The Expulsions of the Embarrassed
Dennis
Ciceronian forensics, and the idioms of Jonsonian tragedy, we can see
how the body's regulation became central to the discourses of
Renaissance control and, further, how the expostulations of the
powerful remain but a breath away from the EXPULSIONS of the
EMBARRASSED.
*************************************
My Lord, I had forgott the fart.
*************************************
’Tis hard to recall a fart when its out
************************************
An Art of the Emetic: Thomas Wilson and the Rhetoric of Parliament.
Lerer, Seth
Source:
Studies in Philology; Spring2001, Vol. 98 Issue 2, p158, 26p
...Throughout the poetry and drama of the later sixteenth century,
scenes of emesis come to represent religious heresy, political
dissent, moral crisis, and personal dissolution. The powerful
expulsion of the Beast of Error at the opening of Spenser's Faerie
Queene is only the most famous of such episodes:
Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw
A flood of poyson horrible and blacke,
Full of great lumpes of flesh and gobbets raw,
Which stunck so vildly, that it forst him slacke
His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe:
Her vomit full of bookes and papers was,
With loathly frogs and toades, which eeys did lacke,
And creeping sought way in the weedy gras:
Her filthy parbreake all the place defiled has.
(1.1.20)(n31)
This litany of horrid gobbets, the reference to the smell, the
"loathly" creatures coughed up, and in the subsequent stanza, the
"Huge heapes of mudd" left by the overflowing Nile in an analogy to
this erroneous emesis--all have precise verbal links to Wilson's
passage in the Arte: to recall, the "gobbets" cast out by the
courtier, the smell and "filthiness" of the act, a deed to be
"loathed," and, of course, the "heaping" of rhetorical example. I
find, too, something of this passage in an equally well-known occasion
in Shakespeare's Hamlet, when in act 5, Hamlet picks up Yorick's skull
and discourses on the very emblem of late sixteenth-century courtier
rhetoric:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of
most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times.
And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be
your gibes now? Your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your
own grinning? Quite chapfall'n? (5.1.183-92)(n32)
Here, the voiceless disembodied skull becomes the venue for
reflections on the courtly voice itself. That Hamlet's own gorge rises
at the memory shows, I think, how Shakespeare displaces the bodily
reaction onto living speaker. Hamlet's speech is something of the
rising gorge itself, a barely suppressed eruption about someone whose
lips, mouth, cheeks, and grin are gone.
Many such examples may be adduced from Renaissance English writing
(indeed, a literary history may well be written out of them), but I
wish to focus in conclusion on a moment in Ben Jonson's Catiline that
takes us back to Wilson's story and its sources and that enables us to
understand the dramatic devices by which parliamentary rhetoric was
figured against Roman models, contemporary performance, and the
literary imagination. Perhaps no dramatist had been as preoccupied
with bodily functions as Jonson;(n33) and the exchange between Cicero,
Catiline, and Cato in act 4 of that play exemplifies the ways in which
Jonson could use such functions metaphorically. Cicero's speech in act
4 is, in Jonson's handling, a textbook case of amplificatio on the
Wilsonian model, and the ensuing dialogue among the senators (for all
its presumed topical references to early seventeenth-century political
activity) takes us back to the earlier sixteenth-century rhetorical
inheritance. It takes us back, too, to the fundamental figural
association of the Roman senate and the English Parliament: an
association implicit in Wilson's appropriation of the Ciceronian
anecdote, and one explicit in later sixteenth-century reflections on
the English institution. John Hooker found the origins of Parliament
in the Roman senate, and he modeled his own rules of public decorum on
what he understood to be old senatorial "customes."(n34) We can read
Jonson's senatorial debates, then, as commentary on the idioms of
English parliamentary rhetoric, and on the inheritance of rhetorical
pedagogy that have been exemplified in Wilson's Arte.(n35)
Let us return to Jonson's text. Act 4 of Catiline is largely taken up
with speechmaking. Cicero takes center stage, arguing at great length
for Catiline's condemnation, and Jonson's version of these speeches
draws heavily on the Roman politician's own Catiline orations, as well
as on classical historians' accounts of the debate in the senate. In
fact, as has been widely noticed, Cicero's speech brings the play to a
near standstill. Except for a few one- or two-line interruptions,
Cicero speaks continuously from lines 170-461 in act 4 (in the Herford
and Simpson edition). As in its source, the speech is marked by all
the rich rhetorical devices of Roman forensics: unanswerable
questions, parallel constructions, apostrophes, exempla, schemes,
tropes, tricks of the juridical trade. Modern critics have not,
however, treated Jonson kindly at this moment. His editors consider
that this episode "reproduces with too much indulgence the copiousness
of the original": an "abuse" of sources. Anne Barton says that "Jonson
ought to have known better," and Bruce Boehrer, who quotes these
earlier opinions, opines himself: "Apparently, however, he didn't."
Boehrer goes on: "On the one hand the poet would seem determined to
transform his source-materials into lurid melodrama; on the other
hand, he uses them as a kind of dramaturgical sedative."(n36)
Boehrer's answer to this conundrum is to see act 4 of Catiline as a
problem in source study, and to resolve the problem as one of fidelity
to earlier example. Cicero appears here, and in the historical
sources, as self-important and long-winded. Plutarch is not without
criticism of Cicero's performance--noting that ever since the Catiline
affair Cicero alienated many by "continually praising and magnifying
himself," filling his books "with praises of himself," and generally
making himself "odious" and "hateful to many" with his "irksome and
tedious" oratory. For Boehrer, Jonson's Cicero is similarly "marred by
vanity, verbosity and physical cowardice, [presiding] at the play's
end, over a highly equivocal triumph."(n37) This equivocal heroism is,
I think, largely accurate, but such a reading falls short of what I
believe to be the real effect of Cicero's speechmaking: not its effect
on later historians, but its effect on Catiline within the play. For
Catiline himself recognizes precisely what Cicero is doing and he has
a name for it:
If an oration, or high language, Fathers,
Could make me guiltie, here is one, that done it:
H'has stroue to emulate this mornings thunder,
With his prodigious rhetoricke. But I hope,
This Senate is more graue, then to give credit
Rashly to all he vomits, 'gainst a man
Of your owne order, a Patrician;
And one, whose ancestors haue more deseru'd
Of Rome, then this mans eloquence could vtter,
Turn'd the best way: as still, it is the worst.
(4.462-71)
Cicero's speech remains a textbook case of amplificatio on the
Wilsonian model, and Catiline's response takes up the latent images of
bodily emesis that, as I have sought to illustrate throughout this
paper, locate Wilson's anecdote in the rhetorical and forensic
traditions. But it also takes up those images as Cicero himself
developed them in Jonson's play. His injunction for Catiline to leave
the city of Rome is one rife with an imagery of bodily emission,
resonant both with the scene of courtier misbehavior and with many of
those speeches from the Elizabethan parliaments I adduced earlier:
Purge the citie.
Draw drie that noysome, and pernicious sinke,
Which left, behind thee, would infect the world.
(4.304-6)
Cicero then asks of Catiline, "What domesticke note / Of priuate
filthiness, but is burnt in / Into thy life?" (4.316-17); he speaks of
an "intestine warre" (4.390); and notes how the evil crew of traitors
might remain still,
enclos'd
Deepe, in the veines and bowells of the state.
As humane bodies, laboring with fevers....
(4.420-22)
What has long been appreciated as the classic Jonsonian fascination
with things alimentary takes full flight here, as Cicero defines
political turmoil in an emetic language.
Thus, Catiline, rising to the bait, declares the thunder and
"prodigious rhetoricke" of Cicero mere vomit. Rather than having the
eloquent speaker respond to gross eruption (as was the case in
Cicero's Philippic and its afterlives), Jonson has his virulent
accused condemn the orator. The scene inverts the Ciceronian paradigm,
and it returns us to the legacies of verbal instruction, courtly
performativity, and parliamentary debate which were the building
blocks of the rhetorical tradition and which Wilson's anecdote
embodied. But Jonson takes it one step further. For not only is the
fullness of Cicero's speechmaking excessive and indecorous, it is
chaotic. Cato may come to Cicero's defense ("his eloquence hath more
deseru'd to day, / Speaking thy ill, then all thy ancestors / Did, in
their good," 4.472-74), but Catiline has the ultimate condemnation.
Against the claim that Cicero's is a "prodigious" rhetoric--literally
monstrous, unnaturally huge--Cato calls Catiline "thou
prodigie" (4.484), and Catiline responds:
They [the gods] would be forc'd themselues, againe, and lost
In the first, rude, and indigested heape;
Ere such a wretched name, as Cicero,
Should sound with theirs.
(4.485 -88)
This undigested heap is Ovid's language. At the opening of
Metamorphoses, he had described the unshaped chaos of pre-Creation
"rudis indigestaque moles."(n38) Catiline, then, is accusing Cicero of
nothing less than uncreation: of presenting not just gobbets thrown up
from the body, but of ultimately taking Rome back to a heap of
unformed matter. The monstrous and the huge debate here: Cicero, with
his prodigious rhetoric, and Catiline the prodigy. Both become
figures--in the early seventeenth-century resonances of these words--
for things grown out of control, things large and hideous.(n39) In
short, they are figures of a malignant amplificatio, and in the end,
it is the word heap which recalls Wilson's idea of amplification and
locates the political, the rhetorical, and the social in the
unregulated body of the civic man.
Wilson's Arte of Rhethorique would prove one of the most durable of
manuals produced during the sixteenth century. As I have mentioned, it
was widely reprinted and praised by later readers. But Wilson himself
may have had mixed feelings for the work. Returning from his European
exile (where, among other adventures, he was tried for treason by the
Inquisition for the presumed heretical content of his books on
rhetoric and logic) after Elizabeth's ascension, he was soon asked to
revise the Arte for republication. Wilson refused to do so, writing
instead a sad and self-abnegating "Prologue to the Reader" to what
would become the 1560 edition. "Amend it?" he asked rhetorically in
the Prologue. "Nay, let the book first amend itself and make me
amends" (39). Wilson's career was now in public service, not in
writing books. (He would, in fact, serve faithfully in Parliament from
1563 until his death in 1581.) The future of this book, he states,
lies with the reader. But as for Wilson himself, this book now is like
a meal served up, a plate of leftovers, it seems:
What goodness is in this treatise, I cannot without vainglory report;
neither will I meddle with it, either hot or cold. As it was, so it
is, and so be it still hereafter for me, so that I hear no more of it
and that it be not yet once again cast in my dish. (39)
I have here sought to survey what I called the rhetoric of the
indecorous, a set of images drawn from the politic and personal
disgorging body. "If a man do sup of my porridge," the parliamentarian
complained, "is it lawful for me to have a lick at his ladle?"
Reviewing his work in 1560, Wilson declines to meddle with the dish--a
verb that meant, in mid-sixteenth-century parlance, to mix together,
especially in recipes.(n40) The Arte of Rhethorique has now become a
food for thought. As we review the language of parliamentary debate,
the legacy of Ciceronian forensics, and the idioms of Jonsonian
tragedy, we can see how the body's regulation became central to the
discourses of Renaissance control and, further, how the expostulations
of the powerful remain but a breath away from the expulsions of the
embarrassed.(n41)
**************************************
Main Entry: bombastic
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: pompous, grandiloquent
Synonyms:
aureate, balderdash, big-talking, declamatory, euphuistic, flowery,
full of hot air, fustian, grandiose, high-flown, highfalutin,
histrionic, inflated, loudmouthed, magniloquent, orotund,
ostentatious, overblown, ranting, rhapsodic, rhetorical, sonorous,
stuffed shirt, swollen, tumid, turgid, verbose, windbag, windy, wordy
Main Entry: bombast
Synonyms:
absurdity, amphigory, babble, babblement, balderdash, bibble-babble,
blabber, blather, bluster, boast, boastfulness, boasting, bombastry,
brag, BRAGGADOCIO, braggartism, bragging, bravado, claptrap, conceit,
double-talk, drivel, drool, fanfaronade, fiddle-faddle, fiddledeedee,
flatulence, flummery, folderol, fudge, fustian, gabble, galimatias,
gammon, gasconade, gasconism, gibber, gibberish, gibble-gabble,
gobbledygook, grandiloquence, heroics, highfalutin, hocus-pocus, hot
air, humbug, jabber, jactation, jactitation, jargon, lexiphanicism,
magniloquence, mumbo jumbo, narrishkeit, niaiserie, nonsense,
orotundity, pack of nonsense, palaver, prate, prattle, puffery,
pyrotechnics, rant, rhapsody, rhetoric, rigamarole, rigmarole,
rodomontade, rubbish, sesquipedality, show, side, skimble-skamble,
stuff and nonsense, stultiloquence, swagger, trash, trumpery,
tumidity, turgidity, twaddle, twattle, twiddle-twaddle, vanity,
vaporing, vaunt, vauntery, vaunting, waffling
****************************************
http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/parliament_fart_section/C1i.html
“The Censure of the Parliament Fart”
Never was bestowed such art
Upon the tuning of a Fart.
Downe came grave auntient Sir John Crooke1
And redd his message in his booke.
Fearie well, Quoth Sir William Morris,2 Soe:
5
But Henry Ludlowes3 Tayle cry’d Noe.
Up starts one fuller4 of devotion
Then Eloquence; and said a very ill motion
Not soe neither quoth Sir Henry Jenkin5
The Motion was good; but for the stincking
10
Well quoth Sir Henry Poole6 it was a bold tricke
To Fart in the nose of the bodie pollitique
Indeed I must confesse quoth Sir Edward Grevill7
The matter of it selfe was somewhat uncivill
Thanke God quoth Sir Edward Hungerford8
15
That this Fart proved not a Turdd
Quoth Sir Jerome the lesse9 there was noe such abuse
Ever offer’d in Poland, or Spruce10
Quoth Sir Jerome in folio,11 I sweare by the Masse
This Fart was enough to have brooke all my Glasse
20
Indeed quoth Sir John Trevor12 it gave a fowle knocke
As it lanched forth from his stincking Docke.13
I (quoth another) it once soe chanced
That a great Man farted as hee danced.14
Well then, quoth Sir William Lower15
25
This fart is noe Ordinance fitt for the Tower.
Quoth Sir Richard Houghton16 noe Justice of Quorum17
But would take it in snuffe 18 to have a fart lett before him.
If it would beare an action quoth Sir Thomas Holcrofte19
I would make of this fart a bolt, or a shafte.
30
Quoth Sir Walter Cope20 ’twas a fart rarely lett
I would ’tweere sweet enough for my Cabinett.
Such a Fart was never seene
Quoth the Learned Councell of the Queene.21
Noe (quoth Mr Pecke22 I have a President23 in store
35
That his Father farted the Session before
Nay then quoth Noy24 ’twas lawfully done
For this fart was entail’d25 from father to sonne
Quoth Mr Recorder26 a word for the cittie
To cutt of the aldermens right27 weere great pittie.
40
Well quoth Kitt Brookes28 wee give you a reason
Though he has right by discent he had not livery & seizin29
Ha ha quoth Mr Evans30 I smell a fee
I’ts a private motion heere’s something for mee31
45
Well saith Mr Moore32 letts this motion repeale
Whats good for the private is oft ill for comonweale33
A good yeare on this fart, quoth gentle Sir Harry34
He has caus’d such an Earthquake that my colepitts miscarry35
’Tis hard to recall a fart when its out
50
Quoth with a loude shoote36
**************************************
Conceiving Jealousy: Othello's Imitated Pregnancy
Melanie K. Ross
Exsufflicate and Blown Surmises
The play casts Othello as conceiving by breath, a Renaissance term for
the words breathed forth, as enacting an imitated pregnancy. Early on,
the play uses Othello's rhetorical style to prefigure his
susceptibility to, and his desire for, a swollen state, much as the
first and last letter of his name can be seen to do. For example,
Othello conveys how much he loves the "pride, pomp and circumstance of
glorious war" (III.iii.357); he is accused by Iago of speaking to town
worthies "with a bombast circumstance/Horribly stuffed with epithets
of war" (I.i.12-13). In the conception scene itself (III.iii), Othello
will allow his "satisfaction" to come from "circumstances:, allow
"proofs" to be "thicken(ed)", as well as to suffice in their flimsy,
airy selves - "trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations
strong". (...)
T.McAlindon describes Othello's verbal style as "tumid",
employing one of Othello's own phrases, "exsufflicate and blown",
which he relates to the "Latin epithet for the swollen or inflated
style - "SUFFLATUS'" (III.iii.185). It is this verbal style that
suggest both the means and the ends of Othello's verbal impregnation,
his figurative pregnancy. But it is actually the context of the above
phrase that is the most revealing. Othello is describing the way his
"impregnation" has occurred, Iago's "surmises" about Desdemona's
infidelity:
Exchange me for a goat
When I shall turn the business of my soul
To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,
Matching thy inference. (III.iii.183-6)
It is precisely these "blown surmises", the very phrase emphasising
their status as breath, that will blow Othello up. The word "blown"
itself is associated with pregnancy, fertility, ripeness - "the blown
rose". Blown out, ex-spired, these surmises will have the capacity not
only to blow up but also to produce heat, to quicken, to in-spire or
animate: the process of pregnancy, and with less radically
transgendering implications, DIGESTION.
(snip)
Othello's penchant for dilation, swelling and stuffing, all words with
rhetorical, schoolroom connotations, *is associated with a simulated
female pregnancy rather than with male tumescence*. For example,
Cassio prays for Othello's arrival at Cyprus:
(...) Great Jove, Othello guard,
And swell his sail with thine own powerful breath
That he may bless this bay with his tall ship,
Make love's quick pants in Desdemona's arms,
Give renewed fire to our extincted spirits
And bring all Cyprus comfort! -
(Enter Desdemona, Iago, Roderigo and Emilia)
O, behold
The riches of the ship is come ashore. (II.i.77-83)
In Cassio's sexualised account of the storm, where Jove's creative and
redemptive breath prefigures Iago's, Othello is both a swollen woman
and a virile man. The image is a transvestite one with a twist:
Othello as pregnant woman. The quick pants and the fire, needed
components for conception in Renaissance theorisations, as we shall
see, should come about through sex with Desdemona but will of course
be simulated with Iago in Othello's act of conecption. "The riches of
the ship", in the context Cassio sets up, echoes Othello's "tall ship"
to suggest that it is Othello's swollen ship that is delivering its
riches up onto the shore, and image that will recur, this time with
Othello as a self-proclaimed pregnant woman, later on.
At the moment of his reunion with Desdemona, Othello claims that
the wind, along with the appearanace of Desdemona, has made him so
"content" that he could now die and be "most happy" (II,i. 188). This
"content" that the *TEMPEST OF WIND* has produced prefigures the
content of the equally "windy" false Desdemona for whom he kills at
the play's end. Here, already in thrall to what the wind has produced,
Othello states, "I cannot speak enough of this content, /It stops me
here, it is too much of joy" (194-5). Othello, driven by a similarly
potent "content" at the play's end, stops its living exemplar. Until
then, however, the phantasmic life denoted by WIND; its associations
with the near-living presence of improvised speech in the rhetorical
tradition; and its embodiment of anima, spirit or animating life-
force, make Othello's "pregnancy", and the fantasy of Othello's
pregnancy, a possibility. Indeed T. Cave, dicussing rhetorical
improvisation in Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, writes that WIND is
one of the most ancient and common figures for the COPIOUS DISCOURSE
that Iago's literalises.
**************************************
Arundel and Howard similarly proclaim Oxford's untruthfulness at
table , his "ordenarye use to lie for the whetstone in the worst
degree' - the whetstone being a traditional prize in a lying contest.
"Let these examples plede', writes Arundel:
- that the cobblers wyves of Millaine, are more richlie dressed
everie
workeinge daye then the Qwene on Christmas daye
- that but for the comminge of Beningefeld (Thomas Bedingfield)
and
the Duke of Alvaes (Ferdinand de Toledo's ) perswation rather to
omitted the service then forsake his cuntrie he had surpriseid Bommle
witness my Lord Howard of Effinhham, Lord Henry Francis Southwell
Walter Ralegh and my self.
- that yf my Lord (Charles? Henry?) Howard had not in the Quenes
name
called him a waye by letter, he had bin *governer of Millayne*
(MILAN), Henry Howard Walter Ralegh Francis Southwell Harrye Burroughe
Robinson.
- that he was in the waye to genoa with 3000 horsees a 10000
foteman
to take it for the Kinge of Spayne by Don Iones (John's) direction
when the Cardinall Moron toke upp the matter
- that he was proffered ten thousand powndes a yere by the Pope
and
more by Kinge Phillipp at NAPALES.
- That the cownetess of Mirondola came fiftie miles to lie with
him
for loves
- That the Qwene of Navare sent a messenger to desire him to
speke
with him in her chamber
- That St Markes churche is paveid at Venice with diamowntes and
rubies
- That a merchant in Geane (Genoa) hathe a Mantell of a chimney
of
more price then all the treasure of the Towre
- That he *red the reathorick lecter publikelie* in sermies (?
sermons)
preached at Strosbreke (Strasbourg)
Here is a potpourri: denigrations of the Queen and her wealth; boasts
of military prowess thwarted by the Queen; travellers' tales; sexual
BRAGGADOCIO; and boasts of intellectual prowess.
Many of Oxford's fabrications are recited at length, as for
example by Arundel (LIB-4.3/I.I):
And first will I detecte him of the most impudent, and sencelesse
lies, that ever past the mowthe of any man, whiche as heretofore they
have made muche sporte to the hereers, so are they nowe turnyd to the
preiudice of divers (persons). Of a Million at the least that hathe
past his tonge, I will onelie speke of three in affirmacion of whiche
lies being voyde of sence, and withowte coullor of truthe, to have
them beleveid he hathe periurde him selfe a hundred times, and damnyd
him selfe to the pitt of hell. A vice not inferior to manye that him
ateneid (attend) and leveinge all his circumstances this is the first
lie. At his beinge in Flawnders (i.e. in 1574) the Duke of Alva, as he
will constantlie affirme, grewe so much to affecte him for those rare
partes he sawe in him, as he made him his lifetenant generall over all
the armye then in the lowe cuntrye. And imployd him ferther in a
notable pece of service, where according to his place he commanwnedid
and directed, the ambassador of spaine that is nowe here, Mountdragon,
Sansoe Davela and the rest of the captaines, but these, whom I have
namid, as he will saye, of all others were most glad to be commaundid
by him, and so valiantlie he behaveid him selfe as he gained great
love of all the soldiers, and no lesse admiracioun of his vallure of
all sortes: and in the iornye he passed manye straytes and divers
bridgees kepte by the enemye whiche he bett (beat) them from with the
losse of many a mans life, but still he forseid (forced) them to
retire, till at the last he approcheid the place that he went to
besege (Leiden?), and using no delaye the Canon was plantid, and the
batterie continuyd the space of ten dayes by whiche time he had made
such a breche, as by a generall consent of all his captaynes he gave
an assaulte, and to encourage his soldiers this valiant prince ledd
them therto and throughe the forse of his murtheringe arme, many were
sore wondid, but more killed(.) notwithstandinge beinge not well
followed bye the royters (ritters, knights) he was repulseid but
determaninge to geve a freshe and generall assalte the next day Mr.
Beningefeld , as the devell wold have it, came in upon his post horse,
and called him from this service by her Maiesties letters beinge the
gretist disgrace, that ever eny suche generall receaveid and nowe the
question is, whether this noble generall were more troblid with his
callinge home, or Beningefeld more moveid with pittye and compassion
to behold this slaugheter, or his horse more aferd when he past the
bridges at sight of the ded bodies, wherat his started and flunge in
such sort as Beninfeld cold hardlie kepe his backe. Whether this hathe
paste him I leve it to the report of my Lord Charles howard, my Lord
Winser, my Lord Compton, my Lord Harrye Howard, and my Lord Thomas
Howard. Rawlie, Gorge, Gifford, Waldose, Noell, and Sowthewell with
divers other Ientillmen that hathe accompanid him, and yf in his
soberist modes (moods) , he wold owne this, it maye easily be gathered
what will pas him in his cuppes.
Oxford similarly claimed to have settle Italian disputes at Genoa and
elsewhere (LIB-1/2), and to have made 'certaye excellent oracions' at
Venice, Padua, and Bologna, so that he was reputed for his eloquence
another CICERO and for his conducke (conduct, accomplishments) a
CEASER' (LIB - 1/3)
Alan Nelson, Monstrous Adversary_, p.206-7
**************************************
Braggadocio \Brag`ga*do"cio\, n. [From Braggadocchio, a boastful
character in Spenser's ``Fa["e]rie Queene.'']
1. A braggart; a boaster; a swaggerer. --Dryden.
2. Empty boasting; mere brag; pretension.
*************************************
rodomontade
n : vain and empty boasting [syn: braggadocio, bluster,
rhodomontade]
rodomontade [ˌrɒdəmɒnˈteɪd -ˈtɑːd] Literary
n
a. boastful words or behaviour; bragging
b. (as modifier) rodomontade behaviour
vb
(intr) to boast, bluster, or rant
[from French, from Italian rodomonte a boaster, from Rodomonte the
name of a braggart king of Algiers in epic poems by Boiardo and
Ariosto]
*************************************
Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto III
Vaine Braggadocchio getting Guyons
horse is made the scorne
Of knighthood trew, and is of fayre
Belphoebe fowle forlorne.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/sfq/img/11000.jpg
S Oone as the morrow faire with purple beames
Disperst the shadowes of the mistie night,
And Titan playing on the eastern streames,
Cleare the deawy ayre with springing light,
(
(EVEN as the sun with purple-colour'd face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn;)
Sir Guyon mindfull of his vow yplight,
Vprose from drowsie couch, and him addrest
Vnto the iourney which he had behight:
His puissaunt armes about his noble brest,
And many-folded shield he bound about his wrest.
Then taking Congé of that virgin pure,
The bloudy-handed babe vnto her truth
Did earnestly commit, and her coniure,
In vertuous lore to traine his tender youth,
And all that gentle noriture ensu'th:
And that so soone as ryper yeares he raught,
He might for memorie of that dayes ruth,
Be called Ruddymane, and thereby taught,
T'auenge his Pare[n]ts death on them, that had it wrought.
So forth he far'd, as now befell, on foot,
Sith his good steed is lately from him gone;
Patience perforce; helpelesse what may it boot
To fret for anger, or for griefe to mone?
His Palmer now shall foot no more alone:
So fortune wrought, as vnder greene woods syde
He lately heard that dying Lady grone,
He left his steed without, and speare besyde,
And rushed in on foot to ayd her, ere she dyde.
The whiles a losell wandring by the way,
One that to bountie neuer cast his mind,
Ne thought of honour euer did assay
His baser brest, but in his kestrell kind
A pleasing vaine of glory vaine did find,
To which his flowing toung, and troublous spright
Gaue him great ayd, and made him more inclind:
He that braue steed there finding ready dight,
Purloynd both steed and SPEARE, and ran away full light.
Now gan his hart all swell in iollitie,
And of him selfe great hope and helpe conceiu'd,
That puffed vp with smoke of vanitie,
And with selfe-loued personage deceiu'd,
He gan to hope, of men to be receiu'd
For such, as he him thought, or faine would bee:
But for in court gay portaunce he perceiu'd,
And gallant shew to be in greatest gree,
Eftsoones to court he cast t'auaunce his first degree.
And by the way he chaunced to espy
One sitting idle on a sunny bancke,
To whom auaunting in great brauery,
As Peacocke, that his painted plumes doth prancke,
He smote his courser in the trembling flancke,
And to him threatned his hart-thrilling speare:
The seely man seeing him ryde so rancke,
And ayme at him, fell flat to ground for feare,
And crying Mercy lowd, his pitious hands gan reare.
Thereat the Scarcrow wexed wondrous prowd,
Through fortune of his first aduenture faire,
And with big thundring voyce reuyld him lowd;
Vile Caytiue, vassall of dread and despaire,
Vnworthie of the commune breathed aire,
Why liuest thou, dead dog, a lenger day,
And doest not vnto death thy selfe prepaire.
Dye, or thy selfe my captiue yield for ay;
Great fauour I thee graunt, for aunswere thus to stay.
Hold, ô deare Lord, hold your dead-doing hand,
Then loud he cryde, I am your humble thrall.
Ah wretch (quoth he) thy destinies withstand
My wrathfull will, and do for mercy call.
I giue thee life: therefore prostrated fall,
And kisse my stirrup; that thy homage bee.
The Miser threw him selfe, as an Offall,
Streight at his foot in base humilitee,
And cleeped him his liege, to hold of him in fee.
So happy peace they made and faire accord:
Eftsoones this liege-man gan to wexe more bold,
And when he felt the folly of his Lord,
In his owne kind he gan him selfe vnfold:
For he was wylie witted, and growne old
In cunning sleights and practick knauery.
From that day forth he cast for to vphold
His idle humour with fine flattery,
And blow the bellowes to his swelling vanity.
Trompart fit man for Braggadocchio,
To serue at court in view of vaunting eye;
Vaine-glorious man, when fluttring wind does blow
In his light wings, is lifted vp to skye:
The scorne of knighthood and trew cheualrye,
To thinke without desert of gentle deed,
And noble worth to be aduaunced hye:
Such prayse is shame; but honour vertues meed
Doth beare the fairest flowre in honorable seed.
So forth they pas, a well consorted paire,
Till that at length with Archimage they meet:
Who seeing one that shone in armour faire,
On goodly courser thundring with his feet,
Eftsoones supposed him a person meet,
Of his reuenge to make the instrument:
For since the Redcrosse knight he earst did weet,
To beene with Guyon knit in one consent,
The ill, which earst to him, he now to Guyon ment.
And comming close to Trompart gan inquere
Of him, what mighty warriour that mote bee,
That rode in golden sell with single spere,
But wanted sword to wreake his enmitee.
He is a great aduenturer, (said he)
That hath his sword through hard assay forgone,
And now hath vowd, till he auenged bee,
Of that despight, neuer to wearen none;
That speare is him enough to doen a thousand grone.
Th'enchaunter greatly ioyed in the vaunt,
And weened well ere long his will to win,
And both his foen with equall foyle to daunt.
Tho to him louting lowly, did begin
To plaine of wrongs, which had committed bin
By Guyon, and by that false Redcrosse knight,
Which two through treason and deceiptfull gin,
Had slaine Sir Mordant, and his Lady bright:
That mote him honour win, to wreake so foule despight.
Therewith all suddeinly he seemd enraged,
And threatned death with dreadfull countenaunce,
As if their liues had in his hand beene gaged;
And with stiffe force shaking his mortall launce,
To let him weet his doughtie valiaunce,
Thus said; Old man, great sure shalbe thy meed,
If where those knights for feare of dew vengeaunce
Do lurke, thou certainly to me areed,
That I may wreake on them their hainous hatefull deed.
Certes, my Lord, (said he) that shall I soone,
And giue you eke good helpe to their decay,
But mote I wisely you aduise to doon;
Giue no ods to your foes, but do puruay
Your selfe of sword before that bloudy day:
For they be two the prowest knights on ground,
And oft approu'd in many hard assay,
And eke of surest steele, that may be found,
Do arme your selfe against that day, them to confound.
Dotard (said he) let be thy deepe aduise;
Seemes that through many yeares thy wits thee faile,
And that weake eld hath left thee nothing wise,
Else neuer should thy iudgement be so fraile,
To measure manhood by the sword or maile.
Is not enough foure quarters of a man,
Withouten sword or shield, an host to quaile?
Thou little wotest, what this right hand can:
Speake they, which haue beheld the battailes, which it wan.
The man was much abashed at his boast;
Yet well he wist, that who so would contend
With either of those knights on euen coast,
Should need of all his armes, him to defend;
Yet feared least his boldnesse should offend,
When Braggadocchio said, Once I did sweare,
When with one sword seuen knights I brought to end,
Thence forth in battell neuer sword to beare,
But it were that, which noblest knight on earth doth weare.
Perdie Sir knight, said then th'enchaunter bliue,
That shall I shortly purchase to your hond:
For now the best and noblest knight aliue
Prince Arthur is, that wonnes in Faerie lond;
He hath a sword, that flames like burning brond.
The same by my deuice I vndertake
Shall by to morrow by thy side be fond.
At which bold word that boaster gan to quake,
And wondred in his mind, what mote that monster make.
He stayd not for more bidding, but away
Was suddein vanished out of his sight:
The Northerne wind his wings did broad display
At his commaund, and reared him vp light
From off the earth to take his aerie flight.
They lookt about, but no where could espie
Tract of his foot: then dead through great affright
They both nigh were, and each bad other flie:
Both fled attonce, ne euer backe returned eie.
Till that they come vnto a forrest greene,
In which they shrowd the[m]selues from causelesse feare;
Yet feare them followes still, where so they beene,
Each trembling leafe, and whistling wind they heare,
As ghastly bug their haire on end does reare:
Yet both doe striue their fearfulnesse to faine.
At last they heard a horne, that shrilled cleare
Throughout the wood, that ecchoed againe,
And made the forrest ring, as it would riue in twaine.
Eft through the thicke they heard one rudely rush;
With noyse whereof he from his loftie steed
Downe fell to ground, and crept into a bush,
To hide his coward head from dying dreed.
But Trompart stoutly stayd to taken heed,
Of what might hap. Eftsoone there stepped forth
A goodly Ladie clad in hunters weed,
That seemd to be a woman of great worth,
And by her stately portance, borne of heauenly birth.
Her face so faire as flesh it seemed not,
But heauenly pourtraict of bright Angels hew,
Cleare as the skie, withouten blame or blot,
Through goodly mixture of complexions dew;
And in her cheekes the vermeill red did shew
Like roses in a bed of lillies shed,
The which ambrosiall odours from them threw,
And gazers sense with double pleasure fed,
Hable to heale the sicke, and to reuiue the ded.
In her faire eyes two liuing lamps did flame,
Kindled aboue at th'heauenly makers light,
And darted fyrie beames out of the same,
So passing persant, and so wondrous bright,
That quite bereau'd the rash beholders sight:
In them the blinded god his lustfull fire
To kindle oft assayd, but had no might;
For with dredd Maiestie, and awfull ire,
She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desire.
Her iuorie forhead, full of bountie braue,
Like a broad table did it selfe dispred,
For Loue his loftie triumphes to engraue,
And write the battels of his great godhed:
All good and honour might therein be red:
For there their dwelling was. And when she spake,
Sweet words, like dropping honny she did shed,
And twixt the perles and rubins softly brake
A siluer sound, that heauenly musicke seemd to make.
Vpon her eyelids many Graces sate,
Vnder the shadow of her euen browes,
Working belgards, and amorous retrate,
And euery one her with a grace endowes:
And euery one with meekenesse to her bowes.
So glorious mirrhour of celestiall grace,
And soueraine moniment of mortall vowes,
How shall fraile pen descriue her heauenly face,
For feare through want of skill her beautie to disgrace?
So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire
She seemd, when she presented was to sight,
And was yclad, for heat of scorching aire,
All in a silken Camus lylly whight,
Purfled vpon with many a folded plight,
Which all aboue besprinckled was throughout,
With golden aygulets, that glistred bright,
Like twinckling starres, and all the skirt about
Was hemd with golden fringe
Below her ham her weed were somewhat traine,
And her streight legs most brauely were embayld
In gilden buskins of costly Cordwaine,
All bard with golden bendes, which were entayld
With curious antickes, and full faire aumayld:
Before they fastned were vnder her knee
In a rich Iewell, and therein entrayld
The ends of all their knots, that none might see,
How they within their fouldings close enwrapped bee.
Like two faire marble pillours they were seene,
Which doe the temple of the Gods support,
Whom all the people decke with girlands greene,
And honour in their festiuall resort;
Those same with stately grace, and princely port
She taught to tread, when she her selfe would grace,
But with the wooddie Nymphes when she did play,
Or when the flying Libbard she did chace,
She could them nimbly moue, and after fly apace.
And in her hand a sharpe bore-speare she held,
And at her backe a bow and quiuer gay,
Stuft with steele-headed darts, wherewith she queld
The saluage beastes in her victorious play,
Knit with a golden bauldricke, which forelay
Athwart her snowy brest, and did diuide
Her daintie paps; which like young fruit in May
Now little gan to swell, and being tide,
Through her thin weed their places only signifide.
Her yellow lockes crisped, like golden wyre,
About her shoulders weren loosely shed,
And when the winde emongst them did inspyre,
They waued like a penon wide dispred,
And low behinde her backe were scattered:
And whether art it were, or heedlesse hap,
As through the flouring forrest rash she fled,
In her rude haires sweet flowres themselues did lap,
And flourishing fresh leaues and blossomes did enwrap.
Such as Diana by the sandie shore
Of swift Eurotas, or on Cynthus greene,
Where all the Nymphes haue her vnwares forlore,
Wandreth alone with bow and arrowes keene,
To seeke her game: Or as that famous Queene
Of Amazons, whom Pyrrhus did destroy,
The day that first of Priame she was seene,
Did shew her selfe in great triumphant ioy,
To succour the weake state of sad afflicted Troy.
Such when as hartlesse Trompart her did vew,
He was dismayed in his coward mind,
And doubted, whether he himselfe should shew,
Or fly away, or bide alone behind:
Both feare and hope he in her face did find,
When she at last him spying thus bespake;
Hayle Groome; didst not thou see a bleeding Hind,
Whose right haunch earst my stedfast arrow strake?
If thou didst, tell me, that I may her ouertake.
Wherewith reviu'd, this answere forth he threw;
O Goddesse, (for such I thee take to bee)
For neither doth thy face terrestriall shew,
Nor voyce sound mortall; I auow to thee,
Such wounded beast, as that, I did not see,
Sith earst into this forrest wild I came.
But mote thy goodlyhed forgiue it mee,
To weet, which of the Gods I shall thee name,
That vnto thee due worship I may rightly frame.
To whom she thus; but ere her words ensewed,
Vnto the bush her eye did suddein glaunce,
In which vaine Braggadocchio was mewed,
And saw it stirre: she left her percing launce,
And towards gan a deadly shaft aduaunce,
In mind to marke the beast. At which sad stowre,
Trompart forth stept, to stay the mortall chaunce,
Out crying, ô what euer heauenly powre,
Or earthly wight thou be, withhold this deadly howre.
O stay thy hand, for yonder is no game
For thy fierce arrowes, them to exercize,
But loe my Lord, my liege, whose warlike name,
Is farre renowmd through many bold emprize;
And now in shade he shrowded yonder lies.
She staid: with that he crauld out of his nest,
Forth creeping on his caitiue hands and thies,
And standing stoutly vp, his loftie crest
Did fiercely shake, and rowze, as comming late from rest.
As fearefull fowle, that long in secret caue
For dread of soaring hauke her selfe hath hid,
Not caring how, her silly life to saue,
She her gay painted plumes disorderid,
Seeing at last her selfe from daunger rid,
Peepes foorth, and soone renewes her natiue pride;
She gins her feathers foule disfigured
Proudly to prune, and set on euery side,
So shakes off shame, ne thinks how erst she did her hide.
So when her goodly visage he beheld,
He gan himselfe to vaunt: but when he vewed
Those deadly tooles, which in her hand she held,
Soone into other fits he was transmewed,
Till she to him her gratious speach renewed;
All haile, Sir knight, and well may thee befall,
As all the like, which honour haue pursewed
Through deedes of armes and prowesse martiall;
All vertue merits praise, but such the most of all
To whom he thus: ô fairest vnder skie,
True be thy words, and worthy of thy praise,
That warlike feats doest highest glorifie.
Therein haue I spent all my youthly daies,
And many battailes fought, and many fraies
Throughout the world, wher so they might be found,
Endeuouring my dreadded name to raise
Aboue the Moone, that fame may it resound
In her eternall trompe, with laurell girland cround.
But what art thou, ô Ladie, which doest raunge
In this wilde forrest, where no pleasure is,
And doest not it for ioyous court exchaunge,
Emongst thine equall peres, where happie blis
And all delight does raigne, much more then this?
There thou maist loue, and dearely loued bee,
And swim in pleasure, which thou here doest mis;
There maist thou best be seene, and best maist see:
The wood is fit for beasts, the court is fit for thee.
Who so in pompe of proud estate (quoth she)
Does swim, and bathes himselfe in courtly blis,
Does waste his dayes in darke obscuritee,
AND IN OBLIVION Ever BURIED IS:
Where ease abounds, yt's eath to doe amis;
But who his limbs with labours, and his mind
Behaues with cares, cannot so easie mis.
Abroad in armes, at home in studious kind
Who seekes with painfull toile, shall honour soonest find.
In woods, in waues, in warres she wonts to dwell,
And will be found with perill and with paine;
Ne can the man, that moulds in idle cell,
Vnto her happie mansion attaine:
Before her gate high God did Sweat ordaine,
And wakefull watches euer to abide:
But easie is the way, and passage plaine
To pleasures pallace; it may soone be spide,
And day and night her dores to all stand open wide.
In Princes court,---The rest she would haue said,
But that the foolish man, fild with delight
Of her sweet words, that all his sence dismaid,
And with her wondrous beautie rauisht quight,
Gan burne in filthy lust, and leaping light,
Thought in his bastard armes her to embrace.
With that she swaruing backe, her Iauelin bright
Against him bent, and fiercely did menace:
So turned her about, and fled away apace.
Which when the Peasant saw, amazd he stood,
And grieued at her flight; yet durst he not
Pursew her steps, through wild vnknowen wood;
Besides he feard her wrath, and threatned shot
Whiles in the bush he lay, not yet forgot:
Ne car'd he greatly for her presence vaine,
But turning said to Trompart, What foule blot
Is this to knight, that Ladie should againe
Depart to woods vntoucht, & leaue so proud disdaine?
Perdie (said Trompart) let her passe at will,
Least by her presence daunger mote befall.
For who can tell (and sure I feare it ill)
But that she is some powre celestiall?
For whiles she spake, her great words did apall
My feeble courage, and my hart oppresse,
That yet I quake and tremble ouer all.
And I (said Braggadocchio) thought no lesse,
When first I heard her horne sound with such ghastlinesse.
For from my mothers wombe this grace I haue
Me giuen by eternall destinie,
That earthly thing may not my courage braue
Dismay with feare, or cause one foot to flie,
But either hellish feends, or powres on hie:
Which was the cause, when earst that horne I heard,
Weening it had beene thunder in the skie,
I hid my selfe from it, as one affeard;
But when I other knew, my selfe I boldly reard.
But now for feare of worse, that may betide,
Let vs soone hence depart. They soone agree;
So to his steed he got, and gan to ride,
As one vnfit therefore, that all might see
He had not trayned bene in cheualree.
Which well that valiant courser did discerne;
For he despysd to tread in dew degree,
But chaufd and fom'd, with courage fierce and sterne,
And to be easd of that base burden still did yerne.
Canto IV
I N braue pursuit of honorable deed,
There is I know not what great difference
*Betweene the vulgar and the noble seed*,
Which vnto things of valorous pretence
Seemes to be borne by natiue influence;
As feates of armes, and loue to entertaine,
But chiefly skill to ride, seemes a science
Proper to gentle bloud; some others faine
To menage steeds, as did this vaunter; but in vaine.
But he the rightfull owner of that steed,
Who well could menage and subdew his pride,
The whiles on foot was forced for to yeed,
With that blacke Palmer, his most trusty guide;
Who suffred not his wandring feet to slide.
But when strong passion, or weake fleshlinesse
Would from the right way seeke to draw him wide,
He would through temperance and stedfastnesse,
Teach him the weake to strengthen, & the stro[n]g suppresse.
**************************************
Whitney's Choice of Emblemes 38
Non locus virum, sed vir locum ornat
To the Honorable Sir PHILLIP SIDNEY Knight, Governour of the Garrison
and towne of Ulissing.
The trampinge steede, that champes the burnish'd bitte,
Is mannag'd brave, with ryders for the nones:
But, when the foole uppon his backe doth sette,
He throwes him downe, and ofte doth bruse his bones:
His corage feirce, dothe crave a better guide,
And eke such horse, the foole shoulde not bestride.
By which is ment, that men of judgement grave,
Of learning, witte, and eeke of conscience cleare,
In highe estate, are fitte theire seates to have,
And to be stall'd, in sacred justice cheare:
Wherein they rule, unto theire endlesse fame,
But fooles are foil'd, and throwne out of the same.
--------------------magnum hoc ego duco,
Quod placuit tibi, qui turpi secernis honestum (Horat 1. Ser.
6)
http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitn109.htm
http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitn110.htm
**************************************
2245. -- Magnum hoc ego duco
Quodplacui tibi, qui turpi secernis honestum
Non patre praclaro, sed vita et pectore puro. HORACE
It is to me
a most gratifying circumstance, that my conduct has been pleasing
to you, who are so competent to discriminate between probity and
baseness, and that you have not bestowed your approbation as a
tribute due to illustrious descent, but to an irreproachable life,
and
a pure, spotless mind."
*************************************
"The players often mention it as an honour 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.'"
*************************************
Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine:
ACT 1. SCENE 2. The house of Strumbo.
[Enter Strumbo above in a gown, with ink and paper in his hand,
saying:--]
STRUMBO. Either the four elements, the seven planets, and all the
particular stars of the pole Antastick, are adversative against me, or
else I was begotten and born in the wane of the Moon, when every thing
as Lactantius in his fourth book of Consultations doth say, goeth
asward. Aye, masters, aye, you may laugh, but I must weep; you may
joy, but I must sorrow; shedding salt tears from the watery fountains
of my most dainty fair eyes, along my comely and smooth cheeks, in as
great plenty as the water runneth from the buckingtubs, or red wine
out of the hogs heads: for trust me, gentlemen and my very good
friends, and so forth, the little god, nay the desparate god Cuprit,
with one of his vengible birdbolts, hath shot me unto the heel: so not
only, but also, oh fine phrase, I burn, I burn, and I burn a, in love,
in love, and in love a. Ah, Strumbo, what hast thou seen? not Dina
with the Ass Tom? Yea, with these eyes thou hast seen her, and
therefore pull them out, for they will work thy bale. Ah, Strumbo,
hast thou heard? not the voice of the Nightingale, but a voice sweeter
than hers. Yea, with these ears hast thou heard it, and therefore cut
them off, for they have caused thy sorrow. Nay, Strumbo, kill thy
self, drown thy self, hang thy self, starve thy self. Oh, but then I
shall leave my sweet heart. Oh my heart! Now, pate, for thy master! I
will dite an eloquent love-pistle to her, and then she hearing the
grand verbosity of my scripture, will love me presently.
[Let him write a little and then read.]
My pen is naught; gentlemen, lend me a knife. I think the more haste
the worst speed.
[Then write again, and after read.]
So it is, mistress Dorothy, and the sole essence of my soul, that the
little sparkles of affection kindled in me towards your sweet self
hath now increased to a great flame, and will ere it be long consume
my poor heart, except you, with the pleasant water of your secret
fountain, quench the furious heat of the same. Alas, I am a gentleman
of good fame and name, majestical, in parrel comely, in gate portly.
Let not therefore your gentle heart be so hard as to despise a proper
tall, young man of a handsome life, and by despising him, not only,
but also to kill him. Thus expecting time and tide, I bid you
farewell. Your servant, Signior Strumbo.
Oh wit! Oh pate! O memory! O hand! O ink! O paper! Well, now I will
send it away. Trompart, Trompart! what a villain is this? Why, sirra,
come when your master calls you. Trompart!
[Trompart, entering, saith:]
TROMPART. Anon, sir.
STRUMBO. Thou knowest, my pretty boy, what a good mast I have been to
thee ever since I took thee into my service.
TROMPART. Aye, sir.
STRUMBO. And how I have cherished thee always, as if you had been the
fruit of my loins, flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.
TROMPART. Aye, sir.
STRUMBO. Then show thy self herein a trusty servant, and carry this
letter to mistress Dorothy, and tell her--
[Speaking in his ear. Exit Trompart.]
Nay, masters, you shall see a marriage by and by. But here she comes.
Now must I frame my amorous passions.
[Enter Dorothy and Trompart.]
DOROTHY. Signior Strumbo, well met. I received your letters by your
man here, who told me a pitiful story of your anguish, and so
understanding your passions were so great, I came hither speedily.
STRUMBO. Oh my sweet and pigsney, the fecundity of my ingenie is not
so great, that may declare unto you the sorrowful sobs and broken
sleeps, that I suffered for your sake; and therefore I desire you to
receive me into your familiarity.
For your love doth lie, As near and as nigh Unto my heart within, As
mine eye to my nose, My leg unto my hose, And my flesh unto my skin.
DOROTHY. Truly, Master Strumbo, you speak too learnedly for me to
understand the drift of your mind, and therefore tell your tale in
plain terms, and leave off your dark riddles.
***************************************
Dennis
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
I read that Spenser juggled about five levels of allegory in the FQ,
including the topical one. The moral allegory in the above example
might be profound, something about how evil tends to devour itself,
literally that the dragon is devoured by its progeny after being
lanced by the knight/author?
>rodomontade [?r?d?m?n?te?d -?t??d] Literary
>Then taking Congé of that virgin pure,
>Hold, ô deare Lord, hold your dead-doing hand,
> Out crying, ô what euer heauenly powre,
>To whom he thus: ô fairest vnder skie,
> True be thy words, and worthy of thy praise,
> That warlike feats doest highest glorifie.
> Therein haue I spent all my youthly daies,
> And many battailes fought, and many fraies
> Throughout the world, wher so they might be found,
> Endeuouring my dreadded name to raise
> Aboue the Moone, that fame may it resound
>In her eternall trompe, with laurell girland cround.
>
>But what art thou, ô Ladie, which doest raunge
Dennis
> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
>
> read more »
bookburn wrote:
"I read that Spenser juggled about five levels of allegory in the FQ,
including the topical one. The moral allegory in the above example
might be profound, something about how evil tends to devour itself,
literally that the dragon is devoured by its progeny after being
lanced by the knight/author?"
'Literally' that the dragon is devoured by its progeny after being
lanced by the knight/author? 'Evil tends to devour itself?'
It's almost funny, all the layers. Sometimes you have to wonder what's
at the bottom of it all. Aren't you still speaking figuratively - even
when you're trying to speak literally?
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 19, 4:04�pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
And looking at the subjective side, in Shakespeare's case his name
"Shake-spear" might suggest the above knight errant, or someone who
might use his pen as a lance of journalism to puncture evils.
Coincidence that his birthday is/was shared with holiday of St.
George, the dragon slayer, patron saint of England. bb
Dennis
> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:41:13 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
Yes, for a Stratfordian that name would be a happy accident. For an
Oxfordian it's a pen-name, and I like its paradoxical qualities -
shake/quiver, bluster, and brandish.
But as an Oxfordian, I've accepted that certain authors - Fulke
Greville, for instance - will always figure Sir Philip Sidney as the
knight on the horse (heroic virtue). That leaves my 'hero' (Oxford/
Shakespeare) to play the part of the anti-Sidney/dragon/monster/tyrant
in *their* texts.
Spenser was an admirer of the Sidneys. As was Harvey, and Jonson.
Heroic Virtue deserved to be raised to immortal fame. Those who
declined from Virtue deserved to have their names blotted from the
book of Fame, or to be cast into Oblivion - to 'lie in Lethe's Lake'.
The 17th Earl of Oxford has no memorials dedicated to him, either
personally, or 'professionally'.
Oxford wrote Cecil (after the death of Elizabeth):
"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."
I think it's safe to conclude that Oxford sank.
With help.
http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/upload/img_400/8010.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqmQUzvubAY
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 20, 6:53�am, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
I read that de Vere was patron of Spenser, though; doesn't that mean
Spenser is expected to center de Vere as the knight on the horse? And
don't we know that de Vere disliked Sidney's courtier image, called
him "puppy"? Of course, we know Spenser probably suffered in
preferment at the hands of Elizabeth in London after his episode in
Ireland with Essex, reportedly dying in abject poverty. I've always
wondered if Elizabeth was that pleased with Spensers limn of her in
FQ. Seems like his picture of her as Gloriana, Queen of the Fairies,
is a caricature of her at the center of a large coterie of flattering
attendants; sort of at odds with the religious allegory; and some
satire of her by Spenser was evidently recognized by others.
bookburn
Dennis
> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:30:16 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
bookburn wrote:
Spenser had been a client of the Earl of Leicester and Sir Philip
Sidney. Essex paid for his tomb. He was associated with the militant
Protestant faction at Court. I think you'll find that Oxford would not
be centred as the heroic knight.
The 'puppy' incident was part of the intense factional in-fighting in
the Elizabethan court (1570's). Members of factions wore ribbons to
show which faction they belonged to - Leicester or Sussex. New
divisions developed in the 1590's, when Essex and Cecil opposed each
other at court -(ending with the execution of Essex).
(Essex's son would lead the fighting against King Charles. During the
civil war there were 'knights'. I think that Leicester/Sidney/Essex
could be characterized as proto-Roundheads. I think of Oxford as a
gallant/cavalier. Two very different styles.)
Perhaps you are thinking of Spenser's dedication of the 1590 Faerie
Queene to Oxford (among others)? A dedication, while significant,
isn't proof of patron/client relationship. These sonnets were all
added to the end of the text - and this preposterous dedicatory
apparatus is ridiculed by Nashe in "Pierce Penniless". They did not
appear in the 1596 edition.
Besides being of the party of religious and political reformers -
Spenser is also thought to have been associated with a group of
literary reformers. They were referred to as the Areopagus but how
organized they were seems to be a matter of dispute:
"The Areopagus is a speculated or hinted poetry movement centered
around Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey. The label is used as a
critical shorthand for a group of poets that included Spenser, Harvey,
Edward Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney. There is no direct evidence that
the group was more than an idea found in letters between Spenser and
Harvey of 1580, but the proposed group was going to reform English
prosody by interpolating Latin and Greek language prosodic notions.
(Wikipedia)
Harvey attacked Oxford's stylistic 'deformities' in _Speculum
Tuscanismi_, singling out Sidney and Dyer as exemplary models. Writing
of the poet Oxford:
Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appear
that this English poet 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
(our very Castor and Pollux for such and many greater matters)
when this trim gear was in the matching?
(snip)
...............................Much like some Gentlewooman, I
coulde name in England, who by all Phisick and Physiognomie too, might
as well have brought forth all goodly faire children, as they have now
some ylfavoured and DEFORMED, had they at the tyme of their
Conception, had in sight, the amiable and gallant beautifull Pictures
of ADONIS, Cupido, Ganymedes, or the like, which no doubt would have
wrought such deepe impression in their fantasies, and imaginations, as
their children, and perhappes their Childrens children to, myght have
thanked them for, as long as they shall have Tongues in their
heades."
I think this suggestion of deformed children/offspring is echoed in
Shakespeare's V&A dedication -
Venus and Adonis
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.
In the sonnet to Oxford, Spenser associates Oxford with the Heliconian
'imps' - a really interesting choice of words:
And also for the love, which thou dost bear
To th'Heliconian imps, and they to thee,
They unto thee, and thou to them most dear:
DEAR AS THOU ART UNTO THYSELF, so love
That loves and honors thee, as doth behoove.
Imp:
"Imp Originally a young shoot of a tree or plant, imp was then used of
children, especially boys, with no derogatory implications.
Eventually, however, it came to be restricted to 'imps of hell'.
Shakespeare seems to have found it rather absurd or comic, for he puts
it in the mouths of three characters only: Armado, Holofernes
(5.2.581), and Ensign Pistol (2 Henry IV 5.5.42 and Henry V 4.1.46)"
The line 'dear as thou art unto thyself' suggest self-love - the worst
vice for any would-be virtuous hero. Oxford does seem to have been
twitted for his hubris - his refusal to conform to type and his
determination to go his own way/do things after his own manner
(Chapman). Self-love was also the sin of the tyrant/monster/
degenerate noble - which is exactly how Greville characterizes Oxford
in his account of the tennis court quarrel.
Blair Worden, _The Sound of Virtue -Philip Sidney's Arcadia and
Elizabethan Politics_
For Greville, tyranny is characterised by 'Will, which nothing but
itself endures', and which overrides 'law'. His golden retrospection
contrasts the readiness of Queen Elizabeth to harmonise her 'own
affections' with 'her subjects' , and to govern by 'laws', with the
ways of 'tyrants' who allow of no scope....but their own will'. Yet
in Sidney's lifetime Greville, and Sidney too, would have been more
likely to concur with the view of Sir Francis Knollys that she
preferred 'her own will and her own affections' to 'the sound advice
of open
counsel'. 'WILL' in Renaissance minds, is the enemy not only of law
but of reason, which law invokes. Languet's and Mornay's _Vindiciae,
Contra
Tyrannos_ cites Juvenal's condemnation of kings who resolve to rule by
'will' rather than by 'reason'. The friends of will are passion and
lust, when men, instead of 'reason, follow will, and instead of law,
use their own lust'. (p.212)
**************************************
Hubert Languet was Philip Sidney's mentor. Very important
relationship.
***************************************
The Truths of a Slippery World: Poetry and Tyranny in Sidney's
Defence
Robert E. Stillman
<<(...) At the foundations of (...) humanist textual labors are the
assumptions of what can only be termed a deeply held intellectualism:
a
belief that real political change derives first and foremost from
changes in how people think - especially in how they thing about
primary issues of moral and political philosophy. That intellectualism
is reflected in the content of their shared agreements about the
nature of Tyranny - as a perversion (literally), and unnatural
inversion of
the nature of good government originating in the perversion of the
individual mind or soul. Tyranny is a form of self-love - or rather,
a manifestation of self-love in the public arena.
(snip)
Ponet, Buchanan and Mornay represent tyranny in essentially similar
ways, as one more point of agreement inside a community of humanists
whose shared understandings are so often illuminated by commonplaces
in
Melanchthon's thought. Toward the conclusion of the _Loci communes_
of 1555, when contemplating worldly authority, Melanchthon argues that
God "gave men light, namely, understanding of NATURAL LAW through
which we know that we should make and keep order in governments, and
are obliged to obey natural law as God's will", once more, as he
writes in application of this argument, such laws distinguish true
kings from tyrants - the latter consistently distinguished from the
former as rulers who pursue "their own general happiness" and
"seek their own tyranny, welfare, pomp, sensual pleasure, and
suppression of the truth" (325, 336-37). Such commonplaces are
illuminating because they underscore the logic of that shared
intellectualism of the resistance theorists. A consistent
correspondence is maintained between the public and the private
spheres, political and moral life, because always for the Protestant
humanist the reality that counts is the one that situates the
individual in relation to God. Tyranny in the state proceeds from the
tyranny of sin over the soul, as a repetition of Melanchthon's
distinctive reading of Adam's fall as a sin of self-love. From the
earliest version of the _Loci communes_ (1521), the emphasis remains
the same: "Thus it happens the soul being without celestial and life
is in darkness. As a result, it most ardently loves itself, seeks its
own desires and wishes nothing but carnal things...It cannot but be
that a creature whom the love of God has not absorbed, loves itself in
the highest degree" (82-83). *The rape of Lucretia* is a speaking
picture of tyrannical self-love at work in the state and the soul, and
chastity, rightly interpreted, the agent of tyrannicide.
Recovering a history of Protestant resistance theory matters
to the
present argument, since it points to (Sidney's) Defence as a text in
dialogue with a community of texts from this same republic of letters.
Like Ponet, Buchanan, Mornay and Languet, Sidney too employs the
language and logic of natural law theory. It highlights in advance the
enormous promise of natural law arguments for a writer like Sidney,
himself haunted by the nightmare of tyranny.
(snip)
The tyranny of self-love looms large throughout the Defence of Poesy
as
a theme that binds private to public considerations, the pious to the
political. (...)
Sidney returns to the theme of tyrannical self-love frequently
in the
Defence, and often with a (...) lightness of touch. As one chief rival
to the poets, he presents the arrogant philosophers, "casting
largess as they go of definitions, divisions and distinctions, with a
scornful interrogative...soberly ask(ing) whether it be possible to
find any path so ready to lead a man to virtue" As the poet's other
chief rival, Sidney ushers into view the similarly narcissistic
historian: "a wonder to young folks and a tyrant in table talk,
den(ying), in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of virtue is
comparable to him" The parodic philosopher and historian of the
Defence are portraits in pomposity, speaking pictures of self-love
tyrannizing over substance as well as style - and style counts in the
cosmopolitan economy of Sidney's poetic universe. Self-love can
corrupt English poetry too, not just the scholarly disciplines, as
happens when a surfeit of "similitudes in certain printed
discourses" spawns "a most tedious prattling," the exaggerated
artificiality exercised by the native writer who "more careful to
speak curiously than to speak truly...doth dance to his own music"
Dancing to one's own music is precisely what poetic imitation,
properly understood, is designed to inhibit. The liberal art serves
the
liberal mind. As Sidney learned from Johann Sturm (1507-89), his
one-time teacher at the Strasbourg academy and subsequently his
lifelong friend, the always cosmopolitan goal of imitation (the
comparatio of great literary models) is to eliminate what this
republic
of letters universally regarded as the most tyrannical of vices, the
sin of self-love: "Imitatio ingenium ultra naturae ducit terminus: ut
se amare desinat: & meliores admirari incipiat." (Imitation leads his
genius beyond the boundaries of nature: so that he ceases to love
himself: and begins to admire better things.)>>
****************************************
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
******************************
Fulke Greville, Recorder of Stratford:
Tennis-Court Quarrel
<<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 an 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
reflections - 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 kind of pause, by a precious inequality of nature in
this
gentleman. So that they both stood silent awhile, like a dumb show in
a
Tragedy; till Sir Philip sensible of his own wrong, the foreign and
factious spirits that attended; and yet, even in this question between
him, and his superior, tender of his Country's honour; with some
words of sharp accent, led the way abruptly out of the Tennis Court,
as if so unexpected and accident were not fit to be decided in that
place. Whereof the great lord making another sense, continues his
play,
without any advantage of reputation; as by the standard of humors in
those
times was conceived.
(snip)
This constant tenor of truth he [Sidney] took upon him; which as
a chief
duty in all creatures, both to themselves and the sovereignty above
them, protected this gentleman - though he obeyed not - from the
displeasure of his sovereign. Wherein he left an authentical precedent
to after ages, that howsoever TYRANTS allow of no scope, stamp, or
standard, but their own WILL; yet with princes there is a latitude for
subjects to reserve native and legal freedom, by paying humble tribute
in manner, though not in matter, to them.>>
*********************************************
Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the SHOW and gaze o' the time.
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,
"Here may you see the tyrant."
http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG
**************************************
best,
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 21, 10:39�am, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
All I know is what I read in Wikipedia, viz.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Vere,_17th_Earl_of_Oxford
(Quote)
He was indeed a notable patron of writers including Edmund Spenser,
as well as Arthur Golding, Robert Greene, Thomas Churchyard, Thomas
Watson and John Lyly (author of the novel Euphues), and Anthony
Munday, both whom he employed as secretaries for many years.[37
*footnote is to "Oxford and Shakespeare". Authorshipstudies.org.
http://www.authorshipstudies.org/articles/oxford_shakespeare.cfm.
Retrieved 2009-07-30.
>
>Besides being of the party of religious and political reformers -
>Spenser is also thought to have been associated with a group of
>literary reformers. They were referred to as the Areopagus but how
>organized they were seems to be a matter of dispute:
>
>"The Areopagus is a speculated or hinted poetry movement centered
>around Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey. The label is used as a
>critical shorthand for a group of poets that included Spenser, Harvey,
>Edward Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney. There is no direct evidence that
>the group was more than an idea found in letters between Spenser and
>Harvey of 1580, but the proposed group was going to reform English
>prosody by interpolating Latin and Greek language prosodic notions.
>(Wikipedia)
I guess we know Sidney carried the ball in that game, with his "The
Defense of Posey" (1583). These guys were in good form as Renaissance
men. What we don't know, it seems, is how to connect Shakespeare with
these seminal groups or the production of the King James Bible. Was
it like being invited to join a moderated use group, but declining
because he was too . . . something.
Dennis
> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:10:18 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
> Retrieved 2009-07-30.
>
>
>
> >Besides being of the party of religious and political reformers -
> >Spenser is also thought to have been associated with a group of
> >literary reformers. They were referred to as the Areopagus but how
> >organized they were seems to be a matter of dispute:
>
> >"The Areopagus is a speculated or hinted poetry movement centered
> >around Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey. The label is used as a
> >critical shorthand for a group of poets that included Spenser, Harvey,
> >Edward Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney. There is no direct evidence that
> >the group was more than an idea found in letters between Spenser and
> >Harvey of 1580, but the proposed group was going to reform English
> >prosody by interpolating Latin and Greek language prosodic notions.
> >(Wikipedia)
>
> I guess we know Sidney carried the ball in that game, with his "The
> Defense of Posey" (1583). These guys were in good form as Renaissance
> men. What we don't know, it seems, is how to connect Shakespeare with
> these seminal groups or the production of the King James Bible. Was
> it like being invited to join a moderated use group, but declining
> because he was too . . . something.
Unbridled? Flowed with too much facility? Was unable to rule his
extravagant wit? Strayed beyond the bounds of decorum?
Decorum \De*cor"um\, n. [L. dec[=o]rum, fr. dec[=o]rus. See
Decorous.]
Propriety of manner or conduct; grace arising from
suitableness of speech and behavior to one's own character,
or to the place and occasion; decency of conduct; seemliness;
that which is seemly or suitable.
Negligent of the duties and decorums of his station.
--Hallam.
If your master Would have a queen his beggar, you must
tell him, That majesty, to keep decorum, must No less
beg than a kingdom. --Shak.
****************************
William Cartwright:
Shakespeare _to thee was dull, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashioned wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:_
_Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free
As his, but without his SCURILITY;
******************************
Philip Sidney, _Defense of Poesy_:
They say the Lirick is larded with passionat Sonets, the Elegiack
weeps the want of his mistresse, and that even to the Heroical, Cupid
hath
ambitiously climed. Alas Love, I would thou couldest as wel defend thy
selfe, as thou canst offend others: I would those on whom thou doest
attend, could either put thee away, or yeeld good reason why they
keepe thee. But grant love of bewtie to be a beastly fault, although
it be
verie hard, since onely man and no beast hath that gift to discerne
bewtie, graunt that lovely name of love to deserve all hatefull
reproches, although even some of my maisters the Philosophers spent a
good deale of their Lampoyle in setting foorth the excellencie of it,
graunt I say, what they will have graunted, that not onelie love, but
lust, but vanitie, but if they will list SCURRILITIE, possesse manie
leaves of the Poets bookes, yet thinke I, when this is graunted, they
will finde their sentence may with good manners put the last words
foremost; and not say, that Poetrie abuseth mans wit, but that mans
wit abuseth Poetrie. For I will not denie, but that mans wit may make
Poesie, which should be eikastike, which some learned have defined
figuring foorth good things to be phantastike, which doth
contrariwise infect the fancie with unwoorthie objects, as the
Painter should give to the eye either some excellent perspective, or
some fine Picture fit for building or fortification, or containing in
it some notable example, as Abraham sacrificing his sonne Isaack,
Judith killing Holofernes, David fighting with Golias, may leave
those, and please an ill pleased eye with wanton shewes of better
hidden matters. But what, shal the abuse of a thing, make the right
use
odious?
********************************
Sidney, _Defence Poetry_
Our tragedies and comedies (not without cause cried out against),
observing rules neither of honest civility nor of skilful poetry,
excepting Gorboduc (again, I say, of those that I have seen), which
notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches and well-sounding
phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca's style, and as full of
notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so
obtain the very end of poesy, yet in truth it is very defectious in
the
circumstances., which grieves me, because it might not remain as an
exact model of all tragedies. For it is faulty both in [the "unities"
of] place and time...
But if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all the rest, where you
shall have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other, and so many
other under-kingdoms, that the player, when he cometh in , must ever
begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be
conceived? Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and
then we must believe the stage to be a garden.
By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we
areto blame if we accept it not for a rock... While in the meantime
two
armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers [shields],
and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched [battle]
field?
Now, of time they are much more liberal, for ordinary it is that two
young princes fall in love. After many traverses, she is got with
child, delivered of a fair boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falls in
love, and is ready to get another child; and all this in two hours'
space: which, how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine, and
art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified...
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 clowns 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 tragicomedy obtained...
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.
*************************************
Jonathan Gibson, _Sidney's Arcadias and Elizabethan Courtiership_,
Oxford University Press
"One aspect of the Alencon dispute that, rather surprisingly, has been
neglected in discussions of Sidney is the relationship between his own
work and the writings of his court rival Edward DeVere, seventeenth
earl of Oxford. The _Arcadias_ can plausibly be read as using their
opposition to a specifically 'Oxfordian' literary aesthetic to trigger
a more general meditation on the problems of Elizabethan courtiership.
As Steven W. May has shown, French-influenced 'new lyricism', closely
associated with Oxford, was the dominant poetic form at the
Elizabethan court at the time of the composition of the old _Arcadia_.
Early
Elizabethan court poetry had been largely religious and didactic but
during the 1570's Oxford pioneered a revival of courtly Petrarchan
lyric in the tradition of Wyatt and Surrey. I have argued elsewhere
that this was connected with Oxford's advocacy of the French match,
forming a key element in what H.R. Woudhuysen has called the
'wholesale importation of French culture and manners to England'
which occurred inthe wake of the marriage negotiations. The arrival
of
'new lyricism' meant that the Petrarchan language of love became
part of the lingua franca of English court life. The complicated
overlap at the
Elizabethan court between the language of early modern patronage
negotiations and the language of Petrarchanism has been much
discussed. The blurring of the two was greatly heightened - and
arguably set in
place, in its specifically Elizabethan manifestation - by Oxford's
literary programme.
The use of erotic language in the process of patronage negotiation was
a potent source of anxiety, but it was only one of several disturbing
elements in Elizabethan courtiership. The pursuit of patronage by the
means of persuasive texts - speech, letters, petitions - aimed at
patrons or potential patrons, essential to every Elizabethan
courtier's career, was fraught by a set of interlinked problems. At
the heart of
courtly writing was uncertainty about its sincerity. Patronage texts
used an emotionally intimate vocabulary in which the relationship
between client and patron was presented as loving and voluntary. Yet
these terms were used more or less automatically - almost
ritualistically. Since the genuineness and emotional status of the
patronage bond was perpetually in doubt, there was much scope for
deception and betrayal. Renaissance rhetoric became involved in this
situation because it provided techniques for creating plausible texts
that were nevertheless deceptive. Armed with the accumulated wisdom of
Cicero and Quintilian, the Renaissance rhetorician was a potentially
demonic figure, capable of harnessing his persuasive power to morally
vicious ends. At court, where partly because of the financial basis of
most patronage transactions, the appearance of sincerity was vital,
anxiety about rhetoric became particularly acute.
(snip)
'New lyrical' poetry was disorientatingly capable of being understood
out of context. As formulaic as its sister genre the Renaissance
letter, it lacked the access to external modes of authorisation
(seals, signatures and so on) available to the letter-writer. Poems
moved
aboutfrom one context or occasion to another. As a result, it is often
impossible to tell whether the speaker of a poem is in love or seeking
political favour. Bits of one poet's poems were blithely reapplied to
new occasions by different poets. In such circumstances, fixed canons
and agreed interpretations are hardly possible. In this context it is
tempting to read the _Arcadias_ as an attack on the slippery nature of
'Oxfordian' court writing - and thus a literary continuation of
Sidney's notorious tennis-court quarrel with Oxford. Both the
_Arcadia_and _Astrophil and Stella_ can be read as dramatised
inquiries
into the ethics of Oxfordian courtier poetry. The moral seriousness of
these
twoworks stands as an implicit rebuke to the opportunistic use made of
Petrarchan language by 'new lyrical' writings. In his _Defence of
Poetry_, meanwhile, Sidney developed a mimetic, ethical theory of
literature diametrically opposed to what May has called the
'utilitarian poetics' of Oxford and his confreres.
***************************
Mirth Making. The Rhetorical Discourse on Jesting in Early Modern
England
Chris Holcomb
...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 (SCURRA/Latin) 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.
*****************************
E P I G R A M S . JONSON
XLIX. -- TO PLAYWRIGHT.
PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns,
He says I want the tongue of epigrams ;
I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mean ;
For witty, in his language, is obscene.
Playwright, I loath to have thy MANNERS known
In my CHASTE book ; profess them in thine own.
*****************************
...Never did so much strength, or such a spell
Of Art, and eloquence of papers dwell.
For whil'st he in colours, full and true,
Mens natures, fancies, and their HUMOURS drew
In method, order, matter, sence and grace,
Fitting each person to his time and place;
Knowing to move, to slacke, or to make haste,
BINDING the middle with the first and last:
He fram'd all minds, and did all passions stirre,
And with a BRIDLE guide the Theater.
Shackerley Marmion, Josonus Virbius
******************************
Carew:
Tis true, dear Ben, thy just CHASTISING hand
Hath fix'd upon the sotted AGE a BRAND
To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due;
****************************
Fescennine
Licentious; obscene; lewd.
Synonyms: bawdy; loose; Rabelaisian; racy; strong; UNBRIDLED
******************************
"His WIT was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too."
Bartholomew Fair
Act I. Scene V.
Quar. Come, John, this ambitious WIT of yours (I am
afraid) will do you no good i' the end.
Joh. No? why Sir?
Quar. You grow so INSOLENT with it, and over-doing,
John; that if you look not to it, and TIE IT UP, *it will
bring you to some obscure place in time, and there 'twill
leave you.*
VVin-w. Do not trust it too much, John, be more spa-
ring, and use it but now and then; a WIT is a dangerous
thing in this AGE; do not over-buy it.
Joh. Think you so, Gentlemen? I'll take heed on't
hereafter.
VVin. Yes, do John.
*****************************
_Mirth Making_, Chris Holcomb
In his Ethics, Aristotle suggests that changes in stylistic and
substantive predilections indicate advances in civilization. While
enumerating the differences between the jesting of a buffoon and a
witty gentleman, Aristotle compares each character type to Old and New
Comedy, respectively: "The difference (between a buffoon and a
gentleman) may be seen by comparing the old and modern comedies; the
earlier dramatists found their fun in obscenity, the modern prefer
innuendo, which marks a great advance in decorum; (4.8.6). This
comparison suggest that smutty humor is less civilized than the more
refined humor delivered through innuendo. (footnote pp. 199-200)
***************************************
Jonson, _Timber_
The parts of a comedy and tragedy. - The parts of a comedy are the
same with a tragedy, and the end is partly the same, for they both
delight and teach; the comics are called διδασκαλοι, of the Greeks no
less than the tragics.
Aristotle. - Plato. - Homer. - Nor is the moving of laughter always
the end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people' s delight,
or their fooling. For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of
laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some
part of a man' s nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain
moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a
lady' s habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such
representations which made the ancient philosophers ever think
laughter unfitting in a wise man. And this induced Plato to esteem of
Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he presented the gods
sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of Aristotle, that to
seen ridiculous is a part of dishonesty, and foolish.
The wit of the old comedy. - So that what either in the words or sense
of an author, or in the language or actions of men, is awry or
depraved does strangely stir mean affections, and provoke for the most
part to laughter. And therefore it was clear that all *insolent and
obscene* speeches, jests upon the best men, injuries to particular
persons, perverse and sinister sayings (and the rather unexpected) in
the old comedy did move laughter, especially where it did imitate any
dishonesty, and SCURRILITY came forth in the place of wit, which, who
understands the nature and genius of laughter cannot but perfectly
know.
****************************
best,
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 22, 2:50ïŋ―pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:10:18 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Nov 21, 10:39ïŋ―am, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> >> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:30:16 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
>> >> wrote:
>>
>> >> >On Nov 20, 6:53ïŋ―am, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> >> >> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:41:13 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
>> >> >> wrote:
>>
>> >> >> >On Nov 19, 4:04ïŋ―pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> >> >> >> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
>> >> >> >> wrote:
>>
>> >> >> >> >As we review the language of parliamentary debate, the legacy of
>> >> >> >> >Ciceronian forensics, and the idioms of Jonsonian tragedy, we can see
>> >> >> >> >how the body's regulation became central to the discourses of
>> >> >> >> >Renaissance control and, further, how the expostulations of the
>> >> >> >> >powerful remain but a breath away from the EXPULSIONS of the
>> >> >> >> >EMBARRASSED.
>>
>> >> >> >> >*************************************
>> >> >> >> >My Lord, I had forgott the fart.
>>
>> >> >> >> >*************************************
>>
>> >> >> >> >ïŋ―Tis hard to recall a fart when its out
>>
>> >> >> >> >************************************
>>
>> >> >> >> >An Art of the Emetic: Thomas Wilson and the Rhetoric of Parliament.
>> >> >> >> > ïŋ― ïŋ―Lerer, Seth
>> >> >> >> >Source:
>> >> >> >> > ïŋ― ïŋ―Studies in Philology; Spring2001, Vol. 98 Issue 2, p158, 26p
>>
>> >> >> >> >...Throughout the poetry and drama of the later sixteenth century,
>> >> >> >> >scenes of emesis come to represent religious heresy, political
>> >> >> >> >dissent, moral crisis, and personal dissolution. The powerful
>> >> >> >> >expulsion of the Beast of Error at the opening of Spenser's Faerie
>> >> >> >> >Queene is only the most famous of such episodes:
>>
>> >> >> >> >Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw
>> >> >> >> >A flood of poyson horrible and blacke,
>> >> >> >> >Full of great lumpes of flesh and gobbets raw,
>> >> >> >> >Which stunck so vildly, that it forst him slacke
>> >> >> >> >His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe:
>> >> >> >> >Her vomit full of bookes and papers was,
>> >> >> >> >With loathly frogs and toades, which eeys did lacke,
>> >> >> >> >And creeping sought way in the weedy gras:
>> >> >> >> >Her filthy parbreake all the place defiled has.
>>
>> >> >> >> I read that Spenser juggled about five levels of allegory in the FQ,
>> >> >> >> including the topical one. ïŋ―The moral allegory in the above example
>> >> >> >> > ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― Purge the citie.
>> >> >> >> >Draw drie that noysome, and pernicious sinke,
>> >> >> >> >Which left, behind thee, would infect the world.
>>
>> >> >> >> >(4.304-6)
>>
>> >> >> >> >Cicero then asks of Catiline, "What domesticke note / Of priuate
>> >> >> >> >filthiness, but is burnt in / Into thy life?" (4.316-17); he speaks of
>> >> >> >> >an "intestine warre" (4.390); and notes how the evil crew of traitors
>> >> >> >> >might remain still,
>>
>> >> >> >> > ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ― ïŋ―enclos'd
>> >> >> >> >Deepe, in the veines and bowells of the state.
>> >> >> >> >As humane bodies, laboring with fevers....
>>
>> >> >> >> >(4.420-22)
>>
>> >> >> >> >What has long been appreciated as the classic Jonsonian fascination
>> >> >> >> >with things alimentary takes full flight here, as Cicero defines
>> >> >> >> >political turmoil in an emetic language.
>>
>> >> >> >> >Thus, Catiline, rising to the bait, declares the thunder and
>> >> >> >> >"prodigious rhetoricke" of Cicero mere vomit. Rather than having the
>> >> >> >> >eloquent speaker respond to gross eruption (as was the case in
>> >> >> >> >Cicero's Philippic and its afterlives), Jonson has his virulent
>> >> >> >> >accused condemn the orator. The scene inverts the Ciceronian paradigm,
>> >> >> >> >and it returns us to the legacies of verbal instruction, courtly
>> >> >> >> >performativity, and parliamentary debate which were the building
>> >> >> >> >blocks of the rhetorical tradition and which Wilson's anecdote
>> >> >> >> >embodied. But Jonson takes it one step further. For not only is the
>> >> >> >> >fullness of Cicero's speechmaking excessive and indecorous, it is
>> >> >> >> >chaotic. Cato may come to Cicero's defense ("his eloquence hath more
>> >> >> >> >deseru'd to day,
>>
>> >> >> >> ...
>>
>> >> >> >> read more ïŋ―
>>
>> >> >> >bookburn wrote:
>>
>> >> >> >"I read that Spenser juggled about five levels of allegory in the FQ,
>> >> >> >including the topical one. ïŋ―The moral allegory in the above example
>> >> >> >might be profound, something about how evil tends to devour itself,
>> >> >> >literally that the dragon is devoured by its progeny after being
>> >> >> >lanced by the knight/author?"
>>
>> >> >> >'Literally' that the dragon is devoured by its progeny after being
>> >> >> >lanced by the knight/author? 'Evil tends to devour itself?'
>>
>> >> >> >It's almost funny, all the layers. Sometimes you have to wonder what's
>> >> >> >at the bottom of it all. Aren't you still speaking figuratively - even
>> >> >> >when you're trying to speak literally?
>>
>> >> >> >Nicole
>>
>> >> >> And looking at the subjective side, in Shakespeare's case his name
>> >> >> "Shake-spear" might suggest the above knight errant, or someone who
>> >> >> might use his pen as a lance of journalism to puncture evils.
>> >> >> Coincidence that his birthday is/was shared with holiday of St.
>> >> >> George, the dragon slayer, patron saint of England. ïŋ―bb
>>
>> >> >Yes, for a Stratfordian that name would be a happy accident. For an
>> >> >Oxfordian it's a pen-name, and I like its paradoxical qualities -
>> >> >shake/quiver, bluster, and brandish.
>>
>> >> >But as an Oxfordian, I've accepted that certain authors - Fulke
>> >> >Greville, for instance - will always figure Sir Philip Sidney as the
>> >> >knight on the horse (heroic virtue). That leaves my 'hero' (Oxford/
>> >> >Shakespeare) to play the part of the anti-Sidney/dragon/monster/tyrant
>> >> >in *their* texts.
>>
>> >bookburn wrote:
>>
>> >> I read that de Vere was patron of Spenser, though; doesn't that mean
>> >> Spenser is expected to center de Vere as the knight on the horse? ïŋ―And
>> >> don't we know that de Vere disliked Sidney's courtier image, called
>> >> him "puppy"? ïŋ― Of course, we know Spenser probably suffered in
>> >> preferment at the hands of Elizabeth in London after his episode in
>> >> Ireland with Essex, reportedly dying in abject poverty. ïŋ―I've always
>> >> wondered if Elizabeth was that pleased with Spensers limn of her in
>> >> FQ. ïŋ―Seems like his picture of her as Gloriana, Queen of the Fairies,
>> >> is a caricature of her at the center of a large coterie of flattering
>> >> attendants; ïŋ―sort of at odds with the religious allegory; and some
>> >> satire of her by Spenser was evidently recognized by others.
>>
>> >Spenser had been a client of the Earl of Leicester and Sir Philip
>> >Sidney. Essex paid for his tomb. He was associated with the militant
>> >Protestant faction at Court. I think you'll find that Oxford would not
>> >be centred as the heroic knight.
>>
>> >The 'puppy' incident was part of the intense factional in-fighting in
>> >the Elizabethan court (1570's). Members of factions wore ribbons to
>> >show which faction they belonged to - Leicester or Sussex. New
>> >divisions developed in the 1590's, when Essex and Cecil opposed each
>> >other at court -(ending with the execution of Essex).
>>
>> >(Essex's son would lead the fighting against King Charles. During the
>> >civil war there were 'knights'. I think that Leicester/Sidney/Essex
>> >could be characterized as proto-Roundheads. I think of ïŋ―Oxford as a
>> >gallant/cavalier. Two very different styles.)
>>
>> >Perhaps you are thinking of Spenser's dedication of the 1590 Faerie
>> >Queene to Oxford (among others)? A dedication, while significant,
>> >isn't proof of patron/client relationship. These sonnets were all
>> >added to the end of the text - and this preposterous dedicatory
>> >apparatus is ridiculed by Nashe in "Pierce Penniless". They did not
>> >appear in the 1596 edition.
>>
>> All I know is what I read in Wikipedia, viz.:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Vere,_17th_Earl_of_Oxford
>>
>> (Quote)
>> ïŋ―He was indeed a notable patron of writers including Edmund Spenser,
>> ïŋ―as well as Arthur Golding, Robert Greene, Thomas Churchyard, Thomas
>> ïŋ―Watson and John Lyly (author of the novel Euphues), and Anthony
>> Munday, ïŋ―both whom he employed as secretaries for many years.[37
>>
>> *footnote is to "Oxford and Shakespeare". Authorshipstudies.org.http://www.authorshipstudies.org/articles/oxford_shakespeare.cfm.
>> Retrieved 2009-07-30. ïŋ―
>>
>>
>>
>> >Besides being of the party of religious and political reformers -
>> >Spenser is also thought to have been associated with a group of
>> >literary reformers. They were referred to as the Areopagus but how
>> >organized they were seems to be a matter of dispute:
>>
>> >"The Areopagus is a speculated or hinted poetry movement centered
>> >around Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey. The label is used as a
>> >critical shorthand for a group of poets that included Spenser, Harvey,
>> >Edward Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney. There is no direct evidence that
>> >the group was more than an idea found in letters between Spenser and
>> >Harvey of 1580, but the proposed group was going to reform English
>> >prosody by interpolating Latin and Greek language prosodic notions.
>> >(Wikipedia)
>>
>> I guess we know Sidney carried the ball in that game, with his "The
>> Defense of Posey" (1583). ïŋ―These guys were in good form as Renaissance
>> men. ïŋ―What we don't know, it seems, is how to connect Shakespeare with
>> these seminal groups or the production of the King James Bible. ïŋ―Was
>delight and teach; the comics are called ??????????, of the Greeks no
I got interested in the comparison between Spenser and Oxford in terms
of participation in an agenda for development of a national
literature, as good Renaissance men, were doing, but did something
that erased my post. Bummer. But here's, the quote I got from
Wikipedia, again, with which I attempted to connect the Spenser-Oxford
comparison with Shakespeare, playing upon "euphuism".
(quote)
Euphues (1580)
"Euphues" is Greek and means "graceful, witty". John Lyly published
the works Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt (1578) and Euphues and his
England (1580). Both works illustrated the intellectual fashions and
favourite themes of Renaissance society ïŋ― in a highly artificial and
mannered style. Its essential features had already appeared in such
works as George Pettie's "A Petite Pallace of Pettie his pleasure"
(1576), in sermon literature, and Latin tracts. It was Lyly who
perfected the distinctive rhetorical devices on which the style was
based.
The euphuistic sentence followed principles of balance and antithesis.
John Lyly set up three basic structural principles:
phrases of equal length that appear in succession;
the balance of key verbal elements in successive sentences;
the correspondence of sounds and syllables, especially between words
that are already balanced against each other.
Lyly's style influenced Shakespeare (Polonius in Hamlet; Moth in
Love's Labour's Lost; Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About
Nothing). Many critics thought that Lyly overused comparisons as well
as alliterations; Philip Sidney and Gabriel Harvey castigated his
style. Euphuism was, however, taken up by the Elizabethan writers
Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge and Barnabe Rich.
(unquote)
Seems to me that Jonson in criticizing Shakespeare was also
criticizing the euphuism of the time. Wondering if he and Shakespeare
had discussions about this over their tavern chess games. bookburn
Dennis
> On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:06:40 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
> wrote:
>
> >On Nov 22, 2:50 pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:10:18 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:30:16 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
> >> >> wrote:
>
> >> >> >> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:41:13 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
> >> >> >> wrote:
>
> >> >> >> >> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
> >> >> >> >> wrote:
>
> >> >> >> >> >As we review the language of parliamentary debate, the legacy of
> >> >> >> >> >Ciceronian forensics, and the idioms of Jonsonian tragedy, we can see
> >> >> >> >> >how the body's regulation became central to the discourses of
> >> >> >> >> >Renaissance control and, further, how the expostulations of the
> >> >> >> >> >powerful remain but a breath away from the EXPULSIONS of the
> >> >> >> >> >EMBARRASSED.
>
> >> >> >> >> >*************************************
> >> >> >> >> >My Lord, I had forgott the fart.
>
> >> >> >> >> >*************************************
>
>
> >> >> >> >> >************************************
>
> >> >> >> >> >An Art of the Emetic: Thomas Wilson and the Rhetoric of Parliament.
> >> >> >> >> >Source:
> >> >> >> >> > Studies in Philology; Spring2001, Vol. 98 Issue 2, p158, 26p
>
> >> >> >> >> >...Throughout the poetry and drama of the later sixteenth century,
> >> >> >> >> >scenes of emesis come to represent religious heresy, political
> >> >> >> >> >dissent, moral crisis, and personal dissolution. The powerful
> >> >> >> >> >expulsion of the Beast of Error at the opening of Spenser's Faerie
> >> >> >> >> >Queene is only the most famous of such episodes:
>
> >> >> >> >> >Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw
> >> >> >> >> >A flood of poyson horrible and blacke,
> >> >> >> >> >Full of great lumpes of flesh and gobbets raw,
> >> >> >> >> >Which stunck so vildly, that it forst him slacke
> >> >> >> >> >His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe:
> >> >> >> >> >Her vomit full of bookes and papers was,
> >> >> >> >> >With loathly frogs and toades, which eeys did lacke,
> >> >> >> >> >And creeping sought way in the weedy gras:
> >> >> >> >> >Her filthy parbreake all the place defiled has.
>
> >> >> >> >> I read that Spenser juggled about five levels of allegory in the FQ,
> >> >> >> >> >Draw drie that noysome, and pernicious sinke,
> >> >> >> >> >Which left, behind thee, would infect the world.
>
> >> >> >> >> >(4.304-6)
>
> >> >> >> >> >Cicero then asks of Catiline, "What domesticke note / Of priuate
> >> >> >> >> >filthiness, but is burnt in / Into thy life?" (4.316-17); he speaks of
> >> >> >> >> >an "intestine warre" (4.390); and notes how the evil crew of traitors
> >> >> >> >> >might remain still,
>
> >> >> >> >> >Deepe, in the veines and bowells of the state.
> >> >> >> >> >As humane bodies, laboring with fevers....
>
> >> >> >> >> >(4.420-22)
>
> >> >> >> >> >What has long been appreciated as the classic Jonsonian fascination
> >> >> >> >> >with things alimentary takes full flight here, as Cicero defines
> >> >> >> >> >political turmoil in an emetic language.
>
> >> >> >> >> >Thus, Catiline, rising to the bait, declares the thunder and
> >> >> >> >> >"prodigious rhetoricke" of Cicero mere vomit. Rather than having the
> >> >> >> >> >eloquent speaker respond to gross eruption (as was the case in
> >> >> >> >> >Cicero's Philippic and its afterlives), Jonson has his virulent
> >> >> >> >> >accused condemn the orator. The scene inverts the Ciceronian paradigm,
> >> >> >> >> >and it returns us to the legacies of verbal instruction, courtly
> >> >> >> >> >performativity, and parliamentary debate which were the building
> >> >> >> >> >blocks of the rhetorical tradition and which Wilson's anecdote
> >> >> >> >> >embodied. But Jonson takes it one step further. For not only is the
> >> >> >> >> >fullness of Cicero's speechmaking excessive and indecorous, it is
> >> >> >> >> >chaotic. Cato may come to Cicero's defense ("his eloquence hath more
> >> >> >> >> >deseru'd to day,
>
> >> >> >> >> ...
>
>
> >> >> >> >bookburn wrote:
>
> >> >> >> >"I read that Spenser juggled about five levels of allegory in the FQ,
> >> >> >> >might be profound, something about how evil tends to devour itself,
> >> >> >> >literally that the dragon is devoured by its progeny after being
> >> >> >> >lanced by the knight/author?"
>
> >> >> >> >'Literally' that the dragon is devoured by its progeny after being
> >> >> >> >lanced by the knight/author? 'Evil tends to devour itself?'
>
> >> >> >> >It's almost funny, all the layers. Sometimes you have to wonder what's
> >> >> >> >at the bottom of it all. Aren't you still speaking figuratively - even
> >> >> >> >when you're trying to speak literally?
>
> >> >> >> >Nicole
>
> >> >> >> And looking at the subjective side, in Shakespeare's case his name
> >> >> >> "Shake-spear" might suggest the above knight errant, or someone who
> >> >> >> might use his pen as a lance of journalism to puncture evils.
> >> >> >> Coincidence that his birthday is/was shared with holiday of St.
>
> >> >> >Yes, for a Stratfordian that name would be a happy accident. For an
> >> >> >Oxfordian it's a pen-name, and I like its paradoxical qualities -
> >> >> >shake/quiver, bluster, and brandish.
>
> >> >> >But as an Oxfordian, I've accepted that certain authors - Fulke
> >> >> >Greville, for instance - will always figure Sir Philip Sidney as the
> >> >> >knight on the horse (heroic virtue). That leaves my 'hero' (Oxford/
> >> >> >Shakespeare) to play the part of the anti-Sidney/dragon/monster/tyrant
> >> >> >in *their* texts.
>
> >> >bookburn wrote:
>
> >> >> I read that de Vere was patron of Spenser, though; doesn't that mean
> >> >> don't we know that de Vere disliked Sidney's courtier image, called
> >> >> preferment at the hands of Elizabeth in London after his episode in
> >> >> wondered if Elizabeth was that pleased with Spensers limn of her in
> >> >> is a caricature of her at the center of a large coterie of flattering
> >> >> satire of her by Spenser was evidently recognized by others.
>
> >> >Spenser had been a client of the Earl of Leicester and Sir Philip
> >> >Sidney. Essex paid for his tomb. He was associated with the militant
> >> >Protestant faction at Court. I think you'll find that Oxford would not
> >> >be centred as the heroic knight.
>
> >> >The 'puppy' incident was part of the intense factional in-fighting in
> >> >the Elizabethan court (1570's). Members of factions wore ribbons to
> >> >show which faction they belonged to - Leicester or Sussex. New
> >> >divisions developed in the 1590's, when Essex and Cecil opposed each
> >> >other at court -(ending with the execution of Essex).
>
> >> >(Essex's son would lead the fighting against King Charles. During the
> >> >civil war there were 'knights'. I think that Leicester/Sidney/Essex
> >> >gallant/cavalier. Two very different styles.)
>
> >> >Perhaps you are thinking of Spenser's dedication of the 1590 Faerie
> >> >Queene to Oxford (among others)? A dedication, while significant,
> >> >isn't proof of patron/client relationship. These sonnets were all
> >> >added to the end of the text - and this preposterous dedicatory
> >> >apparatus is ridiculed by Nashe in "Pierce Penniless". They did not
> >> >appear in the 1596 edition.
>
> >> All I know is what I read in Wikipedia, viz.:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Vere,_17th_Earl_of_Oxford
>
> >> (Quote)
>
> >> *footnote is to "Oxford and Shakespeare". Authorshipstudies.org.http://www.authorshipstudies.org/articles/oxford_shakespeare.cfm.
> >> Retrieved 2009-07-30.
>
> >> >Spenser is also thought to have been associated with a group of
> >> >literary reformers. They were referred to as the Areopagus but how
> >> >organized they were seems to be a matter of dispute:
>
> >> >"The Areopagus is a speculated or hinted poetry movement centered
> >> >around Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey. The label is used as a
> >> >critical shorthand for a group of poets that included Spenser, Harvey,
> >> >Edward Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney. There is no direct evidence that
> >> >the group was more than an idea found in letters between Spenser and
> >> >Harvey of 1580, but the proposed group was going to reform English
> >> >prosody by interpolating Latin and Greek language prosodic notions.
> >> >(Wikipedia)
>
> >> I guess we know Sidney carried the ball in that game, with his "The
> >> men. What we don't know, it seems, is how to connect Shakespeare with
> >> these seminal groups or the production of the King James Bible. Was
> mannered style. Its essential features had already appeared in such
> works as George Pettie's "A Petite Pallace of Pettie his pleasure"
> (1576), in sermon literature, and Latin tracts. It was Lyly who
> perfected the distinctive rhetorical devices on which the style was
> based.
>
> The euphuistic sentence followed principles of balance and antithesis.
> John Lyly set up three basic structural principles:
>
> phrases of equal length that appear in succession;
> the balance of key verbal elements in successive sentences;
> the correspondence of sounds and syllables, especially between words
> that are already balanced against each other.
> Lyly's style influenced Shakespeare (Polonius in Hamlet; Moth in
> Love's Labour's Lost; Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About
> Nothing). Many critics thought that Lyly overused comparisons as well
> as alliterations; Philip Sidney and Gabriel Harvey castigated his
> style. Euphuism was, however, taken up by the Elizabethan writers
> Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge and Barnabe Rich.
> (unquote)
>
> Seems to me that Jonson in criticizing Shakespeare was also
> criticizing the euphuism of the time. Wondering if he and Shakespeare
> had discussions about this over their tavern chess games. bookburn
bookburn wrote:
"I got interested in the comparison between Spenser and Oxford in
terms
of participation in an agenda for development of a national
literature, as good Renaissance men, were doing,"
Yes. Perhaps there was a dispute over what *form* that national
literature should take. Spenser distinguished himself with a national
epic - Oxford wrote worthless comedies.
Mind you, comedies aren't generally fatal, are they?
**************************************
1) The anonymous 1589 Arte of English Poesie, usually attributed to
George Puttenham, contains a chapter describing the practice of
concealed publication by court figures, which includes a passage
listing Oxford as the finest writer of comedy:
for Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst, & Maister Edward Ferrys for
such doings as I haue sene of theirs do deserue the hyest price:
Th'Earle of Oxford and Maister Edwardes of her Maiesties Chappell for
Comedy and Enterlude.
(2) Francis Meres' 1598 Palladis Tamia, which refers to him as Earle
of Oxenford, lists him among the "best for comedy". Shakespeare's name
appears further down the same list.
so the best for comedy amongst us bee, Edward Earle of Oxenforde,
******************************
you wrote/quoted:
> "Euphues" is Greek and means "graceful, witty". John Lyly published
> the works Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt (1578) and Euphues and his
> England (1580). Both works illustrated the intellectual fashions and
> favourite themes of Renaissance society — in a highly artificial and
> mannered style.
Astrophel and Stella
Sonnet III
Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine,
That, bravely masked, their fancies may be told;
Or Pindar's apes flaunt they in phrases fine,
Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold;
Or else let them in statelier glory shine,
Ennobling new-found tropes with problems old;
Or with strange similes enrich each line,
Of herbs or beasts with Ind or Afric hold.
For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know;
Phrases and problems from my reach do grow,
And strange things cost too dear for my poor sprites.
How then? even thus,—in Stella's face I read
What love and beauty be, then all my deed
But copying is, what in her Nature writes.
****************************
you wrote:
> The euphuistic sentence followed principles of balance and antithesis.
> John Lyly set up three basic structural principles:
>
> phrases of equal length that appear in succession;
> the balance of key verbal elements in successive sentences;
> the correspondence of sounds and syllables, especially between words
> that are already balanced against each other.
> Lyly's style influenced Shakespeare (Polonius in Hamlet; Moth in
> Love's Labour's Lost; Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About
> Nothing). Many critics thought that Lyly overused comparisons as well
> as alliterations; Philip Sidney and Gabriel Harvey castigated his
> style. Euphuism was, however, taken up by the Elizabethan writers
> Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge and Barnabe Rich.
> (unquote)
Sidney's critique of Oxfordian style:
Sidney, Defence of Poesy
Other sorts of poetry almost have we none, but that lyrical kind of
songs and sonnets, which, Lord if he gave us so good minds, how well
it might be employed, and with how heavenly fruits both private and
public, in singing the praises of the immortal beauty, the immortal
goodness of that God who giveth us hands to write, and wits to
conceive!—of which we might well want words, but never matter; of
which we could turn our eyes to NOTHING, but we should ever have new-
budding occasions. But truly, many of such writings as come under
the banner of unresistible love, IF I WERE A MISTRESS would never
persuade me they were in love; so coldly they apply fiery speeches, as
men that had rather read lovers’ writings, and so caught up certain
swelling phrases —which hang together like a man which once told me
the wind was at north-west and by south, because he would be sure to
name winds enough — than that in truth they feel those passions, which
easily, as I think, may be bewrayed by that same forcibleness, or
energia (as the Greeks call it) of the writer. But let this be a
sufficient, though short note, that we miss the right use of the
material point of poesy. Now for the outside of it, which is words,
or (as I may term it) diction, it is even well worse, so is that honey-
flowing matron eloquence apparelled or rather disguised, in a
courtesan-like PAINTED AFFECTATION: one time with so farfet words,
that many seem MONSTERS — but must seem strangers—to any poor
Englishman; another time with coursing of a letter, as if they were
bound to follow the method of a dictionary; another time with figures
and flowers extremely winter- starved. But I would this fault were
only peculiar to versifiers, and had not as large possession among
prose-printers, and, which is to be marvelled, among many scholars,
and, which is to be pitied, among some preachers. Truly I could wish—
if at least I might be so bold to wish in a thing beyond the reach of
my capacity—the diligent imitators of Tully and Demosthenes (most
worthy to be imitated) did not so much keep Nizolian paper-books of
their figures and phrases, as by attentive translation, as it were
devour them whole, and make them wholly theirs. *For now they cast
SUGAR and spice upon every dish that is served to the table; like
those Indians, not content to wear ear- rings at the fit and natural
place of the ears, but they will thrust jewels through their nose and
lips, because they will be sure to be FINE*.
*******************************
Meres, 1598
As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the
sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued
Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece his SUGARED
Sonnets among his private friends, etc.
********************************
Whitney's Choice of Emblemes 226
Amico ficto nulla fit injuria
Since fauninge lookes, and SUGRED SPEACHE prevaile,
Take heede betime: and linke thee not with theise.
The gallant clokes, doe hollowe hartes conceile,
And goodlie showes, are mistes before our eies:
But whome thou find'st with guile, disguised so:
No wronge thou doest, to use him as thy foe.
Fere simile, in Hypocritas.
A FACE DEFORM'DE, a visor faire dothe hide,
That none can see his uglie shape within;
To Ipocrites, the same maie bee applide,
With outward showes, who all their credit winne:
Yet give no heate, but like a painted fire;
And, all their zeale, is: as the times require.
http://www.mun.ca/alciato/whit/w226.html
http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitn226.htm
***************************************
De Vere:
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has
anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for
us the FIGURE and MODEL of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be
added, in which there is no redundant word, a portrait which we shall
recognize as that of a highest and most perfect type of man. And so,
although nature herself has made nothing perfect in every detail, yet
the MANNERS OF MEN EXCEED in dignity that with which NATURE has
endowed them; and he who surpasses others has here surpassed himself
and has even OUT-DONE NATURE, which by no one has ever been
surpassed*. Nay more: however elaborate the ceremonial, whatever the
magnificence of the court, the splendor of the courtiers, and the
multitude of spectators, he has been able to lay down principles for
the guidance of the very Monarch himself.
******************************
you wrote:
> Seems to me that Jonson in criticizing Shakespeare was also
> criticizing the euphuism of the time. Wondering if he and Shakespeare
> had discussions about this over their tavern chess games. bookburn
Sure - those chess games. : )
DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER
Jonson
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, it is 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.
*****************************
Jonson, Discoveries
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.
********************************
In the _Discoveries_, Jonson explains when it is decent and acceptable
to *depart
from the RIGHT and NATURAL ways of speaking' - (euphuistic writers
departed unacceptably, excessively)
Jonson, Timber
...BUT WHY DO men depart at all from the RIGHT and
NATURAL *WAYS* of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are
driven, or think it fitter, *to speak that in obscure words, or by
circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers*. Or to
avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as
travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a
footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is
called åó÷çìáôéóìåíç (eschematismene) or FIGURED LANGUAGE.
******************************
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, OR, TRVTH Found too Late. A TRAGEDY As it is
Acted at the Dukes Theatre.
To which is Prefix'd, A Preface Containing the Grounds of Criticism in
Tragedy.
Written By JOHN [H] ->DRYDEN Servant to his Majesty.
The PREFACE to the Play.
(snip)
...If Shakespear be allow'd, as I think be must, to have made his
Characters distinct, it will easily be infer'd that he understood the
nature of the Passions: because it has been prov'd already, that
confus'd passions make undistinguishable
Characters: yet I cannot deny that he has his failings; but they are
not so much in the passions themselves, as in his MANNER of
expression: he often obscures his meaning by his words, and sometimes
makes it unintelligible. I will not say of so great a Poet, that he
distinguish'd not the blown puffy stile, from true sublimity; but I
may venture to maintain that the fury of his fancy often transported
him, *beyond the bounds of Iudgment*, either in coyning of new words
and
phrases, or racking words which were in use, into the violence of a
Catachresis: 'Tis not that I would explode the use of Metaphors from
passions, for Longinus thinks 'em necessary to raise it; *but to use
'em at every word, to say nothing without a Metaphor, a Simile, an
Image, or description*, is I doubt to smell a little too strongly of
the Buskin.
******************************
Quibblers can't write epics:
A quibble is the golden apple for which he (Shakespeare) will always
turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble,
poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content
to purchase it, *by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth*. A
quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world,
and was content to lose it. (S. Johnson)
*****************************
Jonson - The Alchemist
...Our Scene is London, 'cause we would make known,
No Countries mirth is better than our own:
No Clime breeds better Matter for your Whore,
Bawd, Squire, Impostor, many Persons more,
Whose MANNERS, NOW CALL'D HUMOURS, feed the Stage;
And which have still been Subject for the Rage
Or Spleen of Comick Writers. Though this Pen
Did never aim to grieve, but better Men;
Howe'er the AGE he lives in doth endure
The Vices that she breeds, above their CURE.
*******************************
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 23, 5:35�pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
I meant to add English language to national literature. I see
Shakespeare as maneuvering toward realism and vernacular speech forms,
and he and Jonson might have been at logger-heads about classical vs.
modern hybrid forms, too?
>Mind you, comedies aren't generally fatal, are they?
Maybe if it's Devine, it could be?
Makes me wonder if Oxford had a circle of friends he shared comedies
with. Can't say I'm aware of published ones Meres refers to. Usually,
too, some choice bits are circulated from an author's well-received
works; but I don't seem to see that happening about Oxford.
I would add, that the "sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous
and honey-tongued Shakespeare" imagery suggests to me the
neo-Platonism of the time, and the symbolism of bee and honey that
evokes sweetness and light, light being about something divine, AIR. I
need to refresh my memory about what "light" symbolizes, more than
"reason," I guess, maybe divine?
>called ������������� (eschematismene) or FIGURED LANGUAGE.
Dennis
> On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:40:30 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
Yes. Hybrid.
As a deluded Oxfordian, that's exactly what I think Jonson figures in
the Droeshout engraving - Shakespeare's hybrid and unclassical 'body'.
Not Shakespeare's 'face/countenance', but his 'form' - his manner/
style.
A body without symmetry or proportion.
"In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his 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 his fit
bounds." (Jonson)
A body that swelled beyond the bounds of 'decorum':
'Insolent' Greece, and 'Haughty' Rome.
" Jonson (In the difference of wits, note 10)
Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly
seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that
is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not
recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their
sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and
are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as
lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow.
Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are
thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever
election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first,
and *make all an even and proportioned body*.
http://home.att.net/~tleary/doublet.htm
The true artificer will
not run away from Nature as he were afraid of her, or depart from
life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his
hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat,
it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-
chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical
strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant
gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but
artificers perceive it."
****************
they look back to what they intended at first,
and make all an even and proportioned body. -- Jonson
***************
Fool! as if half-eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool, or *shreds from the whole piece*.
Ben Jonson, ‘On Poet-Ape,’ Epigrams (1616), No 56.
***************
Also a figure of deformity, and as you say, HYBRID form/body, as in
Horace. An unexemplary figure:
HOR., Ars Poet. 1.
If in a picture, Piso, you should see
A handsome woman with a fish`s tail,
Or a man`s head upon a horse`s neck,
Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,
Cover`d with feathers of all sorts of birds, -
Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?
Trust me, that book is as ridiculous
Whose incoherent style, like SICK MEN'S dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
Figuring monstrous style:
http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG
*******************************
Whose incoherent style, like SICK MEN'S DREAMS
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
http://marksrichardson.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/midsummer_n_d4_cr.jpg
*******************************
SICK MEN'S DREAMS:
(To see thee in our waters yet appear)
Macbeth, V,iii
Macbeth. "If thou couldst, doctor, cast/ The water of my land, find
her DISEASE,? And PURGE it to a sound and pristine
health,............/ I should applaud thee to the very echo,/That
should applaud again.
******************************
Did you know that the figure in the Droeshout engraving has two left
arms?
"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" (Gentlemen's Tailor Magazine April 1911)
***************************
Fool! as if half-eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool, or *shreds from the whole piece*.
Ben Jonson, ‘On Poet-Ape,’ Epigrams (1616), No 56.
*********************
"Neque, me ut MIRETUR turba, laboro: / Contentus paucis lectoribus" -
" I do not expend my efforts so that the multitude may *wonder* at me:
I am contented with a few READERS"
Jonson/Horace, Epigraph, Workes
********************
best,
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 25, 11:43�am, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
I can see how the Droeshout deliberately portrays an "abstract"
Shakespeare. Could be that's what Jonson points out. I think I've
seen a lot of modern artwork that departs from literal representation
to use another method. Makes me wonder what was underlying his
appearance the artist was going for.
Hear, hear. And of course, for some reason, living things tend to be
bilaterally symmetrical.
Dennis
> On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:40:59 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
An author who couldn't restrain his flow of humour? Something
artificial and amorphous - without a fixed, natural form?
Beyond Psychology: The Moral Basis of Jonson's Theory of Humour
Characterization
James D. Redwine, Jr.
In its strictest denotation, says Jonson, the term “humour” belongs
to physics and is simply the demonstrable natural quality of air or
water, either one of which elements will be found to be always moist
and IN FLUX, which is to say “WANTING POWER TO CONTAIN ITSELFE.” By
extension, the term “humour” also belongs to physiology, since the
four vital ingredients of the human blook stream – choler,
melancholy,phlegm, and blood – are always in flux and want power to
contain themselves.
*****************************
We know Shakespeare flowed with facility and had to be ruled or
contained:
wherein he FLOW'D with that FACILITY, that
sometime it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminan-dus erat
[the brake needed to be applied]; as Augustus said of Haterius. His
WIT was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too.
*******************************
...Never did so much strength, or such a spell
Of Art, and eloquence of papers dwell.
For whil'st he in colours, full and true,
Mens natures, fancies, and their HUMOURS drew
In method, order, matter, sence and grace,
Fitting each person to his time and place;
Knowing to move, to slacke, or to make haste,
BINDING the middle with the first and last:
He fram'd all minds, and did all passions stirre,
And with a BRIDLE guide the Theater.
Shackerley Marmion, Jonsonus Virbius
********************************
Alchemist, Prologue - Jonson
Fortune, that favours Fools, these two short Hours
We wish away, both for your sakes, and ours,
Judging Spectators; and desire in place,
To th' Author Justice, to our selves but Grace.
Our Scene is London, 'cause we would make known,
No Countries Mirth is better than our own:
No Clime breeds better Matter for your Whore,
Bawd, Squire, Impostor, many Persons more,
Whose MANNERS, now call'd HUMOURS, feed the Stage;
And which have still been Subject for the Rage
Or Spleen of Comick Writers. Though this Pen
Did never aim to grieve, but better Men;
Howe'er the AGE he lives in doth endure
The VICES that she breeds, above their Cure.
But when the wholesom Remedies are sweet,
And in their working Gain and Profit meet,
He hopes to find no Spirit so much diseas'd,
But will with such fair Correctives be pleas'd:
For here he doth not fear who can apply.
If there be any that will sit so nigh
Unto the Stream, to look what it doth run,
They shall find things, they'ld think, or wish, were done;
They are so natural Follies, but so shown,
As even the Doers may see, and yet now own.
********************************
William Cartwright,
Shakespeare _to thee was dull, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashioned wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:_
_Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free
As his, but without his scurility;
***********************************
Indecency?
Decent \De"cent\, a. [L. decens, decentis, p. pr. of decere to
be fitting or becoming; akin to decus glory, honor, ornament,
Gr. ? to seem good, to seem, think; cf. Skr. d?c to grant, to
give; and perh. akin to E. attire, tire: cf. F. d['e]cent.
Cf. Decorate, Decorum, Deig?.]
1. Suitable in words, behavior, dress, or ceremony; becoming;
fit; decorous; proper; seemly; as, decent conduct; decent
language. --Shak.
Before his decent steps. --Milton.
2. Free from immodesty or obscenity; modest.
3. Comely; shapely; well-formed. [Archaic]
A sable stole of cyprus lawn Over thy decent
shoulders drawn. --Milton.
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed. --Pope.
4. Moderate, but competent; sufficient; hence, respectable;
fairly good; reasonably comfortable or satisfying; as, a
decent fortune; a decent person.
A decent retreat in the mutability of human affairs.
--Burke.
************************************
Fescennine
Licentious; obscene; lewd.
Synonyms: bawdy; loose; Rabelaisian; racy; strong; UNBRIDLED
***********************************
He that is with him is Amorphus
a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and SHREDS
of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. (Jonson, Cynthia's Revels,
III,ii)
*********************************
best,
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 25, 3:46�pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
Like Mercurial, Protean, Cameleon-like?
Androgenous? I don't know Jonson well enough to understand if his
concept of humours wants to distinguish male and female or somehow
reconcile them in one person, perhaps at a higher level.
>*********************************
>best,
>Nicole
Dennis
> On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:46:47 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
For Jonson, virtuous men (the only men worthy of good fame) are
distinguished by their ability to contain/rule their humours:
I will preferred for knowledge, none, but such
As rule their lives by it, and can becalme
All sea of humour, with the marble trident
Of their strong spirits: Others fight below
With gnats, and shaddowes, others nothing know. (Poetaster, IV, vi, )
******************************
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or INFLUENCE, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
***************************************
Influence \In"flu*ence\, n. [F. influence, fr. L. influens,
-entis, p. pr. See Influent, and cf. Influenza.]
1. A FLOWING in or upon; inFLUX. [Obs.]
***************************************
Beyond Psychology: The Moral Basis of Jonson's Theory of Humour
Characterization
Redwine, con’t.
Crites, Asper’s successor in Cynthia’s Revels, describes the process
of a humour in some detail, and in unmistakably moral terms. Indeed,
there is an instructive similarity between Crites on humours and the
Church Fathers on concupiscence. In Cynthia’s Revels, I, v, 24-64,
Crites says:
O vanity,
How are thy painted beauties doted on,
By light, and empty Idots! how pursu'd
With open and extended Appetite!
How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,
Rais'd on their Toes, to catch thy airy Forms,
Still turning giddy, till they reel like Drunkards,
That buy the merry madness of one hour,
With the long irksomness of following time!
O how despis'd and base a thing is a Man,
If he not strive t'erect his groveling Thoughts
Above the strain of Flesh! But how more cheap,
When, even his best and understanding Part,
(The crown and strength of all his Faculties)
Floats like a dead drownd Body, on the STREAM
Of VULGAR HUMOUR, mixt with common'st dregs?
……………………………………………..
Tut, she (Vice) is stale, rank, foul, and were it not
That those (that woo her) greet her with lockt Eyes,
(In spight of all the impostures, paintings, drugs,
Which her Bawd custom dawbs her Cheeks withal)
She would betray her loath'd and leprous Face,
And fright th' enamour'd dotards from themselves:
But such is the perverseness of our nature,
That if we once but fancy levity,
(How antick and ridiculous so ere
It sute with us) yet will our muffled thought
Choose rather not to see it, than avoid it:
And if we can but banish our own sense,
We act our mimick tricks with that FREE license,
That lust, that pleasure, that security,
*As if we practis'd in a PASTE-BOARD CASE,
And no one saw the motion, but the motion*.
To get oneself caught up in the STREAM of vulgar humour is to
subordinate the “best and understanding part,/ (The crowne, and
strength of all his faculties)” to “the straine of flesh,” which is
“the perversenesse of our nature.” It is to “banish our owne sense,”
“muffle thought,” run after “AYRIE FORMES” until we “reele like
drunkards”; it is to allow the “perversenesse of our nature” to blind
us to the tricks of habit (Bawd Custom). It is, in Augustine’s great
phrase, to be “shackled by an inferior love.”
**************************************
Jonson, _Cynthia's Revels_
MER. Why, Crites, think you any noble spirit,
Or any, worth the title of a man,
Will be incensed to see the enchanted veils
Of self-conceit, and servile flattery,
Wrapt in so many folds by time and custom,
Drawn from his wronged and bewitched eyes?
Who sees not now their shape and nakedness,
Is blinder than the son of earth, the mole;
Crown'd with no more humanity, nor soul.
CRI. Though they may see it, yet the huge estate
FANCY, and FORM, and SENSUAL PRIDE have gotten,
Will make them blush for anger, not for shame,
And turn shewn nakedness to impudence.
HUMOUR is now the test we try things in:
All power is just: nought that delights is sin.
And yet the zeal of every knowing man
Opprest with hills of tyranny, cast on virtue
By the light fancies of fools, thus transported.
Cannot but vent the Aetna of his fires,
T'inflame best bosoms with much worthier love
Than of these outward and effeminate shades;
That these vain joys, in which their wills consume
Such powers of wit and soul as are of force
To raise their beings to eternity,
May be converted on works fitting men:
And, for the practice of a forced look,
An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase,
Study the native frame of a true heart,
An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge,
And spirit that may CONFORM them actually
To God's high FIGURES, which they have in power;
Which to neglect for a self-loving neatness,
Is sacrilege of an unpardon'd greatness.
**************************************
from
Grace Tiffany, Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters
Hence the fear of masculine self-loss asserts itself in the reduction
of symbols that, in Lylyan and Shakespearean mythic comedy, validate
androgynous transsexual synthesis. Jonsonian satire (like all satire)
repudiates eros, the divine procreative force that - for the Greeks,
the Renaissance Neoplatonists, and mythic playwrights like Lyly and
Shakespeare - was vitally linked to androgyny. For Jonson, eros was
simply a sham: an illusion of transsexual connectedness born of a
fatuous submission to unmanly sentiment. Thus the Lylyan/
Shakespearean metaphors of watery dissolution, dream, maze, violas,
alchemy, magical transvestism, and beast-monsters appear, INVERTED
in Jonson's comedies, invested with negative valences. Jonson uses
these symbols,
along with specific hermaphrodite myths, to suggest *illicit
departures from authentic identities: "IMITATING OTHERS," so that "we
cannot return to ourselves," to recall the lines from Discoveries.
The Jonsonian vision of grounded male identity is clearly at odds
with the Shakespearean vision of the protean self, available for
transformative interaction with another. Thus in Jonson's work,
metaphors of watery transformation are used to indicate the total
dissolution of an integrated personality - not the awakening of the
authentic double-gendered relational entity, but a reduction of the
prior, individual self to *nothingness*. (p.113)
******************************
Jonson's Stoic Politics:
Lipsius, the Greeks, and the "Speach According to Horace"
Robert C. Evans
# The concluding portion of the "Speach" attacks the superficial
training of various "Lordings" (l. 62) and "[TEMPESTUOUS]
Grandlings" (l. 64), who
bristle at any attempt to "tutor" them in their responsibilities (l.
66), especially when that attempt is made by "Booke-wormes" (l. 67).
[22] Rejecting their traditional military duties, they take pride
instead in their birth, breeding, and alliances (l. 66), and Jonson
makes them contemptuously ask, "Why are we rich, or great, except to
show / All licence in our lives?" (ll. 69-70). The only subjects they
profess to care about are sports, whoring, dancing, making money,
attending plays, and wearing elaborate costumes. As for their social
obligations, Jonson imagines them variously crying, "let Clownes, and
Tradesmen breed / Their Sonnes to studie Arts, the Lawes, the
Creed" (ll. 73-74), and "Let poore Nobilitie be vertuous" (l. 79), and
"Let them care, / That in the Cradle of their Gentrie are; / To serve
the State by Councels, and by Armes" (ll. 83-85). The poem's final
lines condemn such pseudo-aristocrats as "Carkasses of honour; Taylors
blocks, / Cover'd with Tissue, whose prosperitie mocks / The fate of
things" (ll. 99-101). They are, in the poem's grim final words,
nothing but hollow or "emptie moulds" (l. 102). Their personal
irresponsibility, Jonson suggests, is not only individually DEGENERATE
but also dangerous to the larger body politic.
******************************
Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
TO THE
SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,
The Court.
T
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:
http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG
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.
******************************
best,
Nicole
book...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Nov 25, 7:04�pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
This seems to answer my question about Jonson-Shakespeare and
Jonson-Inigo Jones differences. Jonson was expelled from favor for
his views on homoerotic masques favored by James, it seems; expelled
for seven years--same length of time for Oxford after his court fart;
approximately the same length of time Shakespeare went missing after
possibly being expelled from Stratford?
Happy Thanksgiving, bookburn
Dennis
> On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:53:17 -0800 (PST), Dennis <nldo...@shaw.ca>
Thanks bookburn - and hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving.
you wrote:
"This seems to answer my question about Jonson-Shakespeare and
Jonson-Inigo Jones differences. Jonson was expelled from favor for
his views on homoerotic masques favored by James, it seems; expelled
for seven years--same length of time for Oxford after his court fart;
approximately the same length of time Shakespeare went missing after
possibly being expelled from Stratford?"
I know that seven year journeys are significant in myth, but I can't
offer any opinions on Jonson or Shakespeare's seven year absences. As
for Oxford, I think he always had trouble getting the Queen to grant
him permission to travel. Seven years travel is a long time - but (as
the joke goes) it is hard to recall a fart once it's out.
Nicole