Howsoever the mistaking worlde takes it (whose Left hand ever recev’d what I gave with my Right). -- George Chapman to Inigo Jones
********************************
I.M. of the First Folio Shakespeare and Other Mabbe Problems
Arthur W. Secord
Until the mid- nineteenth century, the I.M whose verses are among those commending the first folio Shakespeare (F1) was assumed to be John Marston...
[Bolton] Corney called attention to two phrases common to Mabbe and I.M., to Mabbe’s reputation as a wit, to his connection with Edward Blount, one of the publishers of F1, and to the fact that commendatory verses were sometimes written in the interest of the publisher(...) Though Corney misread Blount, other evidence, internal and external supports his general conclusion. The external evidence, which is the more significant, though the internal may have first caught Corney’s eye, consists of a series of facts linking Mabbe with Edward Blount, Leonard Digges and Ben Jonson, all three of whom had a part in both Mabbe’s The Rogue and F1. There is the additional fact that Mabbe was pretty well known to seventeenth century readers and that a number of dedications and title-pages refer to him as I.M.
It may clarify the problem to place it in its setting in 1621-23 when the Jaggards with Blount and two other stationers were publishing F1. Blount had for two decades been a power in the trade, and, though he may not, as some have argued, have been the editor of F1, he was obviously a leader in the project. James Mabbe, grandson of a former chamberlain of London, had spent two decades in Magdalen College, Oxford, had been in Spain as secretary to SirJohn Digby, and had been concerned with several books Blount had published. Leonard Digges, son and grandson of distinguished mathematicians and brother of Sir Dudley Digges of the East India Company, was like Mabbe an Oxford man, though not of Magdalen, and a devotee of Spanish literature. His connection with Blount was of more recent origin than Mabbe’s; but it was close enough for Lee to call him and Mabbe Blount’s allies.
Mabbe and Digges must have known each other well. Each had translated a Spanish picaresque novel which Blount published a year or so before F1 but which was in the press simultaneously with it. Digges’s translation was the Gerardo of Gonzalo de Cespedes y Meneses; it was dedicated to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, sponsors of F1. Mabbe’s was, of course, Aleman’s Guzman, called in English The Rogue. That both Digges and Ben Jonson wrote verses commending The Rogue increases the likelihood that Mabbe joined with Digges and Jonson in commending F1.
In the light of these facts, it is significant that the verses of Digges and I.M. in F1 were placed as a unit on the recto of a leaf not contemplated when the rest of the preliminary was printed. All bibliographers say that the original plan was for seven leaves – three sheets of six leaves and the title leaf to be printed separately and inserted between leaves one and two of the quire; and that a fourth sheet was later so printed and folded as to have on the recto of the first leaf the verses of Digges and I.M. and on the recto of the other a half-title over a list of the actors. Opinions differ about the proper placing of the new sheet, but all agree that it was an afterthought...
The internal evidence that Mabbe if the I.M. of F1 consists principally of two phrases common to Mabbe and I.M. Mabbe, paraphrasing Aleman’s Guzman, *was chiding a haughty cavalier for not considering that he is only a man*,
a representant, a poor kinde of Comedian, that acts his part upon the Stage of this World, and comes forth with this or that Office...and that when the play is done, (which can not be long) he must presently enter into the Tyring-house of the grave...
The verses in F1 read:
Wee wondred (Shake-speare) that thou went’st so soone
From the Worlds-Stage, to the Graves-Tyring-roome.
Wee thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth,
Tels thy Spectators, that thou went’st but forth
To enter with applause An Actors Art,
Can dye, and live, to acte a second part.
That’s but an Exit of Mortalitie;
This, a Re-entrance to a Plaudite.
The italicized phrases were not unusual in English literature of the seventeenth century. Professor T.W. Baldwin has discussed the almost endless variations of “All the world’s a stage.” He now calls my attention to the use by John Davies of the other, less common phrase. In the Scourge of Folly (1610) Davies speaks twice of death as a tyring house. Remarkably enough, though critics have not called attention to it, the phrase appears in another of the commendations of F1. Hugh Holland’s sonnet calls the grave death’s “publique tyring-house.”
(Had Mabbe not liked these phrases, he would not have used them in The Rogue, as they are not very close to the original...)
********************************
Jonson’s ‘Grave/Tyring House’ in F1:
Soul of the Age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
************************************
The rogue: or The life of Guzman de Alfarache. VVritten in Spanish by Matheo Aleman, seruant to his Catholike Maiestie, and borne in Seuill
Alemán, Mateo, 1547-1614?, Mabbe, James, 1572-1642?
London: Printed [by Eliot's Court Press and George Eld] for Edward Blount, 1623.
...Reade so, as it becomes thee to reade, and doe not scoffe at my Fable; and if it shall receiue intertainment at thy hands, accept these lines, which I giue thee, and with them, the minde wherewith they be offered vnto thee. Doe not cast them, as dust and sweepings of the house, vpon the dunghill of obliuion; consider that there may be some filings and parings of price; rake them out, gather them into a heape, and when they come to a conuenient quantitie, put them into the crisole [crucible] of thy consideration; giue to them the fire of the Spirit; and I assure thee, thou shalt extract some gold from them, wherewithall to inrich thy selfe. (snip)
*********************
The Rogue, Second Book, Chapter 10 – translator Mabbe
...I remember he told me, That going out of the Palace with the Kings Fa∣uourite, because he put on his Hat, whilest he was entring into his Coach, he lookt vpon him, as if he would haue eaten him; and shortly after, gaue him to vnderstand as much, by delaying his dispatch, making him daunce attendance at Court many a faire day, till he thought hee had sufficiently pu∣nished both his Purse, & his Patience. It shall euer be in my Letany, Good Lord deliuer vs, when Power and Malice meet.
It is a miserable thing, and much to be pittied, that such an IDOLL [this side idolatry Jonson] as one of these, should affect particular adoration; not considering, that he is but a man, a representant, a poore kinde of Comedian, that acts his part vpon the Stage of this World, and comes forth with this or that Office, thus and thus attended, or at least resembling such a person, and that when the play is done, (which can not be long) he must presently enter into the Tyring-house of the graue, and be turned to dust and ashes, as one of the sonnes of the Earth, which is the common Mother of vs all.
Behold (brother) and see the Enterlude of our life is ended; our dis∣guizes laid aside; and thou art as I; I, as thou; and all of vs as one another. Some doe so strut and stretch out their bodies, and are swolne so bigge vvith the puffing winde of pride, as if they were able to swallow the whole Sea in∣to their bellie. They sport, and play, and follow their pleasures, as if their a∣boade on earth, were to be eternall. They set themselues aloft, and in-throane themselues on high, as if they would get them out of Deaths reach, and that it should not be in his power to tumble them downe. Blessed bee God, that there is a God. And blessed be his mercy, that he hath prouided one equall day of Iustice for vs all.
[see Greville’s description of Oxford in Life of Sidney - mocking Sublime Style]
*********************************
Secord con’t.
It is inevitable that in so great a work as F1 we should look behind the initials I.M. for a great poet. But we are not likely to find one. No comparable folio of the period, says Lee, was done in so slipshod a fashion or provided with so little commendatory verse. Though Pollard is less severe, he admits that th publishers were only human, that they grew weary in well-doing, and that they had no inkling that they were dealing with the greatest of all English books. They got one good poet and took whatever else was at hand, a mediocre sonnet by Hugh Holland and the undistinguished verses of Digges and I.M. With nine years in which to improve upon F1, the second folio did little if any better. I.M.S, who contributed the longest poem to F2, may have been the otherwise unimportant Jasper Mayne (Student), and Milton, who added eight couplets, had not previously published anything in English and had only an academic reputation. Jonson was in 1632 still the only contributor with a wider reputation than Mabbe’s.
********************************
(Folio produced grudgingly with all of its faults on display - Shakespeare's admirable style and sublime/grotesque image-making suitable for monarchy and astonishing/impressing English subjects/slaves. King James - to my mind - may have extracted it from the Sidneians (including Henry Vere - see Holland's Elegy for 18th Earl who meets Sidney in Elysium) during the period that Henry de Vere was incarcerated in the Tower under threat of death. Shakespeare's Folio appears again in a Royalist context in Milton's Eikonoclastes as Charles I bosom companion as he was incarcerated and writing Eikon Basilike - another book of false image-making according to the republican Milton.
Jonson's Mock Sublime Encomium: water/uroscopy - flights/bank/Mountebank - take/deceive
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did TAKE Eliza and our James!
**************************
Blount asserts that it is not he who is 'slipshod':
he rogue: or The life of Guzman de Alfarache. VVritten in Spanish by Matheo Aleman, seruant to his Catholike Maiestie, and borne in Seuill
Alemán, Mateo, 1547-1614?, Mabbe, James, 1572-1642?
London: Printed [by Eliot's Court Press and George Eld] for Edward Blount, 1623.
THE PRINTER TO THE Discreet and Curious READER.
AFter so much as you haue read heere, vttered in their iust Commendation, let it be my minute, to be heard in a line or two for my selfe: which is, that you would be pleased not to lay my faults on them. I will neither pretend badnesse of Copy, or his absence, whose prouince it was to correct it; but pray the amendment of these few escapes (as you finde them here-vnder noted,) before you begin to reade: with hope of your pardon, the rather, because it hath beene my care they should be no more.
Ed: Blount.
************************
Anticke/Grotesque:
The Rogue – transl. Mabbe
To thinke vpon a thing, I suppose to be like vnto a pretty little Boy, riding vpon a Hobby-horse, with a Winde-Mill made of paper, which hee beares in his hand vpon the top of a Cane, or some little sticke, that comes first to hand. But to bring that thing to passe, I liken that to an old man, bald-headed, weake-handed, lame-legged, who leaning on two Crutches, goes to the scaling of a high wall, that is strongly defended. Haue I spoke too much? I say it is no lesse. For things oftentimes seeme to bee well dis∣posed of in the night, when the Candles are out, and all is darke, taking * counsaile with our pillow: But the Sunne no sooner appeares, but they vanish away in an instant, like thinne clouds in the heat of Summer. He that could haue seene mee, when I made this account, might easily haue per∣ceiued with what care, and breaking of my sleepes, I framed these things in my thoughts. But they were Castles in the ayre, and fantasticall Chime∣ra's, and had scarce put on my cloathes when I had put them all off againe, and throwne them from mee. I plotted many things, but none of my pro∣iects did hit right, but fell out crosse, if not quite contrarie to what I had proposed. All was vaine, all lyes, all illusion, all falsehood, and deception of the imagination, and like aDuendes Treasure, all cold embers, and dead coales.
****************************************
Rogue, Guzman – transl. Mabbe
To the Uulgar.
TO me it is no new thing (though perhaps it be to thee) to see (O thou vertue-hating Vulgar) the many bad friends that thou hast; that little, which thou deseruest, and that lesse, which thou vnderstandest: To behold, how biting, how enuious, how couetous thou art; how quick in de∣faming, how slowe in honoring; how certain in ill, how vncertaine in good; how facile to fly out, and how hard to bee curbed in. What Diamond is there so hard, which thy sharpe teeth doe not grind to powder? What vertue scapes Free from thy venemous tongue? What piety doe thy actions protect? What defects doth thy cloake couer? What Treacle doe thy eyes behold, which doe not like the Basilsske im∣poyson? What Flower, though neuer so cordiall, euer entred thorow thy eares, which in the Hiue of thy heart thou didst not conuert into poy∣son? What sanctitie hast not thou calumniated? What innocencie hast not thou persecuted? What singlenesse of heart hast not thou condem∣ned? What iustice hast not thou confounded? What truth hast not thou profaned? In what greene field hast thou set thy foot, which thou hast not defiled with thy filthy luxuries? And if it were possible to paint forth to the life the true fashion of hell, and the torments thereof, thou onely, in my iudgement, mightst (and that truely) be its perfectest counterfet. Thin∣kest thou (peraduenture) that passion blindeth mee, that anger moueth me, or that ignorance violently thrusts me on? No verily. And if thou couldst but be capable of seeing thy owne errour, but suffer thy selfe to be informed, (onely but with turning thy head aside) thou shouldst finde thy actions aeternized, and euen from Adam reproued, as thou thy selfe art already condemned. But alas, what amendment may bee ex∣pected from so inveterated a Canker? Or who is he, that can be so happy, as to vnclue himselfe from this Labyrinth, or to vnseaze himselfe from thy griping talons? I fled from the confused Court, and •…hou followedst me into a poore Village; I with-drew my selfe into solitarie Shades, and there thou madest a shot at me, and drew'st thy venemous shafts at mee; neuer letting me alone, but still vexing and pursuing me, to bring me vn∣der thy rigid Iurisdiction, and tyrannicall Empire. I am well assured that the protection which I carry with mee, will not correct thy crooked dis∣position, nor giue that respect, which in good manners thou owest, to his noble qualitie, nor that in confidence thereof I should get free from thy arresting hand. For thou despising all goodnesse and ciuilitie, (which are things that neuer yet came within the reach of thy better considerati∣on) hast rashly and vnaduisedly bitten so many illustrious and worthy persons, extolling some for their wit (though idle) accusing others for their lightnesse, and defaming a third of lyes and false-hoods. Thou art Mus campestris, a very Field-mouse, and no better. Thou art still nib∣bling on the hard rinde of the sowre and vnsauourie Melons, but when thou commest to those that are sweet and wholesome, and fitter for nou∣rishment, thy stomake fals into a loathing, thou canst not feede on them without surfetting. Thou imitatest that importunate, troublesome, and eare-offending Fly (through his vntuneable buzzing) the Scarabee, who not dwelling on the sweeter sort of Flowers, flyes from forth the de∣licate Gardens, and pleasant Woods, for to settle on a Cowe-sheard, fall vpon a dunghill, and other such like noysome places. Thou doest not make any stay vpon the high moralities of diuiner wits, but onely con∣tent'st thy selfe with that which the Dogge said, and the Foxe answered; this cleaues close vnto thee; this, when thou hast read it, remaineth still with thee, and hauing made it once thine owne, is neuer againe forgotten. O vnfortunate Foxe, that thou must be likened to one of these, and must, like these, be reuiled and persecuted, like an vnprofitable and mischie∣uous member in a Common-wealth! I will not inioy the priuiledge of thy honours, nor the freedome of thy Flatteries, though thou wouldst inrich me with all the wealth of thy praises. For the commendation of wicked men, is but shame and dishonour. And I rather desire the repre∣hension of the good; because the end for which they doe it, is like vnto themselues, then thy depraued estimation, which cannot bee but bad. Thou takest too much libertie vnto thee, thou art an vnbridled beast, a head-strong Iade; and, if occasion of matter bee offered vnto thee, thou runn'st away with it, thou kick'st, and fling'st, thou tramplest mens good names vnder thy feete, thou breakest all bounds of modestie, and tearest all in pieces that stands in thy way, and whatsoeuer else shall seeme good vnto thee. But these faire Flowers, which thou so scornefully treadest vn∣der thy feete, *crowne the Temples of the vertuous, and giue a fragrant and odoriferous smell in the nostrils of those that are noble*. The deadly razour-wounding slashes of thy sharpe tuskes, and the mortall strokes made by thy hands, shall heale the man that is discreet, vnder whose warme shade, I shall happily bee de∣fended from all the *stormes and tempests of thy blustring malice*.
***********************************
Spiro Non Tibi – Spenser's Faerie Queene and Sidney’s Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia – appeared on *1593* edition of Sidney’s Arcadia:
Anchora
Adam G. Hooks
blog
The emblem in the compartment at the bottom of the title-page once caused some confusion -- McKerrow and Ferguson don't even attempt an explanation, saying that the meaning "seems never to have been fully explained"; they simply cite the preface to Thomas Nashe's Lenten Stuffe, which is a helpful citation, even considering Nashe's characteristically ironic dedication to "Lustie Humfrey":
Most courteous unlearned louer of Poetry, and yet a Poet thy selfe, of no lesse price then H.S. that in honour of Maid-marrian giues sweete Margera[m] for his Empresse, and puttes the Sowe most sawcily uppon some great personage, what euer she bee, bidding her (as it runnes in the old song) Go from my Garden go, for there no flowers for thee dooth grow. (A2r)
Corbett provides a lengthy explanation for the emblem, which shows a boar backing away from a marjoram bush, with the motto "SPIRO NON TIBI" ("I breathe out [sweet scents] but not for thee"). The general meaning is a condemnation of ignorance, that something wholesome or profitable (i.e., the marjoram bush) is perceived as poisonous by those with poor judgment (i.e., the boar). The emblem was relatively common; Erasmus, in his Adagia, included several proverbs, including this one, on a similar theme: dogs flee from baths, jackdaws from lutes, pigs from both trumpets and marjoram, and asses from lyres (the latter is Asinus ad lyram, and is an entertaining read).
It seems that the emblem was chosen by Hugh Sanford, who obliquely refers to it in his letter "To the Reader," where he defends himself and his editorial decisions. In the previous (and incomplete) 1590 edition of the Arcadia (which included only the first three books of the revised, or so-called "new" Arcadia) the "ouer-seer of the print" inserted the "diuision and summing of the Chapters," and these chapter divisions were removed in the "complete" 1593 edition, where Sanford refers to the "disfigured face ... wherewith this worke not long since appeared to the common view." The 1593 edition included the first three revised books, along with the final three books from the "old" Arcadia, an imperfect solution to the "new" Arcadia's unfinished state, which Sanford recognizes: to his credit, he calls the present edition "the conclusion, not the perfection" of the Arcadia.
Complaining of unlearned readers, Sanford writes that
To vs, say they, the pastures are not pleasant: and as for the flowers, such as we light on we take not delight in, but the greater part growe not within our reach. Poore soules! what talke they of flowers? They are Roses, not flowers, must doe them good, which if they find not here, they shall doe well to go feed elsewhere: Any place will better like them.
Sanford is nominally complaining of those who might fail to appreciate the worth of the work, either stylistic or ethical--as he says, the "wortheles Reader can neuer worthely esteeme of so worthye a writing"--but this rebuke, along with the title-page emblem, could also be read as a defense of himself, one that characterizes his critics as unlearned swine.
That is certainly how it was read by Sanford's contemporaries, who interpreted the emblem as a bold and unwise inclusion: Sanford is the very "H.S." mentioned by Nashe above, whose "Empresse" [i.e., his impresa, his motto] is meant to honor his "Maid-marrian" (which here just may be a covert allusion to Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke). Nashe was thus alluding specifically to the title-page border of Sidney's Arcadia. John Florio was much more forthcoming in his abuse, for in the letter "To the Reader" in his 1598 Worlde of Words, Florio fills out the initials with some new epithets: "Huffe Snuffe, Horse Stealer, Hob Sowter, Hugh Sot, Humfrey Swineshead, Hodge Sowgelder. Now Master H.S. if this doe gaule you, forbeare kicking hereafter, and in the meane time you may make you a plaister of your dride Marioram."
The title-page border was -- and was well-known for being -- specific to the context of the first edition in 1593. It was re-used for some -- although not all --of the subsequent editions of Sidney's Arcadia, which makes a lot of sense, considering the expense and trouble taken to make it. In 1611 and 1617, the border was also used on the title-page of Spenser's works, which, although it bears no specific relation to The Faerie Queene, does make sense when one considers the close connections between Spenser and Sidney. As Stephen Orgel has written, in an essay in The Renaissance Computer (on page 60):
the association of Spenser with Sidney certainly makes sense: The Shephear des Calender had been dedicated to Sidney; The Faerie Queene is the poem that responds most clearly to Sidney's precepts in The Defence of Poetry, and if we think of Colin Clout and Britomart, shepherds and martial women are as relevant to Spenser's epic as to Sidney's romance. Sidney's coat of arms presides over Spenser's work as Sidney's writing was a model for the poet's endeavor.
***********************
Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.
TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,
0.5and Baron of Titchfield.
Right Honorable,
I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. Only if your honor seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised and vow to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honored you with some graver labor. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather and never after ear so barren a land for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honorable survey and your honor to your heart's content, which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation.
Your honor's in all duty,
William Shakespeare.
**********************
Discretion. To Cut. To Discern. To sift out. To separate that which has become confused.
*******************************
Grotesque Figure/Against Nature/ Invita Minerva/Wit-Ingegno
Ambisinister Droeshout Figure:
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare CUT,
*Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-do the life*:
O could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he has hit
His face; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass:
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.
********************************
Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
Cynthia: Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two
We give the Charge; impose what Pains you please:
TH' INCURABLE CUT OFF, the rest REFORM,
Remembring ever what we first decreed,
Since Revels were proclaim'd, let now none bleed.
Arete. How well Diana can distinguish Times,
And sort her Censures, keeping to her self
The Doom of Gods, leaving the rest to us?
Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed.
(snip)
Then, Crites, practise thy DISCRETION.
********************************
The word [discretion] was almost invariably used in Elizabethan England as a means of constructing social, cultural, or aesthetic difference. (David Hillman, Puttenham, Shakespeare, and the abuse of rhetoric).
*********************************
Discreet and Curious – Sidneians
Vulgar and Ignorant – Shakespeare’s Admirers/crew
********************************
Nature/Minerva/Ingegno
Elegy On Randolph’s Finger – William Hemminges
...The fluente Flettcher, Beaumonte riche In sence
*for Complement and Courtshypes quintesence,
Ingenious Shakespeare*
[need to check original punctuation]
*******************************
Jonson - Timber
{Topic 67}} {{Subject: AFFECTED language}}
De vere argutis. [how droll] - I do hear them say often some men are not witty, because they are not everywhere witty; than which nothing is more foolish. If an eye or a nose be an excellent part in the face, therefore be all eye or nose! I think the eyebrow, the forehead, the cheek, chin, lip, or any part else are as necessary and natural in the place. But now nothing is good that is natural; RIGHT and NATURAL LANGUAGE seems to have least of the wit in it; that which is writhed and tortured is counted the more exquisite. Cloth of bodkin or tissue must be embroidered; as if no face were fair that were not powdered or painted! no beauty to be had but in wresting and writhing our own tongue! Nothing is fashionable till it be DEFORMED; and this is to write like a gentleman. All must be affected and preposterous as our gallants' clothes, sweet-bags, and night-dressings, in which you would think our men lay in, like LADIES, it is so CURIOUS.
*********************************************
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 (snip).
*************************
Jonson, Timber
...BUT WHY DO men depart at all from the RIGHT and NATURAL WAYS of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter, to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers. Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called åó÷çìáôéóìåíç (eschematismene) or FIGURED LANGUAGE.
“Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the MIND. *No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech*.”
*************************
HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN: MONSTERS, METAPHORS, AND MAGIC
BY ROBERT E. STILLMAN
(con't)
One of the great paradoxes of the seventeenth-century intellectual tradition, and part of the strangeness of Hobbes's title, is that a book setting out so mathematically to destroy metaphorical language should present itself as an extended trope, a Leviathan. At every stage of its [End Page 795] argument, from the description of the commonwealth as a body to the account of the Roman Church as a kingdom of faeries, Hobbes relies heavily upon figurative language to advance his arguments. The contradiction between Hobbes's theory and his practice offers one of the text's primary and peculiar challenges. There can be no doubt about the existence of the contradiction. Within the tradition of the seventeenth-century's new philosophies, his condemnation of metaphor is among the most uncompromising. For Hobbes, metaphors and other "senseless and ambiguous words," are mere ignes fatui proceeding from the errancy of impassioned imagination (3:37). Note the materialist's pun: words that do not adequately cohere with things are "sense-less." To reason upon metaphors "is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention and sedition, or contempt" (3:37). Verbal chaos leads to cultural chaos. (The association of metaphor with natural marvels, ignes fatui, is telling and characteristic.) Among the four kinds of language abuse, Hobbes gives metaphors a primary place, describing them as words used "in other sense than that they are ordained for; and thereby deceive others" (3:20). Deceit and equivocation are main themes in his opposition. Counsellors to the sovereign are forbidden to employ tropes because they "are useful only to deceive, or to lead him we counsel towards other ends than his own" (3:246). In matters of demonstration, counsel, and "all rigorous search of truth," Hobbes admits that "sometimes the understanding have need to be opened by some apt similitude.... But for metaphors, they are in this case utterly excluded" (3:58-59). The same judgment appears in his statement that "in reckoning, and seeking of truth, such speeches ['the use of metaphors, tropes, and other rhetorical figures, instead of words proper'] are not to be admitted" (3:34). At the end of an early chapter on speech, Hobbes deems "metaphors, and tropes of speech... less dangerous" forms of "ratiocination" than morally charged signifiers such as gravity and stupidity, but he does so only "because they profess their inconstancy; which the other do not" (3:29). The dismissal of metaphor from the rigorous search for truth (and certainly the Leviathan is that) is absolute and unqualified
************************************
Anticke/Grotesque/Dreams
Prospero. You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and 1880
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve 1885
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled: 1890
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.
************************
Alto Ingegno: Oxford’s Sin
By its nature the sublime, “produced by greatness of soul, imitation, or imagery,” cannot be contained in words, and Longinus often refers to its heights as reached by journey, or flight: “For, as if instinctively, our soul is uplifted by the true sublime; it takes a proud flight, *and is filled with joy and vaunting, as though it had itself produced what it has heard*.” Longinus focuses on figurative language as a vehicle for such flight, and argues that it is not just the writer who is transported by sublimity, but the reader as well.
************************
La Forme In-Formante: A Reconsideration of the Grotesque
Sylvie Debevec Henning
Since it’s appearance as wall decorations in the Early Roman Empire, the grotesque has been seen as disturbing and unsettling. It disrupts the classical perception of ordered reality by failing to conform to accepted standards of mimesis and decorum. Moreover, it contravenes rationalism and any systemic use of thought. Relying instead on what Mikhail Bakhtin has called an “inner logic,” it contests the very premises of conventional logic, e.g., the principles of non-contradiction, difference and identity..This “logic of the grotesque,”it follows, employs contradiction and undecidability in order to reveal the insufficiency of traditional categories and dichotomous distinctions. Specifically it questions the opposition between the ludicrous and the fearsome, on the one hand, and the familiar and the uncanny, on the other. In turn even these two pairs of false opposites are shown to be intertwined in a network of agonistic relationships. Thus the grotesque, rather than being a play with terror, as John Ruskin describes it, or a “play with the absurd” as Wolfgang Kayser insists, might more appropriately be called a play with the very indeterminacy of existence. The grotesque reveals that nothing is as clear and distinct as we would like. Nothing is either totally identical with itself nor totally different from everything else. Indeed, where we would find boundaries and barriers, there are only OVERLAYS and IMBRICATIONS.
***********************
Sublime and Grotesque Shakespeare - Paradox
Upon the Effigies of my worthy Friend, the Author Master Willian Shakefspeare, and his Workes
Spectator, this Lifes Shaddow is; To see
The truer image and a livelier he
Turne Reader. But, observe his Comicke vaine,
Laugh, and proceed next to a Tragicke straine,
Then weepe; *So when thou find’st two contraries,
Two different passions from thy rapt soule rise*,
Say, (who alone effect such wonders could)
Rare Shake-speare to the life thou dost behold
