Sunday, March 7, 2021

Jonson and Manly Praise

 Yes I think Shakespeare does *appear* to be common.


Margaret Tudeau-Clayton describes an author whom Jonson truly admired - one whom she calls 'a figure and an example of Language and Life. It might be useful to compare this figure - Virgil - to the example and figure of Shakespeare.

Ben Jonson's Discoveries/Timber was published posthumously - and making available a lot of information that may not have been accessible to the common reader of the day. Personally I do not think anyone can read Jonson's First Folio encomium to Shakespeare without familiarizing themselves with its contents. In that book Jonson makes many statements/observations/translations that render his praise of Shakespeare ridiculous.

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Jonson, Shakespeare & Early Modern Virgil - Margaret Tudeau-Clayton

...But the play's [The Tempest] critical thrust goes beyond the authority of Virgil - whether as formal model or as natural philosopher - to engage with the uses to which this authority is put, in particular in the Jonsonian corpus. For the Boatswain's derisory imperative "use your authority" recalls not only the Virgilian locus of the tempest in Aeneid 1, but the closing scene of _Poetaster_ when Augustus uses the same imperative - 'use your authoritie' to invest Virgil (earlier portrayed in terms of the same Virgilian locus) with power to oversee the judgement of the poetasters, *especially their language.* It is indeed throughout the Jonsonian corpus that Virgil is thus used as a normative, regulatory figure of authority - whether the schoolboys' Virgil, as here, or the learned man's. In either case, his use of Virgil tends to (re)produce a hierarchy of privilege, whether between the 'learned' and the 'ignorant', or between those who speak 'Language' and those who speak 'no-Language', or what is represented, especially in the anti-masques, as 'noise'. In _Poetaster_, these hierarchies come together as a hierarchy precisely between Virgil's stage audience - a privileged elite of virtuous and 'learned heads', who speak the play's normative Language at the centre of power, the court- and the vicious and ignorant majority of 'common men' and women, who speak multiple, particular 'languages'. The interrogation and contestation articulated in _The Tempest_ are thus directed both at the authority of Virgil - as Natural philosopher and as model of a normative 'proper' Language - and at the uses made of these figures to preproduce the difference between high and low, nobles/gentles and common men.
In the Jonsonian corpus, it is above all in _Poetaster_ and _Timber_ that the schoolboys' figure of Virgil as model of a normative 'proper' Language is reproduced. There are two passages in _Timber_ in particular, which will be considered in more detail in chapter 5, (...)as their pedagogic register and purpose are overt. In both passages, practices recommended (mainly) by Quintilian for the instruction of Roman schoolboys are translated into the contemporary context, the overt aim being instruction in 'Language', a normative ideal standard for the vernacular as for Latin, which Virgilian practice exemplifies and represents - a standard of 'proper' English (as well as 'proper' Latin) serving to distinguish the 'gentleman' or , as Jonson - in his recommendations for the education of a _noble_ man's son - calls him, 'man'.
In the first passage, translating Quintilian's advice (from book two of the _Institutio_) as to which authors schoolboys should read first, Jonson writes:

As Livy before Salust, Sydney before Donne: and beware of letting them taste Gower, or Chaucer at first, lest falling too much in love with Antiquity...they grow rough and barren in language onely...Spenser, in affecting the Ancients, writ no Language: Yet I would have him read for his matter; but as Virgil read Ennius. The reading of Homer and Virgil is counsell'd by Quintilian, as the best way of informing youth, and confirming man.

Here Quintilian's examples of ancient authors (Cato and the Gracchi) have been replace by contemporary equivalents (Gower and Chaucer) so that the 'rough and barren' style of the Roman schoolboy exposed to the former becomes that of the English schoolboy, and writer, exposed to the latter and, like Spenser, 'affecting the Ancients;. In what is an addition to the passage from Quintilian, Virgilian practice is given as exemplary of the normative standard - the 'Language' - from which Spenserian practice is a departure, a 'DEFORMATION'. To read Virgil for such 'Language' is, moreover, explicitly recommended as the practice which will in-form - give subjective shape, and muscles to - the civilised human subject, 'man'.

Nearly two hundred lines later Virgilian practice is again cited as EXAMPLE AND FIGURE of a normative standard of 'Language', and again as a corrective to contemporary practice in the use of archaisms.

_Custome_ is the most certaine Mistresse of Language, as the publicke stampe makes the current money. But wee must not be too frequent with the mint, every day coyning. Nor fetch words from the extreme and utmost ages...the eldest of the present, and the newest of the past Language is best. For what was the ancient Language, which some men so doate upon, but the ancient Custome? Yet when I name Custome I understand not the vulgar Custome: For that were a precept no lesse dangerous to Language, the life, if wee should speake or live after the manners of the vulgar: But that I call Custome of speech, which is the consent of the Learned; as Custome of life, which is the consent of the good. Virgill was most loving of Antiquity; yet how rarely doth he insert _aquai_ and _pictai_? Lucretius is scabrous and rough in these; hee seekes 'hem: As some doe Chaucerismes with us, which were better expung'd and banish'd.

Explicitly characterised by the monetary analogy (from Quintilian) as a form of property, the ideal normative discourse - 'Language' - to be acquired is associated here, as in the earlier passage, specifically with restraint in the use of archaisms, a restraint which is said (by Jonson though not, as we shall see in chapter 5, by Quintilian) to have been Virgil's practice. Spenserian practice is thus condemned again as at once 'non Language' and not-Virgilian; the two phrases are indeed virtual synonyms.
In the terms 'expung'd' and 'banish'd' in the second passage a purification of the language, by means of, and to produce 'Language', is envisaged. In _Poetaster_, such a purification is staged: the poetaster Crispinus is judged, like Spenser, to produce 'no Language' and receives a purge, which (like the judgement) is overseen by Virgil, figure once again of the normative economy of 'Language'. Indeed, the parallel is more specific; for, once purged, Crispinus if 'prescrib'd' a 'dyet' of recommended authors and practices by Virgil, and amongst these prescriptions is, 'Shun...old Ennius', which is to say, shun the use of archaisms.
In both _Timber_ and _Poetaster_, that is, Virgil is MOBILISED AS EXAMPLE AND FIGURE of a 'pure' economy of 'Language', which works so as to produce itself in the (thereby) 'purified' vernacular. It is similarly as a normative 'pure' Language that Virgil is taught to schoolboys, and imitated in cultural productions of the elite. (...) Invested with absolute value as 'pure' - above the corruption of change - this Language - tends, as we shall see, to regulate and stabilise not only the (rapidly expanding) vernacular, but also gestures of the body (which it encodes), and, with these, the structure of the social order doubly inscribed both within and by this exclusive economy. More specifically, the economy of pure 'Language' Jonson's Virgil represents is characterised by what if described, metonymically, as Virgil's 'CHASTE...EARE' (Poetaster), a phrase (derived from J. C Scaliger) which draws linguistic and moral/sexual orders into a single economy, marked by habitual restraint - precisely such restraint as, in the second passage from Timber quoted above, Jonson attributes to Virgil in the representation of his 'loving' but restrained practice in the use of archaisms.
Like the representation of Virgilian 'Language' as 'pure' in pedagogical discourses we shall look at in the next chapter, Jonson's more specific representation tends to reassert the humanist alignment of eloquence and virtue, to close the separation between 'words' and 'moral matter', which exegetical and pedagogical practices produce. (My note: Or Not! - as in case of mad Wittenberg Hamlet and his 'Horace') Such idealisations of its object(s), as of those in possession of these objects as the guardians of 'Language' and 'Life' (as in the second passage from _Timber_ above), recur in representations of the practices and purposes of a humanist education (or education in the humanities), the term 'discipline', for example, doing much the same ideological work as Jonson's phrase 'chaste...eare', bringing together formal and moral economies, 'Language' and 'Life'. 'Language' as 'Life' in a single, strenuous and, we might add, strenuously masculine ethos. What such idealisations (a matter of faith finally) cover are, on the one hand, the separations- the different objects produced in practice - and on the other hand, the ideological work of inclusion/exclusion that is done by the production and circulation of these different objects. In the case of early modern Virgil, this work is done by the production and circulation both of the schoolboys' Virgil(s), and of the 'learned" man's Virgil(s). In the case of the former, to which we now turn, the idealisation of Virgil as EXAMPLE AND FIGURE OF LANGUAGE AND LIFE reinforces the exclusion produced by their production and circulation. For these Virgilian objects are invested with universal meaning and value, while those in possession of them are identified as the privileged guardians of what 'makes'/marks the civilised human subject, which implicitly or explicitly denies what is civilised, indeed what is human to those without access to these objects - those who, in Poetaster, are called 'common men' and above whom Virgil and his circle of 'gentle' and 'learned' heads are places as beings of a different and superior 'human' 'kind'.

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Tudeau-Clayton (con't)
The contrast between the Ovidian and Virgilian scenes [in Poetaster], and more particularly between the characters of Ovid and Virgil, is explicitly drawn in the speech by Augustus absolutely condemning the banquet. For the dismissal of Ovid and his circle as vicious is followed by a description of those Augustus will 'prefer' (i.e. promote), which anticipates the formal 'preferment' of Virgil in Act V scene ii (where the verb is uses again).


I will preferre for knowledge, none but such
As rule their lives by it, and can becalme
All sea of humour, with the marble trident
Of their strong spirits: Others fight below
With gnats, and shaddowes, others nothing know. (IV.VI. 74-78)

The type Virgil exemplifies is portrayed here in terms of the scene of Neptune's calming of the tempest in Aeneid I (lines 124-57), moralised as the exercises of reason over turbulent desires (translated into the Jonsonian idiom 'humours'). The portrait justifies, even as it announces, both the formal preferment and, more particularly, the investment of Virgil with authority as judge in Act V, when he will "exercise the monologic authority that Neptune exercises over the unruly winds Those he judges are indeed placed, like and with 'the others' here, 'below', in the realm of the turbulent humours which Virgil has mastered and which, in Ovid's case, is, specifically, the humour of the passion 'they...call Love', 'inconstant, like the sea; rough, swelling like a storme;: 'in a continuall tempest.'

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De Shakespeare Nostrat 1(our/native)

I REMEMBER the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he FLOWED with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be STOPPED. “Sufflaminandus erat,” 2 as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the RULE of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him: “Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.” He replied: “Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause; 3 and such like, which were RIDICULOUS. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.

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Disproportioned Droeshout:

In every action it behoves the poet to know which is the 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 its fit bounds. (Jonson, Discoveries)

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

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John Oldham on Jonson

V.
Sober, and grave was still the Garb thy Muse put on,
No tawdry careless slattern Dress,
Nor starch'd, and formal with Affectedness,
Nor the cast Mode, and Fashion of the Court, and Town;
But neat, agreeable, and janty 'twas,
Well-fitted, it sate close in every place,
And all became with an uncommon Air, and Grace:
Rich, costly and substantial was the stuff,
Not barely smooth, nor yet too coarsly rough:
No refuse, ill-patch'd Shreds o'th Schools,
The motly wear of read, and learned Fools,
No French Commodity which now so much does take,
And our own better Manufacture spoil,
Nor was it ought of forein Soil;
But Staple all, and all of English Growth, and Make:
What Flow'rs soe're of Art it had, were found
No tinsel'd slight Embroideries,
But all appear'd either the native Ground,
Or twisted, wrought, and interwoven with the Piece.

VI.
Plain Humor, shewn with her whole various Face,
Not mask'd with any antick Dress,
Nor screw'd in forc'd, ridiculous Grimace
(The gaping Rabbles DULL delight,
And more the Actor's than the Poet's Wit)
(snip)

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William Cartwright:

...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was FREE
As his, but without his SCURILITY;

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Oldham on Jonson, con't.

Such did she enter on thy Stage,
And such was represented to the wond'ring Age:
Well wast thou skill'd, and read in human kind,
In every wild fantastick Passion of his mind,
Didst into all his hidden Inclinations dive,
What each from Nature does receive,
Or Age, or Sex, or Quality, or Country give;
What Custom too, that mighty Sorceress,
Whose pow'rful Witchcraft does transform
Enchanted Man to several monstrous Images,
Makes this an odd, and freakish Monky turn,
And that a grave and solemn Ass appear,
And all a thousand beastly shapes of Folly wear:
Whate're Caprice or Whimsie leads awry
Perverted, and seduc'd Mortality,
Or does incline, and byass it
From what's Discreet, and Wise, and Right, and Good, and Fit;
All in thy faithful Glass were so express'd,
As if they were Reflections of thy Breast,
As if they had been stamp'd on thy own mind,
And thou the universal vast Idea of Mankind.

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Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity
Michelle Martindale

…It is customary to begin discussion of the extent of Shakespeare’s classical knowledge with the opinions of Ben Jonson. So, for the sake of variety, let us open with some well-known lines by Milton, a devotee of Shakespeare but one who had no reason for partiality over the issue:

Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson’s learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild. (L’Allegro, 121-34)

A careless reading of these lines, together with an anachronistic understanding of their key terms, has encouraged the picturing of Shakespeare as a purely spontaneous genius. In fact the distinction, which is not polemical, is between Jonson’s ‘learning’, that is his assiduous imitation of classical models and insistence on their superiority, and Shakespeare’s delight in a general ambience of English language and inspiration. The dominant contrast is not between Art and Nature, but between the classical and the ‘native’; and that contrast involves a pastiche of the characteristic styles of the two authors, not surprisingly in a poem devoted to literary parody and allusion. In the lines on Jonson, where the vocabulary has a plain, hard-edged, concrete quality, ‘sock’ Englishes a Latin metonymy (soccus, the slipper worn by comic actors, for comedy), and there may be a punning jest by which the ‘sock’ would be wither on stage or on Jonson’s foodt(cf. Jonson’s ‘Ode to Himself: On The New Inn’, 37; Horace, Ars Poetica, 80). The lines on Shakespeare use suggestive but somewhat unfocused metaphorical writing, with a distinct shift midway, as Shakespeare, first the child of a semi-personified Fancy, becomes a bird or rustic singer of the forest. ‘Sweetest’ hints at the Shakespearean style, described in his own time as ‘sugared’ and ‘sweet’; it was the Shakespeare of plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream whom Milton especially favoured, and Shakespeare is anyway treated here as a writer of comedy only. Since these complimentary lines are couched in Shakespearean terms, we should take the key words in something of their Shakespearean sense. IN particular, ‘fancy’ means imagination, and is not equivalent to ‘nature’, to which indeed it is sometimes opposed: for example in Antony and Cleopatra II.ii.200f. (‘O’er-picturing that Venus where we see/The fancy outwork nature’) fancy, man’s creative faculty, amounts almost to art, or at least to an aspect of art. That Shakespeare is “Fancy’s child’ does not mean that he is Nature’s child, untutuored and artless, but that he is a great exponent of the powers of the imagination. The passage thus has no bearing on the question of how much ancient literature Shakespeare had read, even if Milton is nodding, with some wit, at the tradition already established by Jonson.(…)

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Speculum Tuscanismi - Satire on Earl of Oxford

Gabriel Harvey:

See Venus, archegoddess, howe trimly she masterith owld Mars.
See litle CUPIDE, howe he bewitcheth lernid Apollo.
Bravery in apparell, and maiesty in hawty behaviour,
Hath conquerd manhood, and gotten a victory in Inglande.
Ferse Bellona, she lyes enclosd at Westminster in leade.
Dowtines is dulnes ; currage mistermid is outrage.
Manlines is madnes ; beshrowe Lady Curtisy therefore.
Most valorous enforced to be vassals to Lady Pleasure.
And Lady Nicity rules like a soveran emperes of all.
TYMES, MANNERS, FRENCH, ITALISH ENGLISHE.
Where be y e mindes and men that woont to terrify strangers ?
Where that constant zeale to thy cuntry glory, to vertu ?
Where labor and prowes very founders of quiet and peace,
Champions of warr, trompetours of fame, treasurers of welth ?
Where owld Inglande ? Where owld Inglish fortitude and
might ?
Oh, we ar owte of the way, that Theseus, Hercules, Arthur,
And many a worthy British knight were woo'nte to triumphe in.
What should I speake of Talbotts, Brandons, Grayes, with a thousande
Such and such ? Let Edwards go ; letts blott y e remem-braunce
Of puissant Henryes ; or letts exemplify there actes.
Since Galateo came in and Tuscanismo gan usurpe
Vanity above all ; villanye next her ; Statelynes empresse,
NO MAN but minion : stowte, lowte, playne, swayne, quoth a
LORDINGE.

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Jonson - Poetaster - Apologetical Dialogue

...This 'tis, that strikes me silent, seals my Lips,
And apts me rather to sleep out my time,
Than I would waste it in contemned strifes,
With these *VILE IBIDES, these unclean Birds,
That make their Mouths their CLYSTERS, and still PURGE
From their hot entrails.* But, I leave the Monsters
To their own fate*. And, since the Comick Muse
Hath prov'd so ominous to me, I will try
If Tragœdie have a more kind aspect;
Her favours in my next I will pursue,
Where, if I prove the pleasure but of one,
So he judicious be; He shall b' alone

A Theatre unto me; Once I’ll say
To strike the ear of time in those fresh strains,
As shall, beside the cunning of their ground,
Give cause to some of wonder, some despite,
And more despair, to IMITATE their SOUND.

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Author: Holland, Abraham
Title: Naumachia, or Hollands sea-fight Date: 1622


A Caveat to his Muse

Well Minion you'le be gadding forth then? Goe,
Goe, hast unto thy speedy overthrow:
And since thou wilt not take my warning: Hence,
Learne thy owne ruine by experience.
Alas poore Maid (if so I her may call
Who itches to be prostitute to all
Adulterate censures) were it not for thee
Better, to live in sweet securitie
In my small cell, than flying rashly out,
Be whoop't, and hiss't, and gaz'd at all about
Like a day-owle: Faith Misris you'le be put
One of these daies to serve some driveling slut,
To wrap her sope in, or a least be droven
To keepe a Pie from scorching in the Oven:
Or else expos'd a laughing stock to sots,
To cloke Tobacco, or stop Mustard pots,
Thou wilt be grac't if so thou canst but win
To infold Frankincense or Mackrills in,
You deem it a matter of high worth
To have a fame among 'em: New come forth:
And thinke your chiefe felicity is marr'd
If you be not perch't up in Paules Church-yard
Where men a farre may know you in a trice,
By some new-fangled, brasse-cut Frontispice.
Such book's indeed as now-dayes can passé
Had need to have their faces made of brasse.
Is it not then sufficient for you
To stay at home among the residue
Of better sisters: where my dearest Will, (my note - Will Browne?)
And other friends would praise and love thee still:
Him and my other harts-halfes I account
Intire assemblies, and thinke they surmount
A GLOBE OF ADDLE GALLANTS: I averre
One judging Plato worth a Theater.
(snip)

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Jonson figured as suppressing Fame:

Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius

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

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Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, The Fountain of Self-Love

…The better race in Court
That have the true nobility, called virtue,
Will apprehend it as a grateful right
Done to their separate merit: and approve
The fit rebuke of so ridiculous heads,
Thos with their apish customs and forced garbs
Would bring the name of courtier in contempt,
Did it not live unblemished in some few
Whom equal Jove hath loved, and Phoebus formed
Of better metal, and in better mould. (5.1.30-39)

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Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England

By Mary Thomas Crane


…[It] was a deeply threatening idea that a particular kind of education (or, indeed, a prose style indicative of that education) could replace birth and wealth as criteria for access to power. It posed the greatest threat, as Lawrence Stone points out, to the aristocrats whom it disenfranchised, and until they were able, in the seventeenth century, to recast educational credentials on the basis of attendance at certain elite (and expensive) schools, they were forced to reassert an alternative training for aristocratic youth. It also threatened the humanists themselves, who saw in their own upward mobility not only potentially dangerous eminence but also a disquieting acquiescence in capitalist and republican tendencies and a palpable threat to the concepts of order and hierarchy that they promulgated. These issues surface (in the 1520s through the 1540s) in the form of preoccupation with “value,” and in discussions of what society ought to value and how “wealth” (both monetary and cultural) should be displayed and shared.
Stone has shown how the “educational revolution” effected by English humanists contributed to the “crisis of the aristocracy” in the seventeenth century. He argues that in the sixteenth century, the new ideal of “gentleman” based on education “increased the opportunities of the gentry to compete for office on more equal terms with the nobility.” There are signs, however, of ARISTOCRATIC RESISTANCE to the humanist model of counsel, and in this resistance lie the seeds of the alternative model of courtly advancement, the ITALIANATE COURTIER. According to this model, “WORTH” is manifested through the conspicuous consumption of “worthless” TRIFLES (clothes, jewelry) and participation in frivolous pastimes (hunting, dicing, dancing, composing love lyrics).

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O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 17. 1934
...With regard to Martin Droeshout, whose portrait of Shakespeare, appears on the title page of the First Folio , in 1923; as Durning-Lawrence savs, "Droeshout is scarcely likely to have ever seen Shakespeare, as he was only 15 years of age when Shakespeare died." DULL DRAWING. The face in Droeshout's picture certainly expresses no trace of that almost divine intelligence which one would expect to find there, and the figure, out of all drawing, is clothed in an Impossible coat, the sleeves of which are composed, to all appearance, of the back and front of the same left arm. This fact was remarked upon In "The Tailor and Cutter." in its issue of March 9, 1911; and in the April following, under the heading "Problem for the Trade," the "Gentleman's. Tailor" magazine printed the two halves of the coat arranged tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, and said : "It is passing strange that something like three centuries should have, been allowed to elapse before the tailor's handiwork should have been appealed to In this' particular manner." Facing this portrait in ' the First Folio, are these words, attributed to Ben Jonson, which after stating that "the Figure" was Intended for that of Shakespeare, and that the "graver" had a struggle to out-do the life, conclude with: O, could he but have drawn, hit wit As well lo brasse. as he hath hit His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that was ever writ In Brasse. But, since he cannot. Reader looks Not on his Picture, but his Booke. Ben Jonson could never have seriously considered that the dull, wooden, face in the engraving was anything like that of the author of the plays, and may have sarcastically bidden the beholder "looke not on his picture, but his book." BEN JONSON. Facing the title page of the 1640 folio of Ben Jonson's works, is a portrait of that poet by Robert Vaughan. a contemporary engraver, . which, like that of Martin Droeshout, Is a very rough, uncouth, piece of work, though it certainly expresses a certain amount of individuality and intelligence, yet not very much; and the figure Is very ungainly, though Jonson became very stout as he grew older, as we know by one of his Epigrams, and would be difficult to draw. Durning-Lawrence savs that In a very rare and curious little volume published anonymously in 1645, under the title of "The Great Assises holden In Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours," Ben Jonson is described as the "Keeper of the Trophonian Denne," and in an Imaginary Westminster Abbey his medallion bust appeared clothed in a left-handed coat, like the figure by Martin Droeshout in the First Folio, and Stowe is quoted as having written regarding this: O' rare Ben Jonson what, a turncoat grown! Thou ne'er want such. till clad In stone; Then let not this disturb thy sprite. Another age shall set thy buttons right.

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

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Jonson, On Shakespeare

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, 
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame; 
While I confess thy writings to be such 
As neither man nor muse can praise too much; 
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways 
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise; 
For seeliest ignorance on these may light, 
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; 
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance 
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; 
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, 
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise. 
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore 
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more? 
But thou art proof against them, and indeed, 
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need. 
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age! 
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! 
My Shakespeare, rise! 

 

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Jonson/Horace/Horatio


...And that is how Jonson understood his literary kingship in Cynthia's Revels: "loath to prostitute" his talent "to every vulgar, and adulterate brain, " he denounced "popular applause" as the "foamy praise, that drops from common jaws." In lines from Horace that Jonson borrowed for the epigraph to his own first folio in 1616, Jonson reminded himself not to "labour so that the mob [turba] may wonder at you but rather to "be content with few readers." Facing this epigraph was a portrait of Jonson crowned with laurels.  (Shakespeare Only, Jeffrey Knapp)