(October 19 2023, hlas)
Sublime Shakespeare Outrageous Oxford
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[Melanchthon] then provides a long note explaining in both Latin and German what Quintilian meant by HEXIS, which Melanchthon defines as an established facility, firma facilitas, which arises from both practice and a ‘natural aptitude’ (naturali quodam impetu).
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Jonson - ‘He [Shakespeare] was, indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.’
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Flow/flux/humour
No ‘firmness’ - flow/flux humour
No form, impression, stamp (writ in water)
Form (noun) - forma, species, FIGURA, conformatio, schema
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This FORMA/FIGURA that thou seest here put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-do the life:
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Imitating the IDEA of Shakespeare in the First Folio - Jonson imitates the master and writes against Nature
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Incoherent/unnatural Form of the Droeshout engraving - Jonson distinguishes between Opinion and Knowledge
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Dec 17 -
Men of Wit (Oxford) vs. Men of Sense (Jonson).
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Jonson - guided the theatre with a 'bridle' - Jonsonus Virbius
Wikipedia
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Nemesis (/ˈnɛməsɪs/; Ancient Greek: Νέμεσις, romanized: Némesis) also called Rhamnousia (or Rhamnusia; Ancient Greek: Ῥαμνουσία, romanized: Rhamnousía, lit. 'the goddess of Rhamnous'[1]), was the goddess who personified retribution for the sin of hubris; arrogance before the gods.
The name Nemesis is derived from the Greek word νέμειν, némein, meaning "to give what is due", from Proto-Indo-European *nem- "distribute".
She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a whip or a dagger.
As the goddess of proportion and the avenger of crime, she has as attributes a measuring rod (tally stick), a bridle, scales, a sword, and a scourge, and she rides in a chariot drawn by griffins.
The poet Mesomedes wrote a hymn to Nemesis in the early second century AD, where he addressed her:
Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice
and mentioned her "adamantine bridles" that restrain "the FRIVOLOUS INSOLENCES of mortals".
Narcissus
Nemesis enacted divine retribution on Narcissus for his VANITY. After he rejected the advances of the nymph Echo, Nemesis lured him to a pool where he caught sight of his own reflection and fell in love with it, eventually dying.
Insolent Oxford – against Custom/Nature
Droeshout – Inane Figure/INANUS
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Marston - Histriomastix
Mavortius berates Chrisoganus (Jonson) for unsucessfully attempting to impersonate Nemesis: to carry "just Rhamnusia's whip," (Jstor)
How you translating scholar? You can make
A stabbing Satire, or an Epigram,
And think you carry just Ramnusia's whip
To lash the patient: go, get you clothes,
Our free-born blood such apprehension loathes.
(3:257-58)
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Jonson
XLII. — THE MIND OF THE FRONTISPIECE
TO A BOOK.
From death and dark oblivion (near the same)
The mistress of man's life, grave History,
Raising the world to good and evil fame,
Doth vindicate it to eternity.
Wise Providence would so : that nor the good
Might be defrauded, nor the great secured,
But both might know their ways were understood,
When vice alike in time with virtue dured :
Which makes that, lighted by the beamy hand
Of Truth, that searcheth the most hidden springs,
And guided by Experience, whose straight wand
Doth mete, whose line doth sound the depth of things ;
She cheerfully supporteth what she rears,
Assisted by no strengths but are her own,
Some note of which each varied pillar bears,
By which, as proper titles, she is known
Time's witness, herald of Antiquity,
The light of Truth, and life of Memory.
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NOTE ON THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST FOLIO, THE WORKES OF BENIAMIN JONSON, ENGRAVED BY WILLIAM HOLE, PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM STANSBY, LONDON, 1616 Cambridge Edition Jonson
(snip)
...The design of Jonson’s title-page, like the title itself, might have put readers in mind of another famous folio that also appeared in 1616: The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince, Iames, by the grace of God King of Great Brittaine France & Ireland Defendor of the Faithe &c., printed by Robert Barker and John Bill. For Jonson to have described as his Workes a volume which included plays – a form of literature not highly esteemed at the time – was seen by some contemporaries as a pretentious, if not oxymoronic, gesture (Wit’s Recreation, 1640). In a further act of emulation, Jonson’s title-page appeared to echo the architectural design that Renold Elstracke had prepared for James’s frontispiece, which had similarly displayed a row of four columns below a decorated pediment, a central rectangular panel announcing the title and authorship of the work, an oval cartouche beneath it with details of printer and publisher, and two allegorical female figures standing within the alcoves at either side of the design. The two figures in James’s title-page represent RELIGIO (at the left) and PAX (at the right). In Jonson’s title-page, in a bold substitution, their places are taken by TRAGOEDIA and COMOEDIA respectively. Tragoedia stands before a damask curtain holding a sceptre and wearing a crown, a robe and tunic, and the high boots associated with ancient tragedy; a helmeted mask hangs on the column beside her. Comoedia wears the chiton (or ancient Greek tunic) along with slippers and a wreath in her hair, while a broad-brimmed hat adorns her mask on the nearby column. Perched jauntily on the ornate scrolls above the pediment are two further figures: a SATYR with pan-pipes and a PASTOR or shepherd holding a pipe to his lips, representing Satire and Pastoral respectively. Above them both, combining the costume of Tragoedia with the more comfortable footwear of Comoedia, stands the figure of TRAGI COMOEDIA.
Engraved around the pediment is a motto taken from Horace’s Ars Poetica (92), SI[N]GULA QUAEQU[E] LOCVM TENEANT S[O]RTITA DECEN[T]ER, **‘Let each style keep the appropriate place allotted to it.’** Considered in relation to Jonson’s dramatic practice, the motto and the accompanying design present something of a puzzle. Jonson had not, after all, managed to keep Satire and Comedy in their appropriate places, but had run them audaciously together in a new hybrid genre of his own invention, which he termed ‘comical satire’. Conversely, he had shown little interest in Tragicomedy, depicted here at the centre and pinnacle of the edifice, apparently sharing Sir Philip Sidney’s dislike of this ‘MONGREL’ form (Apology for Poetry, ed. Shepherd, 1965, 135). No example of tragicomedy is represented in the 1616 folio, nor is Jonson known ever to have attempted a work of this kind. Nor for that matter does any pastoral play appear in the folio.
(snip)
Beneath the title of the volume and the author’s name in the central panel of the design is another tag from Horace: neque, me vt miretur turba, laboro; / Contentus paucis lectoribus (Satires, 1.10.73–4). Jonson characteristically emphasizes, no doubt to the despair of William Stansby, his complete indifference to the market potential of the volume: *‘I do not strive to catch the wonder of the crowd, but am content with a few readers.’ *
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Horace, Ars Poetica (Socrates Acadia)
(EPISTLE TO THE PISOS)
Believe, ye Pisos, the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a sick man’s dreams, are all vain and fictitious: ***so that neither HEAD nor FOOT can correspond to ANY ONE FORM.*** “
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Preferring to settle for a few discerning readers/understanders Jonson distinguishes himself from fashionable Shakespeare and his unruly Italianate tragicomedies. That the hybrid Tragicomedy stands at the apex of the frontispiece of Jonson's 1616 works echoes countless Jonsonian lamentations at the arsey-versey state of the Ignorant Age he finds himself in. Tragicomedy's preeminent position in the frontispiece echoes the ascendant status of Ignorance in Jonson's milieu. Art has an enemy called Ignorance, according to Jonson, and the Court is the very Inn of Ignorance (Timber).
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Horace, Ars Poetica (Socrates Acadia)
(EPISTLE TO THE PISOS)
If a painter should wish to unite a horse’s neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs [of different animals] taken from every part [of nature], so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight. Believe, ye Pisos, the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a sick man’s dreams, are all vain and fictitious: *so that neither head nor foot can correspond to any one form*. “
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To the Great Example of H O N O U R and V E R T U E, the most Noble
W I L L I A M
E A R L of P E M B R O K E , L O R D C H A M B E R L A I N, &c.
M Y L O R D,
N so thick and dark an Ignorance, as now almost covers the Age, I crave leave to stand near your Light, and by that to be read. Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour and Thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these Jig-given times, to countenance a Legitimate Poem. I must call it so, against all noise of OPINION: from whose crude and airy Reports, I appeal to that great and singular Faculty of Judgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from Error. It is the First (of this Race) that ever I dedicated to any Person; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less Ambition. Now it approacheth your Censure chearfully, and with the same assurance that Innocency would appear before a Magistrate.
Your Lordships most faithful Honourer,
BEN. JOHNSON.
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The Feigned Commonwealth in the Poetry of Ben Jonson
Anthony Mortimer
Jonson (in Timber) defines the poet as one who feigns a commonwealth
and creates a "proper embattling" of VICE and VIRTUE. This
illuminates
the epigrams and commendatory poems where shades of moral gray are
replaced by black and white. The vicious are nameless because vice is
a vizard, destroying personality. The virtuous are named for
recognition and imitation.
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...A volume like Jonson's Epigrammes (1616) - a genre whose origin in
incised inscriptions led to its close association with the emblem in
Renaissance theorizing - might well be regarded as a kind of 'blind'
emblem book. Here was a collection of poems of praise and blame that a
Whitney or a Peacham would likely have been tempted to illustrate with
imprese, heraldic designs or other allegorical devices. As we have
seen, although Jonson translated Horace's Ars Poetica and transcribed
for his own use all the commonplaces of ut pictura poesis, he added
the note that "of the two, the Pen is more noble than the Pencill';
and he placed his faith as a poet in the moral "weight" of language,
in the unique "authority" of the word ***to speak the inner truth of
things to the understanding***, *not just to display surfaces of things
to the sense*. Jonson exercises this power magisterially in the
Epigrammes, where the highest praise for the virtuous is to honour
their names ("On Lucy Covntess of Bedford") while the severest
punishment for the vicious is either to rechristen them with their
true names ("On Sir Voluptuous Beast"), or else to withhold the
dignity of a name altogether ("On some-thing, that walkes some-
where"). IN Jonson's verbal commonwealth, people who are idolized by
the world for *cutting an IMPOSING FIGURE to the eye* - like the
nameless and inwardly "dead" lord who "made me a great face" - are too
morally insubstantial to deserve the attention of language. As it
reflects a distinction, not only between independence of mind and
servility, but between the inner fortitude of language and the
ephemeral luster of visual representation, Jonson's declaration "to
all, to whom I write" might serve as the motto for much of the best
English Poetry written during Quarles's lifetime: "I a Poet here, no
Herald am." (pp. 89-90) Ernest B. Gilman, _Iconoclasm and Poetry in
the English Reformation_
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Jonson
XI. -- ON SOMETHING, THAT WALKS SOMEWHERE.
At court I met it, in clothes brave enough,
To be a courtier ; and looks grave enough,
To seem a statesman : as I near it came,
It made me a great face ; I ask'd the name.
A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh, and blood,
And such from whom let no man hope least good,
For I will do none ; and as little ill,
For I will dare none : Good Lord, walk dead still
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Behold, they are all vanity; their works are NOTHING: their molten
images are WIND and CONFUSION.
- Isaiah 41:29
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Horace/Catiline epigraph:
*----------His non plebecula gaudet:
Verum equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas
Omnis, ad incertos oculos, & gaudia vana. Horat.
For such things please the common herd. But today all the pleasure
even of the knights has moved from what is heard to the *empty* (Note - vanus) delights
of the uncertain eye.'
Perseus Tufts Horace, Ars line 73
Homer has instructed us in what measure the achievements of kings, and chiefs, and direful war might be written.
Plaintive strains originally were appropriated to the unequal numbers [of the elegiac]: afterward [love and] successful desires were included. Yet what author first published humble elegies, the critics dispute, and the controversy still waits the determination of a judge.
Rage armed Archilochus with the iambic of his own invention. The sock and the majestic buskin assumed this measure as adapted for dialogue, and to silence the noise of the populace, and calculated for action.
To celebrate gods, and the sons of gods, and the victorious wrestler, and the steed foremost in the race, and the inclination of youths, and the free joys of wine, the muse has allotted to the lyre.
If I am incapable and unskillful to observe the distinction described, and the complexions of works [of genius], why am I accosted by the name of "Poet?" Why, out of false modesty, do I prefer being ignorant to being learned?
A comic subject will not be handled in tragic verse:4 in like manner the banquet of Thyestes will not bear to be held in familiar verses, and such as almost suit the sock. *Let each peculiar species [of writing] fill with decorum its proper place*. Nevertheless sometimes even comedy exalts her voice, and passionate Chremes rails in a tumid strain: and a tragic writer generally expresses grief in a prosaic style. Telephus and Peleus, when they are both in poverty and exile, throw aside their rants and gigantic expressions if they have a mind to move the heart of the spectator with their complaint.
1 The purport of these lines (from v. 73 to 86), and their connection with what follows, hath not been fully seen. They would express this general proposition, "That the several kinds of poetry essentially differ from each other, as may be gathered, not solely from their different subjects, but their different measures; which good sense, and an attention to the peculiar natures of each, instructed the great inventors and masters of them to employ." The use made of this proposition is to infer, "That therefore the like attention should be had to the different species of the same kind of poetry (v. 89, etc.), as in the case of tragedy and comedy (to which the application is made), whose peculiar differences and correspondences, as resulting from the natures of each, should, in agreement to the universal law of *decorum*, be exactly known and diligently observed by the poet."
2 Elegy was at first only a lamentation for the death of a person beloved, and probably arose frem the death of Adonis. It was afterward applied to the joys and griefs of lovers.
3 The pentameter, which Horace calls “exiguum,” Hor. Ars 77 because it has a foot less than the hexameter. For the same reason he says, “versibus impariter junctis.” Hor. Ars 75
4 “Indignatur item … Coena Thyestae.” Hor. Ars 90 “"Il met le souper de Thyeste pour toutes sortes de tragedies,"” says M. Dacier, with whom agrees the whole band of commentators: but why this subject should be singled out, as the representative of the rest, is nowhere explained by any of them. We may be sure, it was not taken up at random. The reason was, that the Thyestes of Ennius was peculiarly chargeable with the fault here censured; as is plain from a curious passage in the Orator, where Cicero, speaking of the loose numbers of certain poets, observes this, in particular, of the tragedy of Thyestes, “Similia sunt quaedam apud nostros: velut in Thyeste, “Quemnam te esse dicam? qui tarda in senectute,
” et quae sequuntur: quae, nisi cum tibicen accesserit, oratione sunt solutae simillimae”: which character exactly agrees to this of Horace, wherein the language of that play is censured, as flat and prosaic, and hardly rising above the plain narrative of an ordinary conversation in comedy. This allusion to a particular play, written by one of their best poets, and frequently exhibited on the Roman stage, gives great force and spirit to the precept, at the same time that it exemplifies it in the happiest manner. It seems further probable to me, that the poet also designed an indirect compliment to Varius, whose Thyestes we are told (Quinctil. l. x c. 1) was not inferior to any tragedy of the Greeks. This double intention of these lines well suited to the poet's general aim, which is seen through all his critical works, of beating down the excessive admiration of the old poets, and of asserting and advancing the just honors of the deserving moderns. It may further be observed, that the critics have not felt the force of the words “exponi” and “narrari” in this precept. They are admirably chosen to express the two faults condemned: the first implying a kind of pomp and ostentation in the language, which is therefore improper for the low subjects of comedy; and the latter, as I have hinted, a flat, prosaic expression, not above the cast of a common narrative, and therefore equally unfit for tragedy.
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Jonson on Shakespeare:
SOCKS/HAUGHTY
...or, when thy SOCKS were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or HAUGHTY Rome
Sent forth,
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Damning with faint praise:
His Exalted Grace the 17th Earl of Oxford - best for COMEDY and ENTERLUDE
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Jonson distinguished between true and false nobility. True nobility characterized by *virtue* not birth (virtue of ancestors). Aristocrats should not behave like SCURRA. Aristocrats should keep the proper place allotted them and not behave indecorously.
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Mirth Making_, Chris Holcomb
In his Ethics, Aristotle suggests that *changes in stylistic and substantive predilections indicate advances in civilization*. While enumerating the differences between the jesting of a BUFFOON and a witty gentleman, Aristotle compares each character type to Old and New Comedy, respectively: "The difference (between a buffoon and a gentleman) may be seen by comparing the old and modern comedies; the earlier dramatists found their fun in obscenity, the modern prefer innuendo, which marks a great advance in decorum; (4.8.6). This comparison suggest that smutty humor is less civilized than the more refined humor delivered through innuendo. (footnote pp. 199-200)
Horace, Ars Poetica (Socrates Acadia)
You, that write, either follow *tradition*, or invent such fables as are congruous to themselves.
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Word origin
C14: from Latin insolens, from in-1 + solēre to be accustomed
Middle English Compendium – michigan
insolence n.
Entry Info
Forms
insolence n. Also insolens.
Etymology
L insolentia & OF insolence.
Definitions (Senses and Subsenses)
1.
(a) Immoderate conduct, behavior contrary to law or custom; evil deeds; (b) the quality of being excessive or sinful, wickedness; (c) ?extravagance, indecency.
2.
Arrogance, haughtiness.
3.
(a) Misbehavior, bad manners; (b) a mischievous act; (c) folly, ignorance, inexperience.
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Horace, Ars Poetica
Mortal works must perish: much less can the honor and elegance of language be long-lived. Many words shall revive, which now have fallen off; and many which are now in esteem shall fall off, *if it be the will of custom*, in whose power is the decision and right and standard of language.
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Against Custom/Nature -Running Away From Nature
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