Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Oxford Defamed by Anti-Courtier Invective

I've been thinking a lot about something an Oxfordian friend wrote to me regarding the level of difficulty involved in the task of making the case for Hamlet as 'the ultimate anti-Oxford'. An excellent point. But as someone who has spent a lot of time gathering evidence that Oxford was defamed as 'Deformed' and the 'soul' of an Ignorant Age, it may not be too much of a stretch.

I believe that the seeds of the authorship problem were sown during the period of the French Marriage Crisis and remain emblematized in Greville's account of the tennis court quarrel - it is clear that the English court was deeply divided by competing understandings of the nature of virtuous service to the Queen and that often these differences were represented by matters of style. All courtiers were not alike.

To understand the criticism that was levelled at Oxford I think I have found a fruitful historical parallel in the anti-courtier discourse that plagued Henri III of France - and that formed the content of the so-called 'black legend' that grew up around his name. All of the 'Deformed' themes that I have been pursuing as they relate to criticisms of Oxford and Shakespeare -effeminacy, affectation, lack of martial vigour, scurrility, barbarism, dissimulation, extravagance, Italophilia  - appear in the attacks upon the characters of Henri III and his mignons.

Hamlet's contempt and despite for the well-willing courtiers at Elsinore mirrors the content of the anti-courtier discourses that I believe were utilized to blacken the character of the Earl of Oxford. Anti-courtier themes are the subject of a  play of the Poetomachia that bears some relationship to Hamlet - Jonson's Cynthia's Revels- wherein I believe Oxford was satirized as the elegantly 'deformed' courtier Amorphus - the leader of Jonson's 'worser' race at court.  (Cynthia's Revels a satire on courtly courtesy - Hamlet a satire on the neo-stoic reformed civility of academic humanists?Amleth = foolish, dull). And in Greville's illuminating 'story' of the tennis court quarrel the perspective that most closely mirrors Hamlet's own belongs to Philip Sidney - not the Earl of Oxford. Greville's claim that Elizabeth governed legitimately because she governed according to the people's laws and not according to her own will sets the stage for the anti-tyrant discourses that would be mobilized against the Stuart kings. In Sidney's encounter with the stage-tyrant Oxford, Fulke Greville draws a portrait of Sidney's 'worth, justice and duty' standing firm in the face of monstrous  privilege and power - and I have no doubt that Greville intends for us to think of Sidney as an English Brutus or David heroically enacting the anti-tyrant discourses of his [Sidney's] continental mentors. Also, more critically, Greville's use of echo, mirror and tempest imagery deny an 'inwardness' to Oxford who is portrayed as an intemperate creature of surfaces and seeming (idol, picture?). This denial of Oxford's inward truth brands Oxford as politically and morally illegitimate and would similarly cast suspicion upon the speech and writings he brought forth. (For you in me can nothing worthy prove...)

So, sixteenth century anti-courtier discourses in France and England (soon to become antiroyal invective) will continue to be rummaged through as well as Oxford's 'black legend' as reproduced by Alan H Nelson in his biography of Oxford - Monstrous Adversary.

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Shakespeare

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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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend

The Black Legend (Spanish: La leyenda negra) is a phrase used to describe the anti-Spanish historical propaganda created by writers of Spanish rival powers starting in the 16th century, thought to counter Spain's increasing influence and power on the world stage. According to one historian, this propaganda depicts Spain or the Spanish Empire as "cruel, bigoted, exploitative and self-righteous in excess of reality."[1] The term was coined by Julián Juderías in his 1914 book La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica ("The Black Legend and Historical Truth"). Deriving from the Spanish example, the term "black legend" is sometimes used in a more general way to describe any form of unjustified demonization of a historical person, people or sequence of events.


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Proto-Hamlet


The closest myth is Roman: the story of Junius Brutus, legendary founder of Rome, follows a similar pattern of murder and revenge. Brutus' father and brother are killed by his uncle Tarquin; Brutus feigns stupidity to save himself and ultimately overthrows the tyrant, founding the Roman republic. The Scandinavian name "Amleth" and the Latin "Brutus" both have the same meaning ("dull," or "foolish").

The Tarquins In Roman tradition, the Tarquins were an Etruscan family that ruled Rome from ca.657 to ca.510 B.C. The revolt that deposed the last Tarquin was brought about by his son's rape of Lucrece and her subsequent suicide--a subject Shakespeare chose for a long narrative poem.

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Words, Deeds, and a Womanly King


Michael Wintroub

With the possible exception of Louis XVI, Henri III was the most reviled of all French monarchs. The target of an unprecedented propaganda campaign, he was loathed, despised, and demonized—most famously by the Protestant Agrippa d’Aubigné, who compared him to a ‘‘made-up whore’’ (une putain fardee) and ‘‘a King-woman or a man-Queen’’ (un Roy famme ou bien un homme Reyne). For many of his subjects, Henri epitomized France’s descent into a kind of savage and degenerate effeminacy in which truth and virtue had been supplanted by courtly intrigue and cynical dissimulation. Hated not only for his misrule and religious hypocrisy but for his transvestism and alleged homosexuality, Henri provided a worthy foil for the ambitions of the Guise, at the same time giving focus—and corporeal specificity— to the ubiquitous sense that something was radically wrong with the world.

As Denis Crouzet has shown, antiroyal League propaganda had a clear affinity with the pervasive fear that the end-time was at hand. Henri, insofar as he was represented as the debauched and malevolent betrayer of God, came to legitimate (as a holy cause) efforts to overthrow his rule. The king’s inner corruption was thus made evident in God’s displeasure—as manifest in poverty, disease, war, comets, earthquakes, and other monstrous portents. As one commentator asked his readers: ‘‘Do you not see that he is completely fainthearted, cowardly, effeminate, a heliogabal, and is so utterly seduced by luxuries and by all sorts of whorish lechery that the earth vomits and the heavens recoil in horror?’’ Henri’s outward appearance and comportment—from his makeup and curled hair to his perfume and earrings—were, according to his many critics, masks that revealed, rather than disguised, his corrupt and dissimulating nature. France’s decadence, it seems, had become a gauge by which to measure her king’s immorality.

Credible scholarly attempts to understand the ‘‘black legend’’ of Henri III have shied away from the investigation of his actual behaviour to focus instead on the religious and political contexts that framed—and animated—its production and dissemination. Keith Cameron, for example, argues that the king’s behavior had little, if anything, to do with the accusations leveled against him; such slanderous characterizations, he asserts, were clearly attributable to ideological exaggeration at the behest of Leaguers and Protestants vying for position and power. What is interesting to note is that the charges—and perhaps even Henri’s actions themselves—might be associated with deeper social instabilities.

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Jonson, Discoveries


De Poetica. - We have spoken sufficiently of oratory, let us now make a diversion to poetry. Poetry, in the primogeniture, had many PECCANT HUMOURS, and is made to have more now, through the levity and inconstancy of men' s judgments. Whereas, indeed, it is the most prevailing eloquence, and of the most exalted caract. Now the discredits and disgraces are many it hath received through men' s study of depravation or calumny; their practice being to give it diminution of credit, by lessening the professor' s estimation, and making THE AGE afraid of their liberty; and THE AGE is grown so tender of her fame, as she calls all writings aspersions.

That is the state word, the PHRASE OF COURT (placentia college), which some call PARASITES PLACE, the INN OF IGNORANCE.

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Greville. The life of the renowned Sr Philip Sidney.


CHAP. VI.

THus stood the state of things then: And if any judicious Reader shall ask, Whether it were not an error, and a dangerous one, for Sir Philip being neither Magistrate nor Counsellor, to oppose himself against his Soveraigns pleasure in things indifferent? I must answer, That his worth, truth, favour, and sincerity of heart, together with his reall manner of proceeding in it, were his privileges. Because this Gentlemans course in this great business was, not by murmur among equals, or inferiours, to detract from Princes; or by a mutinous kind of bemoaning error, to stir up ill affections in their minds, whose best thoughts could do him no good; but by a due address of his humble reasons to the Queen her self, to whom the appeal was proper. So that although he found a sweet stream of Soveraign humors in that well-tempered Lady, to run against him, yet found he safety in her self, against that selfness which appeared to threaten him in her: For this happily born and bred Princess was not (subject-like) apt to construe things reverently done in the worst sense; but rather with the spirit of annointed Greatness (as created to reign equally over frail and strong) more desirous to find waies to fashion her people, than colours, or causes to punish them.

Lastly, to prove nothing can be wise, that is not really honest; every man of that time, and consequently of all times may know, that if he should have used the same freedome among the Grandees of Court (their profession being not commonly to dispute Princes purposes for truths sake, but second their humours to govern their Kingdomes by them) he must infallibly have found Worth, Justice, and Duty lookt upon with no other eyes but Lamia's; and so have been stained by that reigning faction, which in all Courts allows no faith currant to a Soveraign, that hath not past the seal of their practising corporation.

Thus stood the Court at that time; and thus stood this ingenuous spirit in it. If dangerously in mens opinions who are curious of the present, and in it rather to doe craftily, than well: Yet, I say, that Princely heart of hers was a Sanctuary unto him; And as for the people, in whom many times the lasting images of Worth are preferred before the temporary visions of art, or favour, he could not fear to suffer any thing there, which would not prove a kind of Trophy to him. So that howsoever he seemed to stand alone, yet he stood upright; kept his access to her Majesty as before; a liberall conversation with the French, reverenced amongst the worthiest of them for himselfe, and born in too strong a fortification of nature for the less worthy to abbord, either with question, familiarity, or scorn.

In this freedome, even while the greatest spirits, and Estates seemed hood-winkt, or blind; and the inferior sort of men made captive by hope, fear, ignorance; did he enjoy the freedome of his thoughts, with all recreations worthy of them.

And in this freedome of heart 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.

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SONNET LXXVIII. -- Greville


THe little Hearts, where light-wing'd PASSION raignes,
More easily vpward, as all frailties doe;
Like Strawes to Ieat, these follow Princes veines,
And so, by pleasing, doe corrupt them too.
Whence as their raising proues Kings can create;
So States proue sicke, where toyes beare Staple-rates.

" Like Atomi they neither rest, nor stand,
" Nor can erect; because they NOTHING be
" But baby-thoughts, fed with time-presents hand,
" Slaues, and yet darlings of Authority;
" ECCHO'S of wrong; SHADOWES of Princes might;
" Which glow-worme-like, by shining, show 'tis night.

" Curious of fame, as foule is to be faire;
" Caring to seeme that which they would not be;
" Wherein CHANCE helpes, since Praise is powers heyre,
" Honor the creature of Authoritie:
" So as borne high, in giddie Orbes of grace,
" These Pictures are, which are indeed but Place.

" And as the Bird in hand, with freedome lost,
" Serues for a stale, his fellowes to betray:
" So doe these Darlings rays'd at Princes cost
" Tempt man to throw his libertie away;
" And sacrifice Law, Church, all reall things
" To soare, not in his owne, but Eagles wings.

Whereby, like AEsops dogge, men lose their meat,
To bite at GLORIOUS SHADOWES, which they see;
And let fall those strengths which make all States great
By free Truths chang'd to seruile flatterie.
Whence, while men gaze vpon this blazing starre,
Made slaues, not subiects, they to Tyrants are.

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SONNET LXV. -- Greville


CAElica, you (whose requests commandments be)
Aduise me to delight my minde with books,
" The Glasse where Art doth to posterity,
" Shew nature naked vnto him that looks,
Enriching vs, shortning the wayes of wit,
Which with experience else deare buyeth it.

Caelica, if I obey not, but dispute,
Thinke it is darkenesse; which seeks out a light,
And to presumption do not it impute,
If I forsake this way of Infinite;
*Books be of men, men but in clouds doe see,
Of whose embracements Centaures gotten be*.

I haue for books, aboue my head the Skyes,
Vnder me, Earth; about me Ayre and Sea:
The Truth for light, and Reason for mine eyes,
Honour for guide, and Nature for my way.
With change of times, lawes, humors, manners, right;
Each in their diuerse workings infinite.

Which powers from that wee feele, conceiue, or doe,
Raise in our senses through ioy, or smarts,
All formes, the good or ill can bring vs to,
More liuely farre, than can dead Books or Arts;
" Which at the second hand deliuer forth,
"Of few mens heads, strange rules for all mens worth.

False Antidotes for vitious ignorance,
Whose causes are within, and so their cure,
Errour corrupting Nature not Mischance
For how can that be wise which is not pure?
So that Man being but mere hypocrisie,
What can his arts but beames of follie be?

Let him then first set straight his inward spirit,
That his Affections in the seruing roomes,
May follow Reason, not confound her light,
And make her subiect to inferiour doomes;
*For till the inward moulds be truly plac'd,
All is made crooked that in them we cast.*

But when the heart, eyes light grow pure together,
And so vice in the way to be forgot,
Which threw man from creation, who knowes whither?
Then this strange building which the flesh knowes not,
Reuiues a new-form'd image in mans minde,
Where Arts reueal'd, are miracles defin'd.

What then need halfe-fast helps of ERRING WIT,
Methods, or books of vaine humanity?
Which dazell truth, by representing it,
And so ENTAYLE CLOUDS to POSTERITY.
Since outward wisdome springs from truth within,
Which all men feele, or heare, before they sinne.

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10. Edward de Vere

Fain would I sing, but fury makes me fret
And rage hath sworn to seek revenge of wrong;
My mazed mind in malice so is set
As death shall daunt my deadly dolours long;
Patience perforce is such a pinching pain
As die I will, or suffer wrong again.

I am no sot to suffer such abuse
As doth bereave my heart of his delight,
Nor will I frame myself to such as use
With calm consent to suffer such despite;
No quiet sleep shall once possess mine eye
Till wit have wrought his will on injury.

My heart shall fail and hand shall lose his force,
But some device shall pay despite his due,
And fury shall consume my careful corse,
Or raze the ground whereon my sorrow grew;
Lo, thus in rage of ruthful mind refused,
I rest revenged of whom I am abused.

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Jonson, Discoveries


Censura de poetis. - Nothing in our AGE, I have observed, is more PREPOSTEROUS than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for MIRACLES, who yet are so VILE that if a man should go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have done but one BLOT. Their good is so entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the other’s death with it. A sponge dipped in ink will do all:-

“ - Comitetur Punica librum

Spongia. - ” {44a}
Et paulò post,
“Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ
. . . una litura potest.”

Cestius - Cicero - Heath - Taylor - Spenser. - Yet their vices have not hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved for nothing else. And this false opinion grows strong against the best men, if once it take root with the IGNORANT. Cestius, in his time, was preferred to Cicero, so far as the ignorant durst. They learned him without book, and had him often in their mouths; but a man cannot imagine that thing so foolish or rude but will find and enjoy an admirer; at least a reader or spectator. The puppets are seen now in despite of the players; Heath' s epigrams and the Sculler' s poems have their applause. There are never wanting that dare prefer the worst preachers, the worst pleaders, the worst poets; not that the better have left to write or speak better, but that they that hear them judge worse; Non illi pejus dicunt, sed hi corruptius judicant. Nay, if it were put to the question of the water- rhymer' s works, against Spenser' s, *I doubt not but they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the VULGAR have to lose their judgments and like that which is naught.*

Poetry, in this latter AGE, hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then tendered their visits, she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions (both the law and the gospel) beyond all they could have hoped or done for themselves without her favour. Wherein she doth emulate the judicious but preposterous bounty of the time' s grandees, who accumulate all they can upon the parasite or fresh-man in their friendship; but think an old client or honest servant bound by his place to write and starve.

Indeed, the multitude commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers, who if they come in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence are received for the braver fellows; when many times their own rudeness is a cause of their disgrace, and a slight touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. But in these things the unskilful are naturally deceived, and judging wholly by the bulk, think rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed; nor think this only to be true in the sordid multitude, but the neater sort of our gallants; for all are the multitude, only they differ in clothes, not in judgment or understanding.

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THE Life of the Renowned Sr PHILIP SIDNEY. -- Fulke Greville




CHAP. I.

THe difference which I have found between times, and consequently the changes of life into which their naturall vicissitudes doe violently carry men, as they have made deep furrowes of impressions into my heart, so the same heavy wheeles cause me to retire my thoughts from free traffique with the world, and rather seek comfortable ease or imployment in the safe memory of dead men, than disquiet in a doubtfull conversation amongst the living. Which I ingenuously confesse, to be one chief motive of dedicating these exercises of my youth to that Worthy Sir Philip Sidney, so long since departed. For had I grounded my ends upon active Wisedomes of the present, or sought Patronage out of hope, or fear in the future; Who knowes not, that there are some Noble friends of mine, and many Honourable Magistrates yet living, unto whom both my Fortune, and Reputation were, and are far more subject? But besides this self- respect of Dedication, the debt I acknowledge to that Gentleman is farre greater, as with whom I shall ever account it honour to have been brought up: and in whom the life it self of true worth, did (by way of example) far exceed the pictures of it in any moral Precepts. So that (if my creation had been equal) it would have proved as easie for me, to have followed his patern, in the practice of reall vertue, as to engage my self into this Characteristicall kind of Poesie: in defence whereof he hath written so much, as I shall not need to say any thing. For that this representing of vertues, vices, humours, counsells, and actions of men unfeigned, and unscandalous Images, is an inabling of free-born spirits to the greatest affaires of States: he himself hath left such an instance in the too short scene of his life, as I fear many Ages will not draw a line out of any other mans sphere to parallel with it.

For my own part, I observed, honoured, and loved him so much; as with what caution soever I have passed through my dayes hitherto among the living, yet in him I challenge a kind of freedome even among the dead. So that although with Socrates, I professe to know nothing for the present; yet with Nestor I am delighted in repeating old newes of the ages past; and will therefore stir up my drooping memory touching this mans worth, powers, wayes, and designes: to the end that in the tribute I owe him, our nation may see a Sea-mark, rais'd upon their native coast, above the levell of any private Pharos abroad: and so by a right Meridian line of their own, learn to sayl through the straits of true vertue, into a calm, and spacious Ocean of humane honour.

(snip)

...Instance that reverend Languet, mentioned for honours sake in Sir Philip's Arcadia, learned usque ad miraculum; wise by the conjunction of practice in the world, with that wellgrounded Theory of Books, & much valued at home; till this great Worth (even in a Gentlemans fortune) being discovered for a dangerous instrument against Rome and Spain, by some sparkles got light enough, rather to seek employment elswhere, than to tarry, and be driven out of his own Country with disparagement. In Franckford he settles, is entertained Agent for the Duke of Saxony, and an under-hand Minister for his own King. Lodged he was in Wechels house, the Printer of Franckford, where Sir Philip in travail chancing likewise to become a guest, this ingenious old mans fulnesse of knowledge, travailing as much to be delivered from abundance by teaching, as Sir Philip's rich nature, and industry thirsted to be taught, and manured; this harmony of an humble Hearer to an excellent Teacher, so equally fitted them both, as out of a naturall descent both in love, and plenty, the elder grew taken with a net of his own thread, and the younger taught to lift up himself by a thread of the same spinning; so as this reverend Languet, orderly sequestred from his severall Functions under a mighty King, and Saxonie the greatest Prince of Germany, became a Nurse of knowledge to this hopefull young Gentleman, and without any other hire, or motive than this sympathy of affections, accompanyed him in the whole course of his three years travail. By which example the judicious Reader may see, that Worth in every Nation finds her Country, Parents, Neighbours, and Friends, yea, and often, with more honour, dearnesse, and advancement in knowledges, *than any pedigree of fleshly kindred*, will, or can at home raise, or enlarge them unto. Nay to goe yet farther in this private instance; It may please the Reader to observe, how the same parallel of worth, in what age, or estate soever, as it hath power to win, so hath it likewise absolute power to keep. Far unlike those CREATIONS OF CHANCE, which hath other birds egges; and by advancing men out of chance or complement, lose them again as fast by neglect. Contrary to which, even when diversity of years, courses of life, and fortunes, enforced these dear Friends to divide, there yet passed such a continuall course of intelligence by Letters from one of them to another, as in their losse (if they be lost) there be buried many delicate images, and differences, between the reall, and large complexions of those active times, and the NARROW SALVES of this EFFEMINATE AGE: Because in this excellent mould of their friendship, the greatest businesses of Estate were so mixed with the sweet remissions of ingenuous good will, as men might easily discern in them (as unflattering glasses) that wisdome, and love, in good spirits have great affinity together. For a farther demonstration, behold even the same Languet (after he was sixty six years of age) fashioning himself a journey into England, with the Duke Casimire, onely to see that excellent Plant of his own polishing. In which loving, and unexpected meeting, I dare confidently affirm, neither side became loser. At the sea they parted, and made many mutuall tears omnious propheciers of their never meeting again.

These little sparks of two large natures I make bold the longer to insist upon, because the youth, life and fortune of this Gentleman were indeed but sparkes of extraordinary greatnesse in him: which for want of clear vent lay concealed, and in a maner smothered up. And again to bring the CHILDREN OF FAVOUR, and CHANGE, into an equall ballance of comparison with birth, worth, and education: and therein abruptly to conclude, that God creates those in his certain, and eternall mouldes, out of which he elects for himself; where KINGS choose CREATURES out of Pandoras Tun, and so raise up worth, and no worth; friends or enemies at adventure. Therefore what marvail can it be, if these Iacobs, and Esaus strive ambitiously one with another, as well before as after they come out of such erring, and unperfect wombes?


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‘Male deformities’: Narcissus and the Reformation of Courtly Manners in Cynthia’s Revels

in Ovid & the Renaissance Body

By Goran V Stanivukovic
Mario Digangi

(snip)

...In this essay I want to pursue such an analysis by focusing on Ben Jonson’s early comedy Cynthia’s Revels (1600), which offers particular insight into the social and political implications of the Narcissus myth for early modern English culture. Originally entered in the Stationer’s Register as Narcissus, or the fountain of self-love, this quirky satire of courtly manners represents Jonson’s ‘only extended use of Ovidian material.: Jonson’s uncharacteristic recourse to Ovidian subjects in Cynthia’s Revels suggests his recognition of the Narcissus myth’s theatrical viability as a vehicle for satire. While Narcissus never appears as a character in the play, the Narcissus myth provides Jonson with vivid material for exposing the transgressive bodily practices of unauthorized courtiers, especially through the character of Amorphous (“THE DEFORMED”), whose affected manners violate orthodox prescriptions for male aristocratic comportment. The play’s ridicule of courtly affectation thus accords with early modern interpretations of the Narcissus myth that primarily associate self-love not with homoerotic desire but with EFFEMINATE MANNERS: a clear sign of social, economic and political transgression. By contrast, the virtuously ‘masculine’ comportment of the true gentleman, according to a particular strain of early modern political ideology, justifies his status and exercise of power. Exposing illegitimate courtiers as effeminate narcissists, Cynthia’s Revels reveals the importance of an ideology of ‘civilized’ masculinity to early-seventeenth-century constructions of *political legitimacy*.

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From Alan H Nelson, Monstrous Adversary



The 1615 edition of Stow's _Annales_ reported (for the first time in print) that on his return from Italy, Oxford affected a new stylishness of dress (p. 868):

Milloners, or Haberdashers had not then any gloves Imbroydered, or trimmed with Gold, or Silke, neither Gold nor Imbroydered Girdles and Hangers, neyther could they make any costly wash or perfume, until about the fourteenth or fifteenth yeare of the Queene the right hounourable Edward de Vere, Earle of Oxford: came from Italy, and brought with him Gloves: sweete bagges, a perfumed leather Jerkin, and other plesant thinges, and that yeere the Queene had a payre of perfumed Gloves trimmed onely with foure Tuftes or Roses, of cullered Silke, the Queene took such pleasurer in those Gloves, that shee was pictures with those Gloves upon her hands, and for many yeeres after it was called the Earle of Oxfords perfume.

Oxford's contemporaries believed that Italy had effeminized him.(p.229)

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Much Ado about Nothing - Shakespeare

Watchman
[Aside] I know that Deformed; a' has been a vile
thief this seven year; a' goes up and down like a
gentleman: I remember his name.

BORACHIO
Didst thou not hear somebody?

CONRADE
No; 'twas the vane on the house.

BORACHIO
Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this
fashion is? how giddily a' turns about all the hot
bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty?
sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh's soldiers
in the reeky painting, sometime like god Bel's
priests in the old church-window, sometime like the
shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry,
where his codpiece seems as massy as his club?

(snip)
Second Watchman
Call up the right master constable. We have here
recovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that
ever was known in the commonwealth.

First Watchman
And one Deformed is one of them: I know him; a'
wears a lock.

CONRADE
Masters, masters,--

Second Watchman
You'll be made bring Deformed forth, I warrant you.







Monday, May 6, 2013

Oxford Unassimilable to Whig History - Unlike his Book

In the sixteenth century two influential figures confronted each other in an argument over precedence on the tennis court. Both were members of opposing political factions in the Elizabethan court, and represented very different conceptions of the political future of England and Europe. The commoner Philip Sidney asserted his native ‘rights’ as he challenged the (perceived) tyrannical behaviour of one of the highest ranking earls in the kingdom - Edward de Vere. In the centuries that followed, Sidney’s status took on prophetic and heroic proportions as liberalism, Protestantism and parliamentary power coalesced into a triumphal narrative of "Whig History". On the wrong side of the Whig 'net' from the very start ; conservative, cosmopolitan and Catholic-minded Oxford has languished in a historiographical blind spot. His aristocratic but orphaned Book, however, proved to be most assimilable to the development of the modern British nation and its shifting conceptions of the 'body politic'.

The most comprehensive account of the tennis-court quarrel is to be found in Fulke Greville's 'Life of Sidney'. IMO, the historical record does not yet reflect the conviction, energy and industry of this man. Greville vilifies Oxford, who remains unnamed in his Life - (a lord who is all manner and no matter); and firmly believed that the unworthy should not be raised up or remembered lest their ill-example infect others. As the hereditary Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon and the master of Warwick Castle, he was perfectly positioned to influence events in that region. A subtle adversary, a self-described 'loving and beloved Achates' to Sir Philip, Greville was profoundly devoted to the memory of Sidney - even to the point of designing a shared tomb. Greville may have taken great satisfaction in severing a 'luxurious' and 'effeminate' Oxford/Shakespeare from his immortal literary fame - while (Horatio-like) ensuring that Philip Sidney's story would be told and that he would stand in the eyes of history as the noblest and worthiest man to be found at the court of Elizabeth.

I'm proposing a paradoxical fame for Oxford/Shakespeare. While his book has remained at the soul of British culture his worldly fame was hijacked as his own singular and cosmopolitan brand of courtesy found popularity at court, but was rejected as effeminate and unworthy of imitation by the more martial and plain-style brand of Protestant nationalism that began to rise in England.


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Philip Sidney, _Letter to Queen Elizabeth_


"...But hazards are then most to be regarded, when the nature of the agent and the patient are fitly composed to occasion them. The patient, I account your realm; the agent, Monsieur and his designs. For neither outward accidents do much prevail against a true inward strength, nor inward weakness doth lightly subvert itself without being thrust at by some outward force. Your inward force (for as for your treasure(?), indeed the sinews of your crown, your Majesty doth best and only know) consisteth in your subjects: your subjects generally unexpert in warlike defiance, and, as they are, divided into two mighty factions, and factions bound upon the never ending knot of religion.

The one of them is whom your happy government hath granted the free exercise of eternal truth."

"The other faction, most rightly indeed to be called a faction, is of the Papists: men whose spirits are full of anguish; some being forced to oaths they account damnable; some having their ambition stopped because they are not in the way of advancement; some in prison and disgrace; some whose best friends are banished practisers....

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Wikipedia

Whig history (or Whig Historiography) is the approach to historiography which presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy. In general, Whig historians emphasize the rise of constitutional government, personal freedoms and scientific progress. The term is often applied generally (and pejoratively) to histories that present the past as the inexorable march of progress toward enlightenment. The term is also used extensively in the history of science for historiography that focuses on the successful chain of theories and experiments that lead to present-day science, while ignoring failed theories and dead ends. Whig history has many similarities with the Marxist-Leninist theory of history, which believes that humanity is moving (through historical stages) to the classless, egalitarian society of communism.
Whig history is a form of liberalism, that puts its faith in the power of human reason to reshape society for the better, regardless of past history and tradition. It proposes the inevitable progress of mankind. Its opposite is conservative history or "Toryism." English historian A.J.P. Taylor commented, rather disdainfully and not without considerable prejudice, "Toryism rests on doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future."

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Whig History at Eighty: Wilfred M. McClay

...Of all Butterfield's many works, the most famous and enduringly influential is arguably his 1931 critique entitled The Whig Interpretation of History, a crisp essay-like book that became, and has remained, one of the truly indispensable works in the field of Anglo-American historiography. In it Butterfield defined 'Whig' history as an approach to the past that makes its meaning and its lessons subservient to the demands of the present and to the present's reigning idea of what constitutes "progress". Whig history was history written by and for the winners in historical conflict and change, and as such, it always upheld the present's sense of itself as an unmistakeable and inevitable advance on all that preceded it. Such historical writing was likely to be simplistic and one-sided, reducible to white hats and black hats, and thereby offending Butterfield's sense of historical complexity and is insistence upon broad sympathies. The term "Whig history" expressed the tendency of so many historians, in his words, "to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present." Such history sought to make the crooked stright and the rough places plain, and paved over the lost causes, failed arguments, noble sacrifices, unopened doors, untried passages, ambiguous outcomes, and inconclusive experiments that are the soul and substance of life as lived and remembered.

Still, it may seem surprising that Butterfield took such a firm stand against these Whiggish tendencies, which seemed to him not only gross oversimplifications but betrayals of the rightful task of the historian. One might have thought that his Christian commitments would lead him in the opposite direction, toward a way of writing and thinking about the past that insisted on finding clear moral meaning rather than ambiguity or randomness, and that passionately sought signs of the larger providential telos implicit in the direction of worldly events. He might have disagreed with the particular calculus that individual Whig scholars applied to the interpretation of modern history, or disagreed with their conclusions, without rejecting the enterprise altogether.

But reject it his did. Not that Butterfield disbelieved in Providence. But he insisted that the historian had no special access to providential designs and should refrain from making such arguments, choosing for himself a more modest role, answerable to a different and more limited set of canons, technical or even "scientific" in character, with a deliberate agnosticism about their larger meaning. No mere mortal historian had a right, or had sufficient knowledge, to be making the kind of final moral judgments about the ultimate meaning of historical actions and actors. In this respect, Butterfield found particular fault in the writings of Lord Acton, a historian whom he otherwise greatly admired, but against whom much of the argumentative force of Whig Interpretation ws directed. That Acton was himself a notable member of that shrinking band of believing Christian historians, and a Catholic to boot, and that Butterfield was a Whig by default, only adds further irony to the mix.

The tendencies Butterfield resisted were illustrated in Acton's 1895 inaugural address on assuming the Regius chair [of HISTORY at CAMBRIDGE]. In that address, Acton issued a rebuke to one of the chief characteristics of historicism: its insistence on confining the historians moral judgment to the specific historical contexts in which the actions under review took place. Acton embraced historicism as a method but drew a line against its tendency toward relativism. Instead, he offered a ringing defence of the historian as moral arbiter, urging his audience "never to debase the moral currency or lower the standard of rectitude, but try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict upon wrong."

In other words, as we might say today, the historian should not hesitate to impose his values on the past. And Acton was in no doubt about the general direction of history's movement: "I hope...this will aid you to see that the action of Christ who is risen on mankind whom he redeemed fails not, but increases; that the wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world; and that achieved liberty is the one eithcal result that rests on the converging and combined conditions of advancing civilization. Then you will understand what a famous philosopher said, that History is the true demonstration of Religion."

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Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke

Fulke Greville and Sir John Coke: An Exchange of Letters on a History Lecture and Certain Latin Vers... more
Norman Farmer, Jr.

…(F)or four years beginning in 1624, Greville was deeply involved in an effort to establish what would ultimately be the first professorship of HISTORY at CAMBRIDGE. His initial choice of a scholar to fill that post was the famous Dutch historian, Gerard J. Vossius. When, however, Vossius decided after considerable correspondence to remain at Leiden, Greville selected the young Dutch lawyer Isaac Dorislaus to be the first professor of history at Cambridge, a post not unlike that previously established by William Camden at Oxford in 1622.
(snip)
…As recent scholarship has shown, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the evolution in England of an increasingly sophisticated historiography. Oriented more toward the concepts of process and progress than toward adherence to mere custom, history was rapidly coming to be distinguished from simple antiquarianism at a time when many of the patriotic and theological assumptions of the Tudors were coming to be qualified by a new scepticism. As one recent writer explains it, by the seventeenth century “the crisis in intellectual life had penetrated the writing of history.” This new awareness of the past naturally manifested itself in a wide variety of ways, a remarkable number of which are clearly represented in the pattern of Greville’s own interests. For example, the foregoing chronology of events shows him to have had considerable interest in the historical aspects of genealogy and heraldry, or cartography and surveys, or divinity, of architectural restoration, of the building and presumably the stocking of libraries appropriate for research, and the provision of lecturers competent to discuss history in all of its uses and ramifications. His commitment to such a range of projects indicates a sensitivity to the developing historiography of his time as well as an activist’s dedication to the practical exploitation of theory. And if we will consider certain relevant statements that Greville makes in The Life of Sir Philip Sidney, we can obtain a useful perspective on his developing response to the intellectual change going on about him.

Although it often seems to confuse the various functions of dedication, biography, autobiography, and history, the one dominant motif in the Life that is obvious to most readers is Greville’s desire to praise and exemplary man. As an ideal seldom encountered in real life, Sir Philip Sidney had come to be regarded as a personification of public virtue and service to the state. And it was of course quite proper that the man who considered himself Sidney’s best friend (an opinion in which it would appear there was a general concurrence) should write his biography. But Greville’s praise is in fact a vehicle for moral and political instruction. He states, for example, ‘that although with SOCRATES, I professe to know nothing for the present; yet with NESTOR I am delighted in repeating old newes of the ages past; and will therefore stir my drooping memory touching this mans worth, power, wayes, and designs: to the end that in the tribute I owe him, our nation may see a Sea-mark, rais’d upon their native coast, above the levell of any private Pharos abroad: and so by a right Meridian line of their own, learn to sayl through the straits of true virtue, into a calm, and spacious Ocean of humane honour.”

Such a statement of purpose is clearly founded on the premise that “story” or history is obligated to do more than present facts. It must also supply, in accord with the accepted values of the times, a commentary on the moral implications of facts. As a prominent man of action Sidney offered an example which, it could be expected, would inspire others to strive for like eminence in virtue. And so far as Greville is concerned, his public responsibility as a biographer would be to persuade others, through examples drawn from the facts of Sidney’s life, to adopt virtuous ideals and live by them. Greville’s practice of this kind of history writing follows the pattern established in classical literature by Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, and Seneca. And it is indicative of at least part of his intention in writing the Life to see how closely he does so. First, Sidney was a man of action, a man deeply involved in the affairs of state and personally committed to the attitudes and values that shaped the state. Second, his was a personality and character guaranteed to impress and possibly inspire others; he had the charisma and attractiveness around which a popular myth could flourish. Third, Greville’s treatment of Sidney, while it appears only to extol the man, is in fact a reminder to Greville himself and an assertion to his readers that Sidney’s deeds provide a guide to life (the concept of magistra vitae is clearly apparent here). Finally, while Greville’s treatment of episodes in Sidney’s life shows a scrupulous concern for truthfulness, they are recounted with a keen appreciation of the persuasive force of proper example. In broad terms, Greville apparently considered it his responsibility as a historian to confirm, through examples drawn from the life of Sidney, the precepts of morality established by religion and philosophy.

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Of the period following the Restoration David Norbrook writes (In _Writing the English Republic_):

"Forgetting was officially sanctioned: The Act of Indemnity and
Oblivion banned 'any name or names, or other words of reproach tending
to revive the memory of the late differences thereof'. This book is one
attempt to counter that process of erasure, which has had long-term
effects on English literary history and, arguably, on wider aspects of
political identity.. In the short term, the Act of Indemnity and
Oblivion can be seen as an enlightened piece of legislation. Twenty
years of bitter contention between and within families and social and
religious groups needed oblivion to heal them. In the longer term,
however, such forgetting has had it costs. Suppressing the republican
element in English Cultural history entails simplifying a complex but
intellectually and artistically challenging past into a sanitized and
impoverished Royal heritage....The republic's political institutions
'continue to languish in a historiographical blind spot'; much the same
applies to artistic culture. (Norbrook pp1-2.)

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Country Party/Whigs - Republican Algernon Sidney invoked his great-uncle Philip in his anti-tyrant posturings:

Algernon Sidney or Sydney (14 or 15 January 1623 – 7 December 1683) was an English politician, republican political theorist, colonel, and opponent of King Charles II of England, who was charged with plotting against the King and was executed for treason.
(snip)
Baltic Ambassador

After Cromwell's death in 1658, the army abolished the Protectorate in 1659 and reconvened the Rump Parliament, with Sidney taking up his seat in the Commons. During 1659–1660 he was part of a delegation to help arbitrate peace between Denmark and Sweden, as war would threaten England's naval supplies, as well as those of the Dutch. The delegation was commanded by Edward Montagu, with Sidney and Sir Robert Honeywood. The third planned plenipotentiary, Bulstrode Whitelocke, declined because: "I knew well the overruling temper and height of Colonel Sydney".


Sidney discarded conventional diplomatic norms ("a few shots of our cannon would have made this peace") in order to impose a peace favourable to England. Due to the Swedish king Charles X being unable to immediately receive them, the delegation negotiated with the Dutch on forming a joint fleet to impose peace terms. Charles X complained that the English "wish to command all, as if they were masters". Sidney in person handed Charles the treaty proposal (already accepted by Denmark), threatening military action. He recorded that Charles "in great choler... told us, that we made projects upon our fleets, and he, laying his hand upon his sword, had a project by his side". Sidney would not back down and an observer wrote: "Everyone is amazed how Sidney stood up to him". However Montague planned to go back to England with the fleet, leading Sidney to give "his opinion, [that] for sending away the whole fleet he thought he should deserve to lose his head".

Despite this curtailment of England's influence, a treaty was signed on 27 May 1660 by Denmark, Sweden, France, England and Holland.[1] It was during this period that Sidney signed the visitor's book at the University of Copenhagen with: "PHILIPPUS SIDNEY MANUS HAEC INIMICA TYRANNIS EINSE PETIT PLACIDAM CUM LIBERTATE QUIETEM" ("This hand, enemy to tyrants, by the sword seeks peace with liberty"). This expression was incorporated into the Great Seal of Massachusetts by act of legislature in 1780.

***********************************
Algernon Sidney and the English Republic 1623-1677 By Jonathan Scott


...The even soon became the basis of a specifically republican legend; as Ludlow put it, 'the King of Sweden had expressed his discontent that ... two Commonwealths should form conditions to be imposed on crowned heads'. The Danes, scarcely able to contain their glee, played upon this line with reports back to England that Charles X had expressed amazement that such 'parricides' had ever dared to enter his court. In the midst of all this, Sidney, content to wait for the fifteen days to elapse, returned to Copenhagen. It was probably at this moment that the Danes presented their new (and temporary) hero with the signature book of the university of Copenhagen. In it the feted 'mediator' wrote: `
PHILIPPUS SIDNEY
MANUS HAEC IMIMICA TYRANNIS
EINSE PETIT PLACIDAM CUM LIBERTATE QUIETEM

Most people, of course, would simply have signed their name. This famous inscription was subsequently reproduced at the head of all editions of Sidney's works, expanded, turned in America into verse, incorporated into many whig gentleman's coats, of arms, and remains to this day the offical motto of the State of Massachusetts, USA. As the inscription was later related by Sidney to Lantin during a discussion of Cromwell, he was probably the tyrant he had in mind when he wrote it. But it was the applicablility of the inscription to the recent debacle with Charles X which delighted the Danes. That it later delighted whigs as a denunciation of Stuart tyranny is a tribute to the universality of the legend.

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Wikipedia:

Henry Sydney (or Sidney), 1st Earl of Romney (8 April 1641 – 8 April 1704) was born in Paris, a son of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, of Penshurst Place in Kent, England, and his wife, born Lady Dorothy Percy, a daughter of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland and sister of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland.


Henry was a brother of Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester, who was born in 1619; Algernon Sydney, the Republican martyr, who was born at Penshurst Place in 1622 but was executed, having been found party to the "Rye House Plot" 1683; and Robert Sidney. His sister was Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland.

Henry entered Parliament in 1679 and, as a statesman, was one of the Immortal Seven (the author of the letter, in fact) to invite the Protestant William III of Orange to take the throne through the Glorious Revolution, when King James II was deposed under legislation passed to exclude Charles II's Catholic brother (the Duke of York) from the succession. King William created Sydney Baron Milton and Viscount Sydney in 1689.

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Greville, __A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_

“I conceived an Historian was bound to tell nothing but the truth, but to tell all truths were both justly to wrong, and offend not only princes and States, but to blemish, and stir up himself, the frailty and tenderness, not only of particular men, but of many Families, with the spirit of an Athenian Timon.”

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Shakespeare:

‘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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Trashed by History: Protestant commoner William Shakespeare remains a more malleable "Whiggish" candidate for authorship than politically conservative, Catholic and aristocratic Italophile Oxford.

'suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.' -- Lord Acton

...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. -- Fulke Greville
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Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism, Robert E. Stillman
Exemplary Tyrants and Aesthetic Barbarians:

While prosecuting what the Defence of Poesy calls a "CIVIL WAR among the MUSES,' Sidney marshals an especially crucial argument against the muse of HISTORY. "Many times a terror from well-doing, and an encouragement to unbridled wickedness,' the historical muse sounds the voice not of truth and moral persuasion, but instead of political turpitude. Just consider the kinds of stories that fill history's "old mouse-eaten records," Sidney asks. Cypselus, Periander, Phalaris, and Dionysius were all real-world tyrants who enjoyed quiet deaths, unpunished for their crimes. Discredited by its own mouse-eaten records, history's culturally familiar moral power emerges from the Defence as considerably less than exemplary, both because of the existence of such stories and also more importantly because of the character of historical narrative itself. "Captived to the truth of a foolish world, " history is condemned to narrating over and again the triumphs of tyranny. With an audacity as sly as it is comically hyperbolic, the Defence disposes in a few curt, ironically pointed sentences of centuries of humanistically inspired commentary on history's exemplary moral power. It is hardly the historian's fault that he is compelled to tell the truth, Sidney might have admitted if pressed, but therein lies the critical point. Historical truth is simply inadequate, given the foolishness of the world, to the demands of historical life.

It is useful to begin with renewed attention to how Sidney configures the relationship between poetry and history in his Defence since that relationship is crucial for understanding his preoccupation with TYRANNY in the text as a whole and for reevaluating the connection between his poetics and is politics. Tyranny has attracted a great deal of attention in studies of The New Arcadia, but little has been written about the tyrants who populate the defence in such numbers. It is not only when taking the historian to task for his disciplinary shortfalls that Sidney interests us in tyranny. He muses too upon the failures of the philosopher. Plato's real-life enslavement at the hands of Dionysius, the Sicilian tyrant whose education in virtue he failed to procure, becomes shorthand for the failure of philosophy generally in it controntation with tyranny. In turn , the metamorphosis of Hiero I from tyrant to just king is credited to Simonides and Pindar, as another tribute to the superior powers of the poet. When Sidney wants to exemplify the "eikastic" powers of poetry - it's capacity to "figure forth good things"- he does so, centrally, by alluding to a portrait of "Judith killing Holofernes," one of the great biblical prototypes of tyrannicide. When he seeks to illustrate the power of the stage to create "divine admiration," he highlights the accomplishments of George Buchanan, that Scottish humanist whose specialty was tyrannicidal tragedy. The success of poets in confounding tyrants takes center stage in Sidney's defense of tragedy as a genre. What the Defence terms "the high and excellent Tragedy...maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and *tyrants manifest their tyrannical humours*. (pp. 169-70)

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Greville, Fulke, Baron Brooke, 1554-1628.

Title: Certaine learned and elegant vvorkes of the Right Honorable
Fulke Lord Brooke written in his youth, and familiar exercise with
Sir Philip Sidney. The seuerall names of which workes the following page
doth declare.

Date: 1633
An Inquisition vpon Fame and Honour.

85.
Then make the summe of our Idea's this,
Who loue the world, giue latitude to Fame,
And this Man-pleasing, Gods displeasing is,
Who loue their God, haue glory by his name:
But fixe on Truth, who can, that know it not?
Who fixe on error, doe but write to blot.
86.

"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, (springs,
"Which must, as blossomes, fade ere true fruit
"(Like voice, and eccho) ioyn'd; yet diuers things.

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Shakespeare's Monument, Stratford-upon-Avon

IUDICIO PYLIUM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM:
TERRA TEGIT, POPVLVS MÆRET, OLYMPVS HABET.
[THE JUDGEMENT OF NESTOR, THE GENIUS OF SOCRATES, THE ART OF VIRGIL:
THE *EARTH ENCLOSES*, THE PEOPLE SORROW, OLYMPUS POSSESSES.]

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Shakespeare:

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number'd hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

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1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville


"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors."

“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page
of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine
authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply
standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all
BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative
as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some
warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author
has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our
bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences
among us?”

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XLII. - THE MIND OF THE FRONTISPIECE
TO A BOOK. --Jonson

From death and dark oblivion (near the same)
The mistress of man's life, grave HISTORY,
Raising the world to good and evil fame,
Doth vindicate it to eternity.
Wise Providence would so : that nor the good
Might be defrauded, nor the great secured,
But both might know their ways were understood,
When vice alike in time with virtue dured :
Which makes that, lighted by the beamy hand
Of Truth, that searcheth the most hidden springs,
And guided by Experience, whose STRAIGHT WAND
Doth METE, whose line doth sound the depth of things ;
She cheerfully supporteth what she rears,
Assisted by no strengths but are her own,
Some note of which each varied pillar bears,
By which, as proper titles, she is known
Time's witness, herald of Antiquity,
The light of Truth, and life of Memory.

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To the L A D Y most deserving Her N A M E and B L O O D,

Mary Lady Wroth.

M A D A M,

IN the Age of Sacrifices, the Truth of Religion was not in the Greatness and Fat of the Offerings, but in the Devotion and Zeal of the Sacrificers: Else what could a Handful of Gums have done in the sight of a Hecatomb? Or, how might I appear at this Altar, except with those Affections that no less love the Light and Witness, than they have the Conscience of your Vertue? If what I offer bear an acceptable Odour, and hold the first Strength, it is your Value of it, which remembers where, when, and to whom it was kindled. Otherwise, as the Times are, there comes rarely forth that Thing so full of Authority or Example, but by Assiduity and Custom grows less, and loses. This, yet, safe in your Judgment (which is a SI D N E Y S) is forbidden to speak more, lest it talk or look like one of the Ambitious Faces of the Time, who the more they paint, are the less themselves.

Your Ladiships true Honourer,

BEN. JOHNSON

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Billy Budd, Melville

Aside from his qualities as a sea-officer, Captain Vere was an exceptional character. Unlike no few of England's renowned sailors, long and arduous service with signal devotion to it, had not resulted in absorbing and salting the entire man. He had a marked leaning toward everything intellectual. He loved books, never going to sea without a newly replenished library, compact but of the best. The isolated leisure, in some cases so wearisome, falling at intervals to commanders even during a war-cruise, never was never was tedious to Captain Vere. With nothing of that literary taste which less heeds the thing conveyed than the vehicle, his bias was toward those books to which every serious mind of superior order occupying any active post of authority in the world naturally inclines; books treating of actual men and events no matter of what era- history, biography and unconventional writers, who, free from cant and convention, like Montaigne, honestly and in the spirit of common sense philosophize upon realities.

In this line of reading he found confirmation of his own more reasoned thoughts- confirmation which he had vainly sought in social converse, so that as touching most fundamental topics, there had got to be established in him some positive convictions, which he forefelt would abide in him essentially unmodified so long as his intelligent part remained unimpaired. In view of the troubled period in which his lot was cast this was well for him. His settled convictions were as a dyke against those invading waters of novel opinion, social, political and otherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in those days, minds by nature not inferior to his own. While other members of that aristocracy to which by birth he belonged were incensed at the innovators mainly because their theories were inimical to the privileged classes, not alone Captain Vere disinterestedly opposed them because they seemed to him incapable of embodiment in lasting institutions, but at war with the peace of the world and the welfare of mankind.

With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers of his rank, with whom at times he would necessarily consort, found him lacking in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman, as they deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from their company one would be apt to say to another, something like this: "Vere is a noble fellow, Starry Vere. Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio" (meaning him with the Lord title) "is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter. But between you and me now, don't you think there is a queer streak of the pedantic running thro' him? Yes, like the King's yarn in a coil of navy-rope?"

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Whig History at Eighty: Wilfred M. McClay

Taken to its fullest, nonetheless, Butterfield's New Whig approach cuts away at the branch on which it stands, casting doubt on one of the chief culture-forming distinctives of Judeo-Christianity: its understanding of divine history and human history as intersecting stories and not merely parallel or disparate ones. The Judaism and Christianity of the Bible are faiths whose God takes a very strong and active interest in the doings of nations and the outcomes of historical events and occasionally intervenes in them, sometimes quite dramatically.

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Fulke Greville, the self-described 'Loving and Beloved Achates' of Sir Philip Sidney, frames the tennis court quarrel as Sidney's worthy and noble response to the unjust tyranny of Oxford. Sidney's mentor was Hubert Languet - a noted continental monarchomach. In Sidney's encounter with the creature of fortune Oxford, Greville makes it clear that Languet's lessons regarding unjust power were not wasted - even though Sidney had only this small and rather domestic stage to act upon.


...Hereupon the glorious inequalities of Fortune in his Lordship were put to a kinde of pause, by a precious inequality of nature in this Gentleman. -- Greville on Lord Oxford and Sidney


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(Elizabethan Age - When the 'Good Old Cause' was still Newish)

To Thee Old Cause - Whitman, Notes and Fragments

Poem of adherence to the good old cause - the "good old cause" is that in all its diversities, in all lands, at all times, under all circumstances, - which promulges liberty, justice, the cause of the people as against infidels and tyrants.

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Fulke Greville. The life of the renowned Sr Philip Sidney.

CHAP. VI.
THus stood the state of things then: And if any judicious Reader shall ask, Whether it were not an error, and a dangerous one, for Sir Philip being neither Magistrate nor Counsellor, to oppose himself against his Soveraigns pleasure in things indifferent? I must answer, That his worth, truth, favour, and sincerity of heart, together with his reall manner of proceeding in it, were his privileges. Because this Gentlemans course in this great business was, not by murmur among equals, or inferiours, to detract from Princes; or by a mutinous kind of bemoaning error, to stir up ill affections in their minds, whose best thoughts could do him no good; but by a due address of his humble reasons to the Queen her self, to whom the appeal was proper. So that although he found a sweet stream of Soveraign humors in that well-tempered Lady, to run against him, yet found he safety in her self, against that selfness which appeared to threaten him in her: For this happily born and bred Princess was not (subject-like) apt to construe things reverently done in the worst sense; but rather with the spirit of annointed Greatness (as created to reign equally over frail and strong) more desirous to find waies to fashion her people, than colours, or causes to punish them.

Lastly, to prove nothing can be wise, that is not really honest; every man of that time, and consequently of all times may know, that if he should have used the same freedome among the Grandees of Court (their profession being not commonly to dispute Princes purposes for truths sake, but second their humours to govern their Kingdomes by them) he must infallibly have found Worth, Justice, and Duty lookt upon with no other eyes but Lamia's; and so have been stained by that reigning faction, which in all Courts allows no faith currant to a Soveraign, that hath not past the seal of their practising corporation.

Thus stood the Court at that time; and thus stood this ingenuous spirit in it. If dangerously in mens opinions who are curious of the present, and in it rather to doe craftily, than well: Yet, I say, that Princely heart of hers was a Sanctuary unto him; And as for the people, in whom many times the lasting images of Worth are preferred before the temporary visions of art, or favour, he could not fear to suffer any thing there, which would not prove a kind of Trophy to him. So that howsoever he seemed to stand alone, yet he stood upright; kept his access to her Majesty as before; a liberall conversation with the French, reverenced amongst the worthiest of them for himselfe, and born in too strong a fortification of nature for the less worthy to abbord, either with question, familiarity, or scorn.

In this freedome, even while the greatest spirits, and Estates seemed hood-winkt, or blind; and the inferior sort of men made captive by hope, fear, ignorance; did he enjoy the freedome of his thoughts, with all recreations worthy of them.

And in this freedome of heart 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.

A day Sr Philip remains in suspense, when hearing nothing of, or from the Lord, he sends a Gentleman of worth to awake him out of his TRANCE; wherein the French would assuredly think any pause, if not death, yet a lethargy of true honour in both. This stirred a resolution in his Lordship to send Sir Philip a Challenge. Notwithstanding, these thoughts in the great Lord WANDRED so long between GLORY, ANGER, and INEQUALITY of state, as the Lords of her Majesties Counsell took notice of the differences, commanded peace, and laboured a reconciliation between them. But needlesly in one respect, and bootlesly in another. The great Lord being (as it should SEEM) either not hasty *to adventure many inequalities against one*, or inwardly satisfied with the progress of his own Acts: Sir Philip on the other side confident, he neither had nor would lose, or let fall any thing of his right. Which her Majesties Counsell quickly perceiving, recommended this work to her self.

The Queen, who saw that by the loss, or disgrace of either, she could gain nothing, presently undertakes Sir Philip; and (like an excellent Monarch) lays before him the difference in degree between Earls, and Gentlemen; the respect inferiors ought to their superiors; and the necessity in Princes to maintain their own creations, as degrees descending between the peoples licentiousness, and the anoynted Soveraignty of Crowns: how the Gentlemans neglect of the Nobility taught the Peasant to insult upon both.

Whereunto Sir Philip, with such reverence as became him, replyed: First, that place was never intended for privilege to WRONG: witness her self, who how Soveraign soever she were by Throne, Birth, Education, and Nature; yet was she content to cast her own affections into the same moulds her Subjects did, and govern all her rights by their Laws. Again, he besought her Majesty to consider, that although he were a great Lord by birth, alliance, and grace; yet hee was no Lord over him: and therfore the difference of degrees between free men, could not challenge any other homage than precedency. And by her Fathers Act (to make a Princely wisdom become the more familiar) he did instance the Government of K. Henry the eighth, who gave the Gentry free, and safe appeal to his feet, against the oppression of the Grandees; and found it wisdome, by the stronger corporation in number, to keep down the greater in power: inferring else, that if they should unite, the OVER-GROWN might be tempted, by still coveting more, to fall (as the Angels did) by affecting equality with their Maker.

This constant tenor of truth he took upon him; which as a chief duty in all creatures, both to themselves, & the soveraignty above them, protected this Gentleman (though he obeyed not) from the displeasure of his Soveraign. Wherein he left an authentical president to after ages, that howsoever TYRANTS allow of no scope, stamp, or standard, but their own WILL; yet with Princes there is a latitude for subjects to reserve native, and legall freedom, by paying humble tribute in MANNER, though not in MATTER, to them.

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SONNET LXXVIII. -- Greville


THe little Hearts, where light-wing'd PASSION raignes,
More easily vpward, as all frailties doe;
Like Strawes to Ieat, these follow Princes veines,
And so, by pleasing, doe corrupt them too.
Whence as their raising proues Kings can create;
So States proue sicke, where toyes beare Staple-rates.

Like Atomi they neither rest, nor stand,
Nor can erect; because they NOTHING be
But baby-thoughts, fed with time-presents hand,
Slaues, and yet darlings of Authority;
ECCHO'S of wrong; SHADOWES of Princes might;
Which glow-worme-like, by shining, show 'tis night.

Curious of fame, as foule is to be faire;
Caring to seeme that which they would not be;
Wherein CHANCE helpes, since Praise is powers heyre,
Honor the creature of Authoritie:
So as borne high, in giddie Orbes of grace,
These Pictures are, which are indeed but Place.

And as the Bird in hand, with freedome lost,
Serues for a stale, his fellowes to betray:
So doe these Darlings rays'd at Princes cost
Tempt man to throw his libertie away;
And sacrifice Law, Church, all reall things
To soare, not in his owne, but Eagles wings.

Whereby, like AEsops dogge, men lose their meat,
To bite at GLORIOUS SHADOWES, which they see;
And let fall those strengths which make all States great
By free Truths chang'd to seruile flatterie.
Whence, while men gaze vpon this blazing starre,
Made slaues, not subiects, they to Tyrants are.

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HAMLET


  Nay, do not think I flatter.
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
No, let the CANDIED tongue lick ABSURD POMP,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself, for thou hast been—
As one in suffering all that suffers nothing—
A man that FORTUNE’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks. And blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for FORTUNE’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.—Something too much of this.—

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Blair Worden, _The Sound of Virtue -Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics_

For Greville, TYRANNY is characterised by 'WILL, which nothing but
itself endures', and which overrides 'law'. His golden retrospection
contrasts the readiness of Queen Elizabeth to harmonise her 'own
affections' with 'her subjects' , and to govern by 'laws', with the
ways of 'TYRANTS' who allow of no scope....but their own will'. Yet in
Sidney's lifetime Greville, and Sidney too, would have been more
likely to concur with the view of Sir Francis Knollys that she
preferred 'her own will and her own affections' to 'the sound advice
of open counsel'.

'WILL' in Renaissance minds, is the enemy not only of law but of
reason, which law invokes. Languet's and Mornay's Vindiciae, Contra
Tyrannos cites Juvenal's condemnation of kings who resolve to rule by
'WILL' rather than by 'reason'. The friends of WILL are passion and
lust, when men, instead of 'reason, follow WILL, and instead of law,
use their own lust'. (p.212)

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Shakespeare:


‘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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'suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.' -- Lord Acton


Fulke Greville - Life of Sidney

...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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Shakespeare;

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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Greville - Hereditary Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon:


Rewards of Earth -Greville

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.


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Oxford as the anti-Sidney:

...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.

-- Fulke Greville, writing of the 'wrong sort'.

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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Greville - Historical record does not yet reflect the conviction, energy and industry of this man. Greville clearly vilifies Oxford (who remains unnamed in his Life of Sidney )and firmly believes that the unworthy should not be raised up or remembered. As the hereditary Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon, he was perfectly positioned to influence events. A subtle enemy, and profoundly devoted to Sidney, Greville may have taken great satisfaction in severing Oxford/Shakespeare from his immortal fame - while ensuring that Philip Sidney would stand in the eyes of history as the noblest courtier of them all.

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http://www.historytoday.com/blair-worden/execution-charles-i-king-dead-long-live-crown


...The restored monarchy exploited that sentiment and kept it alive. Signatories of Charles I's death warrant were dragged through the streets to hideous executions at Charing Cross or Tyburn. Cromwell's corpse was exhumed from Westminster Abbey and exposed on a pole to public derision. The date January 30th was set aside for perpetual lamentation in the calendar of the Church of England, which required congregations to acknowledge God's mercy in freeing the land 'from the unnatural rebellion, usurpation and tyranny of ungodly and cruel men, and from the sad confusions and ruin thereupon ensuing'. In each church the minister was either to read from official homilies against disobedience to kings or 'preach a sermon of his own composing against the same argument'.

In the later 17th century, Tories turned January 30th into what their enemies called a 'general madding-day', on which seditious doctrines were excoriated. Sermons recalling Charles's execution would arouse annual excitement and debate until far into the 18th century and denunciations of the regicide would survive in the Church's liturgy until far into the 19th. The great battles of Tory and Whig, and then of Tory and Liberal, turned on memories of the Civil Wars to an extent that can startle our own time, when politics have become so much less politically and historically informed.

Until the Victorian age, when the balance of public sympathy swung in favour of the Roundhead cause, the Tories won the argument. Mainstream Whigs were as eager to bury the memory of the regicide as Tories were to preserve it. Though their own programme was, in fact, close to that of the parliamentarians of 1642, the Whigs found their historical pedigree tainted by the coup of 1649.

Yet on the radical fringe of the Whig party there were brave spirits who answered the Tories back. In the 1690s the deist John Toland and others portrayed the overthrow of James II in 1688 as a missed opportunity to reassert the principles of 1649. In the mid-18th century the regicide was commemorated by writers led by the antiquary Thomas Hollis, who commemorated 'that famous piece of justice,' in which 'we have great cause to rejoice'. He financed the publications of handsomely produced books saluting the event and exported them to the European mainland. He also sent them to America, where they may have had a more profound influence than in England.

Hollis' endeavours were heightened by the accession in 1760 of George III, who in the early years of his reign was widely seen as another Charles I in the making. Enthusiasts for the regicide chose their ground carefully. They distanced themselves from the biblical zeal of Charles's judges, which with the decline of Puritanism had come to look like seditious cant. They did not argue for republican rule. But they praised the courage of the regicides in asserting, at such risk to themselves, the principle that rulers are answerable to their subjects and in bringing a tyrant to justice. The warning to George was clear.

It was the goal of Toland, Hollis and their followers to reclaim the regicides from Tory calumny and to demonstrate the integrity of their motives and conduct. They compared them to heroes of ancient Rome, especially Brutus and Cassius, the slayers of Julius Caesar. But there was a difference. The regicides, as they themselves had proclaimed, had not resorted to the lawlessness of assassination. They had tried the king in open court, where they had demonstrated, as they believed, the illegal course of his rule.

The pleas of the radical Whigs failed. Even in the 19th century the regicide remained a troubling memory. It is not a comfortable one even now. The king's death and the creation of the republic fractured the continuity that has otherwise been the proud characteristic of the English constitution. They induced an enduring mistrust of radical institutional change. If Charles I had not been executed, would we still have a monarchy now?

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Sidney became widely used as a given name in the United States after the American Revolution due to admiration for Algernon Sidney as a martyr to royal tyranny.

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DNB
http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=25519&back=

...In 1683 [Algernon]Sidney said of Cromwell: ‘you need not wonder I call him a tyrant, I did so every day in his life, and acted against him too’. On 17 June 1656 Lord Lisle complained to his father about ‘a play acted’ at Penshurst ‘of publike affront’ to the lord protector during which the audience were so ‘exceedingly pleased with the gallant relation of the chief actor in it … that by applauding him they put him severall times upon it’ (De L'Isle and Dudley MSS, 6.400). Thus grew the legend of Sidney playing Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Lisle had been estranged from his father since December 1652 and the principal subject of his letter was the ‘extreamest vanity’ of ‘the younger sonne’ who ‘now so dominere[s] in your house … [as to] command the whole’ (Blencowe, 270–71).

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Manifest Destiny - Wikipedia

Themes and influences

Historian William E. Weeks has noted that three key themes were usually touched upon by advocates of manifest destiny:

1. the virtue of the American people and their institutions;

2. the mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the United States;

3. the destiny under God to do this work.

The origin of the first theme, later known as American Exceptionalism, was often traced to America's Puritan heritage, particularly John Winthrop's famous "City upon a Hill" sermon of 1630, in which he called for the establishment of a virtuous community that would be a shining example to the Old World. In his influential 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine echoed this notion, arguing that the American Revolution provided an opportunity to create a new, better society:

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand...