Memory Sanctions, Cultural Repression and Shakespeare Authorship

 Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, / What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? --Milton, On Shakespeare


Forgetting Oxford:

There is condiderable evidence that Jonson thought of his role in society as one similar to that of the Roman censor. Harriet I. Flowers describes one of the censors' roles - the imposition of  of memory sanctions on nonconforming elite Roman males. The injunction to forget often occurs during periods of political crisis.

I believe Edward de Vere was the victim of  Jacobean forms of memory sanctions based on Roman and Greek models.

The 'Shakespeare' pen-name appeared during a period of intense factional conflict in the Elizabethan court - Paul Hammer's 'nasty-nineties' that culminated in the execution of the Earl of Essex. The First Folio was published during another period of political upheaval - the Spanish Marriage Crisis. Scant decades after the publication of the First Folio, a Shakespeare-loving Stuart monarch would be executed during the English Civil Wars (see Milton for the close association between Charles I and Shakespeare's Book). Upon his return from the Continent Charles II would enact an official Act of Forgetting - an Stuart amnesty designed to restore peace and order so that Britain might begin to remember itself as a monarchy. Fulke Greville, a man who endowed the first chair of History at Cambridge,  was extraordinarily attuned to the uses and abuses of history. His Life of Sidney (begun approx 1610?)  was designed to present the life of an exemplary man for the edification of future generations, and yet its posthumous publication (1652) suggests a history that was not acceptable to Greville's 'present'. Smuggled into the future and unveiled at some unpredictable time, it would exert a ghostly  influence on future generations' understandings of Greville's age.

'these pamphlets which, having slept out my own time, if they happen to be seen hereafter, shall at their own peril rise upon the stage when I am not" (Greville, Life of Sidney, p.132)

It was first published the year after the defeat of the new King Charles II at the Battle of Worcester (1651), and the same year (1652) that Cromwell's Commonwealth government passed its own Act of Pardon and Oblivion in an attempt to placate disaffected Royalists.

Within Greville's document a very detailed portrait of Oxford emerges, in which Oxford is portrayed as nameless and faceless, a vana imago - a creature of fortune and chance and the absolute opposite to Sidney's substance and worth. The encounter not only provides Greville with an example of Sidney's resistance to tyrannical power (see Hubert Languet, Sidney's mentor) but also allows Greville to comment obliquely on the essential corruptions and vagaries of royal favour - and the political disorder engendered by irrational favouritism and royal absolutism.

Oxford is presented to an unknown future not as a man with a name, a family and a history,  but as a mere type. The figure of an aristocrat, but devoid of the true worth that was natural to Sidney. The descriptions of Sidney and Oxford also mirror Greville's aesthetic - opposing the 'Image of Life/Eikastike' (Sidney) to the much-disparaged  'Image of Wit/Phantastike' (Oxford/Shakespeare). Greville scapegoats Oxford, criticizing the private policies of the Tudor court while magnifying the res-publican (or 'commonwealth') virtues of Sidney.

If England had remained a republic - would the tennis court quarrel be interpreted as Sidney's 'Brutus' moment? Sidney's great-nephew the republican theorist Algernon Sidney was executed in 1683 by Charles II - but years before that he reportedly signed the visitors' book at the University of Copenhagen -  "PHILIPPUS SIDNEY MANUS HAEC INIMICA TYRANNIS EINSE PETIT PLACIDAM CUM LIBERTATE QUIETEM" ("This hand, enemy to tyrants, by the sword seeks peace with liberty"). During 1665–66 Sidney wrote Court Maxims, in which he argued for a reversal of the Restoration of the monarchy: " ... as death is the greatest evil that can befall a person, monarchy is the worst evil that can befall a nation". (Wikipedia).

Algernon Sidney was also called the 'British Brutus' in an eighteenth-century poem that linked his destiny with that of his great-uncle, Philip. (Thomson, The Seasons)

 Is Greville setting up Sidney as a founding father of a projected English Republic, with the 'empty' Oxford figure forced to play the part of the tyrant - a Tarquin, or a Caesar?

Or a Claudius?

Philip Sidney's mentor Hubert Languet (pen name Stephen Junius Brutus?) was associated with Wittenberg and was a follower of Philip Melancthon. The myth closest to the Amleth myth that Hamlet is based upon is the story of Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic. (David also feigned madness as he escaped the wrath of the tyrant Saul - one of Sidney's last projects was the translation of the Psalms.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Junius_Brutus

I think Greville's Life of Sidney was intended to position Sidney as a 'patriot' - one of the founders of a future English liberty. The Restoration of the Stuarts left this project in an historical limbo. The appearance of 'insolent' Oxford as Sidney's nameless mighty opposite and the violent deaths of the Danish royal courtiers at the end of Hamlet suggest how deeply Oxford was opposed to political innovations that were emerging from the 'architectonical' arts of the Sidney circle.

Suppression of the Republican element in English cultural history has also obscured the various conflicts and attempted resolutions that occurred in the period leading up to the civil war.

It has also suppressed variant readings of  the play Hamlet. Hamlet's secrecy (that fatally ensures that the entire Danish court is ignorant of Claudius' guilt), his scholarly contempt for the other courtiers whom he categorizes as mere types, his cold blooded murder of Polonius and the destruction of the souls of his closest childhood friends Rosenkrantz and Guildensterne (no shriving time allowed) may have been held up by Oxford/Shakespeare as a warning to the Elizabethan court - a view of a potential future of the English court if the severity of the Senecans and Brutuses in their midst was not suppressed. Certainly Oxford encountered on the tennis court the contempt of the melancholy and disaffected soldier, scholar and courtier Sidney to his great cost - as the story of the quarrel as told by Sidney's great friend Fulke Greville has shaped History's view of Oxford's character ever since.

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Hamlet, Quarto 1, 1603

Ham. To be, or not to be, I there's the point,

To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:

No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,

For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,

And borne before an euerlasting Iudge,

From whence no passenger euer retur'nd,

The vndiscouered country, at whose sight

The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.

But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,

Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world,

Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?

The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd,

The taste of hunger, or a TIRANTS RAIGNE,

And thousand more calamities besides,

To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life,

When that he may his full Quietus make,

With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,

But for a hope of something after death?

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Republican Milton - On Shakespeare

And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie, 
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.

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Truth is best discovered by plain words, [and] nothing is more usual with ill men than to cover their mischievous designs...by fraud...[and] figurative phrases -- Algernon Sidney, Discourses

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Greville, Life of Sidney

...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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The Imperfections of her Father:

Monstrous Adversary by Alan H. Nelson:

January 31, John Carey to Burghley 1595

Touching the latter part of your letter wherin your honour writes of the mariadge of your daughter the Ladye Vere, I am gladde as a feeling member of your Lordships Joye and rejoice at her ladyships good fortune in preserving your honours  life so longe whereby thIMPERFECTIONS of her father shall be no BLEMISHE to her honour whome I pray God make as happye a couple as ever were of that name. Being also very glad that her majestie will vouchsafe so honorablye to solempnise the matter, with her Royall presence which will be I dare saye a great comforth to your lordship and a great honour to the yonge couple.

The writer was the second son of Henry, 1^st Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain from 1585 to 1596. Upon Henry’s death his eldest son George Carey would become 2^nd Lord Hunsdon, also succeeding his father (after a year’s hiatus) as Lord Chamberlain. John, the writer of the letter, would succeed as 3^rd Lord Hunsdon on George’s death in 1603.

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From Moffett's _Nobilis_ or_ A View of the Life and Death of a Sidney_,dedicated to WILLIAM HERBERT: Jan 1594 (?)

"A few, to be sure, were observed to murmur, and to envy him so great preferment; but they were men without worth or virtue, who considered the public welfare a matter of indifference- fitter, in truth, to hold a DISTAFF and card wool among servant girls than at any time to be considered as rivals by Sidney. For no one ever wished ill to the honor of the Sidney's except him who wished ill to the commonwealth; no one ever for forsook Philip except him whom the hope that he might at some time be honourable had also forsaken; and no one ever injured him except him for whom virtue and piety had no love. He was never so incensed, however, by the wrongs of malignant or slanderous men but that at the slightest sign of penitence the heat of his disturbed spirit would die down, and he would bury all past offenses under a kind of everlasting OBLIVION.  (p.82)

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David Norbrook,  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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XLII. — THE MIND OF THE FRONTISPIECE

TO A BOOK.-- Ben 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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The Art of Forgetting - Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture
Harriet I. Flower

Memory sanctions are deliberately designed strategies that aim to change the picture of the past, whether through erasure or redefinition, or by means of both. Such strategies can be found in most, perhaps even in all, human societies that place distinct value on an account of their past. Conscious manipulation, introduced for a specifically desired effect, must be understood as one vital factor that affects the picture of the past outlined here - in other words, a picture that is by its very nature incomplete and subject to various other distortions. Deliberately imposed modifications resulting from memory sanctions do not impede a perfect view, as if of a landscape on a cloudless and sunny day, rather they contribute to and interact with many other factors that shape human memory, causing it to produce its own, very particular narrative of the past. An alternate account to the one that has obviously been tampered with would not necessarily represent a 'true' and 'unbiased' version, but in most cases simply a different version, one that brought out another set of emphases, meanings and implications...

In Roman thought, memory was not taken for granted as a natural state or product. Rather, oblivion was considered the more normal condition, as the past receded from the present and was simply no longer connected to it. Hence, as a carefully cultivated and deliberately invoked culture of commemoration, Roman memory (memoria) was designed precisely in opposition to the vast oblivion into which most of the past was conceived as having already receded. Such an attitude was the product of a wrold in which life was often short and unpredictable, with the result that time must have seemed to move quickly, and change to come rapidly with the passing generations. for example, Tacitus ends the biography of his father-in-law with these words: "For oblivion will bury many men of old as if they had benn without renown or prestige: Agricola will survive for posterity, his story told and handed on."

(snip)
Memory sanctions, then, take shape against the background of a natural state of oblivion, as constructed in the Roman imagination of the day. In the sense that they were designed to prevent or remove the commemorative strategies specific to the Roman community, their function is analogous to that of exile, which drove the unworthy citizen outside the territory of the city, into a place that was not Roman. Like the exile, a citizen subject to memory sanctions was denied honorific commemoration within the city's own memory space. In such a rich cultural context, memory sanctions, especially in Rome, did not have a single meaning or purpose but were complex and often contradictory, both in conception and implementation. they corresponded to the evolving memory world of Rome, in all its manifestations. Moreover, any particular sanction or erasure would always have taken on its meaning within its own particular milieu, a historical context that is often lost to us. Memory sanctions often appear to float freely between the extremes of oblivion and disgrace, in a dynamic memory space shaped in part by shame and silence, but in part also by vituperation and ongoing debate about the merits or vices of the deceased.

Ancient societies did not exercise total control over memory, because they generally did not envision a world in which any individual or group could wield the power to excise memory in society. Nor did ancient cultures have a secret police force or other organized mechanisms of surveillance to intrude into the personal and domestic spheres of its citizens. These circumstances should not be labeled as a lack of "efficiency." Because sanctions targeted the formal and symbolic memory spaces of the political elite, not all memory was erased. People who had witnessed the past themselves knew and surely had their own opinions about what had happened. Yet the opinions of most ordinary people (or even the ways in which they might cultivate those memories) counted for little at the various moments when sanctions were imposed by those in power. Rather, sanctions looked ahead to a future that was never too far away in Rome, a future when a new generation would be learning the story of the (not necessarily so distant) past from the collective remembrance and monuments of the city.  In addition, those who imposed memory sanctions may have assumed that natural oblivion was on their side. Meanwhile, a few negative examples were always useful, if only as warnings of the dire consequences of delinquent behaviour. Despite the occasionally striking similarities, it is anachronistic and often misleading to read Roman memory sanctions simply or primarily in terms of Orwellian erasures and the totalitarian rewriting of history practiced in the twentieth century.
(snip)

Memory has a shape, a space, and a cultural meaning. In other words, there is a specific what, where, and how to memory. Just a societies remember differently, so also do they forget differently. Editing and erasure take place within the context of each community's culture of writing, or archives, or images, and of monuments. A forgetting, or lack of commemoration, is defined by the local expectations of what might have happened if memory had been cultivated, either according to or even beyond the accepted norms of the community. Roman erasures can, therefore, only really be read in a Roman context. Cultural memory defines both the individual and the city. In this sense, memory is literally political, for it belongs to the polis. The meaning of memory is its effect within its own particular political community. The polis or political community, in turn, needs a memory story to explain its identity and past. Whatever the historicity of the details in this memory story, its existence is essential to the functioning of the community in the present.
(snip)

The function of sanctions within the community...helps to explain the profound shame that memory sanctions represented for members of the Roman elite. The class of officeholders (nobiles) were defined in terms of recognition during life and interms of memory after death. Commemoration was the distinguishing mark of politically elite rank. Hence, if commemoration was limited or banned, the nobiles stood to lose their identity and status. Their loss compromised not just the present and future, but also the past, including their connection with their ancestors and with the prestige of their family. The citizen whose memory had been targeted wa removed from the collective memory of the polis. As the Roman senate put it, when it imposed memory sanctions on CN. Piso in A.D. 20, by his suicide Piso had tried to remove himself from punishments he feared the senators would impose, punishments that were worse than death. In what follows I argue that we should try to understand this assertion in a Roman context. The price of these additional punishment was considered so high in terms of public status that it became irrelevant to ask who might still hold onto or shcerish a personal memory of the affected individual. Such personal recollections would now only reaffeirm how far the person had fallen from a previous position of prominence and recognition. This social background explains how only the political elite who enjoyed the privilege of public commemoration after death. The remembrance of ordinary citizens was in most cases of little concern to those in power and was represented (whether accurately or not) as having no political impact.

At the same time, sanctions must be read a political rhetoric, rather than as mere statements of fact; the reflect a claim on the part of th epowerful to impose a narrative and to control the past. Such a claim may or may not be valid or even be put into practice in a consequent way; sometimes it ight be ittle more than an assertion or expression of hope. At this distance in time, the effects of sanctions, especially as measured throughout the Roman Empire, are nearly always hard to gauge. Official sanctions, the subject of this study, were communicated from the top. Audiences for these political statements were varied and included both internal and external groups. Thus reception must always have been a factor, both immediately and in the long term. Did most people understand the messages sent out from Rome and, if so, did they agree with them? The answers varied across time and space. Dialogue could often be dynamic and was not limited to an immediate reaction to the first news of disgrace and political change.
(snip)

The study of memory sanctions, as a topic in itself, yields certain kinds of results. It is a story that is at least as much about those who designed and imposed sanctions as about their victims, who may or may not have "deserved" them. The inquiry that follows investigates the agency of politicians who imposed erasures on the the past or who denigrated their predecessors. Sanctions are always based on a denial of the political rhetoric or landscape of the immediate past, despite or even because of the fact that at the moment of imposition many people are in a position to have personal knowledge about that recent past. The new narrative of the past, consturcted by the sanctions, reflects the hopes, fears and aspirations of those in power at that moment to a much greater extent than it reveals a historical reconstruction of previous events or of the true character of its victims, usually now dead. Hence the chapters that follow are displaced in time from their subjects, for each one investigates what happened afterward, after the fall. This world of "memory" belongs to the "history" of the subsequent age(s). Sanctions illuminate the nature and mechanics of political crisis and violent change; they do not mark the regular transfer of power either in a republic or a monarchy.

The investigation of memory games does not, however, lead inevitably to the re-creation of a detailed alternate narrative, let alone to the definite discovery of some core of "truth" obscured by propaganda and vituperation. The analysis of memory sanctions is not, in essence, a project of revisionist history, aimed at the rehabilitation of a series of "stage villains." It tends to reveal how much has been lost or obscured, much of which is beyond recovery. Hence the result may be a less "secure" view of the past, a past distorted by shifting images as the disputes of competing narratives resurface. Indeed, memory sanctions pose a fundamental dilemma to research. When truly successful, they presumably remove persons from subsequent record so that we cannot know anything about them. Our study of memory sanctions is necessarily limited to the many that fell short of their apparent goals, or that did not set out to achieve complete erasure.

Nevertheless, some outcomes of such a study can be anticipated. Certainly the nature of various political crises is illuminated by the types of sanctions they preoduced. Moments of political transition are highlighted and their dynamics emerge more clearly. Meanwhile, the alternate narratives they created each contains historical information about the past, information that reflects a particular point of view at a given moment. that view may not have been shared by all, or even by a jamority, but it does not thereby become irrelevant or simply mendacious. Although details may have been exaggerated to being out a point, that point may welll have had more value than the political rhetoric that was spun to support it.

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Henry de Vere's fame is that of a Sidneian. Not forgotten, but a military hero met in Elysium by his grand-sires and Philip Sidney:

...He sought no new-made Honours in the Tide
Of favour, but was borne the same he di'de.
Nor came he to the Elysium with shame
That the old VERES did blush to heare his Name
Brighter than theirs: where his deserts to grace
His Grand-fathers rose up and gave him place,
And set him with the Heroës, where the Quire
Of ayrie Worthies rise up, and admire
The stately Shade: those Brittish Ghosts which long
Agoe were number'd in th'Elysian throng
Ioy to behold him; SYDNEY threw his Bayes
On OXFORDS head, and daign'd to sing his praise;
While Fame with silver Trumpet did keepe time
With his high Voice, and answered his rime.

The soft inticements of the Court, the smiles
Of Glorious Princes the bewitching wiles
Of softer Ladies, and the Golden State
That in such places doth on Greatnesse waite
And all the shadie happinesse which seemes
To attend Kings and follow Diadems
Were Boy-games to his minde: to see a Maske
And sit it out, he held a greater taske
Than to endure a Siege: to wake all Night
In his cold armour, still expecting fight
And the drad On-set, the sad face of feare,
And the pale silence of an Army, were
His best Delights; among the common rout
Of his rough Souldiers to sit hardnesse out
Were his most pleasing Delicates: to him
A Batter'd Helmet was a Diadem:
And wounds, his Brauerie: Knowing that Fame
And faire Eternitie could neuer claime
Their Meeds without such Hazards: but alas
That wee must say, such a Man OXFORD was,
A Hatefull Syllable which doth implie
Valour can be extinct and Vertue die. 

http://bringingdeformedforth.blogspot.ca/2012/01/oxfords-heir-crowned-in-elysium-by.html

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 Author: Brooke, Christopher, d. 1628.
Title: Tvvo elegies consecrated to the neuer-dying memorie of the most worthily admyred; most hartily loued; and generally bewayled prince; Henry Prince of Wales.
Date: 1613

 In morall TRVTH some later Poets faine,
How when we leaue this vaile of misery,
That Time giues Abstracts, which our names containe,
Which flickering Fowle, that about Lethe flye,
Catch in their Beakes, but let them fall againe,
Such are rude men that drowne all memory;
But if a Swan doe get a Heroes name,
He consecrates it straight t'immortall Fame.



Yee Isis Swannes then let not Lethes Fowles
Prophane his name; but may this PRINCES glory
(Which Enuy, Lethe, Time, or Age controls)
Be sung of you in a Mineruall story:
Let this Fames Sunne through this round Transitory
Shine, and ne're set; and fixed like the Poles,
Whiles some stout Atlas props his heauenly frame,
Let men (like Spheres) moue round about the same.



But I, in WIT the weak'st; in ART the least;
Knowing his death would cause the Muses slaine,
In will (tho not in skill) strong as the best,
Doe giue my Tincture to their purer graine:
And tho I bring but ground-worke to the rest,
That must erect this Trophe to his name,
I shall be proud yet to haue had a hand,
Vpon the Bases, where their Columbs stand.

Then faire POSTERITIE heau'ns Arbitresse
(That in Eternall Characters enrolles
Those Worthies, rapt from Earths vnworthinesse,
Through the diuine impulsion of their soules)
Receaue his memory which our zeales expresse,
Deepely remembred in the Thespian bowles:
That Times insatiate Orque (with kingdomes fed)
May on his Ruines haue his name be red.

(SNIP)

... HEE knew that Armes was th'exercise of KINGS;
The spurre to Fame, roote of NOBILITIES
Hee knew his BIRTH and SPIRIT had lent him wings
To mount the pitch of all his AVNCESTRIE:
Hee likewise knew Fames Trumpet neuer rings
Of delicate Courtship, but with Infamy;
Hee knew that Souldiers vs'd n'affected words,
Whose Tongues are SPEARES, their Oratory swords.

 By Warres fayre shadow, his discoursiue Thought
Discernd the substance, and admyr'd the Face;
Bellona was his GODDESSE, whom he sought
With Knightly valour, more then courtly grace:
Th'Impression of whose Figure so much wrought,
That he would front her manly, and enchace
Vpon her sternest Brow, his temper'd steele;
ARMES had his Hart; when LOVE had scarse his Heele.



Not Canopies, but Tents tooke his DESIRE,
Not Courts, but Camps; nor could the courtliest dames
(Though they shot Eye-bals wrapt in CVPIDS fire)
Pierce his steel'd Brest: but Bullets roll'd in Flames,
From thundring Cannons, had more powre t'inspire;
Where Townes for markes; & Crownes do stand for games;
Where Foes subdu'd, for right of Kingdomes wrongs,
HONOVR might blaze with shield of golden Tongues.

These were the Subiects of our PRINCES Aime;
A plumed Caske, a Speare, a Sword, a Shield;
Kingdomes his hope; Olympicke wreaths his Chaine;
Barriers his practise, and the course of Field;
VVe look't HEE should haue impt the wings of FAME;
Charm'd Death, ruld FATE, and made proud Fortune yeeld,
And Lion-like haue forrag'do're the EARTH
To hunt his prey, and Crowne his NAME and BIRTH.



For who suggested not this rauisht minde,
To see him Careere, and weilde his Launce,
VVhat future TIMES such promising hope might finde,
How like HEE was this Kingdome to aduance?
VVho would haue thought a SPIRIT vnconfin'd,
Should not haue triumph't ouer Death and Chance?
And o'resome vanquish't FOE, in crymson Flood,
Be crown'd on Horse-backe sweating dewes of Blood?


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Shakespeare praised by Richard III - 'what could hurt him more?'

 --Some men, of Bookes or Freinds NOT SPEAKING RIGHT,
May hurt them more with praise, then Foes with spight. -- Jonson 

--It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature. (Jonson, Timber)


Author: Brooke, Christopher, d. 1628.
Title: The ghost of Richard the Third expressing himselfe in these three parts, [brace] 1. His character, 2. His legend, 3. His tragedie : containing more of him then hath been heretofore shewed, either in chronicles, playes, or poems.
Date: 1614

THE LEGEND OF RICHARD THE THIRD.

[Richard speaks]

TO him [Shakespeare] that Impt my Fame with Clio's Quill;
Whose Magick rais'd me from Obliuions den;
That writ my Storie on the Muses Hill;
And with my Actions Dignifi'd his Pen:
He that from Heltcon sends many a Rill;
VVhose Nectared Veines, are drunke by thirstie Men:
Crown'd be his Stile, with Fame; his Head, with Bayes;
And none detract, but gratulate his Praise.


Yet if his Scoenes haue not engrost all Grace,
The much fam'd Action could extend on Stage;
If Time, or Memory, haue left a place
For Me to fill; t'enforme this Ignorant Age;
To that intent I shew my horrid Face;
Imprest with Feare, and Characters of Rage:
Nor Wits, nor Chronicles could ere containe,
The Hell-deepe Reaches, of my soundlesse Braine.


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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.”

(snip)

Lastly, to prove nothing can be wise, that is not really honest; every man of that time [French Marriage Crisis], 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.

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The remains of Sir Fulk Grevill Lord Brooke being poems of monarchy and religion : never before printed.
Date: 1670      

70.

Caesar was slain by those that objects were
Of Grace, and Engines of his Tyranny,
Brutus and Cassius work shall witness bear,
Even to the Comfort of posterity,
That proud aspirers never had good end;
Nor yet excess of Might a constant friend.          

71.

So that although this Tyrant usurpation
Stood peaz'd by humours from a present fall;
Thoughts being all forc't up to adoration
Of wit and pow'r (which such Thrones work withal)
Yet both the Head and Members finite are
And must still by their miscreating marre.          

72.

The nature of all over-acting might,
Being to stirre offence in each Estate,
And from the deep impressions of despight
Enflame those restless instruments of Fate,
Which as no friends of Duty, or Devotion
Easily stirre up Incursion, or Commotion.          

73.

Occasion for a forreign Enemy,
Or such Competitors as do pretend
By any stile, or popularity,
Faction or Sect, all whose endeavors tend
To shake the Realm, or by assasinate,
Into the People to let fall the State       

****************************************   
Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius

...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'Ages fashion did make hit;
EXCLUDING THOSE FROM LIFE in AFTER-TIME,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..

******************************** 
  Jonson, Cynthia's Revels


Cynthia: Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two
We give the Charge; impose what Pains you please:
TH' INCURABLE CUT OFF, the rest reform,
Remembring ever what we first decreed,
Since Revels were proclaim'd, let now none bleed.

Arete. How well Diana can distinguish Times,
And sort her Censures, keeping to her self
The Doom of Gods, leaving the rest to us?
Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed.
(snip)
Arete. Nay, forward, for I delegate my Power,
And will that at thy Mercy they do stand,
Whom they so oft, so plainly scorn'd before.
"'Tis VERTUE which they want, and wanting it,
"Honour no Garment to their Backs can fit.
Then, Crites, practise thy Discretion.


********************************

The word [discretion] was almost invariably used in Elizabethan England as a means of constructing social, cultural, or aesthetic difference. (David Hillman, Puttenham, Shakespeare, and the Abuse of r
Rhetoric).

********************************
 Jonson, Timber

Decipimur specie. - There is a greater reverence had of things remote or strange to us than of much better if they be nearer and fall under our sense. Men, and almost all sorts of creatures, have their reputation by distance. Rivers, the farther they run, and more from their spring, the broader they are, and greater. And where our original is known, we are less the confident; among strangers we trust fortune. Yet a man may live as renowned at home, in his own country, or a private village, as in the whole world. For it is VIRTUE that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere. It is only that can naturalise him. A NATIVE, if he be vicious, deserves to be a stranger, and cast out of the commonwealth as an alien.

********************************
Soul of the Age - Jonson's First Folio Mock-Encomium

 Jonson

And which have still been Subject for the RAGE
Or Spleen of Comick Writers. Though this Pen
Did never aim to grieve, but better Men;
Howe'er the AGE he lives in doth endure
The Vices that she breeds, above their Cure.

*********************************
Holding/Restraining/Ruling Shakespeare's Quill:

From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)
by Jasper Mayne 


For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:
A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle.

*********************************
In Memory of Mr. William Cartwright.

John Berkenhead

...Thou didst not write
Warm'd by male Claret or by female White:
Their Giant Sack could nothing heighten Thee,
As far 'bove Tavern Flash as Ribauldry.
Thou thought'st no rank foul line was strongly writ,
That's but the Scum or Sediment of Wit;
Which sharking Braines do into Publike thrust,
(And though They cannot blush, the Reader must;)
Who when they see't abhor'd, for fear, not shame,
*TRANSLATE their BASTARD to some Other's NAME.*

**********************************
Shakespeare - Sonnet 71

 No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, REMEMBER NOT
 The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would BE FORGOT
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.

 *********************************
Remember me/forget me quite

Shakespeare - Sonnet 72
 
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.

********************************** 
Fulke Greville (Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon) - 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.

********************************************

 
Lying in Lethe's Lake:
Perrott, James, Sir, 1571-1637.
The first part of the consideration of humane condition vvherin is
contained the morall consideration of a mans selfe: as what, who, and
what manner of man he is.
 Even so commonly wee see that many of noble birthe and greate
parentage persuade themselves that they exceede all others in
estimation of bloode and linage: whereas they mighte consider with
themselves that how noblye soever they are borne, their Nobility hath
a beginning, not by their own, but by their Auncestors deserts and
vertues; wherefore if that there be not in them good partes and
properties aunswereable to the behaviour and good qualities of their
Elders, and their owne birthes, them are they but a blemish to the
Elders, and a staine to their names, and honors. We see the fairest
and richest silkes, when once they receive any blemish or staine, they
are more disfigured and in greater disgrace then cloath, or other
matter of lesse moment and reckoning: even so is it in the estimation
of Nobility. For a fault in a man of great birth and parentage is more
noted, and breedeth unto him greater disgrace and dishonour, then the
same should do unto a man of lesse and lower dignity. It is not inough
to be born of high bloude, without vertue aunswerable to that birth:
neither with reason may a noble man, because he is honourable
descended, challendge love, estimation, and honour of the actions
accomplished by his Auncestors, unless his owne carriage be
correspondent & aunswerable to theirs, and to his owne calling: for
Seneca sayeth, & that very truely, that, hee which braggeth of his
kindred, commendeth that which concerneth others. And the Poet
speaking to the same purpose saide very well.
Nam genus, et proavos, et quae non fecimus ipsi
Vix ea nostra voco.
that is:
What kindred did, or Elders ours,
And what we have not donne,
I call not ours: it scarcely hath
Us any credit wonne.
This caused a Gentle man of great worth and worthines (note - Sir
Philip Sidney), as any that have lived in our age, to adde this mote
underneath his coate of armes: Vix ea nostra voce. Who although hee
might most deservedly have claimed unto himselfe as much honor as ever
any of his Auncestors have had, yet he would not appropriate their
vertues (which could not be called his) unto himselfe: for he had
rather gaine glory by his owne noble and worthy actes, then be
accoumpted renowned for the greatness of his Auncestors, how neere and
how deere soever unto him. As his noble minde is worthy of memory in
all ages, and his heroicall actes never to be committed to oblivion:
so are they (which degenerate from their Elders, or do disgrace and
dishonor the honourable actions of their Auncestors) to be accoumpted
worth if not of all shame) yet of a place in LETHES LAKE to LYE in
perpetually.

***************************************

Jonson, Discoveries
Fama. - A Fame that is wounded to the world would be better cured by
another' s apology than its own: for few can apply medicines well
themselves.  Besides, the man that is once hated, both his good and
his evil deeds oppress him.  He is not easily EMERGENT.

****************************************

Heminges/Condell in Shakespeare's First Folio

To the great Variety of Readers.
From the most able, to him that can but spell: there you are number'd. We had rather you were weighed; especially, when the fate of all bookes depends upon your capacities and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well ! It is now publique, and you wil stand for your priviledges wee know : to read, and censure. Do so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a Booke, the Stationer saies. Then, how odde soever your braines be, or your wisedomes, make your licence the same, and spare not. Judge your six-pen'orth, your shillings worth, your five shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But, whatever you do, Buy. Censure will not drive a Trade, or make the Jacke go. And though you be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit, to arraigne Playes dailie, know, these Playes have had their triall alreadie, and stood out all Appeales ; and do now come forth QUITTED rather by a DECREE OF COURT, then any purchased letters of commendation.
 It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings; but since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abused with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them : even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.
Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works, and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you: for his wit can NO MORE LIE HID, THEN IT COULD BE LOST.

******************************************** 
Nabokov - 1924 
Shakespeare

Amid grandees of times Elizabethan
you shimmered too, you followed sumptuous custom;
the circle of ruff, the silv’ry satin that
encased your thigh, the wedgelike beard – in all of this
you were like other men… Thus was enfolded
your godlike thunder in a succinct cape.
Haughty, aloof from theatre’s alarums,
you easily, regretlessly relinquished
the laurels twinning into a dry wreath,
concealing for all time your. monstrous genius
beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasm’s echoes
still vibrate for us; your Venetian Moor,
his anguish; Falstaff’s visage, like an udder
with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear..
You are among us, you’re alive; your name, though,
your image, too – deceiving, thus, the world
you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.
It’s true, of course, a usurer had grown
accustomed, for a sum, to sign your work
(that Shakespeare – Will – who played the Ghost in Hamlet,
who lives in pubs, and died before he could
digest in full his portion of a boar’s head)…
The frigate breathed, your country you were leaving,
To Italy you went. A female voice
called singsong through the iron’s pattern
called to her balcony the tall inglesse,
grown languid from the lemon-tinted moon
and Verona’s streets. My inclination
is to imagine, possibly, the droll
and kind creator of Don Quixote exchanging with you a few casual words
while waiting for fresh horses – and the evening
was surely blue. The well behind the tavern
contained a pail’s pure tinkling sound… Reply
whom did you love? Reveal yourself – whose memoirs
refer to you in passing? Look what numbers
of lowly, worthless souls have left their trace,
what countless names Brantome has for the asking!
Reveal yourself, god of iambic thunder,
you hundred-mouthed, unthinkably great bard!
No! At the destined hour, when you felt banished
by God from your existence, you recalled
those secret manuscripts, fully aware
that your supremacy would rest unblemished
by public rumor’s unashamed brand,
that ever, midst the shifting dust of ages,
faceless you’d stay, like immortality
itself – then vanished in the distance, smiling.

*************************************
Wikipedia
In Classical Greek, the word Lethe literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth", aletheia (ἀλήθεια), meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment".

************************************
Herman Melville and the Construction of Cultural Memory? (see Jan Assmann on Cultural Memory)


Billy Budd, Foretopman
Herman Melville

Chapter 28
The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial.
How it fared with the Handsome Sailor during the year of the Great Mutiny has been faithfully given. But tho' properly the story ends with his life, something in way of sequel will not be amiss. Three brief chapters will suffice.
In the general re-christening under the Directory of the craft originally forming the navy of the French monarchy, the St. Louis line-of-battle ship was named the Atheiste. Such a name, like some other substituted ones in the Revolutionary fleet, while proclaiming the infidel audacity of the ruling power was yet, tho' not so intended to be, the aptest name, if one consider it, ever given to a war-ship; far more so indeed than the Devastation, the Erebus (the Hell) and similar names bestowed upon fighting-ships.
On the return-passage to the English fleet from the detached cruise during which occurred the events already recorded, the Indomitable fell in with the Atheiste. An engagement ensued; during which Captain [Edward Fairfax]Vere, in the act of putting his ship alongside the enemy with a view of throwing his boarders across her bulwarks, was hit by a musket-ball from a port-hole of the enemy's main cabin. More than disabled he dropped to the deck and was carried below to the same cock-pit where some of his men already lay. The senior Lieutenant took command. Under him the enemy was finally captured and though much crippled was by rare good fortune successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English port not very distant from the scene of the fight. There, Captain Vere with the rest of the wounded was put ashore. He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily he was cut off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The spirit that spite its philosophic austerity may yet have indulged in the most secret of all passions, ambition, never attained to the fulness of fame.
Not long before death, while lying under the influence of that magical drug which soothing the physical frame mysteriously operates on the subtler element in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant--"Billy Budd, Billy Budd." That these were not the accents of remorse, would seem clear from what the attendant said to the Indomitable's senior officer of marines who, as the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-head court, too well knew, tho' here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.


 Chapter 29

Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head of News from the Mediterranean, there appeared in a naval chronicle of the time, an authorized weekly publication, an account of the affair. It was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, tho' the medium, partly rumor, through which the facts must have reached the writer, served to deflect and in part falsify them. The account was as follows:-
"On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place on board H.M.S. Indomitable. John Claggart, the ship's Master-at-arms, discovering that some sort of plot was incipient among an inferior section of the ship's company, and that the ringleader was one William Budd; he, Claggart, in the act of arraigning the man before the Captain was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knife of Budd.
"The deed and the implement employed, sufficiently suggest that tho' mustered into the service under an English name the assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting English cognomens whom the present extraordinary necessities of the Service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable numbers.
"The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the criminal, appear the greater in view of the character of the victim, a middle-aged man respectable and discreet, belonging to that official grade, the petty-officers, upon whom, as none know better than the commissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His Majesty's Navy so largely depends. His function was a responsible one, at once onerous & thankless, and his fidelity in it the greater because of his strong patriotic impulse. In this instance as in so many other instances in these days, the character of this unfortunate man signally refutes, if refutation were needed, that peevish saying attributed to the late Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
"The criminal paid the penalty of his crime. The promptitude of the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss is now apprehended aboard H.M.S. Indomitable."
The above, appearing in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, is all that hitherto has stood in human record to attest what manner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd.


Chapter 30   (note - common/oral not official/elite 'memory'?)

Everything is for a term remarkable in navies. Any tangible object associated with some striking incident of the service is converted into a monument. The spar from which the Foretopman was suspended, was for some few years kept trace of by the blue-jackets. Their knowledge followed it from ship to dock- yard and again from dock-yard to ship, still pursuing it even when at last reduced to a mere dock-yard boom. To them a chip of it was as a piece of the Cross. Ignorant tho' they were of the secret facts of the tragedy, and not thinking but that the penalty was somehow unavoidably inflicted from the naval point of view, for all that they instinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny as of wilfull murder. They recalled the fresh young image of the Handsome Sailor, that face never deformed by a sneer or subtler vile freak of the heart within. Their impression of him was doubtless deepened by the fact that he was gone, and in a measure mysteriously gone. At the time, on the gun decks of the Indomitable, the general estimate of his nature and its unconscious simplicity eventually found rude utterance from another foretopman, one of his own watch, gifted, as some sailors are, with an artless poetic temperament; the tarry hands made some lines which after circulating among the shipboard crew for a while, finally got rudely printed at Portsmouth as a ballad. The title given to it was the sailor's.
BILLY IN THE DARBIES Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay
And down on his marrow-bones here and pray
For the likes just o' me, Billy Budd.--But look:
Through the port comes the moon-shine astray!
It tips the guard's cutlas and silvers this nook;
But 'twill die in the dawning of Billy's last day.
A jewel-block they'll make of me to-morrow,
Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end
Like the ear-drop I gave to Bristol Molly--
O, 'tis me, not the sentence they'll suspend.
Ay, Ay, Ay, all is up; and I must up to
Early in the morning, aloft from alow.
On an empty stomach, now, never it would do.
They'll give me a nibble--bit o' biscuit ere I go.
Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;
But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,
Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!
No pipe to those halyards.--But aren't it all sham?
A blur's in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.
A hatchet to my hawser? all adrift to go?
The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?
But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;
So I'll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.
But--no! It is dead then I'll be, come to think.
I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.
And his cheek it was like the budding pink.
But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.
THE END


fat weed roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf

asphodel, any of several flowering plants belonging to the family Asphodelaceae. It is a variously applied and thus much misunderstood common name. The asphodel of the poets is often a narcissus; that of the ancients is either of two genera, Asphodeline or Asphodelus, containing numerous species in the Mediterranean region.

**********************************
Shakespeare

 Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.