Linking Oxford and Shakespeare through Figurations of the Sublime
Signior Amorphus/Oxford and the Sublimed Self:
Cynthia's Revels, Jonson
Amo. I am a Rhinoceros, if I had thought
a Creature
of her symmetry, could have dar'd so improportionable,
and abrupt a digression. Liberal, and divine Fount,
of her symmetry, could have dar'd so improportionable,
and abrupt a digression. Liberal, and divine Fount,
suffer my prophane hand to take of thy Bounties. By
the Purity of my taste, here is most ambrosiack Water;
I will sup of it again. By thy favour, sweet fount.
See, the Water (a more running, subtile, and humo-
rous Nymph than she) permits me to touch, and handle
her. What should I infer? If my Behaviours had been
of a cheap or customary garb; my Accent or Phrase
vulgar; my Garments trite; my Countenance illite-
rate, or unpractis'd in the incounter of a beautiful and
brave attir'd Piece; then I might (with some change
of colour) have suspected my Faculties: but know-
ing my self an essence so sublimated, and refin'd by
travel; of so studied, and well exercis'd a Gesture; so
alone in Fashion; able to render the face of any States-
man living; and so speak the meer extraction of Lan-
guage; one that hath now made the sixth return upon
ventuer; and was your first that ever inricht his Coun-
trey with the true Laws of the duello; whose optiques
have drunk the spirit of Beauty, in some Eight score
and eighteen Princes Courts, where I have resided, and
been there fortunate in the amours of Three hundred
forty and five Ladies (all Nobly, if not Princely de-
scended) whose names I have in Catalogue; to con-
clude, in all so happy, as even Admiration her self doth
seem to fasten her kisses upon me: Certes, I do neither
see, nor feel, nor taste, nor favour the least STEAM, or
FUME of a reason, that should invite this foolish fastidi-
ous Nymph, so peevishly to abandon me. Well, let the
Memory of her fleet into Air; my thoughts and I am
for this other Element, Water.
the Purity of my taste, here is most ambrosiack Water;
I will sup of it again. By thy favour, sweet fount.
See, the Water (a more running, subtile, and humo-
rous Nymph than she) permits me to touch, and handle
her. What should I infer? If my Behaviours had been
of a cheap or customary garb; my Accent or Phrase
vulgar; my Garments trite; my Countenance illite-
rate, or unpractis'd in the incounter of a beautiful and
brave attir'd Piece; then I might (with some change
of colour) have suspected my Faculties: but know-
ing my self an essence so sublimated, and refin'd by
travel; of so studied, and well exercis'd a Gesture; so
alone in Fashion; able to render the face of any States-
man living; and so speak the meer extraction of Lan-
guage; one that hath now made the sixth return upon
ventuer; and was your first that ever inricht his Coun-
trey with the true Laws of the duello; whose optiques
have drunk the spirit of Beauty, in some Eight score
and eighteen Princes Courts, where I have resided, and
been there fortunate in the amours of Three hundred
forty and five Ladies (all Nobly, if not Princely de-
scended) whose names I have in Catalogue; to con-
clude, in all so happy, as even Admiration her self doth
seem to fasten her kisses upon me: Certes, I do neither
see, nor feel, nor taste, nor favour the least STEAM, or
FUME of a reason, that should invite this foolish fastidi-
ous Nymph, so peevishly to abandon me. Well, let the
Memory of her fleet into Air; my thoughts and I am
for this other Element, Water.
**************************************
Humours/Manners
Amorphus/Traveller:
.....For Jonson, the main point of the unities is not so
much
verisimilitude as proportion. As he writes in Discoveries,
paraphrasing Heinsius:
In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost bound,
how far with fitness, and a necessary proportion, he may produce, and
determine it…For, as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no
more can the action, either the comedy, or tragedy, without his fit
bounds.
Boundedness is the condition of all proportion and fitness; nothing
can be good without its proper limits. It is a principle that goes
beyond poetics, informing for example these comedies’ preoccupation
with the idea of humor. Asper, the authorial mouthpiece of Every Man
Out, defines humor as “whatsoe’er hath flexure and humidity, / As
wanting power to contain itself,” and explains that the medical humors
(choler, melancholy, and so on) are so called “By reason that they
flow continually / In some one part, and are not continent” (“Grex,”
ll. 96-101). The follies we are about to see, then, are types of
incontinence, ugly and absurd because of their lack of any limiting
principle. A comedy that wandered whimsically from country to country
would be complicit with the humors it displayed. Rather, it should
emulate the wise men who rule their lives by knowledge, “and can
becalm / All sea of HUMOUR with the marble trident / Of their strong
spirits” (The Poetaster, 4.6.74-76). Although his plays were not
written for a Serlian stage, Jonson reproduces its boundedness at the
level of their construction through his self-imposed limitations of
place and time. The classical architecture of the dramatic form, with
its firm symmetries and commanding point of view, stands in for the
perspective scene.
verisimilitude as proportion. As he writes in Discoveries,
paraphrasing Heinsius:
In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost bound,
how far with fitness, and a necessary proportion, he may produce, and
determine it…For, as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no
more can the action, either the comedy, or tragedy, without his fit
bounds.
Boundedness is the condition of all proportion and fitness; nothing
can be good without its proper limits. It is a principle that goes
beyond poetics, informing for example these comedies’ preoccupation
with the idea of humor. Asper, the authorial mouthpiece of Every Man
Out, defines humor as “whatsoe’er hath flexure and humidity, / As
wanting power to contain itself,” and explains that the medical humors
(choler, melancholy, and so on) are so called “By reason that they
flow continually / In some one part, and are not continent” (“Grex,”
ll. 96-101). The follies we are about to see, then, are types of
incontinence, ugly and absurd because of their lack of any limiting
principle. A comedy that wandered whimsically from country to country
would be complicit with the humors it displayed. Rather, it should
emulate the wise men who rule their lives by knowledge, “and can
becalm / All sea of HUMOUR with the marble trident / Of their strong
spirits” (The Poetaster, 4.6.74-76). Although his plays were not
written for a Serlian stage, Jonson reproduces its boundedness at the
level of their construction through his self-imposed limitations of
place and time. The classical architecture of the dramatic form, with
its firm symmetries and commanding point of view, stands in for the
perspective scene.
*************************************
Continence:
The concept of 'proper limits' is bound up with the classical ideal of decorum (propriety in manners and conduct). Quintilian writes that ‘'A good man (vir bonus) will see that everything he says is consistent with his dignity and the respectability of his character (dignitate ac verecundia); for we pay too dear for the laugh we raise if it is at the cost of our own integrity
(probitatis)'
Jonson paraphrases this passage at the close of his epigram
"To My Book” (probitas – integrity,honesty, uprightness):
Continence:
The concept of 'proper limits' is bound up with the classical ideal of decorum (propriety in manners and conduct). Quintilian writes that ‘'A good man (vir bonus) will see that everything he says is consistent with his dignity and the respectability of his character (dignitate ac verecundia); for we pay too dear for the laugh we raise if it is at the cost of our own integrity
(probitatis)'
Jonson paraphrases this passage at the close of his epigram
"To My Book” (probitas – integrity,honesty, uprightness):
***************************************
William Empson points out that 'honest' and 'honesty'
are used 52 times in Othello, writing that 'in Othello,
divergent uses of th(is) key word are found for all the main characters; even
the attenuated clown plays upon it; the unchaste Bianca, for instance, snatches
a moment to claim that she is more honest than Emilia the thief of the
handkerchief; and with all the variety of use the ironies on the word mount up
steadily to the end. Such is the general power of the writing that this is not
obtrusive, but if all but the phrases involving honest were in the style of
Ibsen the effect would be a symbolical charade. Everyone calls Iago honest once
or twice, but with Othello it becomes an obsession; at the crucial
moment just before Emilia exposes Iago he keeps howling the word out. (William
Empson, _Honest in Othello_
****************************************
Patrick Cheney
English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime
...Sources of the sublime identified by Longinus appear in Hotspur’s
speeches : ‘great thoughts’; inspired emotion’; heightened figuration; ‘noble
diction’; and elevated word-arrangement’ (Longinus, On Sublimity 8.1: 149).
Naturally, the actor of Shakespeare’s lines would perform the noble diction and
elevated word-arrangement with inspired emotion, taking the character’s – the
author’s – own cue: ‘Oh, the blood more stirs.’ Hotspur’s ‘elevated…figures of
speech’, too, represent great thoughts, for, in his defence of ‘honor’, he
imagines himself TRANSPORTED: his imagination travels across the horizontal
coordinates of ‘east unto the west’, ‘north to south’, and up the vertical
coordinate of the moon and down to the ocean-bottom – the ocean being, for
Longinus, one of the principal images of the sublime. [full fathom five] Such
transport is the premier trajectory that the sublime tracks. In his 1589 Art of
English Poetry, George Puttenham calls ‘Metaphora’ the ‘figure of transport’,
because the word ‘metaphor’ means to carry across, ‘a kind of wresting of a
single word from his own right signification, to another not of natural. But
yet of some affinity or convenience with it’ (Vickers). Sublime transport is
the ultimate figuration, and Hotspur speaks it.
‘Imagination’ is the word Shakespeare uses in line 198, when
the father says of the son, ‘Imagination of some great exploit/Drives him
beyond the bounds of patience’. Unlike Guiderius in Cymbeline, the idea of a
‘great exploit’ does not lead Hotspur into action but, like Arviragus – yet
dangerously – into ‘imagination’, which Northumberland contrasts with the
rational principle of ‘patience’. ‘Beyond the bounds’ is as succinct a
definition of the sublime as we might wish to find.
*****************************************
Ben Jonson, on Shakespeare (~Timber)
‘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. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov’d the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow’d 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 owne power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him; Caesar, thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.’[1]
‘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. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov’d the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow’d 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 owne power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him; Caesar, thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.’[1]
*******************************************
Haterius - Full of the God
flow'd with that facility - Shakespeare "Profluens/Superfluens"
Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Sexuality
James L Butrica, PhD
...Next we turn to Haterius himself, and what Seneca was trying to convey about him; this requires that we put him into two contexts, the historical and the literary.
By combining notices in the historian Tacitus (who puts his death in the year that we call 26 CE) and Jerome (who reports from Eusebius that he was nearly ninety at the time) we can put Haterius' birth in the range of 64-62 BCE; for a part of 5 BCE he served as one of Rome's two chief magistrates, having been appointed a consul suffectus ("substitute consul") by Augustus. His reputation was well established in his own day but (as Tacitus noted) did not last long beyond it. Seneca the Younger (nephew of Seneca the Elder) discusses him briefly at Epistule morales 40.10. The text is unfortunately corrupt, but Seneca was clearly contrasting two very different orators, Publius Vinicius, who plucked his words one by one as if dictating rather than talking, and Haterius, whose style he characterizes as cursus, or "running"; Seneca says that he wants a "sane man" to have nothing to do with Haterius' manner, for he "never hesitated, never left off, would begin only once, would stop only once." That impetuous, unhesitant forward rush was noticed by the emperor Augustus, who is quoted approvingly by Seneca the Elder as saying that Haterius noster sufflaminandus est, "Our friend Haterius needs to have a brake applied." In his obituary notice at Annals 4.61, Tacitus says that Haterius impetu magis quam cura uigebat, that is, excelled in his forward drive - IMPETUS is here a synonym of cursus - rather than any careful attention to detail, and sums up his distinctive characteristic as canorum illud et PROFLUENS, "that sonorousness and volubility," where PROFLUENS (lit. "flowing forth") again suggests his sheer momentum. Seneca the Elder, quoting him at Controversiae 1.6.12, likewise refers to "the usual cursus of his oratory" (quo solebat cursu orationis). At Suasoriae 3.7, Seneca relates an anecdote in which Haterius is one of several orators described by Gallio as Plena deo, "full of the god" (but with a feminine form of the adjective "full," generally taken as an allusion to Virgil's description of the inspired Sybil of Cumae in Book 6 of his Aeneid, though Virgil does not use the actual phrase). Thus, even without the specific reference in Seneca the Elder that is being discusses here, an image emerges of an orator easily carried away and lacking a sense of just when to stop.
Note - Seneca says he did not so much currere "run" as decurrere "run downward".
flow'd with that facility - Shakespeare "Profluens/Superfluens"
Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Sexuality
James L Butrica, PhD
...Next we turn to Haterius himself, and what Seneca was trying to convey about him; this requires that we put him into two contexts, the historical and the literary.
By combining notices in the historian Tacitus (who puts his death in the year that we call 26 CE) and Jerome (who reports from Eusebius that he was nearly ninety at the time) we can put Haterius' birth in the range of 64-62 BCE; for a part of 5 BCE he served as one of Rome's two chief magistrates, having been appointed a consul suffectus ("substitute consul") by Augustus. His reputation was well established in his own day but (as Tacitus noted) did not last long beyond it. Seneca the Younger (nephew of Seneca the Elder) discusses him briefly at Epistule morales 40.10. The text is unfortunately corrupt, but Seneca was clearly contrasting two very different orators, Publius Vinicius, who plucked his words one by one as if dictating rather than talking, and Haterius, whose style he characterizes as cursus, or "running"; Seneca says that he wants a "sane man" to have nothing to do with Haterius' manner, for he "never hesitated, never left off, would begin only once, would stop only once." That impetuous, unhesitant forward rush was noticed by the emperor Augustus, who is quoted approvingly by Seneca the Elder as saying that Haterius noster sufflaminandus est, "Our friend Haterius needs to have a brake applied." In his obituary notice at Annals 4.61, Tacitus says that Haterius impetu magis quam cura uigebat, that is, excelled in his forward drive - IMPETUS is here a synonym of cursus - rather than any careful attention to detail, and sums up his distinctive characteristic as canorum illud et PROFLUENS, "that sonorousness and volubility," where PROFLUENS (lit. "flowing forth") again suggests his sheer momentum. Seneca the Elder, quoting him at Controversiae 1.6.12, likewise refers to "the usual cursus of his oratory" (quo solebat cursu orationis). At Suasoriae 3.7, Seneca relates an anecdote in which Haterius is one of several orators described by Gallio as Plena deo, "full of the god" (but with a feminine form of the adjective "full," generally taken as an allusion to Virgil's description of the inspired Sybil of Cumae in Book 6 of his Aeneid, though Virgil does not use the actual phrase). Thus, even without the specific reference in Seneca the Elder that is being discusses here, an image emerges of an orator easily carried away and lacking a sense of just when to stop.
Note - Seneca says he did not so much currere "run" as decurrere "run downward".
****************************
(profluens - flowing forth - 'fountain of self-love in Cynthia's Revels').
Shackerley Marmion, Jonsonus Virbius
...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.
*******************************
"Oxford flaunts a COPIOUS rhetoric in this poem in contrast with the more direct, unembellished commendatory verses of his predecessors. His greatest innovation, however, lies in his application of the same qualities of style to the eight poems assigned to him in the 1576 Paradise of Dainty Devices, pieces that Oxford must have composed before 1575." (Steven May. _The Elizabethan Courtier Poets_)
(profluens - flowing forth - 'fountain of self-love in Cynthia's Revels').
Shackerley Marmion, Jonsonus Virbius
...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.
*******************************
"Oxford flaunts a COPIOUS rhetoric in this poem in contrast with the more direct, unembellished commendatory verses of his predecessors. His greatest innovation, however, lies in his application of the same qualities of style to the eight poems assigned to him in the 1576 Paradise of Dainty Devices, pieces that Oxford must have composed before 1575." (Steven May. _The Elizabethan Courtier Poets_)
*******************************
Holding/Restraining/Ruling 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:
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)
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)
*****************************
Dedication in Latin to Bartholomew Clerke's Translation of
The Courtier (1571/1572)
[translated by B. M. Ward]
Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, Viscount Bulbeck and Baron Scales and Badlesmere to the Reader -- Greeting.
A frequent and earnest consideration of the translation of Castiglione's Italian work, which has now for a long time been undertaken and finally carried out by my friend Clerke, has caused me to waver between two opinions: debating in my mind whether I should preface it by some writing and letter of my own, or whether I should do no more than study it with a mind full of gratitude. The first course seemed to demand greater skill and art than I can lay claim to, the second to be a work of no less good-will and application. To do both, however, seemed to combine a task of delightful industry with an indication of special good-will.
I have therefore undertaken the work, and I do so the more willingly in order that I may lay a laurel wreath of my own on the translation in which I have studied this book, and also to ensure that neither my good-will (which is very great) should remain unexpressed, nor that my skill (which is small) should seem to fear to face the light and the eyes of men.
It is no more than its due that praises of every kind should be rendered to this work descriptive of a Courtier. It is indeed every way right, and one may say almost inevitable, that with the highest and greatest praises I should address both the author and the translator, and even more the great patroness of so great a work, whose name alone on the title-page gives it a right majestic and honorable introduction.
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for us the figure and model of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be added, in which there is no redundant word, a portrait which we shall recognize as that of a highest and most perfect type of man. And so, although nature herself has made nothing perfect in every detail, yet the manners of men exceed in dignity that with which nature has endowed them; and he who surpasses others has here surpassed himself and has even out-done nature, which by no one has ever been surpassed. Nay more: however elaborate the ceremonial, whatever the magnificence of the court, the splendor of the courtiers, and the multitude of spectators, he has been able to lay down principles for the guidance of the very Monarch himself.
Again, Castiglione has vividly depicted more and even greater things than these. For who has spoken of princes with greater gravity? Who has discoursed of illustrious women with a more ample dignity? No one has written of military affairs more eloquently, more aptly about horse-racing, and more clearly and admirably about encounters under arms on the field of battle. I will say nothing of the fitness and the excellence with which he has depicted the beauty of chivalry in the noblest persons. Nor will I refer to his delineations in the case of those persons who cannot be courtiers, when he alludes to some notable defect or to some ridiculous character, or to some deformity of appearance. Whatever is heard in the mouths of men in casual talk and in society, whether apt and candid or villainous and shameful, that he has set down in so natural a manner that it seems to be acted before our very eyes.
Again, to the credit of the translator of so great a work, a writer too who is no mean orator, must be added a new glory of language. For although Latin has come down to us from the ancient city of Rome, a city in which the study of eloquence flourished exceedingly, it has now given back its features for use in modern courts as a polished language of an excellent temper, fitted out with royal pomp and possessing admirable dignity. All this my good friend Clerke has done, combining exceptional genius with wonderful eloquence. For he has resuscitated that dormant quality of fluent discourse. He has recalled those ornaments and lights which he had laid aside, for use in connection with subjects most worthy of them. For this reason he deserves all the more honor, because that to great subjects -- and they are indeed great -- he has applied the greatest lights and ornaments.
For who is clearer in his use of words? Or richer in the dignity of his sentences? Or who can conform to the variety of circumstances with greater art? If weighty matters are under consideration, he unfolds his theme in a solemn and majestic rhythm; if the subject is familiar and facetious, he makes use of words that are witty and amusing. When therefore he writes with precise and well-chosen words, with skillfully constructed and crystal-clear sentences, and with every art of dignified rhetoric, it cannot be but that some noble quality should be felt to proceed from his work. To me indeed it seems, when I read this courtly Latin, that I am listening to Crassus, Antonius and Hortensius, discoursing on this very theme.
************************************
je-ne-sais-quois
"it cannot be but that *some noble quality* should be felt to proceed from his work. " (De Vere)
[translated by B. M. Ward]
Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, Viscount Bulbeck and Baron Scales and Badlesmere to the Reader -- Greeting.
A frequent and earnest consideration of the translation of Castiglione's Italian work, which has now for a long time been undertaken and finally carried out by my friend Clerke, has caused me to waver between two opinions: debating in my mind whether I should preface it by some writing and letter of my own, or whether I should do no more than study it with a mind full of gratitude. The first course seemed to demand greater skill and art than I can lay claim to, the second to be a work of no less good-will and application. To do both, however, seemed to combine a task of delightful industry with an indication of special good-will.
I have therefore undertaken the work, and I do so the more willingly in order that I may lay a laurel wreath of my own on the translation in which I have studied this book, and also to ensure that neither my good-will (which is very great) should remain unexpressed, nor that my skill (which is small) should seem to fear to face the light and the eyes of men.
It is no more than its due that praises of every kind should be rendered to this work descriptive of a Courtier. It is indeed every way right, and one may say almost inevitable, that with the highest and greatest praises I should address both the author and the translator, and even more the great patroness of so great a work, whose name alone on the title-page gives it a right majestic and honorable introduction.
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for us the figure and model of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be added, in which there is no redundant word, a portrait which we shall recognize as that of a highest and most perfect type of man. And so, although nature herself has made nothing perfect in every detail, yet the manners of men exceed in dignity that with which nature has endowed them; and he who surpasses others has here surpassed himself and has even out-done nature, which by no one has ever been surpassed. Nay more: however elaborate the ceremonial, whatever the magnificence of the court, the splendor of the courtiers, and the multitude of spectators, he has been able to lay down principles for the guidance of the very Monarch himself.
Again, Castiglione has vividly depicted more and even greater things than these. For who has spoken of princes with greater gravity? Who has discoursed of illustrious women with a more ample dignity? No one has written of military affairs more eloquently, more aptly about horse-racing, and more clearly and admirably about encounters under arms on the field of battle. I will say nothing of the fitness and the excellence with which he has depicted the beauty of chivalry in the noblest persons. Nor will I refer to his delineations in the case of those persons who cannot be courtiers, when he alludes to some notable defect or to some ridiculous character, or to some deformity of appearance. Whatever is heard in the mouths of men in casual talk and in society, whether apt and candid or villainous and shameful, that he has set down in so natural a manner that it seems to be acted before our very eyes.
Again, to the credit of the translator of so great a work, a writer too who is no mean orator, must be added a new glory of language. For although Latin has come down to us from the ancient city of Rome, a city in which the study of eloquence flourished exceedingly, it has now given back its features for use in modern courts as a polished language of an excellent temper, fitted out with royal pomp and possessing admirable dignity. All this my good friend Clerke has done, combining exceptional genius with wonderful eloquence. For he has resuscitated that dormant quality of fluent discourse. He has recalled those ornaments and lights which he had laid aside, for use in connection with subjects most worthy of them. For this reason he deserves all the more honor, because that to great subjects -- and they are indeed great -- he has applied the greatest lights and ornaments.
For who is clearer in his use of words? Or richer in the dignity of his sentences? Or who can conform to the variety of circumstances with greater art? If weighty matters are under consideration, he unfolds his theme in a solemn and majestic rhythm; if the subject is familiar and facetious, he makes use of words that are witty and amusing. When therefore he writes with precise and well-chosen words, with skillfully constructed and crystal-clear sentences, and with every art of dignified rhetoric, it cannot be but that some noble quality should be felt to proceed from his work. To me indeed it seems, when I read this courtly Latin, that I am listening to Crassus, Antonius and Hortensius, discoursing on this very theme.
************************************
je-ne-sais-quois
"it cannot be but that *some noble quality* should be felt to proceed from his work. " (De Vere)
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)
"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)
************************************
Amorphus/Master of Manners/Oxfordian Sublime:
Natalino Sapegno –
Historic Overview of Italian Literature
In the image of the
courtier the highest spirit of the Renaissance is made concrete: the ideal of
the man who has conquered full knowledge of things and perfect control over
himself, who has ordered his own life with admirable equilibrium, in a
harmonious balance between physical and spiritual faculties, between individual
and social needs, between man and nature…In literature the Cortegiano is
one of the most beautiful books of the Cinquecento, inasmuch as even its
style itself realizes that idea of serene and luminous dignity, of clear and
unaffected elegance, which was the fundamental norm of courtesy.
**************************************
Billy Budd/Beauty - noble foundling
'Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and,
evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood
horse.' (Melville, _Billy Budd_)
********************************
********************************
Melvillian Sublime:
1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville
"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors."
“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page
of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine
authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply
standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all
BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative
as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some
warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author
has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our
bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences
among us?”
1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville
"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors."
“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page
of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine
authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply
standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all
BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative
as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some
warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author
has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our
bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences
among us?”
[note - does this explain the relatively pedestrian aspect of Captain Edward Vere as he sacrifices Budd/Book/Foundling in Billy Budd?]
***********************************
Melville’s Sublime uneventfulness. Toward a phenomenology
of the Sublime – Ruud Welten
The sublime is something strange, beyond our imagination,
uncanny even. The term is of great importance to Herman Melville. Moby Dick,
the whale, is sublime because of its terrifying existence. This chapter
investigates the consequences of a phenomenology of the sublime as a prime
condition for consciousness itself. Sublimity is not a property of objects, but
of subjective experience alone. Philosophic language and poetic language
presume that subjectivity is overwhelmed by the experience of the
sublime. As one tries to describe, it radically exceeds its parameters. The
chapter is an attempt to specify the particular phenomenological
characteristics of this transgression. The conclusion of the chapter includes
some phenomenological suggestions to understand the sublime as not only an
aesthetic category, but as the experience of the unveiling of the meaning of
life.
**************************************
Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
You, Mercury, we must entreat to stay,
And hear what we determine of the rest;
For in this Plot we well perceive your Hand.
But (for we mean not a Censorian Task,
And yet to lance these Ulcers grown so ripe)
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.
Are. 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.
Cri. First, Philautia, (for she was the first)
Then light Gelaia, in Aglaias Name;
Thirdly, Phantaste, and Moria next,
Main Follies all, and of the Female Crew:
Amorphus, or Eucosmos Counterfeit,
Voluptuous Hedon, ta'ne for Eupathes,
Brazen Anaides, and Asotus last,
With his two Pages, Morus and Prosaites;
And thou, the Traveller's Evil, Cos, approach,
Impostors all, and Male Deformities ——
Are. 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.
And hear what we determine of the rest;
For in this Plot we well perceive your Hand.
But (for we mean not a Censorian Task,
And yet to lance these Ulcers grown so ripe)
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.
Are. 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.
Cri. First, Philautia, (for she was the first)
Then light Gelaia, in Aglaias Name;
Thirdly, Phantaste, and Moria next,
Main Follies all, and of the Female Crew:
Amorphus, or Eucosmos Counterfeit,
Voluptuous Hedon, ta'ne for Eupathes,
Brazen Anaides, and Asotus last,
With his two Pages, Morus and Prosaites;
And thou, the Traveller's Evil, Cos, approach,
Impostors all, and Male Deformities ——
Are. 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.
***************************************
cutting off the incurable - Jonson's 'My Shakespeare' - to see thee in our waters yet appear/uroscopy/disease.
***************************************
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 rhetoric).
***************************************
Discretion. To Cut. To Discern. To sift out. To separate
that which has become confused.
****************************************
Catherine
Maxwell, Female Sublime.
What this poem [Milton's sonnet on Shakespeare] seems to be
rehearsing is the sublime. Shakespeare’s admirers, stupefied by the effect of
his language to ‘wonder and astonishment’, are like those wrought upon by a
sublime spectacle. Astonishment says
Burke is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree. Shakespeare’s verse
is a pleasurable petrification, a stimulating paralysis. Readers, the poem
suggests, remain arrested at that stage of the sublime in which they are
exhilarated – dizzy and reeling under the bombardment of its mixed images and
multiple dislocations. However, Milton’s poem reproduces this scene of
petrification in order to break out of it. The mental spin induced by lines
13-14 mimes the dizzying effect produced by Shakespeare’s verse, but the cool
control and detachment with which Milton describes the Sahekspearian sublime
suggests assimilation – the poet has absorbed it and has moved beyond it to a
new creativity. Moreover, the poem is itself monumentalising and thus
substitutive – it saves the potentially stricken Milton from the paralysis of
perpetual witness by offering itself as epitaph. Yet this is no simple act of
submission. An example itself of highly ingenious ‘conceiving’, the poem not
only reproduces the effect of Shakespeare’s language but it rivals it. By
writing in a sublime manner about the way the sublime arrests writing, and by
appropriating the precursor as ‘my Shakespeare’, the poem masters the
experience that might otherwise leave the imagination subject. p.50
(snip)
The key figures and ideas which Milton uses in this
poem to express the power of a sublime precursor and the effects of his legacy
are ones which will recur in different form in Shelley’s poetry. Paralysis,
petrification, impress or inscription are some of the means by which we will
recognize the disfigurative mark of the sublime, while defensive evasion
through forms of proxy or shielding shows us ways of protecting oneself against
total constriction.
****************************************
Oxford/Shakespeare/Comus (ungodly sublime)
Milton, John: Comus
118: COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the
119: other: with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of
120: wild
121: beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel
122: glistering.
123: They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in
124: their hands.
125:
126:
127: COMUS. The star that bids the shepherd fold
128: Now the top of heaven doth hold;
129: And the gilded car of day
130: His glowing axle doth allay
131: In the steep Atlantic stream;
132: And the slope sun his upward beam
133: Shoots against the dusky pole,
134: Pacing toward the other goal
135: Of his chamber in the east.
136: Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
137: Midnight shout and revelry,
138: Tipsy dance and jollity.
139: Braid your locks with rosy twine,
140: Dropping odours, dropping wine.
141: Rigour now is gone to bed;
142: And Advice with scrupulous head,
143: Strict Age, and sour Severity,
144: With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
145: We, that are of purer fire,
146: Imitate the starry quire,
147: Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
148: Lead in swift round the months and years.
149: The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
150: Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
151: And on the tawny sands and shelves
152: Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
153: By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
154: The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
155: Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
156: What hath night to do with sleep?
157: Night hath better sweets to prove;
158: Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
159: Come, let us our rights begin;
160: 'T is only daylight that makes sin,
161: Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
162: Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
163: Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
164: Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,
165: That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb
166: Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
167: And makes one blot of all the air!
168: Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
169: Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend
170: Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
171: Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
172: Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
173: The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
174: From her cabined loop-hole peep,
175: And to the tell-tale Sun descry
176: Our concealed solemnity.
178: In a LIGHT FANTASTIC round.
179:
180: The Measure.
181:
182: Break off, break off! I feel the different pace
183: Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
184: Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;
185: Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
186: (For so I can distinguish by mine art)
187: Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,
188: And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
189: Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
190: About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
191: My dazzling spells into the spongy air,
192: Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
193: And give it false presentments, lest the place
194: And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
195: And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
196: Which must not be, for that's against my course.
197: I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
198: And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
199: Baited with reasons not unplausible,
200: Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
201: And hug him into snares. When once her eye
202: Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
203: I shall appear some harmless villager
204: Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
205: But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
206: And hearken, if I may her business hear.
207:
208: The LADY enters.
209:
210: LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
211: My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
212: Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
213: Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
214: Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
215: When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
216: In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
217: And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
218: To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
219: Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
220: Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
221: In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
Milton, John: Comus
118: COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the
119: other: with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of
120: wild
121: beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel
122: glistering.
123: They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in
124: their hands.
125:
126:
127: COMUS. The star that bids the shepherd fold
128: Now the top of heaven doth hold;
129: And the gilded car of day
130: His glowing axle doth allay
131: In the steep Atlantic stream;
132: And the slope sun his upward beam
133: Shoots against the dusky pole,
134: Pacing toward the other goal
135: Of his chamber in the east.
136: Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
137: Midnight shout and revelry,
138: Tipsy dance and jollity.
139: Braid your locks with rosy twine,
140: Dropping odours, dropping wine.
141: Rigour now is gone to bed;
142: And Advice with scrupulous head,
143: Strict Age, and sour Severity,
144: With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
145: We, that are of purer fire,
146: Imitate the starry quire,
147: Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
148: Lead in swift round the months and years.
149: The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
150: Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
151: And on the tawny sands and shelves
152: Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
153: By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
154: The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
155: Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
156: What hath night to do with sleep?
157: Night hath better sweets to prove;
158: Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
159: Come, let us our rights begin;
160: 'T is only daylight that makes sin,
161: Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
162: Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
163: Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
164: Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,
165: That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb
166: Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
167: And makes one blot of all the air!
168: Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
169: Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend
170: Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
171: Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
172: Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
173: The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
174: From her cabined loop-hole peep,
175: And to the tell-tale Sun descry
176: Our concealed solemnity.
178: In a LIGHT FANTASTIC round.
179:
180: The Measure.
181:
182: Break off, break off! I feel the different pace
183: Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
184: Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;
185: Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
186: (For so I can distinguish by mine art)
187: Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,
188: And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
189: Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
190: About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
191: My dazzling spells into the spongy air,
192: Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
193: And give it false presentments, lest the place
194: And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
195: And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
196: Which must not be, for that's against my course.
197: I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
198: And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
199: Baited with reasons not unplausible,
200: Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
201: And hug him into snares. When once her eye
202: Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
203: I shall appear some harmless villager
204: Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
205: But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
206: And hearken, if I may her business hear.
207:
208: The LADY enters.
209:
210: LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
211: My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
212: Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
213: Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
214: Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
215: When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
216: In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
217: And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
218: To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
219: Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
220: Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
221: In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
Shakespeare:
III, iii.
OTHELLO:
This fellow's of exceeding honesty,
And knows all qualities with a learned spirit
Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind
To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years – yet that's not much –
She's gone: I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. O, curse of marriage!
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others' uses. Yet 'tis the plague of great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death:
Even then this forked plague is fated to us
When we do quicken. Desdemona comes:
This fellow's of exceeding honesty,
And knows all qualities with a learned spirit
Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind
To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years – yet that's not much –
She's gone: I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. O, curse of marriage!
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others' uses. Yet 'tis the plague of great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death:
Even then this forked plague is fated to us
When we do quicken. Desdemona comes:
(Enter Desdemona and Emilia.)
If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself!
******************************************
Othello’s metaphor transforms the figurative bond of
marriage into the literally binding jesses the leather bands fastened to a
hawk’s legs to which a falconer’s leash could be attached. Depicting those
jesses as his heartstrings, Othello reveals that he is prepared to cut out a
part of himself to be rid of an adulterous wife. To “let” Desdemona “down the
wind to prey at fortune,” the heartstrings tying Desdemona to Othello would be
excised from othello’s body and left Dangling from her ankles. (Proving
Desdemona Haggard, metaphor and Shakespearean Drama: Unchaste Signification
*******************************************
Oxford/Unchaste Signification/
Cri. Then we (reserving unto Delia's Grace
Her farther Pleasure, and to Arete
What Delia granteth) thus do sentence you.
That from this Place (for Penance known of all,
Since you have drunk so deeply of self-love)
You (two and two) singing a Palinode,
March to your several Homes by Niobe's Stone,
And offer up two Tears apiece thereon,
That it may change the Name, as you must change,
And of a Stone be called Weeping-Cross,
Because it standeth cross of Cynthia's way,
One of whose Names is Sacred Trivia.
And, after Penance thus perform'd, you pass
In like set Order, not as Midas did,
To wash his Gold off into Tagus Stream;
But to the Well of Knowledge, Helicon;
Where purged of your present Maladies,
(Which are not few, nor slender) you BECOME
SUCH AS YOU FAIN WOULD SEEM, and then return,
Offering your Service to great Cynthia.
This is your Sentence, if the Goddess please
To ratifie it with her high Consent.
"The scope of wise Mirth unto Fruit is bent.
Cyn. We do approve thy Censure, belov'd Crites;
Which Mercury, thy true propitious Friend,
(A Deity next Jove belov'd of us)
Will undertake to see exactly done.
And for this Service of Discovery,
Perform'd by thee, in honour of our Name,
We vow to guerdon it with such due Grace
As shall become our Bounty, and thy Place.
"Princes that would their People should do well,
"Must at themselves begin, as at the Head;
"For Men, by their Example, pattern out
"Their Imitations, and regard of Laws:
"A vertuous Court a World to Vertue draws.
Her farther Pleasure, and to Arete
What Delia granteth) thus do sentence you.
That from this Place (for Penance known of all,
Since you have drunk so deeply of self-love)
You (two and two) singing a Palinode,
March to your several Homes by Niobe's Stone,
And offer up two Tears apiece thereon,
That it may change the Name, as you must change,
And of a Stone be called Weeping-Cross,
Because it standeth cross of Cynthia's way,
One of whose Names is Sacred Trivia.
And, after Penance thus perform'd, you pass
In like set Order, not as Midas did,
To wash his Gold off into Tagus Stream;
But to the Well of Knowledge, Helicon;
Where purged of your present Maladies,
(Which are not few, nor slender) you BECOME
SUCH AS YOU FAIN WOULD SEEM, and then return,
Offering your Service to great Cynthia.
This is your Sentence, if the Goddess please
To ratifie it with her high Consent.
"The scope of wise Mirth unto Fruit is bent.
Cyn. We do approve thy Censure, belov'd Crites;
Which Mercury, thy true propitious Friend,
(A Deity next Jove belov'd of us)
Will undertake to see exactly done.
And for this Service of Discovery,
Perform'd by thee, in honour of our Name,
We vow to guerdon it with such due Grace
As shall become our Bounty, and thy Place.
"Princes that would their People should do well,
"Must at themselves begin, as at the Head;
"For Men, by their Example, pattern out
"Their Imitations, and regard of Laws:
"A vertuous Court a World to Vertue draws.
**************************************
Honest Iago/Honest Ben
The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by th' nose
As asses are.
**************************************
Conceit, which is Dangerous -- Edward de Vere, Letters
Oxford to Cecil, [May 1601?].
My very good brother, I have received by Henry Lok your most kind message, which I so effectually embrace that, what for the old love I have borne you which, I assure you, was very great; what for the alliance which is between us, which is tied so fast by my children of your own sister; what for mine own disposition to yourself, which hath been rooted by long and many familiarities of a more youthful time, there could have been nothing so dearly welcome unto me. Wherefore not as a stranger, but in the old style, I do assure you that you shall have no faster friend & well-wisher unto you than myself, either in kindness, which I find beyond mine expectation in you, or in kindred, whereby none is nearer allied than myself sith, of your sisters, of my wife only you have received nieces, a sister, I say, not by any venter, but born of the same father and the same mother of yourself. I will say no more, for words in faithful minds are tedious, only this I protest: you shall do me wrong, and yourself greater if, either through fables, which are mischievous, or CONCEIT, which is DANGEROUS, you think otherwise of me than HUMANITY and consanguinity requireth.
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Othello, Shakespeare
Iago:
Oxford to Cecil, [May 1601?].
My very good brother, I have received by Henry Lok your most kind message, which I so effectually embrace that, what for the old love I have borne you which, I assure you, was very great; what for the alliance which is between us, which is tied so fast by my children of your own sister; what for mine own disposition to yourself, which hath been rooted by long and many familiarities of a more youthful time, there could have been nothing so dearly welcome unto me. Wherefore not as a stranger, but in the old style, I do assure you that you shall have no faster friend & well-wisher unto you than myself, either in kindness, which I find beyond mine expectation in you, or in kindred, whereby none is nearer allied than myself sith, of your sisters, of my wife only you have received nieces, a sister, I say, not by any venter, but born of the same father and the same mother of yourself. I will say no more, for words in faithful minds are tedious, only this I protest: you shall do me wrong, and yourself greater if, either through fables, which are mischievous, or CONCEIT, which is DANGEROUS, you think otherwise of me than HUMANITY and consanguinity requireth.
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Othello, Shakespeare
Iago:
(I will in Cassio’s lodging lose this napkin
And let him find it. Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ. This may do something.
The Moor already changes with my poison.
DANGEROUS CONCEITS are in their natures poisons
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood
Burn like the mines of sulfur.)
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OTHELLO
Soft you, a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service, and they know ’t.
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well.
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme. Of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe. Of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this,
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcisèd dog,
And smote him, thus.
Stabs himself
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Upon Ben: Johnson, the most excellent of Comick Poets.
Mirror of Poets! Mirror of our Age!
Which her whole Face beholding on thy stage,
Pleas'd and displeas'd with her owne faults endures,
A remedy, like Those whom Musicke cures,
Thou not alone those various inclinations,
Which Nature gives to Ages, Sexes, Nations,
Hast traced with thy All-resembling Pen,
But all that custome hath impos'd on Men,
Or ill-got Habits, which distort them so,
That scarce the Brother can the Brother know,
Is represented to the wondring Eyes,
Of all that see or read thy Comedies.
Whoever in those Glasses lookes may finde,
The spots return'd, or graces of his minde;
And by the helpe of so divine an Art,
At leisure view, and dresse his nobler part.
NARCISSUS conzen'd by that flattering Well, (Cynthia's Revels/Narcissus)
Which nothing could but of his beauty tell,
Had here discovering the DEFORM'D estate
Of his fond minde, preserv'd himselfe with hate,
But Vertue too, as well as Vice is clad,
In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had
Beheld what his high Fancie once embrac'd,
Vertue with colour, speech and motion grac'd.
The sundry Postures of Thy copious Muse,
Who would expresse a thousand tongues must use,
Whose Fates no lesse peculiar then thy Art,
For as thou couldst all characters impart,
So none can render thine, who still escapes,
Like Proteus in variety of shapes,
Who was nor this nor that, but all we finde,
And all we can imagine in mankind.
E. Waller
Mirror of Poets! Mirror of our Age!
Which her whole Face beholding on thy stage,
Pleas'd and displeas'd with her owne faults endures,
A remedy, like Those whom Musicke cures,
Thou not alone those various inclinations,
Which Nature gives to Ages, Sexes, Nations,
Hast traced with thy All-resembling Pen,
But all that custome hath impos'd on Men,
Or ill-got Habits, which distort them so,
That scarce the Brother can the Brother know,
Is represented to the wondring Eyes,
Of all that see or read thy Comedies.
Whoever in those Glasses lookes may finde,
The spots return'd, or graces of his minde;
And by the helpe of so divine an Art,
At leisure view, and dresse his nobler part.
NARCISSUS conzen'd by that flattering Well, (Cynthia's Revels/Narcissus)
Which nothing could but of his beauty tell,
Had here discovering the DEFORM'D estate
Of his fond minde, preserv'd himselfe with hate,
But Vertue too, as well as Vice is clad,
In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had
Beheld what his high Fancie once embrac'd,
Vertue with colour, speech and motion grac'd.
The sundry Postures of Thy copious Muse,
Who would expresse a thousand tongues must use,
Whose Fates no lesse peculiar then thy Art,
For as thou couldst all characters impart,
So none can render thine, who still escapes,
Like Proteus in variety of shapes,
Who was nor this nor that, but all we finde,
And all we can imagine in mankind.
E. Waller
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Alciato's Book of Emblems
Emblem 69
Self-love
Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, it was changed into a flower, a plant of known senselessness. Self-love is the withering and destruction of natural power which brings and has brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away the method of the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own fantasies.
http://www.mun.ca/alciato/e069.html
Emblem 69
Self-love
Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, it was changed into a flower, a plant of known senselessness. Self-love is the withering and destruction of natural power which brings and has brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away the method of the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own fantasies.
http://www.mun.ca/alciato/e069.html
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ttp://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id=FALc069 Because your beauty gave you too much satisfaction, Narcissus, it wasturned both into a flower and into a plant of acknowledged insensibility. Self-satisfaction is the rot and destruction of the mind. Learned men in plenty it has ruined, and ruins still, men who cast off the method of teachers of old and aim to pass on new doctrines, nothing more than their own imaginings.
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Patrick Cheney
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare helps us see that
the ‘poet’ is sublime because he – perhaps pre-eminently he – can solve the
Kantian problem, the problem that the Western sublime aesthetic poses: how can
the mind confront the formless, the boundless, and the ineffable, and not be
defeated? Only the poet can use his ‘imagination’ to ‘body …forth/The form of
things unknown’. By taking forms we cannot ‘know’ and ‘giving them shape’, the
poet performs a miracle; he crosses the boundary from the divine to the human,
and makes the human divine. The image of the poet – the actor on the stage –
incarnates the deity, for the simple reason that to pen and stage it, the
author has to do more than ‘glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;:
he must cross the bourn from which few travellers return, and sing it at her
death.
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.
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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Tom O'Bedlam
With a host of FURIOUS FANCIES
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghostes and shadowes
I summon'd am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world's end.
Methinks it is no journey.
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Horace, Art of Poetry, Jonson translation
...Those that are wise, a FURIOUS POET feare,
And flye to touch him, as a man that were
Infected with the Leprosie, or had
The yellow jaundis, or were truely mad,
Under the angry Moon: but then the boyes
They vexe, and careless follow him with noise.
This, while he belcheth lofty Verses out,
And stalketh, like a Fowler, round about,
Busie to catch a Black-bird; if he fall
Into a pit, or hole, although he call
And crye aloud, help gentle Country-men;
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Every Man Out - Revised version
Cob. Humour? mack, I think it be so indeed: what
is that Humour? some rare thing I warrant.
Cash. Mary I'll tell thee Cob: It is a Gentleman-like
Monster, bred in the special gallantry of our Time, by
Affectation; and fed by Folly.
Cob. How? must it be fed?
Cash. Oh I, Humour is nothing if it be not fed.
Didst thou never hear that? it's a common Phrase, Feed
my Humour.
Cob. I'll none on it: Humour, avant, I know you
not, be gone. Let who will make hungry Meals for
your MONSTER-SHIP, it shall not be I.
Cob. Humour? mack, I think it be so indeed: what
is that Humour? some rare thing I warrant.
Cash. Mary I'll tell thee Cob: It is a Gentleman-like
Monster, bred in the special gallantry of our Time, by
Affectation; and fed by Folly.
Cob. How? must it be fed?
Cash. Oh I, Humour is nothing if it be not fed.
Didst thou never hear that? it's a common Phrase, Feed
my Humour.
Cob. I'll none on it: Humour, avant, I know you
not, be gone. Let who will make hungry Meals for
your MONSTER-SHIP, it shall not be I.
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Patrick Cheney, Sublime
Amorphus is a figure of transport, and is composition, made
up of ‘forms’ that are ‘deformed’, takes us into what we have previously
described as Kantian territory. Amorphus is that sublime figure of form that
has none (curiously akin to Marlowe’s Helen of Troy), accommodated to the
Jonsonian public sphere...
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Jonson’s Cynthia’s
Revels has been discussed as belonging to the group of plays that make up
the Poetomachia, or Poets' War, but what has not been noticed (as far as I can
tell) is that a line spoken by the Italianated ‘Signior’ Amorphus, the
ringleader of the 'vicious' courtiers, not only identifies him with the
literary earl Edward de Vere but also serves to contextualize Jonson's
criticisms of the 'airy’ and sublime
forms of a fashionable 'knot of spiders' that inhabit Cynthia's
Court.
In the play, Amorphus, described by Jonson as 'the Deformed', views the passing form of Crites/Criticus, and wonders aloud at Cynthia's apparent preference for the severe Jonson figure:
...And there's her minion, Crites: why his advice more than
Amorphus? Have I not invention afore him? Learning to better
that INVENTION above him? and INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVEL –
These lines may have been somewhat infamous in contemporary literary circles as they had previously been selected by Puttenham in his Art of English Poesy as an example of the rhetorical vice soraismus, known in English as the mingle-mangle. That this line was spoken by the traveller and 'master of courtship' Ulysses-Politropus-Amorphus as self-description is unsurprising, since Jonson had already characterized Amorphus as the very figure of soraismus:
In the play, Amorphus, described by Jonson as 'the Deformed', views the passing form of Crites/Criticus, and wonders aloud at Cynthia's apparent preference for the severe Jonson figure:
...And there's her minion, Crites: why his advice more than
Amorphus? Have I not invention afore him? Learning to better
that INVENTION above him? and INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVEL –
These lines may have been somewhat infamous in contemporary literary circles as they had previously been selected by Puttenham in his Art of English Poesy as an example of the rhetorical vice soraismus, known in English as the mingle-mangle. That this line was spoken by the traveller and 'master of courtship' Ulysses-Politropus-Amorphus as self-description is unsurprising, since Jonson had already characterized Amorphus as the very figure of soraismus:
He that is with him is Amorphus
a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds
of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. (CR, Act ii,
Sc. III)
In the world of the play, Amorphus' inability to perceive the viciousness inherent in his own self-description is a function of his own self-love, which blinds him to the rules of 'virtuous' or worthy composition; virtue in the world of the play being (irritatingly) coextensive with Jonsonian values and neoclassical practice.
The original author, or translator of the line 'And of an ingenious INVENTION, INFANTED WITH PLEASANT TRAVAILE.' was John Southern in his 1584 Pandora; and it was taken from a prefatory poem that had been dedicated to the 'honour' of Edward de Vere. In 1589 Puttenham had singled out Southern, describing him as a 'minion', selecting this line and others as examples of the 'intollerable' vice of affectation (and plagiarism).
Puttenham, Arte of English Poesy:
...Another of your intollerable vices is that which the Greekes call SORAISMUS, and; we may call the [mingle mangle] as when we make our speach or writinges of sundry languages vsing some Italian word, or French, or Spanish, or Dutch, or Scottish, not for the nonce or for any purpose (which were in part excusable) but ignorantly and affectedly as one that said vsing this French word Roy, to make ryme with another verse, thus.
O mightie Lord or ioue, dame Venus onely ioy,
Whose Princely power exceedes ech other heauenly roy.
The verse is good but the terme peeuishly affected Another of reasonable good facilitie in translation finding certaine of the hymnes of Pyndarus and of Anacreons odes, and other Lirickes among the Greekes very well translated by Rounsard the French Poet, andapplied to the honour of a great Prince in France, comes our minion and translates the same out of French into English, and applieth them to the honour of a GREAT NOBLE MAN in ENGLAND (wherein I commend his reuerent minde and duetie) but doth so impudently robbe the French Poet both of his prayse and also of his French termes, that I cannot so much pitie him as be angry with him for his iniurious dealing (our sayd maker not being ashamed to vse these French wordes freddon, egar, superbous, filanding, celest, calabrois, thebanois and a number of others, for English wordes, which haue no maner of conformitie with our language either by custome or deriuation which may make them tollerable. And in the end (which is worst of all) makes his vaunt that neuer English finger but his hath toucht Pindars string which was neuerthelesse word by word as Rounsard had said before by like braggery. These be his verses.
And of an ingenious INVENTION, INFANTED WITH PLEASANT TRAVAILE.
Whereas the French word is enfante as much to say borne as a child, in another verse he saith.
Southern had employed the line to praise the noble substance and ingenious invention of his patron Edward de Vere, and presumably Amorphus' adoption of the phrase as self-description in the play implies that he is unable to to distinguish true praise from flattery:
From the Ode to Oxford in John Southern’s Pandora, The Music of the Beauty of his Mistress Diana.(1584)
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.
Curiously, the phrase appears in a recognizable but slightly
abbreviated form in the 1601 Quarto (while Oxford was alive) - but does appear
in full in the 1616 and 1640 editions of Jonson's 'Works'.
This line not only serves to identify the affected courtier Amorphus (The Deformed) with Edward de Vere (a traveller known for his predilection for foreign styles), but I will suggest that its deployment in Jonson's 'most Ovidian' play echoes Jonson's objections to a monstrous 'Shakespearean' style, linking the figures of Amorphus/Vere and William Shakespeare through a rhetorical figure of linguistic extravagance and disorder.
This line not only serves to identify the affected courtier Amorphus (The Deformed) with Edward de Vere (a traveller known for his predilection for foreign styles), but I will suggest that its deployment in Jonson's 'most Ovidian' play echoes Jonson's objections to a monstrous 'Shakespearean' style, linking the figures of Amorphus/Vere and William Shakespeare through a rhetorical figure of linguistic extravagance and disorder.
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Modern Language Notes, November 1951
Allan G Chester
John Soowthern's Pandora and Othello
On his arrival at Cyprus, Othello greets Desdemona with, "o, my faire Warriour." In a note which appeared first in 1793, Steevens called attention to Ronsard's frequent application of the term guerrieres to his mistresses, and added, "Southern [sic], his imitator, is not less prodigal of the same appellation." Citing three instances from "Southern" Steevens concluded: " Had I not met with the word thus fantastically applied, I would have concluded that Othello called his wife a warrior, because she had embarked with him on a warlike expedition..."
(snip)
As poetry Pandora is deplorable. It is difficult to believe that Shakespeare would have read beyond the first page. But the possibility that he had glanced through the book is further supported by the occurrence of the word orgulous, which the editors have found only once(4) in English between Skelton and Troilus and Cressida.
footnote 4 In William Wyrley's The True Use of Armorie (1592). Steevens seems to have missed the word in Pandora.
footnote 5 I have hesitated to add the fact that a passage in Soowthern's first Ode affirms that "Marbles (all be they so strong)' are less durable than poetry to commemorate an immortal name - that of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who is here addressed. The similarity of the idea to that of Shakespeare's 55th Sonnet is perhaps entirely accidental.
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John Soowthern's Pandora and Othello
On his arrival at Cyprus, Othello greets Desdemona with, "o, my faire Warriour." In a note which appeared first in 1793, Steevens called attention to Ronsard's frequent application of the term guerrieres to his mistresses, and added, "Southern [sic], his imitator, is not less prodigal of the same appellation." Citing three instances from "Southern" Steevens concluded: " Had I not met with the word thus fantastically applied, I would have concluded that Othello called his wife a warrior, because she had embarked with him on a warlike expedition..."
(snip)
As poetry Pandora is deplorable. It is difficult to believe that Shakespeare would have read beyond the first page. But the possibility that he had glanced through the book is further supported by the occurrence of the word orgulous, which the editors have found only once(4) in English between Skelton and Troilus and Cressida.
footnote 4 In William Wyrley's The True Use of Armorie (1592). Steevens seems to have missed the word in Pandora.
footnote 5 I have hesitated to add the fact that a passage in Soowthern's first Ode affirms that "Marbles (all be they so strong)' are less durable than poetry to commemorate an immortal name - that of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who is here addressed. The similarity of the idea to that of Shakespeare's 55th Sonnet is perhaps entirely accidental.
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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.
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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Methinks it is no journey - Mad Tom - 'transporting Oxford in Jonson's Hyperbolic 'To My Beloved Master'':
Definition of transport
(Entry 1 of 2)
1
: to transfer or convey from one place to another
transporting ions across a living membrane
2
: to carry away with strong and often intensely pleasant emotion
3
: to send to a penal colony overseas
