tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61460218983159270982024-03-14T02:11:33.838-07:00Bringing Deformed ForthThis Shakespeare Authorship blog considers evidence that Ben Jonson mocked Edward De Vere as the errant Amorphus of Cynthia’s Revels and that this portrayal parallels Jonson's attacks on the extravagance of Shakespeare's literary body. Shakespearean 'Errancy' also is figured in the disproportionate Droeshout Engraving - Jonson's Horatian 'branding' of Oxford's courtly Ovidian forms - entangling authorship with discourses of monstrosity, madness and the sublime. Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comBlogger217125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-63329621225613197742024-02-25T15:07:00.000-08:002024-02-25T15:07:52.191-08:00Worthy Sidney Unworthy Oxford<p> Haec ego mente olim laeva, studioque supino, Nequitiae posui vana trophaea meae. </p><p><br /></p><p>SONNET 72 - Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>O, lest the world should task you to recite</p><p>What merit lived in me, that you should love</p><p>After my death, -- dear love, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can nothing worthy prove;</p><p>Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,</p><p>To do more for me than mine own desert,</p><p>And hang more praise upon deceased I</p><p>Than niggard truth would willingly impart:</p><p>O, lest your true love may seem false in this,</p><p>That you for love speak well of me untrue,</p><p>My name be buried where my body is,</p><p>And live no more to shame nor me nor you.</p><p> For I am sham'd by that which I bring forth,</p><p> And so should you, to love things nothing worth.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>nequitia (Latin)</p><p>Alternative forms</p><p> • nēquitiēs</p><p>Origin & history</p><p>From nēquam ("worthless").</p><p>Pronunciation</p><p> • (Classical) IPA: /neːˈkʷi.ti.a/</p><p>Noun</p><p>nēquitia (genitive nēquitiae) (fem.)</p><p> 1. A bad moral quality; idleness, negligence, inactivity, remissness; worthlessness; vileness, depravity, wickedness</p><p> 2. Lightness, levity, inconsiderateness.</p><p> 3. Prodigality, profusion.</p><p> 4. Profligacy, wantonness, roguery, lewdness.</p><div>******************************</div><p>'The Sound of Virtue', Blair Worden</p><p>'Walsingham, writing against the Anjou match, intimates that Elizabeth's failure to 'depend' on God derives from a 'wavering' disposition. Basilius wavers too. His change 'with the wind' has many echoes in Sidney's ficetion, where time and again gusts of 'wind' sway characters into following fortune instead of virtue. Wind is a recurrent symbol of inconstancy, as when 'the inconstant people' of Iberia, faced with conflicting claims to the royal succession, 'set their sails with the favourable wind' of 'fortune'. The constant man, in Sidney's moral scheme and in the neo-Stoic scheme of his time, is inwardly indifferent to good or evil fortune, to the hollow ascendancies of chance. Subordinating passion, which if fortune's friend, to reason, which is virtue's, he is not swayed by the passions of hope and fear, which would lead him from virtue's path.The Duke of Anjou, that personification of inconstancy, is, Sidney tells the queen, 'carried away with every wind of hope'; so, in pursuit of the disguised Pyrocles, is Basilius, 'whose small sails the least wind did fill'; so, in the New Arcadia, is King Antiphilus, that 'weak fool', 'neither hoping nor fearing as he should', who is 'swayed...as every wind of passions puffed him', 'like a bladder swelled ready to break while it was full of the wind of prosperity'.</p><p>The Arcadia advises us that it is foolish, even wicked, to 'buil[d]...hopes on haps', to 'build...upon hope'. We saw that Sidney, with his party, wants the queen to 'build' upon virtue, for what is firmly 'built' will 'stand'. Wind, which blows impotently round the edifices of virtue, sweeps those of fortune away. Philanax explains to Basilius, and Sidney explains to Elizabeth, the strength of those who 'stand upon ' virtue: Musidorus, thralled to fortune, is reminded by Pamela of the frailty of persons who 'stand upon chance'.(p.138-9)</p><p>****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Wind, which blows impotently round the edifices of virtue, sweeps those of fortune away.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>Publique Ill Example: </p><p>Oxford appears UNNAMED as Sidney’s intemperate and insubstantial ADVERSARY in Greville’s _A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_(originally published as _Life of Sidney_)</p><p><br /></p><p> Fulke Greville clearly identifies Oxford as a follower of fortune. For Greville, Oxford is the 'personification of inconstancy' in the same way that Sidney regarded Anjou. Significantly, Oxford remains unnamed in Greville's account, which is part of a program of erasing the names of the unworthy from history. As the mighty opposite to the godly Sidney, Oxford was largely excluded from the militant Protestant domain of virtue, and therefore it was necessary that this man of pride and inconstancy be 'swept aside'.</p><p><br /></p><p>In his account, Greville stages the quarrel as Sidney's active resistance to the 'tyranny' and wrongs inflicted upon him by Oxford. This is consistent with Sidney's familiarity with continental Protestant resistance theorists such as Languet and Du-Plessis-Mornay and demonstrates Sidney embodiment of their values. Sidney would be an advisor to his Prince (Elizabeth), but he also demonstrates right action and his virtuous mind by resisting the self-loving humours of the 'tyrant' Oxford. </p><p>Greville writes:</p><p>'Tyrants allow of no scope, stamp, or standard, but their own WILL.'</p><p>*******************************</p><p>Greville, _A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_</p><p>...And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the Tennis- Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this Princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more ROUGHLY. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the MISTS of my Lords PASSIONS, SWOLN with the WINDE of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse amazement, or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was POSSESSED with: till at last with RAGE (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court. To this Sir Philip temperately answers; that if his Lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder Characters, perchance he might have led out those, that he should now find would not be driven out with any scourge of FURY. This answer (like a BELLOWS) blowing up the sparks of EXCESS already kindled, made my Lord scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of Puppy. In which progress of HEAT, as the TEMPEST grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breath out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day audience, in those private Galleries, whose windows looked into the Tennis-Court. They instantly drew all to this tumult: every sort of quarrels sorting well with their humors, especially this. Which Sir Philip perceiving, and rising with inward strength, by the prospect of a mighty faction against him; asked my Lord, with a loud voice, that which he heard clearly enough before. Who ( LIKE AN ECHO, that still multiplies by REFLEXIONS) repeated this Epithet of Puppy the second time. Sir Philip resolving in one answer to conclude both the attentive hearers, and PASSIONATE ACTOR, gave my Lord a Lie, impossible (as he averred) to be retorted; in respect all the world knows, Puppies are gotten by Dogs, and Children by men. Hereupon those GLORIOUS INEQUALITIES of FORTUNE in his Lordship were put to a kinde of pause, by a PRECIOUS INEQUALITY OF NATURE in this Gentleman. So that they both stood silent a while, like a dumb shew in a tragedy; till Sir Philip sensible of his own wrong, the forrain, and factious spirits that attended; and yet, even in this question between him, and his superior, tender to his Countries honour; with some words of sharp accent, led the way abruptly out of the Tennis-Court; as if so unexpected an accident were not fit to be decided any farther in that place. Whereof the great Lord making another sense, continues his play, WITHOUT any ADVANTAGE of REPUTATION; as by the standard of humours in those times it was conceived.</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>In his account of the Tennis court quarrel in his _ Life of Sidney_, Greville not only features Oxford as a 'tyrannical', unworthy foil to the glittering virtues of Sidney; he also painstakingly details (justifies?) the reasons why Oxford's name and fame were deserving of oblivion. As the hereditary Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon, he was perfectly placed to participate in the ignominious backwater fame of the scurra 'Shakespeare'. Jonson assisted by providing the ambisinister Droeshout figure (incapable of 'correct' writing) and further deconstructed Oxford's literary fame with a mock encomium to 'Shakespeare' formed from a cloud of insubstantial, windy metaphors. Jonson's breathless departure from his normal character in the FF is intended to be a form of poetic justice - Nemesis/Jonson imitates Shakespeare's forma and figura thereby blowing Oxford up (presumably with his own piffle).</p><p>*************************</p><p>Vanity/Trifles/Empty Mould:</p><p><br /></p><p>Wind, which blows impotently round the edifices of virtue, sweeps those of fortune away.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Sidney's worthy immortality 'stands' as an edifice of militant Protestant virtue. Oxford was swept away (or at best, immortalized with a fart).</p><p><br /></p><p>"Who worship Fame, commit Idolatry,</p><p>"Make Men their God, Fortune and Time their worth,</p><p>"Forme, but reforme not, meer hypocrisie,</p><p>"By shadowes, onely shadowes bringing forth,</p><p>"Which must, as blossomes, fade ere true fruit springs,</p><p>"(Like voice, and eccho) ioyn'd; yet diuers things. -- Greville</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Greville, _Dedication_:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>...Neither am I (for my part) so much in love with this life, nor believe so little in a better to come, as to complain of God for taking him [Sidney], and such like exorbitant worthyness from us: fit (as it were by an Ostracisme) to be divided, and not incorporated with our corruptions: yet for the sincere affection I bear to my Prince, and Country, my prayer to God is, that this Worth, and Way may not fatally be buried with him; in respect, that both before his time, and since, experience hath published the usuall discipline of greatnes to have been tender of it self onely; making HONOUR a triumph, or rather TROPHY OF DESIRE, set up in the eyes of Mankind, either to be worshiped as IDOLS, or else as Rebels to perish under her glorious oppressions. *Notwithstanding, when the pride of flesh, and power of favour shall cease in these by death, or disgrace; what then hath time to register, or fame to publish in these great mens names, that will not be offensive, or infectious to others? What Pen without blotting can write the story of their deeds? Or what Herald blaze their Arms without a blemish? And as for their counsels and projects, when they come once to light, shall they not live as noysome, and loathsomely above ground, as their Authors carkasses lie in the grave? So as the return of such greatnes to the world, and themselves, can be but private reproach, publique ill example, and a fatall scorn to the Government they live in. Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he affected was built upon true Worth; esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Trophy of Desire - Oxford Will/Desire</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Greville's 'Tomb':</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>FOLK GREVILL</p><p>SERVANT to Queene Elizabeth</p><p>Conceller to King James</p><p>Frend to Sir Philip Sidney.</p><p>TROPHAEUM PECCATI</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Rewards of Earth</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>REWARDS of earth, Nobility and Fame,</p><p>To senses glory and to conscience woe,</p><p>How little be you for so great a name?</p><p>Yet less is he with men what thinks you so.</p><p>For earthly power, that stands by fleshly wit,</p><p>Hath banished that truth which should govern it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nobility, power's golden fetter is,</p><p>Wherewith wise kings subjection do adorn,</p><p>To make man think her heavy yoke a bliss</p><p>Because it makes him more than he was born.</p><p>Yet still a slave, dimm'd by mists of a crown,</p><p>Let he should see what riseth, what pulls down.</p><p><br /></p><p>Fame, that is but good words of evil deeds,</p><p>Begotten by the harm we have, or do,</p><p>Greatest far off, least ever where it breeds,</p><p>We both with dangers and disquiet woo;</p><p>And in our flesh, the vanities' false glass,</p><p>*We thus deceiv'd adore these calves of brass*.</p><p><br /></p><p>Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>From The Oxford Handbook of Milton</p><p>Milton's 'manly' self-regulation:</p><p>__________________________________</p><p>"'Haec ego mente' denounces the elegies, composed at Cambridge in 1626-9, as 'trifling memorials of my levity, which, with a warped mind and base spirit, I once raised.' "Seduced by the superficial attractions of such verse at Cambridge, Milton assures his readers that now 'my heart is frozen solid, packed around with thick ice'.</p><p>__________________________________</p><p>Trifling Memorials of Levity - see To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare </p><p>*********************************</p><p>Asa D. Olson</p><p>The Form of Selfhood: elegy and Self-Presentation in Early Modern England (Dissertation 2018)</p><p><br /></p><p>Introduction: A Worthless Genre </p><p>Haec ego mente olim laeva, studioque supino, Nequitiae posui vana trophaea meae. </p><p>These trifles are the empty monuments of my idleness that I set down, at one time, with silly reason and negligent fire. —John Milton’s Epigraph to his Elegiarum Liber, ll. 1-2 </p><p><br /></p><p>The lines above conclude John Milton’s book of elegies as they are published in his 1645 Poems. Whether this epigraph’s opening lines refer to only the preceding poem (“Elegia Septima”) or the entire collection is a topic of contention; however, the reference to Milton’s subject of his nequitia stands out for several reasons. Milton uses the word with some contempt and is actually asserting his dutiful reformation of morals since his youth, but the word is one that the Roman love elegists Propertius and Ovid embrace in their own collections. In the opening poem of his second book of Amores, for example, Ovid declares himself to be “nequitiae Naso poeta meae,” “Naso, the poet of my wantonness” (Amores 2.1.2). Propertius likewise uses the word in his poem to Tullus, who invites him along on a journey for glory through arms (Prop. 1.6). Propertius rejects the honorable path for love, requesting from Tullus: “me sine, quem semper voluit fortuna iacere, / huic animam extremam reddere nequitiae,” “Give leave to me, whom fortune has always desired to lie in ruins, to surrender my dying breath to this worthlessness” (1.6.25-26). Even in the 9 extant lines of Gallus, the earliest of the Roman elegists, we find the word, seemingly attributed to his beloved Lycoris. Nequitiae, in its prominence, is intricately entangled with the definition of elegy. It denotes, as my translations so far have shown, a variety of meanings, including idleness, wantonness, and worthlessness. It can reflect the elegists’ embrace of otium (idle leisure) over officium (duty), their preference for love over anything else, and their apathy toward modern values. Indeed, “value” is what is at stake in these examples, which declare the genre’s worthlessness and request that the reader decide whether these poems do indeed have any value. In Roman elegy, one frequent topos in which the question of “worth” is raised is the recusatio or the refusal to write in a higher genre, especially epic. Prop. 1.6, for example, engages with this issue when contrasting the soldier with the lover. This contrast between the soldier and lover is no far cry from the contrast of the poet of war and the poet of love, the subject of the subsequent elegy, Prop. 1.7. The idea in such poems is that the epic poet justifies his literary activity by performing some act of civic duty by writing about politics or history, especially in early imperial Rome when epic material had much to do with issues of nationhood and sovereignty. To some extent, the epic poet could be seen as engaging in a form of civic officium or at least otium negotiosum (a busy, justified sort of leisure). In elegiac recusationes, however, the poet usually rejects a request or opportunity to compose epic in order to continue writing elegies and pursuing love, whose subject (especially in contrast with epic) appears to be rather trivial. This contention between epic and elegiac utility is the subject of the first chapter of this dissertation, where I suggest a reason for the polemic’s prominence; however, this contention exists today too in literary scholarship. With all our attempts to disrupt notions of generic hierarchy and concepts of the canon, epic still maintains that privilege over elegy, and in studies of classical reception—the appropriation and 3 adaptation of ancient Greek and Roman texts—scholars still favor the politics of epic over all that elegy offers, at least as it pertains to early modern England.</p><p>*****************************</p><p>Steven May,_ The Elizabethan Courtier Poets_</p><p><br /></p><p>The New Lyricism</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>During the 1570's a body of courtier verse emerged that revived the emphasis upon love poetry as it had been introduced to the Tudor court by Wyatt and Surrey. Upon this revitalized foundation, amorous courtier poetics developed without interruption to the end of the reign and beyond. Unlike courtier verse of the 1560's, the new lyricism modeled itself primarily upon post-classical continental authors, from Petrarch to the Pl?iade. Attention to the classics remained strong, of course, but the ancients were assimilated into the new poetics almost exclusively in the vernacular. The courtier's immediate experience is often reflected in this poetry, although the exact circumstances behind it cannot always be identified, nor does this later work necessarily grow out of actual experience. From a literary standpoint this is perhaps the most important shift away from the trends of the 1560's. Subsequent courtier verse placed a greater emphasis upon artifice in its treatment of occasional subjects, while it increasingly strayed away from real events as the most respectable inducements for writing poetry. The movement was toward fiction and the creation of poems to be valued for their own sake, not merely for their commemorative function. As courtier poets ventured anew into the realms of fiction, they made possible once again the creation of a genuine literature of the court. Progress toward a golden age of lyricism was slow, especially with regard to form and the technical aspects of composition, but the shift in direction occurred suddenly during the period between roughly 1570 and 1575.</p><p><br /></p><p>Although Dyer has been considered the premier Elizabethan courtier poet, that is, the first to compose love lyrics there, the available evidence confers this distinction upon the earl of Oxford. His early datable work conforms, nevertheless, to one of the established functions for poetry practiced by Ascham and Wilson. IN 1572, Oxford turned out commendatory verses for a translation of Cardano's _Comfort_, published in 1573 by his gentleman pensioner friend, Thomas Bedingfield. This poem differs from earlier efforts of the kind not so much because it appeared in English (as had Ascham's verses for Blundeville's book), but because his verses are so self-consciously poetic. The earl uses twenty-six lines to develop his formulaic exempla: Bedingfield's good efforts are enjoyed by others just as laborers, masons, bees, and so forth also work for the profit of others. Oxford flaunts a COPIOUS rhetoric in this poem in contrast with the more direct, unembellished commendatory verses of his predecessors. His greatest innovation, however, lies in his application of the same qualities of style to the eight poems assigned to him in the 1576 Paradise of Dainty Devices, pieces that Oxford must have composed before 1575.</p><p><br /></p><p>DeVere's eight poems in the _Paradise_ create a dramatic break with everything known to have been written at the Elizabethan court at that time...The diversity of Oxford's subjects, including his varied analyses of the lover's state, were practically as unknown to contemporary out-of -court writer as they were to courtiers.</p><p><br /></p><p>Oxford's birth and social standing at court in the 1570's made him a model of aristocratic behaviour. He was, for instance, accused of introducing Italian gloves and other such fripperies at court; his example would have lent respectability even to so trivial a pursuit as the writing of love poetry. Thus, while it is possible that Dyer was writing poetry as early as the 1560's, his earliest datable verse, the complaint sung to the queen at Woodstock in 1575, may itself have been inspired by Oxford's work in the same vein. Dyer's first six poems in Part II are the ones he is most likely to have composed before his association with Philip Sidney. ...Yet even if all six (of Dyer's poems) were written by 1575, Oxford would still emerge as the chief innovator due to the range of his subject matter and the variety of its execution. ...By contrast, Dyer was a specialist...Dyer's output represents a great departure from courtier verse of the 1560's, and several of his poems were more widely circulated and imitated than any of Oxford's; still, the latter's experimentation provided a much broader foundation for the development of lyric poetry at court. (pp. 52-54)</p><p>*********************************</p><p>Bolton, Hypercritica</p><p>Among the greatest wants in our ancient Authours, are the wants of Art and Style, which as they add to the lustre of the Works and Delights of the Reader; yet add they nothing to the Truth; which they so esteemed, as they seem to have regarded nothing else. *For without Truth, Art and Style come into the Nature of Crimes by Imposture*. It is an act of high Wisdom, and not of Eloquence only, to write the History of so great, and noble a People as the English. for the Causes of things are not only wonderfully wrapt one within the other, but place oftentimes far above the ordinary Reach's of human Wit; and he who relates Events, without their Premisses and Circumstances, deserves not the name of an Historian; as being like to him who numbers the Bones of a Man anatomized, or presenteth unto us the Bare Skeleton, without declaring the Nature of the Fabrick or teaching the Use of Parts. (Bolton, Hypercritica)</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Judging Spectators</p><p>Peter Carlson</p><p>“It was well noted by the late L. St. Alban, that the study of words is the first distempter of Learning’, Vaine matter the second: And a third distemper is deceit, or the likenesse of truth: Imposture held up by credulity. All these are the Cobwebs of learning, and to let them grow in us, is either sluttish or foolish.” (Jonson, Discoveries)</p><p>In Bacon’s catalogue, Jonson sees and confirms his own distrust of linguistic masks. “Imposture held up by credulity” – which could serve as an abstract for the action of any of his plays – describes the process of mistaking a fiction for a reality” it is seeing what we wish to see rather than analyzing and judging. “imposture,” for Jonson, is the vice of theatricality, but if we can temporarily neutralize the negative thrust he has introduced, ‘Bacon’s phrase might describe the terms under which we enter any theater, that is, a willing suspension of disbelief. Jonson’s suspicion, then, extends to the most basic premises of his medium, and the inner antagonism generated by this doubt can dind release only in the continual and self-contradictory dialectic of self-justification and self- revelation; “hee is call’s a Poet…that fayneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For, the Fable and Fiction is (as it were) the forme and Soule of any Poeticall worke, or Poeme”; but “nothing is lasting that is fain’d, it will have another face then it had ere long: As Euripides saith, No lye ever growes old.”</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>English translation of Bolton's salute to Jonson in Volpone:</p><p>To Each University, Concerning Benjamin Jonson.</p><p><br /></p><p>This man is the first, who studying Greek antiquities and the monuments of Latin theatre as an explorer, by his happy boldness will provide the Britons with a learned drama: O twin stars favour his great undertakings. The ancients were content with praise of either [genre]; this Sun of the Stage handles the cothurnus [i.e. tragedy] and the sock [i.e. comedy] with equal skill: Volpone, thou givest us jokes; thou, Sejanus, gavest us tears. But is any lament that Jonson's muses have been cramped within a narrow limit, say, you [universities], on the contrary: 'O most miserable [people], who, though English, know the english language inadequately or know it not at all (as if [you were] born across the sea), the poet will grow with time, he will transform his native land, and himself become the English Apollo.' </p><p>E. Bolton</p><p>********************************</p><p>Tyrants allow of no scope, stamp, or standard, but their own WILL (Greville):</p><p><br /></p><p>Infected Will:</p><p>Sidney - Neither let it be deemed too bold a comparison to balance the highest point of man's wit with the efficacy of nature; but rather give right honor to the heavenly maker of that maker, who having made man to his own likeness, set him beyond and over all the work of that second nature, which in nothing he shows so much as in poetry, when with the force of a divine breath he brings things forth far surpassing her doings, with no small argument to the incredulous of that first accursed fall of Adam, since our erected wit makes us know what perfection is, but our infected will keeps us from reaching unto it.</p><p>******************************</p><p>Infected Will - Shakespeare Sonnet 154:</p><p><br /></p><p>The little Love-god lying once asleep,</p><p><br /></p><p>Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,</p><p>Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep</p><p>Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand</p><p>The fairest votary took up that fire</p><p>Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;</p><p>And so the General of hot desire</p><p>Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.</p><p>This brand she quenched in a cool well by,</p><p>Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,</p><p>Growing a bath and healthful remedy,</p><p>For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,</p><p>Came there for cure and this by that I prove,</p><p>Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>SONNET LXXVIII. -- Greville</p><p>THe little Hearts, where light-wing'd PASSION raignes,</p><p>More easily vpward, as all frailties doe;</p><p>Like Strawes to Ieat, these follow Princes veines,</p><p>And so, by pleasing, doe corrupt them too.</p><p>Whence as their raising proues Kings can create;</p><p>So States proue sicke, where toyes beare Staple-rates.</p><p><br /></p><p>Like Atomi they neither rest, nor stand,</p><p>Nor can erect; because they NOTHING be</p><p>But baby-thoughts, fed with time-presents hand,</p><p>Slaues, and yet darlings of Authority;</p><p>ECCHO'S of wrong; SHADOWES of Princes might;</p><p>Which glow-worme-like, by shining, show 'tis night.</p><p><br /></p><p>Curious of fame, as foule is to be faire;</p><p>Caring to seeme that which they would not be;</p><p>Wherein CHANCE helpes, since Praise is powers heyre,</p><p>Honor the creature of Authoritie:</p><p>So as borne high, in giddie Orbes of grace,</p><p>These Pictures are, which are indeed but Place.</p><p><br /></p><p>And as the Bird in hand, with freedome lost,</p><p>Serues for a stale, his fellowes to betray:</p><p>So doe these Darlings rays'd at Princes cost</p><p>Tempt man to throw his libertie away;</p><p>And sacrifice Law, Church, all reall things</p><p>To soare, not in his owne, but Eagles wings.</p><p><br /></p><p>Whereby, like AEsops dogge, men lose their meat,</p><p>To bite at GLORIOUS SHADOWES, which they see;</p><p>And let fall those strengths which make all States great</p><p>By free Truths chang'd to seruile flatterie.</p><p>Whence, while men gaze vpon this blazing starre,</p><p>Made slaues, not subiects, they to Tyrants are.</p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-3902682098090907622024-01-01T17:30:00.000-08:002024-01-01T17:30:26.016-08:00The Lineaments of the Droeshout Engraving<p> Imitating Authors, Colin Burrow</p><p><br /></p><p>The word forma [...] has a complex history. It appears in its earliest usages to have meant something like ‘mould’; hence it shares its genealogy in part with the Greek word tupos, as a term for a shape which can give rise to multiple instances of the same shape, and which gives rise in due course to our use of the term ‘type-faces’ to describe the mechanical reproduction of texts. But in Melanchthon’s usage it takes on some of the senses which we would now include within the word ‘form’ when it is used of a text. Given Melanchthon’s preoccupation with the structuring of discourse, it is likely that he principally means by forma Cicero’s habitual methods of collocation, Cicero’s way of putting things together, or the structuring principles which underlie Cicero’s writing. (p.214).</p><p>(snip)</p><p>The association between the ‘form’ of a writer’s speech and his rhetorical ‘character’ is given a further tweak in Melanchthon’s later work. His final major statement about imitation came in a commentary on Quintilian. This was not published until 1570, a decade after his death. In the Commonefactio de imitatione appended to that commentary Melanchthon states that the imitator should hold an ‘Idea’ of Cicero in their mind (“Then the Idea of a certain pure and ancient orator will surround our soul, from which we should not depart far, even if we cannot straight away *express the lineaments* of one particular example’; [snip latin text]. This again recalls the Platonism of Cicero’s Orator (2.7-10), AND BY USING THE VERB ‘EXPRIMERE’, EXPRESS, PRINT OUT, Melanchthon suggests that the aim of imitation is to actualize the impress of a Platonic forma. By using that work ‘lineamenta’ – outlines, characterizing lines of a face – he may display his continuing debt to Pico’s letter to Bembo.</p><p> Melanchthon elsewhere claims that an ‘idea’ derives from an act of intellection in which elements are taken from a range of instances, rather than being an abstraction which subsists in a supra-sensible world outside the mind. [...] The ‘idea’ of an orator is consequently in effect an abstract pattern of a rhetorician’s practice which is derived from observation of that practice. It is a mental conception of an orator as a particular way of ordering material, which can in turn be ‘expressed’ by another orator; and when positioned within Melanchthon’s earlier writing on imitatio it suggest that he came close to identifying forma with collocatio, or an author’s habitual practices of disposition and structure. (p. 216-217)</p><p>*******************************</p><p>Jonson, Every Man In:</p><p>Come,</p><p>wrong not the quality of your desert, with looking</p><p>downward, Couz; but hold up your Head, so: and</p><p>let the IDEA of what you are, be portray'd i' your Face, </p><p>that Men may read i' your Physnomy, (Here, within</p><p>this place is to be seen the true, rare, and accomplish'd Mon-</p><p>ster, or miracle of Nature, which is all one.) What</p><p>think you of this, Couz?</p><p>****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Imitating Authors, Colin Burrow</p><p>The passage at the very start of Book 10 of the Institutes in which Quintilian talks about the hexis, the habitual practices, of an earlier orator (a passage which had been missing from Petrarch’s manuscript of Quintilian)consequently was vital to post-Erasmian thinking about imitation in Northern Europe. In seeking to replicate the practice of an earlier author an imitator might also refine and express the *idea* of him which had been extrapolated from his practice, of which the dominant characteristic is his *forma*, the structure of his style at all levels, from the arrangement of the speech right down to the individual *kola* that make up his writing and his sequencing of rhetorical figures. Cicero has a particular way of putting things together, a kind of collocatio and, at a higher level, a particular kind of *cohaerentia* which gives rise to a particular kind of form – a ‘form’ which can be both abstracted from the works and imitated by a student who laboured to acquire a hexis analogous to that of Cicero. (p.217)</p><p>**********************</p><p>A Speech according to Horace. --Jonson</p><p>(snip)</p><p>And could (if our great Men would let their Sons</p><p>Come to their Schools,) show 'em the use of Guns.</p><p>And there instruct the noble English Heirs</p><p>In Politick, and Militar Affairs;</p><p>But he that should perswade, to have this done</p><p>For Education of our Lordings; Soon</p><p>Should he hear of Billow, Wind, and Storm,</p><p>From the Tempestuous Grandlings, who'll inform</p><p>Us, in our bearing, that are thus, and thus,</p><p>Born, bred, allied? what's he dare tutor us?</p><p>Are we by Book-worms to be aw'd? must we</p><p>Live by their Scale, that dare do nothing free?</p><p>Why are we Rich, or Great, except to show</p><p>All licence in our Lives? What need we know?</p><p>More then to praise a Dog? or Horse? or speak</p><p>The Hawking Language? or our Day to break</p><p>With Citizens? let Clowns, and Tradesmen breed</p><p>Their Sons to study Arts, the Laws, the Creed:</p><p>We will believe like Men of our own Rank,</p><p>In so much Land a year, or such a Bank,</p><p>That turns us so much Monies, at which rate</p><p>Our Ancestors impos'd on Prince and State.</p><p>Let poor Nobility be vertuous: We,</p><p>Descended in a Rope of Titles, be</p><p>From Guy, or Bevis, Arthur, or from whom</p><p>The Herald will. Our Blood is now become,</p><p>Past any need of Vertue. Let them care,</p><p>That in the Cradle of their Gentry are;</p><p>To serve the State by Councels, and by Arms:</p><p>We neither love the Troubles, nor the harms.</p><p>What love you then? your Whore? what study? Gate,</p><p>Carriage, and Dressing. There is up of late</p><p>The ACADEMY, where the Gallants meet ——</p><p>What to make Legs? yes, and to smell most sweet,</p><p>All that they do at Plays. O, but first here</p><p>They learn and study; and then practise there.</p><p>But why are all these Irons i' the Fire</p><p>Of several makings? helps, helps, t' attire</p><p>His Lordship. That is for his Band, his Hair</p><p>This, and that Box his Beauty to repair;</p><p>This other for his Eye-brows; hence, away,</p><p>I may no longer on these PICTURES stay,</p><p>These Carkasses of Honour; Taylors blocks,</p><p>Cover'd with Tissue, whose prosperity mocks</p><p>The fate of things: whilst totter'd Vertue holds</p><p>Her broken Arms up, to their **EMPTY MOULDS**.</p><p>******************************</p><p>Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels</p><p>Mercury: He that is with him is Amorphus</p><p>a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds</p><p>of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. </p><p>*********************</p><p>Jonson, Discoveries</p><p>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. </p><p>*************************</p><p>Jonson, Discoveries</p><p>DE SHAKESPEARE NOSTRAT[I].—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,” as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power: would the *RULE* of it had been so too. </p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>De corruptela morum -- There cannot be one colour of the MIND; another of the wit. If the mind be staid, grave, and composed, the wit is so; that vitiated, the other is blown, and deflowered. Do we not see, if the mind languish, the members are dull? Look upon an effeminate person: his very gait confesseth him. If a man be fiery, his motion is so; if angry, 'tis troubled, and violent. So that we may conclude wheresoever manners, and fashions are corrupted, language is. It imitates the public riot. The EXCESS of feasts, and apparel, are the notes of a sick state; and the wantonness of language, of a sick MIND.</p><p><br /></p><p>(Discoveries 1171) Jonson </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare's England - Jenny C. Mann</p><p>...Although early English rhetorics use the ideal of a "common" English eloquence to dedicate their own productions in service of national unity, these critiques mobilize social division in order to disparage rhetoric as the province of the uneducated and effeminate.</p><p>Yet despite their confident repudiation of rhetorical ornament, these statements against figurative language nevertheless evince a worried tone. That is because the devices of rhetoric can so easily captivate the attention of those whom Eachard describes as "the common sort of people"; such "Metaphor-mongers" are easily mesmerized by speeches "bespangled" with "Glitterings". For advocates of the new experimental philosophy, this alluring rhetorical ornament threatens to turn all philosophy into mere romance. Parker outlines such an argument in a attack on the Cambridge Platonists, speaking in his other guise as a natural philosopher:</p><p>My next Accusation is, that instead of pure and genuine Reason, they abound so much with gaudy and extravagant Phancies. I that am too simple or too serious to be cajol'd with the frenzies of a bold and ungovern'd Imagination cannot be perswaded to think the Quaintest plays and sportings of wit to be any true and real knowledge. I can easily allow their Discourses the Title of Philosophical Romances, (a sort of more ingenious impertinencies) and 'tis with this estimate I would have them read: But when they pretend to be Nature's Secretaries...and yet put us off with nothing but rampant Metaphors, and Pompous Allegories, and other splended but empty Schemes of speech, I must crave leave to account them (to say not worse ) Poets and Romancers. True Philosophie is too sober to descend to these wildnesses of Imagination, and too Rational to be cheated by them. She scorns, when she is in chase of Truth, to quarry upon trifling gaudy Phantasms: Her Game is *things not words*.</p><p>****************************************</p><p>Jonson, Cynthia's Revels</p><p>P R O L O G U E.</p><p>IF gracious silence, sweet attention,</p><p>Quick sight, and quicker apprehension,</p><p>(The lights of Judgments throne) shine any where;</p><p>Our doubtful Author hopes this is their Sphere.</p><p>And therefore opens he himself to those;</p><p>To other weaker Beams his labours close:</p><p>As loth to prostitute their Virgin strain,</p><p>To ev'ry vulgar and adult'rate Brain,</p><p>In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath,</p><p>She shuns the print of any beaten PATH;</p><p>And proves new ways to come to learned Ears:</p><p>Pied ignorance she neither loves nor, fears.</p><p>Nor hunts she after popular Applause,</p><p>Or fomy praise, that drops from common Jaws:</p><p>The Garland that she wears, their bands must twine,</p><p>Who can both censure, understand, define</p><p>What merit is: Then cast those piercing Rays,</p><p>Round as a Crown, instead of honour'd Bays,</p><p>About his Poesie; which (he knows) affords</p><p>Words, above action: MATTER, ABOVE WORDS. </p><p><br /></p><p>***************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, Discoveries</p><p>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*. Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider *feature and composition* in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it. ”</p><p>**************************</p><p>Jonson, Discoveries</p><p><br /></p><p>De Poetica. - We have spoken sufficiently of oratory, let us now make a diversion to poetry. Poetry, in the primogeniture, had many PECCANT HUMOURS, and is made to have more now, through the levity and inconstancy of men' s judgments. Whereas, indeed, it is the most prevailing eloquence, and of the most exalted caract. Now the discredits and disgraces are many it hath received through men' s study of depravation or calumny; their practice being to give it diminution of credit, by lessening the professor' s estimation, and making THE AGE afraid of their liberty; and THE AGE is grown so tender of her fame, as she calls all writings aspersions.</p><p><br /></p><p>That is the state word, the PHRASE OF COURT (placentia college), which some call PARASITES PLACE, the INN OF IGNORANCE.</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Disarticulating Fantasies: Figures of Speech, Vices, and the Blazon in Renaissance English Rhetoric</p><p>Grant Williams</p><p> ...In his section on ornament, Puttenham suggests the process by which figures permit the subject to gain an illusory ascendancy over the self: they equip the writer or speaker with the means to burnish and fashion his language into a “style” (119), which amounts to nothing less than “the image of man [mentus character] for man is but his mind” (124). This argument about style being the image of the speaker/writer is a popular topos in Renaissance writing and finds its most lucid expression in Jonson’s Timber, or Discoveries, a text, like Puttenham’s, which conjoins rhetoric with poetry. Quoting in the margin Vives’s terse expression “Oratio imago animi,” that is, “speech is the image of the soul,” Jonson asserts,</p><p>No glasse renders a mans forme or likeness, so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man: and as we consider feature, and composition in a man; so words in Language: in the greatness, aptnesse, sound, structure, and HARMONY of it. (78)</p><p>The implications of this Renaissance topos are obvious: since style is the self, the instruments for shaping, controlling and beautifying that style – the figures – empower the individual to fashion his own identity.</p><p><br /></p><p> *********************************</p><p>Jonson – on the Droeshout Engraving FF</p><p><br /></p><p>To the Reader.</p><p>This Figure, that thou here seest put,</p><p>It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,</p><p>Wherein the Graver had a strife</p><p>with Nature, to out-doo the life :</p><p>O, could he but have drawne his wit</p><p>As well in brasse, as he hath hit</p><p>His face ; the Print would then surpasse</p><p>All, that was ever writ in brasse.</p><p>But, since he cannot, Reader, looke</p><p>Not on his Picture, but his Booke.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>Intro Cynthia’s Revels, Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>"Beware then thou render Mens</p><p>FIGURES truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than</p><p>to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and</p><p>no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. (Ben Jonson, _Cynthia's Revels_) </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************</p><p><br /></p><p>Out of joint Figure:</p><p><br /></p><p>Notes to Horace, Art of Poetry:</p><p><br /></p><p>The word PRODIGIALITER apparently refers to that fictitious monster, under which the poet allusively shadows out the idea of absurd and inconsistent composition. The application, however, differs in this, that, whereas the monster, there painted, was intended to expose the extravagance of putting together incongruous parts, without any reference to a whole, this prodigy is designed to characterize a whole, but deformed by the ill-judged position of its parts. The former is like a monster, whose several members as of right belonging to different animals, could by no disposition be made to constitute one consistent animal. The other, like a landscape which hath no objects absolutely irrelative, or irreducible to a whole, but which a wrong position of the parts only renders prodigious. Send the boar to the woods, and the dolphin to the waves; and the painter might show them both on the same canvas.</p><p>Each is a violation of the law of unity, and a real monster: the one, because it contains an assemblage of natural incoherent parts; the other, because its parts, though in themselves coherent, are misplaced and disjointed.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Greville, An Inquisition vpon Fame and Honour.</p><p><br /></p><p>Who worship Fame, commit Idolatry,</p><p>Make Men their God, Fortune and Time their worth,</p><p>Forme, but reforme not, meer hypocrisie,</p><p>By shadowes, onely shadowes bringing forth,</p><p>Which must, as blossomes, fade ere true fruit springs,</p><p>(Like voice, and eccho) ioyn'd; yet diuers things.</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation, Richard Halpern</p><p><br /></p><p>Looking back somewhat sourly on the culture of the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon wrote that it was marked by</p><p><br /></p><p>An affectionate study of eloquence and copie of speech, which then began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the Phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgement…Then did Car of Cambridge, and Ascham, with their lectures and writings, almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were studious unto that delicate and polished kind of learning…In sum, the whole inclination and bent of those times was rather towards copie than weight.</p><p><br /></p><p>What concerns Bacon here is not an imbalance within literary style but the proliferation of stylistic elegance throughout all of serious discourse. Paradoxically, the very autonomy of style allows it to colonize and dominate all other discursive functions; and as if to illustrate this peril, Bacon’s own language falls temporarily under the spell of style, succumbing to a delight in the “round and clear composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses.” This sudden access of eloquence is not a return of the repressed, however, but a witty tribute to the lures of a humanist tradition from which Bacon only halfheartedly tried to extricate himself.</p><p> In assailing what one critic has called the “stylistic explosion” [Richard Lanham] of the sixteenth century, Bacon questions the values of the English literary Renaissance itself. Ciceronianism was only one small part of this movement, but more than any other it came to represent a mysterious addiction to style. Gabriel Harvey famously described his own bout with Ciceronianism in the confessional manner of a recovering alcoholic:</p><p><br /></p><p>…..I valued words more than content, language more than thought, the one art of speaking more than the thousand subjects of knowledge; I preferred the mere style of Marcus Tully to all the postulates of philosophers and mathematicians; I believed that the bone and sinew of imitation lay in my ability to choose as many brilliant and elegant words as possible to reduce them into order, and to connect them together in a rhythmical period.</p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>It is no accident…that Erasmus, who reorganized the teaching of Latin around the concept of style, also wrote the first modern book of manners. De civilitate morum puerilium (1530) taught children the codes of civil behaviour as a natural complement to the achievements of “lyberall science”; social manners and literary style thus cooperated to produce a subject “well fasshyoned in soule, in body, in gesture, and in apparayle.” The cultivation of a good Latin style now appears as part of a larger process of “fashioning” subjects – a process that submits not only language but also manners, dress, and comportment to ideal of “exactness and refinement.” If it is clear that stylistic pedagogy is a form of social discipline, it is equally certain that discipline is becoming stylized. For in defining civility as “outward honesty of the body” (externum…corporis decorum), Erasmus transforms a set of social behaviours into a bodily image. The “well-fashioned” or civil subject is an aesthetic ideal that expands the concept of “style” to cover the whole range of social bearing. To produce a civil subject is to produce a “style” – of manners, dress, and discourse. And social style, like the literary style that is now a part of it, is developed not through obedience to rules but through the mimetic assimilation of models. Thus De civilitate supplements a juridical approach to manners – the prescription and proscription of behaviours – with an imaginary logic. (snip) p32</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-45607122176937665592023-12-27T20:23:00.000-08:002023-12-27T20:23:22.470-08:00The Oxfordian Sublime and Silver Latin Poetry<p> The Ovidian Sublime. Antiquity and After</p><p>Philip Hardie</p><p>Ovid gets just four index entries in James I. Porter’s monumental book on The sublime in antiquity. That, one might think, is not very surprising. ‘Ovidian’ and ‘sublime’ are terms which do not often appear in the same sentence. Nor is a positively valued sublimity one of the features which has been much enlisted in the rehabilitation, over the last half century, of Ovid as one of the greatest of Roman poets. The chief exception to this relative lack of interest in the Ovidian sublime has been the Phaethon episode in the Metamorphoses, on which more below.</p><p>To provide some contexts: Porter’s 2016 book is a massive manifestation of something that has been going on for some time, the diagnosis of sublimity in a range of Greek and Roman texts outside of pseudo-Longinus. More particularly, in the field of Latin poetry, sublimity is a quality or effect for which recent studies have looked to Lucretius, Virgil, Manilius, Lucan, Statius, and Silius Italicus, if rarely to Ovid. Yet that list of Latin hexameter poets is marked by the glaring absence of the name of Ovid, who, in other ways, is inextricably woven in to the development of the Latin hexameter tradition, from Republic to Empire.</p><p> To use the terminology of the now outdated ages of metal scheme, the _Metamorphoses_ has often been seen as a late work of ‘Golden’ Latin poetry that anticipates, and is the model for, features of ‘Silver’ Latin poetry, in the matter of such things as rhetoric, spectacularity, descriptions of extreme violence, hyperbole, and paradox. A number of these features are rather negative labels for what, viewed in a more positive light, could be seen as sources of the sublime. For example, pseudo-Longinus takes hyperbole as productive of the sublime (9.5, 38), although a hyperbole taken too far can fall into the opposite of sublimity. One of the signs of Ovid’s interest in the sublime, and, I would suggest, his interest in an already well-developed literary-critical discourse on the sublime, is precisely his testing of the boundary between the sublime and the ridiculous, between hupsos and bathos, in the sense given to the latter word by Alexander Pope, in Peri Bathous, or the art of sinking in poetry (1727). The best analysis of Ovid’s knowing embrace of the puerility with which he is charged by later critics, in contexts that seem to demand a sustained grandeur, is Llewelyn Morgan’s article on ‘Child’s play: Ovid and his critics’. ‘Grandeur’ is a word used on several occasions by Morgan, in discussion of the younger Seneca’s charge that in his description of the Flood, Ovid reduces the magnitudo rei to pueriles ineptiae (NQ 3.27.13-15), but the words ‘sublime’ and ‘sublimity’ do not appear in his article. Nor does the name of Longinus, who comments that (Subl. 3.4) ‘while tumidity seeks to outdo the sublime, puerility (τὸ μειρακιῶδες) is the exact opposite of grandeur.’ Longinus observes of Isocrates’ use of hyperbole that (38.2) he ‘fell into unaccountable puerility through his ambition to amplify everything’ (ὁ γοῦν Ἰσοκράτης οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅπως παιδὸς πρᾶγμα ἔπαθεν διὰ τὴν τοῦ πάντα αὐξητικῶς ἐθέλειν λέγειν φιλοτιμίαν).</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Greene, Groatsworth:</p><p>"...there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." </p><p>****************************</p><p>John Soothern, Pandora:</p><p>(snip)</p><p>...Amongst our well renowned men </p><p>*De Vere merits a silver pen </p><p>Eternally to write his honour*[…] </p><p>And it pleases me to saye too, </p><p>(With a louange, I protest true) </p><p>That in England we cannot see, </p><p>Anything like De Vere, but he. </p><p>Onelie himselfe he must resemble, </p><p>Vertues so much in him assemble. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-67662307208085993292023-12-22T12:06:00.000-08:002023-12-27T17:46:43.987-08:00Hubris and Jonson's Castigation of Oxford<p> </p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson thought of himself as performing Nemesis:</p><p><br /></p><p>Psychology Spot – Accessed December 22 2023</p><p><br /></p><p>The ancient Greeks thought that overly arrogant and haughty people were attacked by hýbris. In fact, the goddess Hybris personified insolence and lack of restraint. Hybris was believed to spend much of her time among mortals, so it was not uncommon for her to “infect” them with her *bad manners*.</p><p>The Greeks used the word hýbris to refer to excess, pride and arrogance, but not those that are born from an irrational and unbalanced impulse, but rather a conscious attempt to transgress the limits imposed by society and the gods. </p><p>***************************</p><p>Wikipedia:</p><p>Hybris (/ˈhaɪbrɪs/; Ancient Greek: Ὕβρις means 'hubris') was a spirit (daemon) of insolence, violence, and outrageous behaviour. In Roman mythology, the personification was Petulantia who reflected the Greek conception of hubris. </p><p>***************************</p><p>Jonson *imitated/assimilated* his 'Master' Shake-speare in FF encomium:</p><p>Jonson, To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare </p><p>(snip)</p><p>And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,</p><p>From thence to honour thee, I would not seek</p><p>For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,</p><p>Euripides and Sophocles to us;</p><p>Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,</p><p>To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,</p><p>And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,</p><p>Leave thee alone for the comparison</p><p>Of all that *insolent* Greece or *haughty* Rome</p><p>Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.</p><p>************************</p><div><div><br /></div><div>Patrick Cheney</div><div>English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> ...Sources of the sublime identified by Longinus appear in Hotspur’s speeches : ‘great thoughts’; inspired emotion’; heightened figuration; ‘noble diction’; and elevated word-arrangement’ (Longinus, On Sublimity 8.1: 149). Naturally, the actor of Shakespeare’s lines would perform the noble diction and elevated word-arrangement with inspired emotion, taking the character’s – the author’s – own cue: ‘Oh, the blood more stirs.’ Hotspur’s ‘elevated…figures of speech’, too, represent great thoughts, for, in his defence of ‘honor’, he imagines himself TRANSPORTED: his imagination travels across the horizontal coordinates of ‘east unto the west’, ‘north to south’, and up the vertical coordinate of the moon and down to the ocean-bottom – the ocean being, for Longinus, one of the principal images of the sublime. [full fathom five] Such transport is the premier trajectory that the sublime tracks. In his 1589 Art of English Poetry, George Puttenham calls ‘Metaphora’ the ‘figure of transport’, because the word ‘metaphor’ means to carry across, ‘a kind of wresting of a single word from his own right signification, to another not of natural. But yet of some affinity or convenience with it’ (Vickers). Sublime transport is the ultimate figuration, and Hotspur speaks it.</div><div>‘Imagination’ is the word Shakespeare uses in line 198, when the father says of the son, ‘Imagination of some great exploit/Drives him beyond the bounds of patience’. Unlike Guiderius in Cymbeline, the idea of a ‘great exploit’ does not lead Hotspur into action but, like Arviragus – yet dangerously – into ‘imagination’, which Northumberland contrasts with the rational principle of ‘patience’. ‘Beyond the bounds’ is as succinct a definition of the sublime as we might wish to find.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ben Jonson, on Shakespeare (~Timber)</div><div><br /></div><div>‘I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn’d) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov’d the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow’d with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d: Sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said of Haterius. *His wit was in his owne power; would the rule of it* had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him; Caesar, thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.’[1] </div><div><br /></div><div>************************</div><div><br /></div><div>(profluens - flowing forth - 'fountain of self-love in Cynthia's Revels').</div><div><br /></div><div>************************</div><div>Nemesis, Wikipedia:</div><div><br /></div><div><div>The word nemesis originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserved. Later, Nemesis came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right proportion, the sense of justice that could not allow it to pass unpunished.</div><div><br /></div><div>(snip)</div><div><br /></div><div>Narcissus</div><div>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.[15]</div><div>[note – Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels or Narcissus and the Fountaine of Selfe-Love - Amorphus/Oxford]</div><div><br /></div><div>She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a whip or a dagger.[citation needed] In early times the representations of Nemesis resembled Aphrodite, who sometimes bears the epithet Nemesis.[citation needed]</div><div>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.</div><div>The poet Mesomedes wrote a hymn to Nemesis in the early second century AD, where he addressed her:</div><div>Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice</div><div>and mentioned her "adamantine bridles" that restrain "the frivolous insolences of mortals".</div></div><div><br /></div><div>***********************</div><div><br /></div><div>Shackerley Marmion, Jonsonus Virbius</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>...Never did so much strength, or such a spell</div><div><br /></div><div>Of Art, and eloquence of papers dwell.</div><div>For whil'st he in colours, full and true,</div><div>Mens natures, fancies, and their humours drew</div><div>In method, order, matter, sence and grace,</div><div>Fitting each person to his time and place;</div><div>Knowing to move, to slacke, or to make haste,</div><div>Binding the middle with the first and last:</div><div>He fram'd all minds, and did all passions stirre,</div><div>And with a BRIDLE GUIDE the Theater. </div><div><br /></div><div>****************************</div><div><br /></div><div>Holding/Restraining/Ruling Shakespeare's Quill:</div><div><br /></div><div>From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)</div><div>by Jasper Mayne</div><div><br /></div><div>...And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all</div><div>The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:</div><div>No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,</div><div>No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;</div><div>No Oracle of Language, to amaze</div><div>The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase,</div><div>Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,</div><div>A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.</div><div>That which Thou wrot'st was sense, and that sense good,</div><div>Things not first written, and then understood:</div><div><br /></div><div>Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar'd so high</div><div>As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,</div><div>'Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,</div><div>Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.</div><div><br /></div><div>For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.</div><div>In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:</div><div>A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,</div><div>As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.</div><div>Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,</div><div>Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)</div><div><br /></div><div>************************</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>The Arrogance and Insolence of Oxford – Letter Hubert Languet to Sidney:</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Publique Ill Example: Oxford appears UNNAMED as Sidney's proud and intemperate ADVERSARY in Greville’s _A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_(originally published as _Life of Sidney_)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>...And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the Tennis- Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this Princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more ROUGHLY. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the MISTS of my Lords PASSIONS, SWOLN with the WINDE of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse amazement, or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was POSSESSED with: till at last with RAGE (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court. To this Sir Philip temperately answers; that if his Lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder Characters, perchance he might have led out those, that he should now find would not be driven out with any scourge of FURY. This answer (like a BELLOWS) blowing up the sparks of EXCESS already kindled, made my Lord scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of Puppy. In which progress of HEAT, as the TEMPEST grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breath out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day audience, in those private Galleries, whose windows looked into the Tennis-Court. They instantly drew all to this tumult: every sort of quarrels sorting well with their humors, especially this. Which Sir Philip perceiving, and rising with inward strength, by the prospect of a mighty faction against him; asked my Lord, with a loud voice, that which he heard clearly enough before. Who ( LIKE AN ECHO, that still multiplies by REFLEXIONS) repeated this Epithet of Puppy the second time. Sir Philip resolving in one answer to conclude both the attentive hearers, and PASSIONATE ACTOR, gave my Lord a Lie, impossible (as he averred) to be retorted; in respect all the world knows, Puppies are gotten by Dogs, and Children by men. Hereupon those GLORIOUS INEQUALITIES of FORTUNE in his Lordship were put to a kinde of pause, by a PRECIOUS INEQUALITY OF NATURE in this Gentleman. So that they both stood silent a while, like a dumb shew in a tragedy; till Sir Philip sensible of his own wrong, the forrain, and factious spirits that attended; and yet, even in this question between him, and his superior, tender to his Countries honour; with some words of sharp accent, led the way abruptly out of the Tennis-Court; as if so unexpected an accident were not fit to be decided any farther in that place. Whereof the great Lord making another sense, continues his play, without any advantage of reputation; as by the standard of HUMOURS in those times it was conceived.</div><div><br /></div><div>******************************</div><div>Insolence/Petulantia:</div><div><br /></div><div>Ars Poetica, Horace</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>*****************************</div><div><div>Musophilus</div><div><br /></div><div>Samuel Daniel</div><div><br /></div><div>Power above powers ! O Heavenly Eloquence !</div><div>That with the strong rein of commanding words</div><div>Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence</div><div>Of men's affections, more than all their swords !</div><div>Shall we not offer to thy excellence,</div><div>The richest treasure that our wit affords?</div><div><br /></div><div>Thou that canst do much more with one poor pen,</div><div>Than all the powers of princes can effect ;</div><div>And draw, divert, dispose, and fashion men,</div><div>Better than force or rigour can direct !</div><div>Should we this ornament of glory then,</div><div>As the unmaterial fruits of shades, neglect?</div><div><br /></div><div>Or should we careless come behind the rest</div><div>In power of words, that go before in worth ;</div><div>Whenas our accent's equal to the best,</div><div>Is able greater wonders to bring forth ;</div><div>When all that ever hotter spirits express'd,</div><div>Comes better'd by the patience of the north.</div><div><br /></div><div>And who—in time—knows whither we may vent</div><div>The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores</div><div>This gain of our best glory shall be sent</div><div>To enrich unknowing nations with our stores?</div><div>What worlds in the yet unformed Occident</div><div>May come refin'd with the accents that are ours?</div><div><br /></div><div>Or, who can tell for what great work in hand</div><div>The greatness of our style is now ordain'd?</div><div>What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command?</div><div>What thoughts let out ; what humours keep restrain'd?</div><div>What mischief it may powerfully withstand ;</div><div>And what fair ends may thereby be attain'd?</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-16567361181211655202023-12-17T14:19:00.000-08:002023-12-21T20:32:32.311-08:00A Sublime Counter-Jonsonian Author Figure<p><br /></p><p>(October 21 2023, hlas)</p><p><br /></p><p> Idolatrous Italianate Ciceronians - Crows and Apes of Cicero:</p><p>Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor</p><p>On Art.</p><p>Can anyone be an artist without art? Or have you ever seen a bird flying without wings, or a horse running without feet? Or if you have seen such things, which no one else has ever seen, come, tell me please, do you hope to become a goldsmith, or a painter, or a sculptor, or a musician, or an architect, or a weaver, or any sort of artist at all without a teacher? But how much easier are all these things, than that you develop into a supreme and perfect orator without the art of public speaking. There is need of a teacher, and indeed even an excellent teacher, who might point out the springs with his finger, as it were, and carefully pass on to you the art of speaking colorfully, brilliantly, copiously. But what sort of art shall we choose? Not an art entangled in countless difficulties, or packed with meaningless arguments; not one sullied by useless [31] precepts, or disfigured by strange and foreign ones; not an art polluted by any filth, or fashioned to accord with our own will and judgment; not a single art joined and sewn together from many, like a quilt from many rags and skins (way too many rhetoricians have given this sort of art to us, if indeed one may call art that which conforms to no artistic principles). We want rather an art that is concise, precise, appropriate, lucid, accessible; one that is decorated and illuminated by precise definitions, accurate divisions, and striking illustrations, as if by flashing gems and stars; one that emerges, and in a way bursts into flower, from the speech of the most eloquent men and the best orators. Why so? Not only because brevity is pleasant, and clarity delightful, but also so that eloquence might be learned in a shorter time, and with less labor and richer results, and so that it might stand more firmly grounded, secured by deeper roots. For thus said the gifted poet in his Ars Poetica: "Whatever instruction you give, let it be brief." Why? [32] He gives two reasons: "So that receptive minds might swiftly grasp your words and accurately retain them." And indeed, as the same poet elegantly adds: "Everything superfluous spills from a mind that's full."</p><p><br /></p><p>(snip)</p><p>But those annual whistles and shouts I hear indicate that almost all, or at least the greater part of my auditors are newcomers, who do not understand what they should do or whom they should imitate, but who nonetheless are captivated by the splendor of rhetoric, and seek to be orators. Therefore I will now, if I am able, reveal those things and place them all in their view, in such a way that they might seem to see them with their eyes, and almost hold them in their hands. In the meantime I pray you, most eloquent and refined gentlemen, either withdraw, if you like, or with the kindness that you've shown so far hear me as I recite some precepts so common as to be almost elementary. And from those whose tongues and ears Cicero alone inhabits, I beg forgiveness, if by chance I let drop in my haste a word that is un-Ciceronian. We cannot all be Longeuils and Cortesis: [9] some of us don't want to be. As for those who study more Latin authors, but only the best and choicest, and who to accompany Cicero, the foremost of all, add Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Seneca, Terence too, and Plautus and Vergil and Horace, I am sure they will be sympathetic to me. For reading as I do many works by many authors, sometimes even the poets, as Crassus bids in Cicero, I cannot guarantee that in so impromptu an oration I will not use a word not found in a Ciceronian phrase book.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>But those little CROWS and APES of CICERO were long ago driven from the stage by the hissing and laughter of the learned, as they so well deserved, and at last have almost vanished; and I now hope to find not only eager and attentive auditors, but friendly spectators as well, not the sort who scrupulously weigh every individual detail on the scales of their own refined tastes, but who interpret everything in a fair and good-natured way. I too in fact wanted, if I was able--but perhaps I was not--to speak in as Ciceronian a style as the Ciceronianest of them all. [10] Forgive me, illustrious Ciceronians, if I ought not use that word in the superlative.</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Greene's Groatsworth:</p><p><br /></p><p>With thee I ioyne yong Iuuenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastlie with mee together writ a Comedie. Sweete boy, might I aduise thee, be aduisde, and get not many enemies by bitter wordes: inueigh against VAINE men, for thou canst do it, no man better, no man so wel: thou hast a libertie to reprooue all, and none more; for one being spoken to, all are offended, none being blamed no man is iniured. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage, or tread on a worme and it will turne: then blame not Schollers vexed with sharpe lines, if they reproue thy too much libertie of reproofe.</p><p><br /></p><p>And thou no lesse deseruing than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour; driuen (as my selfe) to extreme shifts, a little haue I to say to thee: and were it not an idolatrous oth, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art vnworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned: for vnto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleaue: those Puppets (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al haue beene beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all haue beene beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) bee both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an vpstart CROW, BEAUTIFIED with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to BOMBAST out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imploied in more profitable courses: & let those APES imitate your past excellence, and neuer more acquaint them with your admired inuentions. I know the best husband of you all will neuer proue an Usurer, and the kindest of them all will neuer seeke you a kind nurse: yet whilest you may, seeke you better Maisters; for it is pittie men of such rare wits, should be subiect to the pleasure of such rude groomes.</p><p><br /></p><p>In this I might insert two more, that both haue writ against these buckram Gentlemen: but let their owne works serue to witnesse against their owne wickednesse, if they perseuere to mainteine any more such peasants. For other new-commers, I leaue them to the mercie of these PAINTED MONSTERS, who (I doubt not) will driue the best minded to despise them: for the rest, it skils not though they make a ieast at them.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Sidney , Defense</p><p><br /></p><p>...But let this be a sufficient, though short note, that we misse the right use of the material point of Poesie. Now for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I may tearme it) Diction, it is even well worse: so is it that HONY-FLOWING Matrone Eloquence, apparrelled, or rather disguised, in a Courtisanlike PAINTED AFFECTATION. One time with so farre fet(ched) words, that many seeme monsters, but must seeme Straungers to anie poore Englishman: an other time with coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to follow the method of a Dictionary: an other time with figures and flowers, extreemely winter-starved. But I would this fault were onely peculiar to Versefiers, and had not as large possession among Prose- Printers: and which is to be mervailed among many Schollers, & which is to be pitied among some Preachers. Truly I could wish, if at I might be so bold to wish, in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity, the diligent Imitators of TULLY and DEMOSTHENES (note - Tully/Cicero); Demosthenes, most worthie to be imitated, did not so much keepe Nizolian paper bookes, of their figures and phrase, as by attentive translation, as it were, *devoure them whole, and make them wholly theirs*. For now they cast SUGAR and SPICE uppon everie dish that is served to the table: like those Indians, not content to weare eare-rings at the fit and naturall place of the eares, but they will thrust Jewels through their nose and lippes, because they will be sure to be fine.</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>Sidney Sonnet II</p><p><br /></p><p>Let DAINTY wits crie on the Sisters nine,</p><p>That, BRAVELY MASKT, their fancies may be told;</p><p>Or, Pindars APES , flaunt they in PHRASES FINE,</p><p>Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold;</p><p>Or else let them in statlier glorie shine,</p><p>Ennobling new-found tropes with problemes old;</p><p>Or with strange similes enrich each line,</p><p>Of herbes or beasts which Inde or Affrick hold.</p><p>For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know,</p><p>Phrases and problems from my reach do grow;</p><p>And strange things cost too deare for my poor sprites.</p><p>How then? euen thus: in Stellaes face I reed</p><p>What Loue and Beautie be; then all my deed</p><p>But copying is, what in her Nature writes.</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p>Erasmus, “Apes of Cicero,” and Conceptual Blending</p><p>Kenneth Gouwens</p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>...the portrayals of apes even in the Adages of 1508 [note – Erasmus] could have done little positive for the animals’ image. In explaining the proverb “An ape is an ape, though clad in gold,” Erasmus retells Lucian’s story about an Egyptian king who taught some monkeys to dance, MASKED AND ATTIRED IN SCARLET. Initially compelling, the performance fell apart when a spectator scattered nuts before the apes, who ceased dancing and fought over them. (...) Another adage, “Hercules and an ape,” highlights a more insidious aspect of simian nature, the capacity to hoodwink: whereas “Hercules excels in strength,” the “ape’s power lies in sneaky tricks.” But if monkeys are ridiculous and tricky in and of themselves, in the 1508 edition they more often serve the purpose of holding the mirror up to human folly. Thus the proverb “A donkey among apes” is taken to describe how someone dull-witted falls in among “satirical and insolent people” who mock their hapless victim with impunity. More seriously, as one sees in the adage “An ape in purple,” the deception may consist in a veneer of cultured elegance that camouflages, albeit incompletely, a foulness beneath. The phrase can be applied, says Erasmus, to those “whose true nature, though they may be wearing very fine clothes, is obvious from their expression and character,” as well as “to those who have some inappropriate dignity thrust upon them, or when something nasty in itself is unsuitably decked out with ornament from some unconnected or external source.</p><p>.....Already in 1508, Erasmus occasionally likens apes to pseudo-intellectuals. Thus the adage “No [aged] monkey was ever caught in a trap” is “often applied to clever and slippery talkers who cannot be caught out.” Similarly, “a painted monkey,” which refers directly to an ugly old woman made up like a prostitute, can also illustrate and idea: for example, “if someone dresses up an immoral argument with rhetorical trappings so that it seems honest.” The two remaining images from 1508 point to the simian as unable even to approach the boundary that separates it from the human. Erasmus glosses “the prettiest ape is hideous” as referring to “things which are intrinsically defective, and by no means to be compared with even the lowest specimens of the class of things that possess any merit...” And “The tragical ape” appears to be practically a simulacrum of the human: “Ape, like manikin, is the word for what is scarcely a man and more like a pale copy of one...”</p><p>.....In subsequent expansions, Erasmus adds further shading to some of these adages, directing their thrust at scholars of the type lampooned in the _Ciceronianus_. Whereas in 1508 the gloss of “An ape in purple” ended with the observations “What could be more ridiculous?” the 1515 edition continues: “And yet this is a thing we quite often see in a household where they keep monkeys as pets: they dress them up with plenty of finery to look as much like human beings as possible, sometimes even in purple, so as to deceive people who do not look carefully or have seen nothing like it before...” Erasmus now ends the gloss by turning around the comparison: “How many apes of this kind one can see in princes’ courts, whom you will find, if you strip them of their purple, their collars and their jewels, to be no better than any *cobbler*!” Importantly, in this addendum Erasmus refers to apelike courtiers with the rare masculine form (simios), which he would use consistently when ridiculing “apes of Cicero” in the Ciceronianus.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>Poetaster, Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Caesar. We have, indeed, you worthiest friends of Caesar.</p><p>It is the bane and torment of our ears,</p><p>To hear the discords of those jangling rhymers,</p><p>That with their bad and scandalous practices</p><p>Bring all true arts and learning in contempt.</p><p>But let not your high thoughts descend so low</p><p>As these despised objects; LET THEM FALL,</p><p>With their flat grovelling souls: be you yourselves;</p><p>And as with our best favours you stand crown'd,</p><p>So let your mutual loves be still renown'd.</p><p>Envy will dwell where there is want of merit,</p><p>Though the deserving man should crack his spirit.</p><p>Blush, folly, blush; here's none that fears</p><p>The wagging of an ass's ears,</p><p>Although a WOLFISH CASE he wears.</p><p>Detraction is but baseness' varlet;</p><p>And APES are APES, though clothed in SCARLET. [Exeunt].</p><p><br /></p><p>Rumpatur, quisquis rumpitur invidi! [MARTIAL – LET ENVIOUS POETS BURST]</p><p>*****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>On Poet Ape – only Shakespearean sonnet in Jonson’s 1616 Epigrams</p><p><br /></p><p>Poor POET-APE, that would be thought our chief,</p><p>Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,</p><p>From brokage is become so bold a thief,</p><p>As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.</p><p>At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,</p><p>Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown</p><p>To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,</p><p>He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own.</p><p>And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes</p><p>The sluggish gaping auditor devours;</p><p>He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times</p><p>May judge it to be his, as well as ours.</p><p>Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece</p><p>From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece!</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p>Amorphus/Oxford:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime – Patrick Cheney</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In Cynthia’s Revels [or The Fountain of Self-Love], near the beginning of his career (first printed 1600), Jonson uses the word twice, both surrounding the figure of Amorphus, described by Mercury in Act 2, scene 3 as ‘a traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds of forms that himself is truly deformed’ (66-7). In other words, Amorphus is a figure of transport, and his composition, made up of ‘forms’ that are ‘deformed’, takes us into what we have previously described as Kantian territory. Amorphus is that sublime figure of form that has none (curiously akin to Marlowe’s Helen of Troy), accommodated to the Jonsonian public sphere, where Amorphus’ ‘adaptability and social versatility is a form of shapelessness which links the literal metamorphoses of Echo, Narcissus, and Acteaon, and the cultural ones of Asotus and others’ in the action of the play. (Rassmussen and Steggle).</p><p>In using the word ‘sublimated’, Amorphus stands before the Fountain of Self-Love, having just conversed with Narcissus’o ne-time beloved, the beautiful nymph Echo – who has just abandoned Amorphus – when Jonson’s figure of formless form steps forth to take the plunge: ‘Liberal and divine fount, suffer my profane hand to take of they bounties’. Intoxicated by ‘most ambrosiac water’, he broods why the beguiling feminine potency of the well should accept him but Echo turn her heel:</p><p><br /></p><p>Knowing myself an essence so sublimated and refined by travel, of so studied and well-exercised a gesture, so alone in fashion, able to make the face of any statesman living, and to speak the mere extraction of language…; to conclude, in all so happy as even admiration herself does seem to fasten her kisses upon me; certes I do neither see, nor feel, nor taste, nor savour the least steam or fume of a reason that should invite this foolish fastidious nymph so peevishly to abandon me. (1.3.24-35; emphasis added)</p><p>Amorphus speaks the alchemical language of sublimity but adapts it to his personal identity – his ability to transport himself into a heightened state of ‘language’ that attracts the erotic ‘admiration’ of others – in an appropriately comical language of hyperbolic elevation.</p><p>Specifically, Amorphus engages in narcissism by vaunting his self-knowledge: ‘travel’ refines and ‘sublimate[s]’ his ‘essence’ into a quintessence of gold, and such sublimity underwrites his social and political theatre, during which he can ‘make the face of any statesman living’, as Jeremy Face will do to London citizens in the Alchemist. Sublime transport here is not transcendent but political and social, the Protean self enlivened, capable of adapting to exigency, endlessly. Self-consciously, Jonson makes comically sublime theatre out of a comically sublime theatrical character. We might even see here an impressive staging of the kind of comical hyperbole discussed by Longinus in On Sublimity, which is one form that the sublime can take: ‘acts and emotion which approach ecstasy provide a justification for, and an antidote to, any linguistic audacity. This is why comic hyperboles, for all their incredulity, are convincing because we laugh at them so much…Laughter is emotion in amusement’.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Jonson’s linking of sublimity with a character named ‘Amorphus’ merits pause, because this agile figure looks like a photographic negative of Jonson himself. Without question, the author-figure in Cynthia’s Revels is Criticus (called Crites in the Folio edition), ‘the poet-scholar’ of “Judgement’ who ‘represents Jonson’s literary, philosophical, and ethical ideals’ (Bednarz, Shakespeare & The Poets’ War 159-60), and who becomes the play’s arch-enemy to Amorphus and the motley crew of corrupt courtiers, Hedon, Anaides, ad Asotus. According to James Bednarz, Amorphus is a figure who represents ‘Deformity’ and the ‘lack of true conviction’, and who becomes enamoured of a nymph who happens to be named Phantaste or ‘fantasy’ (159-600. In these terms, the project of the play is to ‘replac[e]…the rhetoric of “nature’ and “instinct” staged in Marston’s Jack Drum with the sterner interdictions of “art” and “judgement” in a larger “allegory of self-knowlledge’ (160). According to Bednarz, Marston had rejected Jonson’s rational, judgemental poetics in favour of one based on imaginative instinct, which Jonson then shows to be purged of cultural authority.</p><p>Nonetheless, as Rasmussen and Steggle write, Amorphus ‘prefigures Jonson’s later tricksters’ in being ‘at the centre of the play’s action due to his energy and inventiveness, both verbal and physical’. Rasmussen and Steggle go so far as to see Amorphus as akin to Jonson himself: ‘biographically Jonson is more like Amorphus than Criticus’, citing Jonson’s ‘experiences in foreign travel’ and his ‘natural charisma and drive’. Even ‘Amorphus’s weaknesses (lack of money and tendency to exaggerate) are close to those of Jonson;. Wisely, Rasmussen and Steggle caution against ‘claim[ing] that Amorphus “is” Jonson, or even to over-allegorize the tension between Amorphus and his nemesis Criticus’ (eds. 1:435); but they do help us see that the figure of Amorphus qualifies as a *sublime counter-Jonsonian author-figure*. (pp. 220-1)</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Horace, Art of Poetry </p><p>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.*** “ </p><p>******************************</p><p>Jonson, _Cynthia's Revels_.</p><p><br /></p><p>AMORPHUS. And there's her minion, Crites: why his advice more than</p><p>Amorphus? Have I not invention afore him? Learning to better</p><p>that INVENTION above him? and INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVEL --</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Southern, Pandora (1584)</p><p><br /></p><p>SUMMARY: Ode to Oxford in John Southern’s Pandora, The Music of the Beauty of his Mistress Diana. The title page gives the publication date as 20 June 1584. The language of the ode was criticized by George Puttenham in Book III, Chapter 22 of his Art of English Poesy, published in 1589. Puttenham also accused Southern of plagiarism, saying: ‘Another of reasonable good facility in translation, finding certain of the hymns of Pindarus and of Anacreon’s odes and other lyrics among the Greeks very well translated by Ronsard, the French poet, & applied to the honour of a great prince in France, comes our minion and translates the same out of French into English, and applieth them to the honour of a great nobleman in England (wherein I commend his reverent mind and duty), but doth so impudently rob the French poet both of his praise and also of his French terms that I cannot so much pity him as be angry with him for his injurious dealing’.</p><p><br /></p><p>To the right honourable the Earl of Oxenford etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>Epode</p><p><br /></p><p>No, no, the high singer is he</p><p>Alone that in the end must be</p><p>Made proud with a garland like this,</p><p>And not every riming novice</p><p>That writes with small wit and much pain,</p><p>And the (God’s know) idiot in vain,</p><p>For it’s not the way to Parnasse,</p><p>Nor it will neither come to pass</p><p>If it be not in some wise fiction</p><p>And of an ingenious INVENTION,</p><p>And INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVAIL,</p><p>For it alone must win the laurel,</p><p>And only the poet WELL BORN</p><p>Must be he that goes to Parnassus,</p><p>And not these companies of asses</p><p>That have brought verse almost to scorn.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie (1589)</p><p><br /></p><p>CHAP. XXII.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some vices in speaches and {w}riting are alwayes intollerable, some others now and then borne {w}ithall by licence of approued authors and custome. (snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>Another of your intollerable vices is that which the Greekes call SORAISMUS, & we may call the [mingle mangle] as when we make our speach or writinges of sundry languages vsing some Italian word, or French, or Spanish, or Dutch, or Scottish, not for the nonce or for any purpose (which were in part excusable) but ignorantly and affectedly as one that said vsing this French word Roy, to make ryme with another verse, thus.</p><p><br /></p><p>O mightie Lord or ioue, dame Venus onely ioy,</p><p><br /></p><p>Whose Princely power exceedes ech other heauenly roy.</p><p><br /></p><p>The verse is good but the terme peeuishly affected Another of reasonable good facilitie in translation finding certaine of the hymnes of Pyndarus and of Anacreons odes, and other Lirickes among the Greekes very well translated by Rounsard the French Poet,</p><p>&</p><p>applied to the honour of a great Prince in France, comes our minion and translates the same out of French into English, and applieth them to the honour of a GREAT NOBLE MAN in ENGLAND (wherein I commend his reuerent minde and duetie) but doth so impudently robbe the French Poet both of his prayse and also of his French termes, that I cannot so much pitie him as be angry with him for his iniurious dealing (our sayd maker not being ashamed to vse these French wordes freddon, egar, superbous, filanding, celest, calabrois, thebanois and a number of others, for English wordes, which haue no maner of conformitie with our language either by custome or deriuation which may make them tollerable. And in the end (which is worst of all) makes his vaunt that neuer English finger but his hath toucht Pindars string which was neuerthelesse word by word as Rounsard had said before by like braggery. These be his verses.</p><p><br /></p><p>And of an ingenious INVENTION, INFANTED WITH PLEASANT TRAVAILE.</p><p><br /></p><p>¶3.22.7 Whereas the French word is enfante as much to say borne as a child, in another verse he saith.</p><p><br /></p><p>I {w}ill freddon in thine honour.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>1601 Quarto - Cynthia's Revels Or The Fountain of Selfe Love, Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Act IV, Sc. V</p><p><br /></p><p>Amorphus</p><p><br /></p><p>And there’s her Minion Criticus; why his advise more then Amorphus? Have I not Invention, afore him? Learning, to better that Invention, above him? And Travaile.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>1616 Folio, Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Act IV, Sc V</p><p><br /></p><p>Amorphus</p><p><br /></p><p>And there’s her minion Crites! Why his advice more then Amorphus? Have not I invention, afore him? Learning, to better that invention, above him? And infanted, with pleasant travaile ----</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>1640 Folio, 'Works' Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Amorphus</p><p><br /></p><p>And there’s her minion Crites! Why his advice more then Amorphus? Have not I invention afore him? Learning, to better that invention, above him? And infanted, with pleasant travaile ----</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>ULYSSES-POLITROPUS-AMORPHUS - Cynthia's Revels</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Politropus/Polytropus</p><p><br /></p><p>Polytropos means much-turned or much-traveled, much-wandering. It is the defining quality of Odysseus, used in the first line of the Odyssey and at 10.330. As used by Hippias with respect to Odysseus (365b) it includes being false or lying and carries the connotations of wily and shifty. Antisthenes, a follower of Socrates who wrote Socratic dialogues, also argued against the claim that Homer meant to blame Odysseus by calling him polytropos; Antisthenes claims that it is praise for being "good at dealing with men...being wise, he knows how to associate with men in many ways." See Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.121-24.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Oxford and the Fountain of Self-Love:</p><p><br /></p><p>Mario DiGangi, Male Deformities’: NARCISSUS and the Reformation of Courtly Manners in Cynthia’s Revels in Ovid and the Renaissance Body</p><p><br /></p><p>...Narcissus himself [...] never even appears during the course of the play. however, the corrupting Fountain of Self-love, the emblematic source of narcissism introduced at the very beginning of the play, seems to be a permanent fixture at Cynthia's court, for no mention is made of its ultimate destruction or purification. for Jonson's audience, the survival of the symbolically cominant fountain of Self-love might well have presaged that narcissistic manners would continue to deform the individual bodies of courtiers as well as the collective body of the court. With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can regard the Fountain's endurance as a sign of the ideological conflict over elite male comportment that would continue to be waged, in early modern England, as the legacy of Narcissus.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>By the time Jonson wrote Cynthia's Revels, the Narcissus myth had developed an extended, complex, cultural legacy. Traditional medieval and Renaissance moral commentaries on Ovid generally explained Narcissus's error as the 'folly of loving an IMAGE.' Arthur Golding's influential 1567 translation of The Metamorposes, for instance, moralizes the myth as a 'mirror' of VANITY and pride: 'Narcissus is of scornfulnesse and pryde a myrror cleere,/ Where beawties fading VANITIE most playnly may appeere.'</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Alciato's Book of Emblems</p><p><br /></p><p>Emblem 69</p><p><br /></p><p>Self-love</p><p><br /></p><p>Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, it was changed into a flower, a plant of known senselessness. Self-love is the withering and destruction of natural power which brings and has brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away the method of the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own fantasies.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>The Arrogance and Insolence of Oxford – Hubert Languet to Sidney:</p><p><br /></p><p>Publique Ill Example: Oxford appears UNNAMED as Sidney's proud and intemperate ADVERSARY in Greville’s _A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_(originally published as _Life of Sidney_)</p><p><br /></p><p>...And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the Tennis- Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this Princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more ROUGHLY. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the MISTS of my Lords PASSIONS, SWOLN with the WINDE of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse amazement, or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was POSSESSED with: till at last with RAGE (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court. To this Sir Philip temperately answers; that if his Lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder Characters, perchance he might have led out those, that he should now find would not be driven out with any scourge of FURY. This answer (like a BELLOWS) blowing up the sparks of EXCESS already kindled, made my Lord scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of Puppy. In which progress of HEAT, as the TEMPEST grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breath out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day audience, in those private Galleries, whose windows looked into the Tennis-Court. They instantly drew all to this tumult: every sort of quarrels sorting well with their humors, especially this. Which Sir Philip perceiving, and rising with inward strength, by the prospect of a mighty faction against him; asked my Lord, with a loud voice, that which he heard clearly enough before. Who ( LIKE AN ECHO, that still multiplies by REFLEXIONS) repeated this Epithet of Puppy the second time. Sir Philip resolving in one answer to conclude both the attentive hearers, and PASSIONATE ACTOR, gave my Lord a Lie, impossible (as he averred) to be retorted; in respect all the world knows, Puppies are gotten by Dogs, and Children by men. Hereupon those GLORIOUS INEQUALITIES of FORTUNE in his Lordship were put to a kinde of pause, by a PRECIOUS INEQUALITY OF NATURE in this Gentleman. So that they both stood silent a while, like a dumb shew in a tragedy; till Sir Philip sensible of his own wrong, the forrain, and factious spirits that attended; and yet, even in this question between him, and his superior, tender to his Countries honour; with some words of sharp accent, led the way abruptly out of the Tennis-Court; as if so unexpected an accident were not fit to be decided any farther in that place. Whereof the great Lord making another sense, continues his play, without any advantage of reputation; as by the standard of HUMOURS in those times it was conceived.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Fulke Greville - Hereditary Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon</p><p><br /></p><p>Greville, _Dedication_</p><p><br /></p><p>...Neither am I (for my part) so much in love with this life, nor believe so little in a better to come, as to complain of God for taking him [Sidney], and such like exorbitant WORTHyness from us: fit (as it were by an Ostracisme) to be divided, and not incorporated with our corruptions: yet for the sincere affection I bear to my Prince, and Country, my prayer to God is, that this WORTH, and Way may not fatally be buried with him; in respect, that both before his time, and since, experience hath published the usuall discipline of greatnes to have been tender of it self onely; making HONOUR a triumph, or rather TROPHY OF DESIRE, set up in the eyes of Mankind, either to be worshiped as IDOLS, or else as Rebels to perish under her glorious oppressions. Notwithstanding, when the pride of flesh, and power of favour shall cease in these by death, or disgrace; what then hath time to register, or fame to publish in these great mens names, that will not be offensive, or infectious to others? What Pen without blotting can write the story of their deeds? Or what Herald blaze their Arms without a blemish? And as for their counsels and projects, when they come once to light, shall they not live as noysome, and loathsomely above ground, as their Authors carkasses lie in the grave? So as the return of such greatnes to the world, and themselves, can be but private reproach, publique ill example, and a fatall scorn to the Government they live in. Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he affected was built upon true WORTH; esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Cynthias Revels, Jonson</p><p>Amorphus/Oxford:</p><p><br /></p><p>He that is with him is Amorphus</p><p>a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds</p><p>of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. He walks</p><p>most commonly with a Clove or Pick-tooth in his</p><p>Mouth, he is the very mint of Complement, all his Be-</p><p>haviours are printed, his Face is another Volume of</p><p>Essayes; and his Beard an Aristrachus. He speaks all</p><p>Cream skim'd, and more affected than a dozen of wait-</p><p>ing Women. He is his own Promoter in every place.</p><p>The Wife of the Ordinary gives him his Diet to main-</p><p>tain her Table in discourse, which (indeed) is a meer</p><p>Tyranny over the other Guests, for he will usurp all</p><p>the talk: *Ten Constables are not so tedious*.</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Horace, Art of Poetry </p><p>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.*** “ </p><p>*******************************</p><p>Sidney, Defence of Poetry</p><p><br /></p><p>But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither RIGHT tragedies nor RIGHT comedies (note - two left arms of the Droeshout), mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither DECENCY nor DISCRETION; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphytrio. But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, match hornpipes and funerals. So falleth it out that, having indeed NO RIGHT COMEDY in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but SCURRILITY, unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltihsness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.</p><p><br /></p><p>But OUR COMEDIANS think there is no delight without laughter, which is very WRONG; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay, rather in themselves they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most DISPROPORTIONED to ourselves and nature.</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Sidney, Defense</p><p>But I have lavished out too many words of this playmatter. I do it, because as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used in England, and none can be more pitifully ABUSED; which, like an unMANNERly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesy`s HONESTY to be called in question.</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Ben Jonson's Poems By Wesley Trimpi</p><p>...Jonson’s fundamental objection to the sonnet…is that it leads one to say more than one has to say in order to satisfy the form. The poet is obliged to use rhetorical figures, and his intentions becomes contradictory to that of the plain style. As the rhetorical figures and the form become more important, the range of subject matter decreases. The poet who seeks the grace and charm of the middle style will do well to utilize that grace which, according to Demetrius, “ may reside in the subject matter, if it is the gardens of the Nymphs, marriage-lays, love-stories” (On Style, 132), or “Petrarch’s long-deceased woes.” The freedom of the plain style to treat of any subject depends on it primary purpose, which is to tell the truth. Since the officium of the middle style is to delight (delectare), many subjects must be excluded, and the emphasis is no longer on content but on expression.</p><p><br /></p><p>The conventional adjectives for rhetorical ornateness in poetry were “sugred” or “honied,” and each could be used as a equivalent for Ciceronian rhetoric itself. The term “sugred” was most often applied to sonnets, such as in the famous comment of Francis Meres on “the mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends.” Among the literary genres the epigram was often regarded as a corrective for the trite diffuseness of the sonnet. The salt of incisive wit was needed to preserve the poem, which otherwise might cloy and dissolve like candy. Sir John Harington contrasts the two sets of conventions in his epigram called “Comparison of the Sonnet, and the Epigram”:</p><p><br /></p><p>Once, by mishap, two Poets fell a-squaring,</p><p>The Sonnet, and our Epigram comparing;</p><p>And Faustus, having long demur’d upon it,</p><p>Yet, at the last, gave sentence for the Sonnet.</p><p>Now, for such censure, this his chiefe defence is,</p><p>Their sugred taste best likes his likresse senses.</p><p>Well, though I grant Sugar may please the taste,</p><p>Tet let my verse have salt enough to make it last.</p><p><br /></p><p>In terms of the poetic conventions the rhetorical controversy between Ciceronianism and Senecanism became one between a MELLIFLUOUS and a SINUOUS style.</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>HONEY-TONGUED Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,</p><p>I swore Apollo got them and none other;</p><p>Their rosy-tinted features clothed in tissue,</p><p>Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother:</p><p>Rose-cheeked Adonis, with his amber tresses,</p><p>Fair fire-hot Venus, charming him to love her,</p><p>Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses,</p><p>Proud lust-stung Tarquin, seeking still to prove her:</p><p>Romeo, Richard; more whose names I know not,</p><p>Their SUGARED tongues, and power attractive beauty</p><p>Say they are saints, although that saints they show not,</p><p>For thousands vow to them subjective duty :</p><p>They burn in love, thy children, Shakespeare HET them ,</p><p>Go, woo thy Muse, more Nymphish brood beget them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion.</p><p>John Weever. 1599. Fourth Weeke, Epig. 22.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,</p><p>Warble his native wood-notes wild. - Milton</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Thomas Bancroft (1639), Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>118. To Shakespeare.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thy Muses SUGRED DAINTIES seeme to us</p><p>Like the fam’d apples of old Tantalus :</p><p>For we (admiring) see and heare thy straines,</p><p>But none I see or heare those sweets attaines.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning</p><p><br /></p><p>There be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, whereby learning hath been most traduced. For those things we do esteem VAIN which are either false or frivolous, those which either have no truth or no use; and those persons we esteem vain which are either credulous or curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words: so that in reason as well as in experience there fall out to be these three distempers (as I may term them) of learning--the first, fantastical learning; the second, contentious learning; and the last, delicate learning; vain imaginations, vain altercations, and vain affectations; and with the last I will begin. Martin Luther, conducted, no doubt, by a higher Providence, but in discourse of reason, finding what a province he had undertaken against the Bishop of Rome and the degenerate traditions of the Church, and finding his own solitude, being in nowise aided by the opinions of his own time, was enforced to awake all antiquity, and to call former times to his succours to make a party against the present time. So that the ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity, which had long time slept in libraries, began generally to be read and revolved. This, by consequence, did draw on a necessity of a more exquisite travail in the languages original, wherein those authors did write, for the better understanding of those authors, and the better advantage of pressing and applying their words. And thereof grew, again, a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an admiration of that kind of writing, which was much furthered and precipitated by the enmity and opposition that the propounders of those primitive but seeming new opinions had against the schoolmen, who were generally of the contrary part, and whose writings were altogether in a differing style and form; taking liberty to coin and frame new terms of art to express their own sense, and to avoid circuit of speech, without regard to the pureness, pleasantness, and (as I may call it) lawfulness of the phrase or word. And again, because the great labour then was with the people (of whom the Pharisees were wont to say, Execrabilis ista turba, quae non novit legem) [the wretched crowd that has not know the law], for the winning and persuading of them, there grew of necessity in chief price and request eloquence and variety of discourse, as the fittest and forciblest access into the capacity of the vulgar sort; so that these four causes concurring--the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the schoolmen, the exact study of languages, and the efficacy of preaching--did bring in an affectionate study of eloquence and copy of speech, which then began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to hunt more after words than matter--more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery vein of Osorius, the Portugal bishop, to be in price. Then did STURMIUS spend such infinite and curious pains upon Cicero the Orator and Hermogenes the Rhetorician, besides his own books of Periods and Imitation, and the like. Then did Car of Cambridge and Ascham with their lectures and writings almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were studious unto that delicate and polished kind of learning. Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing echo, Decem annos consuumpsi in legendo Cicerone [I have spent ten years in reading Cicero(ne); and the echo answered in Greek, One, Asine. Then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly despised as barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination and bent of those times was rather towards copy than weight.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here therefore is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter, whereof though I have represented an example of late times, yet it hath been and will be secundum majus et minus[more or less] in all timeAnd how is it possible but this should have an operation to discredit learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned men's works like the first letter of a patent or limited book, which though it hath large flourishes, yet it is but a letter? It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity; for words are but the images of matter, and except they have life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a picture.</p><p><br /></p><p>But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution. For hereof we have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato also in some degree; and hereof likewise there is great use, for surely, to the severe inquisition of truth and the deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance because it is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, and quencheth the desire of further search before we come to a just period. But then if a man be to have any use of such knowledge in civil occasions, of conference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like, then shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors which write in that manner. But the excess of this is so justly contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw the image of Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said in disdain, Nil sacri es [Thou art no Divinity]; so there is none of Hercules' followers in learning--that is, the more severe and laborious sort of inquirers into truth--but will despise those delicacies and affectations, as indeed capable of no divineness. And thus much of the first disease or distemper of learning.</p><p><br /></p><p>The second, which followeth, is in nature worse than the former, for as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words; wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the times following, and not only respective* to divinity but extensive[5] to all knowledge: Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae.[Avoid profane novelties of terms and the oppositions of what is falsely called knowledge." I Tim. 6.20] For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the other, the strictness of positions,[7] which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtile, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness* and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits and abundance of leisure and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby, but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work but of no substance or profit.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jennifer Richards</p><p><br /></p><p>HOW CASTIGLIONE READ CICERO</p><p><br /></p><p>...The questione della lingua is focused on a particular question: should the courtier imitate the literary greats, borrowing from them words already endowed with authority, or should he follow the promptings of his own talents, and employ the language of his contemporaries? [24] Notably, it covers ground already familiar to us from the earlier discussion of nobility: can courtly gracefulness be learned, or is it a property natural to the nobly born? For this reason, it contributes to our understanding of the relationship between art and nature so central to the nobility debate, and it also further aims to inculcate in us a practice of reading which is itself ennobling.</p><p><br /></p><p>Throughout the discussion, Canossa is committed to the idea that all we need is talent and a willingness to adopt the contemporary linguistic idiom, but he needs to defend his position against an interlocutor, Fregoso, who champions the need for imitation. Castiglione seems to set up an argument in utramque partem which enables us to see both sides of the debate, and to choose the more persuasive one. However, the dialogue does not quite work like that. When Fregoso objects that Canossa's advice encourages the courtier to reproduce the solecisms of ignorant speakers, our speaker produces this confusing explanation: "Good usage in speech is born with men who have native wit, and, with teaching and experience, acquire good judgement, and in accordance with it, agree upon apt words whose quality they know from a certain natural judgement rather than from art or any rule" (87/68). [25]</p><p><br /></p><p>This sentence seems to epitomise Canossa's disdainful refusal to teach us; it looks like a deliberate obfuscation. However, he is in fact following the example set by the dissimulating Antonius, and is showing, not telling us, the artificial causes of "natural" rhetorical skill (78-80/63-64). The questione della lingua is difficult to follow not just because it is meandering, contradictory and ambiguous, but because it offers a partial account of De oratore while relying on our knowledge of that text. [26]</p><p>************************************</p><p>Sprezzatura - sprezzo - insolence</p><p>***********************************</p><p>Straying beyond Jonson's 'fit bounds'/custom:</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, on Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>He was (indeed) honest, and of</p><p>an open, and free nature: had an excellent</p><p>fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions:</p><p>wherein he flowed with that facility, that</p><p>sometime it was necessary he should be</p><p>STOP'D: sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said</p><p>of Haterius. His wit was in his own power;</p><p>would the RULE of it had been so too."</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Ruling/Restraining Shakespeare's Quill:</p><p><br /></p><p>From 'To the Deceased Author of these Poems' (William Cartwright)</p><p>by Jasper Mayne</p><p><br /></p><p>... For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.</p><p>In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:</p><p>A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,</p><p>As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.</p><p>Thy Lamp was cherish'd with supplied of Oyle,</p><p>Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>John Oldham on Jonson</p><p>III.</p><p>Let dull, and ignorant Pretenders Art condemn</p><p>(Those only Foes to Art, and Art to them)</p><p>The meer Fanaticks, and Enthusiasts in Poetry</p><p>(For Schismaticks in that, as in Religion be)</p><p>Who make't all Revelation, Trance, and Dream,</p><p>Let them despise her Laws, and think</p><p>That Rules and Forms the Spirit stint:</p><p>Thine was no mad, unruly Frenzy of the brain,</p><p>Which justly might deserve the Chain,</p><p>'Twas brisk, and mettled, but a manag'd Rage,</p><p>Sprightly as vig'rous Youth, and cool as temp'rate Age:</p><p>Free, like thy Will, it did all Force disdain,</p><p>But suffer'd Reason's loose, and easie rein,</p><p>By that it suffer'd to be led,</p><p>Which did not curb Poetick liberty, but guide:</p><p>Fancy, that wild and haggard Faculty,</p><p>Untam'd in most, and let at random fly,</p><p>Was wisely govern'd, and reclaim'd by thee,</p><p>Restraint, and Discipline was made endure,</p><p>And by thy calm, and milder Judgment brought to lure;</p><p>Yet when 'twas at some nobler Quarry sent,</p><p>With bold, and tow'ring wings it upward went,</p><p>Not lessen'd at the greatest height,</p><p>Not turn'd by the most giddy flights of dazling Wit.</p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>V.</p><p>Sober, and grave was still the Garb thy Muse put on,</p><p>No tawdry careless slattern Dress,</p><p>Nor starch'd, and formal with Affectedness,</p><p>Nor the cast Mode, and Fashion of the Court, and Town;</p><p>But neat, agreeable, and janty 'twas,</p><p>Well-fitted, it sate close in every place,</p><p>And all became with an uncommon Air, and Grace:</p><p>Rich, costly and substantial was the stuff,</p><p>Not barely smooth, nor yet too coarsly rough:</p><p>No refuse, ill-patch'd Shreds o'th Schools,</p><p>The motly wear of read, and learned Fools,</p><p>No French Commodity which now so much does take,</p><p>And our own better Manufacture spoil,</p><p>Nor was it ought of forein Soil;</p><p>But Staple all, and all of English Growth, and Make:</p><p>What Flow'rs soe're of Art it had, were found</p><p>No tinsel'd slight Embroideries,</p><p>But all appear'd either the native Ground,</p><p>Or twisted, wrought, and interwoven with the Piece.</p><p><br /></p><p>VI.</p><p>Plain Humor, shewn with her whole various Face,</p><p>Not mask'd with any antick Dress,</p><p>Nor screw'd in forc'd, ridiculous Grimace</p><p>(The gaping Rabbles dull delight,</p><p>And more the Actor's than the Poet's Wit)</p><p>Such did she enter on thy Stage,</p><p>And such was represented to the wond'ring Age:</p><p>Well wast thou skill'd, and read in human kind,</p><p>In every wild fantastick Passion of his mind,</p><p>Didst into all his hidden Inclinations dive,</p><p>What each from Nature does receive,</p><p>Or Age, or Sex, or Quality, or Country give;</p><p>What Custom too, that mighty Sorceress,</p><p>Whose pow'rful Witchcraft does transform</p><p>Enchanted Man to several monstrous Images,</p><p>Makes this an odd, and freakish MONKY turn,</p><p>And that a grave and solemn ASS appear,</p><p>And all a thousand beastly shapes of Folly wear:</p><p>Whate're Caprice or Whimsie leads awry</p><p>Perverted, and seduc'd Mortality,</p><p>Or does incline, and byass it</p><p>From what's Discreet, and Wise, and Right, and Good, and Fit;</p><p>All in thy faithful Glass were so express'd,</p><p>As if they were Reflections of thy Breast,</p><p>As if they had been stamp'd on thy own mind,</p><p>And thou the universal vast Idea of Mankind.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>XIII.</p><p>Let meaner spirits stoop to low precarious Fame,</p><p>Content on gross and coarse Applause to live,</p><p>And what the dull, and sensless Rabble give,</p><p>Thou didst it still with noble scorn contemn,</p><p>Nor would'st that wretched Alms receive,</p><p>The poor subsistence of some bankrupt, sordid name:</p><p>Thine was no empty Vapor, rais'd beneath,</p><p>And form'd of common Breath,</p><p>The false, and foolish Fire, that's whisk'd about</p><p>By popular Air, and glares a while, and then goes out;</p><p>But 'twas a solid, whole, and perfect Globe of light,</p><p>That shone all over, was all over bright,</p><p>And dar'd all sullying Clouds, and fear'd no darkning night;</p><p>Like the gay Monarch of the Stars and Sky,</p><p>Who wheresoe're he does display</p><p>His sovereign Lustre, and majestick Ray,</p><p>Strait all the less, and petty Glories nigh</p><p>Vanish, and shrink away.</p><p>O'rewhelm'd, and swallow'd by the greater blaze of Day;</p><p>With such a strong, an awful and victorious Beam</p><p>Appear'd, and ever shall appear, thy Fame,</p><p>View'd, and ador'd by all th' undoubted Race of Wit,</p><p>Who only can endure to look on it.</p><p>The rest o'recame with too much light,</p><p>With too much brightness dazled, or extinguish'd quite:</p><p>Restless, and uncontroul'd it now shall pass</p><p>As wide a course about the World as he,</p><p>And when his long-repeated Travels cease</p><p>Begin a new, and vaster Race,</p><p>And still tread round the endless Circle of Eternity.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p>Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius</p><p><br /></p><p>...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe</p><p>Those that we have, and those that we want too:</p><p>Th'art all so GOOD, that reading makes thee worse,</p><p>And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.</p><p>Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate</p><p>That servile base dependance upon fate:</p><p>Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,</p><p>Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;</p><p>*Excluding those from life in after-time*,</p><p>Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:</p><p>Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name</p><p>What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame</p><p>Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence</p><p>Made commendation a benevolence:</p><p>THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win</p><p>That best applause of being crown'd within..</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Jonson</p><p>Author.</p><p>...But, they that have incens'd me, can in Soul</p><p>Acquit me of that guilt. They know, I dare</p><p>To spurn, or bafful 'em; or squirt their Eyes</p><p>With Ink, or Urine: or I could do worse,</p><p>Arm'd with Archilochus fury, write Iambicks,</p><p>Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves;</p><p>RHIME 'EM TO DEATH, AS THEY DO IRISH RATS</p><p>In drumming Tunes. Or, living, I could stamp</p><p>Their foreheads with those deep, and PUBLICK BRANDS,</p><p>That the whole company of Barber-Surgeons</p><p>Should not take off, with all their Art, and Plaisters.</p><p>And these my Prints should last, still to be read</p><p>In their pale Fronts: when, what they write 'gainst me,</p><p>Shall, like a Figure drawn in Water, fleet,</p><p>And the poor wretched Papers be imploy'd</p><p>To clothe Tabacco, or some cheaper Drug.</p><p>This I could do, and make them infamous.</p><p>But, to what end? when their own deeds have mark'd 'em</p><p>And that I know, within his guilty Breast</p><p>Each slanderer bears a Whip, that shall torment him,</p><p>Worse, than a million of these temporal Plagues:</p><p>Which to pursue, were but a Feminine humour,</p><p>And far beneath the Dignity of Man.</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Jonson/Nemesis/Invidia/Giving What’s Due</p><p>Oxford/Hybris/Petulantia/INSOLENCE/Outrageous Behaviour</p><p><br /></p><p>———————————————</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>VOLPONE OR THE FOX</p><p><br /></p><p>TO THE MOST NOBLE AND MOST EQUAL SISTERS, THE TWO FAMOUS UNIVERSITIES, FOR THEIR LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE SHEWN TO HIS POEM IN THE PRESENTATION, BEN JONSON, THE GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGER, DEDICATES BOTH IT AND HIMSELF.</p><p>Never, most equal Sisters, had any man a wit so presently excellent, as that it could raise itself; but there must come both matter, occasion, commenders, and favourers to it. If this be true, and that the fortune of all writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the careful to provide well towards these accidents; and, having acquired them, to preserve that part of reputation most tenderly, wherein the benefit of a friend is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render myself grateful, and am studious to justify the bounty of your act; to which, though your mere authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein poetry and the professors of it hear so ill on all sides, there will a reason be looked for in the subject. It is certain, nor can it with any forehead be opposed, that the too much license of poetasters in this time, hath much deformed their mistress; that, every day, their manifold and manifest ignorance doth stick unnatural reproaches upon her: but for their petulancy, it were an act of the greatest injustice, either to let the learned suffer, or so divine a skill (which indeed should not be attempted with unclean hands) to fall under the least contempt. For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet, without first being a good man. He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover them to their first strength; that comes forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the business of mankind: this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But it will here be hastily answered, that the writers of these days are other things; that not only their manners, but their natures, are inverted, and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is over-true; but that all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness; have loathed the use of such foul and unwashed bawdry, as is now made the food of the scene: and, howsoever I cannot escape from some, the imputation of sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not my youngest infant but hath come into the world with all his teeth; I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order or state, I have provoked? What public person? Whether I have not in all these preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? My works are read, allowed, (I speak of those that are intirely mine,) look into them, what broad reproofs have I used? Where have I been particular? Where personal? Except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon, creatures, for their insolencies, worthy to be taxed? Yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his disease? But it is not rumour can make men guilty, much less entitle me to other men's crimes. I know, that nothing can be so innocently writ or carried, but may be made obnoxious to construction; marry, whilst I bear mine innocence about me, I fear it not. Application is now grown a trade with many; and there are that profess to have a key for the decyphering of every thing: but let wise and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters to be over-familiar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men's simplest meanings. As for those that will (by faults which charity hath raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name with the multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it without a rival, for me! I choose rather to live graved in obscurity, than share with them in so preposterous a fame. Nor can I blame the wishes of those severe and wise patriots, who providing the hurts these licentious spirits may do in a state, desire rather to see fools and devils, and those antique relics of barbarism retrieved, with all other ridiculous and exploded follies, than behold the wounds of private men, of princes and nations: for, as Horace makes Trebatius speak among these,</p><p>"Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, et odit."</p><p>And men may justly impute such rages, if continued, to the writer, as his sports. The increase of which lust in liberty, together with the present trade of the stage, in all their miscelline interludes, what learned or liberal soul doth not already abhor? where nothing but the filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry, able to violate the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy, to turn the blood of a Christian to water. I cannot but be serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame, and the reputation of divers honest and learned are the question; when a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence, become the lowest scorn of the age; and those men subject to the petulancy of every vernaculous orator, that were wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs. This it is that hath not only rapt me to present indignation, but made me studious heretofore, and by all my actions, to stand off from them; which may most appear in this my latest work, which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen, judged, and to my crown, approved; wherein I have laboured for their instruction and amendment, to reduce not only the ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last, the doctrine, which is the principal end of poesie, to inform men in the best reason of living. And though my catastrophe may, in the strict rigour of comic law, meet with censure, as turning back to my promise; I desire the learned and charitable critic, to have so much faith in me, to think it was done of industry: for, with what ease I could have varied it nearer his scale (but that I fear to boast my own faculty) I could here insert. But my special aim being to put the snaffle in their mouths, that cry out, We never punish vice in our interludes, etc., I took the more liberty; though not without some lines of example, drawn even in the ancients themselves, the goings out of whose comedies are not always joyful, but oft times the bawds, the servants, the rivals, yea, and the masters are mulcted; and fitly, it being the office of a comic poet to imitate justice, and instruct to life, as well as purity of language, or stir up gentle affections; to which I shall take the occasion elsewhere to speak.</p><p>For the present, most reverenced Sisters, as I have cared to be thankful for your affections past, and here made the understanding acquainted with some ground of your favours; let me not despair their continuance, to the maturing of some worthier fruits; wherein, if my muses be true to me, I shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and stripping her out of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the great and master-spirits of our world. As for the vile and slothful, who never affected an act worthy of celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it an high point of policy to keep her in contempt, with their declamatory and windy invectives; *she shall out of just rage incite her servants (who are genus irritabile) to spout ink in their faces*, that shall eat farther than their marrow into their fames; and not Cinnamus the barber, with his art, shall be able to take out the brands; but they shall live, and be read, till the wretches die, as things worst deserving of themselves in chief, and then of all mankind.</p><p>From my House in the Black-Friars,</p><p>this 11th day of February, 1607</p><p>—————————————-</p><p><br /></p><p>Shake-speare</p><p>O lest the world should task you to recite</p><p>What merit lived in me that you should LOVE</p><p>After my death, dear LOVE, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can NOTHING WORTHY prove;</p><p>Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,</p><p>To do more for me than mine own desert,</p><p>And hang more praise upon deceasèd I</p><p>Than niggard truth would willingly impart.</p><p>O lest your true LOVE may seem false in this,</p><p>That you FOR LOVE speak well of me untrue,</p><p>My name be buried where my body is,</p><p>And live no more to shame nor me nor you.</p><p>For I am shamed by that which I bring forth</p><p>And so should you, to love things nothing worth.</p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-10660593591843916762023-12-17T14:11:00.000-08:002023-12-27T17:48:45.843-08:00Droeshout Engraving as the Character of Shakespeare's Style<p><br /></p><p>(October 20, 2023, hlas)</p><p>This FIGURE that thou here seest put,</p><p>It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,</p><p>*Wherein the graver had a strife</p><p>With Nature*, to out-do the life:</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>Strife with Nature - Writing Against Nature, Running away from Nature</p><p><br /></p><p>Nature/Minerva</p><p><br /></p><p>Horace - Ars Poetica</p><p><br /></p><p>You, [I am persuaded,] will neither say nor do any thing *in opposition to Minerva*: such is your judgment, such your disposition. But if ever you shall write any thing, let it be submitted to the ears of Metius [Tarpa], who is a judge, and your father’s, and mine; and let it be suppressed till the ninth year, your papers being laid up within your own custody. You will have it in your power to blot out what you have not made public: a word once sent abroad can never return.</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————————</p><p>Disproportionate and incoherent Droeshout Figure characterizes Shakespeare’s style</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————-</p><p>Horace, Art of Poetry </p><p>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.*** “ </p><p>************************</p><p>Colin Burrow</p><p>Imitating Authors</p><p><br /></p><p>...The phrase ‘in the expression of their minds’ might also appear to press imitatio towards an expressive style aesthetic - though,here, as in the passage from Erasmus’s Ciceronianus which argued that ‘if you want to express [exprimere] the whole Cicero you cannot express yourself, it is likely that the literal sense of ‘making an external impression from the mould or form that is one’s mind’ is what makes it appear that Jonson has travelled so far in that direction. And he moves in that direction because he is nudged by Quintilian to do so. So the passage which Jonson is adapting or remembering here states ‘ and so without being conscious of doing so they will express the form of that speech which they had received deeply into their mind.’ (...) Quintilian’s use of the word *forma* in conjunction with ‘exprimerent’ carries across to Jonson’s vocabulary of ‘expression’: imitation is a matter of registering and then expressing a ‘form’ that is impressed upon your mind. But the elasticity of Quintilian’s language here also allows that the metaphor of imitation as the ‘expression’ of a pre-existing ‘mould’ or type might be extended. Texts could be regarded as replicable structures or general outlines (‘forms’) rather than just seals or types which are then stamped out in identical copies. That is borne out by Quintilian’s insistence in the same passage that imitators grasp not just the ‘forma’ of a speech, but also its ‘compositio’ and its ‘figurae’, its structure and both its rhetorical figures and the character of its style. (p. 243)</p><p><br /></p><p>——————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>The Grotesque: A study in Meanings</p><p><br /></p><p>Frances Barasch</p><p><br /></p><p>Chimeras</p><p><br /></p><p>‘Chimera’ or ‘monster against nature’ was a preferred meaning of ‘grotesque’ during the first half of the seventeenth century. Ben Jonson, Sir William D’Avenant, Roger Boyle, Lord Orrery, and Sir Thomas Browne used ‘grotesque’ for specific hybrid figures, which usually were minor details in the larger grotesque designs of Italian origin. The chimera was only a synecdoche of the entire corpus of art treasures found in the Roman grottoes, but it became an important meaning in the word ‘grotesque’.</p><p><br /></p><p>In Ben Jonson’s Discoveries, we learn that the work ‘Chimaera’s was being replaced by ‘Grottesque’, among the vulgar at any rate. He interrupts his retelling De Progressu Picturae to notice Vitruvius’ attitude toward Augustan painters and to comment on the contemporary use of ‘Grottesque’:</p><p><br /></p><p>“See where he [Vitruvius, VII] complaines of their painting Chimaera’s by the vulgar unaptly called Grottesque; Saying, that men who were borne truly to study, and emulate nature, did nothing but make monsters against nature; which Horace [Ars Poetica, l.1-10] so laught at.</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson takes the opportunity of the moment to indicate his own preference over ‘Grottesque’ for the term ‘Chimaera’s’ or the phrase “monsters against nature” and to support Vitruvius by invoking Horace’s authoritative ridicule of the famous mermaid, which we have already noticed in connection with Montaigne and Vauquelin.</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————-</p><p><br /></p><p>Invita Minerva</p><p><br /></p><p>———————————————</p><p>In the verse prologue to _Every Man in his Humour_ Jonson characterizes Shakespeare's plays as 'Monsters'</p><p><br /></p><p>SCENE,---LONDON</p><p><br /></p><p>PROLOGUE.</p><p>Though need make many poets, and some such</p><p><br /></p><p>As art and nature have not better'd much;</p><p><br /></p><p>Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,</p><p><br /></p><p>As he dare serve the *ill customs of the AGE*,</p><p><br /></p><p>Or purchase your delight at such a rate,</p><p><br /></p><p>As, for it, he himself must justly hate:</p><p><br /></p><p>To make a child now swaddled, to proceed</p><p><br /></p><p>Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,</p><p><br /></p><p>Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,</p><p><br /></p><p>And help of some few foot and half-foot words,</p><p><br /></p><p>Fight over York and Lancaster's king jars,</p><p><br /></p><p>And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.</p><p><br /></p><p>He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see</p><p><br /></p><p>One such to-day, as other plays should be;</p><p><br /></p><p>Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,</p><p><br /></p><p>Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;</p><p><br /></p><p>Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard</p><p><br /></p><p>The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard</p><p><br /></p><p>To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum</p><p><br /></p><p>Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;</p><p><br /></p><p>But deeds, and language, such as men do use,</p><p><br /></p><p>And persons, such as comedy would choose,</p><p><br /></p><p>When she would shew an image of the times,</p><p><br /></p><p>And sport with human follies, not with crimes.</p><p><br /></p><p>Except we make them such, by loving still</p><p><br /></p><p>Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.</p><p><br /></p><p>I mean such errors as you'll all confess,</p><p><br /></p><p>By laughing at them, they deserve no less:</p><p><br /></p><p>Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then,</p><p><br /></p><p>*You, that have so grac'd MONSTERS, may like men*.</p><p>***************************************</p><p>Bartholomew Fair: Jonson</p><p>T H E</p><p>I N D u C T I O N</p><p>O N T H E</p><p>S T A G E.</p><p><br /></p><p>...It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That</p><p><br /></p><p>how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is</p><p><br /></p><p>to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a</p><p><br /></p><p>Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and</p><p><br /></p><p>Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the</p><p><br /></p><p>present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the</p><p><br /></p><p>Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser,</p><p><br /></p><p>with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as</p><p><br /></p><p>good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind-</p><p><br /></p><p>heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her</p><p><br /></p><p>Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers</p><p><br /></p><p>for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead</p><p><br /></p><p>of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A</p><p><br /></p><p>sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an</p><p><br /></p><p>Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be ne-</p><p><br /></p><p>ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he</p><p><br /></p><p>says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to MAKE NA-</p><p><br /></p><p>TURE AFRAID in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tem-</p><p><br /></p><p>pests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his Head with other</p><p><br /></p><p>Mens Heels; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances,</p><p><br /></p><p>reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Pup-</p><p><br /></p><p>pets will please any body, they shall be entreated to</p><p><br /></p><p>come in.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Timber/Discoveries</p><p><br /></p><p>(In the difference of wits, note 10)</p><p><br /></p><p>Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly</p><p><br /></p><p>seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that</p><p><br /></p><p>is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not</p><p><br /></p><p>recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their</p><p><br /></p><p>sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and</p><p><br /></p><p>are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as</p><p><br /></p><p>lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are</p><p><br /></p><p>thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever</p><p><br /></p><p>election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first,</p><p><br /></p><p>and make all an even and proportioned body</p><p><br /></p><p>The true artificer will</p><p><br /></p><p>not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from</p><p><br /></p><p>life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his</p><p><br /></p><p>hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat,</p><p><br /></p><p>it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-</p><p><br /></p><p>chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant</p><p><br /></p><p>gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but</p><p><br /></p><p>artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called</p><p><br /></p><p>barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can</p><p><br /></p><p>come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment,</p><p><br /></p><p>knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him.</p><p><br /></p><p>He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men,</p><p><br /></p><p>will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing,</p><p><br /></p><p>his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his</p><p><br /></p><p>readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what</p><p><br /></p><p>sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in</p><p><br /></p><p>men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their</p><p><br /></p><p>minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold</p><p><br /></p><p>what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is</p><p><br /></p><p>beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which</p><p><br /></p><p>strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided</p><p><br /></p><p>faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate</p><p><br /></p><p>phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which</p><p><br /></p><p>is worse), especially for that it is naught.</p><p>—————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>Cynthia’s Revels - Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>TO THE</p><p><br /></p><p>SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,</p><p>The Court.</p><p><br /></p><p>THou art a Bountiful and Brave Spring, and waterest all the Noble Plants of this Island. In thee the whole Kingdom dresseth it self, and is ambitious to use thee as her Glass. Beware then thou render Mens Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. It is not Powd'ring, Perfuming, and every day smelling of the Taylor, that converteth to a Beautiful Object: but a Mind shining through any Sute, which needs no False Light, either of Riches or Honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the Reign of C Y N T H I A, (a C R I T E S and an A R E T E.) Now, under thy P H œ B U S, it will be thy Province to make more: Except thou desirest to have thy Source mix with the Spring of Self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcom a Discovery of thy Days, as was then made of her Nights.</p><p>Thy Servant, but not Slave,</p><p><br /></p><p>BEN. JOHNSON.</p><p>—————————————————</p><p>P R O L O G U E - Cynthia’s Revels</p><p>IF gracious silence, sweet attention,</p><p>Quick sight, and quicker apprehension,</p><p>(The lights of Judgments throne) shine any where;</p><p>Our doubtful Author hopes this is their Sphere.</p><p>And therefore opens he himself to those;</p><p>To other weaker Beams his labours close:</p><p>As loth to prostitute their Virgin strain,</p><p>To ev'ry vulgar and adult'rate Brain,</p><p>In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath,</p><p>She shuns the print of any beaten Path;</p><p>And proves new ways to come to learned Ears:</p><p>Pied ignorance she neither loves nor, fears.</p><p>Nor hunts she after popular Applause,</p><p>Or fomy praise, that drops from common Jaws:</p><p>The Garland that she wears, their bands must twine,</p><p>Who can both censure, understand, define</p><p>What merit is: Then cast those piercing Rays,</p><p>Round as a Crown, instead of honour'd Bays,</p><p>About his Poesie; which (he knows) affords</p><p>Words, above action: matter, above words.</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare</p><p>BY BEN JONSON</p><p>To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,</p><p>Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;</p><p>While I confess thy writings to be such</p><p>As neither man nor muse can praise too much;</p><p>'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways</p><p>Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;</p><p>For seeliest ignorance on these may light,</p><p>Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;</p><p>Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance</p><p>The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;</p><p>Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,</p><p>And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.</p><p>These are, as some infamous bawd or whore</p><p>Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?</p><p>But thou art proof against them, and indeed,</p><p>Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.</p><p>I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!</p><p>The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!</p><p>*My* Shakespeare, rise!</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————</p><p>Jonson has assimilated Shakespeare’s style and has produced ‘his’ Shakespeare. Milton used the same learned feint.</p><p><br /></p><p>———————————-</p><p>Cynthia’s Revels, Jonson</p><p>Mercury</p><p>(snip)</p><p>'Tis Asotus, the Heir of Philargyrus;</p><p>but first I'll give ye the others Character, which may</p><p>make his the clearer. He that is with him is Amorphus</p><p>a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds</p><p>of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. He walks</p><p>most commonly with a Clove or Pick-tooth in his</p><p>Mouth, he is the very mint of Complement, all his Be-</p><p>haviours are printed, his Face is another Volume of</p><p>Essayes; and his Beard an Aristrachus. He speaks all</p><p>Cream skim'd, and more affected than a dozen of wait-</p><p>ing Women. He is his own Promoter in every place.</p><p>The Wife of the Ordinary gives him his Diet to main-</p><p>tain her Table in discourse, which (indeed) is a meer</p><p>Tyranny over the other Guests, for he will usurp all</p><p>the talk: Ten Constables are not so tedious. He is no</p><p>great shifter, once a year his Apparel is ready to revolt.</p><p>He doth use much to arbitrate Quarrels, and fights him-</p><p>self, exceeding well (out at a Window.) He will lye</p><p>cheaper than any Begger, and lowder than most Clocks;</p><p>for which he is right properly accommodated to the</p><p>Whetstone his Page. The other Gallant is his Zani, and</p><p>doth most of these Tricks after him; sweats to imitate</p><p>him in every thing (to a Hair) except a Beard, which is</p><p>not yet extant. He doth learn to make strange Sauces,</p><p>to eat Anchovies, Maccaroni, Bovoli, Fagioli, and Ca-</p><p>viare, because he loves 'em; speaks as he speaks, looks,</p><p>walks, goes so in Cloaths and Fashion: is in all as if he</p><p>were moulded of him. Marry (before they met) he</p><p>had other very pretty sufficiencies, which yet he re-</p><p>tains some light impression of; as frequenting a dan-</p><p>cing School, and grievously torturing strangers with In-</p><p>quisition after his grace in his Galliard. He buys a</p><p>asecond 'a' an error fresh acquaintance at any rate. His Eyes and his</p><p>Raiment confer much together as he goes in the Street.</p><p>He treads nicely like the Fellow that walks upon Ropes;</p><p>especially the first Sunday of his Silk-stockings; and</p><p>when he is most neat and new, you shall strip him</p><p>with Commendations.</p><p>————————————————</p><p>Horace, Art of Poetry </p><p>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.*** “ </p><p>*******************************</p><p>Gabriel Harvey:</p><p>But seeing I must needs bewray my store, and set open my shop-windows, now I pray thee and conjure thee, by all thy amorous Regards, and Exorcisms of Love, call a Parliament of thy Sensible & Intelligible powers together, & tell me, in Tom Troth’s earnest [1], what Il secondo & famoso Poeta [2] [the second and famous poet], Messer Immerito [3], saith to this bold Satirical Libel, lately devised at the instance of a certain worshipful Hertfordshire gentleman [4] of mine old acquaintance: in Gratiam quorundam Illustrium Anglofrancitalorum, hic & ubique apud nos volitantium. Agedum vero, nosti homines, tanquam tuam ipsius cutem [5] [dedicated to some famous Anglo-franco-italians who skulks amongst our midst. Well, you know the people as well as your own skin].</p><p><br /></p><p>Speculum Tuscanismi</p><p><br /></p><p>Since Galateo came in [6], and Tuscanism gan usurp,</p><p>Vanity above all: Villainy next her [7], Stateliness Empress.</p><p>No man, but Minion, Stout, Lout, Plain, swain, quoth a Lording:</p><p>No words but valorous, no works but womanish only [8].</p><p>For life Magnificoe’s [9], not a beck but glorious in show,</p><p>In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.</p><p>His cringing side neck, Eyes glancing, Fisnamy [physiognomy] smirking,</p><p>With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward [10].</p><p>Largebelled Cod-pieced Doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,</p><p>Straight to the dock, like a shirt, and close to the breech, like a diveling.</p><p>A little Apish Hat, couched fast to the pate, like an Oyster,</p><p>French Camarick Ruffs, deep with a witness [knowledge] starched to the purpose.</p><p>Every one A per se A, his terms, and braveries in Print [11],</p><p>Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points:</p><p>In Courtly guiles [deceits], a passing singular odd man,</p><p>For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,</p><p>A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.</p><p>Not the like Discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out:</p><p>Not the like resolute Man, for great and serious affairs,</p><p>Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets, and privities of States [12],</p><p>Eyed like to Argus, Eared like to Midas [13], Nos'd like to Naso [14],</p><p>Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a Thousand for to be employ'd,</p><p>This, nay more than this doth practice of Italy in one year.</p><p>None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelvemonths</p><p>Hath so perfited [perfected] outly and inly both body, both soul,</p><p>That none for sense, and senses, half matchable with them.</p><p>A Vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an Eagle,</p><p>A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion. [15]</p><p>Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,</p><p>All gallant Virtues, all qualities of body and soul:</p><p>O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,</p><p>Blessed and happy Travail, Travailer most blessed and happy. [16]</p><p><br /></p><p>Penatibus Hetruscis laribusque nostris Inquilinis.</p><p>[To the Etruscan Penates and to our adopted Lares.]</p><p><br /></p><p>Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appear that this English Poet [17] wanted but a good pattern before his eyes, as it might be some delicate, and choice elegant Poesy of good Master Sidney's or Master Dyer's [18] (our very Castor and Pollux for such and many greater matters) when this trim gear was in hatching: Much like some Gentlewoman, I could name in England, who by all Physic and Physiognomy too, might as well have brought forth all goodly fair children, as they have now some ill-favoured and deformed, had they at the time of their Conception had in sight the amiable and gallant beautiful Pictures of Adonis, Cupido, Ganymedes, or the like, which no doubt would have wrought such deep impression in their fantasies and imaginations, as their children, and perhaps their Children's children too, might have thanked them for, as long as they have Tongues in their heads.</p><p><br /></p><p>*Nosti manum & stylum*</p><p><br /></p><p>(You know the hand and the style)</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————-</p><p>Horace, Art of Poetry </p><p>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.*** “ </p><p>*************************</p><p>On Poet-Ape - Jonson</p><p>(Form- Shakespearean Sonnet)</p><p>Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,</p><p>Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,</p><p>From brokage is become so bold a thief,</p><p>As we, the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it.</p><p>At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,</p><p>Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown</p><p>To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,</p><p>He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own:</p><p>And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes</p><p>The sluggish gaping auditor devours;</p><p>He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times</p><p>May judge it to be his, as well as ours.</p><p>Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece</p><p>From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?</p><p>————————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>Horace - Ars Poetica</p><p><br /></p><p>(EPISTLE TO THE PISOS)</p><p><br /></p><p>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.** “Poets and painters [you will say] have ever had equal authority for attempting any thing.” We are conscious of this, and this privilege we demand and allow in turn but not to such a degree, that the tame should associate with the savage; nor that serpents should be coupled with birds, lambs with tigers.</p><p><br /></p><p>In pompous introductions, and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of purple patch-work, that may make a great show, are tagged on; as when the grove and the altar of Diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is described. But here there was no room for these [fine things]: perhaps, too, you know how to draw a cypress [used for funerals]: but what is that to the purpose, if he, who is painted for the given price, is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? A large vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a little pitcher? In a word, be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform.</p><p><br /></p><p>The great majority of us poets, father, and youths worthy such a father, are misled by the appearance of right. I labour to be concise, I become obscure: nerves and spirit fail him, that aims at the easy: *one, that pretends to be sublime, proves bombastical:*</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>Greene</p><p>Trust them not, for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes that he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you. And being an absolute Johannes Factotum is in his conceit the only Shakescene in the country."</p><p>——————————————-</p><p>Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor</p><p>On Art.</p><p><br /></p><p>Can anyone be an artist without art? Or have you ever seen a bird flying without wings, or a horse running without feet? Or if you have seen such things, which no one else has ever seen, come, tell me please, do you hope to become a goldsmith, or a painter, or a sculptor, or a musician, or an architect, or a weaver, or any sort of artist at all without a teacher? But how much easier are all these things, than that you develop into a supreme and perfect orator without the art of public speaking. There is need of a teacher, and indeed even an excellent teacher, who might point out the springs with his finger, as it were, and carefully pass on to you the art of speaking colorfully, brilliantly, copiously. But what sort of art shall we choose? Not an art entangled in countless difficulties, or packed with meaningless arguments; not one sullied by useless [31] precepts, or disfigured by strange and foreign ones; not an art polluted by any filth, or fashioned to accord with our own will and judgment; not a single art joined and sewn together from many, like a quilt from many rags and skins (way too many rhetoricians have given this sort of art to us, if indeed one may call art that which conforms to no artistic principles). We want rather an art that is concise, precise, appropriate, lucid, accessible; one that is decorated and illuminated by precise definitions, accurate divisions, and striking illustrations, as if by flashing gems and stars; one that emerges, and in a way bursts into flower, from the speech of the most eloquent men and the best orators. Why so? Not only because brevity is pleasant, and clarity delightful, but also so that eloquence might be learned in a shorter time, and with less labor and richer results, and so that it might stand more firmly grounded, secured by deeper roots. For thus said the gifted poet in his Ars Poetica: "Whatever instruction you give, let it be brief." Why? [32] He gives two reasons: "So that receptive minds might swiftly grasp your words and accurately retain them." And indeed, as the same poet elegantly adds: "Everything superfluous spills from a mind that's full."</p><p>(snip)</p><p>But those annual whistles and shouts I hear indicate that almost all, or at least the greater part of my auditors are newcomers, who do not understand what they should do or whom they should imitate, but who nonetheless are captivated by the splendor of rhetoric, and seek to be orators. Therefore I will now, if I am able, reveal those things and place them all in their view, in such a way that they might seem to see them with their eyes, and almost hold them in their hands. In the meantime I pray you, most eloquent and refined gentlemen, either withdraw, if you like, or with the kindness that you've shown so far hear me as I recite some precepts so common as to be almost elementary. And from those whose tongues and ears Cicero alone inhabits, I beg forgiveness, if by chance I let drop in my haste a word that is un-Ciceronian. We cannot all be Longeuils and Cortesis: [9] some of us don't want to be. As for those who study more Latin authors, but only the best and choicest, and who to accompany Cicero, the foremost of all, add Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Seneca, Terence too, and Plautus and Vergil and Horace, I am sure they will be sympathetic to me. For reading as I do many works by many authors, sometimes even the poets, as Crassus bids in Cicero, I cannot guarantee that in so impromptu an oration I will not use a word not found in a Ciceronian phrase book.</p><p>But those little CROWS and APES of Cicero were long ago driven from the stage by the hissing and laughter of the learned, as they so well deserved, and at last have almost vanished; and I now hope to find not only eager and attentive auditors, but friendly spectators as well, not the sort who scrupulously weigh every individual detail on the scales of their own refined tastes, but who interpret everything in a fair and good-natured way. I too in fact wanted, if I was able--but perhaps I was not--to speak in as Ciceronian a style as the Ciceronianest of them all. [10] Forgive me, illustrious Ciceronians, if I ought not use that word in the superlative.</p><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-25229726917018341922023-12-17T14:02:00.000-08:002023-12-17T14:02:24.012-08:00Megalophues4<p> Billy Budd - Melville</p><p><br /></p><p>Chapter 19</p><p><br /></p><p>It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the finding of the court to the prisoner; for that purpose going to the compartment where he was in custody and bidding the marine there to withdraw for the time.</p><p><br /></p><p>Beyond the communication of the sentence what took place at this interview was never known. But in view of the character of the twain briefly closeted in that state-room, *each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of our nature*--so rare indeed as to be all but incredible to average minds however much cultivated--some conjectures may be ventured.</p><p><br /></p><p>It would have been in consonance with the spirit of Captain Vere should he on this occasion have concealed nothing from the condemned one--should he indeed have frankly disclosed to him the part he himself had played in bringing about the decision, at the same time revealing his actuating motives. On Billy's side it is not improbable that such a confession would have been received in much the same spirit that prompted it. Not without a sort of joy indeed he might have appreciated the brave opinion of him implied in his Captain's making such a confidant of him. Nor, as to the sentence itself could he have been insensible that it was imparted to him as to one not afraid to die. Even more may have been. Captain Vere in the end may have developed the passion sometimes latent under an exterior stoical or indifferent. He was old enough to have been Billy's father. The austere devotee of military duty, letting himself melt back into what remains primeval in our formalized humanity, may in the end have caught Billy to his heart even as Abraham may have caught young Isaac on the brink of resolutely offering him up in obedience to the exacting behest.</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————</p><p>Attack on Oxford’s singular Sublime Style was also an attack on elaborate and extravagant courtly forms. Oxford *sacrificed book* at time of Essex rebellion as court negotiated with city. Oxfordian forms were characterized as vain (empty/INANUS) and affected and insolent (against custom/nature) and were a target for reformers.</p><p>(Hybris (/ˈhaɪbrɪs/; Ancient Greek: Ὕβρις means 'hubris') was a spirit (daemon) of insolence, violence, and outrageous behaviour. In Roman mythology, the personification was PETULANTIA who reflected the Greek conception of hubris.)</p><p>Incoherent, unruly and ambisinister Droeshout Figure stands as a warning (monstrare) that Shakespeare is not a fit subject for imitation. Encomium mirrors the bombast and confusion of Shakespearean style as Jonson assimilates and reproduces Shakespeare’s Forma/Idea in a sophisticated critique of the author. Jonson imitates/emulates Shakespearean deformities/vices in the First Folio matter while choosing more 'virtuous' and 'manly' ways for himself.</p><p>***********************</p><p>Dec 17</p><p>Petulant Styles - Jonson</p><p>pĕtŭlantĭa , ae, f. petulans.</p><p>I. Lit., sauciness, freakishness, impudence, wantonness, petulance</p><p>SPREZZATURA - SPREZZO - Insolence</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson on Shakespeare:</p><p>Leave thee alone for the comparison</p><p>Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome</p><p>Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.</p><p>Tri'umph, my Britain, thou hast one to SHOW</p><p><br /></p><p>********************</p><div><br /></div><p>____________________</p><p>Ben Jonson, Timber {Topic 67}} {{Subject: AFFECTED language}}</p><p><br /></p><p>DE VERE argutis. - 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————————</p><p>Chapman, Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois:</p><p><br /></p><p>When Homer made Achilles passionate,</p><p>Wrathfull, revengefull, and insatiate15</p><p>In his affections, what man will denie</p><p>He did compose it all of industrie</p><p>To let men see that men of most renowne,</p><p>Strong'st, noblest, fairest, if they set not downe</p><p>Decrees within them, for disposing these,20</p><p>Of judgement, resolution, uprightnesse,</p><p>And certaine knowledge of their use and ends,</p><p>Mishap and miserie no lesse extends</p><p>To their destruction, with all that they pris'd,</p><p>Then to the poorest and the most despis'd?25</p><p><br /></p><p>——————————————</p><p>Edward de Vere to Robert Cecil, April 27, 1603)-</p><p><br /></p><p>...I cannot but find a great grief in myself to remember the mistress which we have lost, under whom both you and myself from our greenest years have been in a manner brought up and, although it hath pleased God after an earthly kingdom to take her up into a more permanent and heavenly state wherein I do not doubt but she is crowned with glory, and to give us a prince wise, learned and enriched with all virtues, yet the long time which we spent in her service we cannot look for so much left of our days as to bestow upon another, neither the long acquaintance and kind familiarities wherewith she did use us we are not ever to expect from another prince, as denied by the infirmity of age and common course of reason. In this common shipwreck, mine is above all the rest who, least regarded though often comforted of all her followers, she hath left to try my fortune among the alterations of time and chance, either without sail whereby to take the advantage of any prosperous gale or with anchor to ride till the storm be overpast. There is nothing therefore left to my comfort but the excellent virtues and deep wisdom wherewith God hath endued our our new master and sovereign Lord, who doth not come amongst us as a stranger but as a natural prince, succeeding by right of blood and inheritance, not as a conqueror but as the true shepherd of Christ's flock to cherish and comfort them. </p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-139340636567978852023-12-17T13:27:00.000-08:002023-12-17T13:27:35.756-08:00Megalophues3<p> (October 19 2023, hlas)</p><p>Megalophues 3</p><p><br /></p><p>Billy Budd - Melville</p><p>Chapter 4</p><p><br /></p><p>In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road,</p><p>some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. I am going</p><p>to err into such a by-path. If the reader will keep me company I shall</p><p>be glad. At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure which is</p><p>wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary sin the divergence will</p><p>be.</p><p><br /></p><p>Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at</p><p>last brought about a change in sea-warfare in degree corresponding to</p><p>the revolution in all warfare effected by the original introduction from</p><p>China into Europe of gunpowder. The first European fire-arm, a clumsy</p><p>contrivance, was, as is well known, scouted by no few of the knights as</p><p>a base implement, good enough peradventure for weavers too craven to</p><p>stand up crossing steel with steel in frank fight. But as ashore,</p><p>knightly valor, tho' shorn of its blazonry, did not cease with the</p><p>knights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there a</p><p>certain kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly</p><p>applicable under changed circumstances, did the nobler qualities of such</p><p>naval magnates as Don John of Austria, Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, the</p><p>long line of British Admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become</p><p>obsolete with their wooden walls.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without</p><p>being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one</p><p>the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float</p><p>there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but</p><p>also as a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the</p><p>Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. And this not</p><p>altogether because such craft are unsightly, unavoidably lacking the</p><p>symmetry and grand lines of the old battle-ships, but equally for other</p><p>reasons.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible to that</p><p>poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on behalf of the new order, be</p><p>disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, if need be.</p><p>For example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the Victory's</p><p>quarter-deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell, these</p><p>martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson's</p><p>ornate publication of his person in battle was not only unnecessary, but</p><p>not military, nay, savored of foolhardiness and vanity. They may add,</p><p>too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than a challenge to</p><p>death; and death came; and that but for his bravado the victorious</p><p>Admiral might possibly have survived the battle; and so, instead of</p><p>having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate</p><p>successor in command, he himself, when the contest was decided, might</p><p>have brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceeding which might</p><p>have averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in the elemental</p><p>tempest that followed the martial one.</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, should we set aside the more disputable point whether for various</p><p>reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet, then plausibly enough the</p><p>Benthamites of war may urge the above. But the might-have-been is but</p><p>boggy ground to build on. And, certainly, in foresight as to the larger</p><p>issue of an encounter, and anxious preparations for it--buoying the</p><p>deadly way and mapping it out, as at Copenhagen--few commanders have</p><p>been so painstakingly circumspect as this same reckless declarer of his</p><p>person in fight.</p><p><br /></p><p>Personal prudence even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an</p><p>excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest</p><p>sense of duty, is the first. If the name Wellington is not so much of a</p><p>trumpet to the blood as the simpler name Nelson, the reason for this may</p><p>perhaps be inferred from the above. Alfred in his funeral ode on the</p><p>victor of Waterloo ventures not to call him the greatest soldier of all</p><p>time, tho' in the same ode he invokes Nelson as "the greatest sailor</p><p>since our world began."</p><p><br /></p><p>At Trafalgar, Nelson, on the brink of opening the fight, sat down and</p><p>wrote his last brief will and testament. If under the presentiment of</p><p>the most magnificent of all victories to be crowned by his own glorious</p><p>death, a sort of priestly motive led him to dress his person in the</p><p>jewelled vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus to have adorned</p><p>himself for the altar and the sacrifice were indeed vainglory, then</p><p>affectation and fustian is each more heroic line in the great epics and</p><p>dramas, since in such lines the poet but embodies in verse those</p><p>exaltations of sentiment that a nature like Nelson, the opportunity</p><p>being given, vitalizes into acts. </p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-74382218878521621992023-12-17T13:24:00.000-08:002023-12-17T13:24:07.639-08:00Megalophues2<p><br /></p><p>Sublime Shakespeare Outrageous Oxford</p><p>__________________</p><p> From a Context-bound to an Essentializing Conception: A Study of Longinus’s Treatise On the Sublime</p><p><br /></p><p>AMRITA BHATTACHARYYA</p><p><br /></p><p>Glorifying Bourgeois Hero: Megalophrosyn: A Marker of Movement?</p><p><br /></p><p>The dual transcendence-structure of sublime is to a large extent, determines the attitude toward the great social revolution of modernity. The historical discourse of sublimity witnesses a significant shifting point from the decline of the feudal nobility to the emergence of a middle class. This shift denotes a shift from a culture promoting aristocratic-warrior ethos to another reflecting bourgeois-mercantile values. The intricate connection with affect and the possibilities for a secularized existence enable the experience of the sublime to speak about an evolving democratizing society. Doran views, “In effect what thinkers such as Boileau, Burke and Kant achieve through the sublime is a *bourgeois appropriation of aristocratic subjectivity (the heroic cast of mind)*.” (The Theory of Sublime 20)</p><p><br /></p><p>Aristotle mentions the concept of “megalopsuchos”, the man of great soul as a key element in the Book IV, section 3 of Nichomachean Ethics. Longinus used “megethos” (grandeur) as synonymous with hypsous. Megalo encompasses both the talent or ability of the writer and his or her moral superiority (nobility of mind). Curtius in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages views: “the Greeks did not know the concept of the creative imagination. They had no word for it. What the poet produced was a fabrication. Aristotle praises Homer for having taught poets ‘to lie properly’. For him, as we know, poetry was mimesis... But is Aristotle really the last word of antique literary criticism? Fortunately, we have the treatise On the Sublime.” (398)</p><p>The concept of megalophrosyn thus marks a movement, a shift from the context-based concept of a hero to the essentializing concept of a hero. In “The Morality of the Sublime: To John Dennis”, Jeffrey Barnouw shows that through the notion of megalophrosyn, Longinus did not indicate anything other-worldly; rather, the ideas associated with ‘greatness in mind’ are interrelated with political oratory and “touches the concerns of reputation and interest in civic life” (“The Morality of the Sublime: To John Dennis” 32). Longinus’ treatise unfolds a tension between the mystical-religious and the secular poetic.</p><p>Doran exposes the explicit relationship between the social change/revolution occurred from the Fronde of 1650 – 1653 (French civil war paving the way for concomitant destruction of the feudal order) to the French Revolution (1789-99) which consolidated the power of the bourgeois as the dominant social class; and, the peak period holding interest in the theory of sublimity from Boileau’s translation of 1674 to Kant’s third critique published in 1790 (Doran 20). Boileau extols the heroic nature of Cassius Longinus, the 3rd century philosopher and critic. He associates the qualities of the 17th century figure of the honnete homme (a man possessing high sensibility, refinement, and probity) with the mental elevation of Longinus. It might sound appropriate if we correlate this term with an evolving social category (by and large associated with the middle class, though not necessarily) with a progressing mental disposition.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ekstasis (ecstasy), Ekplexis (astonishment, amazement) and Thaumasion (wonder, awe): Sublime in Experiencing the Shift from Aesthetic to Cultural</p><p><br /></p><p>The history associated with the word thaumazein bears much significance in this context. Since Aristotle, this word bears a sense closer to the verb “to wonder”. Aristotle had used this verb “to wonder” (thaumazien) in Metaphysics, to describe the starting point of philosophy: “For from wonder (thaumazein) men, both now and at the first, began to philosophize, having felt astonishment (thaumazein) at things which were more obvious, indeed, amongst those that were doubtful” (982b). Socrates’ dictum in Plato’s Theaetetus also echoes the same: “This is an experience which is characteristic of a philosopher, this wondering (thaumazein): this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else” (155d). Later Edmund Burke cited this idea as “confused images” (images that excite by their lack of clarity) in his Enquiry to describe Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost as being productive of the sublime.</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————-</p><p>Republican Milton on Shakespeare:</p><p><br /></p><p>And so sepulchred in such pomp doth lie</p><p>That kings for such a tomb would wish to die</p><p>———————————</p><p><br /></p><p>APOLLO from his SHRINE/ Can no more divine,/</p><p>With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving. - Milton</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>King's Book/King's Shrine</p><p><br /></p><p>Shakespeare's Book/Oxford's Shrine</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton, Eikonoklastes</p><p><br /></p><p>...And here may be well observed the loose and negligent</p><p>curiosity of those, who took upon them to adorn the setting out of</p><p>this book; for though the picture set in front would martyr him and</p><p>saint him to befool the people, yet the Latin motto in the end, which</p><p>they understand not, leaves him, as it were, a politic contriver to</p><p>bring about that interest, by fair and plausible words, which the</p><p>force of arms denied him. But quaint emblems and devices, begged from</p><p>the old pageantry of some twelfthnight's entertainment at Whitehall,</p><p>will do but ill to make a saint or martyr: and if the people resolve</p><p>to take him sainted at the canonizing, I shall suspect their calendar</p><p>more than the Gregorian. In one thing I must commend the openness, who</p><p>gave the title to the is book, Eikon Basilike, that is to say, the</p><p>King's Image; and by the SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly</p><p>would have the people come and worship him. For which reason this</p><p>answer is entitled, Eikonoklastes, the famous surname of many Greek</p><p>emperors, who, in their zeal to the command of God, after long</p><p>tradition of idolatry in the church, took courage and broke all</p><p>superstitious images to pieces.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Performing early modern trauma from Shakespeare to Milton</p><p>By Thomas Page Anderson</p><p><br /></p><p>In the "Preface" to Eikonoklastes, Milton establishes his strategy to</p><p>disarm the book in a disingenuous offer of praise. He "commends" the</p><p>King's "op'ness" in giving the title of The King's Image to the book.</p><p>And he complements as well the appearance of the project: "by the</p><p>SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly would have the people come</p><p>and worship him" (EK, p.68). Milton's reference to the shrine echoes</p><p>Protestant writings that worked to debunk notions of the sacred altar</p><p>central to the Catholic sacraments. By acknowledging the altar-like</p><p>status of the text, Milton associates the book's appeal to its</p><p>putative efficacy. However, he qualifies the king's SHRINE by</p><p>suggesting that its altar-like status is the product of effective</p><p>staging or "dress[ing] out."</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>I sing the starry axis and the singing hosts in the sky, *and of the</p><p>gods suddenly destroyed in their own SHRINES*. -- Milton, 1629</p><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-30187402610534943462023-12-17T13:21:00.000-08:002023-12-17T13:21:55.006-08:00Megalophues1<p> </p><p>(October 19 2023, hlas)</p><p><br /></p><p>Sublime Shakespeare Outrageous Oxford</p><p>————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>Colin Burrow</p><p>Imitating Authors</p><p><br /></p><p>...On the Sublime begins Ch.2 with the question which is so foundational to the rhetorical tradition: whether art (techne) or nature produces the sublime style. Longinus’s answer to that question is to emphasize the role played by natural power: he argues that hypsos or sublimity requires an extreme form of natural talent, which he denotes by the word megalophue (2.1), or greatness of nature, and which requires both art and nature.</p><p>(Snip)</p><p>Burrow (con’t)</p><p>When Longinus moves on to discuss imitatio it is as though he is deliberately seeking to remove from it all traces of the traditionally ‘Greek’’ method of teaching through precepts. He begins with a light allusion to the metaphor of the path: one road (hodos) to the sublime, he says, is imitation and emulation (mimesis Kai zelosis, Sublime,13.2). That road leads, not to Rome (...) but to the inspired centre of Greek religion, the Pythian Oracle at Delphi. It is possible to be inspired by an earlier author, Longinus declares, as the Pythian princess ‘becomes impregnated with the divine power and is at one inspired to utter oracles; so, too, from the natural genius of those old writers (apo tes ton archaion megalophuias) there flows into the hearts of their admirers as it were an emanation from those holy mouths’ (Sublime, 13.2).</p><p>This priestly description of imitation as a kind of inspired birth develops Longinus’s earlier assertion that the true sublime elevates its readers and makes them believe that they themselves had created it (...). (Sublime, 13.2) the keyword here is gennesasa: the creation of the sublime is a kind of birth, which spreads by inspiration from author to reader, and which is *implicitly ungovernable by principle or rule*.</p><p><br /></p><p>——————————————-</p><p><br /></p><p>On Shakespeare. 1630</p><p>BY JOHN MILTON</p><p>What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,</p><p>The labor of an age in pilèd stones,</p><p>Or that his hallowed relics should be hid</p><p>Under a star-ypointing pyramid?</p><p>Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,</p><p>What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?</p><p>Thou in our wonder and astonishment</p><p>Hast built thyself a live-long monument.</p><p>For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art,</p><p>Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart</p><p>Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book</p><p>Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,</p><p>Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,</p><p>Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;</p><p>And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,</p><p>That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.</p><p><br /></p><p>———————————-</p><p>Haterius ‘Full of the Ben Jonson, on Shakespeare (~Timber)</p><p><br /></p><p>‘I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn’d) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov’d the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow’d with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d: Sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him; Caesar, thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.’[1]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************************</p><p>Haterius - Full of the God</p><p><br /></p><p>flow'd with that facility - Shakespeare "Profluens/Superfluens"</p><p><br /></p><p>Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Sexuality</p><p>James L Butrica, PhD</p><p><br /></p><p>...Next we turn to Haterius himself, and what Seneca was trying to convey about him; this requires that we put him into two contexts, the historical and the literary.</p><p>By combining notices in the historian Tacitus (who puts his death in the year that we call 26 CE) and Jerome (who reports from Eusebius that he was nearly ninety at the time) we can put Haterius' birth in the range of 64-62 BCE; for a part of 5 BCE he served as one of Rome's two chief magistrates, having been appointed a consul suffectus ("substitute consul") by Augustus. His reputation was well established in his own day but (as Tacitus noted) did not last long beyond it. Seneca the Younger (nephew of Seneca the Elder) discusses him briefly at Epistule morales 40.10. The text is unfortunately corrupt, but Seneca was clearly contrasting two very different orators, Publius Vinicius, who plucked his words one by one as if dictating rather than talking, and Haterius, whose style he characterizes as cursus, or "running"; Seneca says that he wants a "sane man" to have nothing to do with Haterius' manner, for he "never hesitated, never left off, would begin only once, would stop only once." That impetuous, unhesitant forward rush was noticed by the emperor Augustus, who is quoted approvingly by Seneca the Elder as saying that Haterius noster sufflaminandus est, "Our friend Haterius needs to have a brake applied." In his obituary notice at Annals 4.61, Tacitus says that Haterius impetu magis quam cura uigebat, that is, excelled in his forward drive - IMPETUS is here a synonym of cursus - rather than any careful attention to detail, and sums up his distinctive characteristic as canorum illud et PROFLUENS, "that sonorousness and volubility," where PROFLUENS (lit. "flowing forth") again suggests his sheer momentum. Seneca the Elder, quoting him at Controversiae 1.6.12, likewise refers to "the usual cursus of his oratory" (quo solebat cursu orationis). At Suasoriae 3.7, Seneca relates an anecdote in which Haterius is one of several orators described by Gallio as Plena deo, "full of the god" (but with a feminine form of the adjective "full," generally taken as an allusion to Virgil's description of the inspired Sybil of Cumae in Book 6 of his Aeneid, though Virgil does not use the actual phrase). Thus, even without the specific reference in Seneca the Elder that is being discusses here, an image emerges of an orator easily carried away and lacking a sense of just when to stop.</p><p>Note - Seneca says he did not so much currere "run" as decurrere "run downward".</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>Continence:</p><p><br /></p><p>The concept of 'proper limits' is bound up with the classical ideal of decorum (propriety in manners and conduct). Quintilian writes that ‘'A good man (vir bonus) will see that everything he says is consistent with his dignity and the respectability of his character (dignitate ac verecundia); for we pay too dear for the laugh we raise if it is at the cost of our own integrity</p><p>(probitatis)'</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson paraphrases this passage at the close of his epigram</p><p>"To My Book” (probitas – integrity,honesty, uprightness):</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————-</p><p><br /></p><p>Holding/Restraining/Ruling Shakespeare's Quill:</p><p><br /></p><p>From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)</p><p>by Jasper Mayne</p><p><br /></p><p>...And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all</p><p>The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:</p><p>No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,</p><p>No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;</p><p>No Oracle of Language, to amaze</p><p>The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase,</p><p>Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,</p><p>A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.</p><p>That which Thou wrot'st was sense, and that sense good,</p><p>Things not first written, and then understood:</p><p><br /></p><p>Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar'd so high</p><p>As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,</p><p>'Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,</p><p>Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.</p><p><br /></p><p>For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.</p><p>In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:</p><p>A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,</p><p>As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.</p><p>Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,</p><p>Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle.</p><p><br /></p><p>——————————————-</p><p><br /></p><p>(Billy Budd/Beauty - noble foundling)</p><p>Vere/Truth</p><p><br /></p><p>'Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.' (Melville, _Billy Budd_)</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Melvillian Sublime:</p><p><br /></p><p>1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville</p><p><br /></p><p>"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or</p><p>mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including</p><p>their ostensible authors."</p><p><br /></p><p>“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page</p><p>of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine</p><p>authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply</p><p>standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all</p><p>BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative</p><p>as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some</p><p>warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author</p><p>has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our</p><p>bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences</p><p>among us?”</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p>Phoenix and the Turtle - sublime poetry</p><p><br /></p><p>Truth and Beauty buried be</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————————-</p><p>Melville’s Sublime uneventfulness. Toward a phenomenology of the Sublime – Ruud Welten</p><p><br /></p><p>The sublime is something strange, beyond our imagination, uncanny even. The term is of great importance to Herman Melville. Moby Dick, the whale, is sublime because of its terrifying existence. This chapter investigates the consequences of a phenomenology of the sublime as a prime condition for consciousness itself. Sublimity is not a property of objects, but of subjective experience alone. Philosophic language and poetic language presume that subjectivity is overwhelmed by the experience of the sublime. As one tries to describe, it radically exceeds its parameters.</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————</p><p><br /></p><p>Catherine Maxwell, Female Sublime.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>What this poem [Milton's sonnet on Shakespeare] seems to be rehearsing is the sublime. Shakespeare’s admirers, stupefied by the effect of his language to ‘wonder and astonishment’, are like those wrought upon by a sublime spectacle. Astonishment says Burke is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree. Shakespeare’s verse is a pleasurable petrification, a stimulating paralysis. Readers, the poem suggests, remain arrested at that stage of the sublime in which they are exhilarated – dizzy and reeling under the bombardment of its mixed images and multiple dislocations. However, Milton’s poem reproduces this scene of petrification in order to break out of it. The mental spin induced by lines 13-14 mimes the dizzying effect produced by Shakespeare’s verse, *but the cool control and detachment with which Milton describes the Shaekspearian sublime suggests assimilation – the poet has absorbed it and has moved beyond it to a new creativity*. Moreover, the poem is itself monumentalising and thus substitutive – it saves the potentially stricken Milton from the paralysis of perpetual witness by offering itself as epitaph. Yet this is no simple act of submission.</p><p>* An example itself of highly ingenious ‘conceiving’, the poem not only reproduces the effect of Shakespeare’s language but it rivals it.* By writing in a sublime manner about the way the sublime arrests writing, and by appropriating the precursor as ‘my Shakespeare’, the poem masters the experience that might otherwise leave the imagination subject. p.50</p><p>(snip)</p><p>The key figures and ideas which Milton uses in this poem to express the power of a sublime precursor and the effects of his legacy are ones which will recur in different form in Shelley’s poetry. Paralysis, petrification, impress or inscription are some of the means by which we will recognize the disfigurative mark of the sublime, while defensive evasion through forms of proxy or shielding shows us ways of protecting oneself against total constriction.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Oxford/Shakespeare/Comus (ungodly sublime)</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton, John: Comus</p><p><br /></p><p>118: COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the</p><p>119: other: with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of</p><p>120: wild</p><p>121: beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel</p><p>122: glistering.</p><p>123: They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in</p><p>124: their hands.</p><p>125:</p><p>126:</p><p>127: COMUS. The star that bids the shepherd fold</p><p>128: Now the top of heaven doth hold;</p><p>129: And the gilded car of day</p><p>130: His glowing axle doth allay</p><p>131: In the steep Atlantic stream;</p><p>132: And the slope sun his upward beam</p><p>133: Shoots against the dusky pole,</p><p>134: Pacing toward the other goal</p><p>135: Of his chamber in the east.</p><p>136: Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,</p><p>137: Midnight shout and revelry,</p><p>138: Tipsy dance and jollity.</p><p>139: Braid your locks with rosy twine,</p><p>140: Dropping odours, dropping wine.</p><p>141: Rigour now is gone to bed;</p><p>142: And Advice with scrupulous head,</p><p>143: Strict Age, and sour Severity,</p><p>144: With their grave saws, in slumber lie.</p><p>145: We, that are of purer fire,</p><p>146: Imitate the starry quire,</p><p>147: Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,</p><p>148: Lead in swift round the months and years.</p><p>149: The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,</p><p>150: Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;</p><p>151: And on the tawny sands and shelves</p><p>152: Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.</p><p>153: By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,</p><p>154: The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,</p><p>155: Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:</p><p>156: What hath night to do with sleep?</p><p>157: Night hath better sweets to prove;</p><p>158: Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.</p><p>159: Come, let us our rights begin;</p><p>160: 'T is only daylight that makes sin,</p><p>161: Which these dun shades will ne'er report.</p><p>162: Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,</p><p>163: Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame</p><p>164: Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,</p><p>165: That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb</p><p>166: Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,</p><p>167: And makes one blot of all the air!</p><p>168: Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,</p><p>169: Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend</p><p>170: Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end</p><p>171: Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,</p><p>172: Ere the blabbing eastern scout,</p><p>173: The nice Morn on the Indian steep,</p><p>174: From her cabined loop-hole peep,</p><p>175: And to the tell-tale Sun descry</p><p>176: Our concealed solemnity.</p><p>178: In a LIGHT FANTASTIC round.</p><p>179:</p><p>180: The Measure.</p><p>181:</p><p>182: Break off, break off! I feel the different pace</p><p>183: Of some chaste footing near about this ground.</p><p>184: Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;</p><p>185: Our number may affright. Some virgin sure</p><p>186: (For so I can distinguish by mine art)</p><p>187: Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,</p><p>188: And to my wily trains: I shall ere long</p><p>189: Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed</p><p>190: About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl</p><p>191: My dazzling spells into the spongy air,</p><p>192: Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,</p><p>193: And give it false presentments, lest the place</p><p>194: And my quaint habits breed astonishment,</p><p>195: And put the damsel to suspicious flight;</p><p>196: Which must not be, for that's against my course.</p><p>197: I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,</p><p>198: And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,</p><p>199: Baited with reasons not unplausible,</p><p>200: Wind me into the easy-hearted man,</p><p>201: And hug him into snares. When once her eye</p><p>202: Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,</p><p>203: I shall appear some harmless villager</p><p>204: Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.</p><p>205: But here she comes; I fairly step aside,</p><p>206: And hearken, if I may her business hear.</p><p>207:</p><p>208: The LADY enters.</p><p>209:</p><p>210: LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,</p><p>211: My best guide now. Methought it was the sound</p><p>212: Of riot and ill-managed merriment,</p><p>213: Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe</p><p>214: Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,</p><p>215: When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,</p><p>216: In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,</p><p>217: And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth</p><p>218: To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence</p><p>219: Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else</p><p>220: Shall I inform my unacquainted feet</p><p>221: In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>From the Ode to Oxford in John Southern’s Pandora, The Music of the Beauty of his Mistress Diana.(1584)</p><p><br /></p><p>Epode</p><p><br /></p><p>No, no, the high singer is he</p><p>Alone that in the end must be</p><p>Made proud with a garland like this,</p><p>And not every riming novice</p><p>That writes with small wit and much pain,</p><p>And the (God’s know) idiot in vain,</p><p>For it’s not the way to Parnasse,</p><p>Nor it will neither come to pass</p><p>If it be not in some wise fiction</p><p>And of an INGENIOUS INVENTION,</p><p>And INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVAIL,</p><p>For it alone must win the laurel,</p><p>And only the poet well born</p><p>Must be he that goes to Parnassus,</p><p>And not these companies of asses</p><p>That have brought verse almost to scorn. </p><p><br /></p><p>**************</p><p><br /></p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-32328960941235874982023-12-17T13:11:00.000-08:002023-12-27T18:02:16.258-08:00Jonson's Assimilation and Imitation of His Master Shakespeare in the First Folio<p> </p><p>(October 19 2023, hlas)</p><p>Sublime Shakespeare Outrageous Oxford</p><p><br /></p><p>————————————-</p><p><br /></p><p>[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).</p><p><br /></p><p>——————————————-</p><p><br /></p><p>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.’</p><p>———————————————</p><p>Flow/flux/humour</p><p>No ‘firmness’ - flow/flux humour</p><p><br /></p><p>No form, impression, stamp (writ in water)</p><p><br /></p><p>Form (noun) - forma, species, FIGURA, conformatio, schema</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————-</p><p>This FORMA/FIGURA that thou seest here put,</p><p>It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,</p><p>Wherein the graver had a strife</p><p>With Nature, to out-do the life:</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————</p><p>Imitating the IDEA of Shakespeare in the First Folio - Jonson imitates the master and writes against Nature</p><p><br /></p><p>—————————————-</p><p>Incoherent/unnatural Form of the Droeshout engraving - Jonson distinguishes between Opinion and Knowledge </p><p>***************</p><p>Dec 17 - </p><p>Men of Wit (Oxford) vs. Men of Sense (Jonson). </p><p>----------------------</p><p>Jonson - guided the theatre with a 'bridle' - Jonsonus Virbius</p><p>Wikipedia</p><p>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. </p><p>The name Nemesis is derived from the Greek word νέμειν, némein, meaning "to give what is due", from Proto-Indo-European *nem- "distribute". </p><p>She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a whip or a dagger.</p><p>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.</p><p>The poet Mesomedes wrote a hymn to Nemesis in the early second century AD, where he addressed her:</p><p>Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice</p><p>and mentioned her "adamantine bridles" that restrain "the FRIVOLOUS INSOLENCES of mortals".</p><p>Narcissus</p><p>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.</p><p>Insolent Oxford – against Custom/Nature</p><p>Droeshout – Inane Figure/INANUS</p><p>**************************</p><p>Marston - Histriomastix</p><p>Mavortius berates Chrisoganus (Jonson) for unsucessfully attempting to impersonate Nemesis: to carry "just Rhamnusia's whip," (Jstor)</p><p>How you translating scholar? You can make</p><p>A stabbing Satire, or an Epigram,</p><p>And think you carry just Ramnusia's whip</p><p>To lash the patient: go, get you clothes,</p><p>Our free-born blood such apprehension loathes.</p><p>(3:257-58)</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>Jonson</p><p>XLII. — THE MIND OF THE FRONTISPIECE</p><p><br /></p><p>TO A BOOK. </p><p><br /></p><p>From death and dark oblivion (near the same)</p><p> The mistress of man's life, grave History,</p><p>Raising the world to good and evil fame,</p><p> Doth vindicate it to eternity.</p><p>Wise Providence would so : that nor the good</p><p> Might be defrauded, nor the great secured,</p><p>But both might know their ways were understood,</p><p> When vice alike in time with virtue dured :</p><p>Which makes that, lighted by the beamy hand</p><p>Of Truth, that searcheth the most hidden springs,</p><p>And guided by Experience, whose straight wand</p><p> Doth mete, whose line doth sound the depth of things ;</p><p>She cheerfully supporteth what she rears,</p><p> Assisted by no strengths but are her own,</p><p>Some note of which each varied pillar bears,</p><p> By which, as proper titles, she is known</p><p>Time's witness, herald of Antiquity,</p><p>The light of Truth, and life of Memory. </p><p>***********************</p><p>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</p><p>(snip)</p><p>...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. </p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>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.’ *</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************</p><p>Horace, Ars Poetica (Socrates Acadia)</p><p>(EPISTLE TO THE PISOS) </p><p>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.*** “ </p><p>*****************</p><p>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).</p><p>*******************</p><p>Horace, Ars Poetica (Socrates Acadia)</p><p>(EPISTLE TO THE PISOS) </p><p>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*. “ </p><p>*******************</p><p>To the Great Example of H O N O U R and V E R T U E, the most Noble</p><p><br /></p><p>W I L L I A M</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p> M Y L O R D,</p><p>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.</p><p>Your Lordships most faithful Honourer, </p><p>BEN. JOHNSON. </p><p>**********************</p><p>The Feigned Commonwealth in the Poetry of Ben Jonson</p><p>Anthony Mortimer</p><p>Jonson (in Timber) defines the poet as one who feigns a commonwealth</p><p>and creates a "proper embattling" of VICE and VIRTUE. This</p><p>illuminates</p><p>the epigrams and commendatory poems where shades of moral gray are</p><p>replaced by black and white. The vicious are nameless because vice is</p><p>a vizard, destroying personality. The virtuous are named for</p><p>recognition and imitation.</p><p>*********************************</p><p>...A volume like Jonson's Epigrammes (1616) - a genre whose origin in</p><p>incised inscriptions led to its close association with the emblem in</p><p>Renaissance theorizing - might well be regarded as a kind of 'blind'</p><p>emblem book. Here was a collection of poems of praise and blame that a</p><p>Whitney or a Peacham would likely have been tempted to illustrate with</p><p>imprese, heraldic designs or other allegorical devices. As we have</p><p>seen, although Jonson translated Horace's Ars Poetica and transcribed</p><p>for his own use all the commonplaces of ut pictura poesis, he added</p><p>the note that "of the two, the Pen is more noble than the Pencill';</p><p>and he placed his faith as a poet in the moral "weight" of language,</p><p>in the unique "authority" of the word ***to speak the inner truth of</p><p>things to the understanding***, *not just to display surfaces of things</p><p>to the sense*. Jonson exercises this power magisterially in the</p><p>Epigrammes, where the highest praise for the virtuous is to honour</p><p>their names ("On Lucy Covntess of Bedford") while the severest</p><p>punishment for the vicious is either to rechristen them with their</p><p>true names ("On Sir Voluptuous Beast"), or else to withhold the</p><p>dignity of a name altogether ("On some-thing, that walkes some-</p><p>where"). IN Jonson's verbal commonwealth, people who are idolized by</p><p>the world for *cutting an IMPOSING FIGURE to the eye* - like the</p><p>nameless and inwardly "dead" lord who "made me a great face" - are too</p><p>morally insubstantial to deserve the attention of language. As it</p><p>reflects a distinction, not only between independence of mind and</p><p>servility, but between the inner fortitude of language and the</p><p>ephemeral luster of visual representation, Jonson's declaration "to</p><p>all, to whom I write" might serve as the motto for much of the best</p><p>English Poetry written during Quarles's lifetime: "I a Poet here, no</p><p>Herald am." (pp. 89-90) Ernest B. Gilman, _Iconoclasm and Poetry in</p><p>the English Reformation_</p><p>******************************************</p><p>Jonson</p><p>XI. -- ON SOMETHING, THAT WALKS SOMEWHERE.</p><p>At court I met it, in clothes brave enough,</p><p>To be a courtier ; and looks grave enough,</p><p>To seem a statesman : as I near it came,</p><p>It made me a great face ; I ask'd the name.</p><p>A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh, and blood,</p><p>And such from whom let no man hope least good,</p><p>For I will do none ; and as little ill,</p><p>For I will dare none : Good Lord, walk dead still</p><p>*************************</p><p>Behold, they are all vanity; their works are NOTHING: their molten</p><p>images are WIND and CONFUSION.</p><p>- Isaiah 41:29 </p><p>*************************</p><p>Horace/Catiline epigraph:</p><p>*----------His non plebecula gaudet:</p><p>Verum equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas</p><p>Omnis, ad incertos oculos, & gaudia vana. Horat.</p><p><br /></p><p>For such things please the common herd. But today all the pleasure</p><p>even of the knights has moved from what is heard to the *empty* (Note - vanus) delights</p><p>of the uncertain eye.'</p><div>******************</div><div>Uncertain Eye:</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Look how the father's face</div><div>Lives in his issue, even so the race</div><div>Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines</div><div>In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;</div><div>In each of which he SEEMS to shake a lance,</div><div>As brandish'd at the *eyes of ignorance*.</div><div>Sweet Swan of Avon! what a SIGHT it were</div><div>To SEE thee in our WATERS yet appear, (Uroscopy/Disease of the Age (Timber)</div><div>And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, (MOUNT-BANK)</div><div>That so did TAKE Eliza and our James!</div></div><div><br /></div><div>******************</div><div>Wikipedia:</div><div><br /></div><div>Esse quam videri is a Latin phrase meaning "TO BE, rather than to SEEM."</div><div><div>Esse quam videri is found in Cicero's essay On Friendship (Laelius de Amicitia, chapter 98). Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt ("Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so").</div><div><br /></div><div>Just a few years after Cicero, Sallust used the phrase in his Bellum Catilinae (54.6), writing that Cato the Younger esse quam videri bonus malebat ("He preferred to be good rather than to seem so").</div><div><br /></div><div>Previous to both Romans, Aeschylus used a similar phrase in Seven Against Thebes at line 592, at which the scout (angelos) says of the seer/priest Amphiaraus: οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι θέλει (ou gàr dokeîn áristos, all' eînai thélei: "he doesn't want to seem, but to be the bravest"). Plato quoted this line in Republic (361b)</div></div><div><br /></div><div>******************</div><div>Chettle and Dekker 1599</div><div><br /></div><div>Troylus</div><div>Come Cressida my Cresset light,</div><div>Thy face doth shine both day and night,</div><div>Behold, behold, thy garter blue,</div><div>Thy knight his valiant elboe weared,</div><div>That When he shakes his furious Speare,</div><div>The foe in shivering fearefull sort,</div><div>May lay him downe in death to snort.</div><div><br /></div><div>*******************</div><div><br /></div><p>Perseus Tufts Horace, Ars line 73 </p><p><br /></p><p>Homer has instructed us in what measure the achievements of kings, and chiefs, and direful war might be written.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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?</p><p>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.</p><p>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."</p><p>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.</p><p>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</p><p>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,</p><p>” 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.</p><p>*******************</p><p>Jonson on Shakespeare:</p><p>SOCKS/HAUGHTY</p><p>...or, when thy SOCKS were on,</p><p>Leave thee alone for the comparison</p><p>Of all that insolent Greece or HAUGHTY Rome</p><p>Sent forth, </p><p>———————————</p><p>Damning with faint praise:</p><p>His Exalted Grace the 17th Earl of Oxford - best for COMEDY and ENTERLUDE </p><p>______________________</p><p>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.</p><p>******************</p><p>Mirth Making_, Chris Holcomb</p><p>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) </p><div>*******************</div><div><div>Cutting the Ridiculous Droeshout Figure</div><div><br /></div><div>Horace</div><div><br /></div><div>If I meet you with my hair cut by an uneven barber, you laugh [at me]: if I chance to have a ragged shirt under a handsome coat, or if my disproportioned gown fits me ill, you laugh.</div><div><br /></div><div>(footnote - he is not ridiculous because the barber has cut his hair too short, but because he has cut it unequally - inaequalis tonsor) </div></div><div><br /></div><div>*******************</div><div>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.*** “ </div><div><br /></div><div>****************</div><p>Horace, Ars Poetica (Socrates Acadia)</p><p>You, that write, either follow *tradition*, or invent such fables as are congruous to themselves. </p><p>*****************</p><p>Word origin</p><p>C14: from Latin insolens, from in-1 + solēre to be accustomed </p><p><br /></p><p>Middle English Compendium – michigan</p><p><br /></p><p>insolence n.</p><p><br /></p><p>Entry Info</p><p>Forms</p><p>insolence n. Also insolens.</p><p>Etymology</p><p>L insolentia & OF insolence.</p><p>Definitions (Senses and Subsenses)</p><p>1.</p><p>(a) Immoderate conduct, behavior contrary to law or custom; evil deeds; (b) the quality of being excessive or sinful, wickedness; (c) ?extravagance, indecency.</p><p>2.</p><p>Arrogance, haughtiness.</p><p>3.</p><p>(a) Misbehavior, bad manners; (b) a mischievous act; (c) folly, ignorance, inexperience.</p><p>*************************</p><p>Horace, Ars Poetica</p><p>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.</p><p>*************************</p><p>Against Custom/Nature -Running Away From Nature</p><p>*************************</p><div><div>Sidney, Defence of Poetry</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither DECENCY nor DISCRETION; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphytrio. But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, match hornpipes and funerals. So falleth it out that, having indeed NO RIGHT COMEDY in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but SCURRILITY, unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltihsness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.</div><div><br /></div><div>But OUR COMEDIANS think there is no delight without laughter, which is very wrong; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay, rather in themselves they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most DISPROPORTIONED to ourselves and NATURE. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>******************</div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div> “(an epistle to the reader) should be like the Never-too-well read Arcadia, where the Prose and verce (Matters and Words) are like his Mistresses eyes, one still excelling another and without Co-rivall: or to come home to the *vulgars Element*, like Friendly Shakespeare’s Tragedies, *where the Commedian rides, when the Tragedian stands on tip-toe*: Faith it should please all, like Prince Hamlet. But in sadnesse, then it were to be feared he would runne made Insooth I will not be moonesicke, to please: nor out of my wits though I displeased all ” (Preface, “Diaphantus; or, the Passions of Love” 1604) </div></div><div><br /></div><div>*****************</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Maurice Hunt</div><div>Baylor University</div><div>Shakespeare’s “Still-Vexed” Tempest</div><div><br /></div><div>In recent decades, commentators on Shakespearean drama have shown how early</div><div>modern rhetorical figures, as described for example by George Puttenham in The</div><div>Arte of English Poesie (1589), provide the paradigm for better understanding the</div><div>essence of both the dramatic methods and values of Titus Andronicus and Hamlet</div><div>(synecdoche), King John (antimetabole), and Coriolanus (a kinetic combination</div><div>of metonymy and synecdoche) (Kendall; Baldo; Hunt, “Antimetabolic King John”;</div><div>Danson 142–62). Few commentators have shown, however, how a single phrase</div><div>in a Shakespeare play encapsulates a rhetorical trope that describes a signature</div><div>experience of that play. This is what I do in the following paragraphs for the late</div><div>romance The Tempest. The phrase in question is “still-vexed,” appearing in Ariel’s</div><div>early utterance “where once / Thou called’st me up at midnight to fetch dew / From</div><div>the still-vexed Bermudas” (1.2.229–31).1 This two-word phrase, once recognized</div><div>and construed as an oxymoron, represents a primary dramatic effect of The Tem-</div><div>pest, for both characters and playgoers alike. Analysis conducted in terms of the</div><div>oxymoronic paradigm “still-vexed” describes in a new way the persistence of a</div><div>dynamic in The Tempest that plays into and indirectly makes possible the drama’s</div><div>emphasis upon release from bondage or confinement.2 </div><div><br /></div><div>(snip)</div><div><br /></div><div>...Shakespeare salted the text of The Tempest with oxymoronic phrases, for ex-</div><div>ample, “full poor cell” (1.2.20), “baked with frost” (1.2.257), “new-dyed” (2.1.66).</div><div>Interestingly, these poetic oxymora cluster in the early part of the play. Shakespeare</div><div>and other Jacobeans most likely did not call these phrases oxymora. The OED</div><div>records no date before 1657 for usage of the English word oxymoron for the kind</div><div>of trope we call by this name in Shakespeare’s plays. Puttenham in The Arte of</div><div>English Poesie never classifies a trope as an oxymoron. What we call an oxymoron,</div><div>Puttenham, Shakespeare, and their more literate contemporaries likely considered</div><div>a paradox, perhaps a distant cousin of Syneciosis. Puttenham terms this latter trope</div><div>“the Crosse-couple, because it takes two contrary words, and tieth them as it were</div><div>in a paire of couples, and so makes them agree like good fellowes” (206). Sister</div><div>Miriam Joseph defines synoeciosis as “a composition of contraries [that] stimulates</div><div>attention by the seeming incompatibility of the terms it unites” (135). Despite the</div><div>strong possibility that Shakespeare might not have called a phrase such as “full</div><div>poor cell” or “baked with frost” an oxymoron, these and similar utterances in The</div><div>Tempest will be termed oxymora in accordance with current critical usage (as in</div><div>Harry Levin’s celebrated treatment of the oxymora of Romeo and Juliet). In the</div><div>second half of The Tempest, oxymora tend to be figurative, visual in fact, rather</div><div>than linguistic, as when Ariel assumes the form of a harpy, a mythical bird made</div><div>up (for Shakespeare) of the amalgam of angel and eagle. (Cleon tells Dionyza in</div><div>Pericles 4.3.47–49, “Thou art like the harpy, / Which, to betray, dost, with thine</div><div>angel’s face, / Seize with thine eagle’s talons”). Other visual oxymora of The</div><div>Tempest include monstrous-shaped spirits displaying gentle manners (3.3.31–34)</div><div>and the image of the chaste nymphs of April joined in dancing with the sicklemen,</div><div>the reapers, of August.</div><div>In what sense can Ariel’s phrase “still-vexed” be considered an oxymoron? An</div><div>ambiguity inherent in the word still causes the meaning of the phrase to resonate</div><div>beyond its context. “Still” of course can mean “quiet” or “calm,” a fact transforming</div><div>the phrase, taken out context, into a paradox. The phrase “still-vexed” encapsulates</div><div>the paradoxical coincidence of stasis and quiet with turmoil, agitation. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>*******************</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Dew forms when the temperature of an object, such as a blade of grass or a car windshield, drops below the dew point temperature. The dew point temperature is the point at which the air becomes saturated, meaning it can no longer hold all the moisture it contains. As a result, the excess moisture condenses into tiny water droplets on surfaces, creating dew.</div><div>Several factors contribute to the formation of dew. Firstly, clear skies and calm winds are ideal conditions for dew to occur. When the sky is clear, the Earth’s surface radiates heat into space, causing it to cool down. Calm winds prevent the warm air from mixing with cooler air, allowing the temperature to drop further and reach the dew point.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>*******************</div><div>Sargasso Sea Commission:</div><div><br /></div><div>"The Sargasso Sea is... an area of open ocean that has fascinated people for centuries and a key part of Bermuda’s rich cultural maritime history and heritage ranging from legends of the Sargasso Sea as a place of mystery (The Bermuda Triangle), frustrating challenges (the ‘doldrums’ becalming sailors for weeks), and unfounded fears (great mats of weed trapping ships); through to Sargassum sweeping up onto the beaches, and the productivity that the Sargasso Sea confers on Bermuda and surrounding countries." </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-15599158894890485392023-12-17T12:19:00.000-08:002023-12-25T15:30:09.883-08:00The Noble Sublime - Sublimation and Desublimation in Shakespeare Authorship<p><br /></p><p>(hlas - January 1, 2023)</p><p>Shakespear wanted Arte - Ben Jonson, according to William Drummond</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p><br /></p><p>Radical Art “Informe” (formless)</p><p><br /></p><p>Art is about form. (Visual shape is a metaphor for conceptual form.) But in the course of the twentieth century this very notion (form) has become suspect. This situation creates an interesting challenge for the visual arts: to find a form for formlessness, to show the form that has no form. Below we list some of the forms of formlessness that have been explored:</p><p><br /></p><p>dangle, tangle, jumble, litter, mound, heap, junk, foam, fluff, mud, dirt, fat, trash, goo/ooze/putty, mess</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p>Visual shape is a metaphor for conceptual form:</p><p><br /></p><p>Droeshout Engraving - the form of formlessness </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1911, Gentlemen's Tailor Magazine investigated the construction of the doublet and reported:</p><p><br /></p><p>"The tunic, coat, or whatever the garment may have been called at the time, is so strangely illustrated that the right hand-side of the forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the backpart, and so give[s] a harlequin appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume was intentional and done with express object and purpose.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Forms of formlessness:</p><p>gallimaufry, tatterdemalion, frippery, mingle-mangle, soraismus, hodge-podge, genera-mixta, salmagundi, patchwork, motley, jumble, hash, botch, shambles, mongrel tragi-comedy, bedlam, amorphus, Italianate Englishman, shreds, sweepings, scraps</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p>Shakespeare's Sublime Formlessness satirized as Amorphus:</p><p><br /></p><p>He that is with him is Amorphus, a traveller, one so made out of a</p><p><<mixture of shreds and forms>>, that himself is truly deformed. He</p><p>walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth, he is the</p><p>very mint of compliment, all his behaviours are printed, his face is</p><p>another volume of essays, and his beard is an Aristarchus. (Jonson,</p><p>Cynthia's Revels)</p><p>*********************** </p><p>Jonson</p><p>Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,</p><p>Whose works are e'en the FRIPPERY of wit,</p><p>From brokage is become so bold a thief,</p><p>As we, the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it.</p><p>At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,</p><p>Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown</p><p>To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,</p><p>He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own:</p><p>And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes</p><p>The sluggish gaping auditor devours;</p><p>He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times</p><p>May judge it to be his, as well as ours.</p><p>Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece</p><p>From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Italianate Englishman:</p><p><br /></p><p>Speculum Tuscanismi</p><p>Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,</p><p>Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress</p><p>No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:</p><p>No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.</p><p>For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,</p><p>In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.</p><p>His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,</p><p>With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.</p><p>Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,</p><p>Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a</p><p>diveling.</p><p>A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,</p><p>French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.</p><p>Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,</p><p>Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,</p><p>In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,</p><p>For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,</p><p>A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.</p><p>Not the like discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out,</p><p>Not the like resolute man for great and serious affairs,</p><p>Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets and privities of States,</p><p>Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nos'd like to Naso,</p><p>Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a thousand for to be employ'd,</p><p>This, nay more than this, doth practice of Italy in one year.</p><p>None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelve month</p><p>Hath so perfited outly and inly both body, both soul,</p><p>That none for sense and senses half matchable with them.</p><p>A vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an eagle,</p><p>A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion.</p><p>Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,</p><p>All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.</p><p>O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,</p><p>Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy.</p><p>"Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appear</p><p>that this English poet wanted but a good pattern before his eyes,</p><p>as it might be some delicate and choice elegant Poesy</p><p>of good Master Sidney's or Master Dyer's</p><p>(our very Castor and Pollux for such and many greater matters)</p><p>when this trim gear was in the matching?"</p><p>Gabriel Harvey</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>Poetaster, Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>(...)The suffering ploughshare or the flint may wear;</p><p><br /></p><p>But heavenly poesy no death can fear.</p><p><br /></p><p>Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows,</p><p><br /></p><p>The banks o'er which gold-bearing Tagus flows.</p><p><br /></p><p>Kneel hinds to *trash*: me let bright Phoebus swell</p><p><br /></p><p>With cups full-flowing from the Muses' well!_</p><p><br /></p><p>The frost-drad myrtle shall impale my head,</p><p><br /></p><p>And of sad lovers I 'll be often read!</p><p><br /></p><p>Envy the living not the dead doth bite,</p><p><br /></p><p>For after death all men receive their right.</p><p><br /></p><p>*Then when this body falls in funeral fire,</p><p><br /></p><p>My name shall live and my best part ASPIRE. *</p><p><br /></p><p>[after Ovid, Amores 1:15]</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Aspire:</p><p><br /></p><p>intransitive verb</p><p><br /></p><p>1: to seek to attain or accomplish a particular goal</p><p><br /></p><p>2: ASCEND, SOAR</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Merriam Webster:</p><p>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.</p><p>*Also includes - to soar, to fly aloft, to be carried into the sky*</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Ben Jonson, Alchemist Act 1;Sc. 1</p><p><br /></p><p>Face. You might talk softlier, rascal.</p><p>Subtle. No, you scarab,</p><p>I'll thunder you in pieces: I will teach you</p><p>How to beware to tempt a Fury again,</p><p>That carries tempest in his hand and voice.</p><p>Face. The place has made you valiant.</p><p>Subtle. No, your clothes. -</p><p>Thou vermin, have I ta'en thee out of dung,</p><p>So poor, so wretched, when no living thing</p><p>Would keep thee company, but a spider, or worse?</p><p>Rais'd thee from brooms, and dust, and watering-pots,</p><p>Sublimed thee, and exalted thee, and fix'd thee</p><p>In the third region, call'd our state of grace?</p><p>Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains</p><p>Would twice have won me the philosopher's work?</p><p>Put thee in words and fashion, made thee fit</p><p>For more than ordinary fellowships?</p><p>Giv'n thee thy oaths, thy quarrelling dimensions,</p><p>Thy rules to cheat at horse-race, cock-pit, cards,</p><p>Dice, or whatever gallant tincture else?</p><p>Made thee a second in mine own great art?</p><p>And have I this for thanks ! Do you rebel,</p><p>Do you fly out in the projection !</p><p>Would you be gone now?</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>(...) in that which becks</p><p><br /></p><p>Our ready minds to fellowship divine,</p><p><br /></p><p>A fellowship with essence, till we shine</p><p><br /></p><p>Fully alchemized, and free of space. (Keats, Endymion I)</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Attribution (?)</p><p>For the alchemist, the process of sublimation was experienced in symbolic images. He, for example, might see a bird flying up from the matter in the lower part of the vessel to the upper regions. The alchemical vessel was equated with the macrocosm its lower part being the earth and its upper part, heaven. The sublimate flees earth and is transported to heaven. A text says,” At the end of the sublimation there germinates through the mediation of the spirit, a shining white soul [anima candida] which flies up to heaven with the spirit. This is clearly and manifestly the Stone” (This “white soul” is often represented by a white bird being released from the material being heated.)</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Tragic Joy and the Sublime:</p><p><br /></p><p>Love's Martyr, Robert Chester</p><p><br /></p><p>Turtle.</p><p>Haue I come hither drooping through the woods,</p><p>And left the springing groues to seeke for thee?</p><p>Haue I forsooke to bath me in the flouds,</p><p>And pin'd away in carefull misery?</p><p>Do not deny me Phoenix I must be</p><p>A partner in this HAPPY TRAGEDY.</p><p>Phoenix.</p><p>O holy, sacred, and pure perfect fire,</p><p>More pure then that ore which faire Dido mones,</p><p>More sacred in my louing kind desire,</p><p>Then that which burnt old Esons aged bones,</p><p>Accept into your euer hallowed flame,</p><p>Two bodies, from the which may spring one name.</p><p><br /></p><p>Turtle.</p><p>O sweet perfumed flame, made of those trees,</p><p>Vnder the which the Muses•ne haue song</p><p>The praise of vertuous maids in misteries,</p><p>To whom the faire fac'd Nymphes did often throng;</p><p>Accept my body as a Sacrifice</p><p>Into your flame, of whom one name may rise.</p><p>Phoenix.</p><p>O wilfulnesse, see how with smiling cheare,</p><p>My poore deare hart hath flong himselfe to thrall,</p><p>Looke what a mirthfull countenance he doth beare,</p><p>Spreading his wings abroad, and JOYES with all:</p><p>Learne thou corrupted world, learne, heare, and see,</p><p>Friendships vnspotted true sincerity.</p><p>I come sweet Turtle, and with my bright wings,</p><p>I will embrace thy burnt bones as they lye,</p><p>I hope of these another Creature springs,</p><p>That shall possesse both our authority:</p><p>I stay to long, ô take me to your glory,</p><p>And thus I end the Turtle Doues true story.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>Billy Budd/Book/Foundling/Beauty</p><p>Sublime – tragic joy/happy Tragedy (Love’s Martyr)</p><p>Phoenix and Turtle 'Urn'/Melville's Architectural "Finial"</p><p><br /></p><p>Billy Budd chapter 22, Melville</p><p><br /></p><p>It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the finding of the court to the prisoner; for that purpose going to the compartment where he was in custody and bidding the marine there to withdraw for the time.</p><p>Beyond the communication of the sentence what took place at this interview was never known. But in view of the character of the twain briefly closeted in that state-room, each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of our nature--so rare indeed as to be all but incredible to average minds however much cultivated--some conjectures may be ventured.</p><p>It would have been in consonance with the spirit of Captain Vere should he on this occasion have concealed nothing from the condemned one--should he indeed have frankly disclosed to him the part he himself had played in bringing about the decision, at the same time revealing his actuating motives. On Billy's side it is not improbable that such a confession would have been received in much the same spirit that prompted it. *Not without a sort of JOY* indeed he might have appreciated the brave opinion of him implied in his Captain's making such a confidant of him. Nor, as to the sentence itself could he have been insensible that it was imparted to him as to one not afraid to die. Even more may have been. Captain Vere in the end may have developed the passion sometimes latent under an exterior stoical or indifferent. He was old enough to have been Billy's father. The austere devotee of military duty, letting himself melt back into what remains primeval in our formalized humanity, may in the end have caught Billy to his heart even as Abraham may have caught young Isaac on the brink of resolutely offering him up in obedience to the exacting behest. But there is no telling the sacrament, seldom if in any case revealed to the gadding world, wherever under circumstances at all akin to those here attempted to be set forth, two of great Nature's nobler order embrace. There is privacy at the time, inviolable to the survivor, and holy oblivion, the sequel to each diviner magnanimity, providentially covers all at last.</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>(Desublimation of Budd/Beauty/Book/Martyr - oozy weeds)</p><p><br /></p><p>But me they’ll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.</p><p>Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep.</p><p>I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?</p><p>Just ease these darbies at the wrist,</p><p>And roll me over fair.</p><p>I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.</p><p><br /></p><p>(Billy - Melville's 'Pinioned' Figure)</p><p>****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Beauty's Resistless Thunder - Marston, Love's Martyr</p><p><br /></p><p>A narration and description of a most exact wondrous creature, arising out of the Phoenix and Turtle Doues ashes. - Marston</p><p><br /></p><p>O Twas a mouing Epicedium!</p><p>Can Fire? can Time? can blackest Fate consume</p><p>So rare creation? No; tis thwart to sence,</p><p>Corruption quakes to touch such excellence,</p><p>Nature exclaimes for Iustice, Iustice Fate,</p><p>Ought into nought can neuer remigrate.</p><p>Then looke; for see what glorious issue brighter</p><p>Then clearest fire, and beyond faith farre whiter</p><p>Then Dians tier) now springs from yonder flame?</p><p>Let me stand numb'd with wonder, neuer came</p><p>So strong amazement on astonish'd eie</p><p>As this, this measurelesse pure Raritie.</p><p>Lo now; th'xtracture of deuinest Essence,</p><p>The Soule of heauens labour'd Quintessence,</p><p>(Peans to Phoebus) from deare Louer's death,</p><p>Takes sweete creation and all blessing breath.</p><p>What strangenesse is't that from the Turtles ashes</p><p>Assumes such forme? (whose splendor clearer flashes,</p><p>Then mounted Delius) tell me genuine Muse.</p><p>Now yeeld your aides, you spirites that infuse</p><p>A sacred rapture, light my weaker eie:</p><p>Raise my inuention on swift Phantasie,</p><p>That whilft of this same Metaphisicall</p><p>God, Man, nor Woman, but elix'd of all</p><p>My labouring thoughts, with strained ardor sing,</p><p>My Muse may mount with an vncommon wing.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************</p><p>Beauty's Resistlesse Thunder: Marston, Love's Martyr</p><p><br /></p><p>No Master of Himself: Pope and the Response of Wonder</p><p>Katherine Playfair Quinsey</p><p><br /></p><p>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—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”:</p><p><br /></p><p>*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.*</p><p>An Essay upon the Sublime, 3</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>*****************************</p><p>Milton, the sublime and dramas of choice: Figures of Heroic and Literary Virtue</p><p>By Irene Montori </p><p><br /></p><p>...For Milton, Shakespeare’s imagination holds a paralysing, a sort of “marmorialising” effect on the reader, which anticipates Comus’s paralysis of the Lady. Her stasis is also an evident allusion to Hermione’s statue in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. The statue of Hermione, a great example of Renaissance art, is a perfect imitation of the original, “a piece many years in doing and now newly performed by the rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape”. But, like the Lady of A Maske, she does not have the ability to speak (snip)</p><p>...Th(e) sublime moment of reunion between the earthly and the heavenly emerges from a momentary state of wonder, which is also one of the distinguishing features of the romance genre. Through the association of the passions and astonishment and wonder with the marvellous and the Christian supernatural, an early modern poetics of the sublime developed in the context of Shakespeare’s late romances and Spenser’s chivalric poem.</p><p> The Lady’s release from the marble seat in Milton’s masque evokes a similar attempt to collapse the distance between the material and the divine worlds, through the mediation of Sabrina. However, in creating his sublime fiction of transport, Milton distances himself from Shakespeare and Spenser. The Lady’s salvation does not originate from a *seductive, excessive, and over-spontaneous rhetoric, like in Shakespeare*, nor does it emerge as a momentary experience of rapturous wonder, like in Spenser. Milton’s model of sublime poetry eventually results from the combination of imagination and wonder with the assistance of divine grace. Poetic creation, in other words, hinges on the same dialectic that drives the individual’s self-making between active virtue and divine providence. In the very last words of the Attendant Spirit’s epilogue, Milton recalls the dichotomy between virtuous and providential action:</p><p>Love Virtue, she alone is free,</p><p>She can teach ye how to climb</p><p>Higher than the sphery chime;</p><p>Or if Virtue feeble were,</p><p>Heaven itself would stoop to her. (1118-1122)</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime – Patrick Cheney</p><p><br /></p><p>In _Cynthia’s Revels_, near the beginning of his career (first printed 1600), Jonson uses the word twice [note - sublime], both surrounding the figure of Amorphus, described by Mercury in Act 2, scene 3 as ‘a traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds of forms that himself is truly deformed’ (66-7). In other words, Amorphus is a figure of transport, and his composition, made up of ‘forms’ that are ‘deformed’, takes us into what we have previously described as Kantian territory. *Amorphus is that sublime figure of form that has none* (curiously akin to Marlowe’s Helen of Troy)[and Droeshout Engraving], accommodated to the Jonsonian public sphere, where Amorphus’ ‘adaptability and social versatility is a form of shapelessness which links the literal metamorphoses of Echo, Narcissus, and Acteaon, and the cultural ones of Asotus and others’ in the action of the play. (Rassmussen and Steggle).</p><p>In using the word ‘sublimated’, Amorphus stands before the Fountain of Self-Love, having just conversed with Narcissus’ one-time beloved, the beautiful nymph Echo – who has just abandoned Amorphus – when Jonson’s figure of formless form steps forth to take the plunge: ‘Liberal and divine fount, suffer my profane hand to take of they bounties’. Intoxicated by ‘most ambrosiac water’, he broods why the beguiling feminine potency of the well should accept him but Echo turn her heel:</p><p><br /></p><p>Knowing myself an essence so sublimated and refined by travel, of so studied and well-exercised a gesture, so alone in fashion, able to make the face of any statesman living, and to speak the mere extraction of language…; to conclude, in all so happy as even admiration herself does seem to fasten her kisses upon me; certes I do neither see, nor feel, nor taste, nor savour the least steam or fume of a reason that should invite this foolish fastidious nymph so peevishly to abandon me. (1.3.24-35; emphasis added)</p><p><br /></p><p>Amorphus speaks the alchemical language of sublimity but adapts it to his personal identity – his ability to transport himself into a heightened state of ‘language’ that attracts the erotic ‘admiration’ of others – in an appropriately comical language of hyperbolic elevation.</p><p>Specifically, Amorphus engages in narcissism by vaunting his self-knowledge: ‘travel’ refines and ‘sublimate[s]’ his ‘essence’ into a quintessence of gold, and such sublimity underwrites his social and political theatre, during which he can ‘make the face of any statesman living’, as Jeremy Face will do to London citizens in the Alchemist. Sublime transport here is not transcendent but political and social, the Protean self enlivened, capable of adapting to exigency, endlessly. Self-consciously, Jonson makes comically sublime theatre out of a comically sublime theatrical character. We might even see here an impressive staging of the kind of comical hyperbole discussed by Longinus in On Sublimity, which is one form that the sublime can take: ‘acts and emotion which approach ecstasy provide a justification for, and an antidote to, any linguistic audacity. This is why comic hyperboles, for all their incredulity, are convincing because we laugh at them so much…Laughter is emotion in amusement’.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Jonson’s linking of sublimity with a character named ‘Amorphus’ merits pause, because this agile figure looks like a photographic negative of Jonson himself. Without question, the author-figure in Cynthia’s Revels is Criticus (called Crites in the Folio edition), ‘the poet-scholar’ of “Judgement’ who ‘represents Jonson’s literary, philosophical, and ethical ideals’ (Bednarz, Shakespeare & The Poets’ War 159-60), and who becomes the play’s arch-enemy to Amorphus and the motley crew of corrupt courtiers, Hedon, Anaides, ad Asotus. According to James Bednarz, Amorphus is a figure who represents ‘Deformit’ and the ‘lack of true conviction’, and who becomes enamoured of a nymph who happens to be named Phantaste or ‘fantasy’ (159-600. In these terms, the project of the play is to ‘replac[e]…the rhetoric of “nature’ and “instinct” staged in Marston’s Jack Drum with the sterner interdictions of “art” and “judgement” in a larger “allegory of self-knowlledge’ (160). According to Bednarz, Marston had rejected Jonson’s rational, judgemental poetics in favour of one based on imaginative instinct, which Jonson then shows to be purged of cultural authority.</p><p>Nonetheless, as Rasmussen and Steggle write, Amorphus ‘prefigures Jonson’s later tricksters’ in being ‘at the centre of the play’s action due to his energy and inventiveness, both verbal and physical’. Rasmussen and Steggle go so far as to see Amorphus as akin to Jonson himself: ‘biographically Jonson is more like Amorphus than Criticus’, citing Jonson’s ‘experiences in foreign travel’ and his ‘natural charisma and drive’. Even ‘Amorphus’s weaknesses (lack of money and tendency to exaggerate) are close to those of Jonson;. Wisely, Rasmussen and Steggle caution against ‘claim[ing] that Amorphus “is” Jonson, or even to over-allegorize the tension between Amorphus and his nemesis Criticus’ (eds. 1:435); but they do help us see that the figure of Amorphus qualifies as a *sublime counter-Jonsonian author-figure*. (pp. 220-1)</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Love’s Martyr, Cantoes</p><p><br /></p><p>Though death from life my bodie part,</p><p>Yet neare the lesse keepe thou my hart.</p><p>___________________________________</p><p>THOUGH some men are inconstant, fond, and fickle,</p><p>DEATHs ashie count'nance shall not alter me:</p><p>FROM glasse they take their substance being brittle,</p><p>LIFE, Heart, and Hand shall awaies fauour thee,</p><p>MY Pen shall write thy vertues registrie,</p><p>BODIE conioyn'd with bodie, free from strife,</p><p>PART not in sunder till we part our life.</p><p>*YET my soules life to my deare lifes concluding,</p><p>NERE let Absurditie that villaine, theefe,</p><p>THE monster of our time, mens praise deriding,</p><p>LESSE in perseuerance, of small knowledge chiefe,</p><p>KEEP the base Gate to things that are excelling,</p><p>THOU by faire vertues praise maist yeeld reliefe,</p><p>MY lines are thine, then tell Absurditie,</p><p>HART of my deare, shall blot his villanie.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Othello</p><p><br /></p><p>Not I, I must be found.</p><p>My parts, my title, and my perfect soul</p><p>Shall manifest me rightly.</p><p> </p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-82748882863003109992022-03-13T18:02:00.000-07:002022-03-13T18:02:59.708-07:00Frivolous Shakespeare - Towards a New Oxfordian Paradigm<p>My Frivolous Shakespeare, Rise!</p><p><br /></p><p>Latin frīvolus (“silly, empty, trifling, frivolous, worthless”)</p><p>************************</p><p> For Jonson, as for Sidney the bad poet is an object of contempt, not worthy of the name, while the good poet is a worthy asset to the commonwealth, and should be treated accordingly. It is a contrast implied, and a role claimed for the poet, in the initial discussion of the fountain's water, and the invocation of Helicon, at the beginning of the play's main action. As James Bednarz has observed, 'through the coupling of poet and sovereign - Asper and Queen Elizabeth in _Every Man Out_, Criticus and Cynthia in _The Fountaine of Selfe-Love_ [Cynthia's Revels], and Horace and Augustus Caesar in _Poetaster_ - Jonson asserted that literary and political power were equal sources of moral authority. (Hester Lees-Jeffries)</p><p>*********************</p><p>Court 'Wits' vs. the City Men of 'Understanding' and the Essex uprising. Sacrificing Fame/Shake-speare to distance Court and Queen from imputation of frivolity. see _Love's Martyr_, Chester and the immolation of the Turtle Dove.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hollow Praise - Jonson raises a Frivolous and Foolish Monument to the Author at the front of 'Shakespeares' First Folio.</p><p>*************************</p><p>I have discussed my identification of Oxford as Amorphus/The Deformed at length in this blog and on HLAS. This was a politically motivated attack based on 'style'. Oxford sacrificed his identity and immortal name at a time of intense political instability, reminiscent of Captain Edward Vere's sacrifice of Billy Budd during a time of mutiny aboard the man-o-war Bellipotent.</p><p>************************</p><p> Latin frīvolus (“silly, empty, trifling, frivolous, worthless”) </p><p>England’s Helicon – Hester Lees-Jeffries</p><p> </p><p>...Some twenty-five years ago Margaret Tudeau-Clayton demonstrated Ben Jonson’s borrowing from the twelfth-century _Policraticus_ by John of Salisbury in his _Timber_, or _Discoveries_. Tudeau-Clayton considered a passage of some fifty-five lines, just over a third of the way through the _Discoveries_, organized by Jonson under the headings ‘Adulatio’, ‘Devita humana’, ‘De piis & probis’, and ‘Mores Aulici’ (‘flattery’, ‘of human life’, ‘of the upright and the good’, and ‘of the ways of courtiers’), showing that in this section, Jonson had drawn heavily on passages in the third book of the _Policraticus_. [...]Despite Tudeau-Clayton’s identification of this important source for Ben Jonson, little further work has apparently been done in assessing whether others of his works might also reveal traces of the _Policraticus_. There is one very striking example in particular, which dovetails neatly into the passage in _Discoveries_ discussed by Tudeau-Clayton, and which in turn perhaps suggests that Jonson was writing the Discoveries in some form as early as 1600. That example is, of course, _The Fountaine of Selfe-Love_ [Cynthia’s Revels], for in addition to drawing dramaturgically upon Peele’s use of the fountain in _David and Bethsabe_, it seems that Jonson drew more thematic aspects of the device in the play’s eponymous fountain, its central and controlling metaphor, from chapter 10 of Book 5 of the _Policraticus_.</p><p> </p><p> Book 5 of the Policraticus is concerned with the ‘commonwealth’, and with the proper relationship between prince and subjects. Chapter 10 is entitled ‘of the flanks of the powerful, whose needs are to be satisfied, and whose malice is to be restrained’. By the end of the chapter, however, the focus is less on rulers’ potential for viciousness than on the capacity of courtiers to corrupt:</p><p><br /></p><p>For who is it whose virtue is not cast aside by the frivolities of courtiers? Who is so great, who is so resolute, that he cannot be corrupted? He is best who resists for the longest time, who is strongest, who is corrupted least. For in order that virtue be unharmed, one must turn aside from the life of the courtier. He who said the following providentially and prudently expressed the nature of the court: ‘He departs from the court who wishes to be pious’. For this reason the court has been compared to the infamous fountain of Salmacis, which is notorious for weakening virility...</p><p><br /></p><p>This obscure poetic fiction represents the likeness of the frivolities of courtiers, which weaken men by the debasement of their virility or pervert a retained likeness of virility. He who engages in the trifles of the courtier and undertakes the obligations of the philosopher or the good man is an hermaphrodite, whose harsh and prickly face disfigures the beauty of women and who pollutes and dishonours virility with effeminacy. For indeed the philosopher-courtier is a monstrous thing; and, while he affects to be both he is neither one, for the court excludes philosophy and the philosopher at no time engages in the trifles of the courtier. Yet the comparison dies not apply to all courts, but merely those which are mismanaged by a foolish will.* For whoever is wise drives away frivolities, orders his house, and subjects everything to reason*.</p><p><br /></p><p> The image of the court as an enervating fountain is here a central and potent one, and attention is draw to it in the 1513 editions by the marginal note, ‘Curia comparatur fonti salmacis’ (the court compared to the fountain of Salmacis).</p><p><br /></p><p>The fountain of Salmacis and the story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus are not directly invoked by Jonson in the Fountaine of Selfe-Love in the same way that Narcissus and Actaeon are, but the effects of the play’s fountain are very similar. By the end of Act 2, when Amorphus the courier has reported the deliciousness of the fountain’s water to the rest of the court, there is</p><p><br /></p><p>such a drought I’the Presence, wi[t]h reporting the wonders of this new water; that all the Ladies and Gallants lie languishing upon the Rushes, like so many pounded Cattle i[n] the midst of Harvest, sighing one to another, and gasping, as if each of them expected a Cock from the Fountaine, to be brought into his mouth; and (without we returned quickly) they are all (as a youth would say) no better than a few Trowts cast a shore, or a dish of Eeles in a Sand-bag (Cynthia’s Revels).</p><p><br /></p><p>and by the beginning of Act 4, the water having still not been brought, the situation has not improved:</p><p><br /></p><p>Phantaste: I would this water would arrive once our travayling friend so commended to us.</p><p>Argurion: So would I, for he has left all us in travaile, with expectation of it.</p><p>Phantaste: Pray Jove, I never rise from this Couch, if ever I thirsted more for a thing in my whole time of being a Courtier.</p><p>Philautia: Nor I, Ile be sworne; the very mention of it sets my lippes in a worse heate, then if he had sprinkled them with Mercury.</p><p><br /></p><p>While the water here is to be drunk, rather than bathed in (as in the _Policraticus_ and, indeed, in the _Metamorphoses_), the names of the courtiers themselves suggest decadence, degeneracy, and enervation: in addition to Phantaste (‘Boaster’) [my note – Boaster or Fantast?], Argurion (‘Silver’, as in money), and Philautia (Self Love’) in the passage just quoted, the others are named as Amorphus (‘Deformed’), Asotus (‘Debauchee’ or ‘Prodigal’), Hedon (‘Pleasure’), Anaides (‘Impudence’), Moria (‘Folly’), Prosaites (‘Beggar, or ‘one who importunes’), Cos (‘Whetstone’), Morus (‘Fool’), and Gelaia (‘Laughter’). Of these, Amorphus is the central figure, and his name surely recalls the fate of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, as it can also be translated as ‘shapeless’ or even ‘one who changes shape’. The male courtiers in _The Fountaine of Selfe-Love_ are certainly stereotypically effeminate in their obsessions with clothes and their garrulousness, and it is implied that they have been corrupted by too much contact with women; they are therefore effeminate in the now obsolete sense of ‘devoted to women’. </p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Distaff Oxford</p><p><br /></p><p>Alexander and Campaspe (1584) : “Wil you handle the spindle with Hercules, when you shuld shake the speare with Achilles?”</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Reviewed work(s): Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship. Patrick Cheney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xxv+296.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Douglas Bruster</p><p><br /></p><p>Cheney extends the significance of this biographical episode by reading it alongside the curious “Achilles” stanza in 1594’s The Rape of Lucrece (lines 1422–28).1 In this stanza, part of a larger sequence in which Shakespeare portrays Lucrece looking at a painting of Troy, Achilles is represented by “his spear, / Grip’d in an armed hand, himself behind / Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind” (lines 1424–26). Exploring Shakespeare’s fairly idiosyncratic attention to the spear of Achilles and its reputation for being able to both “kill and cure” (2 Henry VI 5.1.101), Cheney argues that this stanza in Lucrece is a particularly good example of a “signature” moment in Shakespeare’s works, a passage in which “Shakespeare signs his name to Achilles” (53) and in which—owing to its emphasis on an uncannily present-yet-absent figure—we can sense an emblem of Shakespearean authorship itself. To Cheney’s persuasive gathering of intertextual references for this interpretation one might add a line that his study overlooks, from John Lyly’s Alexander and Campaspe (1584) : “Wil you handle the spindle with Hercules, when you shuld shake the speare with Achilles?”2 If Shakespeare pushed the elements of his last name to their most playful extremes, then, he found the terms already in the Elizabethan air. </p><p> </p><p>***********************</p><p>Languet to Sidney, Nov 14, 1579</p><p><br /></p><p>...Now I will treat you frankly, as I am accustomed to do, for I am sure our friendship has reached a mark at which neither of us can be offended at any freedom of the other. It was a delight to me last winter to see you high in favour and enjoying the esteem of all your countrymen; but to speak plainly, the habits of your court seemed to me somewhat less manly than I could have wished, and most of your noblemen appeared to me to seek for a reputation more by a kind of affected courtesy than by those virtues which are wholesome to the state and which are most becoming to generous spirits and to men of high birth. I was sorry therefore, and so were other friends of yours, to see you wasting the flower of your life on such things, and I feared lest that noble nature of yours should be dulled, and lest from habit you should be brought to take pleasure in pursuits which only ENERVATE the mind.</p><p><br /></p><p>If the arrogance and insolence of Oxford has roused you from your trance, he has done you less wrong than they who have hitherto been more indulgent to you. But I return to my subject...</p><p><br /></p><p>*footnote - The readers of Shakespeare and Scott are familiar with the language and manners of the Euphuists of Queen Elizabeth's Court. John Lilly's two books, "Euphues, the anatomy of wit," and "Euphues an dhis England," from which the Elizabethan school of Courtiers derived their name, were not published till 1581. (Steuart A Pears) </p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>_Policraticus_ , Tyranny and the Essex Rebellion</p><p>****************************</p><p>England’s Helicon – Hester Lees-Jeffries</p><p><br /></p><p>...It is of course significant for Jonson’s play as a whole, therefore, that the first part of the _Policraticus_’ alternative title, or subtitle, is ‘De Nugis Curialium’ (Concerning the frivolities of courtiers) for it is the corruptions and frivolities of courtiers that are exposed and satirized by Jonson. The other part of this alternative title is ‘et Vestigiis Philosphorum’, ‘and the Footprints of Philosophers’: Criticus, not surprisingly the voice of reason and virtue in the play, who is described in the Induction as ‘a retir’d Scholler’ and later dismissed by Hedon and Anaides as ‘a whoore-sonne Book-worme, a Candle-waster...poore Grogram Rascall...Dormouse’, is surely the philosopher whom John discusses, who is of the court yet apart from it in his comportment and concerns. If Jonson is indeed recalling this passage from the _Policraticus_ in its entirety, he is treading on dangerous ground: it would not do for Queen Elizabeth to have been invited to identify too closely with John's statement that ‘the court excludes philosophy and the philosopher at no time engages in the trifles of the courtiers. Yet the comparison does not apply to all courts, but merely those which are mismanaged by a foolish will. For whoever is wise drives away frivolities, orders his house, and subjects everything to reason.’ Cynthia’s loss of control over her court and its denizens is particularly shown in the way in which the false courtiers use language, and in the fact that it is a poet who is to be the agent of reform. Whatever part the courtiers’ linguistic excesses may have played in the ‘Poets’ War’, they, together with their trivial word games, riddles, and foolish songs, show the corruption of nothing less than the ‘Queen’s English’, a concept far less abstract in Jonson’s day than current usage might suggest. There was a close association in the Renaissance between the person of the monarch and the language of his or her realm, of which he or she was the patron. [...] According to Martin Elsky, ‘the linguistic responsibility asked of English Renaissance monarchs is well documented’. He has argued that </p><p><br /></p><p>the force responsible for creating a society in which it is possible for a speaker to unite word and thing is the monarch, who is responsible for the political fortunes of his kingdom. The connection between morally disposed political power and the verbal health of a nation may have its origins among the Stoics, who held that the initial imposition of a name or thing occurs under a good king, and deteriorates as the moral virtue of the kings declines.</p><p><br /></p><p>In _The Fountain of Selfe-Love_, Jonson figures the dislocation between court and state and monarch and court, and the disjunction between the false court and the ideal, exemplary one, through a debased, trivial, artificial language, which in turn reflects badly on the monarch. As Peter Womack has economically observed (a propos the couriers’ word games in Act 4) ‘Language is supposed to do honour to the mind it represents, as a royal court is supposed to do honour to the monarch it expresses: these courtiers profane both dignities, and each sacrilege is a metaphor for the other. Jonson offers a solution in the person of the scholar-poet-author. Perhaps, in the authorial figure of Criticus, he even questions the monarch’s right to control language as his play demonstrates the loss of that control.</p><p> </p><p> The play in general, even without its apparent pro-Essex agenda (which is the subject of the next, and final, chapter) does tread on dangerous ground. The corruption and decadence of the couriers is shown primarily in the languishing after the waters of the fountain of self-love, but also (and far more pervasively) in their trivial and decadent language; they debase the very ‘Queen’s English’, and themselves pollute the waters of Helicon.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Shake-speare</p><p>Sonnet LXXII</p><p>O! lest the world should task you to recite</p><p>What merit lived in me, that you should love</p><p>After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can nothing worthy prove.</p><p>Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,</p><p>To do more for me than mine own desert,</p><p>And hang more praise upon deceased I</p><p>Than niggard truth would willingly impart:</p><p>O! lest your true love may seem false in this</p><p>That you for love speak well of me untrue,</p><p>My name be buried where my body is,</p><p>And live no more to shame nor me nor you.</p><p> For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,</p><p> And so should you, to love things nothing worth.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>Shakespeare on Masculinity - Robin Headlam Wells</p><p><br /></p><p>Masculinity was a political issue in early-modern England. Phrases such as ‘courage-masculine’ or ‘manly virtue’ took on special meaning. As used by members of the Sidney-Essex faction, and later by admirers of the bellicose young Prince of Wales, they signified commitment to the ideals of militant Protestantism. Diplomacy and compromise were disparaged as ‘feminine’.</p><p><br /></p><p> Shakespeare on Masculinity is an original study of the way Shakespeare's plays engage with a subject that provoked bitter public dispute. Robin Headlam Wells argues that Shakespeare took a sceptical view of the militant-Protestant cult of heroic masculinity. Following a series of portraits of the dangerously charismatic warrior-hero, Shakespeare turned at the end of his writing career to a different kind of leader. If the heroes of the martial tragedies evoke a Herculean ideal of manhood, The Tempest portrays a ruler who, Orpheus-like, uses the arts of civilization to bring peace to a divided world.</p><p>******************************</p><p>Edward de Vere to Robert Cecil, April 27, 1603- </p><p><br /></p><p>...I cannot but find a great grief in myself to remember the mistress which we have lost, under whom both you and myself from our greenest years have been in a manner brought up and, although it hath pleased God after an earthly kingdom to take her up into a more permanent and heavenly state wherein I do not doubt but she is crowned with glory, and to give us a prince wise, learned and enriched with all virtues, yet the long time which we spent in her service we cannot look for so much left of our days as to bestow upon another, neither the long acquaintance and kind familiarities wherewith she did use us we are not ever to expect from another prince, as denied by the infirmity of age and common course of reason. In this common shipwreck, mine is above all the rest who, least regarded though often comforted of all her followers, she hath left to try my fortune among the alterations of time and chance, either without sail whereby to take the advantage of any PROSPEROus gale or with anchor to ride till the storm be overpast. There is nothing therefore left to my comfort but the excellent virtues and deep wisdom wherewith God hath endued our new master and sovereign Lord, who doth not come amongst us as a stranger but as a natural prince, succeeding by right of blood and inheritance, not as a conqueror but as the true shepherd of Christ's flock to cherish and comfort them.</p><p>*******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, Cynthia's Revels </p><p><br /></p><p>Cynthia: Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two</p><p>We give the Charge; impose what Pains you please:</p><p>TH' INCURABLE CUT OFF, the rest REFORM,</p><p>Remembring ever what we first decreed,</p><p>Since Revels were proclaim'd, let now none bleed.</p><p>Arete. How well Diana can distinguish Times,</p><p>And sort her Censures, keeping to her self</p><p>The Doom of Gods, leaving the rest to us?</p><p>Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Then, Crites, practise thy DISCRETION.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>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). </p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>I had not told posterity this but for their IGNORANCE, who chose that circumstance to *COMMEND* their friend by wherein he most faulted -- Jonson on Shakespeare</p><p>Cartwright, to Jonson (in Jonsonus Virbius) </p><p><br /></p><p>...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe</p><p>Those that we have, and those that we want too:</p><p>Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,</p><p>And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.</p><p>Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate</p><p>That servile base dependance upon fate:</p><p>Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,</p><p>Which chance, and TH'AGES FASHION DID MAKE HIT;</p><p><br /></p><p>EXCLUDING THOSE FROM LIFE IN AFTER-TIME,</p><p>Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:</p><p>Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name</p><p>What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame</p><p>Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence</p><p>Made *COMMENDATION* a BENEVOLENCE:</p><p>THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win</p><p>That best applause of being crown'd within.. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p>The *COMMENDATION* of good things may fall within a many, their approbation but in a few· for the most *COMMEND* OUT OF AFFECTION, selfe tickling, an easinesse, or imitation: but MEN iudge only out of KNOWLEDGE. That is the trying faculty. -- Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Ruling/Restraining/Holding Shakespeare's Extravagant Quill:</p><p><br /></p><p>From 'To the Deceased Author of these Poems' (William Cartwright)</p><p>by Jasper Mayne</p><p><br /></p><p>... For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.</p><p>In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:</p><p>A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,</p><p>As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.</p><p>Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,</p><p>Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)</p><p>*************************</p><p>Occulted Elizabethan 'Culture War' - Court and City</p><p>*************************</p><p>The Making of the Subject of the Leviathan By Miloš Petrović </p><p><br /></p><p>(...)Only that [English Literature] which is capable of registering even the slightest social wobble could make sense of—and communicate—changes in something so elusive as one’s conception and experience of oneself. That is why literature, with its deep layers of significance, is particularly suited to our analysis. More than the works of Hobbes or Locke, it is the plays and poetry of England that could grasp the subtlety of the important changes that were by the turn of the eighteenth century [seventeenth for Oxford/Court/Wit and Jonson/City/Sense] becoming as much proper to man’s inner life as they were to his dealings with others. What literature seemed to have registered this time around was, in fact, so dramatic that it would transform English literature itself, its codes and canons, as well as the social map of the land. This refers, most immediately, to those great disputes in England—the early eighteenth century culture wars—which were fought, among other things, at least on the surface of it, over the question of the essential element in a successful literary creation. Already in full sway by the end of the seventeenth century, these disputes involved the rebellious city of London on the one hand, which sought to define the essence of poetry in terms of “sense” (judgment, intellect, mind), and those grouped around the royal court on the other, who defended the older definition of poetry as essentially an expression of “wit” (fancy, imagination, or taste). The latter praised wit as “a capacity for wide-ranging speculation that soars above man’s necessities and desires… a flame and agitation of soul that little minds and men of action cannot comprehend.” They deemed it “the purest element, and swiftest motion of the brain,” “the essence of thoughts” that “encircles all things.” They saw in it genius—transcendent, inscrutable, unattainable by reason—as opposed to mere learning, a “grace beyond the reach of art,” a “radiant spark of heavenly fire,” the furor poeticus pure and simple. Like a “power divine,” which could be defined only negatively, wit was deemed the mysterious core of poetry. The critics of poetry founded on wit, on the other hand, condemned it as unwarrantably elitist. They read in it nothing but verbal ingenuity, emptiness wrapped in extravagant language, in ingenious metaphors, puns and paradoxes, in virtuosic turns of phrase, in epigrams, and replete with alliterations, anagrams, and acrostics: “nothing but the froth and ferment of the soul, beclouding reason and sinking rational pursuits into the miasma of fantasy,” an art “which pleased by confounding truth and deceiving men.” Florid, whimsical, and flamboyant, facetious and frivolous, smacking of airy sophistication and the desire to surprise and startle, in constant search of mystical resemblance, all “wit-writing” became suspect and was subjected to criticism as a likely enemy to all goodness and decency, let alone to true poetry. Such writing was said to disperse rather than comprehend. It profaned, it vulgarized, it thrived on obscenity. It produced false pleasure. It was excessive and lame, its only purpose being to amuse. It condescended, and those who practiced it wrote, as Samuel Johnson would later put it, “rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion.” This was clearly then, in the eyes of the rebellious city, not merely a war between two aesthetic conceptions, debating, say, the relationship between style and subject-matter, or art and morality, but more generally a war between ideas and mere words, between argument and elocution, reason and mystification, sense and nonsense, learning and mere posturing. Involving most of the leading literary figures of the time, and narrated famously by Daniel Defoe as a mockheroic account of a battle between Britannia’s warlike sons (“The Men of Sense against the Men of Wit, eternal Fighting must determine it…”), the rebellion of City against wit was seen by its protagonists as a necessary part of a wider moral reform and a defense of traditional English virtue undermined by aristocratic immodesty and dissoluteness. The divide between the poetic sense and wit was so deeply felt to be a symptom of a wider social divide and part of a profound change in the sensibilities of English society itself, that Defoe could, in the end, reduce its meaning quite simply to two alternative ways of ruling Britain (“Wit is a king without a Parliament, and sense a democratic government”), with one commentator calling it an outright war “between Cheapside and Covent Garden, between City and Court, between bourgeoisie and aristocracy.” This was the culmination of a long literary controversy, which at its core was fought over the sort of individual that was to stand at the center of English literature, not only as its subject, but as its generative principle, a principle of taste, an ideal, and a measure of right tone. More importantly, it was the ground upon which a much larger battle was being fought between different conceptions of what it meant to be an individual in the course of the seventeenth century. The struggle was over the sort of individual that ought to be the generative principle of not only the English society, but of any human society in general. </p><p>This struggle is the object of our present concern. </p><p>**************************</p><p>A Speech according to Horace. --Ben Jonson</p><p>...And could (if our great Men would let their Sons</p><p>Come to their Schools,) show 'em the use of Guns.</p><p>And there instruct the noble English Heirs</p><p>In Politick, and Militar Affairs;</p><p>But he that should perswade, to have this done</p><p>For Education of our Lordings; Soon</p><p>Should he hear of Billow, Wind, and Storm,</p><p>From the Tempestuous Grandlings, who'll inform</p><p>Us, in our bearing, that are thus, and thus,</p><p>Born, bred, allied? what's he dare tutor us?</p><p>Are we by Book-worms to be aw'd? must we</p><p>Live by their Scale, that dare do nothing free?</p><p>Why are we Rich, or Great, except to show</p><p>All licence in our Lives? What need we know?</p><p>More then to praise a Dog? or Horse? or speak</p><p>The Hawking Language? or our Day to break</p><p>With Citizens? let Clowns, and Tradesmen breed</p><p>Their Sons to study Arts, the Laws, the Creed:</p><p>We will believe like Men of our own Rank,</p><p>In so much Land a year, or such a Bank,</p><p>That turns us so much Monies, at which rate</p><p>Our Ancestors impos'd on Prince and State.</p><p>Let poor Nobility be vertuous: We,</p><p>Descended in a Rope of Titles, be</p><p>From Guy, or Bevis, Arthur, or from whom</p><p>The Herald will. Our Blood is now become,</p><p>Past any need of Vertue. Let them care,</p><p>That in the Cradle of their Gentry are;</p><p>To serve the State by Councels, and by Arms:</p><p>We neither love the Troubles, nor the harms.</p><p>What love you then? your Whore? what study? Gate,</p><p>Carriage, and Dressing. There is up of late</p><p>The ACADEMY, where the Gallants meet ——</p><p>What to make Legs? yes, and to smell most sweet,</p><p>All that they do at Plays. O, but first here</p><p>They learn and study; and then practise there.</p><p>But why are all these Irons i' the Fire</p><p>Of several makings? helps, helps, t' attire</p><p>His Lordship. That is for his Band, his Hair</p><p>This, and that Box his Beauty to repair;</p><p>This other for his Eye-brows; hence, away,</p><p>I may no longer on these PICTURES stay,</p><p>These Carkasses of Honour; Taylors blocks,</p><p>Cover'd with Tissue, whose prosperity mocks</p><p>The fate of things: whilst totter'd Vertue holds</p><p>Her broken Arms up, to their EMPTY MOULDS.</p><p>********************</p><p>Shake-speare</p><p>********************</p><p>Loves Martyr - Chester</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Phoenix:</p><p>Why now my heart is light, this very doome</p><p>Hath banisht sorrow from pensive breast:</p><p>And in a manner sacrificingly,</p><p>*Burne both our bodies to revive one name*:</p><p>And in all humblenesse we will intreate</p><p>The hot earth parching Sunne to lend his heate.</p><p>(note – Phoenix calls upon Apollo to kindle the wood)</p><p><br /></p><p>Phoenix:</p><p>O holy, sacred, and pure perfect fire,</p><p>More pure then that ore which faire Dido mones,</p><p>More sacred in my loving kind desire,</p><p>Then that which burnt old Esons aged bones,</p><p>*Accept into your ever hallowed flame,</p><p>Two bodies, from the which may spring one name.*</p><p><br /></p><p>Turtle.</p><p>O sweet perfumed flame, made of those trees,</p><p>Under the which the Muses nine have song</p><p>The praises of vertuous maids in misteries,</p><p>To whom the faire fac’d Nymphes did often throng;</p><p>Accept my body as a Sacrifice</p><p>Into your flame, *of whom one name may rise.*</p><p><br /></p><p>Phoenix.</p><p>O wilfulnesse, see how with smiling cheare,</p><p>My poore deare hart hath flong himselfe to thrall,</p><p>Looke what a mirthfull countenance he doth beare,</p><p>Spreading his wings abroad, and joyes withall:</p><p>Learne thou corrupted world, learne, heare, and see,</p><p>Friendships unspotted true sincerity.</p><p><br /></p><p>I come sweet Turtle, and with my bright wings,</p><p>I will embrace thy burnt bones as they lye,</p><p>*I hope of these another Creature springs,</p><p>That shall possesse both our authority:*</p><p>I stay too long, o take me to your glory,</p><p>And thus I end the Turtle Doves true story.</p><p><br /></p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-72617481866370421512022-02-20T11:42:00.001-08:002022-02-20T11:55:10.065-08:001614 Stratford Fire - A Town in Chaos<p> </p><p>I R</p><p>HONI SOIT QVI MAL Y PENSE</p><p>DIEV ET MON DROIT</p><p>James, By the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France, & Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. To all and singuler Archbishops, Bishops, Archdeacons, Deanes, and their Officials: Parsons, Vicars, Curats, and to all spirituall persons: And also to al Iustices of Peace, Maiors, Sheriffes, Bayliffes, Constables, Churchwardens, & Headboroughes: And to all Officers of Citties, Boroughes, and Townes corporate: And to all other our Officers, Ministers, and Subiects whatsoe∣uer they bee, aswell within Liberties, as without, to whom these presents shall come, greeting.</p><p>WHEREAS wee are credibly certified by a Certificate vnder the hands of our trusty and welbeloued Subiects Sir Fulke Grevill Knight, Chancellor of our Exchequer, Sir Thomas Leigh, sir Edward Deuereux, and sir Thomas Holt Knights & Baronets, sir Edward Greuill, sir Clement Fisher, sir Clement Throgmorton, sir Richard Verney, sir Thomas Lucy, sir Henry Dymocke, sir William Someruill, sir Thomas Bea••on, and sir Henry Rainsford Knights, Thomas Spencer, Edward Boughton, Bartholomew Hales, Iohn Repington, William Combe, and William Barnes Esquiors, Iustices of the Peace within our Counties of Warwicke & Gloucester: That vpon Saterday the Nynth day of Iuly in the yeare of our Lord God, One Thousand Sixe Hundred and Fourteene, there happened a sodaine and terrible Fire within our Towne of Stratford vpon Avon within our County of Warwicke, which within the space of lesse then two howres consumed & burnt Fifty & Fower dwelling houses, many of them being very faire houses, besides Barnes, Stables, & other howses of Office, together also with great store of Corne, Hay, Straw, Wood, & Timber therin, Amounting in all to the value of Eight Thowsand Pounds & vpwards The force of which Fier was so great (the wind sitting ful vpon the Towne) that it dispersed into so many places thereof, whereby the whole Towne was in very great danger to haue beene vtterly consumed and burnt; by reason whereof, and of two seuerall Fiers happening in the said Towne within these Twenty yeares, to the losse of Twenty Thousand Pounds more, not onely our said poore Subiects who haue now sustained this great losse, are vtterly vndoone and like to perish, but also the rest of the Towne is in great hazard to be ouerthrowne & vndoone, the Inhabitants there beeing no waies able to relieue their distressed neighbors in this their great want & misery. AND wheras the said Towne hath béen a great Market Towne whereunto great recourse of people was made, by reason of the weekely Market, Faires, and other frequent mee∣tings, which were there holden and appointed, and now being thus ruinated & decayed, it is in great hazard to beé vtterly ouerthrowne, if either the resort thither be neglected, or course of trauellers diuerted, which for want of spéedy reparation may bee occasioned. And forasmuch as our sayd distressed Subiects the Inhabitants of the said Towne are very ready & willing to the vttermost of their powers to réedifie & new build the say Towne againe, Yet finding the performance therof far beyond their abilty, they haue made their humble suite vnto vs, that we would be pleased to prouide some conuenient meanes that the said Towne may be againe réedified & repayred aswell for the reliefe of the distressed people within the same, as also for the restoring and continuing of the sayd Market, and haue humbly besought Vs to commend the same good & laudable déed and the charitable furtherance thereof, to the beneuolence of all our louing Subiects, not doubting but that all good and wel-disposed Christians will for common charity and loue to their Country, and the rather for our Commendation heerof, be ready with all willingnes to extend their charitable reliefe towards the comfort of so many distressed people and the speedy performing of so good and charitable a worke.</p><p>KNOWE yee therefore, that wee (tendering the lamentable estate and lesses of our sayd distressed Inhabitants, together with the humble suit of all our foresaid Iustices made vnto Vs on their behalfes) Of our especiall Grace and Princely compassion, haue giuen & granted, and by these our letters Patents doe giue and graunt vnto our foresaid trusty & welbeloued Subiects, Sir Richard Verney, sir Henry Rainsford Knights, Bartholomew Hales Esquior, and the Bayliffe & Burgesses of the sayd Towne of Stratford vpon Avon, and to their Deputie & Deputies, the bearer or bearers hereof, full power, licence and authority, to aske, gather receiue, & take the Almes & charitable beneuolence of all our louing Subiects whatsoeuer Inhabiting within our Counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Southampton, Wiltes, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, & Cornwal, with our Cittiie of Canterbury, Rochester, & the Cinque Ports, and in our Citties of Chichester, & Winchester, with the Isle of Wight, and Towne of Southampton, & in our Citties of Salisburie, Exeter, Bristow, Bath, & Wels, with our Towne & County of Poole in our County of Dorset: And in all other Cities, Townes Corporate, priuiledged places, Parishes, Villages, and in all other places whatsoeuer within our said Counties, and not else where, for & towards the new building, reedifying & erecting of the said Towne of Stratford vpon Avon, & the r∣liefe of al such our poore distressed subiects, their Wiues & Children, as haue sustained losse & decay by the misfortune of the said Fire.</p><p>WHEREFORE wee wil & command you, and euery of you, that at such time and times as the sayd Sir Richard Verney, sir Henry Rainsford, Bartholomew Hales, the Bayliffe & Burgesses aforesaid or any of them, or their Deputie or Deputies, the bearer or bearers héerof, shall come & repaire to any your Churches, Chappels, or other places to aske, and receiue the gratuities & charitable beneuolence of our said Subiects, quietly to permit & suffer them so to do, without any manner your lets, or contradictions. And you the said Parsons, Vicars, and Curats, for the better stirring by of a charitable deuotion, deliberately to publish and declare the Tenor of these our Letters Patents vnto our said Subiects, Exhorting and perswading them to extend their liberall contribu∣tions in so good & charitable a deede. And you the Churchwardens of euery Parish where such Collection is to bee made (as aforesaid) to collect and gather the Almes and charitable beneuolence of all our louing Subiects, And what shall bée by you so gathered, to endorse on the Backe-side heerof, and deliuer the same to the bearer or bearers heereof, when as therevnto you shall be required. A∣ny Statute, Lawe, Ordinance, or prouision héertofore made to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding.</p><p>IN witnesse wherof, wée haue caused these our Letters to be made Patents for the space of One whole yeare next after the date héerof to endure. Witnesse our selfe at Westminster the Eleauenth day of May, in the Fourteenth yeere of our R••gne of England, Fraunce, and Ireland• and of Scotland, the Nyne and Fortieth.</p><p>Steward.</p><p>God saue the King.</p><div>Printed by Thomas Purfoot</div><div><br /></div><div>**********************</div><div><div>Shakespeare Documented</div><div><br /></div><div>October 28, 1614</div><div><br /></div><div>William Shakespeare reaches an agreement with William Replingham to safeguard his income as a leaseholder of the tithes in case of enclosure.</div><div><br /></div><div>Within two months of it becoming common knowledge that plans were afoot to enclose some of the open fields at Welcombe to the north-east of Stratford, Shakespeare took steps to ensure that his income as a leaseholder of half the tithes of Old Stratford, Bishopton and Welcombe would not be adversely affected. Tithe holders stood to lose income if, for instance, land was taken out of arable production, thus reducing the crops that contributed to the tithes. (To learn more about the history of the Stratford tithes, please refer to Ralph Hubaud’s 1605 assignment of a lease of a share in the Stratford Tithes to William Shakespeare.) The enclosure scheme was initiated in the name of two men with no interests in the town, Arthur Mainwaring, and his kinsman, William Replingham of Great Harborough. Therefore Shakespeare opened negotiations with Replingham, although it soon emerged that he and Mainwaring were merely fronting the scheme on behalf of William Combe, the main freeholder at Welcombe.</div><div>The agreement between Shakespeare and Replingham has come down to us in the form of an incomplete copy. It bears what was doubtless its original dated heading: “Vicesimo octavo die Octobris, anno Domini 1614. Articles of agreement indented made betweene William Shackespeare of Stretford ... gent. on the one partye & William Replingham of Greete Harborowe .... gent., on the other partie…” However, it is followed by the marginal note “Inter alia” (“amongst other things”) and then by a single paragraph headed “Item” (“also”), instead of beginning “In primis” (“Firstly”), which is how such an agreement would customarily have begun. This indicates that what survives is only a copy of one of several clauses.</div><div>It is also clear that this surviving clause had been amended. Although the agreement’s header includes only Replingham’s and Shakespeare’s names, the single clause that was copied out includes wording to protect not just Shakespeare’s interests but “one Thomas Greene”s as well. Greene confirmed that his name was inserted later in a personal note he made on January 9, 1615. Moreover, because this partial copy is endorsed in Thomas Greene’s hand, it is clear that it had been made for his particular benefit, not Shakespeare’s. Greene took this step because he had recently become the lessee of the other half of the Old Stratford, Bishopton and Welcombe tithes and, like Shakespeare, feared his income from this source would suffer if enclosure went ahead. On the crucial issue of Shakespeare’s wider involvement in the agreement, however, we have no direct knowledge, lacking as we do the other clauses. Perhaps Shakespeare had thought it necessary to ensure that his freehold interests would not be affected either, or to safeguard his pasture rights, as defined more closely in a later survey. </div><div> </div><div>The clause stipulates that any compensation to which Shakespeare might become entitled “for all such losse, detriment and hinderance … by reason of anie Inclosure or decaye of Tyllage” was to be calculated by “foure indifferent persons to be indifferentlie elected by the said William and William” (or, on Replingham’s failure to co-operate, by Shakespeare himself). Oddly this loss was said to be “in respecte of the increasing of the yearelie value of the Tythes” although all editors and commentators assume that “increasinge" was a misreading by the copyist of “decreasinge.”</div><div>The names of the signatories to the agreement are also given. It is likely that originally there were only two: John Rogers, presumably the vicar, and Anthony Nash, who witnessed other documents to which Shakespeare was a party. Thomas Lucas, and his clerk, Michael Olney, were probably added when Greene’s name was later inserted.</div><div>It is likely that this agreement, and Greene’s involvement in it, would have been kept secret. The Stratford Corporation, from whom Thomas Greene and Shakespeare held their leases of the tithes, was opposed to the enclosure scheme and was in no mood to compromise. Greene, as the Corporation’s steward, was also under instructions to help frustrate the scheme.</div><div>Semi-diplomatic transcription</div><div>Written by Robert Bearman</div><div>Last updated May 19, 2020</div></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-21547185885531229922022-02-17T14:10:00.000-08:002022-02-17T14:10:24.604-08:00My Shakespeare - Peccant not Perfect<p> Peccant Shakespeare:</p><p><br /></p><p>Peccare (Latin)</p><p><br /></p><p>Definitions:</p><p> 1. be wrong</p><p> 2. blunder, stumble</p><p> 3. do wrong, commit moral offense</p><p> 4. sin</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Disproportionate Droeshout Figure – Inequalis Tonsor/Ambisinister – WRONG in both hands/not dexterous</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, Timber</p><p>De Poetica. - We have spoken sufficiently of oratory, let us now make a diversion to poetry. Poetry, in the primogeniture, had many PECCANT HUMOURS, and is made to have more now, through the LEVITY AND INCONSTANCY of MENS JUDGEMENTS. Whereas, indeed, it is the most prevailing eloquence, and of the most exalted caract. Now the discredits and disgraces are many it hath received through men' s study of depravation or calumny; their practice being to give it diminution of credit, by lessening the professor' s estimation, and making THE AGE afraid of their liberty; and THE AGE is grown so tender of her fame, as she calls all writings aspersions.</p><p><br /></p><p>That is the state word, the PHRASE OF COURT (placentia college), which some call Parasites Place, the INN OF IGNORANCE. </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Bacon, Advancement of Learning</p><p> </p><p>V </p><p>PECCANT HUMOURS in Learning</p><p>THus have we at length gone over the three Distem∣pers or Diseases of Learning; besides the which, there are other, rather PECCANT HUMORS, than confir∣med Diseases, which neverthelesse are not so secret and in∣trinsique, but that they fall under a popular sense and reprehension, and therefore are not to be passed over. </p><p>I The first of these is an extreme affection of two extremi∣ties, Antiquity and Novelty; wherein the daughters of Time, doe take after the Father; for as Time devoureth his children, so these, one of them seeketh to depresse the other; while Antiquity envieth there should be new Additions; and Novel∣ty can not be content to adde things recent, but it must de∣face and reject the old. Surely the advice of the Prophet is the true direction in this case,*state super vias antiquas & vi∣dete quaenam fit via recta & bona & ambulate in ea: Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stay a while, and stand thereupon, and look about to discover which is the best way; but when the discovery is well ta∣ken, than not to rest there, but cheerefully to make progres∣sion. Indeed to speak truly, Antiquitas seculi, Juventus Mun∣di, Certainly our times are the Ancient times, when the world is now Ancient, and not those which we count An∣cient, ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from our own times.</p><p>II An other error induced by the former is, a suspition and diffidence, that any thing should be now to be found out, which the world should have mist and past over so long time: as if the same objection might be made to Time,* wherewith Lucian reproacheth Iupiter, and other the Heathen Gods, For he wonders that they begot so many children in old time, and begot none in his time? and askes in scoffing manner, whether they were now become Septuagenary, or whether the Law Papia; made against old mens mariages, had restrained them? So it seemes men doubt least time is become past children and generation. *Nay rather the LEVITY and INCONSTANCY of MENS JUDGEMENTS, is hence plainly discovered, which untill a matter be done, wonder it can be done. So Alexander's expedition in∣to Asia was prejudg'd as a vast and impossible enterprize; yet afterwards it pleased Livie, so to slight it as to say of A∣lexander,*Nil aliud quam bene ausus est vana contemnere: The same hapned unto Columbus in the westerne Navigation. But in intellectuall matters it is much more common,(...)</p><p>**********************************</p><p>Peccant \Pec"cant\, a. [L. peccans, -antis, p. pr. of peccare to sin: cf. F. peccant.]</p><p>1. guilty of an offence; corrupt</p><p>2. violating or disregarding a rule; faulty</p><p>3. producing disease; morbid</p><p>***********************************</p><p>Horace, of the Art of Poetrie</p><p>transl. Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>If to Quintilius, you recited ought:</p><p>Hee'd say, Mend this, good friend, and this; "Tis naught.</p><p>If you denied, you had no better straine,</p><p>And twice, or thrice had 'ssayd it, still in vaine:</p><p>Hee'd bid, BLOT ALL: and to the anvile bring</p><p>Those ill-torn'd Verses, to new hammering.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then: If your fault you rather had defend</p><p>Then change. No word, or worke, more would he spend</p><p>In vaine, BUT YOU, AND YOURS, YOU should LOVE STILL</p><p>Alone, without a rivall, by his will.</p><p>A wise, and honest man will cry out shame</p><p>On artlesse Verse; the hard ones he will blame;</p><p>Blot out the careless, with his turned pen;</p><p>Cut off superfluous ornaments; and when</p><p>They're darke, bid cleare this: all that's doubtfull wrote</p><p>Reprove; and, what is to be changed, not:</p><p>Become an Aristarchus. And, not say,</p><p>Why should I grieve my friend, this TRIFLING WAY?</p><p>These trifles into serious mischiefs lead</p><p>The man once mock'd, and suffered WRONG TO TREAD.</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p>Bacon, Advancement Learning</p><p><br /></p><p>III An other error which hath some affinity with the former is, a conceit That all sects and ancient opinions, after they have bin discussed and ventilated; the best still prevail'd and supprest the rest. Wherefore they think that if a man should begin the labour of a new search and examination, he must needs light upon somewhat formerly rejected, and after re∣jection, lost, and brought into oblivion: as if the multitude, or the wisest, to gratify the multitude, were not more ready to give passage to that which is populare and superficiall; than to that which is substantiall and profound. For Time seemeth to be of the nature of a River, *which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is waighty and solid*. </p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Raising a Hollow/Light Praise:</p><p><br /></p><p>Soul of the age!</p><p>The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!</p><p>My Shakespeare, RISE! </p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p>Bacon and Jonson – Levity and Inconstancy of Mens Judgements</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Levity</p><p><br /></p><p>Levity originally was thought to be a physical force exactly like gravity but pulling in the opposite direction, like the helium in a balloon. As recently as the 19th century, scientists were still arguing about its existence. Today levity refers only to lightness in manner. To stern believers of some religious faiths, levity is often regarded as almost sinful.</p><p><br /></p><p>Synonyms</p><p>facetiousness, flightiness, flippancy, frivolity, frivolousness, frothiness, light-headedness, light-mindedness, lightness, silliness</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************************</p><p>Amorphus: ALTEZZO INGEGNO</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, _Cynthia's Revels_. </p><p><br /></p><p>AMORPHUS. And there's her minion, Crites: why his advice more than</p><p>Amorphus? Have I not INVENTION afore him? LEARNING to better</p><p>that INVENTION above him? and INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVEL</p><p><br /></p><p> – [PARAPHRASE OF SOUTHERN’S ODE TO Oxford in his _Pandora_.]</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Jonson, Cynthia's Revels - censuring Amorphus and his crew of courtly</p><p>revellers.( if we once but fancy levity)</p><p><br /></p><p>Crites: O VANITY [vanus/empty],</p><p>How are thy painted beauties doted on,</p><p>By LIGHT AND EMPTY IDIOTS how pursu'd</p><p>With open and extended Appetite!</p><p>How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,</p><p>Rais'd on their Toes, to catch thy AIRY FORMS,</p><p>Still turning GIDDY, till they reel like Drunkards,</p><p>That buy the merry madness of one hour,</p><p>With the long irksomness of following time!</p><p>O how despis'd and base a thing is a Man,</p><p>If he not strive t'erect his groveling Thoughts</p><p>Above the strain of Flesh! But how more cheap,</p><p>When, even his best and understanding Part,</p><p>(The crown and strength of all his Faculties)</p><p>Floats like a dead drownd Body, on the Stream</p><p>Of vulgar humour, mixt with common'st dregs?</p><p>I suffer for their Guilt now, and my Soul</p><p>(Like one that looks on ill-affected Eyes)</p><p>Is hurt with mere intention on their Follies.</p><p>Why will I view them then? my sense might ask me:</p><p>Or is't a rarity, or some new object,</p><p>That strains my strict observance to this Point?</p><p>O would it were, therein I could afford</p><p>My Spirit should draw a little neer to theirs,</p><p>To gaze on novelties: so Vice were one.</p><p>Tut, she is stale, rank, foul, and were it not</p><p>That those (that woo her) greet her with lockt Eyes,</p><p>(In spight of all the impostures, paintings, drugs,</p><p>Which her Bawd custom dawbs her Cheeks withal)</p><p>She would betray her loath'd and leprous Face,</p><p>And fright th' enamour'd dotards from themselves:</p><p>But such is the perverseness of our nature,</p><p>That IF WE ONCE BUT FANCY LEVITY,</p><p>(How antick and ridiculous so ere</p><p>It sute with us) yet will our muffled thought</p><p>Choose rather not to see it, than avoid it:</p><p>And if we can but banish our own sense,</p><p>We act our mimick tricks with that free license,</p><p>That lust, that pleasure, that security,</p><p>*As if we practis'd in a Paste-board Case*,</p><p>And no one saw the motion, but the motion.</p><p>Well, check thy passion, lest it grow too lowd:</p><p>"While fools are pittied, they wax fat and proud</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>William Cartwright:</p><p><br /></p><p>...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes</p><p>I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;</p><p>Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town</p><p>In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;</p><p>Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,</p><p>And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:</p><p>Nature was all his Art, thy veine was FREE</p><p>As his, but without his SCURILITY;</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Sidney, Defense of Poetry</p><p><br /></p><p>But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphytrio. But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, match hornpipes and funerals. So falleth it out that, having indeed no right comedy in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but scurrility, unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltishness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration. </p><p><br /></p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>But our comedians think there is no delight without laughter, which is very wrong; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay, rather in themselves they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Delight hath a joy in it either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful tickling...But I have lavished out too many words of this playmatter. I do it, because as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used in England, and none can be more pitifully abused; which, like an unmannerly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesy`s honesty to be called in question. </p><p>********************************</p><p>Dull Grinning Ignorance:</p><p><br /></p><p>John Beaumont , Jonsonus Virbius</p><p><br /></p><p>...Twas he that found (plac'd) in the seat of wit,</p><p>DULL grinning IGNORANCE, and banish'd it;</p><p>He on the prostituted stage appears</p><p>To make men hear, not by their eyes, but ears;</p><p>Who painted virtues, that each one might know,</p><p>And point the man, that did such treasure owe :</p><p>So that who could in JONSON'S lines be high</p><p>Needed not honours, or a riband buy ;</p><p>But vice he only shewed us in a glass,</p><p>Which by reflection of those rays that pass,</p><p>Retains the figure lively, set before,</p><p>And that withdrawn, reflects at us no more;</p><p>So, he observ'd the like decorum, when</p><p>*He whipt the vices, and yet spar'd the men* :</p><p>When heretofore, the Vice's only note,</p><p>And sign from virtue was his party-coat;</p><p>When devils were the last men on the stage,</p><p>And pray'd for plenty, and the PRESENT AGE.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>Jonson's Epigrams</p><p><br /></p><p> To the great Example of Honour, and Vertue , the most</p><p>Noble William, Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain, &c.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> M Y L O R D,</p><p>While you cannot change your Merit, I dare not change your Title: It was you that made it, and not I. Under which Name, I here offer to your Lordship the ripest of my Studies, my Epigrams; which, though they carry danger in the sound, do not therefore seek your shelter: For, when I made them, I had nothing in my Conscience, to expressing of which I did need a Cypher. But, if I be fallen into those Times, wherein, for the likeness of Vice, and Facts, every one thinks anothers ill Deeds objected to him; and that in their ignorant and guilty Mouths, the common Voice is (for their security) Beware the Poet, confessing, therein, SO MUCH LOVE TO THEIR DISEASES, as they would rather make a Party for them, than be either rid, or told of them: I must expect, at your Lordship's hand, the protection of Truth, and Liberty, while you are constant to your own Goodness. In thanks whereof, I return you the Honour of leading forth so many good, and great Names (as my Verses mention on the better part) to their remembrance with Posterity. Amongst whom, if I have praised, unfortunately, any one, that doth not deserve; or, if all answer not, in all Numbers, the Pictures I have made of them: I hope it will be forgiven me, that they are no ill Pieces, though they be not like the Persons. But I foresee a nearer Fate to my Book than this, That the Vices therein will be own'd before the Vertues, (though, there, I have avoided all Particulars, as I have done Names) and some will be so ready to discredit me, as they will have the impudence to bely themselves. For, if I meant them not, it is so. Nor, can I hope otherwise. For, why should they remit any thing of their Riot, their Pride, their Self-love, and other inherent Graces, to consider Truth or Vertue; but, with the Trade of the World, lend their long Ears against Men they love not: And hold their dear MOUNTEBANK, or JESTER, in far better Condition than all the Study, or Studiers of Humanity? For such, I would rather know them by their VISARDS, still, than they should publish their FACES, at their peril, in my Theatre, where C A T O, if he liv'd, might enter without scandal. By your Lordship's most faithfull Honourer, </p><p><br /></p><p>B E N. J O H N S O N. </p><p> Ben Jonson's Epigrams</p><p>**********************************</p><p>Peccant Humours/disease/distemper</p><p><br /></p><p>Disease/Water/Uroscopy</p><p>mount/bank</p><p>Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were</p><p>TO SEE THEE IN OUR WATERS yet appear,</p><p>And make those FLIGHTS UPON the BANKS of Thames,</p><p>That so did TAKE Eliza and our James!</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>HORACE., Ars Poet. 1.</p><p>Suppose a painter wished to couple a horse’s neck with a man’s head,</p><p>and to lay feathers of every hue on limbs gathered here and there, so</p><p>that a woman, lovely above, foully ended in an ugly fish below; would</p><p>you restrain your laughter, my friends, if admitted to a private view?</p><p>Believe me…a BOOK will appear uncommonly like that PICTURE, if</p><p>impossible figures are wrought into it – *like a sick man’s dreams* –</p><p>with the result that neither head nor foot is ascribed to a single</p><p>shape, and unity is lost*. </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>In his translation of Horace’s _Art of Poetry_ Jonson translates ‘Minerva’ as ‘Nature’</p><p><br /></p><p>Alexander Pope</p><p>...of all English Poets Shakespear must be confessed to be the fairest and fullest subject for Criticism, and to afford the most numerous, as well as the most conspicuous instances, both of beauties and FAULTS of all sorts. (ibid. p. i) </p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Pope, Preface to Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>...the images of Life were to be drawn from those of their [the audience’s] own rank: accordingly we find, that not our Author’s only but almost all the old Comedies have their Scene among Tradesmen and Mechaniks: and even their Historical Plays strictly follow the common Old Stories or Vulgar Traditions of that kind of people. In Tragedy, nothing was so sure to Surprize and cause Admiration, as the most strange, unexpected, and consequently most unnatural, Events and Incidents; the most exaggerated Thoughts; the most verbose and bombast Expression; the most pompous Rhymes, and thundering Versification. In Comedy, nothing was so sure to please, as mean bufoonery, vile ribaldry, and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns. (Preface to edition, p. v) </p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>mix head with heels? Levity or inversion?</p><p>Bartholomew Fair: Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>T H E</p><p><br /></p><p>I N D u C T I O N</p><p><br /></p><p>O N T H E</p><p><br /></p><p>S T A G E.</p><p>(SNIP)</p><p>It is also agreed, That every Man here exercise his</p><p>own Judgment, and not *Censure by Contagion*, or upon</p><p>trust, from anothers Voice, or Face, that sits by him,</p><p>be he never so first in the *Commission of Wit*: As also,</p><p>that he be fixt and settled in his Censure, that what he</p><p>approves, or not approves to day, he will do the same</p><p>to morrow; and if to morrow, the next day, and so</p><p>the next week (if need be:) and not to be brought</p><p>about by any that sits on the Bench with him, though</p><p>they indite and arraign Plays daily. He that will swear,</p><p>Jeronimo, or Andronicus are the best Plays, yet shall pass</p><p>unexcepted at here, as a Man whose JUDGEMENT shews it</p><p>is CONSTANT </p><p><br /></p><p>[NOTE-LEVITY AND INCONSTANCY OF Mens JUDGEMENTS],</p><p><br /></p><p>and hath stood still these five and twenty</p><p>or thirty years. Though it be an IGNORANCE, it is a</p><p>vertuous and staid Ignorance; and next to truth, a CON-</p><p>FIRM’D ERROR [PECCANT HUMOUR] does well; such a one the Author knows</p><p>where to find him. </p><p>It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser, with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind- heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be ne- ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to make Nature afraid in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his head with other Mens Heels; let the CONCUPISCENCE of JIGS AND DANCES, reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Pup-pets will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Jonson, _The Alchemist_</p><p><br /></p><p>TO THE READER.</p><p><br /></p><p>If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in THIS AGE, in poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the CONCUPISCENCE of DANCES and of ANTICS so reigneth, as to run away from nature, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the spectators. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art? When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the things, think to get off WITTILY with their IGNORANCE. Nay, they are esteemed the more learned, and sufficient for this, by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment. For they commend writers, as they do fencers or wrestlers; who if they come in robustuously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks out, perhaps, and is more eminent, because all is sordid and VILE about it: as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness, than a faint shadow. I speak not this, out of a hope to do good to any man against his will; for I know, if it were put to the question of theirs and mine, *the worse would find more suffrages: because the most favour common errors*. But I give thee this warning, that there is a great difference between those, that, to gain the opinion of copy, utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use election and a mean. For it is only the DISEASE of the unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or scattered more numerous than composed.</p><p>**********************************</p><p>TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE OF HONOR, AND VERTVE, THE MOST NOBLE WILLIAM EARLE OF PENBROOKE, &c.</p><p>MY LORD,</p><p><br /></p><p>IN so thicke, and darke an IGNORANCE, as now almost couers the AGE, I craue leaue to stand neare your light: and, by that, to be read. Posterity may pay your benefit the honor, and thanks; when it shall know, that you dare, in these JIG-GIVEN times, to countenance a legitimate Poëme. I must call it so, against all noise of opinion: from whose crude, and airy reports, I appeale, to that great and singular faculty of Iudgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate truth from ERROR. It is the first (of this RACE) that euer I dedicated to any Person, and had I not thought it the best, it should haue beene taught a lesse ambition. Now, it approacheth your censure chearefully, and with the same assurance, that Innocency would appeare before a Magistrate.</p><p><br /></p><p>Your Lo. most faithfull Honorer. Ben. Ionson.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p>Bartholomew Fair, Jonson</p><p>The Induction to the Stage</p><p>Stage-keeper.</p><p><br /></p><p>Gentlemen, have a little patience, they are e'en</p><p> upon coming, instantly. He that should be-</p><p> gin the Play, Master Little-wit, the Proctor,</p><p> has a stitch new faln in his black silk Stock-</p><p>ing; 'twill be drawn up ere you can tell twenty. He</p><p>plays one o' the Arches that dwells about the Hospital,</p><p>and he has a very pretty part. But for the whole Play,</p><p>will you ha' the truth on't? (I am looking, lest the Poet</p><p>hear me, or his Man, Master Broom, behind the Arras)</p><p>it is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain En-</p><p>glish. When't comes to the Fair once, you were e'en</p><p>as good go to Virginia, for any thing there is of Smith-</p><p>field. He has not hit the Humours, he do's not know</p><p>'em; he has not convers'd with the Bartholmew-birds,</p><p>as they say; he has ne'er a Sword and Buckler Man in</p><p>his Fair; nor a little Davy, to take Toll o' the Bawds</p><p>there, as in my time; nor a Kind-heart, if any bodies</p><p>Teeth should chance to ake in his Play; nor a Jugler</p><p>with a well-educated Ape, to come over the Chain for</p><p>the King of England, and back again for the Prince,</p><p>and sit still on his Arse for the Pope, and the King of</p><p>Spain! None o' these fine sights! Nor has he the Can-</p><p>vas-cut i' the Night, for a Hobby-horse-man to creep in-</p><p>to his she-neighbour, and take his leap there! Nothing!</p><p>No, and some writer (that I know) had had but the Pen-</p><p>ning o' this matter, he would ha' made you such a Jig-</p><p>ajog i' the Boothes, you should ha' thought an Earth-</p><p>quake had been i' the Fair! But these Master-Poets,</p><p>they will ha' their own absurd courses; they will be</p><p>inform'd of nothing. He has (sirreverence) kick'd me</p><p>three or four times about the Tyring-house, I thank him,</p><p>for but offering to put in with my experience. I'll</p><p>be judg'd by you, Gentlemen, now, but for one conceit</p><p>of mine! Would not a fine Pump upon the Stage ha'</p><p>done well, for a property now? and a Punque set under</p><p>upon her Head, with her Stern upward, and ha' been</p><p>sous'd by my witty young Masters o' the Inns o' Court?</p><p>What think you o' this for a shew, now? he will not</p><p>hear 'o this! I am an Ass! I! and yet I kept the Stage</p><p>in Master Tarleton's time, I thank my Stars. Ho! and</p><p>that Man had liv'd to have play'd in Bartholmew Fair,</p><p>you should ha' seen him ha' come in, and ha' been co-</p><p>zened i' the Cloath-quarter, so finely! And Adams,</p><p>the Rogue, ha' leap'd and caper'd upon him, and ha'</p><p>dealt his Vermine about, as though they had cost him</p><p>nothing. And then a substantial WATCH to ha' stoln in</p><p>upon 'em, and taken 'em away, WITH MISTAKING WORDS,</p><p>AS THE FASHION IS in the Stage-practice. </p><p>***********************************</p><p>Jonson, To the MEMORY of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,</p><p>My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.</p><p>For though the poet's matter nature be,</p><p>His ART doth give the FASHION; and, that he</p><p>Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,</p><p>(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat</p><p>Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same</p><p>(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame,</p><p>Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;</p><p>For a good poet's *made*, as well as born;</p><p>And such wert thou.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson</p><p>Nature herself was proud of his DESIGNS</p><p>And joy'd to wear the DRESSING of his lines, [CLOTHES/PAINTING BIRDLIME OF FOOLS]</p><p>Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,</p><p>As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.</p><p>*************************************</p><p>In the verse prologue to _Every Man in his Humour_ , Jonson characterizes Shakespeare's plays as 'Monsters' </p><p><br /></p><p>SCENE,---LONDON</p><p>PROLOGUE.</p><p><br /></p><p>Though need make many poets, and some such</p><p>As art and nature have not better'd much;</p><p>Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,</p><p>As he dare serve the *ill customs of the AGE*,</p><p>Or purchase your delight at such a rate,</p><p>As, for it, he himself must justly hate:</p><p>To make a child now swaddled, to proceed</p><p>Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,</p><p>Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,</p><p>And help of some few foot and half-foot words,</p><p>Fight over York and Lancaster's king jars,</p><p>And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.</p><p>He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see</p><p>One such to-day, as other plays should be;</p><p>Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,</p><p>Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;</p><p>Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard</p><p>The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard</p><p>To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum</p><p>Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;</p><p>But deeds, and language, such as men do use,</p><p>And persons, such as comedy would choose,</p><p>When she would shew an image of the times,</p><p>And sport with human follies, not with crimes.</p><p>Except we make them such, by loving still</p><p>Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.</p><p>I mean such errors as you'll all confess,</p><p>By laughing at them, they deserve no less:</p><p>Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then,</p><p>*You, that have so grac'd MONSTERS, may like men*.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Saturday, 14 September 1751.</p><p>By Samuel Johnson</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit.</p><p>Juvenal, XIV.321.</p><p>For wisdom ever echoes nature’s voice.</p><p>[1] Every government, say the politicians, is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution. Every animal body, according to the methodick physicians, is, by the predominance of some exuberant quality, continually declining towards disease and death, which must be obviated by a seasonable reduction of the PECCANT HUMOUR to the just equipoise which health requires.</p><p>[2] In the same manner the studies of mankind, all at least which, not being subject to rigorous demonstration, admit the influence of fancy and caprice, are perpetually tending to error and confusion. Of the great principles of truth which the first speculatists discovered, the simplicity is embarrassed by ambitious additions, or the evidence obscured by inaccurate argumentation; and as they descend from one succession of writers to another, like light transmitted from room to room, they lose their strength and splendour, and fade at last in total evanescence.</p><p>[3] The systems of learning therefore must be sometimes reviewed, complications analised into principles, and knowledge disentangled from opinion. It is not always possible, without a close inspection, to separate the genuine shoots of consequential reasoning, which grow out of some radical postulate, from the branches which art has engrafted on it. The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be discovered.</p><p>[4] Criticism has sometimes permitted fancy to dictate the laws by which fancy ought to be restrained, and fallacy to perplex the principles by which fallacy is to be detected; her super-intendance of others has betrayed her to negligence of herself; and, like the antient Scythians, by extending her conquests over distant regions, she has left her throne vacant to her slaves.</p><p>(SNIP)</p><p>[10] I know not whether he that professes to regard no other laws than those of nature, will not be inclined to receive tragi-comedy to his protection, whom, however generally condemned, her own laurels have hitherto shaded from the fulminations of criticism. For what is there in the mingled drama which impartial reason can condemn? The connexion of important with trivial incidents, since it is not only common but perpetual in the world, may surely be allowed upon the stage, which pretends only to be the mirrour of life. The impropriety of suppressing passions before we have raised them to the intended agitation, and of diverting the expectation from an event which we keep suspended only to raise it, may be speciously urged. But will not experience shew this objection to be rather subtle than just? is it not certain that the tragic and comic affections have been moved alternately with equal force, and that no plays have oftner filled the eye with tears, and the breast with palpitation, than those which are variegated with interludes of mirth?</p><p>[11] I do not however think it safe to judge of works of genius merely by the event. These resistless vicissitudes of the heart, this alternate prevalence of merriment and solemnity, may sometimes be more properly ascribed to the vigour of the writer than the justness of the design: and instead of vindicating tragi-comedy by the success of Shakespear, we ought perhaps to pay new honours to *that transcendent and unbounded genius that could preside over the passions in sport*; who, to actuate the affections, needed not the slow gradation of common means, but could fill the heart with instantaneous jollity or sorrow, and vary our disposition as he changed his scenes. Perhaps the effects even of Shakespeare’s poetry might have been yet greater, had he not counter-acted himself; and we might have been more interested in the distresses of his heroes had we not been so frequently diverted by the jokes of his buffoons.</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************</p><p>Noble Stranger, Lewis Sharpe (1640) – As it was acted at the Private House in Salisbury Court, by her Maiesties Servants. The author, L.S. </p><p>To his Friend the Author on his Come∣dy, called the Noble Stranger.</p><p>FRiend, from me thou canst not expect a praise,</p><p>My Muse can give no Cypres nor no Baies:</p><p>She cannot though she would be vile, expresse</p><p>One syllable to make thy merits lesse:</p><p>Nor can she, had she rob'd the fluent store</p><p>Of Donns wise Genius, make thy merits more:</p><p>No, 'tis thy owne smooth numbers must preferre</p><p>*Thy Stranger to the Globe-like Theatre*.</p><p><br /></p><p>(SNIP)</p><p>Richard Woolfall</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p>Noble Stranger, Lewis Sharpe (fl.1640)</p><p>Mercutio.</p><p>It shall sir— Doe you heare Tom, goe and prepare Flavia for the project, and bring those properties we agreed on.</p><p>Plod.</p><p>Say no more.</p><p>Exit.</p><p>Pupillus.</p><p>Whither doe you send him?</p><p>Mercutio.</p><p>To an Antiquaries study; for strange properties to perform the Ceremonies requisite at INSPIRATION: for we must use Invocations, Incantations, Conjurations, Imprecations, and all for the rare effect of Inspiration.</p><p>Pupillus.</p><p>Blesse me, doe you begin to conjure already?</p><p>Fled-Wit.</p><p>No, he tells you but what he must doe.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>But harke you; pray d'ee deale with honest, faire conditi∣oned Devills?</p><p>Mer.</p><p>O blemish to our sacred Magicke—Devills!</p><p>Pup.</p><p>O no, pray Sir.</p><p><br /></p><p>Mercutio.</p><p>That thought's enough to ruine all the fabricke of our hopes.</p><p>Pupillus.</p><p>Good sir, Ile never thinke while I live agen.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>I tell you sir, we must invoake the Celestiall Deities— We may beginne the Act, none but the bright Minerva can con∣firme it</p><p>Pup.</p><p>And will she come at your call.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>Yes, yes, if you performe quietly what we desire.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Oh most obedient Goddesse.</p><p>Enter Plod with a Boxe, in which are little pieces of paper rold up: A Table set forth.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>Are you come? 'tis well: Is Flavia ready?</p><p>Plod.</p><p>Onely waits her Cue</p><p>Mer.</p><p>Look you sir, you see these papers.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>I, whence came they; from the Lottery?</p><p>Mer.</p><p>No sir, they are certaine Collections out of learned and witty Authors, for all humours in an accomplished wit. Now sir, you must eate every one of hem one by one.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>How, eate 'hem?</p><p>Mer.</p><p>I ease 'hem, and you shall find they will produce effects as various, as the qualities or conditions out of whom they were collected: now therefore off with your Hat and Cloake, kneele downe with a strong beliefe, imagination, and attention — you two stand to keepe him in that equall posture I shall set him; so, now first with a Scholastique Inspiration: somewhat of a hard digesti∣on, as—</p><p>"Dulcia non meruit qui non gustavit amara.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>O 'twill never downe, I shall be choakt with it.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>My life Sir we'll helpe it downe—here—so—feare not, I warrant you—is it downe?</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Almost—so,</p><p>Mer.</p><p>How is it sir?</p><p>Pup.</p><p>O 'twas so sweete at first, and so abhominable bitter at the last—</p><p>Mer</p><p>Why there you relish the conceit sir: for the interpreta∣tion of it is; Hee deserves not sweete, that has not tasted bitter.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>I have tasted a bitter one; now pray let the next be a sweet one.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>According as we see this work: 'thas a present operation—How doe you feele your selfe inclin'd?</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Oh I cou'd quarrell about the Etymologie of words, fight about Syllables, and Orthography, chop Logique with my Father, Write Tragedies and Comedies by the grosse: and my fingers itch at an Hen-roost.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>'Thas wrought bravely, the direct symptomes of an University wit: now for the inspiration of a confident Poeticall wit.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Pray pick out the hard words, if there be any.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>There's none in this — you shall heare it.</p><p>"This from our Author I was bid to say,</p><p>"By Iove 'tis good; and if you lik't you may. [my note – from Ben Jonson’s _Cynthia’s Revels_]</p><p><br /></p><p>Pupillus.</p><p>Ile tell you how I like it presently.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>Come sir, downe with it—</p><p>Fled.</p><p>So, this past with ease—</p><p>Mer.</p><p>How doe you find your selfe affected now?</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Oh that I were in a Play-house—I wou'd tell the whole Audience of their pittifull, Hereticall, Criticall humours—Let a man, striving to enrich his labours, make himselfe as poore as a broken Citizen, that dares not so much as shew the tips on's Hornes: yet will these people crye it downe, they know not why: One loves high language, though he understands it not; another whats obscaene, to move the blood, not spleene: a third, whose wit lyes all in his gall, must have a Satyre: a fourth man all ridiculous: and the fift man not knowing what to have, grounds his opinion on the next man ith' formall Ruffe; and so many heads, so many severall humours; and yet the poor Poet must find waies to please 'hem all.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>It workes strangely.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>But when they shal come to feed on the Offalls of wit, have nothing for their money but a Drumme, a Fooles Coat, and Gunpowder; see Comedies, more ridiculous than a Morrice dance; and for their Tragedies, about at Cudgells were a brave Battalia to 'hem: Oh Phoebus, Phoebus, what will this world come to?</p><p>Mer.</p><p>'Fore Iove, it has wrought most strangely—Tis well here we're none but friends—how doe you sir?</p><p><br /></p><p>Pup.</p><p>Ah! pretty, pretty, sure I have talked extravagantly, Gentlemen have I not?</p><p>Mer.</p><p>I indeed have you; 'tis of a delicate operation: Now sir, you shall have a valiant inspiration to confront your enemy, or rivall in your Mistresses favour—In this paper is the expiring breath of a great warriour, the last words he utter'd.</p><p>"—Farewell light,</p><p>"Tis fit the world should weare eternall night.</p><p><br /></p><p>Pup.</p><p>Why this will kill me sure.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>No, hold him fast—tis of a strong operation—So, chew it well, feare nothing—Now it is downe: how is't?</p><p>He breakes violently from them.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Let me goe, let me goe, the world's too narrow to confine me: Ile mount the skies, snatch Ioves three-fold lightning from his hand, dart it at the World, and reduc't againe to its first desolate Chaos, drye up the Sea with fire of my rage, and puffe mens soules away.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>We must change this humour: Ile now beleeve a strong imagination's witch-craft: force downe another; read it first: What is't? hold him fast.</p><p>Fled.</p><p>"Enter these Armes, and since thou thoughtst it best,</p><p>"Not to dreame all my dreame, lets act the rest.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>A fit one, a wanton lovers rapture: give it him, thrust it downe: So, he begins to yield; how is't.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>O what have you gi'n me now?</p><p>Mer,</p><p>Onely to inspire you with a wanton art to winne your Mistris.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Tis wonderfull provocative, believe me: sure it came out of Ovids-Ars-Amandi: *oh for the book of Venus and Adonis, to Court my Mistris by: I cou'd dye, I cou'd dye in the Eli-zi-um of her Armes: no sweets to those of Love: O Love, love, thy flames will burne me up to dust and ashes*.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>We must quench your flames— Pinch him hard.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Oh—</p><p>Mer.</p><p>Harder yet.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Oh—</p><p>What doe you doe? what doe you? Alas all's downe againe;</p><p>I am as cold as a Cucumber.</p><p><br /></p><p>Mer</p><p>So, I beleeve you are sufficiently prepared:</p><p>Now we will invoke the goddesse Minerva— kneele,</p><p>Downe with your face to the west: harken with</p><p>Attention to what she shall say or request, and be sure to performe it —So, 'tis well.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Does she come yet?</p><p>Fled.</p><p>No, no, he must invoak first.</p><p>Mer.</p><p>Thou sacred goddesse of Joves brave begot,</p><p>walk round about him.</p><p>Descend to earth, and here make fast the knot</p><p>We humble Mortalls have begunne to tye,</p><p>And we'll adore thy glorious Deity.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>O me, O.</p><p>Soft Musick. Enter Flavia drest like Minerva with a Violl of Water.</p><p>Fla.</p><p>Who calls Minerva from the Starry Court?</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Oh 'twas he Lady.</p><p>Fla.</p><p>We know the full effects of your desire,</p><p>It is this noble youth with wit t'inspire:</p><p>Then downe his throat this sacred drinke compell,</p><p>Tis , SALT and water from the MUSES WELL.</p><p>Pup.</p><p>Paugh.</p><p>Fla.</p><p>Now let him offer gold to our dispose,</p><p>And all's confirm'd with this one pluck by th'nose.</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>‘INSPIRATION’</p><p>Cynthia’s Revels, Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Amorphus. That's good, but how Pythagorical?</p><p>Phi. I, Amorphus. Why Pythagorical Breeches?</p><p>Amor. O most kindly of all, 'tis a CONCEIT of that FORTUNE,</p><p>I am bold to hug my Brain for.</p><p>Pha. How is't, exquisite Amorphus?</p><p>Amor. O, I am rapt with it, 'tis so fit, so proper,</p><p>so happy. --</p><p>Phi. Nay do not rack us thus?</p><p>Amor. I never truly relisht my self before. Give me</p><p>your Ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their trans-</p><p>migration into several shapes.</p><p>Mor. Most rare, in sweet troth.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Oldham, on Jonson</p><p>XIII.</p><p>Let meaner spirits stoop to low precarious Fame,</p><p>Content on gross and coarse Applause to live,</p><p>And what the dull, and sensless Rabble give,</p><p>Thou didst it still with noble scorn contemn,</p><p>Nor would'st that wretched Alms receive,</p><p>The poor subsistence of some BANKRUPT, SORDID NAME:</p><p>Thine was no EMPTY VAPOR, RAIS’D beneath,</p><p>And form'd of common Breath,</p><p>The false, and foolish Fire, that's whisk'd about</p><p>By popular Air, and glares a while, and then GOES OUT...</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>obscenus (Latin)</p><p>Origin & history</p><p>Uncertain. Usually derived from Proto-Indo-European *ḱʷeyn- ("to soil; mud; filth"). According to Pokorny, cognate with inquinō, caenum, cūniō and whin.</p><p>Alternative forms</p><p> • obscaenus</p><p>Adjective</p><p>obscēnus (feminine obscēna, neuter obscēnum)</p><p> 1. inauspicious, ominous, portentous</p><p> 2. repulsive, offensive, abominable, hateful, disgusting, filthy</p><p> 3. immodest, impure, indecent, lewd, obscene</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>E P I G R A M S . JONSON</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>XLIX. — TO PLAYWRIGHT. </p><p>PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns,</p><p>He says I want the tongue of epigrams ;</p><p>I have no SALT, no bawdry he doth mean ;</p><p>For witty, in his language, is OBSCENE.</p><p>Playwright, I loath to have thy manners known</p><p>In my chaste book ; I profess them in thine own. </p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>William Cartwright:</p><p><br /></p><p>...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes</p><p>I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;</p><p>Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town</p><p>In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;</p><p>Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,</p><p>And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:</p><p>Nature was all his Art, thy veine was FREE</p><p>As his, but without his SCURILITY;</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius</p><p><br /></p><p>...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe</p><p>Those that we have, and those that we want too:</p><p>Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,</p><p>And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.</p><p>Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate</p><p>That servile base dependance upon fate:</p><p>Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,</p><p>Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;</p><p>*Excluding those from life in after-time*,</p><p>Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:</p><p>Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name</p><p>What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame</p><p>Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence</p><p>Made COMMENDATION a BENEVOLENCE:</p><p>THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win</p><p>That best applause of being crown'd within.. </p><p><br /></p><p>************************** </p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, A Speech according to Horace.</p><p><br /></p><p>And could (if our great Men would let their Sons</p><p> Come to their Schools,) show 'em the use of Guns.</p><p>And there instruct the noble English Heirs</p><p> In Politick, and Militar Affairs;</p><p>But he that should perswade, to have this done</p><p> For Education of our Lordings; Soon</p><p>Should he hear of Billow, Wind, and Storm,</p><p> From the *Tempestuous Grandlings*, who'll inform</p><p>Us, in our bearing, that are thus, and thus,</p><p> Born, bred, allied? what's he dare tutor us?</p><p>Are we by Book-worms to be aw'd? must we</p><p> Live by their Scale, that dare do nothing free?</p><p>Why are we Rich, or Great, except to show</p><p> All licence in our Lives? What need we know?</p><p>More then to praise a Dog? or Horse? or speak</p><p> The Hawking Language? or our Day to break</p><p>With Citizens? let Clowns, and Tradesmen breed</p><p> Their Sons to study Arts, the Laws, the Creed:</p><p>We will believe like Men of our own Rank,</p><p> In so much Land a year, or such a Bank,</p><p>That turns us so much Monies, at which rate</p><p> Our Ancestors impos'd on Prince and State.</p><p>Let poor Nobility be vertuous: We,</p><p> Descended in a Rope of Titles, be</p><p>From Guy, or Bevis, Arthur, or from whom</p><p> The Herald will. Our Blood is now become,</p><p>Past any need of Vertue. Let them care,</p><p> That in the Cradle of their Gentry are;</p><p>To serve the State by Councels, and by Arms:</p><p> We neither love the Troubles, nor the harms.</p><p>What love you then? your Whore? what study? Gate,</p><p> Carriage, and Dressing. There is up of late</p><p>The Academy, where the Gallants meet ——</p><p> What to make Legs? yes, and to smell most sweet,</p><p>All that they do at Plays. O, but first here</p><p> They learn and study; and then practise there.</p><p>But why are all these Irons i' the Fire</p><p> Of several makings? helps, helps, t' attire</p><p>His Lordship. That is for his Band, his Hair</p><p> This, and that Box his Beauty to repair;</p><p>This other for his Eye-brows; hence, away,</p><p> I may no longer on these Pictures stay,</p><p>These Carkasses of Honour; Taylors blocks,</p><p> Cover'd with Tissue, whose prosperity mocks</p><p>The fate of things: whilst totter'd Vertue holds</p><p> Her broken Arms up, to their EMPTY Moulds.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************************</p><p>His WIT was in his own Power, would the RULE OF IT had been so, too</p><p><br /></p><p>De Shakspeare nostrat.—Augustus in Hat.—I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, 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 candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. “Sufflaminandus erat,” [47a] 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;” 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.</p><p>********************************************</p><p>Edward de Vere – meres? Best for comedy</p><p><br /></p><p>Scurra:</p><p><br /></p><p>Mirth Making. The Rhetorical Discourse on Jesting in Early Modern England</p><p>Chris Holcomb</p><p>...Associations between social status and certain forms of jesting appear as early as the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle classifies different modes of jesting according to three social types: the boor, the buffoon, and the witty man of tact. Aristotle has little to say about boorish men except that they never say "anything funny themselves and take offense at those who do" (4.8.3) Instead, Aristotle dwells on differences between the buffoon and man of wit, and in differentiating these two social types, he associates indecorous jests with those of the lower-class buffoon and decorous ones with those of a gentleman. 'Those who go to excess in ridicule are thought to be buffoons or VULGAR FELLOWS, who itch to have their joke at all costs, and are more concerned to raise a laugh than to keep within the bounds of decorum' (4.8.3). The buffoon often jests in a 'servile' and often obscene fashion (4.8.5-6), he 'cannot resist a joke,' he will 'not keep his tongue off himself or anyone else, if he can raise a laugh,' and he 'will say things which a man of refinement would never say' (4.8.10). Those 'who jest with good taste,' by contrast, will say 'only the sort of things that are suitable to a virtuous man and a gentleman; (4.8.5). They prefer to jest by way of 'innuendo, which marks a great advance in decorum,' and they will never stoop so low in their jesting as to say anything 'unbecoming to a gentleman' (4.8.6-7). The line Aristotle draws here is not simply one between the indecorous and decorous; it is also one between the lower and upper classes. And while Aristotle couches his distinctions in more or less descriptive (although elitist) terms, they do have prescriptive force. If a speaker is to show himself as a 'man of refinement,' he must limit his jesting behaviours and avoid the excesses of the buffoon.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Cicero and Quintilian adopt Aristotle's method of classifying decorous and indecorous jests along class lines, and they both use the buffoon and well-bred man of tact to define forms of jesting befitting an orator (the boor, as often happens in everyday life, is left out of their discussions of jesting). But they add to the ranks of the buffoon (or SCURRA, in Latin) a cast of characters familiar from the Roman stage, street performances, and entertainments provided at a gentleman's dinner party - characters including the mime (mimus), pantomime (ethologus), and clown (sannio). Cicero says that 'an orator must avoid each of two dangers: he must not let his jesting become buffoonery or mere mimicking (scurrilis...aut mimicus)' (2.58.239). Like Aristotle's buffoon, the Latin scurra violates proprieties of time. Cicero says he jests "from morning to night, and without any reason at all" (2.60.245). He also shows no restraint in his selection of objects of ridicule, and his jests, like a scattergun, will often strike 'unintended victims' (2.60.245). He will even turn himself into an object of ridicule if he thinks he can raise a laugh (Quintilian, 6.3.82). Most important, the scurra is a member of the lower classes, a parasite who would often perform at a gentleman's dinner party for table scraps, and his antics almost always bespoke his lowly position. For all of these reasons, especially the last, Cicero and Quintilian repeatedly insist that orators avoid all likeness to buffoons, and toward this end, they offer a set of strictures limiting the jesting practices of orators so that those practices accord with the orator's gentlemanly status. With respect to proprieties of time, Cicero says, "Regard then to occasions, control and restraint of our actual raillery, and economy in bon-mots, will distinguish an orator from a buffoon (oratorem a scurra)" (2.60.247). As we have seen, orators should also be careful in their selection of comic butts and avoid targeting the excessively wretched or wicked and the well-beloved. Moreover, they must never turn themselves into objects of laughter for, as Quintilian says, "To make jokes against oneself is scarcely fit for any save professed buffoons and is strongly to be disapproved in an orator" (6.3.82). Presumable, orators should keep the audience's laughter off themselves and direct it only at their opponents. Above all, the orator should only jest in ways that befit a gentleman or liberalis. He should avoid obscenities in his jesting, which are 'not only degrading to a pubic speaker, but also hardly sufferable at a gentleman's dinner party (convivio liberorum)' (De oratore, 2.61.252), and 'scurrilous or brutal jests, although they may raise a laugh, are quite unworthy of a gentlman (liberali)' (Quintilian, 6.3.83). In an allusion to his famous formulation or the orator as a GOOD MAN, or vir bonus, skilled in speaking, Quintilian sums up his attitudes toward buffoonery, a summation that will serve for Cicero's views on the subject as well: 'A good man (vir bonus) will see that everything he says is consistent with his dignity and the respectability of his character (dignitate ac verecundia); for we pay too dear for the laugh we raise if it is at the cost of our own integrity (probitatis)' (6.3.35). (Holcomb,pp.39-40)</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Probitas</p><p><br /></p><p>Latin probitas HONESTY, probity, uprightness. </p><p><br /></p><p>******************************************</p><p>"To My Book" by Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>It will be looked for, book, when some but see</p><p>Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me,</p><p>Thou should'st be bold, licentious, full of gall,</p><p>Wormwood, and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal;</p><p>Become a petulant thing, hurl ink, and wit,</p><p>As madmen stones: not caring whom they hit.</p><p>Deceive their malice, who could wish it so.</p><p>And by thy wiser temper, let men know</p><p>Thou are not covetous of least self-fame.</p><p>Made from the hazard of another's shame:</p><p>Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,</p><p>To catch the world's loose laughter, or VAIN gaze.</p><p>*He that DEPARTS with his own HONESTY</p><p>For VULGAR PRAISE, doth it too dearly buy.* </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Rhodri Lewis:</p><p><br /></p><p>...the visionary quality of the furor poeticus was by definition irrational, and easily contaminated by the threat of ‘enthusiasm’; as there was Restoration consensus that the civil wars had been the product of enthusiastic speech and writing, this contamination was fatal. Consequently, the imitative model of poetics – and with it, translation – came to have a new prestige and cultural importance as an antidote to such anxieties: in CONSTRAINING the poet’s FREEDOM to ERR, it was seen as doing important meta-literary work, and conferred an intrinsic mutuality on the literary enterprise:</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>Constraining/Holding/Ruling Shakespeare's Sublime Quill:</p><p><br /></p><p>From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)</p><p><br /></p><p>by Jasper Mayne</p><p><br /></p><p>For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.</p><p>In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:</p><p>A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,</p><p>As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.</p><p>Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,</p><p>Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip) </p><p>******************************</p><p>His WIT was in his own Power, would the RULE OF IT had been so, too – Jonson on Shakespeare's</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>Timber/Discoveries</p><p>(In the difference of wits, note 10)</p><p><br /></p><p>Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly</p><p>seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that</p><p>is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not</p><p>recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their</p><p>sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and</p><p>are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as</p><p>lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow.</p><p>Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are</p><p>thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever</p><p>election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first,</p><p>and <></p><p><br /></p><p>http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG</p><p><br /></p><p>The true artificer will</p><p>not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from</p><p>life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his</p><p>hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat,</p><p>it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-</p><p>chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical</p><p>strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant</p><p>gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but</p><p>artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called</p><p>barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can</p><p>come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment,</p><p>knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him.</p><p>He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men,</p><p>will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing,</p><p>his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his</p><p>readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what</p><p>sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in</p><p>men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their</p><p>minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold</p><p>what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is</p><p>beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which</p><p>strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided</p><p>faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate</p><p>phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which</p><p>is worse), especially for that it is naught.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>Shakespeare, Show and Seeming:</p><p>(seems to shake a lance)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to SHOW</p><p>To whom all SCENES of Europe homage owe. (scene - painted cloth)</p><p>He was not of an age, but for all Time !</p><p><br /></p><p>--Jonson</p><p>***********************</p><p>Trophaeum Peccati - On Recorder of Stratford Greville's monument in Warwick</p><p><br /></p><p>FOLK GREVILL</p><p>SERVANT to Queene Elizabeth</p><p>Conceller to King James</p><p>Frend to Sir Philip Sidney.</p><p>TROPHAEUM PECCATI </p><p>*************************</p><p>Greville, _Dedication_:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>...Neither am I (for my part) so much in love with this life, nor believe so little in a better to come, as to complain of God for taking him [Sidney], and such like exorbitant worthyness from us: fit (as it were by an Ostracisme) to be divided, and not incorporated with our corruptions: yet for the sincere affection I bear to my Prince, and Country, my prayer to God is, that this *Worth*, and Way may not fatally be buried with him; in respect, that both before his time, and since, experience hath published the usuall discipline of greatnes to have been tender of it self onely; making HONOUR a triumph, or rather TROPHY OF DESIRE, set up in the eyes of Mankind, either to be worshiped as IDOLS, or else as Rebels to perish under her glorious oppressions. *Notwithstanding, when the pride of flesh, and power of favour shall cease in these by death, or disgrace; what then hath time to register, or fame to publish in these great mens names, that will not be offensive, or infectious to others? What Pen without blotting can write the story of their deeds? Or what Herald blaze their Arms without a blemish? And as for their counsels and projects, when they come once to light, shall they not live as noysome, and loathsomely above ground, as their Authors carkasses lie in the grave? So as the return of such greatnes to the world, and themselves, can be but private reproach, publique ill example, and a fatall scorn to the Government they live in. Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he affected was built upon true *Worth*; esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>SONNET 72 - Shakespeare</p><p>O, lest the world should task you to recite</p><p>What merit lived in me, that you should love</p><p>After my death, -- dear love, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can NOTHING WORTHY prove;</p><p>Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,</p><p>To do more for me than mine own desert,</p><p>And hang more praise upon deceased I</p><p>Than niggard truth would willingly impart:</p><p>O, lest your true love may seem false in this,</p><p>That you for love speak well of me untrue,</p><p>My name be buried where my body is,</p><p>And live no more to shame nor me nor you.</p><p> For I am sham'd by that which I bring forth,</p><p> And so should you, to love things NOTHING WORTH. </p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>Greville, __A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_</p><p><br /></p><p>“I conceived an Historian was bound to tell nothing but the truth, but to tell all truths were both justly to wrong, and offend not only princes and States, but to blemish, and stir up himself, the frailty and tenderness, not only of particular men, but of many Families, with the spirit of an Athenian Timon.” </p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p>Tyrants allow of no scope, stamp, or standard, but their own WILL (Greville):</p><p><br /></p><p>Infected Will:</p><p>Sidney - Neither let it be deemed too bold a comparison to balance the highest point of man's WIT with the efficacy of nature; but rather give right honor to the heavenly maker of that maker, who having made man to his own likeness, set him beyond and over all the work of that second nature, which in nothing he shows so much as in poetry, when with the force of a divine breath he brings things forth far surpassing her doings, with no small argument to the incredulous of that first accursed fall of Adam, since our erected WIT makes us know what perfection is, but our infected will keeps us from reaching unto it. </p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-5228503116403808332022-02-13T16:09:00.000-08:002022-02-13T16:09:58.926-08:00Authorship, Shake-speare and the Essex Rebellion<p> I have had the good fortune to find an essay that collects in one place many of the words and concepts I have been exploring – ideas that may explain why the Earl of Oxford chose to divorce his name from that of his intellectual heir Shake-speare. The ‘culture wars’ of the Elizabethan court and city of London appear to have been fought just as vigorously in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as in later periods although the conflict appears to have been mostly covert. Ben Jonson, who established many of the terms that figure in this more general and sustained Poets’ War, aggressively positioned himself a court critic and an arbiter of literary manners and mores – and as a figure who could mediate between city and court with a neoclassical program of rules and literary laws derived from his studies. In Cynthia’s Revels and the figure of Amorphus, the Deformed [Oxford], Jonson makes his most sustained attack on courtly foibles and trifles in an attempt to reform the manners of the court and to lower the tension between court and city following the Essex Rebellion. The rising of Essex and in particular his effort to solicit the aid of the City of London in his attempt to overturn the corruptions of the court would have put courtly makers such as the Earl of Oxford in the position of being an intolerable political liability. Poetic styles and courtly manners were often regarded as reliable indicators of ethics and temperaments; and the mysterious beauties of wit and fancy – the ineffable je- ne-sais-quois of aristocratic identity – became indefensible in the harsh realities of a destabilized reign. </p><p><br /></p><p>As the loyal turtle dove forever immolates himself on the nest of the Phoenix in Chester’s ‘Love’s Martyr’ – in my mind’s eye - Oxford withdraws himself from the factional fray and any suggestion that his manners and forms may have brought shame or instability to his Queen and her court. </p><p><br /></p><p>O lest the world should task you to recite</p><p>What merit lived in me that you should love</p><p>After my death, dear love, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can nothing worthy prove;</p><p>Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,</p><p>To do more for me than mine own desert,</p><p>And hang more praise upon deceasèd I</p><p>Than niggard truth would willingly impart.</p><p>O lest your true love may seem false in this,</p><p>That you for love speak well of me untrue,</p><p>My name be buried where my body is,</p><p>And live no more to shame nor me nor you.</p><p> For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,</p><p> And so should you, to love things nothing worth.</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Melville – Captain Edward Fairfax Vere and the Sacrifice of Billy Budd/Beauty during a period of political crisis</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>The Making of the Subject of the Leviathan By Miloš Petrović </p><p><br /></p><p>(...)Only that [English Literature] which is capable of registering even the slightest social wobble could make sense of—and communicate—changes in something so elusive as one’s conception and experience of oneself. That is why literature, with its deep layers of significance, is particularly suited to our analysis. More than the works of Hobbes or Locke, it is the plays and poetry of England that could grasp the subtlety of the important changes that were by the turn of the eighteenth century [seventeenth for Oxford/Court/Wit and Jonson/City/Sense] becoming as much proper to man’s inner life as they were to his dealings with others. What literature seemed to have registered this time around was, in fact, so dramatic that it would transform English literature itself, its codes and canons, as well as the social map of the land. This refers, most immediately, to those great disputes in England—the early eighteenth century culture wars—which were fought, among other things, at least on the surface of it, over the question of the essential element in a successful literary creation. Already in full sway by the end of the seventeenth century, these disputes involved the rebellious city of London on the one hand, which sought to define the essence of poetry in terms of “sense” (judgment, intellect, mind), and those grouped around the royal court on the other, who defended the older definition of poetry as essentially an expression of “wit” (fancy, imagination, or taste). The latter praised wit as “a capacity for wide-ranging speculation that soars above man’s necessities and desires… a flame and agitation of soul that little minds and men of action cannot comprehend.” They deemed it “the purest element, and swiftest motion of the brain,” “the essence of thoughts” that “encircles all things.” They saw in it genius—transcendent, inscrutable, unattainable by reason—as opposed to mere learning, a “grace beyond the reach of art,” a “radiant spark of heavenly fire,” the furor poeticus pure and simple. Like a “power divine,” which could be defined only negatively, wit was deemed the mysterious core of poetry. The critics of poetry founded on wit, on the other hand, condemned it as unwarrantably elitist. They read in it nothing but verbal ingenuity, emptiness wrapped in extravagant language, in ingenious metaphors, puns and paradoxes, in virtuosic turns of phrase, in epigrams, and replete with alliterations, anagrams, and acrostics: “nothing but the froth and ferment of the soul, beclouding reason and sinking rational pursuits into the miasma of fantasy,” an art “which pleased by confounding truth and deceiving men.” Florid, whimsical, and flamboyant, facetious and frivolous, smacking of airy sophistication and the desire to surprise and startle, in constant search of mystical resemblance, all “wit-writing” became suspect and was subjected to criticism as a likely enemy to all goodness and decency, let alone to true poetry. Such writing was said to disperse rather than comprehend. It profaned, it vulgarized, it thrived on obscenity. It produced false pleasure. It was excessive and lame, its only purpose being to amuse. It condescended, and those who practiced it wrote, as Samuel Johnson would later put it, “rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion.” This was clearly then, in the eyes of the rebellious city, not merely a war between two aesthetic conceptions, debating, say, the relationship between style and subject-matter, or art and morality, but more generally a war between ideas and mere words, between argument and elocution, reason and mystification, sense and nonsense, learning and mere posturing. Involving most of the leading literary figures of the time, and narrated famously by Daniel Defoe as a mockheroic account of a battle between Britannia’s warlike sons (“The Men of Sense against the Men of Wit, eternal Fighting must determine it…”), the rebellion of City against wit was seen by its protagonists as a necessary part of a wider moral reform and a defense of traditional English virtue undermined by aristocratic immodesty and dissoluteness. The divide between the poetic sense and wit was so deeply felt to be a symptom of a wider social divide and part of a profound change in the sensibilities of English society itself, that Defoe could, in the end, reduce its meaning quite simply to two alternative ways of ruling Britain (“Wit is a king without a Parliament, and sense a democratic government”), with one commentator calling it an outright war “between Cheapside and Covent Garden, between City and Court, between bourgeoisie and aristocracy.” This was the culmination of a long literary controversy, which at its core was fought over the sort of individual that was to stand at the center of English literature, not only as its subject, but as its generative principle, a principle of taste, an ideal, and a measure of right tone. More importantly, it was the ground upon which a much larger battle was being fought between different conceptions of what it meant to be an individual in the course of the seventeenth century. The struggle was over the sort of individual that ought to be the generative principle of not only the English society, but of any human society in general. </p><p>This struggle is the object of our present concern. </p><div>****************************</div><div>This struggle is the object of our present concern</div><div>****************************</div><div>Men of Wit/Fancy - Men of Sense/Judgement:</div><div><br /></div><div>****************************</div><div>In a copy of the First Folio now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the following poem is written in a hybrid secretary-italic hand from the 1620s:</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Heere Shakespeare lyes whome none but Death could Shake</div><div><br /></div><div>and heere shall ly till JUDGEMENT all awake;</div><div><br /></div><div>when the last trumpet doth unclose his eyes</div><div><br /></div><div>the WITTIEST poet in the world shall rise. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>***************************</div><div>Blackmore</div><div><div>AN ESSAY UPON WIT.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Inclinations of Men, in this their degenerate State, carry them with great Force to those voluptuous Objects, that please their Appetites and gratify their Senses; and which not only by their early Acquaintance and Familiarity, but as they are adapted to the prevailing Instincts of Nature, are more esteem'd and pursu'd than all other Satisfactions. As those inferior Enjoyments, that only affect the Organs of the Body are chiefly coveted, so next to these, that light and facetious Qualification of the Mind, that diverts the Hearers and is proper to produce Mirth and Alacrity, has, in all Ages, by the greatest Part of Mankind, been admir'd and applauded. No Productions of Human Understanding are receiv'd with such a general Pleasure and Approbation, as those that abound with Wit and Humour, on which the People set a greater Value, than on the wisest and most instructive Discourses. Hence a pleasant Man is always caress'd above a wise one, and Ridicule and Satyr, that entertain the Laughers, often put solid Reason and useful Science out of Countenance. The wanton Temper of the Nation has been gratify'd so long with the high Seasonings of Wit and Raillery in Writing and Conversation, that now almost all Things that are not accommodated to their Relish by a strong Infusion of those Ingredients, are rejected as the heavy and insipid Performances of Men of a plain Understanding and meer Masters of Sense.</div><div>Since the Power of Wit is so prevalent, and has obtained such Esteem and Popularity, that a Man endow'd with this agreeable Quality, is by many look'd on as a Heavenly Being, if compar'd with others, who have nothing but Learning and a clear arguing Head; it will be worth the while to search into its Nature, and examine its Usefulness, and take a View of those fatal Effects which it produces, when it happens to be misapply'd.</div><div>Tho perhaps the Talent which we call Wit, like that of Humour, is as clearly understood by its simple Term, as by the most labour'd Description; an Argument or which is this, That many ingenious Persons, by their unsuccessful Essays to explain it, have rather obscur'd than illustrated its Idea; I will notwithstanding adventure to give the Definition of it, which tho it may fall short of Perfection, yet I imagine, will come nearer to it, than any that has yet appear'd. Wit is a Qualification of the Mind, that raises and enlivens cold Sentiments and plain Propositions, by giving them an elegant and surprizing Turn.</div><div>It is evident, that Wit cannot essentially consist in the Justness and Propriety of the Thoughts, that is, the Conformity of our Conceptions to the Objects we conceive; for this is the Definition of Truth, when taken in a Physical Sense; nor in the Purity of Words and Expression, for this may be eminent in the Cold, Didactick Stile, and in the correct Writers of History and Philosophy: But Wit is that which imparts Spirit to our Conceptions and Diction, by giving them a lively and novel, and therefore an agreeable Form: And thus its Nature is limited and diversify'd from all other intellectual Endowments. Wit therefore is the Accomplishment of a warm, sprightly, and fertile Imagination, enrich'd with great Variety of proper Ideas; which active Principle is however under the Direction of a regular Judgment, that takes care of the Choice of just and suitable Materials, prescribes to the tighter Faculties the due Bounds of their Sport and Activity, and assists and guides them, while they imprint on the Conceptions of the Mind their peculiar and delightful Figures. The Addition of Wit to proper Subjects, is like the artful Improvement of the Cook, who by his exquisite Sauce gives to a plain Dish, a pleasant and unusual Relish. A Man of this Character works on simple Proportions a rich Embroidery of Flowers and Figures, and imitates the curious Artist, who studs and inlays his prepar'd Steel with Devices of Gold and Silver. But Wit is not only the Improvement of a plain Piece by intellectual Enameling; besides this, it animates and warms a cold Sentiment, and makes it glow with Life and Vigor; and this it effects, as is express'd in the last Part of the Definition, by giving it as elegant and surprizing Turn. It always conveys the Thought of the Speaker or Writer cloath'd in a pleasing, but foreign Dress, in which it never appear'd to the Hearer before, who however had been long acquainted with it; and this Appearance in the Habit of a Stranger must be admirable, since Surprize naturally arises from Novelty, as Delight and Wonder result from Surprize; which I have more fully explain'd in the former Essay.</div><div>As to its efficient Cause; Wit owes its Production to an extraordinary and peculiar Temperament in the Constitution of the Possessors of it, in which is found a Concurrence of regular and exalted Ferments, and an Affluence of Animal Spirits refin'd and rectify'd to a great degree of Purity; whence being endow'd with Vivacity, Brightness and Celerity, as well in their Reflexions as direct Motions, they become proper Instruments for the sprightly Operations of the Mind; by which means the Imagination can with great Facility range, the wide Field of Nature, contemplate an infinite Variety of Objects, and by observing the Similitude and Disagreement of their several Qualities, single out and abstract, and then suit and unite those Ideas, which will best serve its purpose. Hence beautiful Allusions, surprizing Metaphors and admirable Sentiments are always ready at hand: And while the Fancy is full of Images collected from innumerable Objects and their different Qualities, Relations and Habitudes, it can at pleasure dress a common Notion in a strange, but becoming Garb; by which, as before observ'd, the same Thought will appear a new one, to the great Delight and Wonder of the Hearer. What we call Genius results from this particular happy Complexion in the first Formation of the Person that enjoys it, and is Nature's Gift, but diversify'd by various specifick Characters and Limitations, as its active Fire is blended and allay'd by different Proportions of Phlegm, or reduc'd and regulated by the Contrast of opposite Ferments. Therefore as there happens in the Composition of a facetious Genius a greater or less, tho still an inferior degree of Judgment and Prudence, and different Kinds of Instincts and Passions, one Man of Wit will be vary'd and distinguish'd from another. That Distinction that seems common to Persons of this Denomination, is an inferior Degree of Wisdom and Discretion; and tho these two Qualities, Wit and Discretion, are almost incapable of a friendly Agreement, and will not, but with great Difficulty, be work'd together and incorporated in the Constitution of any Individual; yet this Observation is not so conspicuous in any, as in those, whose native Complexion comes the nearest to a Subversion and Absence of Mind, tho it should never degenerate into that distemper'd Elevation of the Spirits: Nothing is more common, than to see Persons of this Class always Think Right, and always Act Wrong; admirable for the richness, delicacy, and brightness of their Imaginations, and at the same Time to be pity'd for their want of Prudence and common Sense; abounding with excellent Maxims and instructive Sentiments, which however are not of the least Use to themselves in the Conduct of their Lives. And hence it is certain, that tho the Gentlemen of a pleasant and witty Turn of Mind often make the industrious Merchant, and grave Persons of all Professions, the Subjects of their Raillery, and expose them as stupid Creatures, not supportable in good Company; yet these in their Turn believe they have as great a right, as indeed they have, to reproach the others for want of Industry, good Sense, and regular Oeconomy, much more valuable Talents than those, which any mere Wit can boast of; and therefore wise Parents, who from a tender Concern for the Honour and Happiness of their Children, earnestly desire they may excel in intellectual Endowments, should, instead of refin'd Parts and a Genius turn'd for pleasant Conversation, wish them a solid Understanding and a Faculty of close and clear Reasoning, these Qualifications being likely to make them good Men, and the other only good Companions.</div><div>And this leads to another Observation, namely, That Persons of facetious Talents and agreeable Humour, in whose Temperament, Judgment, and Discretion, as before observ'd, are usually found in a disproportionate Measure, are more inclin'd than others to Levity and dissolute Manners: The same swiftness of Thought and sprightliness of Imagination, that qualifies them for ingenious Conversation, Sports of Fancy and Comick Writing, do likewise give them an exquisite Taste of sensual Pleasures, and expose them to the prevailing Power of Tempting, tho forbidden Enjoyments. The Passions and Appetites of these Men, from the same Spring from whence they derive their extraordinary Parts, that is, a Redundancy of warm and lively Spirits, are more violent and impatient of Restraint, than those in a cooler and less active Complexion, who however may be more eminent in the superior Faculties of the Mind: Hence it will be no wonder, that while their Propensions to Pleasure are much stronger, and their Reason much weaker than those of other Men, they should be less able than others, to resist the Allurements of criminal Delights; and this Remark is confirm'd by daily Experience. How few of this facetious and comick Species of Men, caress'd and applauded for their shining Parts and witty Discourses, escape the Snares that encompass them, and preserve their Vertue and Sobriety of Manners? It too often happens, that a Man elevated above the rest by his uncommon Genius, is as much distinguish'd by his extraordinary Immorality: And it would be well if it stop'd here; but by degrees he often grows much worse, by adding Impiety and Profaneness to Looseness of Manners: For being unable, that is, having a moral Impotence of Will to restrain his evil Propensions and govern his vicious Appetites, and finding his guilty Enjoyments, attended with inward Uneasiness and unavoidable Remorse, and being conscious that his irregular Life is inconsistent with Safety and Happiness in a Future State; to remove the troublesome Misgivings of his Mind from the Apprehensions of Guilt here, and rid himself of the Fears of Suffering hereafter, he at length disclaims the Belief of a Supream Being and a Future Existence, and with much ado brings over his Judgment to the side of his Passions: This ingenious Libertine, having too little strength of Reason to subdue his Appetites, and too much Wit to think, that if that be not done, he shall escape at last Divine Punishment, abolishes his Creed for the Quiet of his Mind, and renounces his God to preserve his Vices.</div><div>(snip)</div><div><br /></div><div>*********************************</div><div><br /></div><div>The Pacificator a poem.</div><div>Defoe, Daniel,</div><div>(snip)</div><div><br /></div><div>To whom shall we Apply, what Powers Invoke,</div><div>To deprecate the near impending stroke?</div><div>Ye Gods of Wit and Arts, their Minds inspire</div><div>With Thoughts of Peace, from your Pacifick Fire;</div><div>Engage some Neighbouring Powers to undertake</div><div>To Mediate Peace, for Dear Britannia's sake;</div><div>Pity the Mother rifl'd of her Charms,</div><div>And make her Sons lay down Intestine Arms.</div><div>Preliminary Treaties first begin,</div><div>And may short Truce a lasting Peace let in,</div><div>Limits to Wits Unbounded Ocean place,</div><div>To which it may, and may no farther pass;</div><div>Fathom the unknown Depths of sullen Sense,</div><div>And Purge it from its Pride, and Insolence,</div><div>Your secret Influences interpose,</div><div>And make them all dispatch their Plenipo's;</div><div>Appoint Parnassus for a Place to meet,</div><div>Where all the Potentates of Wit may Treat,</div><div>Around the Hill let Troops of Muses stand,</div><div>To keep the Peace, and Guard the Sacred Land;</div><div>There let the high Pretensions be discuss'd,</div><div>And Heaven the fatal Differences adjust.</div><div>Let either side abate of their Demands,</div><div>And both submit to Reason's high Commands,</div><div>For which way ere the Conquest shall encline,</div><div>The loss Britannia will at last be thine.</div><div>Wit, like a hasty Flood, may over-run us,</div><div>And too much Sense has oftentimes undone us:</div><div>Wit is a Flux, a Looseness of the Brain,</div><div>And Sense-abstract has too much Pride to Reign:</div><div>Wit-unconcoct is the Extreme of Sloth,</div><div>And too much Sense is the Extreme of both▪</div><div>Abstracted-wit 'tis own'd is a Disease,</div><div>But Sense-abstracted has no Power to please:</div><div>For Sense like Water is but Wit condense,</div><div>And Wit like Air is rarify'd from Sense:</div><div>Meer Sense is sullen, stiff, and unpolite,</div><div>Meer Wit is apoplectick, thin, and light:</div><div>*Wit is a King without a Parliament,</div><div>And Sense a Democratick Government:*</div><div>Wit, like the French, where e'r it reigns Destroys,</div><div>And Sense advanc'd is apt to Tyrannize:</div><div>Wit without Sense is like the Laughing-Evil,</div><div>And Sense unmix'd with Fancy is the D—l.</div><div>Wit is a Standing Army Government,</div><div>And Sense a sullen stubborn P—t:</div><div>Wit by its haste anticipates its Fate,</div><div>And so does Sense by being obstinate:</div><div>Wit without Sense in Verse is all but Farce,</div><div>Sense without Wit in Verse is all mine A—.</div><div>Wit, like the French, Performs before it Thinks,</div><div>And Thoughtful Sense without Performance sinks:</div><div>Sense without Wit is flegmatick and pale,</div><div>And is all Head, forsooth, without a Tail:</div><div>Wit without Sense is cholerick and red,</div><div>Has Tail enough indeed, but has no Head.</div><div>Wit, like the Jangling Chimes, Rings all in One,</div><div>Till Sense, the Artist, sets them into Tune:</div><div>Wit, like the Belly, if it be not Fed,</div><div>Will starve the Members, and distract the Head</div><div><br /></div><div>Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts Conceive,</div><div>Sense is the Vital Heat which Life and Form must give:</div><div>Wit is the Teeming Mother brings them forth,</div><div>Sense is the Active Father gives them worth.</div><div>Vnited: Wit and Sense, makes Science thrive,</div><div>Divided: neither Wit nor Sense can live;</div><div>For while the Parties eagerly contend,</div><div>The Mortal Strife must in their Mutual Ruin end.</div><div>Listen, ye Powers, to Lost Britannia's Prayer,</div><div>And either side to yielding Terms Prepare;</div><div>And if their Cases long Debates admit,</div><div>As how much Condescention shall be fit,</div><div>How far Wits Jurisdiction shall extend,</div><div>And where the stated Bounds of Sense shall end,</div><div>Let them to some known Head that strife submit,</div><div>Some Judge Infallible, some Pope in Wit,</div><div>His Triple Seat place on Parnassus Hill,</div><div>And from his Sentence suffer no Appeal:</div><div>Let the Great Balance in his Censure be,</div><div>And of the Treaty make him Guarantee,</div><div>Let him be the Director of the State,</div><div>And what he says, let both sides take for Fate:</div><div>Apollo's Pastoral Charge to him commit,</div><div>And make him Grand Inquisitor of Wit,</div><div>Let him to each his proper Talent show,</div><div>And tell them what they can, or cannot do,</div><div>That each may chuse the Part he can do well,</div><div>And let the Strife be only to Excel:</div></div><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-30316110795500205142022-01-20T15:58:00.002-08:002022-01-20T16:53:37.002-08:00Jonson's Hollow Praise - Raising an Empty Monument in the First Folio<p> Jonson raised an empty/vain monument from Oxford’s ruin. Shake-speare, Ciceronianism, and Vain Affectations</p><p><br /></p><p>VANUS – </p><p>vain, empty, vacant, void</p><p>unsubstantial</p><p>figuratively groundless, baseless, meaningless</p><p>ostentatious, boastful</p><p>deceptive, untrustworthy</p><p><br /></p><p>matter/words</p><p>res/verba</p><p>substance/style</p><p>****************************</p><p>What merit lived in me that you should love</p><p>After my death, dear love, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can NOTHING WORTHY prove;</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>Hebrew -Maskith – A showpiece, figure, imaginations, carved images</p><p>****************************</p><p>Empty Figures:</p><p><br /></p><p>Soul of the age!</p><p>The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!</p><p>MY Shakespeare, RISE! (Jonson)</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>What needs MY Shakespeare for his honoured bones</p><p>The labour of an age in piled stones...(Milton)</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************</p><p>"Vain Affectations": Bacon on Ciceronianism in "The Advancement of Learning"</p><p>JUDITH RICE HENDERSON</p><p><br /></p><p>When Francis Bacon writes that man "began to hunt more after words than matter" in The Advancement of Learning, he meant not just form and content but academic disciplines. Bacon explains that Martin Luther called for humanist educational reform to teach the laity to read and theologians and preachers to analyze Scripture. In the Strasbourg gymnasium and academy, the Protestant rector Johann Sturm went too far in substituting endless drill in the arts of discourse for other subjects. Bacon deplores Sturm's influence [my note – Harvey/Audley End speech to Oxford] on the Cambridge humanists, especially Nicholas Carr and Roger Ascham, and Ascham's celebration of the Portuguese Ciceronian Jerónimo Osorio in the Marian court. When Osorio subsequently attacked the Elizabethan religious settlement, Ascham and others dismissed his prose as Asiatic, for they had learned from the Protestant opposition to scholastic theology to identify good style with good doctrine. Bacon, seeking truth in God's Works as much as in God's Word, would place dialectic and rhetoric late in the university curriculum, contending that students who labor to perfect argument and style before they have something to say fall into "childish sophistry and ridiculous affectation." </p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Imitation and Praise in the Poems of Ben Jonson</p><p>By Richard S. Peterson</p><p><br /></p><p>...Men should, Crites says [Jonson-type character in Cynthia’s Revels], ”Studie…/An inward comelinesse…that may conforme them…/To Gods high figures, which they have in power: (V.iv.643-6; IV, 158), and this is the goal the poet holds out to his living subjects in the poems. The moral outline or shape Jonson produces is an ideal one, charged with a sense of potential, movement, and change, to which the subject ought actively to conform his soul or mind – or simply continue to conform it, in the most admirable cases – by his own efforts and with the poet’s educative help. What Jonson says in Timber of the poet’s effect on his readers – adapting Quintilian on the orator’s effect on his listeners (Inst. Orat. II.5.8) – ideally applies to praised subjects as well: he “makes their minds like the thing he writes” (ll. 792-3; VIII, 588). His Platonic (or Socratic) and stoic strategy in this respect is perhaps clearest in instances where the collaboration between the poet and the owner of the soul proves an unequal one. If he has occasionally praised his subjects too much, Jonson declares in his epistle to Selden (according to the rhetorical mode of laudando praecipere, “praising to teach”) It was “with purpose to have MADE them such” (Und. 14, l.22) Even more revealing is Jonson’s sharp complaint “To my Muse”:</p><p><br /></p><p>Away, a leave me, thou thing most abhord,</p><p>That hast betray’d me to a worthlesse lord;</p><p>Made me commit most fierce idolatrie</p><p>To a great image through thy luxurie.</p><p><br /></p><p>… … …</p><p>But I repent me: Stay. Who e’re is rais’d,</p><p>For worth he has not, He is tax’d, not prais’d.</p><p>[Epig. 65 1-4, 15-16]</p><p><br /></p><p>This description recalls not only Sir Epicure Mammon’s “most fierce idolatrie” in wooing Dol Common, as he “talke[s] to her, all in gold” (Alchemist IV. i.25-39; V, 360), but the “great image” of gold, Nebuchadnezzar’s symbol, which he dreams about and sets up to be worshiped (Dan. 2:31-8, 3:1-15) Failing a response, the noble shape raised by Jonson becomes merely a “great image” hollow or inert at its core [note – as in My Shakespeare Rise!], and his worship of its potential, mere tribute paid to an idol – a strong contrast, as we shall see, to Jonson’s justifiable near-idolatry of the “full” and animated inner shapes that inhabit the cabinet which is Uvedale.note -</p><p>The sense of potential, of conduct as raw material from wish a shapely life of soul should be fashioned and raises like a statue, is forcefully conveyed in Jonson’s epistle to Sir Edward Sacvile (Und. 13). There the poet shows an accumulated “heape” of virtuous manners being effortfully raised to “stand” as a triumphal arch, which is then metamorphosed, as we watch, into the implied human figure of a colossus, a “wonder” of the world and a landmark (“marke”) or “note” of virtue:</p><p>‘Tis by degrees that men arrive at glad</p><p>Profit in ought; each day some little adde,</p><p>In time ‘twill be a heape; This is not true</p><p>Alone in money, but in manners too.</p><p>Yet we must more than move still, or goe on,</p><p>We must accomplish; ‘Tis the last Key-stone</p><p>That makes the Arch. The rest that there were put</p><p>Are nothing till that comes to bind and shut.</p><p>Then stands it a triumphal marke! Then Men</p><p>Observe the strength, the height, the why, and when,</p><p>It was erected; and still walking under</p><p>Meet some new matter to looke up and wonder!</p><p>Such Notes are virtuous men.</p><p>The parallel we have traced earlier between the need to gather in and transform in conduct as in literary activity holds true here. In describing how the individual soul fashions its heaped stock of manners into a towering form of virtue, the poet himself accumulates a generous heap of material from Plutarch (and from Hesiod, whose heap of money Plutarch has turned to a heap of virtue) and transforms the whole by adding a keystone from Seneca (Epist. 118, secs. 16-17): “one stone makes an archway – the stone which wedges the leaning sides and hold the arch together by its position in the middle. … Some things, through development, put off their former shape and are *altered into a new figure*” (quaedam processu priorem exuunt formam et in novam transeunt). [note – biformis vates?)</p><p>Indeed, Jonson’s works abound with “heapes.” These are admirable enough when they indicate bounty or a plentiful supply of raw material to be shaped. This in Jonson’s masque The Gypsies Metmorphos’d (1621), King James, on approaching the country house of the Duke of Buckingham, is invited to “enter here/ The house your bountie hath built, and still doth reare/ With those highe favors, and those heap’d increases: (ll. 11-13; VII, 565). And in a brief later elegy (Und. 63) Jonson consoles King Charles and his Queen for the loss of their firstborn by a reminder that “God, whose essence is so infinite, /Cannot but heape that grace, he will requite.” But on most occasions, heaps serve as symbols of inert material which is unable to stand or empty of animating, shaping spirit – the very antithesis of Jonson’s ideal. [Men stand, heaps ‘rise’?) A nameless, vicious courtier is “A parcel of Court-durt, a heape, and masse/ Of all vice hurld together” Und. 21), hardly distinguishable from the excrement in Fleet Ditch, “heap’d like a usurers masse” (“On the Famous Voyage,” Epig. 133, l.139); whole a lord fond of flatter is “follow’d with that heape/ That watch, and catch, at what they may applaud” (Und. 15, ll. 156-7). The healthy gathering instinct Jonson describes in the epistle to Sacvile is in sharp contrast to the hoarding of substance, unanimated by any generous impulse, described in the epistle to Sir Robert Wroth: “ Let that goe heape a masse of wretched wealth,/……/And brooding o’re it sit, with broades eyes,/Not doing good, scarce when he dyes: (For. 3, ll. 81-4). A house, too, lacking an indwelling owner, like a body without a soul, becomes a mere heap…(snip)</p><p>If the repugnance of the inert “heap” lies in its resistance to shaping, its lack of any inner impulse that could raise it to stand, conversely it is possible to stand and yet be hollow. Consider Jonson’s startling picture (Und.44) of the ruined form of virtue, unhoused and dispossessed, beseechingly holding up her broken “Armes” (in an evocation of a defaced antique statue combined with a deft pun on the military target of the satire, the refusal of contemporary nobility to bear arms) to the empty “moulds” which have cast her out:</p><p>I may no longer on these picture stay,</p><p>These Carkasses of honour; Taylors blocks,</p><p>Cover’d with Tissue, whose prosperitie mocks</p><p>The fate of things: whilst totter’d virtue holds</p><p>Her broken Armes up, to the EMPTIE moulds. [ll. 98-102]</p><p>Other forms, empty yet nevertheless ambulatory, are seen moving woodenly through the world of the Epigrammes. Of “English Mounsieur” (Epig. 88), with his Frenchified attire, the poet remarks: “is it some french statue? No: ‘T doth move,/ And stoupe, and cringe. O then, it needs must prove/ The new French tailors motion [puppet], monthly made, /Daily to turned in PAULS, and helpe the trade”(…)</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p>Casting down imaginations:</p><p>2 Corinthians </p><p>For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;</p><p>Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God</p><p>***************************</p><p>Horace, of the Art of Poetrie</p><p>transl. Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>If to Quintilius, you recited ought:</p><p>Hee'd say, Mend this, good friend, and this; "Tis naught.</p><p>If you denied, you had no better straine,</p><p>And twice, or thrice had 'ssayd it, still in vaine:</p><p>Hee'd bid, blot all: and to the anvile bring</p><p>Those ill-torn'd Verses, to new hammering.</p><p>Then: If your fault you rather had defend</p><p>Then change. *No word, or worke, more would he spend</p><p>In vaine, BUT YOU, AND YOURS, YOU SHOULD LOVE STILL</p><p>Alone, without a rivall, by his will*.</p><p><br /></p><p>A wise, and honest man will cry out shame</p><p>On ARTELESS Verse; the hard ones he will blame;</p><p>Blot out the careless, with his turned pen;</p><p>Cut off superfluous ornaments; and when</p><p>They're darke, bid cleare this: all that's doubtfull wrote</p><p>Reprove; and, what is to be changed, not:</p><p>Become an Aristarchus. And, not say,</p><p>Why should I grieve my friend, this TRIFLING WAY?</p><p>These TRIFLES into serious mischiefs lead</p><p>The man once mock'd, and SUFFERED WRONG TO TREAD. </p><p>*****************************</p><p>Quintilius/Jonson</p><p>I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never BLOTTED out line. My answer hath beene, would he had BLOTTED a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their IGNORANCE, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most FAULTED... </p><p>*********************************</p><p>Oldham, on Jonson</p><p>XIII.</p><p>Let meaner spirits stoop to low precarious Fame,</p><p>Content on gross and coarse Applause to live,</p><p>And what the dull, and sensless Rabble give,</p><p>Thou didst it still with noble scorn contemn,</p><p>Nor would'st that wretched Alms receive,</p><p>The poor subsistence of some bankrupt, SORDID* NAME:</p><p>Thine was no EMPTY VAPOR, RAIS’D beneath,</p><p>And form'd of common Breath,</p><p>The false, and foolish Fire, that's whisk'd about</p><p>By popular Air, and glares a while, and then GOES OUT...</p><p>********************************</p><p><pharos-heading class="title-font" level="1" no-margin="true" preset="5" style="margin-bottom: var(--pharos-spacing-one-quarter-x);">Gabriel Harvey's Orations on Rhetoric. </pharos-heading>H. S. Wilson</p><p>In the late 1570’s, Gabriel Harvey turned away from Ciceronians such as Sturm and Ascham (with caveats):</p><p><br /></p><p>The great authorities in dialectic and rhetoric of Sturm and his followers were Cicero, Aristotle and HERMOGENES [the POLISHER]. [Harvey had noted ‘polished’ Oxford’s visit to Sturm in his Audley End Address to the Earl.]</p><p>Harvey – Oration to undergraduates of Cambridge</p><p>Do not fall into the Scythian swamp of Hermogenes, that endless and pretentiously vain art, concerning which it is recorded that Hermogenes was so elaborately ingenious he prided himself on being able to include countless figures and other rhetorical subtleties in one and the same period. In which vain labor no few men of our time toil – men in other respects not to be despised, though unfortunately there are increasing numbers of them, especially of those whom your teacher Harvey is wont to call PHILOGRECIANS and PSEUDO-STRASSBURGERS [my note - Sturm/Strasbourg], and whom I would term pseudo-Hermogenes, alias sophist, pseudo-rhetoricians or even rhetorical chameleons: they are not so much nourished with food as saturated with wind and rhetorical hot-air. In truth, through their subtleties, *they make themselves more and more obscure until they gradually disappear in mere inanity*: they have no worse enemies than themselves.</p><p>************************</p><p>*inanity</p><p>Definition of inane (Merriam Webster)</p><p> (Entry 1 of 2)</p><p>1: lacking SIGNIFICANCE meaning, or point : SILLY inane comments</p><p>2: EMPTY, INSUBSTANTIAL</p><p>***********************</p><p>Castigating Courtiers in Cynthia’s Revels: Crites/Criticus/Jonson </p><p><br /></p><p>O VANITY,</p><p>How are thy painted beauties doted on,</p><p>By LIGHT and EMPTY IDIOTS how pursu'd</p><p>With open and extended Appetite!</p><p>How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,</p><p>RAIS’D on their Toes, to catch thy AIRY FORMS,</p><p>Still turning GIDDY, till they reel like Drunkards,</p><p>That buy the merry madness of one hour,</p><p>With the long irksomness of following time!</p><p>O how despis'd and base a thing is a Man,</p><p>If he not strive t'erect his groveling Thoughts</p><p>Above the strain of Flesh! But how more cheap,</p><p>When, even his best and understanding Part,</p><p>(The crown and strength of all his Faculties)</p><p>Floats like a dead drownd Body, on the Stream</p><p>Of vulgar humour, mixt with common'st dregs?</p><p>I suffer for their Guilt now, and my Soul</p><p>(Like one that looks on ill-affected Eyes)</p><p>Is hurt with mere intention on their Follies.</p><p>Why will I view them then? my sense might ask me:</p><p>Or is't a rarity, or some new object,</p><p>That strains my strict observance to this Point?</p><p>O would it were, therein I could afford</p><p>My Spirit should draw a little neer to theirs,</p><p>To gaze on novelties: so Vice were one.</p><p>Tut, she is stale, rank, foul, and were it not</p><p>That those (that woo her) greet her with lockt Eyes,</p><p>(In spight of all the impostures, paintings, drugs,</p><p>Which her Bawd custom dawbs her Cheeks withal)</p><p>She would betray her loath'd and leprous Face,</p><p>And fright th' enamour'd dotards from themselves:</p><p>But such is the perverseness of our nature,</p><p>That if we once but fancy levity,</p><p>(How antick and ridiculous so ere</p><p>It sute with us) yet will our muffled thought</p><p>Choose rather not to see it, than avoid it:</p><p>And if we can but banish our own sense,</p><p>We act our mimick tricks with that free license,</p><p>That lust, that pleasure, that security,</p><p>As if we practis'd in a Paste-board Case,</p><p>And no one saw the motion, but the motion.</p><p>Well, check thy passion, lest it grow too lowd:</p><p>"While fools are pittied, they wax FAT and proud</p><p>*************************************</p><p>Psalm 73:7</p><p>Their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could wish; and the imaginations of their minds overflow [with follies].</p><p>************************************</p><p>Chapman...</p><p><br /></p><p>TO you whose depth of soule measures the height,</p><p>And all dimensions of all WORKES of WEIGHT,</p><p>REASON being ground, structure and ornament,</p><p>To all inuentions, graue and permanent,</p><p>And your cleare eyes the Spheres where REASON moues;</p><p>This Artizan, this God of RATIONALL loues</p><p>Blind Homer;</p><p>(snip)</p><p>TRUE learning hath a body absolute,</p><p>That in apparant sence it selfe can suite,</p><p>Not hid in ayrie termes as if it were</p><p>Like spirits fantastike that put men in feare,</p><p>And are but bugs form'd in their fowle conceites,</p><p>Nor made forsale glas'd with sophistique sleights;</p><p>But wrought for all times proofe, strong to bide prease,</p><p>And shiuer ignorants like Hercules,</p><p>ON THEIR OWN DUNGHILS; (...)</p><p><br /></p><p>AN EMPTY PEN with their owne OWNE STUFF applied</p><p>CAN BLOT THEM OUT: so shall their wealth-burst wombes</p><p>Be made with emptie Penne their honours tombes. </p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************************</p><p>Milton, _Paradise Lost Book V_ </p><p><br /></p><p>But know that in the Soule</p><p>Are many lesser Faculties that serve</p><p>REASON as chief; among these FANSIE next</p><p>Her office holds; of all external things,</p><p>Which the five watchful Senses represent,</p><p>She forms Imaginations, Aerie shapes,</p><p>Which Reason joyning or disjoyning, frames</p><p>All what we affirm or what deny, and call</p><p>Our knowledge or opinion; then retires</p><p>Into her private Cell when Nature rests.</p><p>Oft in her absence MIMIC FANSIE wakes</p><p>To imitate her; but misjoyning shapes,</p><p>WILDE WORK produces oft, and most in dreams,</p><p>Ill matching words and deeds long past or late.</p><p>Som such resemblances methinks I find</p><p>Of our last Eevnings talk, in this thy dream,</p><p>But with addition strange; yet be not sad.</p><p>Evil into the mind of God or Man</p><p>May come and go, so unapprov'd, and leave</p><p>No spot or blame behind:</p><p>*************************************</p><p>English Seneca:</p><p>...Sidney, like Seneca, belonged to a noble (although impoverished) line and lived the life of a courtier depending on the support of a monarch whose favors were fickle. The image that his contemporaries created of Sidney is in important ways like the one that Seneca had tried to create for himself, that of a man who sought “to make himself and others, not in words or opinion, but in life and action, good and great” (Dedication 12.7-7). Sidney appears to have had for the the curriculum at Oxford the same scorn that Seneca had expressed for its essentially Roman model: It teaches words rather than things. In a letter to his brother Robert, Sidney wrote: “So yow can speake and write Latine not barbarously I never require great study in Ciceronianisme the cheife abuse of Oxford, Qui dum verba sectantur, res ipsas negligunt”* (Works, 3). Seneca likewise had condemned both the philological (Ep.88.3-4) and rhetorical (Ep.100.10) focus on words at the expense of subject: Sic ista ediscamus, ut quae fuerint verba, sint opera (Ep. 108.35). [Let us learn those things so that what have been words might become works].</p><p>* where, while they eagerly pursue words, they neglect things themselves. (note matter vs. Manner debate which had broken out among the Humanists.)</p><p>**********************************</p><p>Cynthia’s Revels, Jonson</p><p>P R O L O G U E.</p><p><br /></p><p>F gracious silence, sweet attention, </p><p> Quick sight, and quicker apprehension,</p><p>(The lights of Judgments throne) shine any where;</p><p>Our doubtful Author hopes this is their Sphere.</p><p>And therefore opens he himself to those;</p><p>To other weaker Beams his labours close:</p><p>As loth to prostitute their Virgin strain,</p><p>To ev'ry vulgar and adult'rate Brain,</p><p>In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath,</p><p>She shuns the print of any beaten Path; </p><p>And proves new ways to come to learned Ears:</p><p>Pied ignorance she neither loves nor, fears.</p><p>Nor hunts she after popular Applause,</p><p>Or fomy praise, that drops from common Jaws:</p><p>The Garland that she wears, their bands must twine,</p><p>Who can both censure, understand, define</p><p>What merit is: Then cast those piercing Rays,</p><p>Round as a Crown, instead of honour'd Bays,</p><p>About his Poesie; which (he knows) affords</p><p>Words, above action: MATTER, above WORDS. </p><p>*****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN: MONSTERS, METAPHORS, AND MAGIC</p><p>BY ROBERT E. STILLMAN</p><p><br /></p><p>Hobbes's sense of his place in cultural history is key to understanding the character and the contradictions of Leviathan. Early and late in his long writing career, he represents his philosophical life as a battle against monstrous texts. De cive's "Preface to the Reader" narrates a Hobbesian myth of the fall, in which a golden age of power and authority enjoyed by sovereigns is destroyed by the "disputations" of private men. 1 To illustrate his point, Hobbes cites the classical fable of Ixion's adulterous courtship of Juno: "Offering to embrace her, he clasped a cloud; from whence the Centaurs proceeded, by nature half men, half horses, a fierce, a fighting, and unquiet generation" (2:xiii). His allegorization of the fable is Baconian both in its method -- its derivation of philosophical truths from mythology -- and in its attribution of the origins of political sedition to seditious language and seditious desires: "private men being called to councils of state, desired to prostitute justice, the only sister and wife of the supreme, to their own judgments and apprehensions; but embracing a false and empty shadow instead of it, they have begotten those hermaphrodite opinions of moral philosophers, partly right and comely, partly brutal and wild"</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Hobbes is fond of metaphors of the monstrous, and his employment of them, especially in crucial accounts of his own vocational ambitions, is recurrent and revealing. His claim to having spent a career battling the metaphorical monsters of false systems of knowledge complements his lifelong attacks, I will argue, against the monsters of metaphor. Viewed from a broad historical perspective, Hobbes's attack stands as one characteristic, albeit especially fierce, expression of hostility to metaphor on the part of the seventeenth century's new philosophers. Monsters, as marvels of nature, have their verbal counterparts in metaphors, the marvels of speech. As Paul de Man argues, within metaphors, as inside the most violent catachreses, "something monstrous lurks." 4 (The very word catachresis means an "abuse" of language.) Metaphors can appear dangerous, even monstrous, because "they are capable of inventing the most fantastic entities by dint of the positional power inherent in language. They can dismember the texture of reality and reassemble it in the most capricious of ways, pairing man with woman or human being with beast in the most unnatural shapes." 5 As a consequence, de Man argues, metaphor has been "a perennial problem and, at times, a recognized source of embarrassment for philosophical discourse." 6 That embarrassment becomes especially acute during the seventeenth century because of metaphor's association with subjective imagination, passion, and the monstrous, with all that contrasts with objective judgment, reason, and the natural. As a result, the opposition between the literal and the figural underlies many of the crucial polarities of the century's discourse: the divide between truth and falsehood, natural philosophy and poetry, philosophical discourse and rhetoric, to name only a few. 7 Especially in the civil war years, a hostility to metaphor becomes acute, too, because as a monstrous rebel to linguistic law, metaphor is associated with the monstrous rebels of mob rule. To attack metaphor is to attack the monstrous mother of all seditious philosophies, and a monstrous breeder of sedition itself. </p><p>*******************************</p><p>Cato, the Censor:</p><p>Rem tene, verba sequentur. </p><p>Grasp the subject, the words will follow.</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Fulke Greville, Chief Sidneian, Hereditary Recorder of Stratford upon Avon</p><p><br /></p><p>Who worship Fame, commit Idolatry,</p><p>Make Men their God, Fortune and Time their worth,</p><p>Forme, but reforme not, meer hypocrisie,</p><p>By shadowes, onely shadowes bringing forth,</p><p>Which must, as blossomes, fade ere true fruit springs,</p><p> (Like voice, and eccho) ioyn'd; yet diuers things. </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England</p><p><br /></p><p>By Mary Thomas Crane</p><p>…[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.</p><p>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).</p><p>***********************************</p><p>Steven May, _The Elizabethan Courtier Poets_</p><p>The New Lyricism</p><p>During the 1570's a body of courtier verse emerged that revived the emphasis upon love poetry as it had been introduced to the Tudor court by Wyatt and Surrey. Upon this revitalized foundation, amorous courtier poetics *developed without interruption to the end of the reign and beyond*. Unlike courtier verse of the 1560's, the new lyricism modeled itself primarily upon post-classical continental authors, from Petrarch to the Pl?iade. Attention to the classics remained strong, of course, but the ancients were assimilated into the new poetics almost exclusively in the vernacular. The courtier's immediate experience is often reflected in this poetry, although the exact circumstances behind it cannot always be identified, nor does this later work necessarily grow out of actual experience. From a literary standpoint this is perhaps the most important shift away from the trends of the 1560's. Subsequent courtier verse placed a greater emphasis upon artifice in its treatment of occasional subjects, while it increasingly strayed away from real events as the most respectable inducements for writing poetry. The movement was toward fiction and the creation of poems to be valued for their own sake, not merely for their commemorative function. As courtier poets ventured anew into the realms of fiction, they made possible once again the creation of a genuine literature of the court. Progress toward a golden age of lyricism was slow, especially with regard to form and the technical aspects of composition, but the shift in direction occurred suddenly during the period between roughly 1570 and 1575.</p><p>Although Dyer has been considered the premier Elizabethan courtier poet, that is, the first to compose love lyrics there, the available evidence confers this distinction upon the earl of Oxford. His early datable work conforms, nevertheless, to one of the established functions for poetry practiced by Ascham and Wilson. IN 1572, Oxford turned out commendatory verses for a translation of Cardano's _Comfort_, published in 1573 by his gentleman pensioner friend, Thomas Bedingfield. This poem differs from earlier efforts of the kind not so much because it appeared in English (as had Ascham's verses for Blundeville's book), but because his verses are so self-consciously poetic. The earl uses twenty-six lines to develop his formulaic exempla: Bedingfield's good efforts are enjoyed by others just as laborers, masons, bees, and so forth also work for the profit of others. Oxford flaunts a COPIOUS [my note – abundantly flowing] rhetoric in this poem in contrast with the more direct, unembellished commendatory verses of his predecessors. His greatest innovation, however, lies in his application of the same qualities of style to the eight poems assigned to him in the 1576 Paradise of Dainty Devices, pieces that Oxford must have composed before 1575.</p><p>DeVere's eight poems in the _Paradise_ create a dramatic break with everything known to have been written at the Elizabethan court at that time...The diversity of Oxford's subjects, including his varied analyses of the lover's state, were practically as unknown to contemporary out-of -court writer as they were to courtiers.</p><p>Oxford's birth and social standing at court in the 1570's made him a model of aristocratic behaviour. He was, for instance, accused of introducing Italian gloves and other such FRIPPERIES at court; his example would have lent respectability even to so TRIVIAL a pursuit as the writing of love poetry. Thus, while it is possible that Dyer was writing poetry as early as the 1560's, his earliest datable verse, the complaint sung to the queen at Woodstock in 1575, may itself have been inspired by Oxford's work in the same vein. Dyer's first six poems in Part II are the ones he is most likely to have composed before his association with Philip Sidney. ...Yet even if all six (of Dyer's poems) were written by 1575, Oxford would still emerge as the chief innovator due to the range of his subject matter and the variety of its execution. ...By contrast, Dyer was a specialist...Dyer's output represents a great departure from courtier verse of the 1560's, and several of his poems were more widely circulated and imitated than any of Oxford's; still, the latter's experimentation provided a much broader foundation for the development of lyric poetry at court. (pp. 52-54)</p><p>*********************************</p><p>Vickers, Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy:</p><p>...Of the hundreds of writers who followed Quintilian and Erasmus in reiterating the greater importance of the subject-matter [note-matter over manner], let us just recall Sir Philip Sidney's letter to his younger brother Robert on 18 October,1580, advising him on his studies. 'For the method of writing Historie', Sidiney tells him, 'Bodin hath written at large; you may reede him and gather out of many wordes some matter' - a fatal sign of verbosity. That was obviously a current danger for a young student, given the stylistic fashions then in vogue: 'So you can speake and write Latine not barbarously I never require great study in Ciceronianisme, the cheife abuse of Oxford, Qui dum verba sectantur, res ipsas negligunt'.[who, in their application to words, neglect the things themselves.]</p><p>It is from this basis that Gabriel Harvey compared the style of Osorio's oration De gloria unfavourably with that of Cicero's De amicitia, bringing out the difference between the redundancy of Osorius and the COPIOUSNESS of Cicero. Both men have fluent diction, to be sure; but whereas Cicero's flows without any ripples, like a smooth and quiet river, Osorio's sometimes overflows its banks, like a swollen, hurrying torrent, too impatient to be confined within the bounds set by the other.</p><p>In ascribing copia to Cicero, redundantia to Osorio, Harvey was doubtless aware that Quintilian described the latter as a vice of style (Institutio oratoria VIII.3.57; XII.10.12-19). Harvey's criticism of Osorio was reinforced in the prefatory epistle to his Ciceronianus by William Lewin, a fellow of Christ's College and perhaps Harvey's tutor, who judged it 'a little more copious and overflowing than was proper'.</p><p>Returning to Bacon's critique of Ciceronianism we can now see that it is entirely typical of Renaissance rhetorical humanism in its conceptual categories and in the judgements resulting. His characterization of Osorio - 'Then grew the flowing and watery vein of...the Portugal bishop to be in price' - might have come straight from the pages of Harvey's Ciceronianus. At all events J.W. Binns, in his recent study of 'Ciceronianism in sixteenth-century England: the Latin debate', finds that Bacon's account of 'the growth and progress of a Ciceronianism which paid more attention to style than to matter...is just and perceptive', while his 'use of the term "watery" to describe [Osorio's style] is this in the mainstream of critical thinking. In evoking this fashion of writing Bacon perhaps echoes Harvey's self-mocking description of the care for superficial qualities of style that marked his juvenile flirtation with Ciceronianism, but he goes on further in juxtaposing both the vices and virtues of style. He begins with a plain statement of the disease, in the appropriate language, when care for verba exceeds that for res. Then he enlarges this simple distinction into two unequal parts, first showing how the mimicry of Ciceronian Latin developed a self-propagating power (redundantia), proliferating before our eyes:</p><p>men began to hunt more after words than matter--more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the SWEET falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.</p><p>Those bare, unadorned symmetries in the second part of the sentence sum up pages of teaching from the rhetoric-books on the main virtues of style for which the orator should strive: 'weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgement.' That is surely the definitive expression of what the distinction between res and verba really implied. Bacon's concluding antithesis, then - 'the whole inclination and bent of those times was rather towards COPIE than WEIGHT' - is not an attack on COPIA, tout court, but describes what happens when writers cultivate COPIA VERBORUM in separation from COPIA RERUM, resulting in that disordered condition 'when men study words and not matter'. The terms in which Bacon formulates his critique of Ciceronian imitatio are not critical of, but derive from the rhetorical tradition, from Cato to Quintilian. His dismissive flourish, comparing their enamoration with words to Pygmalion's madness in falling in love with the stature he has made, unites a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses with part of Aristotle's definition of language, and unlikely combination for a modern perhaps, but wholly typical of humanist eclecticism, where all quotations are equally useful.</p><p>***************************************</p><p>Copia – abundant FLOW</p><p><br /></p><p>Ben Jonson: "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,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. </p><p>*********************************</p><p>On Shakespeare" - Milton</p><p><br /></p><p>What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd Bones,</p><p>The labour of an age in piled Stones,</p><p>Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid</p><p>Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?</p><p>Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,</p><p>What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?</p><p>Thou in our wonder and astonishment</p><p>Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.</p><p>For whil'st to th' shame of slow-endeavoring art</p><p>Thy easie numbers FLOW...</p><p>**********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Idolatrous Italianate Ciceronians:</p><p>Homosociality, Imitation, and Gendered Reading in Robert Greene's Ciceronis Amor</p><p>Kevin L Gustafson. Philological Quarterly</p><p><br /></p><p>...Gabriel Harvey provides a particularly illuminating example of this argument because he was a contemporary (though hardly a friend) of Greene, and because his Ciceronianus (1577) offers a brief history of Ciceronian debates up to the middle of the sixteenth century, even while presenting the author as a repentant idolater.47 Harvey follows Jerome's letter in confessing to a prodigality in which he "virtually preferred to be elected to the company of the Ciceronians rather than to that of the saints."48 But now, having digested the arguments of the anti-Ciceronians Erasmus and Peter RAMUS, he claims to have a more balanced view. Cicero is still "the eldest son and indeed heir of Eloquence," and thus most worthy of imitation, but one who also has faults and is best imitated when exceeded.49 For Harvey, as for Ramus, true imitation like true friendship is an exercise dedicated to appreciating and cultivating "all of his virtues and conduct and character [virtutisfundamentuni], rather than merely mimicking affect or style.50 Here again rhetorical imitation bears a striking resemblance to the appreciation and cultivation of virtue in theories of friendship, and the Elizabethan scholar casts this transformation in language directly reminiscent of Quintilian's characterization of imitation as a kind of desire: "To me Cicero was always Cicero, and eloquence, eloquence; but now more than ever my mind, fired with unprecedented ardor and love, not merely expects but promises something greater than Cicero in Cicero himself."51 The reformed Harvey will take what is best from a variety of sources and, following Erasmus and Ramus, redefine "Ciceronian" so that it refers not exclusively to the orator but instead to any writing that is "excellent and in conformity with the most careful usage of speech and thought."52 Harvey's journey of rhetorical reformation traverses a gap between what he elsewhere calls "CURIOUS universall scholars" and "superficial humanists,"53 or the broadly educated orator versus the less-desirable rhetor, who is "highly trained and polished in the single faculty of eloquent speech."54 There is throughout Harvey's work a tension between SCHOLARSHIP and COURTIERSHIP, and in a quite telling move he characterizes the singular concern with style as a KIND OF EFFEMINACY, derisively saying, "Let the little ladies hold sway in the classroom."55 Harvey's ability to police imitation through gender categories only underscores the pervasive and largely tacit homosociality of the work. The Ciceronianus, like the Rhetor that immediately followed it, began as a university lecture in Latin addressed to students as well as fellow scholars, and both treatises were dedicated to academic friends.</p><p>Ciceronis Amor initially may seem far removed from Harvey's academic polemics. Yet Greene's fiction is equally concerned with the twin discourses of friendship and imitation- *equally concerned to mark proper and improper ways of loving Ciceronian eloquence*.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>The letter that Cicero writes on behalf of Lentulus (57-58), and that Greene subsequently translates for his English readers, is the central document in this drama of rhetorical desire. Relihan adduces this episode of women reading as singular evidence that Ciceronis Amor advocates the antimisogynist position that women are just as capable as men of participating in humanist culture. On closer inspection, the scene appears much more ambivalent in its attitude towards women readers. The letter is of course a common feature of amatory writing, and Greene here no doubt expected his audience to have Ovid in mind. Nor is there anything particularly unusual about two Roman ladies reading Latin, which is of course their native tongue. What is striking is that, much like the Ciceronian derided by Harvey, they respond foremost, even exclusively, to its style, the pleasing surface that may lead to but does not necessarily correspond to Ciceronian virtue. Flavia first correctly attributes the letter to Cicero based on its style. Terentia, however, goes no further, as she becomes enflamed with desire for a man she has never met: "Ah Tullie, sweete Tullie, from whose mouth flows mélodie more enchaunting then the sirens" (66). Greene has already referred to the Sirens to suggest the dangers of other-sex desire, sensuality that Parker associates with not only woman's body but also woman's speech. Here the reference indicates a particularly sensual way of reading, and as such highlights a disjunction-between Cicero's motives for eloquence and Terentia's reception of it-that is even more noticeable later in the story, when he tries to persuade Terentia to accept Lentulus: "This discourse of Tully did but sette Terentias herte more on fire. For hearing the pleasant harmony of hir Cicero, shee likt of the musicke as of the Syrens melody, and so entangled her selfe with many newe conceived fancies" (102). Rhetoric here is in a profound sense at cross-purposes for the two characters. Cicero's act of writing the letter exemplifies the ideal that true eloquence is subordinated to virtue, in this case the devotion and self-sacrifice that, in De amicitia, characterize true friendship. Her emotional reception of it, by contrast, resembles the stylistic infatuation of the idolatrous Italianate Ciceronian and looks forward to the stereotype of the mad and oversexed woman reader of Jacobean city comedy.62</p><p>****************************</p><p>CURIOUS UNIVERSAL SCHOLARS:</p><p>Amorphus/Oxford. ... (emphasis on expression - manner over matter)</p><p><br /></p><p>For, let your Soul be assur'd of this (in any rank, or profession whatever) the</p><p>more general, or major part of Opinion goes with the</p><p>Face, and (simply) respects nothing else. Therefore</p><p>if that can be made exactly, CURIOUSLY, EXQUISITELY,</p><p>thorowly, it is enough.</p><p>*************************</p><p><br /></p><p>All action is of the MIND and the mirror of the mind is the FACE, its index the eyes.-- Cicero</p><p><br /></p><p>I can refell that Paradox of those, which hold the face to be the Index of the minde, which (I assure you) is not so, in any politique creature:[1601 , Jonson Cynthia's Revels - Amorphus the Deformed]</p><p><br /></p><p>Cf. [Cicero Orator lx.] ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi, *the face is a picture of the mind* as the eyes are its interpreter; L. vultus est index animi (also oculus animi index), the face (also, eye) is the index of the mind. [my note – disproportionate Droeshout]</p><p>**************************</p><p>Gendered Style:</p><p>Jonson - Timber</p><p>{Topic 67}} {{Subject: AFFECTED language}}</p><p>DE VERE argutis. - 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.</p><p>************************************</p><p>"Style is the man":</p><p>The Virility of Conversation</p><p>What is the relationship between the classical proposition that a man's literary style must be like his life and the early modern investment in table talk, or conversation, as an arena for social advancement? The topic of stylistic manliness, disparaging by contrast an effeminate decay in modern oratory, is pervasive in classical literature; examples that elaborate upon it are Persius' first satire, the preface to the first book of the elder Seneca's declamations, and the younger Seneca's 114th epistle to Lucilius. The topic was revived, in relation to both Latin and vernacular prose, by Renaissance humanists. In a brilliant recent essay, Patricia Parker has analyzed the literature of this revival and the way in which it expresses "a desire for a more 'masculine' or virile style," a style "linked to the metaphorics of the male body in its prime." Parker deftly unpacks the key opposing terms in this debate over style: the first term is*nervus*, a word that, as well as meaning "sinewy" or muscular, also connoted the male sexual member; and the second is *mollis*, "soft," a word associated in Roman culture both with women and with the male "pathic," the man who desired to be penetrated by other men. One of her objectives in discussing this "massively influential Latin tradition" is to engage with the gender politics of what has been the central contention of prose studies of the English Renaissance - that is, the argument that a seventeenth-century reaction against the Ciceronian excesses of sixteenth-century English prose pave the way for the rise of a scientific "plain style." If the concept of stylistic virility is above all marked by a certain conflation of body and language, however, a rather different historical development might come to mind as its more probable outcome. I am thinking of the well-attested emergence, in the early modern period, of the phenomenon known as "civil conversation," according to which the arts of polite discourse become newly central to the acquisition and expression of Social status. And yet the problem for any examination of the relationship between "virile style" and "civil conversation" is, of course, that conversation (in our modern sense of informal exchanges of speech) simply cannot be recovered as a practice. Even the social historians whose work provides compelling evidence of conversation's new centrality necessarily derive their evidence from the period's theoretical literature - from conversation manuals. More perplexing, it would seem that, if there were a relationship between the prescriptive literature of early modern civil conversation and a classically derived discourse of "VIRILE STYLE" in literary prose, such a relationship could only be one of opposition. How else could the discourse Parker describes as privileging deeds over words, and disparaging linguistic excess as effeminate, coexist with a conduct literature that makes manliness (for Renaissance conversation manuals are, primarily, addressed to men) depend on the ability to converse with ease, fluency, and confidence?</p><p>******************************* </p><p>Languet to Sidney, Nov 14, 1579</p><p><br /></p><p>...Now I will treat you frankly, as I am accustomed to do, for I am sure our friendship has reached a mark at which neither of us can be offended at any freedom of the other. It was a delight to me last winter to see you high in favour and enjoying the esteem of all your countrymen; but to speak plainly, the habits of your court seemed to me somewhat less manly than I could have wished, and most of your noblemen appeared to me to seek for a reputation more by a kind of affected courtesy than by those virtues which are wholesome to the state and which are most becoming to generous spirits and to men of high birth. I was sorry therefore, and so were other friends of yours, to see you wasting the flower of your life on such things, and I feared lest that noble nature of yours should be dulled, and lest from habit you should be brought to take pleasure in pursuits which only ENERVATE the mind.</p><p>If the ARROGANCE and INSOLENCE of OXFORD has roused you from your trance, he has done you less wrong than they who have hitherto been more indulgent to you. But I return to my subject...</p><p>********************************</p><p>Effeminate/Distaff Hercules:</p><p>Reviewed work(s): Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship. Patrick Cheney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xxv+296.</p><p>Douglas Bruster</p><p>Cheney extends the significance of this biographical episode by reading it alongside the curious “Achilles” stanza in 1594’s The Rape of Lucrece (lines 1422–28).1 In this stanza, part of a larger sequence in which Shakespeare portrays Lucrece looking at a painting of Troy, Achilles is represented by “his spear, / Grip’d in an armed hand, himself behind / Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind” (lines 1424–26). Exploring Shakespeare’s fairly idiosyncratic attention to the spear of Achilles and its reputation for being able to both “kill and cure” (2 Henry VI 5.1.101), Cheney argues that this stanza in Lucrece is a particularly good example of a “signature” moment in Shakespeare’s works, a passage in which “Shakespeare signs his name to Achilles” (53) and in which—owing to its emphasis on an uncannily present-yet-absent figure—we can sense an emblem of Shakespearean authorship itself. To Cheney’s persuasive gathering of intertextual references for this interpretation one might add a line that his study overlooks, from John Lyly’s Alexander and Campaspe (1584) : “Wil you handle the SPINDLE with Hercules, when you shuld SHAKE the SPEARE with Achilles?”2 If Shakespeare pushed the elements of his last name to their most playful extremes, then, he found the terms already in the Elizabethan air. </p><p>******************************</p><p>Sidney's Womanish Man</p><p>Mark Rose</p><p><br /></p><p>Idleness was understood to be the first shaft that 'Cupide shootethinto the hot liver of a heedlesse lover', so in desiring to give in toidleness the prince is only proving true to type. Distaff Hercules was the conventional image for just such a condition of effeminate idleness induced by passionate love. The distaff itself was an old symbol of idleness, and Sindey would have read in Amyot's Plutarch:</p><p><br /></p><p>...that men given to idle luxury are like Hercules 'au palais royal de la royne de Lydie Omphale, vestu d'une cotte de demoiselle, se laissant souffletter & tresser aux filles & femmes de la Royne'.</p><p><br /></p><p>'WIL you handle the spindle with Hercules, when you should SHAKE the SPEARE with Achilles?" asks a character in Lyly's Campaspe. Barnaby Rich states that lascivious women have made 'valiant men effeminate, as Hercules'. And Robert Burton uses 'Herculean Love' as an uncomplimentary epithet for passionate love. Sidney's own contempt for distaff Hercules is clear from the Defence of Poesie:</p><p><br /></p><p>So in Hercules, painted with his great beard, and furious countenance, in a womans attire, spinning, at Omphales commaundement, it breedes both delight and laughter; for the representing of so straunge a power in Love, procures delight, and the scornefulness of the action, stirreth laughter. (iii. 40)</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi</p><p><br /></p><p>Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,</p><p>Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress</p><p>No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:</p><p>No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.</p><p>For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,</p><p><br /></p><p>In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.</p><p>His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,</p><p>With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p>Sidney as the substantial image of 'True Nobility":</p><p>From Moffett's _Nobilis_ or_ A View of the Life and Death of a Sidney_,</p><p><br /></p><p>dedicated to WILLIAM HERBERT: Jan 1594 (?)</p><p><br /></p><p>"A few, to be sure, were observed to murmur, and to envy him so great preferment; but they were men without worth or virtue, who considered the public welfare a matter of indifference- fitter, in truth, to hold a DISTAFF and CARD WOOL AMONG SERVANT GIRLS than at any time to be considered as RIVALS by Sidney. For no one ever wished ill to the honor of the Sidney's except him who wished ill to the commonwealth; no one ever for forsook Philip except him whom the hope that he might at some time be honourable had also forsaken; and no one ever injured him except him for whom virtue and piety had no love. He was never so incensed, however, by the wrongs of malignant or slanderous men but that at the slightest sign of penitence the heat of his disturbed spirit would die down, and he would bury all past offenses under a kind of everlasting OBLIVION. (p.82 Nobilis (The Noble Man), Moffett) </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Author: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. ]</p><p>Title: Poems: vvritten by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent</p><p>Date: 1640 </p><p>Achilles his concealement of his Sex in the Court of Lycomedes.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>NOw from another World doth saile with joy,</p><p>A welcome daughter to the King of Troy,</p><p>The whilst the Gr[...]cians are already come,</p><p>(Mov'd with that generall wrong 'gainst Islium:)</p><p>Achilles in a Smocke, his Sex doth smother,</p><p>And laies the blame upon his carefull mother,</p><p>What mak'st thou great Achilles, teazing Wooll·</p><p>When Pallas in a Helme should claspe thy Scul[...]?</p><p>What doth these fingers with fine threds of gold?</p><p>Which were more fit a Warlike Shield to hold.</p><p>Why should that right hand, Rocke or Tow containe,</p><p>By which the Trojan Hector must be slaine?</p><p>Cast off thy loose vailes, and thy Armour take,</p><p>And in thy hand the *Speare of Pellas shake*.</p><p>Thus Lady-like he with a Lady lay,</p><p>Till what he was, must her belly bewray,</p><p>Yet was she forc't (so should we all beleeve)</p><p>Not to be forc't so· now her heart would grieve:</p><p>When he should rise from her, still would she crie·</p><p>(For he had arm'd him, and his Rocke laid by)</p><p>And with a [...]ft voyce spake: Achilles stay,</p><p>It is too soone to rise, lie downe I pray,</p><p>And then the man that forc't her, she would kisse,</p><p>What force (Delade[...]a) call you this? </p><p><br /></p><p>Pelias hasta – spear of Achilles (shaft grown on mount Pelion)</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************************</p><p>Mocking Oxford’s “Sublime” Ciceronian Style:</p><p><br /></p><p>Gabriel Harvey and Oxford</p><p>http://www.elizabethanauthors.org/harvey101.htm</p><p> In 1578 the Queen visited Cambridge, accompanied by the whole Court. Harvey met the procession at Audley End, presented verses written in their honor.</p><p>The following address, in Latin, was presented to Lord Oxford (trans. by Ward).</p><p><br /></p><p>An heroic address to [Oxford], concerning the combined utility and dignity of military affairs and of warlike exercises.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is my welcome; this is how I have decided to bid All Hail!</p><p>to thee and to the other Nobles.</p><p>Thy splendid fame, great Earl, demands even more than in the case of others</p><p>the services of a poet possessing LOFTY ELOQUENCE.</p><p>Thy merit doth not creep along the ground,</p><p>nor can it be confined within the limits of a song.</p><p>It is a WONDER which reaches as far as the heavenly orbs.</p><p>O great-hearted one, strong in thy mind and thy fiery will,</p><p>thou wilt conquer thyself, thou wilt conquer others;</p><p>thy glory will spread out in all directions beyond the Arctic Ocean;</p><p>and England will put thee to the test and prove thee to be native-born ACHILLES.</p><p>Do thou but go forward boldly and without hesitation.</p><p>Mars will obey thee, Hermes will be thy messenger,</p><p>Pallas striking her shield with her spear shaft will attend thee,</p><p>thine own breast and courageous heart will instruct thee.</p><p>For long time past Phoebus Apollo has cultivated thy mind in the arts.</p><p>English poetical measures have been sung by thee long enough.</p><p>Let that Courtly Epistle —</p><p>more POLISHED even than the writings of Castiglione himself —</p><p>witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters.</p><p>I have seen many Latin verses of thine, yea,</p><p>even more English verses are extant;</p><p>thou hast drunk deep draughts not only of the Muses of France and Italy,</p><p>but hast learned the manners of many men, and the arts of foreign countries.</p><p>It was not for nothing that STURMIUS himself was visited by thee;</p><p>neither in France, Italy, nor Germany are any such cultivated and POLISHED men.</p><p>O thou hero worthy of renown, throw away the insignificant pen, throw away bloodless books,</p><p>and writings that serve no useful purpose; now must the sword be brought into play,</p><p>now is the time for thee to sharpen the spear and to handle great engines of war.</p><p>On all sides men are talking of camps and of deadly weapons; war and the Furies are everywhere,</p><p>and Bellona reigns supreme.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now may all martial influences support thy eager mind, driving out the cares of Peace.</p><p>Pull Hannibal up short at the gates of Britain. Defended though he be by a mighty host,</p><p>let Don John of Austria come on only to be driven home again. Fate is unknown to man,</p><p>nor are the counsels of the Thunderer fully determined.</p><p>And what if suddenly a most powerful enemy should invade our borders?</p><p>If the Turk should be arming his savage hosts against us?</p><p>What though the terrible war trumpet is even now sounding its blast?</p><p>Thou wilt see it all; even at this very moment thou art fiercely longing for the fray.</p><p>I feel it. Our whole country knows it.</p><p>In thy breast is noble blood, Courage animates thy brow, Mars lives in thy tongue,</p><p>Minerva strengthen thy right hand, Bellona reigns in thy body, within thee burns the fire of Mars.</p><p>Thine eyes flash fire, thy countenance shakes a spear;</p><p>who would not swear that ACHILLES had come to life again?</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>You are wielding the plectrum, and a tender mistress holds you in her warm embrace! And does anyone ask wherefore do you refuse to fight? Because the fight brings danger: while the zither, and song, and Venus, bring delight. Safer it is to lie on the couch, to clasp a sweetheart in your arms, to tinkle with your fingers the Thracian lyre, than to take in hand the shield, and the speare with sharpened point…Ye Gods forfend! And may the spear of Pelion go quivering from your strong arm to pierce the side of Hectore [validoque, precor, vibrata lacerto /transeat Hectoreum Pelias hasta latus!] </p><p>(Ovid, Heroides 3.113-26) </p><p>********************************</p><p>"that famous poet who TAKES his name from “shaking” and “spear”:</p><p><br /></p><p>An Unnoticed Early Reference to Shakespeare</p><p>Fred Schurink</p><p><br /></p><p>IN a recent article in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Douglas Bruster noted that in the second edition of Thomas Vicars's manual of rhetoric, Xeipaγωγia, Manuductio ad artem rhetoricam (1624, first edition 1621), the author introduced a list of outstanding English poets...If readers would like to find out more about the subject, however, he recommends they consult Bartholomaeus Keckermann's Philippo-Ramaeum rhetoricae systema (1605) and especially Charles Butler's popular rhetorical manual, Rhetoricae libri duo (first printed in 1597 under the title Rameae rhetoricae libri duo). In the latter, he continues, Butler ‘lists certain poets whose measures and wit our countrymen have praised and of whom our England boasts, perhaps not without cause: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and George Wither’. Vicars then goes on to say that he personally enjoys reading Drayton most and offers two brief English poems in praise of him, supposedly written after having been inspired by Drayton's extremely popular Englands Heroicall Epistles... (1597).</p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>What Bruster fails to mention, and what seems to have escaped the attention of scholars of English literature so far, is that in the third edition of the manual, published in 1628, Vicars added a short passage in which he punningly alludes to Shakespeare's name. The reference is included directly after his mention of the other English poets, and runs as follows: ‘To these I believe should be added that famous poet who takes his name from “shaking” and “spear”, John Davies, and my namesake, the pious and learned poet John Vicars.’ The passage expressing Vicars's enthusiasm for Drayton's poetry which followed in the previous edition is retained. Perhaps under Vicars's influence, Charles Butler, on whose text Vicars had originally modelled his discussion of the English poets, then also included Shakespeare's name in his list in the 1635 edition of Rhetoricae libri duo (in place of Chaucer's). (snip) Vicars's punning allusion to Shakespeare, while reflecting his characteristic fondness for wordplay,10 also suggests that he was a familiar figure to readers of the manual. This is confirmed by the fact that Shakespeare is the only author in Vicars's list who is called ‘famous’ (‘celeber’)...Certainly, the term ‘poeta’, which Vicars uses in reference to Shakespeare, could denote a dramatist as well as a poet in the strict sense of the word. Vicars does not, however, use any of the available qualifiers to make it clear that he is specifically referring to Shakespeare as a playwright (as Charles Butler did, for example, when he spoke of him as one of the ‘Poëtae scaenici’, ‘tragicus comicus historicus Guilielmus Shakspeare’). Notes and Queries (March 2006) 53 (1): 72-75. </p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Chapman, Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois</p><p><br /></p><p>When Homer made Achilles passionate,</p><p>Wrathfull, revengefull, and insatiate15</p><p>In his affections, what man will denie</p><p>He did compose it all of industrie</p><p>To let men see that men of most renowne,</p><p>Strong'st, noblest, fairest, if they set not downe</p><p>Decrees within them, for disposing these,20</p><p>Of judgement, resolution, uprightnesse,</p><p>And certaine knowledge of their use and ends,</p><p>Mishap and miserie no lesse extends</p><p>To their destruction, with all that they pris'd,</p><p>Then to the poorest and the most despis'd?25</p><p>(snip)</p><p>I over-tooke, comming from Italie,</p><p>In Germanie a great and famous Earle85</p><p>Of England, the most goodly fashion'd man</p><p>I ever saw; from head to foote in forme</p><p>Rare and most absolute; hee had a face</p><p>Like one of the most ancient honour'd Romanes</p><p>From whence his noblest familie was deriv'd;90</p><p>He was beside of spirit passing great,</p><p>Valiant, and learn'd, and liberall as the sunne,</p><p>Spoke and writ sweetly, or of learned subjects,</p><p>Or of the discipline of publike weales;</p><p>And t'was the Earle of Oxford: and being offer'd95</p><p>At that time, by Duke Cassimere, the view</p><p>Of his right royall armie then in field,</p><p>Refus'd it, and no foote was mov'd to stirre</p><p>Out of his owne free fore-determin'd course.</p><p>I, wondring at it, askt for it his reason,100</p><p>It being an offer so much for his honour.</p><p>Hee, all acknowledging, said t'was not fit</p><p>To take those honours that one cannot quit. (Revenge, III, iv, lines 84-104)</p><p><br /></p><p>Oxford's Achillean list of virtues (heroic) is, however, is qualified by an Achillean display of pride and intemperance (incivility):</p><p><br /></p><p>Ren. Twas answer'd like the man you have describ'd.</p><p><br /></p><p>Clermont. AND YET he cast it onely in the way,105</p><p>To stay and serve the world. Nor did it fit</p><p>His owne true estimate how much it waigh'd;</p><p>FOR HEE DESPIS'D IT, and esteem'd it freer</p><p>To keepe his owne way straight, and swore that hee</p><p>Had rather make away his whole estate</p><p>In things that crost the vulgar then he would</p><p>Be frozen up stiffe (like a Sir John Smith,</p><p>His countrey-man) in common Nobles fashions;</p><p>Affecting, as't the end of noblesse were,</p><p>Those servile observations.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Ren. It was strange. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Clermont. O tis a vexing sight to see a man,</p><p>OUT OF HIS WAY, stalke PROUD as HEE WERE IN;</p><p>OUT OF HIS WAY, to be officious,</p><p>Observant, wary, serious, and grave,</p><p>Fearefull, and passionate, insulting, raging,</p><p>Labour with iron flailes to *thresh downe feathers</p><p>Flitting in AYRE*.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ren. What one considers this,</p><p>Of all that are thus out? or once endevours,</p><p>Erring, to enter on mans RIGHT-HAND PATH? (note - Droeshout figure, ambisinister, error/ignorance)</p><p><br /></p><p>Clermont. These are too grave for brave wits; give them toyes;</p><p>Labour bestow'd on these is harsh and thriftlesse. (snip)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>****************************</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor</p><p>On Art.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Can anyone be an artist without art? Or have you ever seen a bird flying without wings, or a horse running without feet? Or if you have seen such things, which no one else has ever seen, come, tell me please, do you hope to become a goldsmith, or a painter, or a sculptor, or a musician, or an architect, or a weaver, or any sort of artist at all without a teacher? But how much easier are all these things, than that you develop into a supreme and perfect orator without the art of public speaking. There is need of a teacher, and indeed even an excellent teacher, who might point out the springs with his finger, as it were, and carefully pass on to you the art of speaking colorfully, brilliantly, copiously. But what sort of art shall we choose? Not an art entangled in countless difficulties, or packed with meaningless arguments; not one sullied by useless [31] precepts, or disfigured by strange and foreign ones; not an art polluted by any filth, or fashioned to accord with our own will and judgment; not a single art joined and sewn together from many, like a quilt from many rags and skins (way too many rhetoricians have given this sort of art to us, if indeed one may call art that which conforms to no artistic principles). We want rather an art that is concise, precise, appropriate, lucid, accessible; one that is decorated and illuminated by precise definitions, accurate divisions, and striking illustrations, as if by flashing gems and stars; one that emerges, and in a way bursts into flower, from the speech of the most eloquent men and the best orators. Why so? Not only because brevity is pleasant, and clarity delightful, but also so that eloquence might be learned in a shorter time, and with less labor and richer results, and so that it might stand more firmly grounded, secured by deeper roots. For thus said the gifted poet in his Ars Poetica: "Whatever instruction you give, let it be brief." Why? [32] He gives two reasons: "So that receptive minds might swiftly grasp your words and accurately retain them." And indeed, as the same poet elegantly adds: "Everything superfluous spills from a mind that's full."</p><p><br /></p><p>(snip)</p><p>But those annual whistles and shouts I hear indicate that almost all, or at least the greater part of my auditors are newcomers, who do not understand what they should do or whom they should imitate, but who nonetheless are captivated by the splendor of rhetoric, and seek to be orators. Therefore I will now, if I am able, reveal those things and place them all in their view, in such a way that they might seem to see them with their eyes, and almost hold them in their hands. In the meantime I pray you, most eloquent and refined gentlemen, either withdraw, if you like, or with the kindness that you've shown so far hear me as I recite some precepts so common as to be almost elementary. And from those whose tongues and ears Cicero alone inhabits, I beg forgiveness, if by chance I let drop in my haste a word that is un-Ciceronian. We cannot all be Longeuils and Cortesis: [9] some of us don't want to be. As for those who study more Latin authors, but only the best and choicest, and who to accompany Cicero, the foremost of all, add Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Seneca, Terence too, and Plautus and Vergil and Horace, I am sure they will be sympathetic to me. For reading as I do many works by many authors, sometimes even the poets, as Crassus bids in Cicero, I cannot guarantee that in so impromptu an oration I will not use a word not found in a Ciceronian phrase book.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>But those little CROWS and APES of CICERO were long ago driven from the stage by the hissing and laughter of the learned, as they so well deserved, and at last have almost vanished; and I now hope to find not only eager and attentive auditors, but friendly spectators as well, not the sort who scrupulously weigh every individual detail on the scales of their own refined tastes, but who interpret everything in a fair and good-natured way. I too in fact wanted, if I was able--but perhaps I was not--to speak in as Ciceronian a style as the Ciceronianest of them all. [10] Forgive me, illustrious Ciceronians, if I ought not use that word in the superlative.</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Greene's Groatsworth:</p><p><br /></p><p>With thee I ioyne yong Iuuenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastlie with mee together writ a Comedie. Sweete boy, might I aduise thee, be aduisde, and get not many enemies by bitter wordes: inueigh against VAINE men, for thou canst do it, no man better, no man so wel: thou hast a libertie to reprooue all, and none more; for one being spoken to, all are offended, none being blamed no man is iniured. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage, or tread on a worme and it will turne: then blame not Schollers vexed with sharpe lines, if they reproue thy too much libertie of reproofe.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>And thou no lesse deseruing than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour; driuen (as my selfe) to extreme shifts, a little haue I to say to thee: and were it not an idolatrous oth, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art vnworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned: for vnto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleaue: those Puppets (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al haue beene beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all haue beene beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) bee both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an vpstart CROW, BEAUTIFIED with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to BOMBAST out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imploied in more profitable courses: & let those APES imitate your past excellence, and neuer more acquaint them with your admired inuentions. I know the best husband of you all will neuer proue an Usurer, and the kindest of them all will neuer seeke you a kind nurse: yet whilest you may, seeke you better Maisters; for it is pittie men of such rare wits, should be subiect to the pleasure of such rude groomes.</p><p><br /></p><p>In this I might insert two more, that both haue writ against these buckram Gentlemen: but let their owne works serue to witnesse against their owne wickednesse, if they perseuere to mainteine any more such peasants. For other new-commers, I leaue them to the mercie of these PAINTED MONSTERS, who (I doubt not) will driue the best minded to despise them: for the rest, it skils not though they make a ieast at them.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Sidney , Defense</p><p><br /></p><p>...But let this be a sufficient, though short note, that we misse the right use of the material point of Poesie. Now for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I may tearme it) Diction, it is even well worse: so is it that HONY-FLOWING Matrone Eloquence, apparrelled, or rather disguised, in a Courtisanlike PAINTED AFFECTATION. One time with so farre fet(ched) words, that many seeme monsters, but must seeme Straungers to anie poore Englishman: an other time with coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to follow the method of a Dictionary: an other time with figures and flowers, extreemely winter-starved. But I would this fault were onely peculiar to Versefiers, and had not as large possession among Prose- Printers: and which is to be mervailed among many Schollers, & which is to be pitied among some Preachers. Truly I could wish, if at I might be so bold to wish, in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity, the diligent Imitators of TULLY and DEMOSTHENES (note - Tully/Cicero); Demosthenes, most worthie to be imitated, did not so much keepe Nizolian paper bookes, of their figures and phrase, as by attentive translation, as it were, devoure them whole, and make them wholly theirs. For now they cast SUGAR and SPICE uppon everie dish that is served to the table: like those Indians, not content to weare eare-rings at the fit and naturall place of the eares, but they will thrust Jewels through their nose and lippes, because they will be sure to be fine. </p><p>***************************</p><p>Sidney Sonnet II</p><p>Let DAINTY wits crie on the Sisters nine,</p><p>That, BRAVELY MASKT, their fancies may be told;</p><p>Or, Pindars APES , flaunt they in PHRASES FINE,</p><p>Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold;</p><p>Or else let them in statlier glorie shine,</p><p>Ennobling new-found tropes with problemes old;</p><p>Or with strange similes enrich each line,</p><p>Of herbes or beasts which Inde or Affrick hold.</p><p>For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know,</p><p>Phrases and problems from my reach do grow;</p><p>And strange things cost too deare for my poor sprites.</p><p>How then? euen thus: in Stellaes face I reed</p><p>What Loue and Beautie be; then all my deed</p><p>But copying is, what in her Nature writes. </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Erasmus, “Apes of Cicero,” and Conceptual Blending</p><p>Kenneth Gouwens</p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>...the portrayals of apes even in the Adages of 1508 [note – Erasmus] could have done little positive for the animals’ image. In explaining the proverb “An ape is an ape, though clad in gold,” Erasmus retells Lucian’s story about an Egyptian king who taught some monkeys to dance, MASKED AND ATTIRED IN SCARLET. Initially compelling, the performance fell apart when a spectator scattered nuts before the apes, who ceased dancing and fought over them. (...) Another adage, “Hercules and an ape,” highlights a more insidious aspect of simian nature, the capacity to hoodwink: whereas “Hercules excels in strength,” the “ape’s power lies in sneaky tricks.” But if monkeys are ridiculous and tricky in and of themselves, in the 1508 edition they more often serve the purpose of holding the mirror up to human folly. Thus the proverb “A donkey among apes” is taken to describe how someone dull-witted falls in among “satirical and insolent people” who mock their hapless victim with impunity. More seriously, as one sees in the adage “An ape in purple,” the deception may consist in a veneer of cultured elegance that camouflages, albeit incompletely, a foulness beneath. The phrase can be applied, says Erasmus, to those “whose true nature, though they may be wearing very fine clothes, is obvious from their expression and character,” as well as “to those who have some inappropriate dignity thrust upon them, or when something nasty in itself is unsuitably decked out with ornament from some unconnected or external source.</p><p>.....Already in 1508, Erasmus occasionally likens apes to pseudo-intellectuals. Thus the adage “No [aged] monkey was ever caught in a trap” is “often applied to clever and slippery talkers who cannot be caught out.” Similarly, “a painted monkey,” which refers directly to an ugly old woman made up like a prostitute, can also illustrate and idea: for example, “if someone dresses up an immoral argument with rhetorical trappings so that it seems honest.” The two remaining images from 1508 point to the simian as unable even to approach the boundary that separates it from the human. Erasmus glosses “the prettiest ape is hideous” as referring to “things which are intrinsically defective, and by no means to be compared with even the lowest specimens of the class of things that possess any merit...” And “The tragical ape” appears to be practically a simulacrum of the human: “Ape, like manikin, is the word for what is scarcely a man and more like a pale copy of one...”</p><p>.....In subsequent expansions, Erasmus adds further shading to some of these adages, directing their thrust at scholars of the type lampooned in the _Ciceronianus_. Whereas in 1508 the gloss of “An ape in purple” ended with the observations “What could be more ridiculous?” the 1515 edition continues: “And yet this is a thing we quite often see in a household where they keep monkeys as pets: they dress them up with plenty of finery to look as much like human beings as possible, sometimes even in purple, so as to deceive people who do not look carefully or have seen nothing like it before...” Erasmus now ends the gloss by turning around the comparison: “How many apes of this kind one can see in princes’ courts, whom you will find, if you strip them of their purple, their collars and their jewels, to be no better than any cobbler!” Importantly, in this addendum Erasmus refers to apelike courtiers with the rare masculine form (simios), which he would use consistently when ridiculing “apes of Cicero” in the Ciceronianus.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p>Poetaster, Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Caesar. We have, indeed, you worthiest friends of Caesar. </p><p>It is the bane and torment of our ears, </p><p>To hear the discords of those jangling rhymers, </p><p>That with their bad and scandalous practices </p><p>Bring all true arts and learning in contempt. </p><p>But let not your high thoughts descend so low </p><p>As these despised objects; LET THEM FALL, </p><p>With their flat grovelling souls: be you yourselves; </p><p>And as with our best favours you stand crown'd, </p><p>So let your mutual loves be still renown'd. </p><p>Envy will dwell where there is want of merit, </p><p>Though the deserving man should crack his spirit. </p><p>Blush, folly, blush; here's none that fears </p><p>The wagging of an ass's ears, </p><p>Although a WOLFISH CASE he wears. </p><p>Detraction is but baseness' varlet; </p><p>And APES are APES, though clothed in SCARLET. [Exeunt].</p><p><br /></p><p>Rumpatur, quisquis rumpitur invidi! [MARTIAL – LET ENVIOUS POETS BURST]</p><p>*****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>On Poet Ape – only Shakespearean sonnet in Jonson’s 1616 Epigrams</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Poor POET-APE, that would be thought our chief,</p><p>Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,</p><p>From brokage is become so bold a thief,</p><p>As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.</p><p>At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,</p><p>Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown</p><p>To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,</p><p>He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own.</p><p>And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes</p><p>The sluggish gaping auditor devours;</p><p>He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times</p><p>May judge it to be his, as well as ours.</p><p>Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece</p><p>From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece!</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p>Amorphus/Oxford:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime – Patrick Cheney</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In Cynthia’s Revels, near the beginning of his career (first printed 1600), Jonson uses the word twice, both surrounding the figure of Amorphus, described by Mercury in Act 2, scene 3 as ‘a traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds of forms that himself is truly deformed’ (66-7). In other words, Amorphus is a figure of transport, and his composition, made up of ‘forms’ that are ‘deformed’, takes us into what we have previously described as Kantian territory. Amorphus is that sublime figure of form that has none (curiously akin to Marlowe’s Helen of Troy), accommodated to the Jonsonian public sphere, where Amorphus’ ‘adaptability and social versatility is a form of shapelessness which links the literal metamorphoses of Echo, Narcissus, and Acteaon, and the cultural ones of Asotus and others’ in the action of the play. (Rassmussen and Steggle).</p><p>In using the word ‘sublimated’, Amorphus stands before the Fountain of Self-Love, having just conversed with Narcissus’o ne-time beloved, the beautiful nymph Echo – who has just abandoned Amorphus – when Jonson’s figure of formless form steps forth to take the plunge: ‘Liberal and divine fount, suffer my profane hand to take of they bounties’. Intoxicated by ‘most ambrosiac water’, he broods why the beguiling feminine potency of the well should accept him but Echo turn her heel:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Knowing myself an essence so sublimated and refined by travel, of so studied and well-exercised a gesture, so alone in fashion, able to make the face of any statesman living, and to speak the mere extraction of language…; to conclude, in all so happy as even admiration herself does seem to fasten her kisses upon me; certes I do neither see, nor feel, nor taste, nor savour the least steam or fume of a reason that should invite this foolish fastidious nymph so peevishly to abandon me. (1.3.24-35; emphasis added)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Amorphus speaks the alchemical language of sublimity but adapts it to his personal identity – his ability to transport himself into a heightened state of ‘language’ that attracts the erotic ‘admiration’ of others – in an appropriately comical language of hyperbolic elevation.</p><p>Specifically, Amorphus engages in narcissism by vaunting his self-knowledge: ‘travel’ refines and ‘sublimate[s]’ his ‘essence’ into a quintessence of gold, and such sublimity underwrites his social and political theatre, during which he can ‘make the face of any statesman living’, as Jeremy Face will do to London citizens in the Alchemist. Sublime transport here is not transcendent but political and social, the Protean self enlivened, capable of adapting to exigency, endlessly. Self-consciously, Jonson makes comically sublime theatre out of a comically sublime theatrical character. We might even see here an impressive staging of the kind of comical hyperbole discussed by Longinus in On Sublimity, which is one form that the sublime can take: ‘acts and emotion which approach ecstasy provide a justification for, and an antidote to, any linguistic audacity. This is why comic hyperboles, for all their incredulity, are convincing because we laugh at them so much…Laughter is emotion in amusement’.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Jonson’s linking of sublimity with a character named ‘Amorphus’ merits pause, because this agile figure looks like a photographic negative of Jonson himself. Without question, the author-figure in Cynthia’s Revels is Criticus (called Crites in the Folio edition), ‘the poet-scholar’ of “Judgement’ who ‘represents Jonson’s literary, philosophical, and ethical ideals’ (Bednarz, Shakespeare & The Poets’ War 159-60), and who becomes the play’s arch-enemy to Amorphus and the motley crew of corrupt courtiers, Hedon, Anaides, ad Asotus. According to James Bednarz, Amorphus is a figure who represents ‘Deformity’ and the ‘lack of true conviction’, and who becomes enamoured of a nymph who happens to be named Phantaste or ‘fantasy’ (159-600. In these terms, the project of the play is to ‘replac[e]…the rhetoric of “nature’ and “instinct” staged in Marston’s Jack Drum with the sterner interdictions of “art” and “judgement” in a larger “allegory of self-knowledge’ (160). According to Bednarz, Marston had rejected Jonson’s rational, judgemental poetics in favour of one based on imaginative instinct, which Jonson then shows to be purged of cultural authority.</p><p>Nonetheless, as Rasmussen and Steggle write, Amorphus ‘prefigures Jonson’s later tricksters’ in being ‘at the centre of the play’s action due to his energy and inventiveness, both verbal and physical’. Rasmussen and Steggle go so far as to see Amorphus as akin to Jonson himself: ‘biographically Jonson is more like Amorphus than Criticus’, citing Jonson’s ‘experiences in foreign travel’ and his ‘natural charisma and drive’. Even ‘Amorphus’s weaknesses (lack of money and tendency to exaggerate) are close to those of Jonson;. Wisely, Rasmussen and Steggle caution against ‘claim[ing] that Amorphus “is” Jonson, or even to over-allegorize the tension between Amorphus and his nemesis Criticus’ (eds. 1:435); but they do help us see that the figure of Amorphus qualifies as a *sublime counter-Jonsonian author-figure*. (pp. 220-1)</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p><br /></p><p>Cynthias Revels, Jonson</p><p> Amorphus/Oxford:</p><p><br /></p><p>He that is with him is Amorphus</p><p>a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds</p><p>of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. He walks</p><p>most commonly with a Clove or Pick-tooth in his</p><p>Mouth, he is the very mint of Complement, all his Be-</p><p>haviours are printed, his Face is another Volume of</p><p>Essayes; and his Beard an Aristarchus. He speaks all</p><p>Cream skim'd, and more affected than a dozen of wait-</p><p>ing Women. He is his own Promoter in every place.</p><p>The Wife of the Ordinary gives him his Diet to main-</p><p>tain her Table in discourse, which (indeed) is a meer</p><p>Tyranny over the other Guests, for he will usurp all</p><p>the talk: *Ten Constables are not so tedious*. </p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Sidney, Defence of Poetry</p><p><br /></p><p>But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither RIGHT tragedies nor RIGHT comedies (note - two left arms or the Droeshout), mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither DECENCY nor DISCRETION; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphytrio. But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, match hornpipes and funerals. So falleth it out that, having indeed NO RIGHT COMEDY in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but SCURRILITY, unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltihsness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.</p><p><br /></p><p>But OUR COMEDIANS think there is no delight without laughter, which is very WRONG; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay, rather in themselves they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most DISPROPORTIONED to ourselves and nature.</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Sidney, Defense</p><p>But I have lavished out too many words of this playmatter. I do it, because as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used in England, and none can be more pitifully ABUSED; which, like an unMANNERly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesy`s HONESTY to be called in question. </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Ben Jonson's Poems By Wesley Trimpi</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>...Jonson’s fundamental objection to the sonnet…is that it leads one to say more than one has to say in order to satisfy the form. The poet is obliged to use rhetorical figures, and his intentions becomes contradictory to that of the plain style. As the rhetorical figures and the form become more important, the range of subject matter decreases. The poet who seeks the grace and charm of the middle style will do well to utilize that grace which, according to Demetrius, “ may reside in the subject matter, if it is the gardens of the Nymphs, marriage-lays, love-stories” (On Style, 132), or “Petrarch’s long-deceased woes.” The freedom of the plain style to treat of any subject depends on it primary purpose, which is to tell the truth. Since the officium of the middle style is to delight (delectare), many subjects must be excluded, and the emphasis is no longer on content but on expression.</p><p><br /></p><p>The conventional adjectives for rhetorical ornateness in poetry were “sugred” or “honied,” and each could be used as a equivalent for Ciceronian rhetoric itself. The term “sugred” was most often applied to sonnets, such as in the famous comment of Francis Meres on “the mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends.” Among the literary genres the epigram was often regarded as a corrective for the trite diffuseness of the sonnet. The salt of incisive wit was needed to preserve the poem, which otherwise might cloy and dissolve like candy. Sir John Harington contrasts the two sets of conventions in his epigram called “Comparison of the Sonnet, and the Epigram”:</p><p><br /></p><p>Once, by mishap, two Poets fell a-squaring,</p><p>The Sonnet, and our Epigram comparing;</p><p>And Faustus, having long demur’d upon it,</p><p>Yet, at the last, gave sentence for the Sonnet.</p><p>Now, for such censure, this his chiefe defence is,</p><p>Their sugred taste best likes his likresse senses.</p><p>Well, though I grant Sugar may please the taste,</p><p>Tet let my verse have salt enough to make it last.</p><p><br /></p><p>In terms of the poetic conventions the rhetorical controversy between Ciceronianism and Senecanism became one between a MELLIFLUOUS and a SINUOUS style. </p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>HONEY-TONGUED Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,</p><p>I swore Apollo got them and none other;</p><p>Their rosy-tinted features clothed in tissue,</p><p>Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother:</p><p>Rose-cheeked Adonis, with his amber tresses,</p><p>Fair fire-hot Venus, charming him to love her,</p><p>Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses,</p><p>Proud lust-stung Tarquin, seeking still to prove her:</p><p>Romeo, Richard; more whose names I know not,</p><p>Their SUGARED tongues, and power attractive beauty</p><p>Say they are saints, although that saints they show not,</p><p>For thousands vow to them subjective duty :</p><p>They burn in love, thy children, Shakespeare HET them ,</p><p>Go, woo thy Muse, more Nymphish brood beget them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion.</p><p>John Weever. 1599. Fourth Weeke, Epig. 22. </p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,</p><p>Warble his native wood-notes wild. - Milton </p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>Thomas Bancroft (1639), Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>118. To Shakespeare.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thy Muses SUGRED DAINTIES seeme to us</p><p>Like the fam’d apples of old Tantalus :</p><p>For we (admiring) see and heare thy straines,</p><p>But none I see or heare those sweets attaines.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Return from Parnassus</p><p><br /></p><p>...In another exchange Ingenioso says "Amonge other of youre vertues I doe observe youre stile to be most pure, youre English tonge comes as neere Tullies (note- Cicero) as anie mans livinge." to which Gullio replies "Oh Sir, that was my care, to prove a complet gentleman, to be tam Marti quam Mercurio; in so muche that I am pointed at for a poet in Pauls church yard.."</p><p><br /></p><p>When the penniless poet offers verses written in a variety of styles, Gullio far prefers the writing style of Mr. Shakespeare and his speech is littered with quotations from the plays.</p><p><br /></p><p>Gullio speaks scornfully of 'Liteltonians', that is people who learned elementary French from the language tutor Claude Hollyband's 'French Littleton', which is worth comparing with the comment Florio makes in the opening address to his translation of Montaigne's essays: "seven or eight of great wit and worth have assayed but found these Essayes no attempt for French apprentises or Littletonians." As the scene draws to a close Gullio exclaims "O sweet Mr Shakspeare, Ile have his picture in my study at the courte."</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Return from Parnassus</p><p><br /></p><p>Ingenioso My pen is your bounden vassal to command;</p><p>but what vein would it please you to have them in?</p><p><br /></p><p>Gullio Not in a VAIN vein (titters at own joke; Ingenioso</p><p>feebly joins in) Pretty, i'faith! - make me them in two or</p><p>three diverse veins,(Ingenioso scribbles notes frantically) in</p><p>Chaucer's, Gower's and Spencer's, and - (Ingenioso</p><p>shudders, knowing what's coming) Mr Shakespeare's.</p><p>Marry, I think I shall entertain those verses which run like</p><p>these:</p><p><br /></p><p>Euen as the sun with purple-coloured face</p><p>Had ta'en his last leave on the weeping morn, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ingenioso (mocking) Sweet Mr. Shakespeare!</p><p><br /></p><p>Gullio: Oh sweet Mr. Shakespeare, I’ll have his picture in my study at the Courte</p><p><br /></p><p>Gullio: Let the duncified worlde esteeme Spenser and Chaucer, I’ll worship sweet Mr. Shakespeare.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning</p><p><br /></p><p>There be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, whereby learning hath been most traduced. For those things we do esteem VAIN which are either false or frivolous, those which either have no truth or no use; and those persons we esteem vain which are either credulous or curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words: so that in reason as well as in experience there fall out to be these three distempers (as I may term them) of learning--the first, fantastical learning; the second, contentious learning; and the last, delicate learning; vain imaginations, vain altercations, and vain affectations; and with the last I will begin. Martin Luther, conducted, no doubt, by a higher Providence, but in discourse of reason, finding what a province he had undertaken against the Bishop of Rome and the degenerate traditions of the Church, and finding his own solitude, being in nowise aided by the opinions of his own time, was enforced to awake all antiquity, and to call former times to his succours to make a party against the present time. So that the ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity, which had long time slept in libraries, began generally to be read and revolved. This, by consequence, did draw on a necessity of a more exquisite travail in the languages original, wherein those authors did write, for the better understanding of those authors, and the better advantage of pressing and applying their words. And thereof grew, again, a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an admiration of that kind of writing, which was much furthered and precipitated by the enmity and opposition that the propounders of those primitive but seeming new opinions had against the schoolmen, who were generally of the contrary part, and whose writings were altogether in a differing style and form; taking liberty to coin and frame new terms of art to express their own sense, and to avoid circuit of speech, without regard to the pureness, pleasantness, and (as I may call it) lawfulness of the phrase or word. And again, because the great labour then was with the people (of whom the Pharisees were wont to say, Execrabilis ista turba, quae non novit legem) [the wretched crowd that has not know the law], for the winning and persuading of them, there grew of necessity in chief price and request eloquence and variety of discourse, as the fittest and forciblest access into the capacity of the vulgar sort; so that these four causes concurring--the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the schoolmen, the exact study of languages, and the efficacy of preaching--did bring in an affectionate study of eloquence and copy of speech, which then began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to hunt more after words than matter--more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery vein of Osorius, the Portugal bishop, to be in price. Then did STURMIUS spend such infinite and curious pains upon Cicero the Orator and Hermogenes the Rhetorician, besides his own books of Periods and Imitation, and the like. Then did Car of Cambridge and Ascham with their lectures and writings almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were studious unto that delicate and polished kind of learning. Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing echo, Decem annos consuumpsi in legendo Cicerone [I have spent ten years in reading Cicero(ne); and the echo answered in Greek, One, Asine. Then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly despised as barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination and bent of those times was rather towards copy than weight.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here therefore is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter, whereof though I have represented an example of late times, yet it hath been and will be secundum majus et minus[more or less] in all timeAnd how is it possible but this should have an operation to discredit learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned men's works like the first letter of a patent or limited book, which though it hath large flourishes, yet it is but a letter? It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity; for words are but the images of matter, and except they have life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a picture.</p><p><br /></p><p>But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution. For hereof we have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato also in some degree; and hereof likewise there is great use, for surely, to the severe inquisition of truth and the deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance because it is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, and quencheth the desire of further search before we come to a just period. But then if a man be to have any use of such knowledge in civil occasions, of conference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like, then shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors which write in that manner. But the excess of this is so justly contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw the image of Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said in disdain, Nil sacri es [Thou art no Divinity]; so there is none of Hercules' followers in learning--that is, the more severe and laborious sort of inquirers into truth--but will despise those delicacies and affectations, as indeed capable of no divineness. And thus much of the first disease or distemper of learning.</p><p><br /></p><p>The second, which followeth, is in nature worse than the former, for as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words; wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the times following, and not only respective* to divinity but extensive[5] to all knowledge: Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae.[Avoid profane novelties of terms and the oppositions of what is falsely called knowledge." I Tim. 6.20] For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the other, the strictness of positions,[7] which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtile, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness* and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits and abundance of leisure and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby, but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work but of no substance or profit.</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************** </p><p><br /></p><p>Jennifer Richards</p><p><br /></p><p>HOW CASTIGLIONE READ CICERO</p><p><br /></p><p>...The questione della lingua is focused on a particular question: should the courtier imitate the literary greats, borrowing from them words already endowed with authority, or should he follow the promptings of his own talents, and employ the language of his contemporaries? [24] Notably, it covers ground already familiar to us from the earlier discussion of nobility: can courtly gracefulness be learned, or is it a property natural to the nobly born? For this reason, it contributes to our understanding of the relationship between art and nature so central to the nobility debate, and it also further aims to inculcate in us a practice of reading which is itself ennobling.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Throughout the discussion, Canossa is committed to the idea that all we need is talent and a willingness to adopt the contemporary linguistic idiom, but he needs to defend his position against an interlocutor, Fregoso, who champions the need for imitation. Castiglione seems to set up an argument in utramque partem which enables us to see both sides of the debate, and to choose the more persuasive one. However, the dialogue does not quite work like that. When Fregoso objects that Canossa's advice encourages the courtier to reproduce the solecisms of ignorant speakers, our speaker produces this confusing explanation: "Good usage in speech is born with men who have native wit, and, with teaching and experience, acquire good judgement, and in accordance with it, agree upon apt words whose quality they know from a certain natural judgement rather than from art or any rule" (87/68). [25]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>This sentence seems to epitomise Canossa's disdainful refusal to teach us; it looks like a deliberate obfuscation. However, he is in fact following the example set by the dissimulating Antonius, and is showing, not telling us, the artificial causes of "natural" rhetorical skill (78-80/63-64). The questione della lingua is difficult to follow not just because it is meandering, contradictory and ambiguous, but because it offers a partial account of De oratore while relying on our knowledge of that text. [26]</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>Straying beyond Jonson's 'fit bounds':</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, on Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>He was (indeed) honest, and of</p><p>an open, and free nature: had an excellent</p><p>fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions:</p><p>wherein he flowed with that facility, that</p><p>sometime it was necessary he should be</p><p>STOP'D: sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said</p><p>of Haterius. His wit was in his own power;</p><p>would the RULE of it had been so too." </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Ruling/Restraining Shakespeare's Quill:</p><p><br /></p><p>From 'To the Deceased Author of these Poems' (William Cartwright)</p><p>by Jasper Mayne </p><p><br /></p><p>... For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.</p><p>In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:</p><p>A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,</p><p>As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.</p><p>Thy Lamp was cherish'd with supplied of Oyle,</p><p>Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip) </p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>John Oldham on Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>III.</p><p>Let dull, and ignorant Pretenders Art condemn</p><p>(Those only Foes to Art, and Art to them)</p><p>The meer Fanaticks, and Enthusiasts in Poetry</p><p>(For Schismaticks in that, as in Religion be)</p><p>Who make't all Revelation, Trance, and Dream,</p><p>Let them despise her Laws, and think</p><p>That Rules and Forms the Spirit stint:</p><p>Thine was no mad, unruly Frenzy of the brain,</p><p>Which justly might deserve the Chain,</p><p>'Twas brisk, and mettled, but a manag'd Rage,</p><p>Sprightly as vig'rous Youth, and cool as temp'rate Age:</p><p>Free, like thy Will, it did all Force disdain,</p><p>But suffer'd Reason's loose, and easie rein,</p><p>By that it suffer'd to be led,</p><p>Which did not curb Poetick liberty, but guide:</p><p>Fancy, that wild and haggard Faculty,</p><p>Untam'd in most, and let at random fly,</p><p>Was wisely govern'd, and reclaim'd by thee,</p><p>Restraint, and Discipline was made endure,</p><p>And by thy calm, and milder Judgment brought to lure;</p><p>Yet when 'twas at some nobler Quarry sent,</p><p>With bold, and tow'ring wings it upward went,</p><p>Not lessen'd at the greatest height,</p><p>Not turn'd by the most giddy flights of dazling Wit.</p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p> V.</p><p>Sober, and grave was still the Garb thy Muse put on,</p><p>No tawdry careless slattern Dress,</p><p>Nor starch'd, and formal with Affectedness,</p><p>Nor the cast Mode, and Fashion of the Court, and Town;</p><p>But neat, agreeable, and janty 'twas,</p><p>Well-fitted, it sate close in every place,</p><p>And all became with an uncommon Air, and Grace:</p><p>Rich, costly and substantial was the stuff,</p><p>Not barely smooth, nor yet too coarsly rough:</p><p>No refuse, ill-patch'd Shreds o'th Schools,</p><p>The motly wear of read, and learned Fools,</p><p>No French Commodity which now so much does take,</p><p>And our own better Manufacture spoil,</p><p>Nor was it ought of forein Soil;</p><p>But Staple all, and all of English Growth, and Make:</p><p>What Flow'rs soe're of Art it had, were found</p><p>No tinsel'd slight Embroideries,</p><p>But all appear'd either the native Ground,</p><p>Or twisted, wrought, and interwoven with the Piece.</p><p><br /></p><p>VI.</p><p>Plain Humor, shewn with her whole various Face,</p><p>Not mask'd with any antick Dress,</p><p>Nor screw'd in forc'd, ridiculous Grimace</p><p>(The gaping Rabbles dull delight,</p><p>And more the Actor's than the Poet's Wit)</p><p>Such did she enter on thy Stage,</p><p>And such was represented to the wond'ring Age:</p><p>Well wast thou skill'd, and read in human kind,</p><p>In every wild fantastick Passion of his mind,</p><p>Didst into all his hidden Inclinations dive,</p><p>What each from Nature does receive,</p><p>Or Age, or Sex, or Quality, or Country give;</p><p>What Custom too, that mighty Sorceress,</p><p>Whose pow'rful Witchcraft does transform</p><p>Enchanted Man to several monstrous Images,</p><p>Makes this an odd, and freakish MONKY turn,</p><p>And that a grave and solemn ASS appear,</p><p>And all a thousand beastly shapes of Folly wear:</p><p>Whate're Caprice or Whimsie leads awry</p><p>Perverted, and seduc'd Mortality,</p><p>Or does incline, and byass it</p><p>From what's Discreet, and Wise, and Right, and Good, and Fit;</p><p>All in thy faithful Glass were so express'd,</p><p>As if they were Reflections of thy Breast,</p><p>As if they had been stamp'd on thy own mind,</p><p>And thou the universal vast Idea of Mankind.</p><p>(snip)</p><p> XIII.</p><p>Let meaner spirits stoop to low precarious Fame,</p><p>Content on gross and coarse Applause to live,</p><p>And what the dull, and sensless Rabble give,</p><p>Thou didst it still with noble scorn contemn,</p><p>Nor would'st that wretched Alms receive,</p><p>The poor subsistence of some bankrupt, sordid name:</p><p>Thine was no empty Vapor, rais'd beneath,</p><p>And form'd of common Breath,</p><p>The false, and foolish Fire, that's whisk'd about</p><p>By popular Air, and glares a while, and then goes out;</p><p>But 'twas a solid, whole, and perfect Globe of light,</p><p>That shone all over, was all over bright,</p><p>And dar'd all sullying Clouds, and fear'd no darkning night;</p><p>Like the gay Monarch of the Stars and Sky,</p><p>Who wheresoe're he does display</p><p>His sovereign Lustre, and majestick Ray,</p><p>Strait all the less, and petty Glories nigh</p><p>Vanish, and shrink away.</p><p>O'rewhelm'd, and swallow'd by the greater blaze of Day;</p><p>With such a strong, an awful and victorious Beam</p><p>Appear'd, and ever shall appear, thy Fame,</p><p>View'd, and ador'd by all th' undoubted Race of Wit,</p><p>Who only can endure to look on it.</p><p>The rest o'recame with too much light,</p><p>With too much brightness dazled, or extinguish'd quite:</p><p>Restless, and uncontroul'd it now shall pass</p><p>As wide a course about the World as he,</p><p>And when his long-repeated Travels cease</p><p>Begin a new, and vaster Race,</p><p>And still tread round the endless Circle of Eternity.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p>Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius</p><p><br /></p><p>...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe</p><p>Those that we have, and those that we want too:</p><p>Th'art all so GOOD, that reading makes thee worse,</p><p>And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.</p><p>Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate</p><p>That servile base dependance upon fate:</p><p>Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,</p><p>Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;</p><p>*Excluding those from life in after-time*,</p><p>Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:</p><p>Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name</p><p>What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame</p><p>Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence</p><p>Made commendation a benevolence:</p><p>THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win</p><p>That best applause of being crown'd within.. </p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Shake-speare</p><p>O lest the world should task you to recite</p><p>What merit lived in me that you should LOVE</p><p>After my death, dear LOVE, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can NOTHING WORTHY prove;</p><p>Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,</p><p>To do more for me than mine own desert,</p><p>And hang more praise upon deceasèd I</p><p>Than niggard truth would willingly impart.</p><p>O lest your true LOVE may seem false in this,</p><p>That you FOR LOVE speak well of me untrue,</p><p>My name be buried where my body is,</p><p>And live no more to shame nor me nor you.</p><p>For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,</p><p>And so should you, to LOVE things NOTHING WORTH.</p><p><br /></p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-55742523911959667872022-01-06T14:06:00.001-08:002022-01-06T14:26:04.165-08:00Oxford, Shakespeare and Milton's Limbo of Vanity<p> Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,</p><p>What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?</p><p>(snip)</p><p>And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,</p><p>That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton – Republican. King immured in extravagant rhetoric – the Paradise of a Fool</p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p>Milton – Paradise of Fools</p><p>Wikipedia</p><p><br /></p><p> One of the most notable examples of the Paradise of Fools is found in Book 3 of John Milton's _Paradise Lost_, where Milton, in the narrative of Satan's journey to Earth, reserves a space for future fools (Milton also calls it the "Limbo of Vanity"), specifically Catholic clergy and "fleeting wits".[2] Milton's satirical allegory in turn was inspired by Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516); Samuel Johnson, in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, stated that the allegory "disgraced" Milton's epic.[3]</p><p>The ancestry of Milton's Paradise of Fools includes Canto XXXIV of Orlando and Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. As John Wooten argued, that canto in Orlando contains a summarizing critique of Dante's entire Comedy—a descent into Hell, followed by an ascent to a mountain top (Dante's Earthly Paradise) and a flight to the moon: "with the greatest ironic debunking, the moon ... is Ariosto's allegorical substitute for the complex theology and metaphysics of Dante's Paradiso".[4] In turn, Milton's Paradise of Fools builds on Ariosto's mock version of Dante's Comedy, but adds a specifically anti-Catholic aspect by making fun of hermits, friars, Dominicans, Franciscans—those equipped with "Reliques, Beads, / Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls". Central is the PUNISHMENT OF VANITY; it is the place for "all things transitory and vain, when Sin / With vanity had fill'd the works of men: / Both all things vain, and all who in vain things / Built thir fond hopes of Glory or lasting fame" (III.446-49). Milton also "corrects" Ariosto; the Paradise of Fools is "Not in the neighboring Moon, as some have dream'd" (III.459)--a "mock correction", as Wooten calls it.</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************</p><p>Definition of pomp</p><p>1: a show of magnificence : SPLENDOR</p><p>every day begins … in a pomp of flaming colours— F. D. Ommanney</p><p>2: a ceremonial or festival display (such as a train of followers or a pageant)</p><p>3a: ostentatious display : VAINGLORY</p><p>b: an ostentatious gesture or act</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Limbus Fatuorum </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************</p><p>Milton, On Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>What needs my Shakespeare for his *honoured bones*,</p><p>The labor of an age in pilèd stones,</p><p>Or that his * hallowed relics * should be hid </p><p>Under a star-ypointing pyramid?</p><p><br /></p><p>(saintly Shake-speare?)</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************</p><p>Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare</p><p>John WEEVER (1576-1632)</p><p>Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,</p><p>I swore Apollo got them, and none other;</p><p>Their rosy-tainted features, clothed in tissue,</p><p>Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother:</p><p>Rose-cheeked Adonis, with his amber tresses,</p><p>Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her;</p><p>Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses,</p><p>Proud lust-stung Tarquin, seeking still to prove her;</p><p>Romeo, Richard - more, whose names I know not -</p><p>Their sugared tongues and power-attractive beauty</p><p>Say they are saints, although that saints they show not,</p><p>For thousands vows to them subjective duty;</p><p>They burn in love; thy children, Shakespeare, het them,</p><p>Go, woo thy muse, more nymphish brood beget them.</p><p>**********************</p><p><br /></p><p>From Purgatory to the Paradise of Fools: Dante, Ariosto, and Milton's</p><p>John Wooten</p><p><br /></p><p> If we trace the sources of Milton’s Paradise of Fools, or Limbo of Vanity, his other name for that strange region Satan finds while flying from Hell to Eden in Book III of Paradise Lost, aren’t we led most logically to Dante’s Limbo, and not to his Purgatory? Most editors and commentators have assumed, and with good reason, that Milton’s Limbo functions in some way as a literary allusion to Dante’s first circle of Hell, which is Dante’s Limbo. After probing that assumption, however, even such a distinguished Miltonist as Merritt Y. Hughes lamented that as far as he could tell Milton’s Limbo has nothing to do with Dante’s. Hughes offered Plato as the most significant influence on this section of Paradise Lost, but, as I hope to show, Dante is relevant, though not in so simple a way as critics have believed. In addition, critics and commentators have assumed, because of Milton’s reference in this passage to the canto in Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ where *Astolfo*, the English Knight-errant, flies to the moon, that Milton has Ariosto very much in mind as a complementary source. After all, the narrator of Paradise Lost rather bluntly tells us that all the strange things with which Ariosto littered his lunar terrain are to be found in Milton’s Limbo, and “Not in the neighboring Moon, as some have dream’d.” Ariosto stands corrected. Milton never minded correcting those in error, or course, and he does not hesitate here. But before we nod in complacent agreement about this familiar aspect of the Milton we know and love, we should stop over the fact that Milton’s Limbo is as much a literary fantasy as Ariosto’s moon ever was. And Milton knew that, of course. So why this mock correction of one playful fantasy with another fantasy, equally invalid so far as strict truth is concerned?</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Milton, Paradise Lost – Bk III</p><p><br /></p><p>So on this windie Sea of Land, the Fiend [ 440 ]</p><p>Walk'd up and down alone bent on his prey,</p><p>Alone, for o...ther Creature in this place</p><p>Living or liveless to be found was none,</p><p>None yet, but store hereafter from the earth</p><p>Up hither like Aereal vapours flew [ 445 ]</p><p>Of all things transitorie and vain, when Sin</p><p>With vanity had filld the works of men:</p><p>Both all things vain, and all who in vain things</p><p>Built thir fond hopes of Glorie or lasting fame,</p><p>Or happiness in this or th' other life; [ 450 ]</p><p>All who have thir reward on Earth, the fruits</p><p>Of painful Superstition and blind Zeal,</p><p>Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find</p><p>Fit retribution, emptie as thir deeds;</p><p>All th' unaccomplisht works of Natures hand, [ 455 ]</p><p>Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt,</p><p>Dissolvd on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,</p><p>Till final dissolution, wander here,</p><p>Not in the neighbouring Moon, as some have dreamd; </p><p>Those argent Fields more likely habitants, [ 460 ]</p><p>Translated Saints, or middle Spirits hold</p><p>Betwixt th' Angelical and Human kinde:</p><p>Hither of ill-joynd Sons and Daughters born</p><p>First from the ancient World those Giants came</p><p>With many a vain exploit, though then renownd: [ 465 ]</p><p>The builders next of Babel on the Plain</p><p>Of Sennaar, and still with vain designe</p><p>New Babels, had they wherewithall, would build:</p><p>Others came single; he who to be deem'd</p><p>A God, leap'd fondly into Ætna flames [ 470 ]</p><p>*Empedocles, and hee who to enjoy</p><p>Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the Sea*,</p><p>Cleombrotus, and many more too long,</p><p>Embryo's and Idiots, Eremits and Friers</p><p>White, Black and Grey, with all thir trumperie. [ 475 ]</p><p>Here Pilgrims roam, that stray'd so farr to seek</p><p>In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heav'n;</p><p>And they who to be sure of Paradise</p><p>Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,</p><p>Or in Franciscan think to pass disguis'd; [ 480 ]</p><p>They pass the Planets seven, and pass the fixt,</p><p>And that Crystalline Sphear whose ballance weighs</p><p>The Trepidation talkt, and that first mov'd;</p><p>And now Saint Peter at Heav'ns Wicket seems</p><p>To wait them with his Keys, and now at foot [ 485 ]</p><p>Of Heav'ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe</p><p>*A violent cross wind from either Coast</p><p>Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry</p><p>Into the devious Air*; then might ye see</p><p>Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost [ 490 ]</p><p>And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads,</p><p>Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls,</p><p>The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft</p><p>Fly o're the backside of the World farr off</p><p>Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld [ 495 ]</p><p>The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown</p><p>Long after, now unpeopl'd, and untrod;</p><p>All this dark Globe the Fiend found as he pass'd,</p><p>And long he wanderd, </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p><br /></p><p>Limbo Reapplied: On living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent Afterlife</p><p>Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte</p><p><br /></p><p>.....If also in the case of Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, and, in particular, regarding his Paradise of Fools, we were to offer one single extra interpretative comment, or stress one single aspect, then it would regard the inhabitants of Milton’s Limbo. A greater difference between Milton’s (but also already Ariosto’s) Limbo and the traditional scholastic and even Dantesque Limbo can probably not be found than in the description of its inhabitants. Whereas we find, in Dante’s and the scholastic Limbo, the first human (Adam), ancient prophets, the great Fathers of the Jewish tradition, Greek philosophers, scientists, even some other ‘barbarian’ just, and, finally innocent newborns, we are contrasted by the Miltonian/Ariostonian vainglorious, narcissistic, haughty arrogant, superstitiously void and praise-seeking nullities on the one hand, and on the other, the trumpery-loaded ordained Catholics and their silly superstitious and almost purely work-oriented lay counterparts.</p><p> However, if we were to attempt to leave the parody and critical satire behind, or better, if we were to try and transcend all of this (in other words, if we were to leave out the mere aspect of vanity and emptiness from Milton’s ‘Limbo large and broad’), one could venture out and discover that Milton’s Limbo considered as a Fools’ Paradise is not so different than the paradoxical Limbo we discovered in Dante and, above all in Saint Thomas. Reading Milton after we have spent so much time with Dante might have clouded our minds. Dante’s insistence on the great merit of all the inhabitants of Limbo has somewhat biased our reading of Milton. True, Milton’s insistence on the negative characteristics of the future inhabitants of his Limbo seem to be hinting at a similar – although in reverse - primary importance of the Limbo-dwellers. But Milton’s Limbo is, however, primarily about something else. Milton’s Limbo is about the ‘punishment’, about the punishment that reverses all that is expected. It is about the overturning of glory, fame, and supposed happiness. It is about subverting rewards that had been worked for in a superstitious way.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>vain - vanus – empty</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>Milton, On Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,</p><p>The labor of an age in pilèd stones,</p><p>Or that his hallowed relics should be hid </p><p>Under a star-ypointing pyramid?</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk I</p><p><br /></p><p>...After these appear’d</p><p>A crew who, under names of old renown,</p><p>Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,</p><p>With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus’d</p><p>Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek</p><p>Their wand’ring Gods disguis’d in brutish forms</p><p>Rather than human. (481)</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>Worldly Vanity/Pomp</p><p><br /></p><p>_Comus_, John Milton</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>745: COMUS. Why are you vexed, Lady? why do you frown?</p><p>746: Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from these gates</p><p>747: Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures</p><p>748: That FANCY can beget on youthful thoughts,</p><p>749: When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns</p><p>750: Brisk as the April buds in primrose season.</p><p>751: And first behold this cordial julep here,</p><p>752: That flames and dances in his crystal bounds,</p><p>753: With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed.</p><p><br /></p><p>(SNIP)</p><p><br /></p><p>837: LADY. I had not thought to have unlocked my lips</p><p>838: In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler</p><p>839: Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes,</p><p>840: Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.</p><p>841: I hate when vice can bolt her arguments</p><p>842: And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.</p><p>843: Impostor! do not charge most innocent Nature,</p><p>844: As if she would her children should be riotous</p><p>845: With her abundance. She, good cateress,</p><p>846: Means her provision only to the good,</p><p>847: That live according to her sober laws,</p><p>848: And holy dictate of spare Temperance.</p><p>849: If every just man that now pines with want</p><p>850: Had but a moderate and beseeming share</p><p>851: Of that which lewdly-pampered LUXURY</p><p>852: Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,</p><p>853: Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed</p><p>854: In unsuperfluous even proportion,</p><p>855: And she no whit encumbered with her store;</p><p>856: And then the Giver would be better thanked,</p><p>857: His praise due paid: for swinish gluttony</p><p>858: Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his GORGEOUS feast,</p><p>859: But with besotted base ingratitude</p><p>860: Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on</p><p>861: Or have I said enow? To him that dares</p><p>862: Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words</p><p>863: Against the sun-clad power of chastity</p><p>864: Fain would I something say;--yet to what end?</p><p>865: Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend</p><p>866: The sublime notion and high mystery</p><p>867: That must be uttered to unfold the sage</p><p>868: And serious doctrine of Virginity;</p><p>869: And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know</p><p>870: More happiness than this thy present lot.</p><p>871: Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric,</p><p>872: That hath so well been taught her DAZZLING FENCE;</p><p>873: Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced.</p><p>874: Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth</p><p>875: Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits</p><p>876: To such a flame of sacred vehemence</p><p>877: That dumb things would be moved to sympathise,</p><p>878: And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and SHAKE,</p><p>879: Till all thy MAGIC STRUCTURES, reared so high,</p><p>880: Were SHATTERED into heaps o'er thy FALSE HEAD.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p><br /></p><p>Casting Down Imaginations: Milton as Iconoclast</p><p>David Loewenstein</p><p><br /></p><p> “The weapons of our warfare are...mightie through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations and everie high thing that exalts it self against the knowledge of God...having in a readiness to aveng all disobedience.” This passage from Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians (10:4-6) had special significance for Milton’s controversial writings: he cited it three times in his polemics – once in his antiprelatical tracts of the early 1640s, once during the period of his regicide polemics, adn once in his late pre-Restoration works. While it involved the breaking of images and the pulling down of strongholds, iconoclasm for Milton, the major literary iconoclast of his revolutionary age, was a renovating activity with both crucial artistic and social implications.(...)</p><p> Eikonoklastes is Milton’s longest and most sustained revolutionary polemic: with immense passion and skill it demolishes the fiction, spectacle, adn arguments of Eikon Basilike, a work of royalist propaganda displaying Charles I as the greatest martyr of his age. Iconoclasm emerges in Milton’s controversial tract, which appeared i early October 1649 (and which was written in response to an order from Parliament), as an essential expression of the poet-polemicist’s dynamic and creative response to the historical process. In Eikonoklastes Milton attempts to free history from the tyranny of the king’s image – a powerful icon of Charles projected and fashioned with considerable visual and rhetorical art in the frontispiece and text of the king’s book. Recognizing the the extraordinarily alluring power of the king’s theatrical image and text, Milton seeks to deconstruct point by point the arguments of Eikon Basilike, thereby relentlessly breaking to pieces, with his verbal iconoclasm, the royal ideology and its symbolic icon. Iconoclasm for Milton consequently emerges as a profoundly radical and creative response that cannot be divorced from his dramatic sense of social transformation: it represents his attempt to undermine an entrenched ideological and historical perspective, so as to being about a new mode of social vision.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p><br /></p><p>‘Companions of their solitudes’: Transforming the Commonplace in Milton’s ‘Eikonoklastes’</p><p>Iris Pearson</p><p>One of John Milton’s pithiest criticisms of Eikon Basilike comes at the beginning of his preface to his Eikonoklastes: he accuses the king’s book of ‘containing little else but the common grounds of tyranny and popery’.[1] To a Renaissance reader drilled in humanist practices of reading from their earliest school days, the phrase ‘common grounds’ would have had an undeniable resonance. Common ground is common territory, which is common place – communis locus – which becomes the practice of commonplacing and the commonplace book. A foundation of Renaissance humanist teaching championed by Erasmus and also by Milton himself in his 1644 essay ‘Of Education’, commonplacing was a method of reading which involved selecting extracts from texts and categorising these quotations and extracts under different headings and subheadings in a single book (although often in multiple volumes), to be used in writing different essays or pieces on these subjects.[2] Intertextuality, in this way, was inextricably connected to commonplacing; a reference to another text implied a quotation in the writer’s commonplace book. As Milton discusses texts that are mentioned either explicitly or implicitly in Eikon Basilike, then, he begins to construct an image of the titles on the bookshelf of King Charles I. I suggest that Milton gives us more than this imagined library, however, and that his criticism of the king goes beyond a comment on which texts he reads. I argue, through the apian metaphor for reading provided by multiple humanist writers, that Milton’s primary criticism lies in the static, aesthetic status that the king seems to give to the books he reads and that Milton himself, in Eikonoklastes, presents an alternative model for reading and working with texts.</p><p> Perhaps the most discussed moment of intertextuality in Eikonoklastes (perhaps more accurately described as an intertextual moment from Eikon Basilike which Milton tears apart in Eikonoklastes) is ‘the Pamela prayer’. The words of this prayer, Milton tells us, although presented as the king’s own creation, have been lifted directly from Book Three, Chapter Six of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (Milton in his pedantry of argument quotes the exact page number): ‘a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god’ (Eikonoklastes, p327). The repetition of ‘heathen’ at the centre of this quotation is a reminder of the contrast between the king’s own Anglicanism and Pamela’s emphatic pagan-ness as Sidney presents her. Milton is critical of the ease with which the king seems to abandon his religion and the religious discourse which is supposedly so central to his position. The word ‘stolen’ is also significant, however, as it suggests an anger about the direct and deliberate lifting of material from one work to use in this book. The verbal object sits in exactly the same state in Eikon Basilike as it was in Arcadia.‘Stolen’ hints therefore at a creative poverty in the king, as he cannot come up with his own words but must take them from the mouth of another; Milton’s criticism at this point turns then on the possibility of plagiarism that is the result of misuse of the commonplace book.</p><p> In Chapter I of Eikonoklastes, Milton focuses on the king’s familiarity with Shakespeare: ‘I shall not instance an ABSTRUSE author, wherein the King might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closest companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare’ (Eikonoklastes, p327). </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Merriam-Webster</p><p><br /></p><p>Abstruse</p><p><br /></p><p>Latin Ties Things Together With Abstruse</p><p>Look closely at the following Latin verbs, all of which are derived from the verb trudere ("to push, thrust"): extrudere, intrudere, obtrudere, protrudere. Remove the last two letters of each of these and you get an English descendant whose meaning involves pushing or thrusting. Another trudere offspring, abstrudere, meaning "to push away" or "to conceal," gave English abstrude, meaning "to thrust away," but that 17th-century borrowing has fallen out of use. An abstrudere descendant that has survived is abstruse, an adjective that recalls the meaning of its Latin parent abstrūsus, meaning "concealed."</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>Eclipsing Shakespeare’s Eikon: Milton’s Subversion of “Richard II”</p><p>Julia M. Walker</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>...Written at the order of Parliament to refute the currently circulating a Eikon Basilike (Charles posthumous twenty-eight-chapter version of the Pomfret Castle speech). Milton’s work not only takes on the ghostly voice of Charles and/or his ghost writers but goes beyond the point-by-point, chapter-by-chapter refutation to address the larger question of the divinity of monarchs. Although Milton quotes lines from Eikon Basilike as texts for his own chapters, he makes no attempt to cite and remake the frontispiece, Charles at emblem-rounded prayer. Just as Eikonklastes balances the Eikon Basilike’s icon of Charles at prayer with nothing – not a dismembered or reworked icon but total absence of icon – [What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name - Oxford as master 'vain' image maker of the previous reign] - so Milton sets out to deconstruct, to desanctify, to disprivilege all of the monarchy’s literary icons, the tropes, similies, and commonplaces of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the very same devices which Shakespeare collects and presents with such telling, if varied, effect in Richard II. Just as Charles’s book relies upon this treasure trove of iconography, so does Milton’s text seek to erase it, to render it without significance. Briefly, almost casually, Milton subverts a number of the important images from Richard II – the mirror of truth, the good gardener, the relative supremacy of fire and water; but it is for the play’s (and Charles’s) most powerful image, the king as sun, that Milton reserves the full strength of his wit, poetic talent, and political conviction. Milton’s attack upon Eikon Basilike is, of necessity, not subtle: his attack upon the literary icons of kingship, however *employs imagery to destroy imagery* [note- defacement of Oxford], showing us that even the Parliamentary “left hand” held the pen of a poet.</p><p>...A strong hand and a strong pen were clearly needed by the anti-royalists. Charles’s Eikon greatly moved the people, both by its prose pleas and prayers for understanding and by its William Marshall frontispiece, which Ernest B. Gilman describes as “a rich pictorial synopsis of Charles’s Christ-like virtues.” Gilman reminds us of how recently such depictions of monarchs were considered commonplace by the English readers: “This is the illuminated monarch celebrated in the Stuart masque as both the focus and the source of all ennobling visions. He is brought low but still (as Ben Jonson said of Charles’s father) ‘placed high’.” Milton attempts to redefine the audience which would have found such an image “ennobling”; in the final paragraph of Eikonklastes he calls Charles attempt to explain himself “hopeless...but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and Image-doting rabble; ([that like a credulous and hapless herd, begott’n to servility, and inchanted with these popular institutes of Tyranny, subscrib’d with a new device of the Kings Picture at his praiers, hold out both thir eares with such delight and ravishment to be stigmatiz’d and board through in witness of thir own voluntary and beloved baseness)” (CPW p.601) The heavy-handed name-calling of this, the penultimate sentence of his work, reveals to us a poet in combat with something he recognizes to be beyond the bounds of simply rational discourse.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p>Milton, Eikonoklastes</p><p>The PREFACE.</p><p>*TO descant on the misfortunes of a person fall'n from so high a dignity, who hath also payd his final debt both to Nature and his Faults*, is neither of it self a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discours. Neither was it fond ambition, or the VANITY to get a Name, present, or with Posterity, by writing against a King: I never was so thirsty after Fame, nor so destitute of other hopes and means, better and more certaine to attaine it. For Kings have gain'd glorious Titles from thir Favourers by writing against privat men, as Henry the 8th did against Luther; but no man ever gain'd much honour by writing against a King, as not usually meeting with that force of Argument in such Courtly Antagonists, which to convince might add to his reputation. Kings most commonly, though strong in Legions, are but weak at Arguments; as they who ever have accustom'd from the Cradle to use thir will onely as thir right hand, *thir reason alwayes as thir left* [note – ambisinister Droeshout Figure]. Whence unexpectedly constrain'd to that kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny Adversaries. Nevertheless for their sakes who through custom, simplicitie, or want of better teaching, have not more seriously considerd Kings, then in the gaudy name of Majesty, and admire them and thir doings, as if they breath'd not the same breath with other mortal men, I shall make no scruple to take up (for it seems to be the challenge both of him and all his party) to take up this Gauntlet, though a Kings, in the behalf of Libertie, and the Common-wealth.</p><p>And furder, since it appears manifestly the cunning drift of a factious and defeated Party, to make the same advantage of his Book, which they did before of his Regal Name and Authority, and intend it not so much the defence of his former actions, as the promoting of thir own future *designes*, making thereby the Book thir own rather then the Kings, as the benefit now must be thir own more then his, now the third time to corrupt and disorder the mindes of weaker men, by new suggestions and narrations, either falsly or fallaciously representing the State of things to the dishonour of this present Goverment, and the retarding of a generall peace, so needfull to this afflicted Nation, and so nigh obtain'd, I suppose it no injurie to the dead, but a good deed rather to the living, if by better information giv'n them, or, which is anough, by onely remembring them the truth of what they themselves know to be heer misaffirm'd, they may be kept from entring the third time unadvisedly into Warr and bloodshed. For as to any moment of solidity in the Book it self, save only that a King is said to be the Author, a name, then which there needs no more among the blockish vulgar, to make it wise, and excellent, and admir'd, nay to set it next the Bible, though otherwise containing little els but the common grounds of Tyranny and popery, drest up, the better to deceiv, in a new Protestant guise, and trimmly garnish'd over, or as to any need of answering, in respect of staid and well-principl'd men, I take it on me as a work assign'd rather, then by me chos'n or affected. Which was the cause both of beginning it so late, and finishing it so leasurely, in the midst of other imployments and diversions. And though well it might have seem'd in vaine to write at all; considering the envy and almost infinite prejudice likely to be stirr'd up among the Common sort, against what ever can be writt'n or gainsaid to the Kings book, so advantageous to a book it is, only to be a Kings, and though it be an irksom labour to write with industrie and judicious paines that which neither waigh'd, nor well read, shall be judg'd without industry or the paines of well judging, by Faction and the easy literature of custom and opinion, it shall be ventur'd yet, and the truth not smother'd, but sent abroad, in the native confidence of her single self, to earn, how she can, her entertainment in the world, and to finde out her own readers; few perhaps, but those few, of such value and substantial worth, as truth and wisdom, not respecting numbers and bigg names, have bin ever wont in all ages to be contented with.</p><p>And if the late King had thought sufficient those Answers and Defences made for him in his life time, they who on the other side accus'd his evil Goverment, judging that on their behalf anough also hath been reply'd, the heat of this controversie was in all likelyhood drawing to an end; and the furder mention of his deeds, not so much unfortunat as faulty, had in tenderness to his late sufferings bin willingly forborn; and perhaps for the present age might have slept with him unrepeated; while his adversaries, calm'd and asswag'd with the success of thir cause, had bin the less unfavourable to his memory. But since he himself, making new appeale to Truth and the World, hath left behind him this Book as the best advocat and interpreter of his own actions, and that his Friends by publishing, dispersing, commending, and almost adoring it, seem to place therein the chiefe strength and nerves of thir cause, it would argue doubtless in the other party great deficience and distrust of themselves, not to meet the force of his reason in any field whatsoever, the force and equipage of whose Armes they have so oft'n met victoriously. And he who at the Barr stood excepting against the form and manner of his Judicature, and complain'd that he was not heard; neither he nor his Friends shall have that cause now to find fault; being mett and debated with in this op'n and monumental Court of his own erecting; and not onely heard uttering his whole mind at large, but answer'd. Which to doe effectually, if it be necessary that to his Book nothing the more respect be had for being his, they of his own Party can have no just reason to exclaime. For it were too unreasonable that he, because dead, should have the liberty in his Book to speak all evil of the Parlament; and they, because living, should be expected to have less freedom, or any for them, to speak home the plain truth of a full and pertinent reply. As he, to acquitt himself, hath not spar'd his Adversaries, to load them with all sorts of blame and accusation, so to him, as in his Book alive, there will be us'd no more Courtship then he uses; but what is properly his own guilt, not imputed any more to his evil Counsellors, (a Ceremony us'd longer by the Parlament then he himself desir'd) shall be laid heer without circumlocutions at his own dore. That they who from the first beginning, or but now of late, by what unhappines I know not, are so much affatuated, not with his person onely, but with his palpable faults, and dote upon his deformities, may have none to blame but thir own folly, if they live and dye in such a strook'n blindness, as next to that of Sodom hath not happ'nd to any sort of men more gross, or more misleading. Yet neither let his enemies expect to finde recorded heer all that hath been whisper'd in the Court, or alleg'd op'nly of the Kings bad actions; it being the proper scope of this work in hand, not to ripp up and relate the misdoings of his whole life, but to answer only and refute the missayings of his book.</p><p>First then that som men (whether this were by him intended, or by his Friends) have by policy accomplish'd after death that revenge upon thir Enemies, which in life they were not able, hath been oft related. And among other examples we finde, that the last will of Cæsar being read to the people, and what bounteous Legacies he had bequeath'd them, wrought more in that Vulgar audience to the avenging of his death, then all the art he could ever use, to win thir favor in his life-time. And how much their intent, who publish'd these overlate Apologies and Meditations of the dead King, drives to the same end of stirring up the people to bring him that honour, that affection, and by consequence, that revenge to his dead Corps, which he himself living could never gain to his Person, it appears both by the conceited portraiture before his Book, drawn out to the full measure of a Masking Scene, and sett there to catch fools and silly gazers; and by those Latin words after the end, Vota dabunt quæ Bella negarunt; intimating, That what he could not compass by Warr, he should atchieve by his Meditations. For in words which admitt of various sense, the libertie is ours to choose that interpretation, which may best minde us of what our restless enemies endeavor, and what wee are timely to prevent. And heer may be well observ'd the loose and negligent curiosity of those who took upon them to adorn the setting out of this Book: for though the Picture sett in Front would Martyr him and Saint him to befool the people, yet the Latin Motto in the end, which they understand not, leaves him, as it were, a politic contriver to bring about that interest by faire and plausible words, which the force of Armes deny'd him. But quaint Emblems and devices, begg'd from the old Pageantry of some Twelf-nights entertainment at Whitehall, will doe but ill to make a Saint or Martyr: and if the People resolve to take him Sainted at the rate of such a Canonizing, I shall suspect thir Calendar more then the Gregorian. In one thing I must commend his op'nness who gave the title to this Book, Εικων Βασιλικη, that is to say, The Kings Image; and by the SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly would have the people come and worship him. For which reason this answer also is intitl'd, Iconoclastes, the famous Surname of many Greek Emperors, who in thir zeal to the command of God, after long tradition of Idolatry in the Church, took courage and broke all superstitious Images to peeces. But the People, exorbitant and excessive in all thir motions, are prone ofttimes not to a religious onely, but to a civil kinde of Idolatry, in idolizing thir Kings; though never more mistak'n in the object of thir worship; heretofore being wont to repute for Saints, those faithful and courageous Barons, who lost thir lives in the Field, making glorious Warr against Tyrants for the common Liberty; as Simon de Momfort, Earl of Leicester, against Henry the third; Thomas Plantagenet Earl of Lancaster, against Edward the second. But now, with a besotted and degenerate baseness of spirit, except some few, who yet retain in them the old English fortitude and love of Freedom, and have testifi'd it by thir matchless deeds, the rest, imbastardiz'd from the ancient nobleness of thir Ancestors, are ready to fall flatt and give adoration to the Image and Memory of this Man, who hath offer'd at more cunning fetches to undermine our Liberties, and putt Tyranny into an Art, then any British King before him. Which low dejection and debasement of mind in the people, I must confess I cannot willingly ascribe to the natural disposition of an English-man, but rather to two other causes. First, to the Prelats and thir fellow-teachers, though of another Name and Sect, whose Pulpit-stuff, both first and last, hath bin the Doctrin and perpetual infusion of servility and wretchedness to all thir hearers; whose lives the type of worldliness and hypocrisie, without the least true pattern of vertue, righteousness, or self-denial in thir whole practice. I attribute it next to the factious inclination of most men divided from the public by several ends and humors of thir own. (...)</p><p>**************************</p><p>I sing the starry axis and the singing hosts in the sky, *and of the</p><p>gods suddenly destroyed in their own SHRINES*. -- Milton, 1629</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>Shrine \Shrine\, v. t.</p><p>To enshrine; to place reverently, as in a shrine. ``Shrined</p><p>in his sanctuary.'' --Milton.</p><p><br /></p><p>Shrine \Shrine\ (shr[imac]n), n. [OE. schrin, AS. scr[=i]n, from</p><p>L. scrinium a case, chest, box.]</p><p>1. A case, box, or receptacle, especially one in which are</p><p>deposited sacred relics, as the bones of a saint.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. Any sacred place, as an altar, tomb, or the like.</p><p><br /></p><p>Too weak the sacred shrine guard. --Byron.</p><p><br /></p><p>3. A place or object hallowed from its history or</p><p>associations; as, a shrine of art.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton</p><p>On Shakespeare. 1630</p><p><br /></p><p>WHat needs my Shakespear for his HONOUR'D BONES,</p><p>The labour of an age in piled Stones,</p><p>Or that his HALLOW'D RELIQUES should be hid</p><p>Under a Star-ypointing PYRAMID?</p><p>Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, [ 5 ]</p><p>What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?</p><p>Thou in our wonder and astonishment</p><p>Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.</p><p>For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,</p><p>Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart [ 10 ]</p><p>Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,</p><p>Those DELPHICK lines with deep impression took,</p><p>Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,</p><p>Dost make us MARBLE with too much conceaving;</p><p>And so Sepulcher'd in such POMP dost lie, [ 15 ]</p><p>That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die. </p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>APOLLO from his SHRINE/ Can no more divine,/</p><p>With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving. - Milton </p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Performing early modern trauma from Shakespeare to Milton</p><p>By Thomas Page Anderson</p><p><br /></p><p>In the "Preface" to Eikonoklastes, Milton establishes his strategy to</p><p>disarm the book in a disingenuous offer of praise. He "commends" the</p><p>King's "op'ness" in giving the title of The King's Image to the book.</p><p>And he complements as well the appearance of the project: "by the</p><p>SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly would have the people come</p><p>and worship him" (EK, p.68). Milton's reference to the shrine echoes</p><p>Protestant writings that worked to debunk notions of the sacred altar</p><p>central to the Catholic sacraments. By acknowledging the altar-like</p><p>status of the text, Milton associates the book's appeal to its</p><p>putative efficacy. However, he qualifies the king's SHRINE by</p><p>suggesting that its altar-like status is the product of effective</p><p>staging or "dress[ing] out." </p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629)</p><p><br /></p><p>...The Oracles are dumm,</p><p>No voice or hideous humm</p><p>Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. [ 175 ]</p><p>APOLLO from his shrine</p><p>Can no more divine,</p><p>With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving.</p><p>No nightly trance, or breathed spell,</p><p>Inspire's the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell. [ 180 ] </p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Milton, Paradise Regained</p><p><br /></p><p>451: The other service was thy chosen task,</p><p>452: To be a liar in four hundred mouths;</p><p>453: For lying is thy sustenance, thy food.</p><p>454: Yet thou pretend'st to truth! all oracles</p><p>455: By thee are given, and what confessed more true</p><p>456: Among the nations? That hath been thy craft,</p><p>457: By mixing somewhat true to vent more lies.</p><p>458: But what have been thy answers? what but dark,</p><p>459: Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding,</p><p>460: Which they who asked have seldom understood,</p><p>461: And, not well understood, as good not known?</p><p>462: Who ever, by consulting at thy shrine,</p><p>463: Returned the wiser, or the more instruct</p><p>464: To fly or follow what concerned him most,</p><p>465: And run not sooner to his fatal snare?</p><p>466: For God hath justly given the nations up</p><p>467: To thy delusions; justly, since they fell</p><p>468: Idolatrous. But, when his purpose is</p><p>469: Among them to declare his providence,</p><p>470: To thee not known, whence hast thou then thy truth,</p><p>471: But from him, or his Angels president</p><p>472: In every province, who, themselves disdaining</p><p>473: To approach thy temples, give thee in command</p><p>474: What, to the smallest tittle, thou shalt say</p><p>475: To thy adorers? Thou, with trembling fear,</p><p>476: Or like a fawning parasite, obey'st;</p><p>477: Then to thyself ascrib'st the truth foretold.</p><p>478: But this thy glory shall be soon retrenched;</p><p>479: No more shalt thou by oracling abuse</p><p>481: And thou no more with POMP and sacrifice</p><p>482: Shalt be enquired at DELPHOS or elsewhere--</p><p>483: At least in vain, for they shall find thee mute.</p><p>484: God hath now sent his living Oracle</p><p>485: Into the world to teach his final will,</p><p>486: And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to dwell</p><p>487: In pious hearts, an inward oracle</p><p>488: To all truth requisite for men to know."</p><p>489:</p><p>490: So spake our Saviour; </p><p><br /></p><p>***************************</p><p><br /></p><p>And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,</p><p>That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.</p><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-35559421597640682722021-12-21T15:18:00.000-08:002021-12-21T15:18:08.541-08:00Deep Impression Took<p> Star-y – pointing Pyramid:</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton</p><p>On Shakespeare. 1630</p><p><br /></p><p>WHat needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,</p><p>The labour of an age in piled Stones,</p><p>Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid</p><p>Under a STAR-Y-pointing Pyramid?</p><p>Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,</p><p>What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************************</p><p>Melville, Billy Budd</p><p><br /></p><p>Starry Vere:</p><p><br /></p><p>Ashore in the garb of a civilian, scarce anyone would have taken him for</p><p>a sailor, more especially that he never garnished unprofessional talk</p><p>with nautical terms, and grave in his bearing, evinced little</p><p>appreciation of mere humor. It was not out of keeping with these traits</p><p>that on a passage when nothing demanded his paramount action, he was the</p><p>most undemonstrative of men. Any landsman observing this gentleman, not</p><p>conspicuous by his stature and wearing no pronounced insignia, emerging</p><p>from his cabin to the open deck, and noting the silent deference of the</p><p>officers retiring to leeward, might have taken him for the King's guest,</p><p>a civilian aboard the King's-ship, some highly honorable discreet envoy</p><p>on his way to an important post. But in fact this unobtrusiveness of</p><p>demeanour may have proceeded from a certain unaffected modesty of</p><p>manhood sometimes accompanying a resolute nature, a modesty evinced at</p><p>all times not calling for pronounced action, and which shown in any rank</p><p>of life suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind. As with some others</p><p>engaged in various departments of the world's more heroic activities,</p><p>Captain Vere, though practical enough upon occasion, would at times</p><p>betray a certain dreaminess of mood. Standing alone on the weather-side</p><p>of the quarter-deck, one hand holding by the rigging, he would absently</p><p>gaze off at the blank sea. At the presentation to him then of some minor</p><p>matter interrupting the current of his thoughts he would show more or</p><p>less irascibility; but instantly he would control it.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the navy he was popularly known by the appellation--Starry Vere. How</p><p>such a designation happened to fall upon one who, whatever his sterling</p><p>qualities, was without any brilliant ones was in this wise: A favorite</p><p>kinsman, Lord Denton, a free-hearted fellow, had been the first to meet</p><p>and congratulate him upon his return to England from his West Indian</p><p>cruise; and but the day previous turning over a copy of Andrew Marvell's</p><p>poems, had lighted, not for the first time however, upon the lines</p><p>entitled Appleton House, the name of one of the seats of their common</p><p>ancestor, a hero in the German wars of the seventeenth century, in which</p><p>poem occur the lines,</p><p><br /></p><p>"This 'tis to have been from the first</p><p>In a domestic heaven nursed,</p><p>Under the discipline severe</p><p>Of Fairfax and the starry Vere."</p><p><br /></p><p>And so, upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodney's great victory</p><p>wherein he had played so gallant a part, brimming over with just family</p><p>pride in the sailor of their house, he exuberantly exclaimed, "Give ye</p><p>joy, Ed; give ye joy, my starry Vere!" This got currency, and the novel</p><p>prefix serving in familiar parlance readily to distinguish the</p><p>Indomitable's Captain from another Vere his senior, a distant relative,</p><p>an officer of like rank in the navy, it remained permanently attached to</p><p>the surname.</p><p>********************************************</p><p>Deep Impression Took:</p><p><br /></p><p>On Shakespeare. 1630</p><p>John Milton</p><p>(...)</p><p>Thou in our wonder and astonishment</p><p>Hast built thyself a live-long monument.</p><p>For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art, </p><p>Thy easy numbers flow, and that each HEART </p><p>Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book</p><p>Those Delphic lines with DEEP IMPRESSION TOOK, </p><p>Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, </p><p>Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;</p><p>And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,</p><p>That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.</p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p>Jeff Westover</p><p>The Impressments of Billy Budd</p><p>Voltaire relates a tour of the Thames he made with an Englishman who bragged that “ he would rather be a modest boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in France.” On the following day the famous writer was surprised to find the man “in heavy chains, bitterly complaining of the abominable government that took him by force from his wife and children to serve on the King’s ship in Norway.” Voltaire records his sympathy for the man, but impishly adds: “ A Frenchman, who was with me, admitted to me that he felt a malicious pleasure in seeing that the English, who reproached us so loudly for our servitude, were just as much slaves as we.” Instead of denying that the French “were slaves, “ the Frenchman’s remark asserts an equivalence of servitude in both England and France. According to this arch parable, English political liberty is a sham, for the impressed man is just as much a slave an any individual subjected to the whims of an absolute monarch.</p><p>(...)</p><p>The fabular quality of the event recounted by Voltaire corresponds to the hybrid of fiction and history embodied in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. Just as Voltaire’s anonymous Englishman acquires a symbolic importance in his terse narrative, so the figurative significance of impressment permeates Billy Budd. (...) In order to explore the sociopolitical implications of impressment in Billy Budd, I want to exploit the polyvalence of the word impressment by considering its various cognates, including impress, impression, pressure, and press. I attend to the semantic range of these words in order to expolicate the various manifestations of a single principle. By adopting such an approach, I aim to show how impressment functions as the governing trope of Melville’s final work. </p><p> In Billy Budd, the meaning and effect of impressment as both an abstract principle and historical practice are multiform. There are, however, three primary categories of meaning and activity that define the work of impressment in Melville’s tale; these include the sociohistorical, the psychological, and the textual. In my first category, impressment refers to the conscription of men for military service. The other two categories are fully intelligible only within this context, for impressment is a practice with a specific historical trajectory entailing particular effects. In a more general sense, though, impressment may be described as a _principle of compulsion_. It functions as a constraining force in the service of a ruling power, providing the means whereby a dominant group implements its sovereignty. In this sense, the word figures the process of interpellation, or the production of subjects, and signifies a principle under which all three of my categories may be classed. From this perspective, the object of impressment is the production of obedient and disciplined subjects.</p><p> My second category of analysis refers to the constitution of impressment as impression, which brings into play the cognitive dimensions of the phenomenon. Impressment-as-impression is a process whereby external forces of subjection produce corresponding psychological forces on the part of the subjected individual. (Impressment-as-impression functions, in other words, somewhat like Michel Foucault’s disciplinary correlative to corporal punishment.) (...)</p><p> The last aspect of impressment I wish to explore is the textual. In the same family of words as impressment are the noun and verb forms of press and impress, words whose derivations both share in and differ from the origin of impressment (...) For while the end of impressment was to form compliant subjects, the printing press was used to evoke both allegiance and dissent. I wish to uncover the voice of such dissent in order to show how Billy Budd questions the subjugating force of impressment.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>Hamlet, Shakespeare</p><p>HAMLET</p><p>Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the MIRROR up to NATURE, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his FORM and PRESSURE.</p><p>************************</p><p>Milton:</p><p>Then thou our FANCY of it self bereaving,</p><p>Doth make us MARBLE with too much conceaving;</p><p>********************************</p><p>_Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in Paradise Lost_. By Paul Stevens. Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.</p><p>Review by Nigel Smith</p><p><br /></p><p>Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in 'Paradise Lost' is probably a mistitled book. Professor Stevens is certainly concerned with theories of imagination and the way in which these theories helped to determine the language of Milton's epic. There is also a consideration of Shakespeare's presence, confined mostly to instances in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Tempest_. The significance of echoes from other plays are discussed, though a central consideration of echoes from the tragedies would have produced a very different work.</p><p>As the book stands, we are shown how Milton takes the Shakespearean incarnation of FANCY and modifies it, so that it becomes associated,via COMUS, with evil in Paradise Lost, unless it is governed by Reason, so reflecting the divine. </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p>John Milton </p><p>Comus</p><p><br /></p><p>The Scene changes to a stately Palace, set out with all manner of deliciousness; soft Musick, Tables spred with all dainties. Comus appears with his rabble, and the Lady set in an inchanted Chair, to whom he offers his Glass, which she puts by, and goes about to rise.</p><p><br /></p><p>Comus. Nay Lady sit; if I but wave this wand,</p><p>Your nervs are all chain'd up in Alabaster, [ 660 ]</p><p>And you a statue; or as Daphne was</p><p>Root-bound, that fled Apollo,</p><p>La. Fool do not boast,</p><p>Thou canst not touch the freedom of my minde</p><p>With all thy charms, although this corporal rinde</p><p>Thou haste immanacl'd, while Heav'n sees good. [ 665 ]</p><p>Co. Why are you vext, Lady? why do you frown?</p><p>Here dwell no frowns, nor anger, from these gates</p><p>Sorrow flies farr: See here be all the pleasures</p><p>That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts,</p><p>When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns [ 670 ]</p><p>Brisk as the April buds in Primrose-season.</p><p>And first behold this cordial Julep here</p><p>That flames, and dances in his crystal bounds</p><p>With spirits of balm, and fragrant Syrops mixt.</p><p>Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone, [ 675 ]</p><p>In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena</p><p>Is of such power to stir up joy as this,</p><p>To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.</p><p>Why should you be so cruel to your self,</p><p>And to those dainty limms which nature lent [ 680 ]</p><p>For gentle usage, and soft delicacy?</p><p>But you invert the cov'nants of her trust,</p><p>And harshly deal like an ill borrower</p><p>With that which you receiv'd on other terms,</p><p>Scorning the unexempt condition [ 685 ]</p><p><br /></p><p>By which all mortal frailty must subsist,</p><p>Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,</p><p>That have been tir'd all day without repast,</p><p>And timely rest have wanted, but fair Virgin</p><p>This will restore all soon. [ 690 ]</p><p>(snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>La. I had not thought to have unlockt my lips</p><p>In this unhallow'd air, but that this Jugler</p><p>Would think to charm my judgement, as mine eyes,</p><p>Obtruding false rules pranckt in reasons garb.</p><p>I hate when vice can bolt her arguments, [ 760 ]</p><p>And vertue has no tongue to check her pride:</p><p>Impostor do not charge most innocent nature,</p><p>As if she would her children should be riotous</p><p>With her abundance, she good cateress</p><p>Means her provision onely to the good [ 765 ]</p><p>That live according to her sober laws,</p><p>And holy dictate of spare Temperance:</p><p>If every just man that now pines with want</p><p>Had but a moderate and beseeming share</p><p>Of that which lewdly-pamper'd Luxury [ 770 ]</p><p>Now heaps upon som few with vast excess,</p><p>Natures full blessings would be well dispenc't</p><p>In unsuperfluous eeven proportion,</p><p>And she no whit encomber'd with her store,</p><p>And then the giver would be better thank't, [ 775 ]</p><p>His praise due paid, for swinish gluttony</p><p>Ne're looks to Heav'n amidst his gorgeous feast,</p><p>But with besotted base ingratitude</p><p>Cramms, and blasphemes his feeder. Shall I go on?</p><p>Or have I said anough? To him that dares [ 780 ]</p><p>Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words</p><p>Against the Sun-clad power of Chastity,</p><p>Fain would I somthing say, yet to what end?</p><p>Thou hast nor Eare nor Soul to apprehend</p><p>The sublime notion, and high mystery [ 785 ]</p><p>That must be utter'd to unfold the sage</p><p>And serious doctrine of Virginity,</p><p>And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know</p><p>More happines then this thy present lot.</p><p>Enjoy your deer Wit, and gay Rhetorick [ 790 ]</p><p>That hath so well been taught her dazling fence,</p><p>Thou art not fit to hear thy self convinc't;</p><p>Yet should I try, the uncontrouled worth</p><p>Of this pure cause would kindle my rap't spirits</p><p>To such a flame of sacred vehemence, [ 795 ]</p><p>That dumb things would be mov'd to sympathize,</p><p>And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake,</p><p>Till all thy magick structures rear'd so high,</p><p>Were shatter'd into heaps o're thy false head. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>********************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Delphic Lines:</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton</p><p>On Shakespeare. 1630</p><p><br /></p><p>WHat needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,</p><p>The labour of an age in piled Stones,</p><p>Or that his HALLOW'D RELIQUES should be hid</p><p>Under a Star-ypointing PYRAMID?</p><p>Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,</p><p>What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?</p><p>Thou in our wonder and astonishment</p><p>Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.</p><p>For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,</p><p>Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart</p><p>Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,</p><p>Those DELPHICK lines with deep impression took,</p><p>Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,</p><p>Dost make us MARBLE with too much conceaving;</p><p>And so Sepulcher'd in such POMP dost lie,</p><p>THAT KINGS for such a Tomb WOULD WISH TO DIE. </p><p><br /></p><p>***************************</p><p>John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629)</p><p><br /></p><p>...The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy,</p><p>That on the bitter cross</p><p>Must redeem our loss;</p><p>So both himself and us to glorifie:</p><p>Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep, [ 155 ]</p><p>The wakefull trump of doom must thunder through the deep,</p><p><br /></p><p>XVII</p><p><br /></p><p>With such a horrid clang</p><p>As on mount Sinai rang</p><p>While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake:</p><p>The aged Earth agast [ 160 ]</p><p>With terrour of that blast,</p><p>Shall from the surface to the center shake,</p><p>When at the worlds last session,</p><p>The dreadfull Judge in middle Air shall spread his throne.</p><p><br /></p><p>XVIII</p><p><br /></p><p>And then at last our bliss [ 165 ]</p><p>Full and perfect is,</p><p>But now begins; for from this happy day</p><p>Th' old Dragon under ground,</p><p>In *straiter limits bound*,</p><p>Not half so far casts his usurped sway, [ 170 ]</p><p>And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,</p><p>Swindges the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail.</p><p><br /></p><p>XIX,</p><p><br /></p><p>The Oracles are dumm,</p><p>No voice or hideous humm</p><p>Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. [ 175 ]</p><p>APOLLO from his SHRINE</p><p>Can no more divine,</p><p>With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving.</p><p>No nightly trance, or breathed spell,</p><p>Inspire's the PALE-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell. [ 180 ]</p><p>********************</p><p>http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/nativity/notes.shtml#intro</p><p><br /></p><p>Introduction. John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" is significant for its merit alone, though this remarkable poem is also important in the context of the artist's career. His first major work in English, the nativity ode reflects "his desire to attempt the highest subjects and to take on the role of bardic Poet-Priest" (Barbara Lewalski, Life of John Milton 38). Milton himself declares such ambition in a letter to his friend Charles Diodati: "I sing to the peace-bringing God descended from heaven, and the blessed generations covenanted in the sacred books,… I sing the starry axis and the singing hosts in the sky, *and of the gods suddenly destroyed in their own shrines*." ("Elegia sexta"). Milton's lofty tone suits he elevation of his artistry, as the nativity ode is the "first realization" of Milton's high poetic aspirations (Lewalski 37). </p><p><br /></p><p>*******************</p><p><br /></p><p>A DISCOURSE OF WIT.</p><p>BY David Abercromby, M. D.</p><p>Qui velit ingenio cedere rarus erit.</p><p>LONDON, Printed for John Weld at the Crown between the two Tem|ple Gates in Fleetstreet, 1686.</p><p><br /></p><p>3. I cannot then pretend to give you a true and genuine Notion of Wit, but an imperfect, and rude inchoate description thereof, yet so general and comprehensive, that it contains all such Creatures, as without any violence done to the Word, we may truely call Witty. Yet shall I not say with a great Man of this Age, that Wit is, un je ne scay quoy, I know not what: For this would be to say no|thing at all, and an easie answer to all difficulties, and no solution to any. Neither shall I call it a certain Liveliness, or Vivacity of the Mind inbred, or radicated in its Nature, which the Latines seem to insinuate by the word Ingenium; nor the subtlest operation of the Soul above the reach of meer matter, which perhaps is mean't by the French, who concieve Wit to be a Spiritual thing, or a Spi|rit L'esprit. Nor with others, that 'tis a certain acuteness of Undestanding, some men possess in a higher degree, the Life of discourse, as Salt, with|out which nothing is relished, a Ce|lestial Fire, a Spiritual Light, and what not. Such and the like Expressi|ons contain more of POMP THAN OF TRUTH, and are fitter to make us talkative on this Subject, than to en|lighten our Understandings. </p><p><br /></p><p>******************</p><p><br /></p><p>Salvation History, Poetic Form, and the Logic of Time in Milton's</p><p>Nativity Ode</p><p><br /></p><p>M.J. Doherty</p><p><br /></p><p>...It helps that Milton's Muse, like the prophet of Isaiah, chapter d of poetic parallelism to the liturgical readings of Epiphany shows up in the themes of the coming of the Incarnate Son as the Light and the singing of the New Song who *casts out idols*. The Lord is everlasting light (Luke iii), the light to the Gentiles (Isa. xlix) that comes at the acceptable time on the day of salvation, the light which, by leading of the star, subordinates all kings and all nations to itself...</p><p><br /></p><p>...Milton demonstrates the coming of the light by describing the evacuation of darkness, the emptying out of the places of the gods in the earth, from the inmost places of material substance - "And the chill Marble seems to sweat,/ While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat" (195-196) - to the outermost boundary of the "mooned Ashtaroth" (220) From the arches roof of the heavens and the shrine of Apollo at Delphos to the humblest evacuated urn, Christ's light penetrates space, completely expunging darkness. As Milton describes the pagan places of EGYPT, the power of hell is contracted into one spot, Memphis, in Osiris's complete perversion of religion: but in his "sacred chest" Osiris can no longer be at rest because the holy infant reigns. </p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Milton</p><p><br /></p><p>After these appear'd</p><p>495: A CREW who under Names of old Renown,</p><p>496: OSIRIS, ISIS, ORUS and their Train</p><p>497: *With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd*</p><p>498: FANATIC EGYPT and her Priests, to seek</p><p>499: Thir wandring Gods disguis'd in brutish forms</p><p>500: Rather then human.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>CREW</p><p>In Italian, a word for crew is ciurma, which is akin to ciurmaglia, a mob or rabble, and to ciurmare, to chat, cheat, inveigle (Westover, footnote)</p><p>***************************************</p><p>Puttenham, Arte</p><p>“And in her Majesty’s time that now is are sprung up another CREW of Courtly makers, Noble men and Gentlemen of her Majesty’s own servants, who have written excellently well as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest, of which number is first that noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford, Thomas Lord of Bukhurst, when he was young, Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Master Edward Dyer, Master Fulke Greville, Gascoigne, Britton, Turberville and a great many other learned Gentlemen, whose names I do not omit for envy, but to avoid tediousness, and who have deserved no little commendation.” </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Oxford/Shakespeare/Comus </p><p><br /></p><p>Milton, John: Comus</p><p><br /></p><p>118: COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the</p><p>119: other: with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of</p><p>120: wild</p><p>121: beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel</p><p>122: glistering.</p><p>123: They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in</p><p>124: their hands.</p><p>125:</p><p>126:</p><p>127: COMUS. The star that bids the shepherd fold</p><p>128: Now the top of heaven doth hold;</p><p>129: And the gilded car of day</p><p>130: His glowing axle doth allay</p><p>131: In the steep Atlantic stream;</p><p>132: And the slope sun his upward beam</p><p>133: Shoots against the dusky pole,</p><p>134: Pacing toward the other goal</p><p>135: Of his chamber in the east.</p><p>136: Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,</p><p>137: Midnight shout and revelry,</p><p>138: Tipsy dance and jollity.</p><p>139: Braid your locks with rosy twine,</p><p>140: Dropping odours, dropping wine.</p><p>141: Rigour now is gone to bed;</p><p>142: And Advice with scrupulous head,</p><p>143: Strict Age, and sour Severity,</p><p>144: With their grave saws, in slumber lie.</p><p>145: We, that are of purer fire,</p><p>146: Imitate the starry quire,</p><p>147: Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,</p><p>148: Lead in swift round the months and years.</p><p>149: The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,</p><p>150: Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;</p><p>151: And on the tawny sands and shelves</p><p>152: Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.</p><p>153: By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,</p><p>154: The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,</p><p>155: Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:</p><p>156: What hath night to do with sleep?</p><p>157: Night hath better sweets to prove;</p><p>158: Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.</p><p>159: Come, let us our rights begin;</p><p>160: 'T is only daylight that makes sin,</p><p>161: Which these dun shades will ne'er report.</p><p>162: Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,</p><p>163: Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame</p><p>164: Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,</p><p>165: That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb</p><p>166: Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,</p><p>167: And makes one blot of all the air!</p><p>168: Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,</p><p>169: Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend</p><p>170: Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end</p><p>171: Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,</p><p>172: Ere the blabbing eastern scout,</p><p>173: The nice Morn on the Indian steep,</p><p>174: From her cabined loop-hole peep,</p><p>175: And to the tell-tale Sun descry</p><p>176: Our concealed solemnity.</p><p>178: In a LIGHT FANTASTIC round.</p><p>179:</p><p>180: The Measure.</p><p>181:</p><p>182: Break off, break off! I feel the different pace</p><p>183: Of some chaste footing near about this ground.</p><p>184: Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;</p><p>185: Our number may affright. Some virgin sure</p><p>186: (For so I can distinguish by mine art)</p><p>187: Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,</p><p>188: And to my wily trains: I shall ere long</p><p>189: Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed</p><p>190: About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl</p><p>191: My dazzling spells into the spongy air,</p><p>192: Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,</p><p>193: And give it false presentments, lest the place</p><p>194: And my quaint habits breed astonishment,</p><p>195: And put the damsel to suspicious flight;</p><p>196: Which must not be, for that's against my course.</p><p>197: I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,</p><p>198: And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,</p><p>199: Baited with reasons not unplausible,</p><p>200: Wind me into the easy-hearted man,</p><p>201: And hug him into snares. When once her eye</p><p>202: Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,</p><p>203: I shall appear some harmless villager</p><p>204: Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.</p><p>205: But here she comes; I fairly step aside,</p><p>206: And hearken, if I may her business hear.</p><p>207:</p><p>208: The LADY enters.</p><p>209:</p><p>210: LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,</p><p>211: My best guide now. Methought it was the sound</p><p>212: Of riot and ill-managed merriment,</p><p>213: Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe</p><p>214: Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,</p><p>215: When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,</p><p>216: In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,</p><p>217: And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth</p><p>218: To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence</p><p>219: Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else</p><p>220: Shall I inform my unacquainted feet</p><p>221: In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Ascham, The Scholemaster</p><p><br /></p><p>**But I know as many, or mo, and some, sometyme my deare frendes, for whose sake I hate going into that countrey the more, who, partyng out of England feruent in the loue of Christes doctrine, and well furnished with the feare of God, returned out of Italie worse transformed, than euer was any in CIRCES Court. I know diuerse, that went out of England, men of innocent life, men of excellent learnyng, who returned out of Italie, not onely with worse maners, but also with lesse learnyng: neither so willing to liue orderly, nor yet so hable to speake learnedlie, as they were at home, before they went abroad. And why? Plato yt wise writer, and worthy traueler him selfe, telleth the cause why. He went into Sicilia, a countrey, no nigher Italy by site of place, than Italie that is now, is like Sicilia that was then, in all corrupt maners and licenciousnes of life. Plato found in Sicilia, euery Citie full of vanitie, full of factions, euen as Italie is now. And as Homere, like a learned Poete, doth feyne, that CIRCES, by pleasant inchantmentes, did turne men into beastes, some into Swine, som</p><p>into Asses, some into Foxes, some into Wolues etc. euen so Plato, like a wise Philosopher, doth plainelie declare, that pleasure, by licentious vanitie, that sweete and perilous poyson of all youth, doth ingender in all those, that yeld vp themselues to her, foure notorious properties.</p><p>{1. lethen</p><p>{2. dysmathian</p><p>{3. achrosynen</p><p>{4. ybrin.</p><p> The first, forgetfulnes of all good thinges learned before: the second, dulnes to receyue either learnyng or honestie euer after: the third, a mynde embracing lightlie the worse opinion, and baren of discretion to make trewe difference betwixt good and ill, betwixt troth, and vanitie, the fourth, a proude disdainfulnes of other good men, in all honest matters. Homere and Plato, haue both one meanyng, looke both to one end. For, if a man inglutte himself with vanitie, or walter in filthines like a Swyne, all learnyng, all goodnes, is sone forgotten: Than, quicklie shall he becum a dull Asse, to vnderstand either learnyng or honestie: and yet shall he be as sutle as a Foxe, in breedyng of mischief, in bringyng in misorder, with a busie head, a discoursing tong, and a factious harte, in euery priuate affaire, in all matters of state, with this pretie propertie, alwayes glad to commend the worse partie, and euer ready to defend the falser opinion. And why? For, where will is giuen from goodnes to vanitie, the mynde is sone caryed from right iudgement, to any fond opinion, in Religion, in Philosophie, or any other kynde of learning. The fourth fruite of vaine pleasure, by Homer and Platos iudgement, is pride in them selues, contempt of others, the very badge of all those that serue in Circes Court. The trewe meenyng of both Homer and Plato, is plainlie declared in one short sentence of the holy Prophet of God Hieremie, crying out of the vaine & vicious life of the Israelites. This people (sayth he) be fooles and dulhedes to all goodnes, but sotle, cunning and bolde, in any mischiefe. </p><p>(SNIP)</p><p>But I am affraide, that ouer many of our trauelers into Italie, do not exchewe the way to CIRCES Court: but go, and ryde, and runne, and flie thether, they make great hast to cum to her: they make great sute to serue her: yea, I could point out some with my finger, that neuer had gone out of England, but onelie to serue CIRCES, in Italie. Vanitie and vice, and any licence to ill liuyng in England was counted stale and rude vnto them. And so, beyng Mules and Horses before they went, returned verie Swyne and Asses home agayne: yet euerie where verie Foxes with suttle and busie heades; and where they may, verie wolues, with cruell malicious hartes. A meruelous monster, which, for filthines of liuyng, for dulnes to learning him selfe, for wilinesse in dealing with others, for malice in hurting without cause, should carie at once in one bodie, the belie of a Swyne, the head of an Asse, the brayne of a Foxe, the wombe of a wolfe. If you thinke, we iudge amisse, and write to sore against you, heare, what the Italian sayth of the English man, what the master reporteth of the scholer: who vttereth playnlie, what is taught by him, and what learned by you, saying, Englese Italianato, e vn diabolo incarnato, that is to say, you remaine men in shape and facion, but becum deuils in life and condition. This is not, the opinion of one, for some priuate spite, but the iudgement of all, in a common Prouerbe, which riseth, of that learnyng, and those maners, which you gather in Italie: a good Scholehouse of wholesome doctrine: and worthy Masters of commendable Scholers, where the Master had rather diffame hym selfe for hys teachyng, than not shame his Scholer for his learning. A good nature of the maister, and faire conditions of the scholers. And now chose you, you Italian English men, whether you will be angrie with vs, for calling you monsters, or with the Italianes, for callyng you deuils, or else with your owne selues, that take so much paines, and go so farre, to make your selues both. If some yet do not well vnderstand, what is an English man Italianated, I will plainlie tell him. He, that by liuing, & traueling in Italie, bringeth home into England out of Italie, the Religion, the learning, the policie, the experience, the maners of Italie. That is to say, for Religion, Papistrie or worse: for learnyng, lesse commonly than they caried out with them: for pollicie, a factious hart, a discoursing head, a mynde to medle in all mens matters: for experience, plentie of new mischieues neuer knowne in England before: for maners, varietie of vanities, and chaunge of filthy lyuing. These be the inchantementes of CIRCES, brought out of Italie, to marre mens maners in England: much, by example of ill life, but more by preceptes of fonde bookes, of late translated out of Italian into English, sold in euery shop in London, commended by honest titles the soner to corrupt honest maners: dedicated ouer boldlie to vertuous and honorable personages, the easielier to begile simple and innocent wittes. It is pitie, that those, which haue authoritie and charge, to allow and dissalow bookes to be printed, be no more circumspect herein, than they are. Ten Sermons at Paules Crosse do not so moch good for mouyng men to trewe doctrine, as one of those bookes do harme, with inticing men to ill liuing. Yea, I say farder, those bookes, tend not so moch to corrupt honest liuyng, as they do, to subuert trewe Religion. Mo Papistes be made, by your mery bookes of Italie, than by your earnest bookes of Louain.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************</p><p>Gabriel Harvey's satirical portrait of the Earl of Oxford:</p><p><br /></p><p>Speculum Tuscanismi</p><p><br /></p><p>Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,</p><p>Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress</p><p>No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:</p><p>No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.</p><p>For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,</p><p>In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.</p><p>His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,</p><p>With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.</p><p>Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,</p><p>Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a</p><p>diveling.</p><p>A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,</p><p>French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.</p><p>Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,</p><p>Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,</p><p>In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,</p><p>For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,</p><p>A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.</p><p>Not the like discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out,</p><p>Not the like resolute man for great and serious affairs,</p><p>Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets and privities of States,</p><p>Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nos'd like to Naso,</p><p>Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a thousand for to be employ'd,</p><p>This, nay more than this, doth practice of Italy in one year.</p><p>None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelve month</p><p>Hath so perfited outly and inly both body, both soul,</p><p>That none for sense and senses half matchable with them.</p><p>A vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an eagle,</p><p>A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion.</p><p>Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,</p><p>All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.</p><p>O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,</p><p>Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy. </p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p>Comus, Milton</p><p>Spir. Ile tell ye, 'tis not vain, or fabulous,</p><p>(Though so esteem'd by shallow ignorance)</p><p>What the sage Poëts taught by th' heav'nly Muse, [ 515 ]</p><p>Storied of old in high immortal vers</p><p>Of dire Chimera's and inchanted Iles,</p><p>And rifted Rocks whose entrance leads to hell,</p><p>For such there be, but unbelief is blind.</p><p>Within the navil of this hideous Wood, [ 520 ]</p><p>Immur'd in cypress shades a Sorcerer dwels</p><p>Of Bacchus, and of Circe born, great Comus,</p><p>Deep skill'd in all his mothers witcheries,</p><p>And here to every thirsty wanderer,</p><p>By sly enticement gives his banefull cup, [ 525 ]</p><p>With many murmurs mixt, whose pleasing poison</p><p>The visage quite transforms of him that drinks,</p><p>And the inglorious likenes of a beast</p><p>Fixes instead, unmoulding reasons mintage</p><p>Character'd in the face; this have I learn't [ 530 ]</p><p>Tending my flocks hard by i'th hilly crofts,</p><p>That brow this bottom glade, whence night by night</p><p>He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl</p><p>Like stabl'd wolves, or tigers at their prey,</p><p>Doing abhorred rites to Hecate [ 535 ]</p><p>In their obscured haunts of inmost bowres.</p><p>****************************************</p><p>Mentis Character - Style is the image of man, for man is but his MIND... (Puttenham)</p><p><br /></p><p>No, I am that I am, and they that level</p><p>At my abuses reckon up their own;</p><p>I may be straight, they themselves be bevel.</p><p>*By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown*,</p><p>Unless this general evil they maintain:</p><p>All men are bad, and in their badness reign. </p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p>Hamlet</p><p><br /></p><p>Fare thee well at once.</p><p>The glowworm shows the matin to be near</p><p>And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.</p><p>Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me. </p><p><br /></p><p>****************</p><p>Melville, Billy Budd</p><p><br /></p><p>Over him but scarce illuminating him, two battle lanterns swing from two massive beams of the deck above. Fed with the oil supplied by the war contractors (whose gains, honest or otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of death), with flickering splashes of dirty yellow light they pollute the pale moonshine all but ineffectually struggling in obstructed flecks through the open ports from which the tampioned cannon protrude.</p><p><br /></p><p>***************</p><p> </p><p>Jeff Westover</p><p>The Impressments of Billy Budd</p><p> For many seamen at Spithead and the Nore, the political and linguistic barriers of literacy entailed a disabling relation of paternalism between the regime with which they negotiated and themselves. In Melville’s novella, Vere’s frequently remarked fatherly bearing towards Billy ironically worsens the foretopman’s position. The Captain’s kindness so flusters Billy, whose excessive desire to display his duty momentarily paralyzes him, that he strikes out not only in defense, but in a hapless, failed effort to speak. As Susan Mizruchi points out, “Billy suffers at times from...the inability to speak at all, which parallels his illiteracy, his inability to read the signs of his experience. The language available to him as a lower-ranking seaman differs from the superior articulation of the educated officers, Vere and Claggart.</p><p> The political arbitrations wrought by writing align plebeian illiteracy with regimental paternalism. Paternalism predicates inferiority, and that predication is implemented by an administrative literacy. The same paternalism that Vere shows toward Billy also prevails in a note addressed by one of the mutinous crews at Spithead to the Lords of the Admiralty on August 19, 1795: “the ill-usage we have on board this ship forced us to fly to your Lordships the same as a child to its father. It is almost impossible for us to put it down in [sic] paper as cruel as it really is with flogging and abusing above humanity.” The Spithead Delegates wrote another letter to Admiral Lord Bridport, addressing him as “the father of the Fleet.” For their part, the Nore mutineers similarly evoked the king’s title “Father of your People” in a petition. The tender though sentimentalizing image of a child seeking adult protection both reveals the pathos of the seamen’s plight and the apparently inherent union between administrative paternalism and proletarian illiteracy. Such language asserts the hierarchy that informs the military, but it does so by means of an ideology that posits military relations as familial; it thereby mystifies the real quality of the relations it constitutes. Hence Vere’s paternal regard for Billy masks the fact that he acts from an idiosyncratic interpretation of military requirements.</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************</p><p>Writing Britain: James VI & I and the National Body</p><p>Samantha Murphy</p><p>(...)Charnes’ description of narrative imperialism, especially in relation to its ability to create an absolute identity which structures the identity of others, is similar to Slavoj Žižek’s notion of the ‘nodal point’ or ‘master-signifier’. Since an ideology is “a network of elements whose value wholly depends on their respective differential positions within the symbolic structure” (Tarrying 231), Žižek posits that ideological space is composed of “floating signifiers” whose identity is ultimately anchored through “the intervention of a certain ‘nodal point’ … which ‘quilts’ them, stops their sliding and fixes their meaning” (Sublime 87). By affixing an ideological field, the nodal point effectuates its identity. Thus, it is not only the point through which the subject is attached to the signifier, but also “the point that interpolates individual into subject by addressing it with the call of a certain master-signifier (‘Communism’, ‘God’, ‘Freedom,’ ‘America’)” (Sublime 101). This master-signifier embodies the ideological field and supplies the identity of each component part. As the consolidation and naturalization of power is due, in no small part, to the manipulation of rhetorical signs and symbols, literacy can be defined as the act of learning signifiers in relation to the nodal point. Critical literacies enable us to step back from that point and deconstruct the absolute identity around which meaning is formed. Returning to Žižek, if we “see it [the master-signifier] in the light of day, it changes into an every day object, it dissipates itself, precisely because in itself it is nothing at all” (Sublime 170).[1] </p><p>As my contribution to this discussion of cultural studies and critical literacies, I offer a reading of the nation-building literacies produced during the reign of England’s first Stuart monarch, James I. Beginning a new dynasty with new cultural imperatives, James presided over England during a period of rapid growth and expansion. His vision, expressed through a paternally absolute discourse, sought to redefine England, both to others and herself, as a consolidated Great Britain. Courtier Francis Bacon observed that James’ policies endeavored to “IMPRINT and inculcate into the hearts and heads of the people, that they are one people and one nation” (qtd. in Ivic 135). Fostering a British national consciousness, Christopher Ivic notes, caused “[m]any of James’ subjects . . . [to find] themselves rethinking their place within an emergent multi-national British polity” (135). James, unlike his predecessors, viewed himself as head of a geographically and politically unified state and his rhetorical productions strove to create an indivisible nation-state centered around the conjoined body of king and subjects. This hybrid body situated James as an all-inclusive “louing nourish-father” (“Basilikon Doron” 27) who sustained and unified the subjects of his nation.</p><p>Crucially, James exhibited his body to his subjects through writing. Textuality, the book to be studied, is as much a means to power as direct political action. Jeffrey Masten cogently describes James’ position as “a figure situated at the intersection of contemporaneous meanings of author: authority, father, instigator, ruler, writer” (66).[2] James recognized that to narrate is not simply to produce words, it is to produce the parameters of being; thus, he used his published material as a forum to implement his own narrative imperialism. In the process, he raised issues of author/ity[3] and paternity in order to position the kingly body as his ideal of parens patriae.[4] One metaphor frequently used by James in this figuration is the mirror image. Calling his writing the “mirrour . . . / Which sheweth the shaddow of a worthy King,” James commands that it act as a “patterne” for his subjects (“Basilikon Doron” 1). In this, his rhetorical and material strategy is clear. The king’s body, replicated through his words, serves as the template for the bodies of his children-subjects. In the policy this analogy promotes, the king’s reflected image serves as the point of reference for each subject(ed) body.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>In consistently returning to the dangers of misinterpretation, James displays an understandable anxiety over the possibility of absolute authorship. In the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, collaboration was the prevalent mode of textual production. The assignment of sole authorship was prescribed by neither law nor custom. Even when individual authorship was claimed, of course, texts did not emerge from a vacuum. As seen by James’ critique of his misreaders, his words do not simply or absolutely assign meaning. Responding to this danger, James took the unusual step of authorizing the collation and publication of his texts in 1616’s The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince, James. This was a crucial move in James’ establishment of narrative imperialism. In the words of historian Kevin Sharpe, Workes marks the “moment when the authority of the text resided in the name of the creator” (17).</p><p>How was James’ author/ity effectuated? In his preface to Workes, the Bishop of Winton describes the collection as “divers Off-springs . . . proceeded[ing] from one braine.” He continues that, in re-membering the scattered corpus, Workes “give[s] euery childe [its] owne Father; [and] euery Booke [its] trew Author.” In this, Winton echoes James’ rhetoric of benevolent paternal author/ity. The readers are prepared to view James as the generative father, birthing his textual offspring. As children of the true father, they properly reflect his image. Then Winton’s language takes a darker turn: the kingly text has been divorced from the royal body, resulting in the need to “recover those that have bene lost.” The lost offspring, separated from the king, are “abused by false copies” (qtd. in Masten 72). The reproductive metaphor has morphed into malevolence. Workes attempts to contain that malevolence and place rhetorical reproduction firmly into the king’s hands.</p><p>What James’ work rhetorically reproduces is a hybrid body encompassing himself and his subjects. Agreeing with Peter Sloterdijk’s contention that “[t]o embody a doctrine means to make oneself into its medium” (102), I argue that James sought to discursively and materially embody the doctrine of paternally generative author/ity. Exhibiting his body through writing, he creates a new literacy—a new common-sense map of meaning that consolidates his vision of absolute monarchy. As part of this process, James’ rhetoric extends out from the page to the material body. Calling his “life” a “law-booke and a mirrour to [his] people,” James insists that subjects “read” in him “the practice of their owne Lawes; [that] therein they may see, by [his] image, what life they should lead” (BD 34). Authorship goes beyond the written word when the body of the king is the “law-booke” for his people. Stressing the conjoined nature of monarch and subject, James acknowledges that any “sinne” committed by the king is not “a single sinne procuring but the fall of one; but . . . an exemplare sinne . . . draw[ing] with it the whole multitude to be guilty of the same” (BD 12-13). As a mirror to his people, a monarch’s sin is never singular; it is reflected back by the “whole multitude” of his subjects.</p><p>For James, the power relations inherent in patriarchal absolutism demand a hybridized kingly body; one that is antithetical to democratic principles. Acting as a hybridized network composing the body of the state, the king’s body is not only joined to, but symbiotic with, the body of his nation. All life flows from James, and in him there is all life. In Speach to the Lords and Commons, James states, “For the King that is Parens Patriae, telles you of his wants. Nay, Patria ipsa by him speaks to you. For if the King wants, the state wants, and therefore the strengthening of the King is the preservation and standing of the state; And woe be to him that divides the weale of the King from the weale of the kingdom” (195). Sharing a body, king and country are indivisible. With his hybrid body, James sustains his state with his voice containing all voices and his welfare translating into national welfare. Constructing a hierarchy of paternal author/ity, James displays his body through the written word as a means of creating a new national literacy. In these terms, the maps of meaning created by James place him as the fecund father, the literal embodiment of the law, the mirror for his subjects, and the boundary of the national body.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p>Jeff Westover</p><p>The Impressments of Billy Budd</p><p>Text as Impress</p><p><br /></p><p> In concluding his novella with two contradictory reports of Billy Budd’s demise, Melville both explicitly addresses the subjective nature of history and demonstrates the complex character of hegemony. As “an inside narrative,” the novella presents itself as a framework from which to assess the information in the different texts, even though the ambiguity that permeates the novellas suggest that its textual authority, like that of its concluding texts, cannot prove ultimately comprehensive. From this perspective, the narrator’s juxtaposition of the official naval account and the populist ballad invites a skeptical response to the authoritative truth of the novella.</p><p><br /></p><p> Moreover, to the extent that Melville’s narrative renders “Billy in the Darbies,” both as a scene in its plot and ad the text of the closing ballad, it pre-presents and to some extent repeats the compulsion of impressment. The depictions of Billy in manacles form a composite “imprese,” or emblem, for the novella as a whole. Yet the image of Billy in chains functions as an impress in a more familiar sense, for this iconic posture represents the “characteristic or distinctive mark” of the text, figuring the impressed man par excellence. In this sense, military impressment is repeated in print form.</p><p><br /></p><p> That repetition is not a simple matter, however. Although the dominant class of a society asserts its control partly through its recourse to a governing, constitutive ideology, the ascendancy of that class is by no means static and impenetrable. As Raymond Williams insists, “hegemony is not singular; indeed...its own internal structures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by the same token,...they can be continually challenged and in certain respects modified.”</p><p>*************************************</p><p>Melville, Billy Budd, Ch. 7</p><p>With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers of his rank, with whom at times he would necessarily consort, found him lacking in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman, as they deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from their company one would be apt to say to another, something like this: "Vere is a noble fellow, Starry Vere. Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio" (meaning him with the Lord title) "is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter. But between you and me now, don't you think there is a queer streak of the pedantic running thro' him? Yes, like the King's yarn in a coil of navy-rope?"</p><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-40576800792645805182021-12-12T12:46:00.000-08:002021-12-12T12:46:11.798-08:00Shakespeare Made Minerva Afraid<p> Droeshout Engraving – Figure of Disorder</p><p>*******************************</p><p>Prospero:</p><p>This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p>The Grotesque: A study in Meanings</p><p>Frances Barasch</p><p>Chimeras</p><p>‘Chimera’ or ‘monster against nature’ was a preferred meaning of ‘grotesque’ during the first half of the seventeenth century. Ben Jonson, Sir William D’Avenant, Roger Boyle, Lord Orrery, and Sir Thomas Browne used ‘grotesque’ for specific hybrid figures, which usually were minor details in the larger grotesque designs of Italian origin. The chimera was only a synecdoche of the entire corpus of art treasures found in the Roman grottoes, but it became an important meaning in the word ‘grotesque’.</p><p>In Ben Jonson’s Discoveries, we learn that the work ‘Chimaera’s was being replaced by ‘Grottesque’, among the vulgar at any rate. He interrupts his retelling De Progressu Picturae to notice Vitruvius’ attitude toward Augustan painters and to comment on the contemporary use of ‘Grottesque’:</p><p>“See where he [Vitruvius, VII] complaines of their painting Chimaera’s by the vulgar unaptly called Grottesque; Saying, that men who were borne truly to study, and emulate nature, did nothing but make monsters against nature; which Horace [Ars Poetica, l.1-10] so laught at.</p><p>Jonson takes the opportunity of the moment to indicate his own preference over ‘Grottesque’ for the term ‘Chimaera’s’ or the phrase “monsters against nature” and to support Vitruvius by invoking Horace’s authoritative ridicule of the famous mermaid, which we have already noticed in connection with Montaigne and Vauquelin.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>HOR., Ars Poet. 1.</p><p>Suppose a painter wished to couple a horse’s neck with a man’s head,</p><p>and to lay feathers of every hue on limbs gathered here and there, so</p><p>that a woman, lovely above, foully ended in an ugly fish below; would</p><p>you restrain your laughter, my friends, if admitted to a private view?</p><p>Believe me…a BOOK will appear uncommonly like that PICTURE, if</p><p>impossible figures are wrought into it – *like a sick man’s dreams* –</p><p>with the result that neither head nor foot is ascribed to a single</p><p>shape, and unity is lost*. </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>In his translation of Horace’s _Art of Poetry_ Jonson translates ‘Minerva’ as ‘Nature’</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Invita Minerva</p><p>**********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, in the verse prologue to _Every Man in his Humour_, characterizes Shakespeare's plays as 'Monsters' </p><p>SCENE,---LONDON</p><p>PROLOGUE.</p><p><br /></p><p>Though need make many poets, and some such</p><p>As art and nature have not better'd much;</p><p>Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,</p><p>As he dare serve the *ill customs of the AGE*,</p><p>Or purchase your delight at such a rate,</p><p>As, for it, he himself must justly hate:</p><p>To make a child now swaddled, to proceed</p><p>Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,</p><p>Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,</p><p>And help of some few foot and half-foot words,</p><p>Fight over York and Lancaster's king jars,</p><p>And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.</p><p>He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see</p><p>One such to-day, as other plays should be;</p><p>Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,</p><p>Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;</p><p>Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard</p><p>The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard</p><p>To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum</p><p>Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;</p><p>But deeds, and language, such as men do use,</p><p>And persons, such as comedy would choose,</p><p>When she would shew an image of the times,</p><p>And sport with human follies, not with crimes.</p><p>Except we make them such, by loving still</p><p>Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.</p><p>I mean such errors as you'll all confess,</p><p>By laughing at them, they deserve no less:</p><p>Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then,</p><p>*You, that have so grac'd MONSTERS, may like men*.</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Bartholomew Fair: Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>T H E</p><p>I N D u C T I O N</p><p>O N T H E</p><p>S T A G E.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That</p><p>how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is</p><p>to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a</p><p>Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and</p><p>Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the</p><p>present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the</p><p>Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser,</p><p>with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as</p><p>good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind-</p><p>heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her</p><p>Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers</p><p>for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead</p><p>of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A</p><p>sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an</p><p>Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be ne-</p><p>ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he</p><p>says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to MAKE NA-</p><p>TURE AFRAID in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tem-</p><p>pests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his Head with other</p><p>Mens Heels; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances,</p><p>reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Pup-</p><p>pets will please any body, they shall be entreated to</p><p>come in.</p><p>************************************</p><p>‘Mix his head with other men’s heels’: Antick/Topsy-Turvy/Carnivalesque/Harlequin</p><p>************************************</p><p>Jonson</p><p>Timber/Discoveries</p><p>(In the difference of wits, note 10)</p><p><br /></p><p>Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly</p><p>seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that</p><p>is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not</p><p>recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their</p><p>sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and</p><p>are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as</p><p>lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow.</p><p>Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are</p><p>thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever</p><p>election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first,</p><p>and <></p><p><br /></p><p>http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG</p><p><br /></p><p>The true artificer will</p><p>not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from</p><p>life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his</p><p>hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat,</p><p>it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-</p><p>chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical</p><p>strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant</p><p>gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but</p><p>artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called</p><p>barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can</p><p>come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment,</p><p>knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him.</p><p>He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men,</p><p>will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing,</p><p>his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his</p><p>readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what</p><p>sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in</p><p>men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their</p><p>minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold</p><p>what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is</p><p>beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which</p><p>strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided</p><p>faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate</p><p>phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which</p><p>is worse), especially for that it is naught.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Sending up the Oxfordian Sublime </p><p><br /></p><p>Cynthia’s Revels, Ben Jonson</p><p><br /></p><p>Amorphus [Oxford]. That's good, but how Pythagorical?</p><p>Phi. I, Amorphus. Why Pythagorical Breeches?</p><p>Amor. O most kindly of all, 'tis a conceit of that FORTUNE,</p><p>I am bold to hug my Brain for.</p><p>Pha. How is't, exquisite Amorphus?</p><p>Amor. O, I am rapt with it, 'tis so fit, so proper,</p><p>so happy. --</p><p>Phi. Nay do not rack us thus?</p><p>Amor. I never truly relisht my self before. Give me</p><p>your Ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their trans-</p><p>migration into several shapes.</p><p>Mor. Most rare, in sweet troth.</p><p>************************************</p><p>Milton</p><p><br /></p><p>Then to the well-trod stage anon,</p><p>If Jonson's learned sock be on,</p><p>Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,</p><p>Warble his native wood-notes wild.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>Milton’s ‘grottesque’ – cavernous </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p>The Grotesque: A Study in Meanings</p><p>Frances Barasch</p><p>Milton’s ‘grottesque’ appears in the fourth book of Paradise Lost (1667) in the description of Satan’s envious view of the hill of Eden crowned by Paradise itself:</p><p>SO on he fares, and to the border comes</p><p>Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,</p><p>Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,</p><p>As with a rural mound, the champaign head</p><p>Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides</p><p> With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,</p><p>Access denied;</p><p>The ascent to Eden is “grottesque and wilde”, but Paradise, “A Silvan Scene” with “Shade above shade” of trees is an orderly arrangement of concentric circles crowning the top of the hill. This crown is the “lovely Landskip” Milton described in subsequent lines:</p><p><br /></p><p>and overhead up grew</p><p>Insuperable height of loftiest shade,</p><p>Cedar and pine and fir and branching palm,</p><p>A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend</p><p>Shade above shade, a woody theatre</p><p>Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops</p><p>The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung;</p><p>(...)</p><p> And higher than that wall a circling row</p><p>Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton’s distinction between the lower and upper slopes and the crown of the hill is significant: it is made more than once in the same section:</p><p><br /></p><p>Now to th’ascent of that steep savage Hill</p><p>Satan had journied on, pensive and slow;</p><p>But furder way found none, so thick entwin’d,</p><p>As one continu’d brake, the undergrowth </p><p>Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplext</p><p>All path of Man or Beast that passed that way: (ll. 172-7)</p><p><br /></p><p>The steep ascent is savage, perplexing as well as grotesque, wild, inaccessible. But Satan, neither man nor beast, “overleap’d all bound/Of Hill or Highest wall” and landed “on the Tree of Life,/The middle tree and highest there that grew”. On the crown of Eden’s hill are orderly ranks of tress, arranged “shade above shade”, that is, symetrically, row upon row as in a “theatre” of circus. And in the exact center is the Tree of Life. This Platonic and Dantesque view of Paradise is based on the classical circle. It suggests all that is ideal and heavenly in Milton’s aesthetic. Milton’s “lovely Lantskip” is a harmonious classical landscape, not a pleasingly irregular scene. The ascent to Paradise, on the other hand, is entangled by undergrowth; its savage, hairy sides symbolize the disorder and confusion of this world. It was a place where both man and beast groped confusedly, without clear direction, toward salvation. Among the properties of man’s disordered natural world were fearsome caves and stony grots, traditionally “Deepe, darke, uneasy, dolefull, comfortlesse”, as Spenser described them. These disorders of the natural world are created in part “by grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades” (Comus) and “infamous hills” (Comus) Milton’s ‘grottesque’ belonged to this natural world. It is indeed part of irregular nature, but it is never pleasing. It is plainly the horrific antithesis of a classical, ideal landscape.</p><p>*************************</p><p>masque/anti-masque</p><p>*************************</p><p>The Grotesque: A study in Meanings</p><p>Frances K. Barasch</p><p><br /></p><p>When Sir Thomas Browne used ‘grotesque’ for chimeras and fantastic creatures in 1643 and 1646, he still associated the word with pictorial delineations and painting techniques, but he introduced the word into a new sphere of thought and made it serve for the fantastic and unnatural concepts perpetuated in ancient axioms. As a modern philosopher, Browne reversed these ancient premises: The only indisputable Axiom”, he insisted, is “there are no Grotesques in nature”.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p><br /></p><p>The Comical Scene: Perspective and Civility on the Renaissance</p><p>Stage – Peter Womack</p><p><br /></p><p>.....For Jonson, the main point of the unities is not so much</p><p>verisimilitude as proportion. As he writes in Discoveries,</p><p>paraphrasing Heinsius:</p><p><br /></p><p>In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost bound,</p><p>how far with fitness, and a necessary proportion, he may produce, and</p><p>determine it…For, as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no</p><p>more can the action, either the comedy, or tragedy, without his fit</p><p>bounds.</p><p><br /></p><p>Boundedness is the condition of all proportion and fitness; nothing</p><p>can be good without its proper limits. It is a principle that goes</p><p>beyond poetics, informing for example these comedies’ preoccupation</p><p>with the idea of humor. Asper, the authorial mouthpiece of Every Man</p><p>Out, defines humor as “whatsoe’er hath flexure and humidity, / As</p><p>wanting power to contain itself,” and explains that the medical humors</p><p>(choler, melancholy, and so on) are so called “By reason that they</p><p>flow continually / In some one part, and are not continent” (“Grex,”</p><p>ll. 96-101). The follies we are about to see, then, are types of</p><p>incontinence, ugly and absurd because of their lack of any limiting</p><p>principle. A comedy that wandered whimsically from country to country</p><p>would be complicit with the humors it displayed. Rather, it should</p><p>emulate the wise men who rule their lives by knowledge, “and can</p><p>becalm / All sea of HUMOUR with the marble trident / Of their strong</p><p>spirits” (The Poetaster, 4.6.74-76). Although his plays were not</p><p>written for a Serlian stage, Jonson reproduces its boundedness at the</p><p>level of their construction through his self-imposed limitations of</p><p>place and time. The classical architecture of the dramatic form, with</p><p>its firm symmetries and commanding point of view, stands in for the</p><p>perspective scene.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>Amorphus/Oxford/Shakespeare:</p><p><br /></p><p>He that is with him is Amorphus, a traveller, one so made out of a</p><p><<mixture of shreds and forms>>, that himself is truly deformed. He</p><p>walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth, he is the</p><p>very mint of compliment, all his behaviours are printed, his face is</p><p>another volume of essays, and his beard is an Aristarchus. (Jonson,</p><p>Cynthia's Revels) </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>LOGODAEDELUS: Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe</p><p>Note 55. Ingenuus, an especially rich term, yields a noun (ingenuitas)and an adverb (ingenue) in Perottie. One acts ingenue whose comportment is “as befits a free man, without fear, without anything to do with servility. (ingenue adverbium, hoc est libere, unde ingenue loqui dicimus eum, qui ita loquitur, ut liberum hominem decet, nihil dimidum, nihil servile habens).</p><p><br /></p><p>indeed free</p><p>*************************************</p><p>Image, Imagination, and Cognition: Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice</p><p><br /></p><p>...David Zagoury traces the art theoretical term ‘ingegno’ in the Florentine art world, the birthplace of Renaissance and early modern art, and in particular in the writings of Benedetto Varchi (1503-1565), a philosopher deeply engaged in Florentine cultural debates. A cognate of genius, ingegno was understood as a cognitive ability, and thereby related to imagination. As Zagoury shows in the course of a micro-historical analysis of events that took place over several weeks in 1547 and in which Varchi plays the central role, ingegno, a NATURAL or INBORN ability, was contrasted with ‘fatica’ or physical labour, and the role of each in artistic production carefully weighed and judged. </p><p><br /></p><p>**************************************</p><p>Ben Jonson, in his translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry, translates Minerva as ‘Nature’.</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, on Shakespeare</p><p><br /></p><p>Nature herself was proud of his DESIGNS</p><p>And joy'd to wear the DRESSING of his lines,</p><p>Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,</p><p>As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.</p><p>The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,</p><p>Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,</p><p>But antiquated and deserted lie,</p><p>As they were not of Nature's family.</p><p>Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,</p><p>My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.</p><p>For though the poet's matter nature be,</p><p>His art doth give the fashion; and, that he</p><p>Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,</p><p>(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat</p><p>Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same</p><p>(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame,</p><p>Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;</p><p>For a good poet's made, as well as born;</p><p>And such wert thou. Look how the father's face</p><p>Lives in his issue, even so the race</p><p>Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines</p><p>In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;</p><p>In each of which he SEEMS to shake a lance,</p><p>As brandish'd at the EYES of ignorance.</p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Minerva in the Forge of Vulcan: Ingegno, Fatica, and Imagination in Early Florentine Art Theory</p><p>David Zagoury</p><p><br /></p><p>It is significant that the two most important authors writing about Michelangelo after the publication of Varchi’s lectures both praised Michelangelo’s imagination. In 1553 Ascanio Condivi (1525-1574), a keen reader of the _Due lezzioni_, underlined Michelangelo’s supremely powerful ‘virtu imaginativa’. In the second edition of his Vite (1568), Vasari amended his biography of Michelangelo by inserting praise of his ‘immaginativa’ in a passage particularly relevant here, in which he calls the artist ‘questo ingegno’ – a term one is tempted to translate as ‘this genius’:</p><p><br /></p><p>Michelangelo had such a distinctive and perfect imagination [immaginative] and the works he envisioned were of such a nature that he found it impossible to express such grandiose and awesome conceptions [concetti] with his hands, and he often abandoned his works, or rather ruined many of them, as I myself know, because just before his death he burned a large number of his own drawings, sketches and cartoons to prevent anyone from seeing the labours [fatiche] he endured or the ways he tested his ingegno, for fear he might seem less than perfect. [...] And although [these drawings] display the greatness of this ingego, _they also reveal that when he wanted to bring forth Minerva from the head of Jupiter he needed Vulcan’s hammer_.</p><p><br /></p><p>[Gabriel Harvey – Oxford’s Jovial Mind]</p><p><br /></p><p>Vasari’s final remark is, of course, a disguised reference to the exchange between Michelangelo and Varchi quoted above. However, Vasari adds the fact that what comes out of Jupiter’s head is Minerva, a detail Michelangelo had omitted. Since Latin antiquity, Minerva was associated with ingenium and rhetorical talent. The parallel had been applied to the ingenia of poets, as in an encomium of Dante (long attributed to Boccaccio but most probably of sixteenth-century vintage) where on top of praise for his alta fantasia Dante is named ‘the obscure Minerva’:</p><p><br /></p><p>I am Dante Alighieri, obscure Minerva</p><p>Intelligent and artful, in whose ingegno</p><p>Maternal elegance unites with the sign</p><p>That is considered a great miracle of nature</p><p>My high fantasia ready and assured</p><p>Went through Tartarus and in the kingdom of heaven</p><p>And I made my noble book worthy</p><p>Of both temporal and spiritual reading.</p><p><br /></p><p>The survival into the Renaissance of the association of a deity with an idea or concept – in particular, Minerva with ingegno – comes as no surprise.This allegorical mode underwent considerable expansion in the age of Vasari. Following the mid-Cinquecento surge of interest in emblematics and symbolism, artists increasingly used personifications to derive visual representations of complex notions such as the relationship between different concepts, or something like a theory. We may ask ourselves whether the reception of Varchi’s lectures did not give rise to pictorial attempts of this kind. As far as his 1547 discussion of the realation between ingegno and fatica [labour/toil] is concerned, we ought to consider a small painting on copper by Vasari now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Known as The Forge of Vulcan, it also has been referred to under the title of Ingenium and Ars.</p><p> Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580) – a Benedictine monk and philologist, and Vasari’s foremost advisor on all matters iconographic – devised the painting’s invenzione. His initial idea survives in a manuscript in Borghini’s hand and addressed to Vasari. Borghini suggested a depiction of Vulcan forging Achilles’s shield following the descriptions of Homer and Virgil, but adapted to our purpose, as we have mused together’, where Thetis, who commissioned the shield, would be replaced by Minerva. Vasari painted Borghini’s ‘blazing furnace’ and ‘three naked young men making various weapons and armors’, with assistants and putti. He also rendered Minerva holding a set square and a pair of compasses, emblems of theory, pointing to her prominent (pregnant?) belly. Vasari departed from the invenzione with regard to the interaction between the two gods While Borghinini wanted Vulcan to be showing the shield to Minerva, Vasari painted Vulcan actively sculpting while looking at a sheet of paper shown to him by the goddess. This drawing is in the hand of the deity associated with the MIND, in keeping with the ideal definition of DISEGNO in Vasari’s Vite (1568) as an ‘expression of the concetto imagined in the mind’. Vasari thus fully exploits the polysemy of the word disegno which, in addition to a drawing, could also signify the product of thought (disegnare meant ‘to think’).</p><p> Vasari’s image mirrors the mutual dependence of conception and execution, while suggesting the interrelationship of the inventore (Borghini) and the arteficer (Vasari himself). Indeed, some authors described the relationship between ars and ingenium as an inseparable unity, and even compared it to the conjunction between mind and body. In the chapter ‘Ars et Ingenium’ of his Hieroglyphica (1556) Pierio Valeriano Bolzano mentions a story of the marriage between Pallas (Minerva) and Vulcan which was appropriated by the ancients ‘as seen in the Orphic hymns’ to explain that Minerva’s and Vulcan’s respective strengths coexist in each being. This, writes Valeriano, is the reason why androgyny, or the coincidence of female and male, was regarded as a sign of higher perfection in antiquity.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************************</p><p>Harvey to Oxford:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> Do thou but</p><p>go forward boldly and without hesitation. Mars will</p><p>obey thee, Hermes will be thy messenger, Pallas striking</p><p>her shield with her spear shaft will attend thee, thine own</p><p>breast and courageous heart will instruct thee. For a</p><p>long time past Phoebus Apollo has cultivated thy mind in</p><p>the arts. English poetical measures have been sung by</p><p>thee long enough. Let that Courtly Epistle 1 -more</p><p>polished even than the writings of Castiglione himself-</p><p>witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters. I have seen</p><p>many Latin verses of thine, yea, even more English</p><p>verses are extant; thou hast drunk deep draughts not</p><p>only of the Muses of France and Italy, but hast learned</p><p>the manners of many men, and the arts of foreign countries.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Harvey – Four Letters</p><p><br /></p><p>And that was all the fleeting that I every felt, saving that another company of special good fellows (whereof he was none of the meanest that bravely threatened to conjure up one which should massacre Martin’s Wit, or should be lambacked himself with ten years’ provision) would needs forsooth very courtly persuade the Earl of Oxford, that something in those letters, and namely, the Mirror of Tuscanismo, was palpably intended against him; whose noble Lordship I protest I never meant to dishonour with the least prejudicial word of my tongue or pen, but ever kept a mindful reckoning of many bounden duties toward the same: since in the prime of his gallantest youth he bestowed angels upon me in Christ’s College in Cambridge, and otherwise vouchsafed me many gracious favours, at the affectionate commendation of my cousin M. Thomas Smith, the son of Sir Thomas, shortly after Colonel of the Ardes in Ireland. But the noble Earl, not disposed to trouble his JOVIAL mind with such SATURNINE paltry, still continued, like his magnificent self: and that fleeting also proved, like the other, a silly bullbear, a sorry puff of wind, a thing of nothing.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p>Jonson</p><p>Nature herself was proud of his DESIGNS</p><p>And joy'd to wear the DRESSING of his lines,</p><p>Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,</p><p>As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************************</p><p>Dressing/painting/plastering:</p><p><br /></p><p>Timber, Jonson</p><p>De mollibus |&| effæminatis.</p><p>There is nothing valiant, or solid to bee hop'd for from such, as are</p><p>alwayes kempt'd, and perfum'd; and every day smell of the Taylor:</p><p>The exceedingly curious, that are wholly in mending such an imperfe-</p><p>ction in the face, in taking away the Morphew in the neck; or bleach-</p><p>ing their hands at Mid-night, gumming, and bridling their beards, or</p><p>making the waste small, binding it with hoopes, while the mind runs at</p><p>waste: Too much pickednesse is not manly. Nor from those that will</p><p>jeast at their owne outward imperfections, but hide their ulcers</p><p>within, their Pride, Lust, Envie, ill nature, with all the art and</p><p>authority they can. These persons are in danger; For whilst they thinke to</p><p>justifie their ignorance by impudence; and their persons by clothes, and out-</p><p>ward ornaments, they use but a Commission to deceive themselves.</p><p>Where, *if wee will LOOKE with our understanding, and not our SENSES*,</p><p>wee may behold vertue, and beauty, (though cover'd with rags) in</p><p>their brightnesse; and vice, and <<deformity>> so much the fowler, in</p><p>having all the splendor of riches to guild them, or the false light of</p><p>honour and power to helpe them. *Yet this is that, wherewith the world</p><p>is TAKEN*, and runs mad to on: Clothes agazend Titles, the Birdlime</p><p>of Fools.</p><p>*********************</p><p><br /></p><p>TO THE</p><p><br /></p><p>SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,</p><p><br /></p><p>The Court.</p><p>Hou art a Bountiful and Brave Spring, and waterest all the Noble Plants of this Island. In thee the whole Kingdom dresseth it self, and is ambitious to use thee as her Glass. Beware then thou render Mens Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. It is not Powd'ring, Perfuming, and every day smelling of the Taylor, that converteth to a Beautiful Object: but a Mind shining through any Sute, which needs no False Light, either of Riches or Honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the Reign of C Y N T H I A, (a C R I T E S and an A R E T E.) Now, under thy P H œ B U S, it will be thy Province to make more: Except thou desirest to have thy Source mix with the Spring of Self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcom a Discovery of thy Days, as was then made of her Nights.</p><p>Thy Servant, bu</p><p>**********************</p><p>Jonson's dedication to his Epigrammes.</p><p>TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE</p><p>OF HONOR AND VERTUE,</p><p>tHE MOST NOBLE</p><p>WILLIAM, EARLE OF PEMBROKE,</p><p>L. CHAMBERLAYNE, &C.</p><p>MY LORD. While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your</p><p>title: It was that made it, and not I. Under which name, I here offer</p><p>to your LO: the ripest of my studies, my Epigrammes; which though they</p><p>carry danger in the sound, doe not therefore seeke your shelter: For,</p><p>when I made them, I had nothing in my conscience, to expressing of</p><p>which I did need a cypher. But, if I be falne into those times,</p><p>wherein, for the likenesse of vice and facts, every one thinks</p><p>anothers ill deeds objected to him, and that in their ignorant and</p><p>guilty mouthes, the common voyce is (for their securitie) Beware the</p><p>Poet, confessing, therein, so much love to their diseases, as they</p><p>would rather make a partie for them, then be either rid, or told of</p><p>them: I must expect, at you Lo: hand, the protection of truth, and</p><p>libertie, while you are constant to your owne goodnesse. In thankes</p><p>whereof, I returne you the honor of leading forth so many good and</p><p>great names (as my verses mention on the better part) to their</p><p>remembrance with posteritie. Amongst whom, if I have praysed,</p><p>unfortunately , any one, that doth not deserve; or, if all answere</p><p>not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them: I hope it will</p><p>be forgiven me, that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like</p><p>the persons. But I foresee a neerer fate to my book, then this: that</p><p>the vices therein will be own'd before the vertues (though, there, I</p><p>have avoyded all particulars, as I have done names) and that some will</p><p>be readie to discredit me, as they will have the impudence to belye</p><p>themselves. For, if I meant them not, it is so. Nor, can I hope</p><p>otherwise. For, why should they remit any thing of their riot, their</p><p>pride, their self-love, and OTHER INHERENT GRACES, to consider truth</p><p>or vertue; but , with the trade of the world, lend their long eares</p><p>against men they love not: and hold their deare Mountebanke, or</p><p>Jester, in farre better condition, then all the studie, or studiers of</p><p>humanitie? For such, I would rather know them by their visards, still,</p><p>then they should publish their faces, at their perill, in my Theater,</p><p>where CATO, if he liv'd, might enter without scandall.</p><p>Your Lo: most faithfull honorer,</p><p>Ben. Jonson</p><p>**********************************************</p><p>Look with our understanding and not our senses - Jonson</p><p>Sweet Swan of Avon! what a SIGHT it were</p><p>To SEE thee in our water yet appear,</p><p>And make those flights upon the banks of Thames</p><p>That so did TAKE Eliza, and our James! </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>In the pen of a Puritan, ‘Grotesco’ denoted ‘fantastic’ and suggested supersitious, ignorant, pedantic, and priestly, all attributes of the King’s university men. On the Royalist side, ‘Grottesco’ (a motley creature) was used metaphorically for the Puritan state. (...) Cleveland’s use of Grottesco’ had distinct affiliations with the sphere of art adn farce literature where pibald and motley garments were worn by the clowns and Jack Puddings of the piece. D’Avenant’s and Browne’s uses of ‘groteque’ show that the word was still closely associated with fantastical pictorial phenomena, and while Hall’s metaphor betrays no direct kinship with the arts, he seems to have derived it from Browne and extended it to the popular character of farce and legend, Will o’ the Wisp”, the English Harlequin.</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Cynthia’s Revels</p><p> Crites: What ridiculous Circumstance might I devise</p><p>now, to bestow this reciprocal brace of Butter-flies one</p><p>upon another?</p><p> Amorphus/Oxford. Since I trode on this side the Alpes, I was not</p><p>so frozen in my Invention. Let me see: to accost him</p><p>with some choice remnant of Spanish, or Italian? that</p><p>would indifferently express my languages now: mar-</p><p>ry then, if he should fall out to be ignorant, it were</p><p>both hard and harsh. How else? step into some ra-</p><p>gioni del stato, and so make my induction? that were</p><p>above him too; and out of his Element, I fear. Feign</p><p>to have seen him in Venice or Padua? or some face neer</p><p>his in similitude? 'tis too pointed, and open. No, it</p><p>must be a more quaint, and collateral device. As —</p><p>stay: to frame some encomiastick Speech upon this our</p><p>Metropolis, or the wise Magistrates thereof, in which</p><p>politick number, 'tis odds, but his Father fill'd up a</p><p>Room? descend into a particular admiration of their</p><p>Justice, for the due measuring of Coals, burning of</p><p>Cans, and such like? as also Religion, in pulling</p><p>down a superstitious Cross, and advancing a Venus, or</p><p>Priapus, in place of it? ha? 'twill do well. Or to talk</p><p>of some Hospital, whose Walls record his Father a</p><p>Benefactor? or of so many Buckets bestow'd on his</p><p>Parish-church, in his life time, with his name at length</p><p>(for want of Arms) trickt upon them? Any of these?</p><p>Or to praise the cleanness of the Street, wherein he</p><p>dwelt? or the provident painting of his Posts against he</p><p>should have been Prætor? Or (leaving his Parent) come</p><p>to some special Ornament about himself, as his Rapier,</p><p>or some other of his Accoutrements? I have it: Thanks,</p><p>gracious Minerva. </p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-7474129983937753622021-12-09T14:27:00.000-08:002021-12-09T14:27:16.593-08:00Sublime Shakespeare and the Grave's Tyring-House<p> </p><p>Howsoever the mistaking worlde takes it (whose Left hand ever recev’d what I gave with my Right). -- George Chapman to Inigo Jones</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>I.M. of the First Folio Shakespeare and Other Mabbe Problems</p><p>Arthur W. Secord</p><p><br /></p><p>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...</p><p>[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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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...</p><p><br /></p><p>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*,</p><p><br /></p><p>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...</p><p><br /></p><p>The verses in F1 read:</p><p><br /></p><p>Wee wondred (Shake-speare) that thou went’st so soone</p><p>From the Worlds-Stage, to the Graves-Tyring-roome.</p><p>Wee thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth,</p><p>Tels thy Spectators, that thou went’st but forth</p><p>To enter with applause An Actors Art,</p><p>Can dye, and live, to acte a second part.</p><p>That’s but an Exit of Mortalitie;</p><p>This, a Re-entrance to a Plaudite.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.”</p><p><br /></p><p>(Had Mabbe not liked these phrases, he would not have used them in The Rogue, as they are not very close to the original...)</p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson’s ‘Grave/Tyring House’ in F1:</p><p><br /></p><p>Soul of the Age!</p><p>The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!</p><p>My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by</p><p>Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie</p><p>A little further, to make thee a room:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>The rogue: or The life of Guzman de Alfarache. VVritten in Spanish by Matheo Aleman, seruant to his Catholike Maiestie, and borne in Seuill</p><p>Alemán, Mateo, 1547-1614?, Mabbe, James, 1572-1642?</p><p>London: Printed [by Eliot's Court Press and George Eld] for Edward Blount, 1623.</p><p><br /></p><p>...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)</p><p>*********************</p><p>The Rogue, Second Book, Chapter 10 – translator Mabbe</p><p><br /></p><p>...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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>[see Greville’s description of Oxford in Life of Sidney - mocking Sublime Style]</p><p>*********************************</p><p>Secord con’t.</p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>(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.</p><p>Jonson's Mock Sublime Encomium: water/uroscopy - flights/bank/Mountebank - take/deceive</p><p><br /></p><p>Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were</p><p>To see thee in our waters yet appear,</p><p>And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,</p><p>That so did TAKE Eliza and our James!</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>Blount asserts that it is not he who is 'slipshod':</p><p><br /></p><p>he rogue: or The life of Guzman de Alfarache. VVritten in Spanish by Matheo Aleman, seruant to his Catholike Maiestie, and borne in Seuill</p><p>Alemán, Mateo, 1547-1614?, Mabbe, James, 1572-1642?</p><p>London: Printed [by Eliot's Court Press and George Eld] for Edward Blount, 1623.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE PRINTER TO THE Discreet and Curious READER.</p><p>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.</p><p>Ed: Blount.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p>Anticke/Grotesque:</p><p>The Rogue – transl. Mabbe</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>****************************************</p><p>Rogue, Guzman – transl. Mabbe</p><p>To the Uulgar.</p><p>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*.</p><p>***********************************</p><p>Spiro Non Tibi – Spenser's Faerie Queene and Sidney’s Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia – appeared on *1593* edition of Sidney’s Arcadia:</p><p><br /></p><p>Anchora</p><p>Adam G. Hooks</p><p>blog</p><p><br /></p><p>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":</p><p>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)</p><p>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).</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>Complaining of unlearned readers, Sanford writes that</p><p> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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."</p><p><br /></p><p>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):</p><p>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.</p><p>***********************</p><p>Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo</p><p>Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.</p><p>TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE</p><p>Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,</p><p>0.5and Baron of Titchfield.</p><p>Right Honorable,</p><p>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.</p><p>Your honor's in all duty,</p><p>William Shakespeare.</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p>Discretion. To Cut. To Discern. To sift out. To separate that which has become confused.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Grotesque Figure/Against Nature/ Invita Minerva/Wit-Ingegno</p><p>Ambisinister Droeshout Figure:</p><p><br /></p><p>This figure that thou here seest put,</p><p>It was for gentle Shakespeare CUT,</p><p>*Wherein the graver had a strife</p><p>With Nature, to out-do the life*:</p><p>O could he but have drawn his wit</p><p>As well in brass, as he has hit</p><p>His face; the print would then surpass</p><p>All that was ever writ in brass:</p><p>But since he cannot, reader, look</p><p>Not on his picture, but his book.</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, Cynthia's Revels</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Cynthia: Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two</p><p>We give the Charge; impose what Pains you please:</p><p>TH' INCURABLE CUT OFF, the rest REFORM,</p><p>Remembring ever what we first decreed,</p><p>Since Revels were proclaim'd, let now none bleed.</p><p>Arete. How well Diana can distinguish Times,</p><p>And sort her Censures, keeping to her self</p><p>The Doom of Gods, leaving the rest to us?</p><p>Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed.</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Then, Crites, practise thy DISCRETION.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>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).</p><p>*********************************</p><p>Discreet and Curious – Sidneians</p><p>Vulgar and Ignorant – Shakespeare’s Admirers/crew</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Nature/Minerva/Ingegno</p><p><br /></p><p>Elegy On Randolph’s Finger – William Hemminges</p><p><br /></p><p>...The fluente Flettcher, Beaumonte riche In sence</p><p>*for Complement and Courtshypes quintesence,</p><p>Ingenious Shakespeare*</p><p><br /></p><p>[need to check original punctuation]</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Jonson - Timber</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>{Topic 67}} {{Subject: AFFECTED language}}</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>*********************************************</p><p>Speculum Tuscanismi - Satire on Earl of Oxford</p><p><br /></p><p>Gabriel Harvey:</p><p><br /></p><p>See Venus, archegoddess, howe trimly she masterith owld Mars.</p><p>See litle CUPIDE, howe he bewitcheth lernid Apollo.</p><p>Bravery in apparell, and maiesty in hawty behaviour,</p><p>Hath conquerd manhood, and gotten a victory in Inglande.</p><p>Ferse Bellona, she lyes enclosd at Westminster in leade.</p><p>Dowtines is dulnes ; currage mistermid is outrage.</p><p>Manlines is madnes ; beshrowe Lady Curtisy therefore.</p><p>Most valorous enforced to be vassals to Lady Pleasure.</p><p>And Lady Nicity rules like a soveran emperes of all.</p><p>TYMES, MANNERS, FRENCH, ITALISH ENGLISHE.</p><p>Where be y e mindes and men that woont to terrify strangers ?</p><p>Where that constant zeale to thy cuntry glory, to vertu ?</p><p>Where labor and prowes very founders of quiet and peace,</p><p>Champions of warr, trompetours of fame, treasurers of welth ?</p><p>Where owld Inglande ? Where owld Inglish fortitude and</p><p>might ?</p><p>Oh, we ar owte of the way, that Theseus, Hercules, Arthur,</p><p>And many a worthy British knight were woo'nte to triumphe in.</p><p>What should I speake of Talbotts, Brandons, Grayes, with a thousande</p><p>Such and such ? Let Edwards go ; letts blott y e remem-braunce</p><p>Of puissant Henryes ; or letts exemplify there actes.</p><p>Since Galateo came in and Tuscanismo gan usurpe</p><p>Vanity above all ; villanye next her ; Statelynes empresse,</p><p>NO MAN but minion : stowte, lowte, playne, swayne, quoth a</p><p>LORDINGE (snip).</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, Timber</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>...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.</p><p><br /></p><p>“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*.”</p><p><br /></p><p>*************************</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN: MONSTERS, METAPHORS, AND MAGIC</p><p>BY ROBERT E. STILLMAN</p><p>(con't)</p><p><br /></p><p>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</p><p>************************************</p><p>Anticke/Grotesque/Dreams</p><p><br /></p><p>Prospero. You do look, my son, in a moved sort,</p><p>As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.</p><p>Our revels now are ended. These our actors,</p><p>As I foretold you, were all spirits and 1880</p><p>Are melted into air, into thin air:</p><p>And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,</p><p>The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,</p><p>The solemn temples, the great globe itself,</p><p>Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve 1885</p><p>And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,</p><p>Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff</p><p>As dreams are made on, and our little life</p><p>Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;</p><p>Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled: 1890</p><p>Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:</p><p>If you be pleased, retire into my cell</p><p>And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,</p><p>To still my beating mind.</p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p>Alto Ingegno: Oxford’s Sin</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>************************</p><p><br /></p><p>La Forme In-Formante: A Reconsideration of the Grotesque</p><p>Sylvie Debevec Henning</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Sublime and Grotesque Shakespeare - Paradox</p><p><br /></p><p>Upon the Effigies of my worthy Friend, the Author Master Willian Shakefspeare, and his Workes</p><p><br /></p><p>Spectator, this Lifes Shaddow is; To see</p><p>The truer image and a livelier he</p><p>Turne Reader. But, observe his Comicke vaine,</p><p>Laugh, and proceed next to a Tragicke straine,</p><p>Then weepe; *So when thou find’st two contraries,</p><p>Two different passions from thy rapt soule rise*,</p><p>Say, (who alone effect such wonders could)</p><p>Rare Shake-speare to the life thou dost behold</p><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-32171039692900303882021-11-07T12:30:00.000-08:002021-11-07T12:30:05.447-08:00The Sublimation of Great Oxford<p> The Sublimation of Sublime Oxford</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>*Then when this body falls in funeral fire,</p><p><br /></p><p>My name shall live and my best part aspire. * Ovid</p><p><br /></p><p>********************</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>... in that which becks</p><p><br /></p><p>Our ready minds to fellowship divine,</p><p><br /></p><p>A fellowship with essence, till we shine</p><p><br /></p><p>Fully alchemized, and free of space.</p><p><br /></p><p>(Keats, Endymion I) </p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Sublimity is the echo of a noble mind – Longinus</p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Of the many qualities Castiglione's characters attribute to their perfect courtier, oratory and the manner in which the courtier presents himself while speaking is amongst the most highly discussed. Wayne Rebhorn, a Castiglione scholar, states that the courtier's speech and behavior in general is “designed to make people marvel at him, to transform himself into a beautiful spectacle for others to contemplate. -- Wikipedia, Book of the Courtier</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p><br /></p><p>James I appropriated sublime/admirable style to himself.</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Jonson, Poetaster</p><p><br /></p><p>Envy the living not the dead doth bite,</p><p><br /></p><p>For after death all men receive their right.</p><p><br /></p><p>*Then when this body falls in funeral fire,</p><p><br /></p><p>My name shall live and my best part aspire. *</p><p><br /></p><p>[after Ovid, Amores 1:15] </p><p><br /></p><p>*********************</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Milton, Areopagitica</p><p><br /></p><p>We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient State, or politie, or Church, nor by any Statute left us by our Ancestors elder or later; nor from the moderne custom of any refor∣med Citty, or Church abroad; but from the most Antichristian Coun∣cel, and the most tyrannous Inquisition that ever inquir'd. Till then Books were ever as freely admitted into the World as any other birth: the issue of the brain was no more stifl'd then the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sate cros-leg'd over the nativity of any mans intellectuall off spring; *but if it prov'd a Monster, who denies, but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the Sea*. </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Shakespeare, The Tempest</p><p><br /></p><p>PROSPERO</p><p>Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,</p><p>And ye that on the sands with printless foot</p><p>Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him</p><p>When he comes back; you demi-puppets that</p><p>By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,</p><p>Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime</p><p>Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice</p><p>To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,</p><p>Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd</p><p>The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,</p><p>And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault</p><p>Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder</p><p>Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak</p><p>With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory</p><p>Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up</p><p>The pine and cedar: graves at my command</p><p>Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth</p><p>By my so potent art. But this rough magic</p><p>I here abjure, and, when I have required</p><p>Some heavenly music, which even now I do,</p><p>To work mine end upon their senses that</p><p>This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,</p><p>Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,</p><p>*And deeper than did ever plummet sound</p><p>I'll drown my book.*</p><p>**********************</p><p>William Shakespeare – Anagram – Is Like A Sperm Whale</p><p>**********************</p><p>Melville, Billy in the Darbies</p><p><br /></p><p>Ay, Ay, Ay, all is up; and I must up to</p><p>Early in the morning, aloft from alow.</p><p>On an empty stomach, now, never it would do.</p><p>They'll give me a nibble--bit o' biscuit ere I go.</p><p>Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;</p><p>But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,</p><p>Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!</p><p>No pipe to those halyards.--But aren't it all sham?</p><p>A blur's in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.</p><p>A hatchet to my hawser? all adrift to go?</p><p>The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?</p><p>But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;</p><p>So I'll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.</p><p>But--no! It is dead then I'll be, come to think.</p><p>I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.</p><p>And his cheek it was like the budding pink.</p><p>But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.</p><p>Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.</p><p>I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?</p><p>Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,</p><p>I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist. </p><p><br /></p><p>**********************</p><p><br /></p><p>“Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.”</p><p>― Herman Melville , Moby-Dick or, the Whale </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p><br /></p><p>Patrick Cheney</p><p>English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> ...Sources of the sublime identified by Longinus appear in Hotspur’s speeches : ‘great thoughts’; inspired emotion’; heightened figuration; ‘noble diction’; and elevated word-arrangement’ (Longinus, On Sublimity 8.1: 149). Naturally, the actor of Shakespeare’s lines would perform the noble diction and elevated word-arrangement with inspired emotion, taking the character’s – the author’s – own cue: ‘Oh, the blood more stirs.’ Hotspur’s ‘elevated…figures of speech’, too, represent great thoughts, for, in his defence of ‘honor’, he imagines himself TRANSPORTED: his imagination travels across the horizontal coordinates of ‘east unto the west’, ‘north to south’, and up the vertical coordinate of the moon and down to the ocean-bottom – the ocean being, for Longinus, one of the principal images of the sublime. Such transport is the premier trajectory that the sublime tracks. In his 1589 Art of English Poetry, George Puttenham calls ‘Metaphora’ the ‘figure of transport’, because the word ‘metaphor’ means to carry across, ‘a kind of wresting of a single word from his own right signification, to another not of natural. But yet of some affinity or convenience with it’ (Vickers). Sublime transport is the ultimate figuration, and Hotspur speaks it.</p><p><br /></p><p>‘Imagination’ is the word Shakespeare uses in line 198, when the father says of the son, ‘Imagination of some great exploit/Drives him beyond the bounds of patience’. Unlike Guiderius in Cymbeline, the idea of a ‘great exploit’ does not lead Hotspur into action but, like Arviragus – yet dangerously – into ‘imagination’, which Northumberland contrasts with the rational principle of ‘patience’. ‘Beyond the bounds’ is as succinct a definition of the sublime as we might wish to find.</p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Milton, Areopagitica</p><p><br /></p><p>I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: For Books are not absolute∣ly dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as a∣ctive as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously produ∣ctive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand un∣lesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbal∣m'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse; and re∣volutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living la∣bours of publick men, how we spill that season'd life of man preser∣v'd and stor'd up in Books; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdome, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall life, but strikes at that ethereall and and fist essence, the breath of reason it selfe, slaics an immortality rather then a life. But lest I should be condemn'd of introducing licence, while I oppose Licencing, I refuse not the paines to be so much Hi∣storicall, as will serve to shew what hath been done by ancient and famous Commonwealths, against this disorder, till the very time that this project of licencing crept out of the Inquisition, was catcht up </p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Catherine Maxwell, Female Sublime.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>What this poem [Milton's sonnet on Shakespeare] seems to be rehearsing is the sublime. Shakespeare’s admirers, stupefied by the effect of his language to ‘wonder and astonishment’, are like those wrought upon by a sublime spectacle. Astonishment says Burke is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree. Shakespeare’s verse is a pleasurable petrification, a stimulating paralysis. Readers, the poem suggests, remain arrested at that stage of the sublime in which they are exhilarated – dizzy and reeling under the bombardment of its mixed images and multiple dislocations. However, Milton’s poem reproduces this scene of petrification in order to break out of it. The mental spin induced by lines 13-14 mimes the dizzying effect produced by Shakespeare’s verse, but the cool control and detachment with which Milton describes the Shakespearian sublime suggests assimilation – the poet has absorbed it and has moved beyond it to a new creativity. Moreover, the poem is itself monumentalising and thus substitutive – it saves the potentially stricken Milton from the paralysis of perpetual witness by offering itself as epitaph. Yet this is no simple act of submission. An example itself of highly ingenious ‘conceiving’, the poem not only reproduces the effect of Shakespeare’s language but it rivals it. By writing in a sublime manner about the way the sublime arrests writing, and by appropriating the precursor as ‘my Shakespeare’, the poem masters the experience that might otherwise leave the imagination subject. p.50</p><p>(snip) </p><p>The key figures and ideas which Milton uses in this poem to express the power of a sublime precursor and the effects of his legacy are ones which will recur in different form in Shelley’s poetry. Paralysis, petrification, impress or inscription are some of the means by which we will recognize the *disfigurative mark of the sublime*, while defensive evasion through forms of proxy or shielding shows us ways of protecting oneself against total constriction. </p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Milton, the sublime and dramas of choice: Figures of Heroic and Literary Virtue</p><p>By Irene Montori </p><p>...For Milton, Shakespeare’s imagination holds a paralysing, a sort of “marmorialising” effect on the reader, which anticipates Comus’s paralysis of the Lady. Her stasis is also an evident allusion to Hermione’s statue in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. The statue of Hermione, a great example of Renaissance art, is a perfect imitation of the original, “a piece many years in doing and now newly performed by the rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape”. But, like the Lady of A Maske, she does not have the ability to speak (snip)</p><p>...Th(e) sublime moment of reunion between the earthly and the heavenly emerges from a momentary state of wonder, which is also one of the distinguishing features of the romance genre. Through the association of the passions and astonishment and wonder with the marvellous and the Christian supernatural, an early modern poetics of the sublime developed in the context of Shakespeare’s late romances and Spenser’s chivalric poem.</p><p> The Lady’s release from the marble seat in Milton’s masque evokes a similar attempt to collapse the distance between the material and the divine worlds, through the mediation of Sabrina. However, in creating his sublime fiction of transport, Milton distances himself from Shakespeare and Spenser. The Lady’s salvation does not originate from a seductive, excessive, and over-spontaneous rhetoric, like in Shakespeare, nor does it emerge as a momentary experience of rapturous wonder, like in Spenser. Milton’s model of sublime poetry eventually results from the combination of imagination and wonder with the assistance of divine grace. Poetic creation, in other words, hinges on the same dialectic that drives the individual’s self-making between active virtue and divine providence. In the very last words of the Attendant Spirit’s epilogue, Milton recalls the dichotomy between virtuous and providential action:</p><p>Love Virtue, she alone is free,</p><p>She can teach ye how to climb</p><p>Higher than the sphery chime;</p><p>Or if Virtue feeble were,</p><p>Heaven itself would stoop to her. (1118-1122)</p><p>*******************************</p><p>Shake-speare</p><p>Sonnet 72</p><p>O! lest the world should task you to recite</p><p>What merit lived in me, that you should love</p><p>After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,</p><p>For you in me can nothing worthy prove.</p><p>Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,</p><p>To do more for me than mine own desert,</p><p>And hang more praise upon deceased I</p><p>Than niggard truth would willingly impart:</p><p>O! lest your true love may seem false in this</p><p>That you for love speak well of me untrue,</p><p>My name be buried where my body is,</p><p>And live no more to shame nor me nor you.</p><p> For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,</p><p> And so should you, to love things nothing worth. </p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p>Billy Budd/Beauty - noble foundling</p><p><br /></p><p>'Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.' (Melville, _Billy Budd_)</p><p><br /></p><p>(note – Billy Budd name of contemporary racehorse)</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Melvillian Sublime:</p><p><br /></p><p>1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville</p><p><br /></p><p>"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or</p><p>mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including</p><p>their ostensible authors."</p><p><br /></p><p>“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page</p><p>of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine</p><p>authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply</p><p>standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all</p><p>BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative</p><p>as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some</p><p>warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author</p><p>has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our</p><p>bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences</p><p>among us?”</p><p><br /></p><p>********************************</p><p>Billy Budd/Vere’s Bastard Book</p><p>Milton, Areopagitica</p><p>We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient State, or politie, or Church, nor by any Statute left us by our Ancestors elder or later; nor from the moderne custom of any refor∣med Citty, or Church abroad; but from the most Antichristian Coun∣cel, and the most tyrannous Inquisition that ever inquir'd. Till then Books were ever as freely admitted into the World as any other birth: the issue of the brain was no more stifl'd then the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sate cros-leg'd over the nativity of any mans intellectuall off spring; *but if it prov'd a Monster, who denies, but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the Sea*. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>Sacrificial Sublime:</p><p>Billy Budd, Melville</p><p>Without volition as it were, as if indeed the ship's populace were but the vehicles of some vocal current electric, with one voice from alow and aloft came a resonant sympathetic echo--"God bless Captain Vere!" And yet at that instant Billy alone must have been in their hearts, even as he was in their eyes.</p><p>At the pronounced words and the spontaneous echo that voluminously rebounded them, Captain Vere, either thro' stoic self-control or a sort of momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock, stood erectly rigid as a musket in the ship-armorer's rack.</p><p>The hull deliberately recovering from the periodic roll to leeward was just regaining an even keel, when the last signal, a preconcerted dumb one, was given. At the same moment it chanced that the vapory fleece hanging low in the East, was shot thro' with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended; and, ascending, took the full rose of the dawn.</p><p>In the pinioned figure, arrived at the yard-end , to the wonder of all no motion was apparent, none save that created by the ship's motion, in moderate weather so majestic in a great ship ponderously cannoned.</p><p>**********************************</p><p>Beli Budd:</p><p>The name ‘Billy Budd’ has been analysed by scholars to have its history and references in the tradition of the British Druids, whereby, “the god known as Hu, Beli, and Budd was seen ‘as the greatest God, ad viewed as riding on the sunbeams.” (quoted in H. Bruce Franklin, The Wake of the Gods). Katea Duff</p><p>*******************</p><p>Holding/Restraining/Ruling Shakespeare's Quill (Darbies):</p><p><br /></p><p>From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)</p><p>by Jasper Mayne</p><p><br /></p><p>...And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all</p><p>The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:</p><p>No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,</p><p>No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;</p><p>No Oracle of Language, to amaze</p><p>The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase,</p><p>Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,</p><p>A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.</p><p>That which Thou wrot'st was sense, and that sense good,</p><p>Things not first written, and then understood:</p><p><br /></p><p>Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar'd so high</p><p>As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,</p><p>'Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,</p><p>Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.</p><p><br /></p><p>For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.</p><p>In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:</p><p>A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,</p><p>As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.</p><p>Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,</p><p>Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************</p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, Alchemist</p><p><br /></p><p>FACE. You might talk softlier, rascal.</p><p> SUB. No, you scarab,</p><p> I’ll thunder you in pieces: I will teach you</p><p> How to beware to tempt a Fury again,</p><p> That carries tempest in his hand and voice.</p><p> FACE. The place has made you valiant.</p><p> SUB. No, your clothes.—</p><p> Thou vermin, have I ta’en thee out of dung,</p><p> So poor, so wretched, when no living thing</p><p> Would keep thee company, but a spider, or worse?</p><p> Rais’d thee from brooms, and dust, and watering-pots,</p><p> Sublimed thee, and exalted thee, and fix’d thee</p><p> In the third region, call’d our state of grace?</p><p> Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains</p><p> Would twice have won me the philosopher’s work?</p><p>Put thee in words and fashion, made thee fit</p><p> For more than ordinary fellowships?</p><p> Giv’n thee thy oaths, thy quarrelling dimensions,</p><p> Thy rules to cheat at horse-race, cock-pit, cards,</p><p> Dice, or whatever gallant tincture else?</p><p> Made thee a second in mine own great art?</p><p> And have I this for thanks! Do you rebel,</p><p> Do you fly out in the projection?</p><p> Would you be gone now? </p><p><br /></p><p>***************************************</p><p>Jonson, Cynthia's Revels</p><p><br /></p><p>You, Mercury, we must entreat to stay,</p><p>And hear what we determine of the rest;</p><p>For in this Plot we well perceive your Hand.</p><p>But (for we mean not a Censorian Task,</p><p>And yet to lance these Ulcers grown so ripe)</p><p>Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two</p><p>We give the Charge; impose what Pains you please:</p><p>Th' incurable CUT OFF, the rest reform,</p><p>Remembring ever what we first decreed,</p><p>Since Revels were proclaim'd, let now none bleed.</p><p> Are. How well Diana can distinguish Times,</p><p>And sort her Censures, keeping to her self</p><p>The Doom of Gods, leaving the rest to us?</p><p>Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed.</p><p> Cri. First, Philautia, (for she was the first)</p><p>Then light Gelaia, in Aglaias Name;</p><p>Thirdly, Phantaste, and Moria next,</p><p>Main Follies all, and of the Female Crew:</p><p>Amorphus, or Eucosmos Counterfeit,</p><p>Voluptuous Hedon, ta'ne for Eupathes,</p><p>Brazen Anaides, and Asotus last,</p><p>With his two Pages, Morus and Prosaites;</p><p>And thou, the Traveller's Evil, Cos, approach,</p><p>Impostors all, and Male Deformities ——</p><p> Are. Nay, forward, for I delegate my Power,</p><p>And will that at thy Mercy they do stand,</p><p>Whom they so oft, so plainly scorn'd before.</p><p>"'Tis Vertue which they want, and wanting it,</p><p>"Honour no Garment to their Backs can fit.</p><p>Then, Crites, practise thy DISCRETION.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Jonson, Timber</p><p><br /></p><p>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. </p><p><br /></p><p>****************************************</p><p>Longinus’ Great Thoughts – Melville’s ‘Antlered’ Sublime:</p><p><br /></p><p>Melville, Moby Dick</p><p><br /></p><p>In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German Emperors to their decrees. It signifies--"God: done this day by my hand." But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all above them in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius.</p><p>But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.</p><div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-68826834734589512462021-10-30T18:08:00.002-07:002021-10-30T18:15:24.304-07:00Sublimation of Oxford - Love's Martyr<p>Sublimation of Love into Art</p><p>Shake-speare - Quintessential Oxford</p><p>Sublime/Noble Style (see Southern, Pandora)</p><p>*********************************</p><p>The original, nature, and immortality of the soul a poem : with an introduction concerning humane knowledge</p><p>Davies, John, Sir, 1569-1626</p><p>(snip)</p><p>...No Body can at once two Forms admit,</p><p>Except the one the other do deface;</p><p>But in the Soul ten thousand Forms do sit,</p><p>And none intrudes into her Neighbour's Place.</p><p>All Bodies are with other Bodies fill'd,</p><p>But she receives both Heav'n and Earth together:</p><p>Nor are their Forms by rash Encounter spill'd,</p><p>For there they stand, and neither toucheth either.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nor can her wide Embracements filled be;</p><p>For they that most and greatest things embrace,</p><p>Enlarge thereby their Mind's Capacity,</p><p>As Streams enlarg'd, enlarge the Channel's Space.</p><p>All things receiv'd, do such Proportion take,</p><p>As those things have, wherein they are receiv'd:</p><p>So little Glasses little Faces make,</p><p>And narrow Webs on narrow Frames are weav'd.</p><p>Then what vast Body must we make the Mind,</p><p>Wherein are Men, Beasts, Trees, Towns, Seas and Lands;</p><p>And yet each thing a proper Place doth find,</p><p>And each thing in the true Proportion stands?</p><p>Doubtless, this could not be, *but that she turns</p><p>Bodies to Spirits, by Sublimation strange*;</p><p>As Fire converts to Fire the things it burns;</p><p>As we our Meats into our Nature change.</p><p>From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms,</p><p>And draws a kind of *Quintessence* from things;</p><p>Which to her proper Nature she transforms,</p><p>To bear them light on her Celestial Wings.</p><p><br /></p><p>This doth she, when, from things particular,</p><p>She doth abstract the universal Kinds,</p><p>Which bodyless and immaterial are,</p><p>And can be only lodg'd within our *Minds*.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************</p><p>Love's Martyr, Chester</p><p><br /></p><p>Marston:</p><p>A narration and description of a most exact wondrous creature, arising out of the Phoenix and Turtle Doues ashes.</p><p>O Twas a mouing Epicedium!</p><p>Can Fire? can Time? can blackest Fate consume</p><p>So rare creation? No; tis thwart to sence,</p><p>Corruption quakes to touch such excellence,</p><p>Nature exclaimes for Iustice, Iustice Fate,</p><p>Ought into nought can neuer remigrate.</p><p>Then looke; for *see what glorious issue (brighter</p><p>Then clearest fire, and beyond faith farre WHITER</p><p>Then Dians tier*) now springs from yonder flame?</p><p>Let me stand numb'd with wonder, neuer came</p><p>So ••rong amazement on astonish'd eie</p><p>As this, this measur•lesse pure Ra•itie.</p><p>Lo now; th'•cracture of deuinest Essence▪</p><p>The Soule of heauens labour'd Quintessence,</p><p>(Peans to Phoebus) from deare Louer's death,</p><p>Takes sweete creation and all blessing breath.</p><p>What strangenesse is't that from the Turtles ashes</p><p>Assumes such forme? (whose splendor clearer flashes,</p><p>Then mounted Delius) tell me genuine Muse.</p><p>Now yeeld your aides, you spirites that infuse</p><p>A sacred rapture, light my weaker eie:</p><p>Raise my inuention on swift Phantasie,</p><p>That whilst of this same Metaphisicall</p><p>God, Man, nor Woman, but elix'd of all</p><p>My labouring thoughts, with strained ardor sing,</p><p>My Muse may mount with an vncommon wing.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p>The Rocket and the Whale: A Critical Study of Pynchon’s Use of Melville</p><p> • Zhana Levitsky</p><p> • Published 2015</p><p> • Art</p><p>Pynchon, Melville, whale, Moby-Dick, Moby Dick, whiteness, light, rocket, color theory, American literature. </p><p><br /></p><p>******************************************</p><p>https://jhna.org/articles/petrifying-gaze-medusa-ambivalence-explexis-sublime/</p><p><br /></p><p>Ekplexis: Terrifying, Shattering, and Petrifying</p><p>So much for enargeia. But what about ekplexis, which for Longinus was the vivid effect reached by sublime poetry? It is a distinction with important implications for the arts, since they were considered in antiquity and the early modern period to be more akin to poetry than to prose.11 Even though it might be putting too much weight on Longinus’s pairing of prose with enargeia and poetry with ekplexis, I do think it worthwhile to pursue the poetical variety of the sublime, because it may tell us more about the nature of the sublime in the arts, and because Dutch varieties are particularly telling. We also move here from theoretical accounts of the sublime to its figurations, because Netherlandish artistic literature, as far as I can see, is rather silent about the striking, terrifying, or even paralyzing and petrifying variety of the sublime.</p><p>Enargeia and ekplexis have very different etymologies and hence connotations. Enargeia is derived from argos, a strong light, comparable to the almost white flash of lightning in the Mediterranean, or a spotlight. Homer uses it to describe the epiphany of the Olympian gods. Ekplexis is derived from ekpletto, which means to strike, confound, paralyze, or render somebody beside themselves with fear, surprise, or amazement, a much more negative effect than the shining vividness enargeia evokes.12 Longinus pairs enargeia with prose, and ekplexis with poetry. This distinction alerts us that the effect of sublime phantasia is not simply a very intense variety of enargeia; it may also turn out to be much more negative, threatening, unsettling, or even petrifying.</p><p>In Peri hypsous these terrifying aspects of the sublime are illustrated repeatedly by the rhetorical powers of Demosthenes, who, as Longinus describes it, “with his violence, yes, and his speed, his force, his terrifying power of rhetoric, burns, as it were, and scatters everything before him, and may therefore be compared to a flash of lightning or a thunderbolt.” And, he adds, at the end of the surviving text, “You could sooner open your eyes to the descent of a thunderbolt than face his repeated outbursts of emotion without blinking.”13 The brilliant illumination of enargeia has here turned into the shattering flash of ekplexis.</p><p>The term Longinus uses here to define the awe-inspiring, terrifying aspects of the sublime is to deinos, meaning the terrible, awe-inspiring, or forceful but also the excessively or incomprehensibly crafty or virtuoso. He briefly mentions this when discussing Homer. </p><p><br /></p><p>***************************</p><p>Parodic Sublime: Jonson</p><p>To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,</p><p>Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;</p><p>While I confess thy writings to be such</p><p>As neither man nor muse can praise too much;</p><p>'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways</p><p>Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;</p><p>For seeliest ignorance on these may light,</p><p>Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;</p><p>Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance</p><p>The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;</p><p>Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,</p><p>And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.</p><p>These are, as some infamous bawd or whore</p><p>Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?</p><p>But thou art proof against them, and indeed,</p><p>Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.</p><p>I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!</p><p>The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!</p><p>My Shakespeare, RISE! </p><p><br /></p><p>**************************</p><p>Ode/Elevated Style:</p><p>Pandora, the musyque of the beautie, of his mistresse Diana. Composed by Iohn Soowthern Gentleman, and dedicated to the right Honorable, Edward Deuer, Earle of Oxenford, &c. 1584. Iune. 20.</p><p><br /></p><p>Non careo patria , Me caret Illa magis. [By no means to absent from my native land, To me more dearly That way]</p><p>His earth, is the nourishing teate,</p><p>As well that deliuers to eate:</p><p>As els throwes out all that we can</p><p>Deuise, that should be naedefull fore</p><p>The health, of or disease or sore,</p><p>The houshold companions of man.</p><p>And this earth, hath hearbes soueraine,</p><p>To empeach sicknesses sodaine,</p><p>If they be well aptlie applide.</p><p>And this yearth, spues vp many a breuage,</p><p>Of which if we knew well the vsage:</p><p>Would force the force Acherontide.</p><p>Bréefe, it lendes vs all that we haue,</p><p>With to liue: and it is our graue.</p><p>But with all this, yet cannot giue,</p><p>Vs fayre renowmes, when we be dead.</p><p>And in déede they are onelie made,</p><p>By our owne vertues whiles we liue.</p><p>Antistrophe.</p><p>¶ And Marbles (all be they so strong,)</p><p>Cannot maintaine our renowmes long:</p><p>And neither they he but abuses,</p><p>To thinke that other thinges haue puissaunce,</p><p>To make for time any resistaunce,</p><p>Saue onelie the well singing Muses.</p><p>And the fayre Muses that prouide,</p><p>For the wise, an immortall name:</p><p><br /></p><p>With Lawrell, by hearesay of Fame.</p><p>Nor euerie one that can rime,</p><p>Must not thinke to triumph on time.</p><p>For they giue not their Diuine furie,</p><p>To euerie doting troupe that comes.</p><p>Nor the touch of eu'rie ones thommes,</p><p>Is not of an eternall durie.</p><p>Epode.</p><p>¶ No, no, the high singer is hée</p><p>Alone: that in the ende must bée</p><p>Made proude, with a garland lyke this,</p><p>And not eu'rie ryming nouice,</p><p>That writes with small wit, and much paine:</p><p>And the (Gods knowe) idiot in vaine,</p><p>For it's not the way to Parnasse,</p><p>Nor it wyll neither come to passe,</p><p>If it be not in some wise fiction,</p><p>And of an ingenious inuension:</p><p>And infanted with pleasant trauaill,</p><p>For it alone must win the Laurell.</p><p>And onelie the Poet well borne,</p><p>Must be he that goes to Parnassus:</p><p>And not these companies of Asses,</p><p>That haue brought verce almost to scorne.</p><p> </p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-60450055917870848022021-09-16T16:29:00.008-07:002021-10-09T15:08:39.146-07:00Oxford and the Empedoclean Drive in Love's Martyr<div style="text-align: left;">The ridiculous/unrevised/<i>ingenium-</i>based/mad/sublime/paradoxical/marvellous/grotesque/metamorphic/Empedoclean/Ovidian Oxford</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Ovidian Oxford</div><div style="text-align: left;">Horatian Jonson</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As suggested above in the header to this blog, the disproportion and asymmetry evident in the Droeshout Engraving figures the sublime/prodigious Shakespearean <i>corpus</i> (the immortal literary body of Edward de Vere). In the 1570's Oxford had selected the sublime/<i>hypsos</i> style as his own personal register (see Southern's Ode to Oxford in <i>Pandora</i>, and Oxford's discussion of high style in the Latin Preface to Clerke's <i>Courtier</i>, Knight of the Tree of the Sun etc...) - and appears to have influenced other members of the aristocracy to adopt this elevated style as the manner most suited to set the tone of the English court. Oxford's contributions to the development of the lyric (Steven May) with its ornate figured language (esp. metaphor) develop in parallel with accounts of his spectacular and impactful presence in Elizabeth's retinue. </div><div style="text-align: left;">I have presented evidence that Ben Jonson satirized Oxford as the absurd and formless Amorphus of <i>Cynthia's Revels</i> - putting into Amorphus mouth the high praises that had been presented to Oxford decades before and identifying Amorphus as the fantastic Earl. Jonson would later follow up this critique of Oxford with the deformed Droeshout engraving - a Figure of unruly form that still presents in iconic form a historical critique of both Longinian <i>hypsos</i> and Shakespearean style - marking out Oxfordian/Shakespearean rhetoric as ridiculous - a disorderly and ecstatic art unsuited to the court of a well-tempered Prince, or to the forming of the manners and mores of a country. Branded a ridiculous figure in plays of the Poets' War and in particular the Ovidian <i>Cynthia's Revels</i> , Oxford/Shakespeare enacted a sublime and 'mad' literary transfiguration into pure rhetoric - his Empedoclean end in the symbolic realm of <i>Love's Martyr. </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Edward de Vere was 'turned', transported, transfigured, carried across into the immortal realm of pure symbol - I know not what? Sublime Shakespeare</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">-bodies changed into new forms</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">****************************</div><div style="text-align: left;">Reading Ovid Reading Horace. The Empedoclean Drive in the <i>Ars poetica</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Abel Tamas</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> ...To begin with, I must confess a deep debt to Alessandro Barchiesi, who in his book <i>The Poet and the Prince</i> briefly but brilliantly poses and answers the question of a connection between the <i>Ars [poetica]</i> and the <i>Metamorphoses.</i> I quote the key sentences:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Horace's theory is based on an ideal of consistency and proportion that reflects the unity of natural organisms and the discipline of social decorum: his prodigies are examples of an art to be rejected because they are incoherent, paradoxical, and do not obey the rules. The <i>Metamorphoses</i> enters this argument to demonstrate that the artistic consistency recommended by the <i>Ars [poetica</i>] can remain such even if it is applied to a world that is unruly and magical in itself and it achieves this by giving concrete reality to the negative examples mentioned in the <i>Ars Poetica</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Furthermore, I would like to call attention to one of Barchiesi's notes which contains the crucial insight that metamorphosis [in the singular, i.e., in itself, as a poetic theme - A.T.] is a powerful drive toward asymmetry, disunity, liberation of imagination, going on to demonstrate that there is a conscious, or at least easily discernable, play in the <i>Metamorphoses</i> with the violation of Horatian norms, or with their literal fulfilment. The famous opening of the <i>Ars </i>(to which I will return at the end of this paper) with its fulminations against the RIDICULOUS - a broad category that includes metamorphic creatures, confessedly superabundant ecphrases, the many examples which combine heterogeneous things to deterrent effect: in one word, any poetic drive towards 'paradox and the marvellous' - is evidently something that Ovid's great work brings to full artistic fruition. </div><div style="text-align: left;">(snip)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Going one step further, we should jump now to the end of the <i>Ars,</i> where the possibility - and I think not only the possibility- of an Ovidian reading again emerges in strong connection to the ring-composition of the <i>Ars</i>, which has been explored by several Horatian scholars in recent times. Simply stated, this means nothing else in the case of the <i>Ars</i> than a return to the lesson on 'how to avoid ridiculousness?' at the end of the epistle. In two sections, moreover: first in the lesson on literary revision which stars Quintilius Varus, and then in the burlesque ending of the poem starring EMPEDOCLES. These two stages, however associative the logic may seem are strongly interconnected: in order to avoid being ridiculous, you have to correct and revise your poem as thoroughly as possible, otherwise you will be a ridiculous poet, and ridiculousness - according to the (of course) <i>satirical</i> logic of the <i>Ars</i> - is nothing other than INSANITY.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">*************************</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Hamlet</i> - The Poet and the Prince (Poet/Horace/Horatio/Jonson) - does not end well for the Prince or the Court. (Poetomachia - <i>Cynthia's Revels/Poetaster</i> - Jonson's attacks on Oxfordian Ovidianism. <i>Hamlet</i> interrogates Jonson's Horatianism and his preference for satire and their deadly effects upon the society of the Prince and his Court.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">*************************</div><div style="text-align: left;">Un-<i>Hamlet:</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Oxford to Robert Cecil May (1601):</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">...I will say no more, for words in faithful minds are tedious, only this I protest: you shall do me wrong, and yourself greater if, either through fables, which are mischievous, or conceit, which is dangerous, you think otherwise of me than humanity and consanguinity requireth.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">*************************</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Tom O'Bedlam</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">...With a host of furious fancies</div><div style="text-align: left;">Whereof I am commander,</div><div style="text-align: left;">With a *burning* spear and a horse of *air*</div><div style="text-align: left;">To the wilderness I wander.</div><div style="text-align: left;">By a knight of ghosts and shadows</div><div style="text-align: left;">I summoned am to tourney,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ten leagues beyond the wie world's end -</div><div style="text-align: left;">Methinks it is no journey.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Fire/Air - Empedoclean elements of transmigration</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">****************************</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Tamas (con't)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">As it is well known, Ovid in his later poetry recurrently refers to the <i>Metamorphoses</i> as an unfinished or more precisely uncorrected and unrevised poetic project which lacks his <i>ultima manus. (see First Folio -</i> 'Shake-speare' lacks <i>the final hand.) </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">***************************</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">Ovid</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">...so I placed the innocent books consigned with me to death, my very vitals, upon the devouring pyre,because I had come to hate the Muses as my accusers or because the poem itself was as yet halfgrown and rough. These verses were not utterly destroyed; they still exist - several copies were made, I think - and now I pray that they may live, that thus my industrious leisure may bring pleasure to the reader and remind him of me. And yet they cannot be read in patience by anybody who does not know that they lack the final hand. That work was taken from me while it was on the anvil and my writing lacked the last touch of the file. [...] And so whatever defect this rough poem may have I would have corrected , had it been permitted me. </span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">I sang also, though my attempt lacked the final touch, of bodies changed into new forms.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">There are also thrice five books on changing forms, verses snatched from the funeral of their master. That work, had I not perished beforehand, might have gained a more secure name from my finishing hand: but now unrevised it has come upon men's lips - if anything of mine is on their lips...</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">***************************</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">Tamas (con't)</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">...And this is exactly what Ovid, in his later authorial interpretations, describes as the 'unfinishedness' of the <i>Metamorphoses</i>. He seems to follow a twofold strategy. On the one hand, he would like to place his <i>opus magnum</i> in the literary canon, by playing the role of the dead Vergil - a perspective to which being (at least symbolically) dead and leaving the great work unfinished are both highly relevant - and also (though no less importantly) through showing his 'failed' readiness to observe the Horatian aesthetic norms, including the requirement of literary revision. On the other had, he is not ashamed of the <i>Metamorphoses</i>, which he describes as it it has been disseminated orally by the literary public itself, popular presumably even because of its lack of rigorous revision. Statements like <i>emendaturus eram</i>, consequently, signal the simultaneous desire to become canonised and remain popular. As far as the <i>Ars </i>is concerned, it becomes, in this intertextual framework, a self-made-example of how to attack 'Ovidianism' and be 'Ovidian' at the same time</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">(snip)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Considering the ring-composition structure of the <b>Ars</b> (i.e., that its<i> caput </i>meets its <i>pes</i> in the end) and that a sort of (counter-)Ovidianism is palpable even at the 'head' and the 'foot', we can assume that, beyond Empedocles' explicit presence at the end of the A.P., there must be an at least implicit Empedoclean presence also in its opening. This assumption, as it turns out is quite justified. Similarly to the end, the opening also focuses on a disintegrated <i>corpus</i> (see Droeshout - ND), but instead of the 'ridiculous-mad poet', this time it is his 'ridiculous-mad book' which we observe...(snip important stuff but too long ND)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Taking these fragments into consideration, we can, in accordance with Hardie, detect here a very strong link to the beginning of <i>Ars</i> (1-9).</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">quoting Horace, <i> Ars </i>- <i>Imagine a painter wanting to attach a horse's neck to a human head, assemble limbs from everywhere, and add feathers of various colours, so that a woman beautiful above the waist tailed into a revolting black fish! Could you hold back your laughter, my friends, if admitted to view it? Believe me, Pisos a book could be very like such a canvas, its images *just empty inventions like a sick man's dreams*: neither foot nor head *would be rendered in a single form*. [see Droeshout Engraving -ND]</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">(Tamas con't)This Horatian<i> Mischwesen, </i>painted by the 'ridiculous' (and, in the sense I have outlined above, also 'mad' or 'sublime') painter who paints 'paradoxical and marvellous' things appears as an Empedoclean mixture of -limbs assembled from everywhere-. It is exactly if the painter of fr.23 would have painted the 'second stage' of Empedocles' zoogony, characterised by Empedocles himself with metamorphic creatures, as we can see in fr.61. According to Horace a book without a clear structure will be similar to this painting because - neither foot nor head would be rendered in a single form-. This Empedoclean or proto-Ovidian book will be very similar to the second stage of the Empedoclean Zoogony, where these metamorphic animals are associated with 'CREATURES IN DREAMS', just like Horace's book, which is like a<i> tabula</i> (cf. the <i>anathemata</i> in fr.23) that represents something like a 'sick man's dream'. This Empedoclean presence at the end and at the beginning of the Ars is something which, I think, opens the way for Ovid to accept 'Horatian madness' as a 'sweet punishment' for not having corrected and revised his poem according to Horatian normative rules but which - in the Horatian logic - results in his being 'Empedocles', or with other words, sublime. Ovid gladly fulfils this rather provocative possibility encoded in the <i>Ars</i>, in order to be something like an "Empedocles <i>redivivus</i>" as he writes, or more precisely begins, his "Empedoclean epos" - a text which , in a certain Horatio-centric sense, does nothing other than to yield to the Empedoclean drive implied in the <i>Ars</i>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> The <i>Metamorphoses</i>, on the one hand, repeats the 'Empedoclean opening' and 'Empedoclean ending' of the <i>Ars</i>, insofar as it starts with a cosmogony based strongly on Empedocles (a cosmogony which is going to be a metaphor for Ovid's poetic project as well: cf. <i>coeptum</i> as work/world-in-progress) ) and concludes with the highly Empedoclean book 15, which repeats this structure in itself starting with the speech of Pythagoras, a didactic mini-epic based on the philosophy of change represented by Empedocles, and ends with the famous epilogue which, in terms recalling Horace's <i>Odes </i>3:30, uses this philosophy to talk about the afterlife of the poem and/or the poet. On the other hand, the <i>Metamorphoses</i>, considering both its poetic principle and its subject matter, is nothing other than the realisation of the Empedoclean philosophy of change in the terms of poetics: it speaks in an eminently metamorphic way about a world base on continuous metamophosis. Nothing can ever be finished, Ovid tells us: this is why he is taking the risk - as a <i>poeta</i>, <i>pictor</i>, or <i>liber</i> - of being ridiculous/unrevised/<i>ingenium</i>-based/mad/sublime/paradoxical/marvellous/grotesque/metamorphic/Empedoclean. At the same time, he gives us a non-normative reading of the <i>Ars </i>through which the Horatian book, for its caput to its pes, will turn out to be a <i>coeptum</i> with the same characteristics. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">*******************************</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sir
Thomas Smith's Voyage into Russia (1605) - Anonymous</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Oh
for some excellent pen-man to deplore their state</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">:
but he which would liuely, naturally, or indeed poetically delyneare
or enumerate these occurrents, shall either lead you therevnto
by </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">apoeticall
spirit,</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">as
could well, if well he might the dead liuing,
life-giuing </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sydney</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Prince
of </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Poe|sie</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">;
or deifie you with the Lord </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Salustius</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">deuinity,
or in an Earth-deploring, Sententious, high rapt Tragedie with the
noble </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Foulk-Greuill,</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">not
onely giue you the </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Idea,</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">but
the soule of the acting </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Idea</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">;
as well could, if so we would, the elaborate English </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Horace</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">that
giues number, waight, and measure to euery word, to teach the reader
by his industries, euen our Lawreat worthy </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Beniamen,</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">whose
Muze approues him with (our mother) the </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ebrew</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">signification
to bee, </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
elder Sonne,</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
happely to haue been the Childe of </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sorrow:</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
were worthy so excellent rare witt: for my selfe I am
neither </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Apollo</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">nor </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Appelles,</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">no
nor any heire to the </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Muses:</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">yet
happely a youn|ger brother, though I haue as little bequeathed me, as
many elder Brothers, and right borne Heires gaine by them: but </span></span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Hic
labor, Hoc opus est</span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
am with the LATE English quick-spirited,
cleare-sighted Ouid: </span></i></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
is to be feared Dreaming, and thinke I see many strange and cruell
actions, but say my selfe nothing all this while: Bee it so that I am
very drowsie, (the heate of the Clymate, and of the State) will
excuse mee; for great happinesse to this mightie Empire is it, or
would it haue been, if the more part of their State affyres had been
but Dreames, as they prooue phantasmaes for our yeares. </span></i></span></span></span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i></span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span><i style="background-color: white;">***************************************</i></span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span><i style="background-color: white;">Sublime:</i></span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="background-color: white;">Love's Martyr<i>, Marston</i></span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span><i>Perfectioni
Hymnus</i><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">WHat
should I call this *CREATURE*,</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Which
now is growne vnto maturitie?</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">How
should I blase this feature</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">As
firme and constant as Eternitie?</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Call
it Perfection? Fie!</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Tis
perfecter the~ brightest names can light it:</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Call
it Heauens mirror? I.</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Alas,
best attributes can neuer right it.</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Beauties
resistlesse thunder?</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">All
nomination is too straight of sence:</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Deepe
Contemplations wonder?</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">That
appellation giue this excellence.</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Within
all best confin'd,</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">(Now
feebler Genius end thy slighter riming)</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">No
Suburbes *all is MIND*</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">As
farre from spot, as possible defining.</span><br />
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Iohn
Marston.</span> </span></span></span>
</span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">*******************************'</span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">'Shake-speare' as Oxford's 'Creature':</span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">********************************</span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Creature Caliban, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Julia Reinhard Lupton</span></span></p><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">What is a creature? Derived from the future-active participle of the Latin verb<i> creare</i> ("to create"), <i>creature</i> indicates a made or fashioned thing but with the sense of continued or potential process, action, or emergence built into the future thrust of its active verbal form. Its tense forever imperfect, <i>creatura </i>resembles those parallel constructions<i> natura</i> and <i>figura, </i>in which<i> </i>the determinations conferred by nativity an facticity are nonetheless opened to the possibility of further metamophosis by the forward drive of the suffix -<i>ura </i>("that which is about to occur"). The <i>creatura</i> is a thing always in the process of undergoing creation; the creature is actively passive or, better,<i> passionate</i>, perpetually becoming created, subject to transformation at the behest of the arbitrary command of an Other. The <i>creature</i> presents above all a theological conceptualization of natural phenomena. In Judaism and Christianity (and indeed it is only via the Latin of late antiquity that the word enters the modern languages),<i> creature</i> marks the radical separation of creation and Creator. This separation can in turn articulate any number of cuts or divisions: between world and God; between all living things and those that are inert, inanimate, or elemental; between human beings and the "other creatures" over which they have been given rule; or, in more figurative uses, between anyone or anything that is produced or controlled by an agent, author, master, or tyrant. In modern usage creature borders on the monstrous and unnatural, increasingly applied to those created things that warp the proper canons of creation. It can even come to characterize the difference between male and female or between majority and minority; as a term of endearment <i>creature</i> is generally used of women and children, and <i>creatura</i> itself might be said to break into formed and formless segments, with <i>creat</i>- indicating the ordered composition of humanity and the -ura signaling its risky capacities for increase and change, foison and fusion...</span></span></span></span></div><br /></div>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146021898315927098.post-19043774569511842262021-08-11T16:34:00.000-07:002021-08-11T16:34:54.337-07:00Love's Martyr - Courting the Queen for the Presidency of Wales<p><br /></p><p>Gifting/Presenting "Shake-speare" to the Queen</p><p><br /></p><p>At the time of the publication of <i>Love's Martyr </i>Oxford was angling hard for the Presidency of Wales. I believe he presented to the Queen the greatest thing in his gift: nothing less than literary immortality. Shake-speare, in an elaborate conceit and compliment, is the offspring of the marriage of true minds - the literary heir of a Queen and, arguably, her greatest Courtier. The elderly, suspicious and embattled Elizabeth is transfigured and elevated from the subject of poetry to the metaphysical role of co-creator. Two bodies are burnt, and one name rises.</p><p>Immediately following the <i>Threnos</i>, Marston celebrates the risen creature -the risen name. A transfiguration has occurred. The name William Shake-speare figures prominently on the opposing page. It is, of course, the name of the author of the poem known as The Phoenix and Turtle. For Marston, (and myself), it is a metaphysical wonder</p><p><br /></p><p>*********************************</p><p>History and Etymology for creature - Merriam Webster</p><p>Middle English, borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Late Latin creātūra "act of bringing into being, something brought into being," from Latin creātus, past participle of creāre "to beget, give birth to</p><p>******************************** </p><p><i>Love's Martyr</i>, Chester</p><p>Phoenix.</p><p>O wilfulnesse, see how with smiling cheare,</p><p>My poore deare hart hath flong himselfe to thrall,</p><p>Looke what a mirthfull countenance he doth beare,</p><p>Spreading his wings abroad, and joyes withall:</p><p>Learne thou corrupted world, learne, heare, and see,</p><p>Friendships unspotted true sincerity.</p><p><br /></p><p>I come sweet Turtle, and with my bright wings,</p><p>I will embrace thy burnt bones as they lye,</p><p>*I hope of these another Creature springs,</p><p>That shall possesse both our authority:*</p><p>I stay too long, o take me to your glory,</p><p>And thus I end the Turtle Doves true story.</p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Grosart edition ‘Love’s Martyr’</p><p><br /></p><p>(d)What is the message or motif of these poems? I recall that the original title-page informs us that in Love’s Martyr, or Rosalins Complaint, we have poems “Allegorically shadowing the truth of Love.” I cannot take less out of this than that the author believed he was celebrating a ‘true love.’ More than that, I cannot explain away the so prominently-given chief title, of <i>Love’s Martyr</i>, or the subtitle, <i>Rosalin’s Complaint</i>; which so manifestly folds within it Elizabeth, as the ‘Tudor Rose' (just as Rosalind in <i>As You Like It,</i> is called ‘my sweet Rose, my dear Rose,’). To me all this means a ‘true love’ that ‘ran not smooth,’ that was defeated or never completed, and that led to such anguish as only the awful word ‘martyr’ could express. (snip) (footnote d - p.xlv)</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Love's Martyr printed by Richard Field for Edward Blount - 1601</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************</p><p>Connections to Wales - Salusbury and King Arthur:</p><p>Sir John Salusbury (1567 – 24 July 1612) was a Welsh knight, politician and poet of the Elizabethan era. He is notable for his opposition to the faction of Robert Devereaux, second Earl of Essex, and for his patronage of complex acrostic and allegorical poetry that anticipated the Metaphysical Movement</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Chester's main poem is a long allegory in which the relationship between the birds is explored, and its symbolism articulated. It incorporates the story of King Arthur [note - largely Welsh], and a history of ancient Britain, emphasising Welsh etymologies for British towns. It culminates with the joint immolation of the Phoenix and Turtledove, giving birth to a new and more beautiful bird from the ashes. It also includes several allegorical love poems within it, supposed to have been written by the Turtledove to the Phoenix. - Wikipedia</p><p><br /></p><p>******************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Folger Facsimile: (Grosart's edition does not reproduce either the elaborate header and footer that contributes to a 'contained' (Urn-like?) appearance of the <i>Threnos,</i> or the oversized and graceful font selected to present the name <i>William Shake-speare</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK9gUfqIaBz0TmEnq7QwqMZRH-LU9Y8A3BZ8OkJQkItUO_WW5_lORt86QpTOS0ifTlM5ocGmal4vB9CoDgK91FfUKbk0_4BxISC-UPdgK7KoN8uNI4eBIio2p_qpaAOqHm1Qzcp4WZgcf-/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1079" data-original-width="1714" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK9gUfqIaBz0TmEnq7QwqMZRH-LU9Y8A3BZ8OkJQkItUO_WW5_lORt86QpTOS0ifTlM5ocGmal4vB9CoDgK91FfUKbk0_4BxISC-UPdgK7KoN8uNI4eBIio2p_qpaAOqHm1Qzcp4WZgcf-/w503-h316/image.png" width="503" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>************************************</p><p>Much Ado About Nothing - unfortunately</p><p><br /></p><p>(To Sir Robert Cecil:)</p><p><br /></p><p>At this time, I am to try my friends: among which, considering our old acquaintance, familiarity heretofore, & alliance of houses (than which can be no straiter) as of my Brother, I presume especially. Wherefore at this time, *whereas some good fortune (if it be backed by friends)* doth in a manner present itself, I most earnestly crave your furtherance so far as the place and favor you hold may admit. And that is, as I conceive: that if her Majesty be willing to confer the Presidency of Wales to me that I may assure myself</p><p><br /></p><p>of your voice in Council rather than a stranger. Not that I desire you should be a mover, but a furtherer; for as the time is, it were not reason. But if it shall please her Majesty in regard of my youth, time & fortune spent in her Court, adding thereto her Majesty's favors and promises which drew me on without any mistrust the more to presume in mine own expenses, to confer so good a turn to me that then with your good word, and brotherly friendship, you will encourage her forward, and further it as you may. For I know her Majesty is of that princely disposition that they shall not be deceived which put their trust in her, which good office in you I will never forget; and always to my power acknowledge in love & kindness, hoping that, as we be knit near in alliance; so hereafter more nearer by good and friendly offices. Thus most earnestly desiring you to have me in friendly remembrance, when time serveth: I take my leave, this 2nd of February. [1601]</p><p><br /></p><p>"Your assured and loving Brother, Edward Oxeford" (Fowler transcription)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>SUMMARY: The document [above] is a letter dated 2 February 1601 from Oxford to Sir Robert Cecil requesting his assistance in obtaining the Presidency of Wales, left vacant by the death on 19 January 1601 of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. The Queen granted the post to Edward Zouche (1556?-1625), 11th Baron Zouche of Harringworth. He was appointed Lord President of Wales in June 1602; four months later John Chamberlain wrote that, ‘Lord Zouche *<i>plays rex*</i> in Wales with both council and justices, and with the poor Welshmen’. He remained Lord President until 13 July 1615, when he was made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. See the DNB entry for Edward Zouche. (comment by Nina Green)</p><p><br /></p><p>***********************</p><p><br /></p><p>(To Sir Robert Cecil:)</p><p><br /></p><p>"My very good Brother, I have received by Henry Lo(c)ke your most kind message, which I so effectually embrace, that what for the old love I have borne you, which I assure you was very great, what for the alliance which is between us, which is tied so fast by my children of your own sister, what for mine own disposition to yourself, which hath been rooted by long and many familiarities of a more youthful time, there could have been nothing so dearly welcome unto me. Wherefore not as a stranger but in the old style, I do assure you that you shall have no faster friend & well-wisher unto you than myself, either in kindness, which I find beyond mine expectation in you; or in kindred, whereby none is nearer allied than myself, since of your sisters, of my wife only you have received Nieces. A sister I say not by any venter, but born of the same father and the same mother of yourself. I will say no more, for words in faithful minds are tedious, only this I protest, you shall do me wrong, and yourself greater, if either through fables, which are mischievous, or conceit, which is dangerous, you think otherwise of me than humanity, and consanguinity requireth. I desired Henry Lo(c)ke to speak unto you, for that I cannot so well urge mine own business to her M(ajes)ty that you would do me the favour, when these troublesome times give opportunity to her Magesty to think of the disposition of the President of Wales that I may understand it by you, lest neglecting through ignorance the time, by mishap I may lose the suit; *for as I have understood, and by good reason conceived I am not to use any friend to move it, so myself having moved it, and received good hope*, I fear nothing but through ignorance when to prosecute it lest I should lose the benefit of her good disposition on which I only depend. </p><p><br /></p><p>Your most assured & loving Brother, as ever in mine own affection, in all kindness and kindred, </p><p><br /></p><p>EDWARD OXENFORD</p><p>(Fowler)</p><p>*****************************************</p><p>Loves Martyr - Chester</p><p>(snip)</p><p>Phoenix:</p><p><br /></p><p>Why now my heart is light, this very doome</p><p>Hath banisht sorrow from pensive breast:</p><p>And in a manner sacrificingly,</p><p>*Burne both our bodies to revive one name*:</p><p>And in all humblenesse we will intreate</p><p>The hot earth parching Sunne to lend his heate.</p><p>(note – Phoenix calls upon Apollo to kindle the wood)</p><p><br /></p><p>Phoenix:</p><p>O holy, sacred, and pure perfect fire,</p><p>More pure then that ore which faire Dido mones,</p><p>More sacred in my loving kind desire,</p><p>Then that which burnt old Esons aged bones,</p><p>*Accept into your ever hallowed flame,</p><p>Two bodies, from the which may spring one name.*</p><p><br /></p><p>Turtle.</p><p>O sweet perfumed flame, made of those trees,</p><p>Under the which the *Muses nine* have song</p><p>The praises of vertuous maids in misteries,</p><p>To whom the faire fac’d Nymphes did often throng;</p><p>Accept my body as a *SACRIFICE*</p><p>Into your flame, *of whom one name may rise.*</p><p><br /></p><p>*something given up</p>Nicolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737430402213402022noreply@blogger.com