Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live and illustrate the times. God did never let them be wanting to the world, as Abel...Enoch...Noah...Abraham...and so of the rest. These, sensual men thought mad, because they would not be partakers or practicers of their madness. But they, placed high on the top of all virtue, looked down on the stage of the world and contemned the play of fortune. For though the most be players, some must be spectators. (VIII, 597)
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Contemning the play of fortune:
Horace, 3.30
I have created a monument more lasting than bronze/brass
and loftier than the royal structure of the pyramids,
that which neither devouring rain, nor the unrestrained North Wind
may be able to destroy nor the immeasurable
succession of years and the flight of time.
I shall not wholly die and a greater part of me
will evade Libitina [Goddess of Death]; continually I,
newly arisen, may be strengthened with ensuing praise so long
as the high priest climbs the Capitoline with the silent maiden.
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My Shakespeare, rise!
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stultitia - Etymology From stultus (“stupid, foolish”).
Noun stultitia (genitive stultitiae); f, first declension
1.Folly, stupidity, foolishness, simplicity, silliness, fatuity.
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Ignorant Praise/Gilding the Monument:
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much;
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise!
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1.MODUS - measure, bound, limit, manner, method, mode, way
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Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
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That is the state word, the phrase of court (placentia college), which
some call Parasites place, the Inn of IGNORANCE. (Jonson, Timber)
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De Shakspeare NOSTRAT. - Augustus in Hat. - I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their IGNORANCE who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most FAULTED;
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Boundedness is the condition of all proportion and fitness; nothing can be good without its proper limits. It is a principle that goes beyond poetics, informing for example these comedies' preoccupation with the idea of humor. Asper, the authorial mouthpiece of Every Man Out, defines humor as "whatsoe'er hath flexure and humidity, / As wanting power to contain itself," and explains that the medical humors (choler, melancholy, and so on) are so called "By reason that they flow continually / In some one part, and are not continent" ("Grex," ll. 96-101). The follies we are about to see, then, are types of incontinence, ugly and absurd because of their lack of any limiting principle. A comedy that wandered whimsically from country to country would be complicit with the humors it displayed. Rather, it should emulate the wise men who RULE their lives by KNOWLEDGE, "and can becalm / All sea of humour with the marble trident / Of their strong spirits" (The Poetaster, 4.6.74-76). -- Peter Womack
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Jonson, Catiline, Act V
...And now had fierce Enyo, like a Flame,
Consum'd all it could reach, and then it self;
Had not the Fortune of the Commonwealth
Come, Pallas-like, to every Roman thought.
Which Catiline seeing, and that now his Troops
Cover'd that Earth they had fought on, with their Trunks,
Ambitious of great Fame, to crown his Ill,
Collected all his Fury, and ran in
(Arm'd with a Glory high as his Despair)
Into our Battel, like a Lybian Lion
Upon his Hunters, scornful of our Weapons,
Careless of Wounds, plucking down Lives about him,
Till he had circled in himself with Death:
Then fell he too, t' embrace it where it lay.
And as in that Rebellion 'gainst the Gods,
Minerva holding forth Medusa's Head,
One of the Gyant-Brethren felt himself
Grow Marble at the killing Sight, and now
Almost made Stone, began t' inquire, what Flint,
What Rock it was, that crept through all his Limbs,
And, ere he could think more, was that he fear'd;
So Catiline, at the sight of Rome in us,
Became his Tomb:
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Jonson, Discoveries
In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost bound, how far with fitness, and a necessary proportion, he may produce, and determine it…*For, as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no more can the action, either the comedy, or tragedy, without his fit bounds*.
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Jonson, Timber
Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live and illustrate the times. God did never let them be wanting to the world, as Abel...Enoch...Noah...Abraham...and so of the rest. These, sensual men thought mad, because they would not be partakers or practicers of their madness. But they, placed high on the top of all virtue, looked down on the stage of the world and contemned the play of fortune. For though the most be players, some must be spectators. (VIII, 597)
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But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a CONSTELLATION there! (Jonson, First Folio poem)
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Constellation
a cluster of stars, or stars which appear to be near each other
in the heavens, and which astronomers have reduced to certain
figures (as the "Great Bear," the "Bull," etc.) for the sake of
classification and of memory. In Isa. 13:10, where this word
only occurs, it is the rendering of the Hebrew _kesil_, i.e.,
"FOOL." This was the Hebrew name of the constellation Orion (Job
9:9; 38:31), a constellation which represented Nimrod, the
symbol of folly and impiety. The word some interpret by "the
giant" in this place, "some heaven-daring rebel who was chained
to the sky for his impiety."
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Proverbs 26
1 Like snow in summer or rain in harvest,
honor is not fitting for a fool.
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Cynthia's Revels, Jonson
Beware then thou render men's Figures truly --
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Cynthia's Revel Act V. Scene XI.
Cynthia, Arete, Crites, Masquers.
(snip)
Arete. Nay, forward, for I delegate my Power
And will that at thy Mercy they do stand,
Whom they so oft, so plainly scorn'd before.
"'Tis Vertue which they want, and wanting it,
"HONOUR NO GARMENT TO THEIR BACKS CAN FIT.
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…the lips of a fool consume him. The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is wicked madness. A fool multiplies words, though no man knows what is to be, and who can tell him what will be after him? (Ecclesiastes 10:12-14; RSV).
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