The Noble Visage Underneath:
The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European
Literature
David M. Posner
... In the discussion in book II, section 11, of masquerade (“lo esser travestito”) [in The Courtier], and of its great utility for showing of one’s true (noble) identity through disguising it, Castiglione emphasizes that the success of the courtier’s performance is determined by the audience reaction, and particularly by whether or not the audience “si diletta e piglia peacere” (“is delighted and pleased”). Control of that reaction, through controlling the pleasure experienced by the beholder, thus becomes paramount. This pleasure arises not from the audience’s experience of the showing forth of some Truth, a la Cicero, but rather from its being deceived. Castiglione shows that the essence of the courtier’s performance is a kind of multi-layered deception, in the form of a performed concealment – a concealment that pretends to be the opposite, to be an intentionally incomplete concealment that instead reveals, with a wink and a nudge, the “truth” behind its supposedly consensual pretense. Through performing "con abito disciolto,”: in a disguise meant to be seen into, the performer invites the audience to feel as though it is in on the joke. The audience’s pleasure arises from its accepting that invitation, from being fooled into believing that , rather than being fooled, it is seeing beyond the mask (representing e.g. a pastor selvatico, a peasant) to the “real” (i.e. noble) visage underneath. The precise locus of this pleasure, as Castilgione makes clear, is the tension between what is actually seen and what is artfully hinted at, without however being revealed in what Bacon will call the “Naked, and Open day light” of Truth. Nor could that shadowy something-hinted-at ever be thus revealed, as it is neither presence nor substance, neither essence nor Truth, but rather the reflection of the desire of the beholder, at the very moment of “l’animo…(chi)…corre ad imaginar…” (“the mind which rushes to imagine”). In this specular performance, there is always something more – Castiglione’s “molto maggior cosa” – than can be seen, or indeed be present; the desire for that shadowy cosa is the delectation proper to this masquerade, and it is the eliciting of that desire that is the object of the courtier’s performance.
David M. Posner
... In the discussion in book II, section 11, of masquerade (“lo esser travestito”) [in The Courtier], and of its great utility for showing of one’s true (noble) identity through disguising it, Castiglione emphasizes that the success of the courtier’s performance is determined by the audience reaction, and particularly by whether or not the audience “si diletta e piglia peacere” (“is delighted and pleased”). Control of that reaction, through controlling the pleasure experienced by the beholder, thus becomes paramount. This pleasure arises not from the audience’s experience of the showing forth of some Truth, a la Cicero, but rather from its being deceived. Castiglione shows that the essence of the courtier’s performance is a kind of multi-layered deception, in the form of a performed concealment – a concealment that pretends to be the opposite, to be an intentionally incomplete concealment that instead reveals, with a wink and a nudge, the “truth” behind its supposedly consensual pretense. Through performing "con abito disciolto,”: in a disguise meant to be seen into, the performer invites the audience to feel as though it is in on the joke. The audience’s pleasure arises from its accepting that invitation, from being fooled into believing that , rather than being fooled, it is seeing beyond the mask (representing e.g. a pastor selvatico, a peasant) to the “real” (i.e. noble) visage underneath. The precise locus of this pleasure, as Castilgione makes clear, is the tension between what is actually seen and what is artfully hinted at, without however being revealed in what Bacon will call the “Naked, and Open day light” of Truth. Nor could that shadowy something-hinted-at ever be thus revealed, as it is neither presence nor substance, neither essence nor Truth, but rather the reflection of the desire of the beholder, at the very moment of “l’animo…(chi)…corre ad imaginar…” (“the mind which rushes to imagine”). In this specular performance, there is always something more – Castiglione’s “molto maggior cosa” – than can be seen, or indeed be present; the desire for that shadowy cosa is the delectation proper to this masquerade, and it is the eliciting of that desire that is the object of the courtier’s performance.
The success of that performance, of its come-hither pseudo-
revelation, is in turn dependent on a sort of meta-deception, another layer of
pretense that likewise attempts to disguise itself as its opposite. The
courtier’s performance must persuade, but that effort at persuasion must itself
be covered over by another persuasive effort, on that “demonstrates” to the
audience that no effort at persuasion is being made. One cannot be seen to be
doing what one is in fact doing, namely working very hard to persuade one’s
audience of a noble identity which – if it actually were what it claims to be –
would need no rhetorical helps to impose its intrinsic veracity, its
mathematical Identity with itself, on the minds and emotions of the audience.
That such an effort of rhetoric is in fact needed suggest that the Identity
being performed is not what it professes to be, or at least that the person
laying claim to it has no intrinsic, “natural” right to do so. Effort must
therefore be disguised as its opposite; one must persuade the witnesses to that
effort of its absence. This is sprezzatura.(pp.9-12)
(snip)
Castiglione appropriates from Cicero the notion of artful artlessness, as well as its seductive effect: that the audience, finding what it beholds “sit venustius sed non ut appareat,” is incited to suspect, and desire, the presence of something more than what is actually seen. (While Castiglione’s rewriting of diligens negligentia jettisons the explicit comparison with the woman made more beautiful and attractive by her non-use of external adornments, the model of a seductive delectation is everywhere implicit in Castiglione’s idea of the courtier’s relationship with his or her audience.) But the Cortegiano expand the field of application of diligens negligentia well beyond the narrow limits of a single style of oratory; sprezzatura governs all courtly behaviour, and indeed is its essential defining characteristic. Upon it depends grazia, grace, which must be seen to accompany the courtier’s every action; upon it depends above all the crucial ability to persuade one’s public of the presence of the “molto maggior cosa,” that Something Else, always just beyond the reach of clear perception, which is the key to noble identity.(p.13)
(snip)
Castiglione appropriates from Cicero the notion of artful artlessness, as well as its seductive effect: that the audience, finding what it beholds “sit venustius sed non ut appareat,” is incited to suspect, and desire, the presence of something more than what is actually seen. (While Castiglione’s rewriting of diligens negligentia jettisons the explicit comparison with the woman made more beautiful and attractive by her non-use of external adornments, the model of a seductive delectation is everywhere implicit in Castiglione’s idea of the courtier’s relationship with his or her audience.) But the Cortegiano expand the field of application of diligens negligentia well beyond the narrow limits of a single style of oratory; sprezzatura governs all courtly behaviour, and indeed is its essential defining characteristic. Upon it depends grazia, grace, which must be seen to accompany the courtier’s every action; upon it depends above all the crucial ability to persuade one’s public of the presence of the “molto maggior cosa,” that Something Else, always just beyond the reach of clear perception, which is the key to noble identity.(p.13)
***********************************
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)
**********************************
Shakespeare's Lady 8
Bruster, Douglas. Shakespeare
Quarterly; Washington, D. C. Vol. 66, Iss. 1,
(Spring 2015): 47-88,110.
THIS ESSAY FOCUSES ON THE ATTRACTIVE PRINTERS' ORNAMENT
that, gracing the title pages of both Venus and Adonis and Lucrece upon their
first publication, helped to announce Shakespeare when he emerged as London's
leading writer in the mid-1590s. Resting atop female names rendered in titling
font, and with a female face gazing at the viewer from a virtual thicket of
flora, fauna, and supernatural figures, this ornament could be seen as offering
a visual correlative of his works' variety and allegiances. In fact, were we to
design something to represent the copious abundance in Shakespeare's writings,
an image able, in Jachimo's words, to "inventory" his
"adornment," "figures," "the contents o' th'
story," and "natural notes," we might produce a picture much like
this. Yet while this ornament is a familiar feature of these two early
Shakespeare publications-one for the "younger sort," in Gabriel
Harvey's words, the other for "the wiser"-it has never received
serious analysis.1 This is not in itself surprising: ornaments of this kind
have typically served as forensic evidence for analytical bibliography
(testifying, for instance, to the time and place of book production).2 They
have less often been read, remaining below the interpretive realm owing to
their perceived interchangeability.
Answering D. F. McKenzie's call for "fuller
understanding of those historical decisions made by authors, designers and
craftsmen in deploying the many visual and even tactile languages of book form
to help direct their readers' responses to the verbal language of the
text," the following paragraphs aim to bring close attention to the
ornament that decorated the first versions of Venus and Lucrece.
(snip)
SHAKESPEARE AND THE ANTIKE S TYLE
Pagan and beguiling, Lady 8 is nothing if not a Renaissance
symbol, a humanist image reflecting even as it advertises the implied classical
textures of Shakespeare's two narrative poems. One in a family of such
ornaments, this headpiece's busy admixture of materials participates in a
larger European genre of intricate decoration that has been identified by many
names, including "grotesque," "fantastic," and "early
mannerist." During the Elizabethan era, this ornament's style might also
have drawn a specific term from Shakespeare's contemporaries: the
"antike." "Antike" is a useful word for understanding the
cultural aesthetics of this time in part because it defines Elizabethan art's
familiar attraction to and ability to enfold the delightfully multifarious-the
strange and the familiar, the ordered and the disordered, the new and the old.
It is also a helpful term through which to conceive Shakespeare's achievement
in particular, for its suggestion of the almost indiscriminately copious points
toward the wild heterogeneity of the worlds he made.
The locus classicus of "antike" theory in the
English Renaissance actually traces to the moment of its decline in the
Jacobean era, when it was possible to look back on the style's development with
an objective eye. In the thirteenth chapter of The Art of Drawing, originally
published in 1606 and subsequently in 1607, Henry Peacham defines a style he
spells "antique":
ANTIQVE so called ab antiquitate, because the inuention and
vse therof aboue all other kinds among the Graecians especially was most
auncient and in greatest request, the Italian calleth it L'antica: it hath the
principall vse in plate, clocks, armour, all manner of compartmentes, curious
Architecture, ders of &c. Though you shall seldome haue any greate vse of
it, yet I woulde haue you know what it is, and what to obserue in it: The forme
of it is a generall, and (as I maye say) an vnnaturall or vnorderly composition
for delight sake, of me[n], beasts, birds, fishes, flowers, &c.without (as
wee say) Rime or reason, for the greater variety you shew in your inuention,
the more you please, but remembring to obserue a method or continuation of one
and the same thing throughout your whole work without change or altering.
You may, if you list, draw naked boyes riding and playing
with their papermills or bubble[-]shels vppon Goates, Eagles, Dolphins &c.
the bones of a Rammes head hung with strings of beads and Ribands, Satyres,
Tritons, apes, Cornu-copia's, Dogges yoackt &c.drawing cowcu[m]mers,
cherries & any kind of wild trail or vinet after your owne inuention, with
a thousand more such idle toyes, so that heerein you cannot bee too
fantastical.
Perhaps appropriately, Peacham seems of multiple minds when
explaining this involved style: crediting its origins to the Greeks, he prefers
a Latin spelling while nevertheless giving it a modern habitation in the
Italian "L'antica." Likewise, though he calls the style
"vnnaturall or vnorderly," he is at pains to talk about the natural
creatures and plants that populate it, and insists that his artist
"obserue a method or continuation of one and the same thing . . . without
change or altering"-nothing if not the definition of an "order."
As if shoring up the diversity of his own explanation, Peacham goes on to
inventory the diverse creatures, decorations, fruits, and vegetables this style
offers, concluding by assuring his sophisticated reader that "heerein you
cannot bee too fantastical."
*****************************
Again and again in his plays, an unforeseen catastrophe …
suddenly turns what had seemed like happy progress, prosperity, smooth sailing
into disaster, terror, and loss. The loss is obviously and immediately
material, but it is also, and more crushingly, a loss of identity. To wind up
on an unknown shore, without one’s friends, habitual associates, familiar
network—this catastrophe is often epitomized by the deliberate alteration or
disappearance of the name and, with it, the alteration or disappearance of
social status.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2004. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company. p. 85
*****************************
Edward de Vere to Robert Cecil, April 27, 1603)-
...I cannot
but find a great grief in myself to remember the mistress which we have lost,
under whom both you and myself from our greenest years have been in a manner
brought up and, although it hath pleased God after an earthly kingdom to take
her up into a more permanent and heavenly state wherein I do not doubt but she
is crowned with glory, and to give us a prince wise, learned and enriched with
all virtues, yet the long time which we spent in her service we cannot look for
so much left of our days as to bestow upon another, neither the long
acquaintance and kind familiarities wherewith she did use us we are not ever to
expect from another prince, as denied by the infirmity of age and common course
of reason. In this common shipwreck, mine is above all the rest who, least
regarded though often comforted of all her followers, she hath left to try my
fortune among the alterations of time and chance, either without sail whereby
to take the advantage of any prosperous gale or with anchor to ride till the
storm be overpast. There is nothing therefore left to my comfort but the
excellent virtues and deep wisdom wherewith God hath endued our new master and
sovereign Lord, who doth not come amongst us as a stranger but as a natural
prince, succeeding by right of blood and inheritance, not as a conqueror but as
the true shepherd of Christ's flock to cherish and comfort them.
************************
Author: Cardano, Girolamo, 1501-1576.
Title: Cardanus comforte translated into Englishe. And published by commaundement of the right honourable the Earle of Oxenford
Date: 1573
Date: 1573
To my louinge frende Thomas Bedingfeld Esquyer, one of her Maie|sties gentlemen Pentioners.
AFter I had perused youre letters good maister Bedingfeld, findinge in them your request farre differing from the desert of your labour, I could not chose but greatly doubt, whether it were better for me to yelde you your desyre, or execute myne owne intention towardes the publishinge of youre Booke. For I do confesse the affections that I haue alwayes borne towardes you coulde moue mee not a little. But when I had throughlye considered in my mynde of sondrye and diuers argumentes, whether it were best to obeye myne affections or the merites of your studyes. At the length I determined it better to denye your vnlawfull request, then to graunte or condiscende to the concealment of so worthy a worke. VVhereby as you haue bene profited in the transla|tinge, so many may reape knowledge by the reading of the same, that shall comfort the afflicted, co~firme the doubtful, encourage the cowarde, and lift vp the base minded man, to atchiefe to any true summe or grade of vertue, wherto ought onely the noble thoughtes of men to be enclyned. And because next to the sacred letters of Diuinitye, nothinge doth perswade the same more then Philosophye, of whiche youre booke is plentifully stored. I thought my selfe to commit an vnpardonable errour, to haue murthered the same in the wast bottomes of my chestes, and better I thought it were to displease one, then to displease many: further consideringe so little a trifle cannot procure so great a breach of our amity, as may not with a little perswasions of reason be repayred agayne. And herein I am forced like a good and politicke Captaine, oftentimes to spoile & burne the corne of his owne countrey, least his ennemyes therof do take aduauntage. For rather then so many of your countreye men shoulde be de|ided through my senister meanes of your industry in studyes,(wherof you are bound in conscience to yelde them an accompte) I am content to make spoyle and hauocke of your request, and that that might haue wrought greatly in me in this former respect, vtterlye to be of no effect or operation, and when you examine your selfe what doth auaile a masse of goulde to be continuallye imprisoned in your bags, and neuer to be employed to your vse. I do not doubte euen so you thinke of your studyes and delightfull Muses. VVhat do they auaile, if you do not participate tbem to others? VVherfore we haue this latine Prouerbe. Scire tuu~ nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter. VVhat doth auaile the tree vnlesse it yeld fruite vnto an other, vvhat doth auaile the Vyne vnlesse an other delighteth in the Grape? Vvhat doth auaile the Rose vnlesse an other toke pleasure in the smell? VVhye should this tree be accompted better then that tree, but for the goodnes of his fruite? VVhye should this Vyne be better then that Vyne, vnlesse it brought forth a better Grape then the other? VVhye should this Rose be better esteemed then that Rose, vnlesse in pleasantnes of smel it farre surpassed the other Rose? And so is it in al other thinges as well as in man. VVhye should this man, be more esteemed then that man, but for his vertue, throughe vvhich euerye man desireth to be accompted of. Then you amongest men I do not doubt, but vvill aspyre to followe that vertuous pathe, to ILLUSTER your selfe vvyth the ornamentes of vertue. And in myne opynion as it beutifyeth a fayre vvoman to be decked with pearles and precious stones, so much more it ornifyeth a gentleman to be furnished in mynde wyth glittering vertues. VVherefore considering the small harme I do to you, the great good I do to others I prefer myne ovvne intention to discouer your volume, before your request to secrete ye same: VVherein I may seeme to you to playe the part of the cunninge and experte Medeciner or Phisition, vvho althoughe his pacient in the extremitye of his burninge Feuer, is desirous of colde liccour or drincke to qualefye his sore thirst, or rather kill his languishinge bodye. Yet for the daunger hee doth euidentlye knowe by his science to ensue, denyeth hym the same. So you beinge sicke of to much doubte in your owne procedinges, throughe which infirmitye you are desirous to burye and inseuill your workes in the graue of obliuion. Yet I knovvinge the discommodityes that shal redounde to your selfe thereby (and whiche is more vnto your Countreyemen) as one that is vvilling to salue so great an inconuenience, am nothing dainty to denye your request. Againe we see, if our frendes be deade, vve cannot shewe or declare our affection more then by erectinge them of Tombes: vvhereby vvhen they be deade in deede, yet make vvee them liue as it vvere againe through theyr monument, but vvyth me behold it happeneth farre better, for in your lyfe time I shal erect you such a monument, that as I saye in your life time you shall see hovve noble a shadowe of your vertuous life, shal hereafter remaine vvhen you are deade and gone. And in your life time againe I say, I shall giue you that monument and remembraunce of your lyfe, vvhereby I may declare my good vvill thoughe vvith your ill vvill as yet that I do beare you in your life. Thus earnestlye desyringe you in this one request of myne, as I vvould yelde to you in a great manye, not to repugne the settinge forth of your ovvne proper studyes. I bid you farevvel. ¶
From my newe countrye Muses at VViuenghole, wishing you as you haue begunne, to proceede in these vertuous actions. For when all things shall els forsake vs, vertue yet wil euer abide wyth vs, and when our bodies falles into the bowels of the earth, yet that shall MOUNTE with our MINDES into the highest Heauens.
By your louinge and assured frende. E. Oxenford.
****************************
The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation, Richard Halpern
Looking back
somewhat sourly on the culture of the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon wrote
that it was marked by
An affectionate study of eloquence and copie of speech,
which then began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to
hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase,
and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of
the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and
figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of
argument, life of invention, or depth of judgement…Then did Car of Cambridge,
and Ascham, with their lectures and writings, almost deify Cicero and
Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were studious unto that delicate and
polished kind of learning…In sum, the whole inclination and bent of those times
was rather towards copie than weight.
What concerns Bacon
here is not an imbalance within literary style but the proliferation of
stylistic elegance throughout all of serious discourse. Paradoxically, the very
autonomy of style allows it to colonize and dominate all other discursive
functions; and as if to illustrate this peril, Bacon’s own language falls
temporarily under the spell of style, succumbing to a delight in the “round and
clear composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses.” This
sudden access of eloquence is not a return of the repressed, however, but a
witty tribute to the lures of a humanist tradition from which Bacon only
halfheartedly tried to extricate himself.
In assailing what one critic has called
the “stylistic explosion” [Richard Lanham] of the sixteenth century,
Bacon questions the values of the English literary Renaissance itself.
Ciceronianism was only one small part of this movement, but more than any other
it came to represent a mysterious addiction to style. Gabriel Harvey famously
described his own bout with Ciceronianism in the confessional manner of a
recovering alcoholic:
…..I valued words
more than content, language more than thought, the one art of speaking more
than the thousand subjects of knowledge; I preferred the mere style of Marcus
Tully to all the postulates of philosophers and mathematicians; I believed that
the bone and sinew of imitation lay in my ability to choose as many brilliant
and elegant words as possible to reduce them into order, and to connect them
together in a rhythmical period.
**********************
Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
P R O L O G U E.
I
|
IF gracious silence, sweet
attention,
Quick sight, and quicker apprehension,
(The lights of Judgments throne) shine any where;
Our doubtful Author hopes this is their Sphere.
And therefore opens he himself to those;
To other weaker Beams his labours close:
As loth to prostitute their Virgin strain,
To ev'ry vulgar and adult'rate Brain,
In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath,
She shuns the print of any beaten Path;
Quick sight, and quicker apprehension,
(The lights of Judgments throne) shine any where;
Our doubtful Author hopes this is their Sphere.
And therefore opens he himself to those;
To other weaker Beams his labours close:
As loth to prostitute their Virgin strain,
To ev'ry vulgar and adult'rate Brain,
In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath,
She shuns the print of any beaten Path;
And proves new ways to come to
learned Ears:
Pied ignorance she neither loves nor, fears.
Nor hunts she after popular Applause,
Or fomy praise, that drops from common Jaws:
The Garland that she wears, their bands must twine,
Who can both censure, understand, define
What merit is: Then cast those piercing Rays,
Round as a Crown, instead of honour'd Bays,
About his Poesie; which (he knows) affords
Words, above action: MATTER, ABOVE WORDS.
Pied ignorance she neither loves nor, fears.
Nor hunts she after popular Applause,
Or fomy praise, that drops from common Jaws:
The Garland that she wears, their bands must twine,
Who can both censure, understand, define
What merit is: Then cast those piercing Rays,
Round as a Crown, instead of honour'd Bays,
About his Poesie; which (he knows) affords
Words, above action: MATTER, ABOVE WORDS.
**************************************
Steven May,_ The Elizabethan Courtier
Poets_
The New Lyricism
During the 1570's a body of courtier
verse emerged that revived the emphasis upon love poetry as it had been
introduced to the Tudor court by Wyatt and Surrey. Upon this revitalized
foundation, amorous courtier poetics developed without interruption to the end
of the reign and beyond. Unlike courtier verse of the 1560's, the new lyricism
modeled itself primarily upon post-classical continental authors, from Petrarch
to the Pl?iade. Attention to the classics remained strong, of course, but the ancients
were assimilated into the new poetics almost exclusively in the vernacular. The
courtier's immediate experience is often reflected in this poetry, although the
exact circumstances behind it cannot always be identified, nor does this later
work necessarily grow out of actual experience. From a literary standpoint this
is perhaps the most important shift away from the trends of the 1560's.
Subsequent courtier verse placed a greater emphasis upon artifice in its
treatment of occasional subjects, while it increasingly strayed away from real
events as the most respectable inducements for writing poetry. The movement was
toward fiction and the creation of poems to be valued for their own sake, not
merely for their commemorative function. As courtier poets ventured anew into
the realms of fiction, they made possible once again the creation of a genuine
literature of the court. Progress toward a golden age of lyricism was slow,
especially with regard to form and the technical aspects of composition, but
the shift in direction occurred suddenly during the period between roughly 1570
and 1575.
Although Dyer has been considered the premier Elizabethan courtier poet, that is, the first to compose love lyrics there, the available evidence confers this distinction upon the earl of Oxford. His early datable work conforms, nevertheless, to one of the established functions for poetry practiced by Ascham and Wilson. IN 1572, Oxford turned out commendatory verses for a translation of Cardano's _Comfort_, published in 1573 by his gentleman pensioner friend, Thomas Bedingfield. This poem differs from earlier efforts of the kind not so much because it appeared in English (as had Ascham's verses for Blundeville's book), but because his verses are so self-consciously poetic. The earl uses twenty-six lines to develop his formulaic exempla: Bedingfield's good efforts are enjoyed by others just as laborers, masons, bees, and so forth also work for the profit of others. 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.
DeVere's eight poems in the _Paradise_ create a dramatic break with everything known to have been written at the Elizabethan court at that time...The diversity of Oxford's subjects, including his varied analyses of the lover's state, were practically as unknown to contemporary out-of -court writer as they were to courtiers.
Oxford's birth and social standing at court in the 1570's made him a model of aristocratic behaviour. He was, for instance, accused of introducing Italian gloves and other such fripperies at court; his example would have lent respectability even to so trivial a pursuit as the writing of love poetry. Thus, while it is possible that Dyer was writing poetry as early as the 1560's, his earliest datable verse, the complaint sung to the queen at Woodstock in 1575, may itself have been inspired by Oxford's work in the same vein. Dyer's first six poems in Part II are the ones he is most likely to have composed before his association with Philip Sidney. ...Yet even if all six (of Dyer's poems) were written by 1575, Oxford would still emerge as the chief innovator due to the range of his subject matter and the variety of its execution. ...By contrast, Dyer was a specialist...Dyer's output represents a great departure from courtier verse of the 1560's, and several of his poems were more widely circulated and imitated than any of Oxford's; still, the latter's experimentation provided a much broader foundation for the development of lyric poetry at court. (pp. 52-54)
Although Dyer has been considered the premier Elizabethan courtier poet, that is, the first to compose love lyrics there, the available evidence confers this distinction upon the earl of Oxford. His early datable work conforms, nevertheless, to one of the established functions for poetry practiced by Ascham and Wilson. IN 1572, Oxford turned out commendatory verses for a translation of Cardano's _Comfort_, published in 1573 by his gentleman pensioner friend, Thomas Bedingfield. This poem differs from earlier efforts of the kind not so much because it appeared in English (as had Ascham's verses for Blundeville's book), but because his verses are so self-consciously poetic. The earl uses twenty-six lines to develop his formulaic exempla: Bedingfield's good efforts are enjoyed by others just as laborers, masons, bees, and so forth also work for the profit of others. 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.
DeVere's eight poems in the _Paradise_ create a dramatic break with everything known to have been written at the Elizabethan court at that time...The diversity of Oxford's subjects, including his varied analyses of the lover's state, were practically as unknown to contemporary out-of -court writer as they were to courtiers.
Oxford's birth and social standing at court in the 1570's made him a model of aristocratic behaviour. He was, for instance, accused of introducing Italian gloves and other such fripperies at court; his example would have lent respectability even to so trivial a pursuit as the writing of love poetry. Thus, while it is possible that Dyer was writing poetry as early as the 1560's, his earliest datable verse, the complaint sung to the queen at Woodstock in 1575, may itself have been inspired by Oxford's work in the same vein. Dyer's first six poems in Part II are the ones he is most likely to have composed before his association with Philip Sidney. ...Yet even if all six (of Dyer's poems) were written by 1575, Oxford would still emerge as the chief innovator due to the range of his subject matter and the variety of its execution. ...By contrast, Dyer was a specialist...Dyer's output represents a great departure from courtier verse of the 1560's, and several of his poems were more widely circulated and imitated than any of Oxford's; still, the latter's experimentation provided a much broader foundation for the development of lyric poetry at court. (pp. 52-54)
***************************************
DIGNITAS - In Ancient Rome, Dignitas was regarded
as the sum of the personal influence that a male citizen acquired throughout
his life. It included personal reputation, moral standing, and ethical worth
and the man's entitlement to respect and proper treatment as well.
The word does not have a direct connotation or translation
in English. Some interpretations include dignity (merely a derivation) and
prestige. The Oxford Latin Dictionary defines the expression as fitness,
suitability, worthiness, visual impressiveness or distinction, dignity of style
and gesture, rank, status, position, standing, esteem, importance, and honor.
**************************************
Ancient Rome in so Many Words – Christopher Francese
Dignitas
Dignitas refers
primarily to the social prestige of office holders and their families, and it
has a very positive ring, since such distinctions were, through an ideological
trick central to the word, seen as based on worth. Dignus means “WORTHY,” and
dignitas is the personal worth that earns high office, or the high office
itself. One’s dignitas, in the senses
of both career and prestige or honor, had to be maintained and reasserted by
winning new offices and distinctions through election or preferment, by the
behaviour of the individual, by exercising leadership in the Senate, and
through recognition by the voters. The word had a moral content and implied
that the man was worthy of such leadership, advancement, and promotion. There was thus a kind of productively vague
slippage between political prestige,
management of the state, and moral worth. It is often impossible to separate
the various shades of meaning: the office itself, the rank in society it
entails, and the quality of the office holder’s life.
A Roman animal fable about the loss of dignitas casts in the leading role an old lion who has lost his
roar and bite. This is fitting, because, unlike dignity, which in theory
belongs to everyone to some degree just by being human, dignitas belongs to the lions of the social world. As he is drawing
his final breaths, a boar comes up and gores him, avenging an old hut; then a
bull attacks with his horns; finally an ass, seeing that the lion is putting u
no reistance, kicks him in the head. “I resented being insulted by the brave,:
says the dying lion to the ass, “but having to endure you, you shame of nature,
I feel I am dying twice.” The moral is that loss of dignitas means being exposed, helpless, to the insults of one’s
inferiors.
***************************************
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford:
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, 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.
*********************************
Some Noble Quality - non se che
A History of Six Ideas: An Essay in
Aesthetics
W Tatarkiewicz
…Two aesthetic values, the value of
structure and the value of ornament , have had their own names since the Middle
Ages. The Scholastics called the beauty of structure ‘formositas’ (obviously
from ‘forma’) and also ‘compositio’, while they called the beauty of ornaments
‘ornamentum’ and ornatus’; they also used the name ‘venustas’ in the sense of
ornamentality , decorativeness.
(snip)
In Rome there was a known
distinction between dignified and comely beauty: dignitas – dignity was beauty, venustas
– comeliness was likewise, but each was a different beauty. Cicero writes
succinctly in De oficiis (I.36.130): “There are two kinds of beauty, one
comeliness, the other dignity; we ought to consider comeliness to be a
feminine, dignity a masculine, beauty.”
*Grace*
Grace, in Greek (…), in Latin gratia, played a considerable role in
the ancient view of the world. The Charites, its incarnations in mythology, in
Latin called the Graces, have also entered modern symbolism and art as
personifications of beauty and grace. And under its Latin name grace has
entered the modern languages and the theory of beauty.
In mediaeval Latin a different,
albeit a kindred sense of the expression gratia
prevailed in religious and philosophical speech: namely, divine grace. But
in the modern languages, beginning with Renaissance Italian, grazia was once again the old grace. And
it was once again something close to beauty. Cardinal Bembo held that beauty is
always grace and nothing else, that there is no other beauty than grace.
However, other Renaissance aestheticians separated these two concepts. To those
who understood it broadly, the concept of beauty included grace, while to those
who took it narrowly, it was opposed to the concept of grace. In the
influential Poetics of Julius Caesar
Scaliger we find an interpretation of beauty as perfection, regularity,
conformity to rules; in such a beauty, grace did not find a place. Benedetto
Varchi already in the title of a book published in 1590 (Libro della belta e grazia) had separated grace from beauty. Beauty
in the strict sense is evaluated by the mind, whereas grace is “non so che”. Considerably later yet,
Felibien (Idée du peintre parfait,
1707) was to write of grace: “It can be defined in this way: it is that which
pleases and which wins the heart without having passed through the mind. Beauty
and grace are two different things: beauty pleases only thanks to rules,
whereas grace pleases without rules.” In this respect, there was agreement all
the way from the Quattrocento to the rococo.
Later came attempts at a more
precise definition of grace. Lord Kames argued that grace is accessible only to
the eye and manifests itself only in man, in a face, in movement; in music, it
is a metaphor. Johann Joachim Winckelmann differentiated varieties of grace:
sublime, winsome, childish. Still later, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
would defined grace as “the supreme gentleness and the coordination of all
forces”.
In the course of two centuries, a
fairly substantial change had after all occurred in the concept of grace.
During the Renaissance it had been regarded as conduct and appearance that was
natural, free, unforced; its antithesis had been stiffness and artificiality.
It had been thought to occur equally in men and in women, equally in the old
and in the young. Held to be personifications of grace were the portraits by
Raphael, even his portraits of older men. In the age of the rococo, however,
grace became the privilege of women and oung people, its special incarnations
became the pictures of Watteau, its antithesis – austerity, its basic trait –
petiteness of forms. Grace and greatness were opposed (Fr. Yves Marie Andre, Essai sur le beau, 1741); grace, which
had been compatible with greatness during the Renaissance, was not compatible
with it in the 18th century.
*************************
Shakespeare
O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
********************************
Conceits, Clinches, Flashes and Whimzies (1639)
194,
One asked another what Shakespeares works were worth, all
being bound together. He answered, not a farthing. Not worth a farthing! Said
he; why so? He answered that his plays were worth a great deale of mony, but he
never heard, that his works were worth any thing at all.
********************************
Edward de Vere satirized as Amorphus
of Cynthia's Revels:
Ben Jonson's Sacramental Poetics:
Manners as Mystery in his Poetry and Drama
Marshelle Woodward
Peterson has elucidated the Stoic
and Neoplatonic underpinnings of Jonson's distaste for empty forms of fashion,
opposed in his works to “full” men whose bodies are “informed” by virtuous
souls.31
I argue that Jonson's use of the term “mystery” to heap praise and blame upon
these arts suggests an additional sacramental dimension to his treatment of
them. Jonson never characterizes weaving, tilling and other “arts that serve
the body” as mysteries, despite the fact that they were regularly designated as
such in the period (Discoveries 113–15). When not used to describe
divine truth, mystery serves an almost exclusively epideictic function in his
works, pointing to the noblest and basest forms of human ceremony and labor. In
taking it upon himself to dispense the true mystery of manners and destroy the
false mystery of fashion, Jonson positions himself as neither Protestant seer
nor rude mechanical, but something in between, a priest and craft master for
whom the “business of mankind” is itself an efficacious rite.
Indeed, what we find reflected in
his distinction between manners and fashion is a conflict in the Early Modern
discourse of manners centering on the art's ethical and spiritual merits. As
presented in Erasmus's De civilitate morum puerilium (1530), the craft
of manners in its most idealistic form was an art designed to reflect and
condition one's inner virtue. Both the Protestant and Catholic reform movements
embraced the “new manners” as a vehicle for moral reform, seeing in its
disciplined behaviors a means of subordinating the animalistic passions of the
lower body to the Godlike rationality of the upper.32
However, the new manners' emphasis on external appearances and reliance on the
dissimulating practice of sprezzatura simultaneously threatened to
undermine virtue. As Harry Berger, Jr. has detailed, Giovanni della Casa's Galateo
(1558) depicts the moral degradation of the craft of manners, which it strongly
opposes to the art of virtue.33
Jonson's works seek to transform the
manners of the English court along Erasmian lines, purging its members of their
Galatean fixation with fashion. By attempting to transform fashionable
aristocrats into well-mannered nobles, he seeks to lead the court away from a
corporeal, ultimately idolatrous mystery towards an art in which virtue and its
habitual bodily expression are mutually reinforcing. In this art, as in the
poet's craft, human labor is elevated by a “divine instinct” that transfigures
an otherwise rote practice into an incarnational rite. Though the conflict
between the mysteries of manners and fashion runs throughout Jonson's works,
the two are brought into most direct competition in the 1616 folio edition of Cynthia's
Revels, or the Fountain of Self-Love. The play pits scholar-poet Crites
against fashionable hangers-on at Cynthia's court, dramatizing through their
antagonism the tension between the poet's art of manners and the courtiers'
false art of fashion. This quarrel erupts in the play's final acts in a
standoff between two forms of courtly ritual: the courtiers' trial of
courtship, erroneously framed as a mystery, and the revels and penitential rite
devised by Crites. In these scenes, Jonson structurally “embattles” the
mysteries of manners and fashion, following his own recommendation that the
poet embattle virtues and vices in order “to render the one loved, the other
hated” (Discoveries 745).
************************************
Edward de Vere/Shakespeare/Master of
Manners Amorphus
***********************************
Gabriel Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi and 'exemplary' Sidney:
Gabriel Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi and 'exemplary' Sidney:
Speculum Tuscanismi (1580)
Since GALATEO came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,
Since GALATEO came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,
Vanity above all: villainy next her,
stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,
For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,
A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,
For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,
A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.
(snip)
Gabriel Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi
and 'exemplary' Sidney:
'Tell me in good sooth, doth it not
too evidently appeare, that this English Poet (note - Edward de Vere) wanted
but a good PATTERNE before his eyes, as it might be some delicate, and
choyce elegant Poesie of good M. Sidneys, or M. Dyers (ouer very Castor, &
Pollux for such and many greater matters) when this trimme geere was in
hatching: Much like some Gentlewooman, I coulde name in England, who by all
Phisick and Physiognomie too, might as well have brought forth all goodly faire
CHILDREN, as they have now some ylfavoured and DEFORMED, had they at the tyme
of their Conception, had in sight, the amiable and gallant beautifull Pictures
of ADONIS, Cupido, Ganymedes, or the like, which no doubt would have wrought
such deepe impression in their fantasies, and imaginations, as their children,
and perhappes their Childrens children to, myght have thanked them for, as long
as they shall have Tongues in their heades."
******************************
Shakespeare, dedication Venus and
Adonis:
But if the first HEIRE of my INVENTION proue DEFORMED, I shall be sorie it had so noble a god-father : and neuer after eare so barren a land, for feare it yeeld me still so bad a haruest, I leaue it to your Honourable suruey, and your Honor to your hearts content, vvhich I wish may alvvaies ansvvere your ovvne vvish, and the vvorlds hopefull expectation.
But if the first HEIRE of my INVENTION proue DEFORMED, I shall be sorie it had so noble a god-father : and neuer after eare so barren a land, for feare it yeeld me still so bad a haruest, I leaue it to your Honourable suruey, and your Honor to your hearts content, vvhich I wish may alvvaies ansvvere your ovvne vvish, and the vvorlds hopefull expectation.
*****************************
Jonathan Gibson, _Sidney's Arcadias
and Elizabethan Courtiership_,
Oxford University Press
"One aspect of the Alencon dispute that, rather surprisingly, has been neglected in discussions of Sidney is the relationship between his own work and the writings of his court rival Edward DeVere, seventeenth earl of Oxford. The _Arcadias_ can plausibly be read as using their opposition to a specifically 'Oxfordian' literary aesthetic to trigger a more general meditation on the problems of Elizabethan courtiership. As Steven W. May has shown, French-influenced 'new lyricism', closely associated with Oxford, was the dominant poetic form at the Elizabethan court at the time of the composition of the old _Arcadia_.
Early Elizabethan court poetry had been largely religious and didactic but during the 1570's Oxford pioneered a revival of courtly Petrarchan lyric in the tradition of Wyatt and Surrey. I have argued elsewhere that this was connected with Oxford's advocacy of the French match, forming a key element in what H.R. Woudhuysen has called the 'wholesale importation of FRENCH CULTURE AND MANNERS to England' which occurred in the wake of the marriage negotiations. The arrival of 'new lyricism' meant that the Petrarchan language of love became part of the lingua franca of English court life. The complicated overlap at the Elizabethan court between the language of early modern patronage negotiations and the language of Petrarchanism has been much discussed. The blurring of the two was greatly heightened - and arguably set in place, in its specifically Elizabethan manifestation - by Oxford's literary programme.
Oxford University Press
"One aspect of the Alencon dispute that, rather surprisingly, has been neglected in discussions of Sidney is the relationship between his own work and the writings of his court rival Edward DeVere, seventeenth earl of Oxford. The _Arcadias_ can plausibly be read as using their opposition to a specifically 'Oxfordian' literary aesthetic to trigger a more general meditation on the problems of Elizabethan courtiership. As Steven W. May has shown, French-influenced 'new lyricism', closely associated with Oxford, was the dominant poetic form at the Elizabethan court at the time of the composition of the old _Arcadia_.
Early Elizabethan court poetry had been largely religious and didactic but during the 1570's Oxford pioneered a revival of courtly Petrarchan lyric in the tradition of Wyatt and Surrey. I have argued elsewhere that this was connected with Oxford's advocacy of the French match, forming a key element in what H.R. Woudhuysen has called the 'wholesale importation of FRENCH CULTURE AND MANNERS to England' which occurred in the wake of the marriage negotiations. The arrival of 'new lyricism' meant that the Petrarchan language of love became part of the lingua franca of English court life. The complicated overlap at the Elizabethan court between the language of early modern patronage negotiations and the language of Petrarchanism has been much discussed. The blurring of the two was greatly heightened - and arguably set in place, in its specifically Elizabethan manifestation - by Oxford's literary programme.