Monday, April 6, 2015

Shakespeare Authorship and Roman Oratorical Invective

I suspect the Shakespeare Authorship problem arises from factional rivalry in the Elizabethan court and the resultant literary wreckage that should be understood in the tradition of Roman invective. This factional slander suggests that Oxford was an intrinsically worthless, lightweight (levitas) and effeminized creature (homo inanis)  who was made great only by Fortune and who deserved to be forgotten.

I believe that the picture of Oxford that emerged in Alan Nelson's book 'Monstrous Adversary' can be understood as 'fossilized invective' as described by Amy Richlin in The Garden of Priapus

"...There are myriad examples of Roman political or politicized invective in all forms, but they are mostly preserved by later biographers and historians who are quite obviously, sometimes consciously, repeating  what had become a kind of party line. In other words, this invective is fossilized, kept alive by political motives that have long outlived the protagonists of the stories." (p.86)

(and, of course, new uses have been found for this 'fossilized' invective as Oxford's ill-fame has been revived during the Shakespeare Authorship wars.)

If 'Shakespeare' exists as a testament to the author's worth, then his fame appears to have eclipsed all others despite the efforts of his censurers. However, the resulting fame is maddeningly paradoxical. Through his own labour Shakespeare/Oxford established himself at the centre of British culture and at the same time Oxford/Shakespeare was shaped by his political opposition as the disruptive 'Other'. An ignoble, preposterous and promiscuous 'Other' whose indiscriminate and unregulated energies required containment.

It seems possible that a great man was 'hurled headlong' (flaming?) from the apex of Elizabethan court culture and came to rest in a Warwickshire dunghill.

Similar patterns of events have occurred as individuals found themselves on the wrong side of history. Many lie nameless and unremembered, or vilified and scorned. What is extraordinary in Oxford's case is the momentous fact of his insuppressible Book.

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Arthur Golding to Edward de Vere (Epistle Dedicatorie,  Psalms):

...I beseech your Lordship consider how God hath placed you upon a high stage in the eyes of all men, as a guide, patterne, insample and leader unto others. If your vertues be uncounterfayted, if your religion should be sound and pure, if your doings be according to true godlines: you shal be a stay to your cuntrie, a comforte too good men, a bridle to evil men, a joy to your friends, a corzie to your enemies, and an encreace of honor to your owne house. But if you should become eyther a counterfayt Protestant, or a perverse Papist, or a colde and careless newter (which God forbid) the harme could not be expressed which you should do to your native Cuntrie. For (as Cicero no lesse truely than wisely affirmeth and as the sorowfull dooings of our present dayes do too much certeinly avouch) greate men hurt not the common weale so much by beeing evil in respect of themselves, as by drawing others unto evel by their evil example...

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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, Life of Sidney (1652) - Sidney and the 'nameless' Earl - vir and homo inanis.


"And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the Tennis-Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this PRINCELY SPIRIT, he grew to expostulate more roughly. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the mists of my Lords PASSIONS, swoln with the winde of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse amazement, or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was possessed with: till at last with rage (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court...

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."

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from: A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, Ed. William Dominik and Jon Hall


Invective, according to the definition provided by Koster (1980: 38-9, 354) , is a literary genre whose goal is to denigrate publicly a known individual against the background of ethical societal preconceptions, to the end of isolating him or her from the community. In the Latin rhetorical tradition, vitupemtio (“invective”), together with its opposite laus (“praise”), belongs to the principal topics that make up the genus demonstrativum , or epideictic oratory. A brief discussion of this genus can be found in Cicero's youthful work De Inventione (2.177-8) and in the almost contemporary treatise Rhetorica ad Herennium (3.10-15). The latter presents a more extensive treatment of the three broad categories which can be used to shame the chosen target: (1) external circumstances, which include birth, education, wealth, power, achievements, and citizenship; (2) physical attributes such as looks, health, speed, strength, and weakness; (3) qualities of character, or virtutes animi , such as wisdom, justice, courage, and self-restraint (for a brief list of such loci see Cic. Part. Or . 82). This kind of verbal assault, conducted through an open recounting of the target's faults and organized according to these loci , was often employed in judicial and deliberative speeches with the aim of turning the audience against its target. Invective was thus an ingredient in forensic and deliberative oratory and not an end in itself (Powell 2006).
(snip)
In the strict sense only speeches delivered, or supposedly delivered, as a direct attack against an individual should be considered invective...However, if we are prepared to broaden our definition, speeches whose first aim was not to attack the opponent directly, but to discredit him or her in order to achieve a specific persuasive goal, might also be considered invective.
(snip)
According to the conventions of Roman political life, invective was regarded as a legitimate weapon for pursuing one's political enemies...[t]he rules of engagement also permitted a degree of direct abuse that we would not countenance today.
(snip)
The orator's function then was not only to manipulate the audience's values and prejudices, but also, by claiming "to have the inside-line on those values', to take up the role of their representative (Freudenburg 1997:4). This created alternative ethical modes. If the manuscript tradition had had a different fortune so as to preserve only the speeches by, say, Clodius or Catiline we would not doubt have quite a different picture. As Corbeill (1996:4) notes: 'Among men, rhetoric as taught and practiced further defines the narrow body of persons who constitute the elite: by demonstrating that an opponent behaves contrary to the well-being of the state, the orator can isolate that opponent as an individual who has no place in society.' The point then becomes: what is the well-being of the state? Who retains the right to establish its content and nature? The orator, whoever he is, is one part of the answer. The other, however, is the audience.
Invective would have been effective only when the audience (whether senate, popular assembly or judicial court) embraced the picture as described for it by the speaker. The moral description of specific acts constituted an essential element in winning the audience's approval. This rhetorical device, referred to by Quintilian as distinctio (Inst. 9.3.65), involved casting a particular action in a moral light different from that claimed by one's opponent (see, e.g., Rhet. Her. 4.35 and Skinner 1996:) If the speaker succeeds in convincing his audience of this new moral description, he has to some extent also succeeded in modifying the social perceptions of that behaviour. Given the recent scholarly trend toward studying the social prejudices that underpin invective, a further way forward perhaps is the analysis of how (and how far) this rhetorical manipulation succeeded in altering the values of Roman society.

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(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.

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Suppressing Oxford's fame and name - discriminating between good and bad examples. 'Publique ill example.'



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.

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Sidney's Womanish Man
Mark Rose

IDLENESS was understood to be the first shaft that 'Cupide shooteth into the hot liver of a heedlesse lover', so in desiring to give in to idleness the prince is only proving true to type. Distaff Hercules was the conventional image for just such a condition of effeminate idleness induced by passionate love. The distaff itself was an old symbol of idleness, and Sidney would have read in Amyot's Plutarch:

...that men given to idle luxury are like Hercules 'au palais royal de la royne de Lydie Omphale, vestu d'une cotte de demoiselle, se laissant souffletter & tresser aux filles & femmes de la Royne'.

'WIL you handle the spindle with Hercules, when you should SHAKE the SPEARE with Achilles?" asks a character in Lyly's Campaspe. Barnaby Rich states that lascivious women have made 'valiant men effeminate, as Hercules'. And Robert Burton uses 'Herculean Love' as an uncomplimentary epithet for passionate love. Sidney's own contempt for distaff Hercules is clear from the Defence of Poesie:

So in Hercules, painted with his great beard, and furious countenance, in a womans attire, spinning, at Omphales commaundement, it breedes both delight and laughter; for the representing of so straunge a power in Love, procures delight, and the scornefulness of the action, stirreth laughter. (iii.

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Sidney as the picture of 'True Nobility":
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 Nobilis (The Noble Man), Moffett)

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Men/Vir vs. Parasites: 

The COMMENDATION of good things may fall within a many,  their approbation but in a few· for the most COMMEND OUT OF AFFECTION,  selfe tickling, an easinesse, or imitation: but MEN iudge only out of *KNOWLEDGE*. That is the trying faculty. -- Jonson

I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a MALEVOLENT speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their IGNORANCE, who choose that circumstance to COMMEND their friend by, wherein he most FAULTED... -- Jonson on Shakespeare

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Jonson, on Shakespeare

He was (indeed) honest, and of
an open, and free nature: had an excellent
fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions:
wherein he flowed with that facility, that
sometime it was necessary he should be
STOP'D: sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said
of Haterius. His wit was in his own power;
would the RULE of it had been so too." 

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THE RESTRAINT OF FANCY/'SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL' (and Jonsonian-judgement's preeminence):

From To the Deceased Author of these Poems...William Cartwright  (note- of the Tribe of Ben)

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. (snip)

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Jonson figured as suppressing Fame:

Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius

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

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TO MY MOST DEARELY-LOVED FRIEND HENERY REYNOLDS ESQUIRE, OF
Poets and Poesie.
by Michael Drayton
(snip)

The noble Sidney, with this last arose,
That Heroe for numbers, and for Prose.
That throughly pac'd our language as to show,
The plenteous English hand in hand might goe
With Greeke and Latine, and did first reduce
Our tongue from Lillies writing then in use;
Talking of Stones, Stars, Plants, of fishes, Flyes,
Playing with words, and idle Similes,
As th'English, APES and very ZANIES be
Of every thing, that they doe heare and see,
So IMITATING his ridiculous tricks,
They spake and writ, all like meere lunatiques. 

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In the course of very few years from the late 1570's to the early 1580's, humanist learning and courtly advancement have come to a parting of the ways. English rime follows the lead of the court, while quantitative verse is left to take the path that leads away from power. In these circumstances, the charge of barbarousness loses its force. If acorns are being consumed at court, they are by that very fact made courteous and civil.
The adoption of riming verse by the court and by courtiers, or at least the close association of one with the other, thus obscured for a while the issue that had been so clear in Ascham. (Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood).

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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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Controlling Laughter: Political Humour in the Late Roman Republic
Anthony Corbeill

Throught the mockery of a deviant physique, name, appearance or gesture, the public speaker helps mark, and the public audience helps reinforce, the bodily form and movement that are improper for the elite. In so doing, the elite defines its boundaries and excludes those who violate these socially constructed norms. 
We hear diverse voices from the early Empire bewailing the decline of moral standards, a lament that often links the loss of morality with a lapse from the rhetorical standards maintained during the glory days of the Republic. If one understands the role played by political invective in the late Republic, it becomes clear why the Romans linked morality and oratory. Invective reaffirmed publicly what was right and proper for the true, elite Roman. Morality, then did not simply depend on oratory for its expression. It was through oratory that the Roman moral codes found constant confirmation.

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Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi - satire on the Earl of Oxford

Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,
Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man...
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always. 
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking, 
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward. 
(SNIP)
Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior, 
All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.
O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,
Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy.
"Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appear
that this English poet wanted but a good pattern before his eyes,
as it might be some delicate and choice elegant Poesy
of good Master Sidney's or Master Dyer's
(our very Castor and Pollux for such and many greater matters)
when this trim gear was in the matching?" 

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Amy Richlin:

The bad body, in Quintilian's book, is that elsewhere associated with the cinaedus [catamite]; bad speech is effeminata, good speech is 'straight' and natural, tallying with the common assertion that the actions of the cinaedus are 'against nature'. The effeminate body stands both by metonymy and synecdoche for the kind of speech that Quintilian rejects; bad speech is both like such bodies and produced by such bodies.

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Shakespeare 
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd
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, though 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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An Epigram.
To the Honour'd------Countess of ------ Jonson

THe Wisdom Madam of your private Life,
Where with this while you live a widowed Wife,
And the *RIGHT WAYS* you take unto the RIGHT*,
To conquer Rumour, and triumph on Spight;
Not only shunning by your act, to do
Ought that is ill, but the suspicion too,
Is of so brave Example, as he were
No Friend to Vertue, could be silent here.
The rather when the Vices of the Time
Are grown so Fruitful, and false Pleasures climb
By all oblique Degrees, that killing height
From whence they fall, cast down with their own
weight... 

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Jonson, Underwoods
XLII. — THE MIND OF THE FRONTISPIECE 
TO A BOOK. 

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.

`








Friday, April 3, 2015

Lady 8 and the Sign of the Ineffable


Shakespeare Brand Identified in His First Poems
April 2, 2015
AUSTIN, Texas — A printer’s ornament on the title pages of William Shakespeare's earliest works suggests that from an early stage in his career, the poet received significant support in fashioning a unique brand.
In an essay forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly, Douglas Bruster, an English professor at The University of Texas at Austin, draws on archival research to identify an Elizabethan “Shakespeare brand” in the decorative headpiece printed on the title pages of the poems “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece.”
“It’s a gorgeous picture that has been in plain sight for centuries,” Bruster said. “It’s pagan, luxurious, busy and full of life. The female face at the center is the perfect match for what he was extremely talented at doing. It’s a symbol that paves the way for Juliet, Beatrice and Cleopatra.”
Bruster refers to the design as “Lady 8,” in reference to its placement in a catalog of ornaments used by Shakespeare’s friend and publisher Richard Field. Field placed the ornament on the title page of each of Shakespeare’s poems; he had not used it so prominently before and would not do so again.
“Field’s carefulness as a printer is nowhere more apparent than his use of ornaments,” Bruster said. “It has a sort of final effect on the entire piece. It was very valuable, requiring hundreds of hours of craftsmanship to produce.”
French in style, the ornament is a prestigious Renaissance symbol, often associated with aristocrats and French Protestants known as Huguenots. Sometimes thought to be a “closet Catholic,” Shakespeare also mixed with immigrant Protestants in his day, Bruster explained. These French immigrants were particularly skilled in arts and crafts.
“Shakespeare was often criticized by other writers for his lack of schooling,” Bruster said. “So you can imagine the young writer's concerns for how his poems would appear when published. He seems to have had a little help from his friend Richard Field.”
The ornament signified prestige, reminding people of the peak of the Elizabethan era. It was soon deployed by publishers interested in trading on Shakespeare's growing celebrity, Bruster discovered.
“This ornament was used very deliberately,” Bruster said. “It goes to show that Shakespeare’s status was both recognized and enabled by peers who valued his talent much earlier than the traditional narrative suggests.”
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The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European Literature

David M. Posner

... In the discussion in book II, section 11, of masquerade (“lo esser travestito”) [in The Courtier], and of its great utility for showing of one’s true (noble) identity through disguising it, Castiglione emphasizes that the success of the courtier’s performance is determined by the audience reaction, and particularly by whether or not the audience “si diletta e piglia peacere” (“is delighted and pleased”). Control of that reaction, through controlling the pleasure experienced by the beholder, thus becomes paramount. This pleasure arises not from the audience’s experience of the showing forth of some Truth, a la Cicero, but rather from its being deceived. Castiglione shows that the essence of the courtier’s performance is a kind of multi-layered deception, in the form of a performed concealment – a concealment that pretends to be the opposite, to be an intentionally incomplete concealment that instead reveals, with a wink and a nudge, the “truth” behind its supposedly consensual pretense. Through performing "con abito disciolto,”: in a disguise meant to be seen into, the performer invites the audience to feel as though it is in on the joke. The audience’s pleasure arises from its accepting that invitation, from being fooled into believing that , rather than being fooled, it is seeing beyond the mask (representing e.g. a pastor selvatico, a peasant) to the “real” (i.e. noble) visage underneath. The precise locus of this pleasure, as Castilgione makes clear, is the tension between what is actually seen and what is artfully hinted at, without however being revealed in what Bacon will call the “Naked, and Open day light” of Truth. Nor could that shadowy something-hinted-at ever be thus revealed, as it is neither presence nor substance, neither essence nor Truth, but rather the reflection of the desire of the beholder, at the very moment of “l’animo…(chi)…corre ad imaginar…” (“the mind which rushes to imagine”). In this specular performance, there is always something more – Castiglione’s “molto maggior cosa” – than can be seen, or indeed be present; the desire for that shadowy cosa is the delectation proper to this masquerade, and it is the eliciting of that desire that is the object of the courtier’s performance.

The success of that performance, of its come-hither pseudo- revelation, is in turn dependent on a sort of meta-deception, another layer of pretense that likewise attempts to disguise itself as its opposite. The courtier’s performance must persuade, but that effort at persuasion must itself be covered over by another persuasive effort, on that “demonstrates” to the audience that no effort at persuasion is being made. One cannot be seen to be doing what one is in fact doing, namely working very hard to persuade one’s audience of a noble identity which – if it actually were what it claims to be – would need no rhetorical helps to impose its intrinsic veracity, its mathematical Identity with itself, on the minds and emotions of the audience. That such an effort of rhetoric is in fact needed suggest that the Identity being performed is not what it professes to be, or at least that the person laying claim to it has no intrinsic, “natural” right to do so. Effort must therefore be disguised as its opposite; one must persuade the witnesses to that effort of its absence. This is sprezzatura.(pp.9-12)

(snip)

Castiglione appropriates from Cicero the notion of artful artlessness, as well as its seductive effect: that the audience, finding what it beholds “sit venustius sed non ut appareat,” is incited to suspect, and desire, the presence of something more than what is actually seen. (While Castiglione’s rewriting of diligens negligentia jettisons the explicit comparison with the woman made more beautiful and attractive by her non-use of external adornments, the model of a seductive delectation is everywhere implicit in Castiglione’s idea of the courtier’s relationship with his or her audience.) But the Cortegiano expand the field of application of diligens negligentia well beyond the narrow limits of a single style of oratory; sprezzatura governs all courtly behaviour, and indeed is its essential defining characteristic. Upon it depends grazia, grace, which must be seen to accompany the courtier’s every action; upon it depends above all the crucial ability to persuade one’s public of the presence of the “molto maggior cosa,” that Something Else, always just beyond the reach of clear perception, which is the key to noble identity.(p.13) 

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nescio quid

"And I maintain this also, that when a certain training and well- formed learning achieve and outstanding and illustrious character, then that *noble and unique something* usually STANDS FORTH." (Cicero) 

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From Gabriel Harvey, Gratulationes Valdinenses – to the Earl of Oxford (1578)

...Your virtue does not creep the earth, nor is it confined to a song:
it wondrously penetrates the aetherial orbs! Up and Away!
With that mind and that fire, noble heart, you will surpass yourself, surpass others:
your great glory will everywhere spread beyond the frozen ocean!
England will discover in you its hereditary ACHILLES.
(snip)
For long time past Phoebus Apollo has cultivated thy mind in the arts.
English poetical measures have been sung by thee long enough.
Let that Courtly Epistle, more polished even than the writings of Castiglione himself
witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters.
I have seen many Latin verses of thine, yea,
even more English verses are extant;
Thou hast drunk deep draughts not only of the Muses of France and Italy,
But hast learned the MANNERS of many men, and the arts of foreign countries.
It was not for nothing that Sturmius, himself was visited by thee,
Neither in France, Italy, nor Germany are any such cultivated and polished men.
(snip)
In peace it behooves us to endure toil and thirst and hunger and cold and irksome heat and watches,
both day and night; to brandish menacing weapons with a terrible right hand.
Let your enemies trifle, the opponent enjoy his rest:
Let the sluggish indulge in the allurements of the moment and in the blandishments of a sportive peace.
(snip)
So persuaded that old poet that it was a great disgrace: "Truly, ye youths, ye have the spirits of women!"

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'Wil you handle the spindle with Hercules, when you should SHAKE the SPEARE with ACHILLES?" - Lyly, Campaspe
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 Venus and Adonis title page - from Ovid's Amores:

Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

Let base-conceited wits admire vile things,
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses' [Castalian] springs.

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Oxford's Invention INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVAIL:

Southern, Pandora (1584)

SUMMARY: Ode to Oxford in John Southern’s Pandora, The Music of the Beauty of his Mistress Diana. The title page gives the publication date as 20 June 1584.

To the right honourable the Earl of Oxenford etc. 

(snip)
Epode

No, no, the high singer is he
Alone that in the end must be
Made proud with a garland like this,
And not every riming novice
That writes with small wit and much pain,
And the (God’s know) idiot in vain,
For it’s not the way to Parnasse,
Nor it will neither come to pass
If it be not in some wise fiction
And of an ingenious INVENTION,
And INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVAIL,
For it alone must win the laurel,
And only the poet WELL BORN
Must be he that goes to Parnassus, 

And not these companies of asses
That have brought verse almost to scorn. 

(see Puttenham, Art of Poesie, on this passage as an example of Soraismus - a vice in writing)

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Identifying Oxford as Amorphus/The Deformed in Cynthia's Revels:

Cynthia's Revels 1616 Folio, Jonson

Act IV, Sc V
Amorphus (the Deformed)
...And there’s her minion Crites! Why his advice more then Amorphus? Have
not I invention, afore him? Learning, to better that invention, above
him? And infanted, with pleasant travaile ----


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The Aristocrat as Art: A Study of the Honnête Homme and the Dandy in Seventeenth and Nineteenth-Century French Literature

By Domna C. Stanton

…In what constitutes the most extensive seventeenth-century commentary on le je ne sais quoi, Bouhours insists that it can only be known only by its effects and that all the terms which have been used to define it – “those impressions, penchants, instincts, feelings, affinities: - are nothing but flim-flam: “When we have said all that and and a thousand other things besides, we have said nothing. It would no longer be a je ne sais quoi if we knew what it was; its nature is to be incomprehensible and unexplainable”.

Although Mere purported to believe that “certain people know its cause and origin, he, along with the other writers on honnêtete, continued to regard le je ne sais quoi as the impenetrable “explanation” of the self-as-art. The countenance of an honnête homme, for example, radiates “a merry and insinuating je ne said quoi:, and his body, “a certain secret, charming je ne sais quoi that we cannot describe". Like his manner, urbanity brings together “a courteous and polished je ne sais quoi, a je ne sais quoi that is at the same time bantering and flattering”. In conversation, his voice has a "gentle and tender je ne said quoi that touches the heart", or “one that has an appealing, casual je ne sais quoi”, and his verbal style, according to Mere, has a “je ne sais quoi (that is) pure and noble,” “refined,” “natural,” “subtle and lofty,” “precise and insinuating” The global pertinence of this SIGN OF THE INEFFABLE also dominates Scudery’s analysis: “this je ne sais quoi galant which permeated the entire person of its possessor – his mind, his words, his actions or even his clothing – put the finishing touch on honntêtes gens, makes them lovable and causes others to love them. Bouhours said both the first and the last word on the subject when he insisted that the presence of the je ne sais quoi could remedy all defects and that its absence could invalidate all virtues. (p.208) 

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Jonson, _Discoveries_

AFFECTED language:

DE VERE argutis.--I do hear them say often some men are not witty, because they are not everywhere witty; than which nothing is more foolish. If an eye or a nose be an excellent part in the face, therefore be all eye or nose! I think the eyebrow, the forehead, the cheek, chin, lip, or any part else are as necessary and natural in the place. But now nothing is good that is natural; right and natural language seems to have least of the wit in it; that which is writhed and tortured is counted the more exquisite. Cloth of bodkin or tissue must be embroidered; as if no face were fair that were not powdered or PAINTED! no beauty to be had but in wresting and writhing our own tongue! Nothing is fashionable till it be DEFORMED; and this is to write like a gentleman. All must be affected and preposterous as our GALLANTS' clothes, sweet-bags, and night-dressings, in which you would think our men lay in, like ladies, it is so curious.

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Fucus/Paint

Davies, Scourge of Folly
Of the staid FURIOUS POET FUCUS.
Epig. 114

Fucus the FURIOUS POET writes but Plaies;
So, playing, writes: that’s, idly writeth all:

Yet, idle Plaies, and Players are his Staies;
Which stay him that he can no lower fall:

For, he is fall’n into the deep’st decay,
Where Playes and Players keepe him at a stay.

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Sidney, Defence of Poesy

Other sort of Poetrie, almost have we none, but that Lyricall kind of Songs and SONETS; which Lord, if he gave us so good mindes, how well it might be employed, and with how heavenly fruites, both private and publike, in singing the praises of the immortall bewtie, the immortall goodnes of that God, who giveth us hands to write, and wits to conceive: of which we might wel want words, but never matter, of which we could turn our eyes to nothing, but we should ever have new budding occassions. But truly many of such writings as come under the banner of unresistable love, if I were a Mistress, would never perswade mee they were in love: so coldly they applie firie speeches, as men that had rather redde lovers writings, and so caught up certaine swelling Phrases, which hang togither like a man that once tolde me the winde was at Northwest and by South, because he would be sure to name winds inough, then that in truth they feele those passions, which easily as I thinke, may be bewraied by that same forciblenesse or Energia, (as the Greeks call it of the writer). But let this be a sufficient, though short note, that we misse the right use of the material point of Poesie. Now for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I may tearme it) Diction, it is even well worse: so is it that HONY-FLOWING Matrone Eloquence, apparrelled, or rather disguised, in a Courtisanlike PAINTED AFFECTATION. One time with so farre fet(ched) words, that many seeme monsters, but must seeme STRAUNGERS to anie poore Englishman: an other time with coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to follow the method of a Dictionary: an other time with figures and flowers, extreemely winter-starved. But I would this fault were onely peculiar to Versefiers, and had not as large possession among Prose- Printers: and which is to be mervailed among many Schollers, & which is to be pitied among some Preachers. Truly I could wish, if at I might be so bold to wish, in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity, the diligent Imitators of Tully & Demosthenes, most worthie to be imitated, did not so much keepe Nizolian paper bookes, of their figures and phrase, as by attentive translation, as it were, devoure them whole, and make them wholly theirs. For now they cast SUGAR and spice uppon everie dish that is served to the table: like those Indians, not content to weare eare-rings at the fit and naturall place of the eares, but they will thrust Jewels through their nose and lippes, because they will be SURE TO BE FINE.

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Sidney's Womanish Man
Mark Rose

IDLENESS was understood to be the first shaft that 'Cupide shooteth into the hot liver of a heedlesse lover', so in desiring to give in to idleness the prince is only proving true to type. Distaff Hercules was the conventional image for just such a condition of effeminate idleness induced by passionate love. The distaff itself was an old symbol of idleness, and Sidney would have read in Amyot's Plutarch:

...that men given to idle luxury are like Hercules 'au palais royal de la royne de Lydie Omphale, vestu d'une cotte de demoiselle, se laissant souffletter & tresser aux filles & femmes de la Royne'.

'WIL you handle the spindle with Hercules, when you should SHAKE the SPEARE with Achilles?" asks a character in Lyly's Campaspe. Barnaby Rich states that lascivious women have made 'valiant men effeminate, as Hercules'. And Robert Burton uses 'Herculean Love' as an uncomplimentary epithet for passionate love. Sidney's own contempt for distaff Hercules is clear from the Defence of Poesie:

So in Hercules, painted with his great beard, and furious countenance, in a womans attire, spinning, at Omphales commaundement, it breedes both delight and laughter; for the representing of so straunge a power in Love, procures delight, and the scornefulness of the action, stirreth laughter. (iii. 40)

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Dedication Venus and Adonis:
I KNOW not how I shall offend in dedicating my UNPOLISHED lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all IDLE HOURS, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove DEFORMED, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation.

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Les Signes Galants: A Historical Reevaluation of Galanterie
Alain Viala and Daryl Lee


The texts of the 1650's acknowledge less the Italian model than models from Antiquity...Obviously, a model that includes expressions such as je ne sais quoi and delicatesse (words that come back again and again in texts from this period) is an ideal that evades easy definition. In the end galant and galanterie solidify into literary categories. They denote and aesthetics combining arts and genres (the lettre galante, for example, combines prose and verse, the comedy-ballet combines stage arts), privileging a style both "middle" and "natural", and in search of humorous wit and entertainment: in a word, the aesthetic of the honnête bonne humeur. When understood correctly, the objective of this search is a satisfying balance of mind, temperament, and being, that is, a harmonious distribution of "HUMOR" (in the sense of the anthropology of the time). There is no absolute privilege granted to reason, no surrendering to the flow of the passions, but rather a sense of playing - that is to say, the capacity to maintain a certain distance from objects and from facts: the right and proper distance, a respectful distance. The pleasure of the literary game thus assumes a therapeutic function. It is both end and means at once, the space in which a social integration is achieved and displayed by a proper balancing of the affects and of the mind: the literary game prepares one for the social game at the same time as it shapes it. Galanterie then asserts itself as a social model by crystallizing the various tendencies or nuances carried by the various concomitant terms.

It is literature, therefore, that during the second generation infuses sociable conduct with the model it has constructed. Unlike the preceding generation, the social model crystallizes through the construction of an aesthetics. The idea of the utility of literature has not disappeared: it verges on divertissement to the point of incorporating it, by dint of the affirmation of the virtue of an aesthetics that the ethical model takes form. Literature is conceived no longer as a vector only, but as the very space in which an ideological model is elaborated: it signals the increased autonomy of the literary field, which generates its own values, of an aesthetic order. However, the process toward autonomy is only relative, for the taste of galant literary circles is precisely not to parade themselves as gens de lettres, but rather to pass themselves off as worldly amateurs. 

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The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe

Richard Scholar


The Case of Shakespeare:

...An entire study of the je-ne-sais-quois could be devoted to Shakespeare's plays. They dramatize its main themes, whether the ghostly apparition of an insensible force in nature, the stroke of a disastrous passion, or the super-subtle artifice of signs of quality; they show the characters who undergo such experiences attempting, with extraordinary sophistication, to come to terms with them; and, at such moments, forms of the English phrase 'I know not what' tend to appear. Shakespeare's place in the present study is marginal, since my criterion of inclusion was that a writer should occupy at least a potential place in the historical rise and fall of the je-ne-sais- quois (n.), and Shakespeare has no place in that history. He stands apart from it, a stranger on its threshold, while effortlessly revealing his mastery of its terms and themes. As with so many of the new approaches and theories that literary critics bring to his plays, one is left with the bardolatrous feeling that Shakespeare saw the whole thing first, that it was in fact he who dreamt up the je-ne-sais-quois.

A Midsummer Night's Dream exemplifies Shakespeare's mastery of the je-ne-sais-quois. A strange force of sympathy falls between certain individuals in the play. The characters discuss the nature of this force obsessively: some attempt to dispel, subdue, and explain it away; others sense that it is something really inexplicable and inexplicably real and, in saying so, they grasp at forms of the phrase 'I know not what'. 

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Men/Vir vs. Parasites: 

The COMMENDATION of good things may fall within a many,  their approbation but in a few· for the most COMMEND OUT OF AFFECTION,  selfe tickling, an easinesse, or imitation: but MEN iudge only out of *KNOWLEDGE*. That is the trying faculty. -- Jonson

I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a MALEVOLENT speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their IGNORANCE, who choose that circumstance to COMMEND their friend by, wherein he most FAULTED... -- Jonson on Shakespeare

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Jonson, on Shakespeare

He was (indeed) honest, and of
an open, and free nature: had an excellent
fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions:
wherein he flowed with that facility, that
sometime it was necessary he should be
STOP'D: sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said
of Haterius. His wit was in his own power;
would the RULE of it had been so too." 

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THE RESTRAINT OF FANCY/'SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL' (and Jonsonian-judgement's preeminence):

From To the Deceased Author of these Poems...William Cartwright  (note- of the Tribe of Ben)

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. (snip) 


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Shakespeare's Troy: drama, politics, and the translation of empire

By Heather James

It is no coincidence that OxfordAntony comes to act out the very roles he fears will come to define him...in the JacobeanAugustan future of EnglandRome: his crisis of identity anticipates the ideological accounts already setting in to construe his reputation in political and literary history. The course of EnglishRoman political history forbids him characterological integrity: OxfordAntony is doomed "sometimes, when he is not Oxford Antony," to come "too short of that great property/ Which still should go with OxfordAntony". He recognizes that literary-political history will continually unshape him and dislimn him until he is as "indistinct/ As water is in water."

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Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell. 

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I suspect the Shakespeare Authorship problem arises from the wreckage of intense factional rivalry in the Elizabethan court and a confusion of rhetorical sleights that should be understood in the tradition of Roman invective. This factional slander suggests that Oxford was an intrinsically worthless and effeminized creature (homo inanis) made great only by Fortune and who deserved to be forgotten.
If 'Shakespeare' exists as a testament to the author's worth, then his fame appears to have eclipsed all others. The resulting fame, however,  is paradoxical. Through his own efforts Oxford/Shakespeare established himself as the heart/voice of British culture and at the same time Oxford/Shakespeare was shaped by his opposition as the disruptive 'Other'. An 'Other' whose indiscriminate and unregulated energies needed to be contained. Thus a great man was hurled headlong from the apex of Elizabethan court culture to land in a Stratford dunghill.

Similar patterns of events have occurred as individuals found themselves on the wrong side of history. Many lie nameless and unremembered. What is extraordinary in Oxford's case is the momentous fact of his shadowy and insuppressible Book.

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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. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe : And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his Friends, whom if you need, can be your guides: if you neede them not, you can lead yourselves, and others, and such readers we wish him.

John Heminge.
Henrie Condell.

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Soul of the Age:

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, Life of Sidney (1652) - Sidney and the 'nameless' Earl - vir and homo inanis.


"And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the Tennis-Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this PRINCELY SPIRIT, he grew to expostulate more roughly. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the mists of my Lords PASSIONS, swoln with the winde of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse amazement, or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was possessed with: till at last with rage (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court...

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." 

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In the course of very few years from the late 1570's to the early 1580's, humanist learning and courtly advancement have come to a parting of the ways. English rime follows the lead of the court, while quantitative verse is left to take the path that leads away from power. In these circumstances, the charge of barbarousness loses its force. If acorns are being consumed at court, they are by that very fact made courteous and civil.
The adoption of riming verse by the court and by courtiers, or at least the close association of one with the other, thus obscured for a while the issue that had been so clear in Ascham. (Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood).

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Suppressing Oxford's fame and name - discriminating between good and bad examples. 'Publique ill example.'



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.