The Sublimation of Edward de Vere
Edward de Vere embodied the sublime style (Longinus) and the je ne sais quois/I know not what of _The Courtier_ at the court of Elizabeth I. The Shakespearean Sublime is a subset of Oxfordian Sublime. : ) The Knight of the Tree of the Sun and perhaps _Endymion_ are also examples of this elevated style.
In Cynthia's Revels Jonson attacked the court's 'airy forms' and flights of fancy in a manner that prefigures Alexander Pope's attacks on the Dunces in his *Dunciad*. The mixing of high and low was particularly offensive to classical sensibilities. Jonson also refers back to a 1584? dedication to Oxford to identify Amorphus as the Earl - but to also identify him as a type of Parnassian fool (Southern, Pandora, only the poet well-born etc). Just as the Dunciad is a mock epic, Jonson brands Oxford/Shake-speare as a foolish figure in the First Folio mock encomium. Jonson and Chapman insisted upon an ethical and rational component to their art - as well as 'matter above words' etc.. The sublime blows up these ideas.
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Merriam Webster:
The word sublimate comes from the Latin verb sublimare, which means "to lift up" or "raise" and which is also the ancestor of our sublime. "Sublimate" itself once meant "to elevate to a place of dignity or honor" or "to give a more elevated character to," but these meanings are now obsolete.
*Also includes - to soar, to fly aloft, to be carried into the sky*
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Jonson mocks Shakespeare's formlessness and undecidability (hallmarks of the sublime style) in the disproportionate Droeshout engraving - a dull ridiculous figure replete with absurdities.
Middle English dul; akin to Old English dol foolish, Old Irish dall blind
'Shakespeare to thee was dull...' - Cartwright
Dulness - the goddess of the Dunces. : )
Broke at the end of his life and his glory days at the Elizabethan Court behind him, Oxford made one last sublime courtly gesture towards Elizabeth. As _Cynthia's Revels_ shows, the sublime style at court was becoming a political liability (similar to Charles I Eikon Basilike?) and all of Oxford's beauties were being satirically inverted (see Othello/Black-faced Folly). In 'Love's Martyr' he embodied true courtly love by sublimating himself and Elizabeth in poetic fire - the immolation/transformation of the Phoenix and the Turtle (Mutual Flame) created a more perfect and immortal creature. A fifth element? The creature - William Shake-speare (written in a gorgeous and outstanding font in the original publication) - is the product of the marriage of the true minds of a great courtier and his queen.
Unfortunately Elizabeth didn't share her property as willingly. 'Shake-speare' seems to have become orphaned at this point.
Chester, Love's Martyr
Pellican.
VVHat wondrous hart-grieuing spectacle,
Hast thou beheld the worlds true miracle?
With what a spirit did the Turtle flye
Into the fire, and chearfully did dye?
He look't more pleasant in his countenance
Within the flame, then when he did aduance,
*His pleasant wings vpon the naturall ground,*
True perfect loue had so his poore heart bound,
The Phoenix Natures dea• adopted child,
With a pale heauy count'nance, wan and mild,
Grieu'd for to see him first possesse the place,
That was allotted her, her selfe to grace,
And followes cheerfully her second turne,
And both together in that fire do burne.
O if the rarest creatures of the earth,
Because but one at once did ere take breath
Within the world, should with a second he,
A perfect forme of loue and amitie
Burne both together, what should there arise,
And be presented to our mortall eyes,
Out of the fire, but a more perfect creature?
Because that two in one is put by Nature,
The one hath giuen the child inchaunting beautie,
The other giues it loue and chastitie:
The one hath giuen it wits rarietie,
The other guides the wit most charily:
The one for vertue doth excell the rest,
The other in true constancie is blest.
If that the Phoenix had bene separated,
And from the gentle Turtle had bene parted,
Loue had bene murdred in the infancie,
Without these two no loue at all can be.
I can't shake the idea that at the end of his life Herman Melville was tracing the sublime arc of Edward de Vere and his book/foundling/heir. He registers Captain Vere's sacrifice of Beauty/Billy Budd/foundling/book at the 'exacting behest' of the state. Billy's movements 'aloft and alow' also describes the height and depths of the sublime/profound (natural?) object. I think it is possible that at the end of his life Melville was shaping a response to Emerson's challenge to explain the poem referred to as the Phoenix and Turtle and taking a turn at the sublime as well.
Beauty's Resistless Thunder - Marston, Love's Martyr
A narration and description of a most exact wondrous creature, arising out of the Phoenix and Turtle Doues ashes. - Marston
O Twas a mouing Epicedium!
Can Fire? can Time? can blackest Fate consume
So rare creation? No; tis thwart to sence,
Corruption quakes to touch such excellence,
Nature exclaimes for Iustice, Iustice Fate,
Ought into nought can neuer remigrate.
Then looke; for see what glorious issue brighter
Then clearest fire, and beyond faith farre whiter
Then Dians tier) now springs from yonder flame?
Let me stand numb'd with wonder, neuer came
So strong amazement on astonish'd eie
As this, this measurelesse pure Raritie.
Lo now; th'xtracture of deuinest Essence,
The Soule of heauens labour'd Quintessence,
(Peans to Phoebus) from deare Louer's death,
Takes sweete creation and all blessing breath.
What strangenesse is't that from the Turtles ashes
Assumes such forme? (whose splendor clearer flashes,
Then mounted Delius) tell me genuine Muse.
Now yeeld your aides, you spirites that infuse
A sacred rapture, light my weaker eie:
Raise my inuention on swift Phantasie,
That whilft of this same Metaphisicall
God, Man, nor Woman, but elix'd of all
My labouring thoughts, with strained ardor sing,
My Muse may mount with an vncommon wing.
Beauty's Resistless Thunder - Marston
Perfectioni Hymnus.
WHat should I call this creature,
Which now is growne vnto maturitie?
How should I blase this feature
As firme and constant as Eternitie?
Call it Perfection? Fie!
Tis perfecter thē brightest names can light it:
Call it Heauens mirror? I.
Alas, best attributes can neuer right it.
Beauties resistlesse thunder?
All nomination is too straight of sence:
Deepe Contemplations wonder?
That appellation giue this excellence.
Within all best confin'd,
(Now feebler Genius end thy slighter riming)
No Suburbes * all is Mind
As farre from spot, as possible defining.
Iohn Marston.
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Beauties Resistlesse Thunder:
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Synonyms for stupefied
amazed, astonished, astounded, awestruck (also awestricken), bowled over, dumbfounded (also dumfounded), dumbstruck, flabbergasted, shocked, stunned, thunderstruck
Stupefaction - the action of stupefying, making dull or lethargic
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No Master of Himself: Pope and the Response of Wonder
Katherine Playfair Quinsey
.The late seventeenth-century invocation of the response of wonder was thus a dynamic process replete with ambivalence, a characteristic that continues to inform even current criticism on Longinian aesthetics. Often described as “rapture” or a loss of a sense of self, in an overwhelming emotive response to objects that go beyond the limits of perception, this immersion of the self in the otherness of the perceived arose, ironically, from a new focus on the self: from philosophical, religious, and scientific empiricism, and an unprecedented recognition of the empirical validity of the subjective response. As an aesthetic and philosophical concept, wonder develops through an ongoing tension with the formalistic rhetorical tradition of artful persuasion. This particular ambivalence is clearly evident in the classical treatise frequently invoked, Longinus’s Peri Hupsos[9]—usually referred to as On the Sublime—which opens with a lucid analysis of the relationship between rhetorical strategy and emotive expression, clearly delineating the difference between persuasion and the action of the “sublime”:
*For great and lofty Thoughts do not so truly perswade, as charm and throw us into a Rapture. They form in us a kind of Admiration made up of Extasy and Surprize, which is quite different from that motion of the Soul, by which we are pleas’d, or perswaded. Perswasion has only that power over us, which we will give it; but Sublime carries in it such a noble Vigour, such a resistless Strength, which ravishes away the hearer’s Soul against his consent.*
An Essay upon the Sublime, 3
The chief feature of the response of wonder or “admiration” is ecstasy, or separation from the body, here described as separation from the willed consciousness of the self, acting “against his [the hearer’s] consent” and imaged as the near-violent overcoming of the will and reason. This is opposed to rhetorical persuasion, in which the hearer is an active participant who willingly “allows” the argument to have emotional power as well as logical validity. (Note that Longinus also invokes the traditional meaning of nil admirari, the association of admiration with “surprise.”) The rapture of the soul, or sense of a loss of self, through being immersed in that which is greater than oneself, is a distinguishing feature of the sublime, as is the word “resistless,” itself a favourite term of Pope’s, used repeatedly in this 1698 translation to characterize the action of the sublime in both individual perception and rhetorical technique.
