Art posted:
Upon the Dramatick Poems of Mr John Fletcher (end)
by William Cartwright
.
. [N]ought later then it should, nought comes before,
. [C]hymists, and Calculators doe erre more:
. [S]ex, age, degree, affec(T)ions, country, place,
. [T]he inward substance, (A)nd the outward face;
. [A]ll kept precisely, al(L) exactly fit,
. [W]hat he would write, he was bef(O)re he writ.
.'[T]wixt Johnsons grave, and Shake(S)peares lighter sound
. His muse so steer'd that something still was found,
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Jonson's grave(r) and Shakespeare's lighter sound - gravitas and levitas:
GRAVITAS
Ever since George W Bush picked Richard Cheney as his running mate, the candidates in the American presidential race have been vying to see who can demonstrate the greatest gravitas, or appearance of dignity and seriousness. The Washington Times earlier this month called it the "gravitas gambit", and Rush Limbaugh has been having fun playing recordings to illustrate how it has become the media buzzword of the campaign.
It's a Latin word, a noun formed from the adjective gravis, heavy. English borrowed the Latin word via French as gravity at about the beginning of the sixteenth century. Then, it had much the same sense as gravitas now has: weight, influence, or authority. It could also refer to some matter that was grave (which comes from the same Latin source) or to a solemn dignity, a sobriety or seriousness of conduct. A weighty word indeed, the opposite of levity, a lightness that causes bodies to rise, a tendency for people to exhibit lightweight attitudes.
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Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis dedication
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.
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Mocking Shakespearean Levitas:
Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, RISE!
(snip)
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's LIGHT.
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William Cartwright - To John Fletcher:
...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free
As his, but without his SCURILITY;
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The Poems of Robert Green
(Written under a carving of Cupid, blowing bladders in the air.)
Love is a lock that linketh noble minds,
Faith is the key that shuts the spring of love,
LIGHTNESS a wrest that wringeth all awry,
LIGHTNESS a plague that fancy cannot brook:
LIGHTNESS in love so bad and base a thing,
As foul disgrace to greatest states do bring
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Jonson, Timber
Opinion is a LIGHT, vain, crude, and imperfect thing, settled in the imagination: but never arriving at the understanding, there to obtain the tincture of reason. We labour with it more than truth. There is more holds us, than presseth us. An ill fact is one thing, an ill-fortune is another: yet both oftentimes sway us alike, by the error of our thinking.
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Fuller:
“Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and
Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon,and an English
man-of-war. Master Jonson, (like the former) was built far higher in
learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with
an English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn
with all tides, and take advantage of all winds, by
the quickness of his wit and invention.”
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The War of the Private Theaters - James P. Bednarz
...When Horace first appears in Satiromastix (still composing the verses he began in Poetaster), Asinius Bubo informs him that Crispinus and Demetrius intend to bring his "life and death upon th'stage like a Bricklayer". Dismissing this news, Horace reviles them as a "[light] voluptuous Reveler" and an "arrogating puff," using the same epithets Criticus hurled at Hedon and Anaides [ in Jonson's Cynthia's Revels]:
Horace: That same Crispinus is the silliest Dor, and Fannius the
slightest cobweb-lawn piece of a Poet, oh God!
Why should I care what every Dor doth buzz
In credulous ears, it is a crown to me,
That the best judgements can report me wrong'd...
I think but what they are, and am not mov'd.
The one a LIGHT voluptuous Reveler,
The other, a strange arrogating puff,
Both impudent, and arrogant enough.
Asinius: S'lid, do not Criticus Revel in these lines, ha Ningle ha?
Horace: Yes, they're mine own.
Horace's admission, "Yes, they're mine own," makes sense only because he and Criticus, who reveled in the same lines, are Jonsonian personae denouncing Marston and Dekker. Through it, Dekker prompts his audience to recall Criticus's prior condemnation of the poetasters:
What should I care what every dor doth buzz
In credulous ears? It is a crown to me,
That the best judgements can report me wrong'd:
Them liars: and their slanders impudent.
...when if remember,
'Tis Hedon and Anaides: alas, then,
I think but what they are, and am not stirr'd.
The one, a LIGHT voluptuous reveller,
The other a strange arrogating puff,
Both impudent, and ignorant enough;
That take (as they are wont) not as I merit:
Traduce by custom, as most dogs do bark,
Do nothing out of judgement, but disease,
Speak ill, because they never could speak well.
Dekker's Horace greets news of the conspiracy against him by remembering its inception in Cynthia's Revels...
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The one, a LIGHT voluptuous reveller,
The other a strange arrogating puff,
Both impudent, and ignorant enough; - Cynthia's Revels
The one a LIGHT voluptuous Reveler,
The other, a strange arrogating puff,
Both impudent, and arrogant enough. - Satiromastix
[Or], when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Traduce by custom, as most dogs do bark,
Do nothing out of judgement, but DISEASE,- Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our WATERS yet appear,
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Jonson, Cynthia's Revels - censuring Amorphus/Oxford and his crew of courtly
revellers.
O vanity,
How are thy painted beauties doted on,
By LIGHT, and empty Idiots how pursu'd
With open and extended Appetite!
How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,
Rais'd on their Toes, to catch thy AIRY FORMS,
Still turning GIDDY, till they reel like Drunkards,
That buy the merry madness of one hour,
With the long irksomness of following time!
O how despis'd and base a thing is a Man,
If he not strive t'erect his groveling Thoughts
Above the strain of Flesh! But how more cheap,
When, even his best and understanding Part,
(The crown and strength of all his Faculties)
Floats like a dead drownd Body, on the Stream
Of vulgar humour, mixt with common'st dregs?
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Reverberating Song in Shakespeare and Milton: Language, Memory, and Musical ...
By Asst Prof Erin Minear
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the LIGHT fantastic toe;
The vocabulary of the fantastic repeatedly surfaces in Protestant polemics against elaborate music in the church. These polemics emphasize at some length the dangers of music that overwhelms or distracts from words. In The Reliques of Rome (1563) - much mined by William Prynne in his Histrio-mastix of 1633 - Thomas Becon describes the music of his own time as "LIGHT, vayne, madde, fond, foolishe and fantastical." Such music - polyphonic, combining voices and instruments to the detriment of holy words - by its very nature lacks gravity.
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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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Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
CRITES. Though they may see it, yet the huge estate
FANCY, and FORM, and SENSUAL PRIDE have gotten,
Will make them blush for anger, not for shame,
And turn shewn nakedness to impudence.
Humour is now the test we try things in:
All power is just: nought that delights is sin.
And yet the zeal of every knowing man
Opprest with hills of tyranny, cast on virtue
By the LIGHT FANCIES OF FOOLS, thus transported.
Cannot but vent the Aetna of his fires,
T'inflame best bosoms with much worthier love
Than of these outward and effeminate shades;
That these vain joys, in which their wills consume
Such powers of wit and soul as are of force
To raise their beings to eternity,
May be converted on works fitting men:
And, for the practice of a forced look,
An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase,
Study the native frame of a true heart,
An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge,
And spirit that may conform them actually
To God's high figures, which they have in power;
Which to neglect for a self-loving neatness,
Is sacrilege of an unpardon'd greatness.
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LIGHT and empty Idiots:
A Speech according to Horace. --Jonson
(snip)
And could (if our great Men would let their Sons
Come to their Schools,) show 'em the use of Guns.
And there instruct the noble English Heirs
In Politick, and Militar Affairs;
But he that should perswade, to have this done
For Education of our Lordings; Soon
Should he hear of BILLOW, WIND, and STORM,
From the TEMPESTUOUS GRANDLINGS, who'll inform
Us, in our bearing, that are thus, and thus,
Born, bred, allied? what's he dare tutor us?
Are we by Book-worms to be aw'd? must we
Live by their Scale, that dare do nothing FREE?
Why are we Rich, or Great, except to show
All LICENCE in our Lives? What need we know?
More then to praise a Dog? or Horse? or speak
The Hawking Language? or our Day to break
With Citizens? let Clowns, and Tradesmen breed
Their Sons to study Arts, the Laws, the Creed:
We will believe like Men of our own Rank,
In so much Land a year, or such a Bank,
That turns us so much Monies, at which rate
Our Ancestors impos'd on Prince and State.
Let poor Nobility be vertuous: We,
Descended in a Rope of Titles, be
From Guy, or Bevis, Arthur, or from whom
The Herald will. Our Blood is now become,
Past any need of Vertue. Let them care,
That in the Cradle of their Gentry are;
To serve the State by Councels, and by Arms:
We neither love the Troubles, nor the harms.
What love you then? your Whore? what study? Gate,
Carriage, and Dressing. There is up of late
The ACADEMY, where the Gallants meet ----
What to make Legs? yes, and to smell most sweet,
All that they do at Plays. O, but first here
They learn and study; and then practise there.
But why are all these Irons i' the Fire
Of several makings? helps, helps, t' attire
His Lordship. That is for his Band, his Hair
This, and that Box his Beauty to repair;
This other for his Eye-brows; hence, away,
I may no longer on these PICTURES stay,
These Carkasses of Honour; Taylors blocks,
Cover'd with Tissue, whose prosperity mocks
The fate of things: whilst totter'd Vertue holds
Her broken Arms up, to their EMPTY MOULDS.
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Swollen with the Winde of his Faction - Depicting Oxford as an intemperate 'light-weight':
"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." (Greville, Life of Sidney)
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Restraining Shakespeare's Quill:
From To the Deceased Author of these Poems...William Cartwright
BY Jasper Mayne
...And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all
The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:
No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,
No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;
No Oracle of Language, to amaze
The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase,
Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,
A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.
That which Thou wrot'st was sense, and that sense good,
Things not first written, and then understood:
Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar'd so high
As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,
'Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,
Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.
For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.
In Thee BEN JOHNSON still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:
A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)
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Jonson, De Shakespeare NOstrat
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 stopped*. "Sufflaminandus erat," 2 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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mid-14c., "generous," also, late 14c., "selfless; noble, nobly born; abundant," and, early 15c., in a bad sense "extravagant, unrestrained," from Old French liberal "befitting free men, noble, generous, willing, zealous" (12c.), from Latin liberalis "noble, gracious, munificent, generous," literally "of freedom, pertaining to or befitting a free man," from liber "free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious," from PIE *leudh-ero-, probably originally "belonging to the people" (though the precise semantic development is obscure; compare frank (adj.)), and a suffixed form of the base *leudh- "people" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic ljudu, Lithuanianliaudis, Old English leod, German Leute "nation, people;" Old High German liut "person, people").
With the meaning "free from restraint in speech or action," liberal was used 16c.-17c. as a term of reproach. It revived in a positive sense in the Enlightenment, with a meaning "free from prejudice, tolerant," which emerged 1776-88.
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...Never did so much strength, or such a spell
Of Art, and eloquence of papers dwell.
For whil'st he in colours, full and true,
Mens natures, fancies, and their humours drew
In method, order, matter, sence and grace,
Fitting each person to his time and place;
Knowing to move, to slacke, or to make haste,
Binding the middle with the first and last:
He fram'd all minds, and did all passions stirre,
And with a BRIDLE GUIDE the Theater.
Shackerley Marmion, Josonus Virbius
Of Art, and eloquence of papers dwell.
For whil'st he in colours, full and true,
Mens natures, fancies, and their humours drew
In method, order, matter, sence and grace,
Fitting each person to his time and place;
Knowing to move, to slacke, or to make haste,
Binding the middle with the first and last:
He fram'd all minds, and did all passions stirre,
And with a BRIDLE GUIDE the Theater.
Shackerley Marmion, Josonus Virbius
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The Age of Lightness: Emergences of a Paradigm of the French Eighteenth Century 15 May 2015
Maison française of Oxford
Call for papers
Whilst Voltaire observed that 'lightness and fickleness shaped the character of that agreeable nation' (none other than France), Caraccioli remarked that 'for a long time, French people have been accused of lightness, and for a long time they have not cared to mend their ways'. If lightness became such a crucial national issue in eighteenth-century France, it is in great part because of its connection with 'civic virtues' which were then thought to depend upon this inconstancy. The French nation would be too fickle to be seriously evil. However, the alleged lightness of the 'siècle' was far from inspiring unanimous praise. Many would rather condemn the inconsequential spirit of the times. Lightness thus emerged from all these discussions as one of the paradigms around or against which the entire century was defining itself. Furthermore, this interest for the question of lightness did not concern debates on morals alone, but reappeared instead in all fields of human knowledge. Whereas 'amateurs' or art critics extolled the 'lightness' of certain paintings, scientists investigated lightness as a potential property of matter. And, at the end of this Age of Lightness, the Montgolfier brothers' balloons and others aerostats could be seen floating weightlessly over enchanted and enthusiastic crowds. The lightest century is also the one who first lifted itself to the sky.
Significantly, from the Revolution of 1789 onwards, subsequent periods would also define themselves in relation to this paradigm, thereby resuming the construction of the French eighteenth century not just as the Age of Enlightenment, but instead as the Age of Lightness. From the bourgeois nineteenth century nostalgically dreaming of bygone fêtes galantes to our own early twenty first century celebrating the frivolity (and marketability) of Marie-Antoinette's and Fragonard's images, the last century of the Ancien Régime has never ceased to exert its charms upon the public. Now more than ever, the fascinated focus of scholars, novelists, filmmakers and artists has brought to the fore that particular aspect of eighteenth-century France: the delightfully hedonistic, fickle, witty and frivolous siècle des Lumières that they give us to see spurs the ever-expanding diffusion of this representation of history.
Thus the lightness of the French eighteenth century not only appears to be the object of a multi-faceted conquest (at once scientific, moral, aesthetic, ...); it also imposes itself as an historically constructed paradigm giving rise to many questions that we propose to explore from a critical and historiographical point of view during a study-day to be held at the Maison française d'Oxford on May, 15 2015.
We welcome papers which examine the alleged lightness of the French eighteenth century from the perspectives of various disciplines:
In literature, the rise of the 'French' novel is inseparable from this notion of lightness. The authors' opposition to the gravitas of the Ancients conceptualised lightness in style as a way to comply with contemporary literary aesthetics whilst exploring new expressive possibilities. Besides, the novel itself was accused of being a dangerously idle genre. French literature was for instance trifling with characters who, from hedonists to immaterial sylphs to featherbrained ladies, were defined by their lightness.
In contemporary memoirs and correspondences, observations of and reflections on the so-called lightness of the French nation abound. What inspired such remarks? To what extent did they craft the posterity of the eighteenth century as the age of lightness?
In the domain of moral philosophy, numerous essays were written on frivolity, happiness, pleasure, whilst philosophy itself, aiming both to teach and to please, was channelled through entertaining and superficially light fables and tales.
In visual arts and the arising art criticism, lightness is a quality of the painter's style as well as the subject of the composition, as epitomised by Watteau's 'fêtes galantes', Chardin's La Bulle de savon, Fragonard's L'Escarpolette, or Greuze's L'Oiseau mort. Such works have often been regarded (especially in the nineteenth century but also already in their own time) as artefacts of the Lumières' moral lightness.
In architecture, lightness is defined as 'the scarcity of material' (Encyclopédie) and the openness of structures. How have these qualities been interpreted relatively to different architectural styles such as the baroque, the gothic, the rococo or Neoclassicism.
In music, to what extent does lightness characterizes the French style? What part did the notion of lightness play in the Querelle des Bouffons for instance?
In the history of sciences, from the field of medicine (through the theories on vapours) to the Montgolfier brothers, lightness (or air) appears as a crucial element to know and to master. The conquest of the sky and its representations is of particular interest to the present reflection.
Finally, to promote a critical/historiographical approach of these reflections, we will also welcome papers addressing more specifically the synchronic and diachronic representations of this alleged lightness. How did other nations and subsequent periods construct themselves through their conceptualisation of the French eighteenth century as 'light'? What can discourses on the French eighteenth century's alleged lightness disclose about the place and time which produce these discourses?
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