Michael McCanles
Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet and the Praise of True Nobility
At the heart of all Ben Jonson's nondramatic poetry, argues Michael McCanles, lies the concept of true nobility. Jonson sought to transform the inherited aristocracy of England into an aristocracy of humanist virtue in which he could claim a place through his achievement of true nobility by the merits of his own intellectual labours. In this survey of all Jonson's non-dramatic poetry, McCanles identifies a range of dialectical and contrastive forms through which this concern was rendered poetically. He analyses the contrastive forms in discussions of Jonson's prosody, his use of homonymy and synonymy, and of metaphor. He coins the term 'contrastivity' to encompass the play of semantic choices directed by Jonson's use of suprasegmentals at the local level of poetic technique, and the reader's process of reading wherein he or she confirms the validity of a poem's statements by recreating the process of selection/rejection that went into its creation. Thematically, McCanles suggests that the vera nobilitas argument is in fact four distinct arguments in various ways mutually contradictory, collectively both supporting and subverting aristocratic and monarchical hierarchies. Thus he finds Jonson constrained to employ this argument in addressing aristocratic friends, patrons, and the monarch himself, with careful diplomacy in order to negate the subversive dimensions of his own advice and praise. Employing the resources generated by the theoretical analysis of contrastivity in the first chapter, McCanles demonstrates the considerable complexity of Jonson's poetry, generally underestimated in current scholarship
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Bartholomew Fair, Jonson, From the Induction to the Stage
...If there be ne- ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to make Nature afraid in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries, to MIX HIS HEAD with other MENS HEELS; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances, reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Puppets will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in.
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Earls chastised by Scholars:
McCanles
Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet and the Praise of True Nobility
Jonson and 'Vera Nobilitas'
History and Structure of the 'Vera Nobilitas' Argument
An early vector of Jonson's literary career appears near the beginning of the first play he was willing to acknowledge by publication, Every Man in His Humour. In its first version, Lorenzo Senior lectures his nephew Stephano on the emptiness of pretence to self-importance based on gentle birth. Stephano is advised: 'Let not your cariage and behaviour taste/Of affectation, lest while you pretend/ To make a blaze of gentrie to the world/A little puffe of scorne extinguish it'. He was told that he should 'Stand not so much on your gentility' but rather 'entertain a perfect real substance.' Stephano of course ignores this advice and mindlessly pursues whoever appears able to teach him the catch-phrases and gestural tics of fashion to fill out the 'substance' of gentility. Stephano's snobbery discloses him aware of lacking. In this earlier version of the play, Stephano's snobbery about his gentle birth is subordinated to his display of general frivolity, making him the perfect target of the little puff of scorn that Lorenzo warns him of.
In the second version, with which Jonson opens the 1616 Folio of his Workes, the earlier Stephano snobbery is filled out, and becomes the mark against which both Jonson's and Edward Knowell's shafts are aimed. This shift in Jonson's design is highlighted by an addition to Edward Knowell Senior's expostulation with Stephen: 'Nor stand so much on your gentility,/ Which is an airy and mere borrowed thing,/ From dead men's dust and bones; and none of yours/ Except you make or hold it'. The senior Knowell dips briefly into a long tradition of statements about the foundations of true gentility, to inform him that gentility cannot be inherited from the dead, but can only be achieved by one's own labours and self-discipline. It is a subject that Jonson was never to cease exploring, and we have here probably its first appearance in his oeuvre.
The tradition old Knowell alludes to extends back to fifth-century Athens, and develops through Pindar and Theognis to Aristotle and Isocrates, through Sallust, Cicero, Horace, Seneca, Pliny the Younger, and Juvenal to Claudian in Latin literature, to be picked up by Boethius and transmitted to Dante, the writers of the Roman del la Rose, Chaucer, and finally to full development and flowering among Italian and English humanists of the Renaissance. Treated in Classical Greek writing under the name areté, in Latin literature as virtus, and by Chaucer called gentillesse, this tradition is summarized in the writings of fifteenth-century Florentine humanists under the phrase vera nobilitas. This phrase names a coherent yet historically shifting and evolving set of arguments that concern the true foundations of aristocratic status, which Renaissance humanism derived mainly from classical sources and reframed to serve its own educational agenda. There is little that Jonson says on the subject that does not betray similar indebtedness, and indeed because he appears to be repeating commonplaces his concern with vera nobilitas has passed with little comment in the literature on Jonson's works. The reasons for this neglect are important for understanding the concept itself, its history, and its surprising endurance through Western writing up to the Renaissance (pages 46, 47)
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Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight, they they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad, and in their badness reign.
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McCanles, con't.
The vera nobilitas argument lies at or near the centre of most subjects and themes Jonson treats in his nondramatic poetry. He foreshadows this treatment when he dedicates the Epigrammes to an aristocratic patron, William Herbert, earl of Pembroke: 'My Lord. While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title: It was you that made it, and not I'. Pembroke's title, in the words of the epigram 'To Sir William Jephson' was 'made' by his merit, 'not entayl'd on title,' because 'Nature no such difference had imprest/ In men, but every bravest was the best:/ That bloud not mindes, but mindes did bloud adorne:/ And to live great, was better, then great borne'. The oppositions and equivalences in this epigram are typical of the vera nobilitas tradition in general. Noble titles derive from merit, not the other way round - or at least that is the way the case should be, which is why Jonson praises Sir William for reversing the usually reversed priority. The distinction between noble 'bloud' and 'minde' makes the latter a synecdoche for intellectual cultivation, and discloses Jonson's humanist bias. Where classical Greek and Roman definitions of vera nobilitas emphasize acts of remarkable statesmanship or valour performed in the public domain, Renaissance humanism bent the classical emphasis toward the attainments of humanist scholarship as the true justification of aristocratic privilege.
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O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,
Whilst like a willing patient I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
Ev'n that your pity is enough to cure me
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Tempestuous Grandlings:
Jonson's Stoic Politics:
Lipsius, the Greeks, and the "Speach According to Horace"
Robert C. Evans
...The concluding portion of the "Speach" attacks the superficial training of various "Lordings" (l. 62) and "Grandlings" (l. 64), who bristle at any attempt to "tutor" them in their responsibilities (l. 66), especially when that attempt is made by "Booke-wormes" (l. 67). Rejecting their traditional military duties, they take pride instead in their birth, breeding, and alliances (l. 66), and Jonson makes them contemptuously ask, "Why are we rich, or great, except to show / All licence in our lives?" (ll. 69-70). The only subjects they profess to care about are sports, whoring, dancing, making money, attending plays, and wearing elaborate costumes. As for their social obligations, Jonson imagines them variously crying, "let Clownes, and Tradesmen breed / Their Sonnes to studie Arts, the Lawes, the Creed" (ll. 73-74), and "Let poore Nobilitie be vertuous" (l. 79), and "Let them care, / That in the Cradle of their Gentrie are; / To serve the State by Councels, and by Armes" (ll. 83-85). The poem's final lines condemn such pseudo-aristocrats as "Carkasses of honour; Taylors blocks, / Cover'd with Tissue, whose prosperitie mocks / The fate of things" (ll. 99-101). They are, in the poem's grim final words, nothing but hollow or "emptie moulds" (l. 102). Their personal irresponsibility, Jonson suggests, is not only individually degenerate but also dangerous to the larger body politic.
http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/04-1/evanjons.html
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McCanles, con't.
The second distinction in this epigram sets high birth against living greatly. This antithesis has clearer classical antecedents, and declares that each scion of a noble family retains that nobility not by inheriting it but by recreating it anew. Noble birth contributes nothing to true 'greatness', that is, noble status, and is consequently redundant. No one says this in Jonson's time or before. In fact, Jonson as well as other Renaissance humanists make just the opposite point: the desirable norm is an established aristocracy composed of individuals who have in addition achieved vera nobilitas by their own labours.
However, writing during the years following Jonson's death, Blaise Pascal in a brief treatise entitled 'On the Condition of the Great' marked the end of the vera nobilitas argument as it had developed from fifth-century Greece to Jonson's own time. When Pascal says that 'there are in the world two kinds of greatness: for there is greatness of institution, and natural greatness', he is merely repeating the distinction historically fundamental to the vera nobilitas argument. Nevertheless, Pascal breaks decisively with its history when he concludes that these two kinds of greatness have nothing to do with each other. For Pascal aristocratic status depends on an external political structure, and this status may exist independent of the inner virtues that make natural greatness. He acknowledges to his noble addressee that he owes 'the ceremonies that are merited by your quality of duke... But if you were a duke you without being a gentleman, I should still do you justice; for in rendering you the external homage which the order of men has attached to your birth, I should not fail to have for you the internal contempt that would be merited by your baseness of mind'. (p.48)
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Baseness of mind - 'Bumpkinification' of the Earl of Oxford as Stratford Will.
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Base \Base\ (b[=a]s), a. [OE. bass, F. bas, low, fr. LL. bassus thick, fat, short, humble; cf. L. Bassus, a proper name, and W. bas shallow. Cf. Bass a part in music.] 1. Of little, or less than the usual, height; of low growth; as, base shrubs. [Archaic] --Shak. 2. Low in place or position. [Obs.] --Shak. 3. Of humble birth; or low degree; lowly; mean. [Archaic] ``A pleasant and base swain.'' --Bacon. 4. Illegitimate by birth; bastard. [Archaic] Why bastard? wherefore base? --Shak. 5. Of little comparative value, as metal inferior to gold and silver, the precious metals. 6. Alloyed with inferior metal; debased; as, base coin; base bullion. 7. Morally low. Hence: Low-minded; unworthy; without dignity of sentiment; ignoble; mean; illiberal; menial; as, a base fellow; base motives; base occupations. ``A cruel act of a base and a cowardish mind.'' --Robynson (More's Utopia). ``Base ingratitude.'' --Milton. 8. Not classical or correct. ``Base Latin.'' --Fuller. 9. Deep or grave in sound; as, the base tone of a violin. [In this sense, commonly written bass.] 10. (Law) Not held by honorable service; as, a base estate, one held by services not honorable; held by villenage. Such a tenure is called base, or low, and the tenant, a base tenant.
Syn: Dishonorable; worthless; ignoble; low-minded; infamous;
sordid; degraded.
Usage: Base, Vile, Mean. These words, as expressing
moral qualities, are here arranged in the order of
their strength, the strongest being placed first. Base
marks a high degree of moral turpitude; vile and mean
denote, in different degrees, the want of what is
valuable or worthy of esteem. What is base excites our
abhorrence; what is vile provokes our disgust or
indignation; what is mean awakens contempt. Base is
opposed to high-minded; vile, to noble; mean, to
liberal or generous. Ingratitude is base; sycophancy
is vile; undue compliances are mean.************************************
He was told that he should 'Stand not so much on your gentility' but rather 'entertain a perfect real substance.'...''Nor stand so much on your gentility,/ Which is an airy and mere borrowed thing,/ From dead men's dust and bones; and none of yours/ Except you make or hold it' --Jonson/McCanles
Who worship Fame, commit Idolatry,
Make Men their God, Fortune and Time their worth,
Forme, but reforme not, meer hypocrisie,
By shadowes, onely shadowes bringing forth,
Which must, as blossomes, fade ere true fruit springs,
(Like voice, and eccho) ioyn'd; yet diuers things. -- Greville
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Compare Pascal to Fulke Greville's depiction of the Oxford/Sidney tennis court quarrel:
Publique Ill Example: Oxford appears UNNAMED as Sidney's proud and intemperate ADVERSARY in Greville’s _A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_(originally published as _Life of Sidney_)
...And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the Tennis- Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this Princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more ROUGHLY. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the MISTS of my Lords PASSIONS, SWOLN with the WINDE of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse amazement, or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was POSSESSED with: till at last with RAGE (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court. To this Sir Philip temperately answers; that if his Lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder Characters, perchance he might have led out those, that he should now find would not be driven out with any scourge of FURY. This answer (like a BELLOWS) blowing up the sparks of EXCESS already kindled, made my Lord scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of Puppy. In which progress of HEAT, as the TEMPEST grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breath out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day audience, in those private Galleries, whose windows looked into the Tennis-Court. They instantly drew all to this tumult: every sort of quarrels sorting well with their humors, especially this. Which Sir Philip perceiving, and rising with inward strength, by the prospect of a mighty faction against him; asked my Lord, with a loud voice, that which he heard clearly enough before. Who ( LIKE AN ECHO, that still multiplies by REFLEXIONS) repeated this Epithet of Puppy the second time. Sir Philip resolving in one answer to conclude both the attentive hearers, and PASSIONATE ACTOR, gave my Lord a Lie, impossible (as he averred) to be retorted; in respect all the world knows, Puppies are gotten by Dogs, and Children by men. Hereupon those GLORIOUS INEQUALITIES of FORTUNE in his Lordship were put to a kinde of pause, by a PRECIOUS INEQUALITY OF NATURE in this Gentleman. So that they both stood silent a while, like a dumb shew in a tragedy; till Sir Philip sensible of his own wrong, the forrain, and factious spirits that attended; and yet, even in this question between him, and his superior, tender to his Countries honour; with some words of sharp accent, led the way abruptly out of the Tennis-Court; as if so unexpected an accident were not fit to be decided any farther in that place. Whereof the great Lord making another sense, continues his play, without any advantage of reputation; as by the standard of HUMOURS in those times it was conceived.
O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing WORTHY prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing WORTH.
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Worth \Worth\, n. [OE. worth, wur[thorn], AS. weor[eth],
wur[eth]; weor[eth], wur[eth], adj. See Worth, a.]
1. That quality of a thing which renders it valuable or
useful; sum of valuable qualities which render anything
useful and sought; value; hence, often, value as expressed
in a standard, as money; equivalent in exchange; price.
What 's worth in anything But so much money as 't
will bring? --Hudibras.
2. Value in respect of moral or personal qualities;
excellence; virtue; eminence; desert; merit; usefulness;
as, a man or magistrate of great worth.
To be of worth, and worthy estimation. --Shak.
As none but she, who in that court did dwell, Could
know such worth, or worth describe so well.
--Waller.
To think how modest worth neglected lies.
--Shenstone.
Syn: Desert; merit; excellence; price; rate.****************************************Fulke Greville - Hereditary Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon
Greville, _Dedication_
...Neither am I (for my part) so much in love with this life, nor believe so little in a better to come, as to complain of God for taking him [Sidney], and such like exorbitant WORTHyness from us: fit (as it were by an Ostracisme) to be divided, and not incorporated with our corruptions: yet for the sincere affection I bear to my Prince, and Country, my prayer to God is, that this WORTH, and Way may not fatally be buried with him; in respect, that both before his time, and since, experience hath published the usuall discipline of greatnes to have been tender of it self onely; making HONOUR a triumph, or rather TROPHY OF DESIRE, set up in the eyes of Mankind, either to be worshiped as IDOLS, or else as Rebels to perish under her glorious oppressions. Notwithstanding, when the pride of flesh, and power of favour shall cease in these by death, or disgrace; what then hath time to register, or fame to publish in these great mens names, that will not be offensive, or infectious to others? What Pen without blotting can write the story of their deeds? Or what Herald blaze their Arms without a blemish? And as for their counsels and projects, when they come once to light, shall they not live as noysome, and loathsomely above ground, as their Authors carkasses lie in the grave? So as the return of such greatnes to the world, and themselves, can be but private reproach, publique ill example, and a fatall scorn to the Government they live in. Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he affected was built upon true WORTH; esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.
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REWARDS of earth, Nobility and Fame,
To senses glory and to conscience woe,
How little be you for so great a name?
Yet less is he with men what thinks you so.
For earthly power, that stands by fleshly wit,
Hath banished that truth which should govern it.
Nobility, power's golden fetter is,
Wherewith wise kings subjection do adorn,
To make man think her heavy yoke a bliss
Because it makes him more than he was born.
Yet still a slave, dimm'd by mists of a crown,
Let he should see what riseth, what pulls down.
Fame, that is but good words of evil deeds,
Begotten by the harm we have, or do,
Greatest far off, least ever where it breeds,
We both with dangers and disquiet woo;
And in our flesh, the vanities' false glass,
*We thus deceiv'd adore these calves of brass*.
Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke
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Upon Ben: Johnson, the most excellent of Comick Poets.
Mirror of Poets! Mirror of our Age!
Which her whole Face beholding on thy stage,
Pleas'd and displeas'd with her owne faults endures,
A remedy, like Those whom Musicke cures,
Thou not alone those various inclinations,
Which Nature gives to Ages, Sexes, Nations,
Hast traced with thy All-resembling Pen,
But all that custome hath impos'd on Men,
Or ill-got Habits, which distort them so,
That scarce the Brother can the Brother know,
Is represented to the wondring Eyes,
Of all that see or read thy Comedies.
Whoever in those Glasses lookes may finde,
The spots return'd, or graces of his minde;
And by the helpe of so divine an Art,
At leisure view, and dresse his nobler part.
*NARCISSUS conzen'd by that flattering Well,
Which nothing could but of his beauty tell,
Had here discovering the deform'd estate
Of his fond minde, preserv'd himselfe with hate*,
But Vertue too, as well as Vice is clad,
In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had
Beheld what his high Fancie once embrac'd,
Vertue with colour, speech and motion grac'd.
The sundry Postures of Thy copious Muse,
Who would expresse a thousand tongues must use,
Whose Fates no lesse peculiar then thy Art,
For as thou couldst all characters impart,
So none can render thine, who still escapes,
Like Proteus in variety of shapes,
Who was nor this nor that, but all we finde,
And all we can imagine in mankind.
E. Waller
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Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius
...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;
*Excluding those from life in after-time*,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..
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-- CARTWRIGHT, WILLIAM, 1647,
Upon the Dramatick Poems of Mr. John Fletcher.
...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes; [70]
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free
As his, but without his scurility
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From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)
Jasper Mayne
…And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all
The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:
No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,
No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;
No Oracle of Language, to amaze
The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase,
Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,
A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.
That which Thou wrot’st was sense, and that sense good,
Things not first written, and then understood:
Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar’d so high
As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,
‘Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,
Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.
For thou to Nature had’st joyn’d Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD Shakespeare’s quill:
A Quill, rul’d by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish’d with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch’d from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)
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hold
4. To impose restraint upon; to limit in motion or action; to
bind legally or morally; to confine; to restrain.
We can not hold mortality's strong hand. --Shak.
Death! what do'st? O,hold thy blow. --Grashaw.
He hat not sufficient judgment and self-command to
hold his tongue. --Macaulay.
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Jonson on Shakespeare
He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free
nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle
expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it
was necessary he should be *stopped*. "Sufflaminandus erat," as
Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the
*rule* of it had been so, too.
