A Face Farced

[Dennis]

Beware, then, thou render men's figures truly, and teach them no less
to hate their deformities than to love their forms; for, to grace
there should come reverence; and no man can call that lovely which is
not also venerable. (Jonson_Cynthia’s Revels_)

If Jonson had not written that - perhaps I could pass by the
absurdities of the Droeshout figure. But form was
important to Jonson. The above passage is set at the beginning of a
play that was intended to reform the deformities, abuses and
corruptions of 'Cynthia's Court'. Jonson even provided us with a
catalogue of some of these abuses. Very interesting reading!

Transformation, - form, reform, deform. These were the concerns of the
age. If Jonson let a deformed figure stand for Shakespeare - he did it
deliberately.

<<“For , let your soule be assur’d of this (in any ranke, or
profession what-ever) the more generall, or major part of opinion
*goes with the face, and (simply) respects nothing else*. Therefore,
if that can be made exactly, curiously, exquisitely, thorowly, it is
inough” (2.3.53-57)>> Amorphus, Cynthia’s Revels

Is this an example of what Jonathan Gibson termed Oxfordian
insincerity? It is conceivable that Amorphus's fascinating 'mimicry'
could extend to other surfaces - such as the 'faces' of sonnets.
Jonson could do the same to the 'face' of an author, or a monument.

<< “Farce,” appearing whenever the perceived surfaces of things seem
to disavow the substance that “should” be there.>>

As we learn from Alan H. Nelson, Oxford's taste for high fashion and
low comedy, (and perhaps any of the other particular vices on Jonson's
'Cynthia's Revel' list) - made him appear 'deformed' in the eyes of
some of his contemporaries. (To charge someone with being 'monstrous'
is to charge them with deformity)

The gallants loved Oxford - the reformers loathed him.

Oxford seems to have disappointed many who saw in him a potential ally
of the militant Protestant cause. In the end, he was dismissed by many
as someone who had truly purchased his vices at the expense of his
virtues.

The Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare, and descriptions of the Earl
of Oxford, identify them both as sites of disorder and deformity.
Sites of deformation resistant to reformation.

For Jonson - sites of deformity are also sites of shame and dishonour.
Scratch the exquisite, curious, and gilded '(sur)face' of his praise
of Shakespeare, and the scorn simply oozes out!

But as Amorphus predicted: “For , let your soule be assur’d of this
(in any ranke, or profession what-ever) the more generall, or major
part of opinion *goes with the face, and (simply) respects nothing
else*. Therefore, if that can be made exactly, curiously, exquisitely,
thorowly, it is inough”

The 'major part of opinion' has gone with the 'face' of Shakespeare.
It has been 'inough'.

***************************************

The Feigned Commonwealth in the Poetry of Ben Jonson
Anthony Mortimer

Jonson (in Timber) defines the poet as one who feigns a commonwealth
and creates a “proper embattling” of vice and virtue. This illuminates
the epigrams and commendatory poems where shades of moral gray are
replaced by black and white. The vicious are nameless because vice is
a vizard, destroying personality. The virtuous are named for
recognition and imitation.

**************************************

Leah S Marcus
In dedicating the 1616 Folio version of Cynthia's Revels to the court,
Jonson addressed that body as “A bountiful and brave spring” that
“waterest all the noble plants of this island. In thee, the whole
kingdom dresseth itself, and is ambitious to use thee as her glass.
Beware, then, thou render men's figures truly, and teach them no less
to hate their deformities than to love their forms; for, to grace
there should come reverence; and no man can call that lovely which is
not also venerable.” If, as Jonson claimed, the court nurtured and
sustained the whole island, it would be impossible to overestimate the
importance of his self appointed role as court reformer. Throughout
his career, though in varying modes and intensities at different
times, he assigned himself the gargantuan and foolhardy task of
critiquing the foibles and vices of the court. Jonson lived most of
his life in close proximity to the English court at Whitehall, and the
court figures prominently in his writings.

**************************************

“ A Monster with a Face Between His Feet” The Corporeal Culture of
Farce in Early Eighteenth Century Britain

Tonya-Marie Locke Howe

The first chapter, “The Body of Farce,” considers the materiality of
the farcical aesthetic. Through the language of what I am calling the
“farcical body.” Critics come to define and marginalize bad art (and
vice versa). I assert that the rhetoric and practice of farce in the
eighteenth century not only acquires shape through reference to the
body, but more particularly, to the body somehow deformed, diseased,
less-than-human, and otherwise disposable. The stories that farce
tells, then as now, are primarily stories about bodies in
distress.Yet, physical and social bodily experiences each reinforce
the other. The term “farcical body” describes not only those bodies
that partake materially in the logic of farce; it also describes those
that exist discursively in the shadow of a despised genre. Drawing on
Maussian scholarship and work by Stallybrass and White, I argue that
the spectacle of the distorted, distended body in the early eighteenth
century becomes an analogue for farce itself.

**************************************

A Farcical Body - the Soul of Jonson's 'Loathesome Age'

Speculum Tuscanismi

Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,
Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a
diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,
For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,
A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.
Not the like discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out,
Not the like resolute man for great and serious affairs,
Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets and privities of States,
Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nos'd like to Naso,
Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a thousand for to be employ'd,
This, nay more than this, doth practice of Italy in one year.
None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelve month
Hath so perfited outly and inly both body, both soul,
That none for sense and senses half matchable with them.
A vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an eagle,
A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion.
Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,
All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.
O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,
Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy.
"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?"

Gabriel Harvey

**************************************

He that is with him is Amorphus, a traveller, one so made out of a
<<mixture of shreds and forms>>, that himself is truly deformed. He
walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth, he is the
very mint of compliment, all his behaviours are printed, his face is
another volume of essays, and his beard is an Aristarchus. (Jonson,
Cynthia's Revels)

**************************************

<<This emphasis on the variegated quality of “bad art” is licensed, in
the vernacular, by the recently-imported senses of the term “farce.”
As Leo Hughes has pointed out, the term “farce” entered the theatrical
vocabulary during the late Restoration and early eighteenth century as
an English neologism coined from the French “farcir,” meaning “to
stuff.”>> T.M. Locke Howe

<<To farce something is to stuff it, or as Samuel Johnson writes, to
“fill it with mingled ingredients” Conversely, it also signifies the
stuffing itself, the concatenation of disparate parts. >> T.M. Locke
Howe

*************************************

Ode (to himself)
by Ben Jonson
COME leave the loathed stage,
And the more LOATHSOME AGE:
Where pride and impudence (in faction knit)
Usurpe the chaire of wit !
Indicting, and arraigning every day
Something they call a Play.
Let their fastidious, vaine
Commission of the braine
Run on, and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn :
They were not made for thee, lesse thou for them.
Say, that thou pour'st them wheat,
And they will acornes eat :
'Twere simple fury, still, thy selfe to waste
On such as have no taste !
To offer them a surfeit of pure bread,
Whose appetites are dead !
No, give them graines their fill,
Huskes, draff to drink and swill.
If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine,
Envy them not, their palate's with the swine.
No doubt some mouldy tale,
Like Pericles ; and stale
As the Shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish-
<<Scraps>> out of every dish
Throwne forth, and rak't into the common tub,
May keepe up the Play-club :
There, <<sweepings>> doe as well
As the best order'd meale.
For, who the relish of these guests will fit,
Needs set them but the almes-basket of wit.
And much good do 't you then :
Brave plush and velvet-men ;
Can feed on orts : and safe in your stage-clothes,
Dare quit, upon your oathes,
The stagers and the stage-wrights too (your peeres)
Of larding your large eares
With their foule comic socks,
Wrought upon twenty blocks :
Which if they are torne, and turn'd, and patch't enough,
The gamesters share your GILT, and you their STUFFE.-

**************************************

farce Pronunciation noun, verb, farced, farc•ing.
–noun
1. a light, humorous play in which the plot depends upon a skillfully
exploited situation rather than upon the development of character.
2. humor of the type displayed in such works.
3. foolish show; mockery; a ridiculous sham.
4. Cookery. FORCEMEAT.

–verb (used with object)
5. to season (a speech or composition), esp. with witty material.
6. Obsolete. to stuff; cram.

[Origin: 1300–50; (n.) ME fars stuffing < MF farce < VL *farsa, n. use
of fem. of L farsus, earlier FARTUS stuffed, ptp. of farcīre to stuff;
(v.) ME farsen < OF farcir < L farcīre ]

—Synonyms 3. burlesque, travesty.

**************************************

The Stuff of Farce:

<< “Farce,” appearing whenever the perceived surfaces of things seem
to disavow the substance that “should” be there.>>

Notes & Queries
John Aubrey upon the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford
Bacil F. Kirtley
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 307. (Jan. - Mar.,
1965), pp. 64-65.

The stuff of farce:

John Aubrey Upon the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford: - John Aubrey
(1626-1697) begins his short biography of Edward de Vere, seventeenth
Earl of Oxford, with a paragraph which I cite fully:

This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth,
happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed tht he
went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home,
and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.

This account depicting the memorable lapse of the elegant but
sphincterally-unrelible young nobleman (a tale which apparently
sugeested to Mark Twain his Rabelaisian “Fireside Conversation in
Queen Elizabeth’s Time”) is almost certainly apocryphal, for a similar
and earlier tale occurs in _The Book of the Thousand Nights and a
Night.
(snip)
Why did seventeenth-century gossip attach this story to the exalted
Edward de Vere? A headnote to Aubrey’s story by the latest editor of
Brief Lives, Oliver Lawson Dick, suggests and answer: “He (Oxford) was
a courtier of Queen Elizabeth who lost his friends by his insolence
and pride, and his fortune by his extravagance.” What more exquisite
reprisal by the victims of de Vere’s arrogance than this story, which
makes his mere name a perpetual chuckling stimulus and which offers a
plausible and piquantly malicious etiology for the nobleman’s extended
continental tour?
This likelihood prompts a general observation upon the function of
legend. Legends, at least most legends, are history as the naïve would
like it to be. Legends, like dreams, are wish-fantasies; but they,
unlike dreams, are canalized, stylized, disciplined to pre-established
and traditionally defined patterns. They, and again a qualifying
“almost all” is intended, are not really history, but are the
equivalents of and substitutes for history, modes and formulas of
historical interpretation applied by the uncritical and the unknowing.

Bacil F. Kirtley , University of Hawaii

**************************************

<<“For , let your soule be assur’d of this (in any ranke, or
profession what-ever) the more generall, or major part of opinion
*goes with the face, and (simply) respects nothing else*. Therefore,
if that can be made exactly, curiously, exquisitely, thorowly, it is
inough” (2.3.53-57)>> Amorphus, Cynthia’s Revels

*************************************

Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie you be not warnd:
for unto none of you (like mee) sought those burres to cleave: those
Puppets (I meane) that spake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht
in our colours. Is it not strange, that I, to whom they all have beene
beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all have beene
beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) bee both at
once of them forsaken? Yes trust them not: for there is an upstart
Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in
a Players hyde (note- 'surface'), supposes he is as well able to
bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute
Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a
countrey.

Bombast – stuff
***************************************
Messenger
A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all
honourable virtues.

BEATRICE
It is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man:
but for the stuffing,--well, we are all mortal.

***************************************

eNotes.com
Bombast - originally, cotton or any soft material used for padding to
produce clothes in the fashion of the Sixteenth Century. It has come
to mean a highflown unnatural style, rather inflated and insincere,
pretentious, ranting, and using extravagant language. Also, it can
denote extravagance at the expense of content.
The word is from the Greek bombux, meaning “silkworm” or “silk,” and
the Latin bombyx, meaning “silkworm,” “something made of silk, any
fine fiber, or cotton.” Both were used to form the Old French bombace,
meaning “cotton.”

In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago uses the word in complaining to
Roderigo about Othello:
But he, as loving of his own pride and purposes,
Evades them with a bombast circumstance
Horribly stuff’d with epithets of war;
And, in conclusion,
Nonsuits my mediators.
Act I, scene i : lines 13 – 17

<<That feeds on Mulberry-leaves, like a true Silk-worm>> jonson

**************************************

Farce – to paint (the face)

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.

**************************************

(From Alan H Nelson Monstrous Adversary p.229)

The 1615 edition of Stow’s _Annales_ reported (for the first time in
print) that on his return from Italy, Oxford affected a new
stylishness of dress (p. 868):

Milloners, or Haberdashers had not then any gloves Imbroydered, or
trimmed with Gold, or Silke, neither Gold nor Imbroydered Girdles and
Hangers, neyther could they make any costly wash or perfume, until
about the fourteenth or fifteenth yeare of the Queene the right
hounourable Edward de Vere, Earle of Oxford: came from Italy, and
brought with him Gloves: sweete bagges, a perfumed leather Jerkin, and
other plesant thinges, and that yeere the Queene had a payre of
perfumed Gloves trimmed onely with foure Tuftes or Roses, of cullered
Silke, the Queene took such pleasurer in those Gloves, that shee was
pictures with those Gloves upon her hands, and for many yeeres after
it was called the Earle of Oxfords perfume.

Oxford’s contemporaries believed that Italy had effeminized him.

***************************************

http://www.abm-enterprises.net/artgall2/botticelli_venus_mars.jpg

**************************************

Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion : and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet's made, as well as born.

**************************************

Some critical discussion of eighteenth century farce:
“ A Monster with a Face Between His Feet” The Corporeal Culture of
Farce in Early Eighteenth Century Britain

Tonya-Marie Locke Howe

Between the true and false wit opening Addison’s “Pleasures of the
Imagination” series; between good and bad public deployments of the
body; between good and bad art, the consumer must navigate a vast
chasm. Across this vast chasm, the discourse of farce accumulates
weight with reference to the corporeal fact.

In Harlequin Horace; or, The Art of Modern Poetry (1741), James
Miller provides a critical retrospective of the bad art of the past
decades. There, the nadir of “Modern Poetry” is John Rich, who not
only managed a theater known for putting on extravagant productions
suited to the popular taste and penned a variety of spectacular
entertainments, but also performed as a talented Harlequin on that
stage, rendering the surfaces of his body sites of awe (note –
Amorphus’ mimicry (Faces), Oxford’s outrageous affectations)
He also trained cohorts of new Harlequins – often drawn from the ranks
of “vulgar” comedians, like John Hippisley. Dedicated to Rich,
Harleuqin Horace arrays under the rubric of bad representation
productions that rely for effect on deceit and deception – the
counterfeit, the feigned, and the therefore unnatural. Interestingly ,
Miller uses the trope of the counterfeit to contain a staggering array
of bad practices – including pleasing too many; creating pleasure by
means of spectacle, surprise, and wonder, concocting new texts by
taking from the old; committing a kind of crime against nature by,
Frankenstein-like, giving life to “Things without Head, or Taail, or
Form, or Grace. These bad practices often go so far as to “sometimes
shew the Absence of the God”. The sign of these bad practices is
“farce,” appearing <<whenever the perceived surfaces of things seem to
disavow the substance that “should” be there>>. It is significant in
this structural and textural sense that vulgar performances such as
farce and its comrades in arms – pantomime, harlequinade, fairground
drolls and other forms of exhibition – were termed “irregular”
theater, taking place on the “irregular stage.”

A touchstone for bad representation, the concept of “farce”
underwrites Miller’s polemic. Because it articulates almost all of the
common discourses associated with vulgar art during the early
eighteenth century, it is a representative example of the critical
position on farce. In Harlequin Horace, Miller deploys the term
“farce” in a manner characteristic of its early modern uses. Providing
modern poets with a satirical ‘how-to’ guide, Miller exhorts would-be
artists to ignore reality and the social tendencies of man; to steal
rampantly from other writers; to always insert “a Jig, a Wedding, or a
Fray”; to “so lye, confound, disjoint, lop, eke and patch,/ That
neither Head, nor Tail, nor Middle, match”; and to “shun with Care the
Rule presecrib’d of old,/ That Things too strange should not be shewn,
but told”. A “Scotch or Irish story” will “never fail to please’
because, being unknown and unsurveilled by the watchful, measuring eye
of the educated, they are more amenable to “admitting Variety”.
Typically, it is this “Variety” that critics of farce cite as its
hallmark; however, this concept of “Variety” is itself variegated,
drawing content into form. Miller links the concatenations of newfound
cosmopolitanism – especially operatic imports, harlequinade, and
masquerade – to the ill-educated products consumed by an imagined
community of illiterates. All such productions “league, melodious
Nonsense to dispense,/And give us Sound nstead of Sense”. All tend
toward the point embodied by Rich, who, neither “rul’d by Reason, nor
by Law restrain’d,/In all his Farces Smut and Scandal reign’d”

This emphasis on the variegated quality of “bad art” is licensed, in
the vernacular, by the recently-imported senses of the term “farce.”
As Leo Hughes has pointed out, the term “farce” entered the theatrical
vocabulary during the late Restoration and early eighteenth century as
an English neologism coined from the French “farcir,” meaning “to
stuff.” As a theatrical, pseudo-generic concept, it gained increasing
popularity of use throughout the period most often viewed under the
aegis of the Augustan. But the applicability of the term to theatrical
representation is itself colored by an etymological history that
prefigures its low aesthetic status, its structural hybridity, and the
need to regulate and contain it. “Farce” was first and foremost a
domestic term, signifying a culinary practice still in use today. As a
verb, to farce is, literally, to stuff, and as a noun, farce is,
literally, stuffing: To farce something is to stuff it, or as Samuel
Johnson writes, to “fill it with mingled ingredients” Conversely, it
also signifies the stuffing itself, the concatenation of disparate
parts.

This domestic etymology, however, houses other and more
insidious senses peculiar to its vexed position within and aesthetic
hierarchy. In the Old French, the term signifies not only
gastronomically, but also religiously; and in the Middle English, it
possesses a highly unsavory – no pun intended – medical sense. Farce,
in the French history of the term, referred to explanatory passages or
interludes inserted into the liturgy of the Latin Mass. Its earliest
senses, that is, refer to a structural characteristic, rather than a
certain brand of humor. It is from this sense that the shortest of
theatrical pieces, performed between the acts of more legitimate
dramatic entertainments, came to be termed farces. Indeed, it is no
surprise that farce as a theatrical genre was despised by the newly
British and overwhelmingly Protestant nation; here, we have
intertwined the “papist” tradition of liturgical explication and the
masculinist tradition of female domesticity. But further, and perhaps
more startlingly, the etymology of the term highlights yet another
negative force in this pantheons of negatives: illness, the “other” to
health.

The etiological term farcy derives from the history of farce and to
farce as stuffing; in turn, the physical presentation of the disease
gestures towards both the generic imagination of farce as a theatrical
entertainment and the marginalized aesthetic disposition it has
acquired. A particularly painful and contagious disease most often
found in horses, farcy is the cutaneous version of glanders…(snip) As
a disease characterized by noxious swellings and pustular lesions,
farcy disrupts the unexceptionable horizon of normalcy; farce is
monstrous because it conjoins disparate parts, thrusting them into a
single theatrical hodgepodge that undulates with formal irregularity…
(snip) Farce – if left unchecked – ostensibly has the capacity to
reproduce its formal irregularity within the moral landscape of
eighteenth – century British society. Transforming its viewers into
effeminate non-citizens of vitiated taste, farce communicated its
moral confusion to the theater-going public; in effect, it was seen to
have monster-making capabilities that perhaps exceeded those of
Nature.

This structural, textural life of “farce” is also bound up with
discourses of repetition informing the disposition of bodily surfaces
in relation to other bodily surfaces, all of which are rendered
legible by culture. The concept of mimicry becomes…a powerful tool for
the aesthetic delegitimation of farce.
(snip)

The discourse of farce is fundamentally linked to its experiential,
embodied quality, both in dramatic performance and in cultural
performance more broadly. This embodied quality is in large part the
site of its definitional difficulty. Because farce, while most often
spoken of in its dramatic capacity, is also a vibrant part of critical
discourse, it poses a unique set of generic concerns. The critical
life of farce is well known even today; to use the term is to make a
critical statement – usually to the detriment of your subject but not
always. Harte, in his poetical Essay on Reason, deploys farce in a
manner well known to us today: “Sad farce of pow’r, sad anarchy of
things,/ Where brutes are subjects, and where tyrants kings”. The
question of farce is always-already about form and cultural indices of
worth. To use the term is to take a position on the event and its
significance; thee concept of farce is inextricably bound up with the
consolidation of authority. In the literary realm, this consolidating
of authority is found in canonicity, the establishment and maintenance
of taxonomies of aesthetic value.

**************************************
Daffodilification:

Jonsonian Comedy and the Discovery of the Social Self
Lawrence Danson
PMLA, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Mar., 1984), pp. 179-193.

The satiric point about the courtier’s “trivial follies” (in
_Cynthia’s Revels_) is, of course, that there is nothing more to
them: they are their silly actions. And those acitons have the
cogwheel reciprocity fo the sociologists comical machinery of
“typifications”….Their very names confer an identity and deprive them
of it: one is “deformed” or even unformed, the other a “prodigal”
endlessly wasting his insubstantial essence. What shape they have is
mutually derived; they see themselves in each other and create
themselves by reflection.: “…your sweet disposition to travaile (I
assure you) hath made you another my-selfe in mine eye, and stroke mee
inamor’d of your beauties” , says Amorphus to Asotus. Amorphus has
drunk “the fountain of self-love”; what he loves in another is
therefore the insubstantial reflection of his own lack of substance.
Echo and Narcissus are the mythological exemplars for this state of
self-annihilating self-love. The fresh fount that keeps slow time to
Echo’s salt tears is the fountain whose waters have induces Narcissus’
daffodilification. Because Echo still loves Narcissus and remains
involved with his self-involvement, she loses (again) the full power
of individualizing speech and becomes the echo or imitation of other
emptily echoing characters. Echo is more sympathetic than most of the
others, however, partly because her disaster spares us from having to
hear her and partly because her love is still recognizable as such.
The more typical state of affairs is aptly described by L.A.
Beaurline: “Nothing comes from within, so they all must imitate each
other, an act of mere ENVY”

***************************************
Oxford as Empty Echo:

Fulke Greville: 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.

***************************************

Danson, (con't)

Asotus’ “disposition to travaile” is what first impresses the traveler
Amorphus: and traveling, in this and other of Jonson’s satires, is
what the self does when it is in a state of ultimate contingency.
Amorphus appoints himself Asotus’ tutor in the essential social art of
seeming-to-be. To demonstrate how he “can refell that paradox, or
rather pseudodox, of those, which hold the face to be the index of the
mind, which (I assure you) is not so, in any politique creature” (2.3.
13-15), he imitates for Asotus the various faces imitated by the
various social types, “as your merchant, your scholer, your souldier,
your lawyer, courtier, &c.” This pedant knows that the social self
exists only outwardly in its typificaitons; what would be inward, in
another version of selfhood, is here simply irrelevant: “For , let
your soule be assur’d of this (in any ranke, or profession what-ever)
the more generall, or major part of opinion goes with the face, and
(simply) respects nothing else. Therefore, if that can be made
exactly, curiously, exquisitely, thorowly, it is inough” (2.3.53-57)
We know that the traveling self is pathological because Jonson gives
us its healthy alternative in the figure of Crites, “A creature of a
most perfect and divine temper” (2.3. 123-24) Crites’ self is of a
sort not comprehended within the social vision. He exists (we are
told) wholly unto himself. He is Jonson’s ideal, “the man…/Who (like a
circle bounded in it selfe) / Contaynes as much, as man in fulnesse
may” (5.8.18-20) But as a dramatic character Crites cannot compete
with the fools, since his excellence depends on his refusal to enter
into the action. Jonson faces this problem repeatedly in his plays and
manages to solve it only in the masques by the strange expedient of
keeping his hero, the King, literally uninvolved, and unmoved mover.
The good man stays aloof, unmoved, but by that token he is
dramatically void…

**************************************

Writing to Harvey in October 1579, Spenser says:
"As for . . . Master Sidney and Master Dyer, they have me, I thank
them, in some use of familiarity.
. . . And now they have proclaimed in their Areopagus (clique) a
general surceasing and silence of bald rymers and also of the very
best too: instead whereof, they have, by authoritie of their whole
Senate, prescribed certain laws and rules of quantities of English
syllables for English verse: having had thereof already great
practise, and drawn me to their faction."

Three Proper And Witty Familiar Letters,
lately passed between two university men,
touching the earthquake in April last,
and our <<English reformed versifying>>.
With the preface of a well-willer to them both.
Imprinted at London by H. Bynneman,
dwelling in Thames Street near unto Baynard's Castle
Anno Domini 1580
Cum gratia & priuilegio Regiae Maiestatis

**************************************

Jonson's Stoic Politics:
Lipsius, the Greeks, and the "Speach According to Horace"

• George Parfitt, one of Jonson's best critics, has called the
"Speach" "puzzling and fascinating" and "an example of a great public
poet trying to cope with a difficult social and historical
situation" (86). Parfitt rightly points out that the poem "belongs to
a period of national and international uncertainty, a period which
forced men to examine their allegiances and beliefs with care" (87),
and he argues that the "Speach" is fascinating "partly because it is
not only a deeply disturbed poem but also because it is one in which
the disturbance is not fully resolved" (87). In the poem, Jonson
excoriates the aristocracy and gentry for neglecting their traditional
duties as military leaders, and, with a mixture of admiration,
condescension, and apparently genuine perplexity, he describes how
trained bands of armed commoners have stepped in to fill the gap.
According to Parfitt, "Jonson found the situation puzzling," since the
"vacuum [had been] filled by men whom Jonson could not believe were
capable of fulfilling the roles they were playing" (91). Parfitt
considers Jonson's puzzlement "honest, intelligent, and
revealing" (91), and he contends that the "quality and integrity of
Jonson's response in this poem are such that its inability to provide
solutions testifies to the difficulties of the situation" (92). In
Parfitt's words,
Preserving the tensions of a major creative writer as his society
moved towards changes of immense importance, the poem thus reveals
something of the complexity of choice-with-integrity at this time, and
it provides a moving sense of how deeply a man may care for a culture
and society which were destined, as history posthumously says, to
change . . . . (92)
(snip)
• The concluding portion of the "Speach" attacks the superficial
training of various "Lordings" (l. 62) and "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.
• As it happens, the final pages that Jonson marked in his copy of
Lipsius' Politics are obviously relevant to the general tone and
specific details of the "Speach." Those pages idealize the old Roman
role of censor, a role concerned with supervising and correcting
manners. Jonson seems to have sometimes seen himself as a kind of
censor, and certainly the title of his poem suggests that he was self-
consciously thinking of Roman examples. In any case, his markings in
this section of Lipsius provide many points of comparison with the
indictment he issues in the "Speach." For instance, there is an
obvious parallel between the tone of the poem and Lipsius' claim that
when license is tolerated, it can eventually "wholly subvert an
estate" (121). To combat such license, the censor should serve "as the
corrector of manners, and master of the ancient discipline" (121) --
certainly a role Jonson seems to relish playing in this poem.[23] In
particular, the censor should be concerned (as is Jonson in the
"Speach") "to cut off from youth ill practises, and unlawfull
desires" (121), and he should encourage all citizens to pursue
"goodnesse and paines taking, not sumptuousnesse, nor riches" (121).
[24] Without such correction, excess would "grow infinit in euerie
thing, where monie might be prodigallie consumed" (122), particularly
in "Monie, Buildings, Banquets, and Apparel" (122).[25] According to
Lipsius, "Effeminate riches haue poisoned al ages with dishonest
superfluitie" (122), and an excessive concern with money (as
demonstrated by the "Grandlings" in "A Speach") is "a most dangerous
plague" (122). Typically, Lipsius piles quotation on quotation to
reiterate his point, borrowing words from Aristotle, among many others
(122).
• To combat the kinds of excesses he attacks, Lipsius commends the
role of censor -- a role quite similar to that of the Jonsonian
satirist. The censor ideally functions by attempting to shame
transgressors (124), much as Jonson does in the "Speach." If shame
should fail, then corporal punishment may be necessary (124), but in
any case the prince must be vigilant to "Cause Faith to return backe,
correct voluptuousnesse, and bind together, by seuere lawes, those
things which are decaied" (124).[26] The ruler should "rather . . .
labour for the safetie of all men, then for their pleasure" (124).
When supervising his people, he should not "winke at that which is
euill, dissemble their faults, and with their present pleasure, giue
consent to their future mischiefe" (124). Instead, he must live an
exemplary life and thus shame others into doing the same.[27] "Shame
will worke the best alteration in some, in others necessitie, and euen
a loathing of it in others" (125). Iamblichus is quoted as extolling
the effectiveness of princely reward and punishment: "What so is in
honour is augmented and increaseth, & that which is in contempt,
declineth, and diminisheth: and that is a most manifest sign of a
kingdome well established" (125). One could hardly ask for a better
explanation of the rationale and objectives of Jonson's "Speach," a
poem in which Jonson adopts the role of censor, becoming a kind of
unofficial magistrate of manners.
• Whether Jonson read Lipsius' discussion of the censor before,
during, or after writing his poem, it is easy to see why that reading
caught his interest and how it is relevant both to this specific poem
and to his Caroline politics in general. Fundamentally, both the
theorist and the poet share an essentially moralistic approach to
political problems: most political and social ills can be traced to
the kind of "private" immorality the "Speach" attacks. In fact, of
course, for both Jonson and Lipsius no immorality is ever truly
private; all selfish or unethical conduct inevitably has harmful
social consequences. If Jonson seems obsessed by such apparently
trivial matters as aristocratic addictions to "gate, / Carriage, and
dressing" (ll. 87-88) and if he fulminates against those whose chief
desire is to "make legs" and "smell most sweet" (l. 90), it is not
because he is a busybody who cannot leave other people alone. It is
because he, like Lipsius, cannot finally separate "private" behavior
from its social and political ramifications. No wonder he read Lipsius
with such eagerness; no wonder he marked him with such zest.
(snip)

• The egotism of such persons is, as usual, not only stated but also
poetically and ironically underscored. Thus Jonson nicely stresses
"Wee" (l. 79), while the adjective "poore" boomerangs in ways the
wealthy but unworthy grandlings do not anticipate (l. 79). The
grandlings have "Descended" in more ways than one, and the "rope of
Titles" they value refers not only to interwoven strands of family
connections, and not only to appelations of social rank, but also to
binding, legalistic contracts or deeds of land. In these, ultimately,
their power is rooted, although it is also shored up by the kind of
bookworms (heralds) they earlier disdained (ll. 67; 82). Just as they
concede military power to the trained bands, so they concede another
sort of power to the heralds; their earlier lack of interest in
learning extends even to their own family histories.[34] And, through
their irresponsibility, they permit fabricated titles to take up the
slack. As long as heralds can justify aristocratic wealth, the
grandlings are content; their "blood is now become / Past any need of
vertue" (ll. 82-83). Here Jonson seems to suggest not only the
literal, material blood through which titles were inherited, but also
temperament and mettle, just as he also implies that virtue is partly
a response to the challenges posed by necessity. An aristocracy faced
with no pressures from necessity inevitably becomes both physically
and ethically weak.
• This weakness makes the reiterated "let . . . Let . . . Let"
clauses of ll. 73-86 seem especially ironic. The repeated verbs
suggest condescending permission or supercilious allowance ("Let poore
Nobilitie be vertuous . . . Let them care"). Yet the clauses also
convey weakness, fatigue, and dissipation disguised as indifference --
an abdication of responsibility and authority. The grandlings grant
the right to duties (but also powers) they no longer care to
discharge. By surrendering their traditional roles and rights to
persons they consider to be "in the Cradle of their Gentrie" (l. 84),
the grandlings actually prove their own immaturity, their own lack of
accountability. Indeed, by calling them "grandlings" (a term he seems
to have coined; see OED), Jonson even hints that they are little more
than "groundlings" -- commoners in the least attractive sense, despite
their land and titles. They refuse to serve "the State," either "by
Councels" or "by Armes" (l. 85). The phrasing here, as often, is
quietly equivocal: "Councels" can be understood both as modern-day
"councils" and as "counsels" (suggesting both public and private
advice), while the linking of "Councels" and "Armes" suggests the
ideal union of mind and body, intent and deed, always prized by
Jonson. Moreover, when the grandlings confess that they "neither love
the Troubles, nor the harmes" (l. 86), the linked nouns suggest an
aversion both to mental or emotional anxiety and to physical or
material risk.
• This emphasis on avoiding pain, however, is at once replaced by a
desire not simply for pleasure but for illicit pleasure. The first
"love" the grandlings mention is a "whore" -- a noun that immediately
renders the word "love" ironic (l. 87). In the same way, the verb
"study" is paradoxical, since the "study" mentioned makes mind serve
body (ll. 86-87). Moreover, the subjects of such study are completely
superficial; they lack even the dignity of being necessary. The
grandlings make their bodies act and appear in unnatural,
unspontaneous ways, and although such "study" is motivated partly by
egotism, it is also driven by a fear of of being momentarily
unfashionable. Ironically, the grandlings neglect their larger
responsibilities to the commonwealth not in pursuit of genuine
independence (which Jonson might respect), but rather in pursuit of a
debased and slavish obedience. Here as throughout, egotism equals
servitude. The grandlings' concern with "gate, / Carriage, and
dressing" makes them seem almost feminine (ll. 87-88), if femininity
is identified (as it often was in Jonson's culture) with weakness and
vanity.[35]
• Jonson's reference to such superficial "study" nicely sets up his
ensuing ironic mention of the "Academie, where the Gallants meet" to
"make legs" and "to smell most sweet" (ll. 89-90). By selecting
"Academie," of course, he chooses a noun with enormous resonance -- a
word linked with some of the greatest traditions of classical
philosophy. In the present context the word seems almost parodic, and
this group of self-absorbed "Gallants" also contrasts strongly not
only with truly disciplined scholars but even with the well-
intentioned (if somewhat ridiculous) trained bands of citizen-soldiers
whom Jonson stresses so strongly in the poem's first half. The very
word "Gallant" -- from a French term meaning to "make merry" --
suggests the superficiality of those it describes, while the gallants'
concern to "make legs" implies not genuine deference or real respect
but simply another kind of self-assertion, competition, and public
display. The act of making legs may involve bowing and apparent
humility, but in this case it actually symbolizes pride. Like so much
the grandlings do, it is done for show.
• This is why it seems so appropriate that they attend "Playes,"
where they are less concerned to witness performances than to perform.
Just as they neglect their responsibilities as members of the
commonwealth, so they also neglect their responsibilities as attentive
members of the audience. They attend theaters not to learn but to
usurp attention, a fact which makes the reference to how diligently
they "learne and studie" at the "Academie" all the more ironic (l.
92). By describing how the grandlings primp (fixing their "eye-
browes," attempting their "Beautie to repaire" [ll. 97, 96]), Jonson
once again feminizes them, but he also implies how much their neglect
of the endangered body politic springs from a preoccupation with their
own decaying bodies. How appropriate, then, that he should call them
"Carkasses of honour" (l. 99). This apparently simple phrase is
typically rich, suggesting not only that the grandlings embody the
death of honor, and not only that they are carkasses who happen (by
accident of birth) to be conventionally honored, but also that the
body is inevitably nothing more than a carcass, especially if its role
as the temporary home of spirit and virtues is neglected.
• However, Jonson disgustedly refuses "to stay" any "longer on these
pictures" (l. 98). He refuses, that is, to pay them the attention they
crave, just as he also refuses to pay them the attendance they expect.
They may make legs to others, but he refuses to make any obeisance to
them. For him they are simply "pictures" -- insubstantial images, the
mere likenesses of real persons. (note - Looke not on his picture..)
Their "prosperitie mocks / The fate of things" in several typically
complicated senses (ll. 100-01). First, they proudly, falsely assume
that their material prosperity protects them against fate, which of
course it cannot do. Their own mockery can and will be mocked -- as,
indeed, it is in this poem. Moreover, while the word "things" might at
first seem too vague or abstract to be exact, it is in fact precisely
the right word to suggest the ultimately undistinguished,
undifferentiated condition of mere matter. Despite all their pride and
temporary triumph, the grandlings are things little different from the
"things" they buy and wear.
• Yet their triumph, though temporary, is a fact Jonson cannot and
does not deny. (Denying it, of course, would make his poem
unnecessary.) Instead, he ends with the haunting image of "totter'd
vertue," who "holds / Her broken Armes up, to their [the grandlings']
emptie moulds" (ll. 101-02). The reference to "broken Armes" is not
only a powerful symbol of powerlessness but is also particularly
appropriate to this poem, with its emphasis on military decadence.
Just as he had earlier imagined humans as mere pictures, so here
Jonson seems to imagine a concept or ideal (Virtue) as if it were a
living, injured being. The final gesture of "vertue" -- holding up her
broken arms -- can be interpreted variously as defiance, supplication,
fear, or courage. Here as so often elsewhere, Jonson's famous "plain
style" is anything but. Although the poem gives its literal last words
to the grandlings, those words ("emptie moulds") suggest lack of
substance and eventual defeat.

Shakespeare Farce - A warning to 'grandlings' and merry gallants.
Jonson's 'brand'.

**************************************

For the present, most reverenced Sisters, as I have cared to be
thankful for your affections past, and here made the understanding
acquainted with some ground of your favours; let me not despair their
continuance, to the maturing of some worthier fruits; wherein, if my
muses be true to me, I shall raise the despised head of poetry again,
and stripping her out of those <<rotten and base rags wherewith the
times have adulterated her form>>, restore her to her primitive
habit,
feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist
of
all the great and master-spirits of our world. As for the vile and
slothful, who never affected an act worthy of celebration, or are so
inward with their own vicious natures, as they worthily fear her, and
think it an high point of policy to keep her in contempt, with their
declamatory and <<windy>> invectives; she shall out of just rage
incite
her servants (who are genus irritabile) to spout ink in their
<<faces>>,
that shall eat farther than their marrow into their fames; and not
Cinnamus the barber, with his art, shall be able to take out the
brands; but they shall live, and be read, till the wretches die, as
things worst deserving of themselves in chief, and then of all
mankind. (Dedicatory Epistle, _Volpone_, Jonson)

**************************************

An Iconographical Interpretation of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare's
Ovidian Comedy
Eugene B. Cantelupe
Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2. (Spring, 1963), pp. 141-151.

Shaekspeare, of course (in Venus and Adonis), gives the stellar role
to Venus, and his casting her as an aggressive and practised siren who
pursues and innocent and adolescent boy _ he knew of Lodge’s and
Greene’s less effective attempts, and of the reversal of the roles in
Marlowe’s popular poem – demanded an exploitation of the sensuous and
erotic as well as the satirical and farcical. Moreover, he makes
doubly certain that the basic situation in which he places them
provide for every possible irony. The virile, handsome Adonis, who
loves hunting –“but love he laught to scorn” – possesses a sweating
palm which attests to his “pith and livelihood”; but he grows more
scornful and resistant as Venus, who is “Love…loves, and yet is not
lov’d”, grows more desperate and frenzied. He emerges as a self-
indulgent, at times irritatingly obtuse but disarmingly naïve male;
and she a voracious, extravagantly absurd yet immensely comic and
sympathetic female. Her never flagging efforts to fire the passive
youth with the procreative arguments that comprise Shakesepeare’s
first eighteen sonnets or with glowing descriptions of her physical
beauty and sexual prowess not only reveal her self-confidence,
insatiable appetite, and wit, but also beget sympathy through
rollicking, robust humor. Adonis is the inverse of Romeo and Troilus,
and Venus the obverse of Juliet’s Nurse and Falstaff.
One of Shakespeare’s most happy touches is the goddess’s proclivity
for self-praise, often wild and hyperbolic but always amusing and
entertaining. The most effective of these self-laudatory passages is
her recital of the conquest of Mars, and exemplum which should not
only instruct the youth woefully ignorant of amatory lore but also
impress him with the reputation of the woman who so desperately begs
his attention. Shakespeare renders the scene as a magnificent medieval
pageant. After Venus tells Adonis that Mars became her captive and
slave who begged for that which the boy can have without asking, she
describes the war god as prancing across a tented field on a
caparisoned stallion, his “churlish drumme” beating and accompaniment
to each victory – except that of love. To it he makes the supreme
sacrifice. Over her altar, Venus boasts, he

…hung his lance,
His batter’d shield, his uncontrolled crest,
And for my sake hath learn’d to sport and dance,
To toy, to wanton, dally, smile and jest…
Making my arms his field, his tent my bed. (ll.104-109)

This stanzaic picture <<contrasts with Spenser’s portrayal of a
languid Acrasia and an impassive VERDANT in the Bower of Bliss>>, but
compares with a Venus and Mars painting by Francesca Cossa. The
resemblance to Cossa’s pictorial version, in the astrological cycle
that decorates on of the rooms of the Palazzo Schifonia at Ferrara,
depends upon the last image of the passage, which is one of the most
engaging in the poem and one of Shakespeare’s original details in his
telling of this legendary romance. Venus emphasizes her triumph over
Mars by adding that she then led him “prisoner in a red-rose chain”.
This image alludes to her planetary grace and amiability, which are
stronger than the physical prowess of the planet Mars, a power which
Cossa depicts by placing Venus on a chariot with Mars, in full armor,
kneeling before her, his waist encircled by a chain attached to her
throne.

http://www.wga.hu/art/c/cossa/schifano/2april/2april_0.jpg

**************************************

Right Honourable,

I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to
your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so
strong a prop to support so weak a burden: only, if your honour seem
but pleased, I account my self highly praised, and vow to take
advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver
labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove DEFORMED, I shall
be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a
land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your
honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content; which I
wish may always answer your own wish, and the world's hopeful
expectations.

Your honour's in all duty,

William Shakespeare

**************************************

If care or skill could conquer vain desire,
Or reason's reins my strong affection stay,
Then should my sights to quiet breast retire,
And shun such signs as secret thoughts bewray;
Uncomely love, which now lurks in my breast,
Should cease my grief, through wisdom's power oppressed.

But who can leave to look on Venus' face,
Or yieldeth not to Juno's high estate?
What wit so wise as gives not Pallas place?
These virtues rare each god did yield amate,
Save her alone who yet on earth doth reign,
Whose<< beauty's string>> no gods can well distrain.

What worldly wight can hope for heavenly hire
When only sights must make his secret moan?
A silent suit doth seld to grace aspire;
My hapless hap doth roll the restless stone;
Yet Phoebe fair disdained the heavens above,
To joy on earth her poor Endymion's love.

Rare is reward where none can justly crave,
For chance is choice where reason makes no claim;
Yet luck sometimes despairing souls doth save:
A happy star made Gyges joy attain;
A slavish smith of rude and rascal race
Found means in time to gain a goddess' grace.

hen lofty love thy sacred sails advance;
My seething seas shall flow with streams of tears.
Amidst disdain drive forth my doleful chance;
A valiant mind no deadly danger fears.
Who loves aloft, and sets his heart on high,
Deserves no pain though he doth pine and die. (Edward de Vere)

***************************************

Description of Verdant in the ‘Beautified’ Bower of Bliss

Faerie Queene Bk.2.12

The young man sleeping by her, seemd to bee
Some goodly swayne of honorable place,
That certes it great pittie was to see
Him his nobilitie so foule deface;
A sweet regard, and amiable grace,
Mixed with manly sternnesse did appeare
Yet sleeping, in his well proportiond face,
And on his tender lips the downy heare
Did now but freshly spring, and silken blossomes beare.

His warlike armes, the idle instruments
Of sleeping praise, were hong vpon a tree,
And his braue shield, full of old moniments,
Was fowly ra'st, that none the signes might see;
Ne for them, ne for honour cared hee,
Ne ought, that did to his aduauncement tend,
But in lewd loues, and wastfull luxuree,
His dayes, his goods, his bodie he did spend:
O horrible enchantment, that him so did blend.

http://www.abm-enterprises.net/artgall2/botticelli_venus_mars.jpg

**************************************

Timber

Make-up and Clothes-horses

De mollibus |&| effæminatis.

There is nothing valiant, or solid to bee hop'd for from such, as are
alwayes kempt'd, and perfum'd; and every day smell of the Taylor:
The exceedingly curious, that are wholly in mending such an imperfe-
ction in the face, in taking away the Morphew in the neck; or bleach-
ing their hands at Mid-night, gumming, and bridling their beards, or
making the waste small, binding it with hoopes, while the mind runs at
waste: Too much pickednesse is not manly. Nor from those that will
jeast at their owne outward imperfections, but hide their ulcers
within, their Pride, Lust, Envie, ill nature, with all the art and
authority
theycan. These persons are in danger; For whilst they thinke to
justifie
their ignorance by impudence; and their persons by clothes, and out-
ward ornaments, they use but a Commission to deceive themselves.
Where, *if wee will looke with our understanding, and not our senses*,
wee may behold vertue, and beauty, (though cover'd with rags) in
their brightnesse; and vice, and <<deformity>> so much the fowler, in
ha-
ving all the splendor of riches to guild them, or the false light of
honour and power to helpe them. *Yet this is that, wherewith the world
is TAKEN*, and runs mad to gaze on: Clothes and Titles, the Birdlime
of
Fools.

**************************************

Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did TAKE Eliza, and our James!

**************************************

Jonson's dedication to his Epigrammes.

TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE
OF HONOR AND VERTUE,
tHE MOST NOBLE
WILLIAM, EARLE OF PEMBROKE,
L. CHAMBERLAYNE, &C.

MY LORD. While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your
title: It was that made it, and not I. Under which name, I here offer
to your LO: the ripest of my studies, my Epigrammes; which though they
carry danger in the sound, doe not therefore seeke your shelter: For,
when I made them, I had nothing in my conscience, to expressing of
which I did need a cypher. But, if I be falne into those times,
wherein, for the likenesse of vice and facts, every one thinks
anothers ill deeds objected to him, and that in their ignorant and
guilty mouthes, the common voyce is (for their securitie) Beware the
Poet, confessing, therein, so much love to their diseases, as they
would rather make a partie for them, then be either rid, or told of
them: I must expect, at you Lo: hand, the protection of truth, and
libertie, while you are constant to your owne goodnesse. In thankes
whereof, I returne you the honor of leading forth so many good and
great names (as my verses mention on the better part) to their
remembrance with posteritie. Amongst whom, if I have praysed,
unfortunately , any one, that doth not deserve; or, if all answere
not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them: I hope it will
be forgiven me, that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like
the persons. But I foresee a neerer fate to my book, then this: that
the vices therein will be own'd before the vertues (though, there, I
have avoyded all particulars, as I have done names) and that some will
be readie to discredit me, as they will have the impudence to belye
themselves. For, if I meant them not, it is so. Nor, can I hope
otherwise. For, why should they remit any thing of their riot, their
pride, their self-love, and other inherent graces, to consider truth
or vertue; but , with the trade of the world, lend their long eares
against men they love not: and hold their deare Mountebanke, or
Jester, in farre better condition, then all the studie, or studiers of
humanitie? For such, I would rather know them by their visards, still,
then they should publish their faces, at their perill, in my Theater,
where CATO, if he liv'd, might enter without scandall.

Your Lo: most faithfull honorer,
Ben. Jonson

**************************************

<<if wee will looke with our understanding, and not our senses>>
Jonson

Nicole

***************************************

Bringing Deformed Forth
Engendering Meaning in Much Ado About Nothing
DAVID LUCKING

In the comic subplot revolving around the activities of Dogberry and
the watchmen under his command much fun is made of the manner in which
the chance use of a word can give rise to what seems to be endlessly
proliferating confusion. When Borachio is overheard to say 'seest thou
not what a deformed thief this fashion is?' (III.iii.121), a watchman
thinks he detects a reference to 'Deformed; a has been a vile thief
this seven year; a goes up and down like a gentleman' (III.iii.
122-24). Subsequently, when Borachio and Conrade are placed under
arrest, the watchman is convinced that they have apprehended this
oddly-named miscreant together with the others: 'Deformed is one of
them; I know him, a wears a lock' (III.iii.163-4). Taking his cue from
his colleague's remarks, another watchman promises the prisoners that
'You'll be made bring Deformed forth, I warrant you' (III.iii.166-7).
At this point, what began as an individual misapprehension has
acquired public status, assumed an identity, become almost an
autonomous entity in its own right. By the time we arrive at
Dogberry's report to Leonato the non-existent figure of Deformed has
been fleshed out even further:
And also the watch heard them talk of one Deformed; they say he wears
a key in his ear and a lock hanging by it, and borrows money in God's
name, the which he hath used so long, and never paid, that now men
grow hard-hearted and will lend nothing for God's sake. (V.i.301-6)
>From the purely literal point of view, of course, Deformed is no more
than a figment, an accidental by-product of language, of no importance
whatsover. But there is another sense in which he is the presiding
genius of the play, no less present for being absent, the spirit of
the infinite amount of ado that can be made about nothing. From this
point of view he is as ubiquitous as error itself, for in a world in
which nothing can become anything through the inexhaustible capacity
of human beings for misery and mischief, there is almost nothing that
will not be brought forth deformed.

[Dennis]

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.

******************************

Sidney : Letter to Queen Elizabeth Touching Her Marriage With
Monsieur
<<Your inward force (for as for your treasures, indeed the sinews
of your crown, your Majesty doth best and only know) consisteth in
your subjects: your subjects generally unexpert in warlike defiance,
and , as they are, divided into two mighty factions, and factions
bound upon the never ending knot of religion......The one of them is
whom your happy government hath granted the free exercise of eternal
truth.>>

<<"The other faction, most rightly indeed to be called a faction, is
of the Papists: men whose spirits are full of anguish; some being
forced to oaths they account damnable; some having their ambition
stopped because they are not in the way of advancement; some in prison
and disgrace; some whose best friends are banished practisers....>>

*******************************

The Stuffe of Reason

<<where the humanist "sovereignty of reason" is reduced to the status
of "a king of shreds and patches>>

In Our Circumstance and Course of Thought": The Problematics of
Conceptual Scheme in "Hamlet"
Eric P. Levy
Modern Language Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 91-108.

Hamlet begins with an urgent interrogation ("Who's there"?) that
inaugurates a profoundly dramatic questioning of the meaning and
purpose of human life - or, "To be, or not to be" (3.1.56), "What is a
man..." (4.4.33). The interrogation is so fundamental that its
resolution entails not merely answers, but reformulation of the
conceptual contest in which the questions themselves are posed. In
other words, at bottom the questioning concerns that need not merely
for answers, but also for deeper understanding of the implications of
perplexity - deeper understanding, that is, of the role of thought in
creating or exacerbating the uncertainty to be resolved. For, through
its manner of operation and depending on relevant circumstances,
thought can either create uncertainty, by erroneous application of
ideas to the matter addressed, or it can refuse to accept uncertainty,
in matters which exceed it intellectual capability (1.5.56; 4.4.38).
the Ghost exemplifies both alternatives. As a "questionable
shape" (1.4.43) whose identity must be determined by its witnesses,
the Ghost foregrounds the risk that thought might impose erroneous
concepts on that which it seeks to understand. But as a posthumous
resident of "the undiscover'd country, from whose bourn/ No traveler
returns" (3.1.79-80), the Ghost foregrounds an uncertainty about life
after death which thought alone can never dispel.
On the level now under consideration, what happens in Hamlet concerns
not merely a sequence of events, nor even intersecting sequences of
events, but the "method" (2.2.205) of thought in comprehending reality
or, more precisely, in conceiving the import and proper conduct of
what Rosencrantz terms "the single and peculiar life" (3.3.11). As we
shall see, Hamlet dramatizes an intellectual crisis where the humanist
"sovereignty of reason" is reduced to the status of "a king of shreds
and patches" (1.4.73, 3.4.103). For the domain of its authority is
shrunk to the boundaries of the "nutshell" of the mind (2.2.254). That
is, far from enjoying universal validity, the determinations of reason
are now no more than a conceptual scheme or mental construct imposed
by the mind on reality, in order to evaluate and understand it: "for
there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it
so" (2.2.249-50). Of course, since Harry Levin introduced the notion,
critics have often observed that the play counters the humanist
accolade of reason. Walter King, Eve Sanders, William Morse, Kenneth
Rothwell, Lars Engle, and Ronald Shafer, among many others, have
convincingly extended this argument. But our present concern is not
with the critique of Renaissance humanist doctrine per se, but rather
with an investigation of how the play problematizes the need of
thought to resort to conceptual schemes in order to interpret
experience. Analysis of conceptual schemes in Hamlet will enable the
excavation of an "undiscover'd" stratum of meaning in the play.
Before proceeding to direct examination of the play, it is necessary
to clarify the notion and role of conceptual scheme. There is no
reasoning without thought, and thought itself is incoherent without
concepts. For without concepts thought lacks certainty about its own
content, and becomes merely a diffuse, unstructured, and emotionally
toned awareness. Ophelia's madness vividly exemplifies the affect-
laden <<formlessness> of unconceptual thought: "Indeed would make one
think there might be thought, / though nothing sure, yet much
unhappily" Concepts are the means by which intellectual order is made
out of experiential chaos. Indeed, as Ernst Cassirer notes, "it is
always the basic function of the concept to gather together (...) what
is dispersed in intuition (...or conscious awareness)" (Philosophy
3.303)). Each concept relates particulars to a universal in terms of
which they are apprehended as "inwardly belonging together," in virtue
of characteristics common to all the discrepant particulars and
through which their individual differences achieve agreement
(Philosophy 3.298) Thus concepts structure thought by determining how
the multitudinous diversity which it concerns or encounters is
combined and configured.
By thus structuring thought, concepts structure the way the mind
thinks about reality, and makes rational sense of it. But the
understanding thus achieved might nevertheless be erroneous. For the
concepts employed to achieve it might misinterpret or distort that to
which they are applied. Polonius, for example, misinterprets Hamlet's
madness by construing it under the concept of "neglected
love" (3.1.180). In fact, Hamlet often dramatizes the problem of
correct application of concepts to things apprehended in the world, as
when Ophelia seeks explanation of the dumb show ("What means this my
lord?"), or when, as noted earlier, perceivers attempt to determine
the identity of the Ghost: "What are thou that usurp'st this time of
night" (1.1.49). Moreover, conceptual scheme can cause error not only
by misapplication of ideas, but also by exclusion of them, as Hamlet
indicates to Horatio, regarding the existence of ghosts: "There are
more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ Than are dreamt of in your
philosophy" (1.5.174).
(snip)
The present approach seeks not to apply a conceptually scheme to
the play, but instead to investigate how the play problematizes
received or conventional conceptual schemes, and dramatizes the
movement toward a new one. Indeed, on first addressing the Ghost,
Hamlet emphasizes the disorientation associated with expansion of
conceptual scheme: "So horridly to shake our disposition/ With
thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls" (1.4.55-56). As suggested by
these very words, the revenge imperative transmitted by the Ghost does
launch Hamlet on a process of expansion, "beyond the reaches" of the
conceptual schemes prevailing in the world of the play. In fact, the
threat which Hamlet poses to Claudius, after receiving the revenge
imperative, is also expressed in terms that vividly imply conceptual
development: "Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow/ Out of his
brows" (3.3.6-7). At the deepest level, the conceptual growth which
Claudius attributes to Hamlet concerns, not any specific plot against
Claudius personally, but enlargement of the conceptual scheme in terms
of which Hamlet thinks about the world and his role as a man in it.
To advance our enquiry, we must first clarify nomenclature. In its
widest formulation, the term, "conceptual scheme," denotes the
"constructive conditions" (to import Cassirer's phrase) under which
thought operates, in its intellection of the given or that which is
apprehended (Cassirer, Philosophy). In other words, as P.F. Strawson
indicates, "the way we think of the world" is determined by the
"actual structure of our thought about the world". For that thought-
structure constitutes the nexus of concepts "in terms of which we
think about particular things" and the world they inhabit or occupy.
In alternate formulation, to invoke Alfred North Whitehead, that
thought-structure comprises the "system of ideas in terms of which
every element of our experience can be interpreted". Hence, as Edwyn
Bevan notes, apprehension or cognition of an object is necessarily
conditioned by the "mass of ideas already in (the subject's) mind."
Without conceptual scheme, thought cannot organize or orient its own
content. Thus, in its application, conceptual scheme can be construed
as wither context of perspective. That is, it functions as wither a
frame which confers meaning no its content or as a viewpoint which
determines the intelligible form of that which is seen."

******************************

CASSIUS.
Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion;
By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried
Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.
Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?

BRUTUS.
No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself
But by reflection, by some other thing. (60)

CASSIUS.
'Tis just:
And it is very much lamented, Brutus,
That you have no such mirrors as will turn
Your hidden worthiness into your eye,
That you might see your shadow.

******************************

Do not Deform the play: arresting the comic/lyric spirit

Act III, Sc.ii

[Enter Hamlet and cartain Players.]

Ham.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of
your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my
lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand,
thus, but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest,
and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must
acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a
robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to
tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings,
who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would have such a
fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod:
pray you avoid it.

I Player.
I warrant your honour.

Ham.
Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be
your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the
action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the
purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now,
was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;
to show virtue her own image, scorn her own image, and
the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the
unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve;
the censure of the which one must in your allowance,
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players
that I have seen play,--and heard others praise, and that highly,--
not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of
Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's
journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they
imitated humanity so abominably.

I Player.
I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us, sir.

Ham.
O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them
that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren
spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous
and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go
make you ready.

******************************

A Satyre Against Reason and Mankind - Rochester

Based to some extent on Boileau's eighth satire,
this famous poem is also indebted to Hobbes, Montaigne,
and the tradition of le libertinage generally.

Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)
A spirit free to choose, for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear, 5
Or anything but that vain animal
Who is so proud of being rational.

The senses are to gross, and he'll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five,
And before certain instinct, will prefer 10
Reason, which fifty times for one does err;
Reason, an <<ignis fatuus>> in the mind,
Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,
Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes
Through error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes; 15
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimseys, heaped in his own brain;
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down
Into doubt's boundless sea, where, like to drown,
Books bear him up a while, and make him try 20
To swim with bladders of philosophy;
In hopes still to o'ertake th' escaping light,
The vapor dances in his dazzling sight
Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.
Then old age and experience, hand in hand, 25
Lead him to death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.
Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was proud, so witty, and so wise.
(snip)

http://www.ealasaid.com/fan/rochester/satire.html

**********************************

The king's personal physician, writing in mid-sixteenth century
Denmark, observed:

' Most Danes, particularly the nobility, are inordinately given to
drink and could spend both day and night emptying goblets. They
especially find it impossible to hold a wedding, banquet or party
without the one's urging the other to keep drinking, while doing the
same himself , until they ( if you will excuse my saying ) spew out
the ale again, and in the presence of the servers and guests take care
of another matter under the table without the slightest shame. And
when one of them, half or wholly unconscious, must be brought to bed,
the fact causes immense jubilation and is the occasion for roars of
laughter.

In Pierce Penilesse Thomas Nashe writes:
The Danes are bursten-bellied sots, that are to bee confuted with
nothing but Tankards or quart pots, and Ovid might as well haue read
his verses to the Gretes that vnderstood him not, as a man talk reason
to them that haue no eares but their mouths, nor sense but of that
which they swallowe downe their throates . [24, pg. 68]

In Act I,iv, 17, Shakespeare makes a direct reference to these ethnic
prejudices:
Hamlet: This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations
They clept us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition....

Nashe:
The most grosse and sencelesse proud dolts (in a different kind from
all these) are the Danes: who stand so much vpon their vnweldy
burliboand souldiery, that they account of no man that hath not a
battle Axe at his girdle to hough dogs with, or weares not a cockes
feather in a red thrumd hat like a caualier: briefly, he is the best
foole bragart vnder heauen. For besides, nature hath left him a
flaberkin face, like one of the foure winds, and cheekes that sag like
a womans dugs ouer his chin-bone, his apparel is so puft vp with
bladders of Taffetie, and his back like biefe stuft with Parsley, so
drawne out with Ribands and deuises, and blisterd with light sarcenet
bastings, that you would thinke him nothing but a swarme of
Butterflies, if you saw him a farre off. Thus walkes he vp and downe
in his Maiestie, taking a yard of ground at euery step, and stamps on
the earth so terrible as if he ment to knocke vppe a spirite, when
(foule drunken bezzle) if an Englishman set his little finger to him,
he falles like a hogs-trough that is set on one end. Therfore I am the
more vehement against them, because they are an arrogant Asse-headed
people, that naturally hate learning, and all them that loue it: yea,
and for they would vtterly roote it out from among them, they haue
withdrawen al rewards from the Professors therof. Not Barbary it selfe
is halfe so barbarous as they are. First, whereas the hope of honour
maketh a Souldior in England: Byshopricks, Deanries, Prebendaries, and
other priuate dignities, animate our Diuines to such excellence. The
ciuil Lawyers haue their degrees & consistories of honour by
themselues, equal in place with Knights and Esquiers: the common
Lawyers, (suppose in the beginning they are but husband-mens sone)
come in time to be chiefe Fathers of the land, and manie of them not
the meanest of the Priuie Counsell.

*******************************
Andrew Hadfield:

"It is also clear that Belleforest's version has a pronounced
republican theme, something that Shakespeare exploits and expands. Any
tale of the assassination of a malicious king would remind readers of
the story of the banishment of Tarquin, because any such change was
likely to lead to a transformation of the form, as well as the
occupant, of the ruling office. The story appears time and again
throughout Shakespeare's career, more frequently than in that of any
other Renaissance English dramatist. In Hamlet, the link between the
founding of the Roman republic and the story of the murderous
infighting at the Danish royal court is made explicit. Hamlet feigns
madness to buy himself time before he acts, a tactic employed by
Lucius Junius Brutus, and one that makes his name especially
appropriate ('Brutus' means 'fool' or 'madman'). Brutus is the nephew
of the king - lIke Hamlet- and he decides to adopt a role when he
learns of the actions of the king, Tarquin Superbus. (snip)

Hadfield, con't -

Shakespeare uses the impending change of dynasty (Elizabeth's
successor James - NLD) to speculate more widely and philosophically on
the nature of government and the forms of political action that can be
countenanced. It is noticeable that key sections of the language of
the play's most famous speech, Hamlet's soliloquy on suicide (3.1.)
could easily have come from the arguments of such monarchomach
treatises advocating the right of citizens to assassinate their
ungodly rulers as Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
(snip)
Indeed, many of the significant political questions that Hamlet poses
derive from those asked in a text such as Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos .
(Hadfield, Andrew, _Shakespeare and Republicanism_ p.199)

******************************

Two Cultures? Court and Country under Charles I
P.W. Thomas

"And never Rebel was to Arts a friend', John Dryden pronounced with
great finality in Absalom and Achitohel in 1679. Faced with the threat
of Monmouth's recklessly yielding to the temptation of Shaftesbury's
eloquent, Satanic prompting, he could not refrain from recalling the
great upheaval of English society in the middle of the seventeenth
century. The Great REbellion, for Tories of his generation, was a
reminder of the madness that insurrection and innovation, challenging
established values, might yet at any moment conjure up. they cherished
the memory of a divided, deluded society as a cautionary tale apt for
their own crises.

Frances K Barasch
Shakespeare and the Puppet Sphere

The first period of early modern puppetry in England appears on
record in 1573, as can best be determined from Privy Council minutes
of July 14 which summarize "a letter to the Lord Mayour of London to
permitte libertie to certain Italian plaiers to make shewe of an
instrument of strainge motiones within the Cities." Five days later
another letter ordered the Mayor "to graunt libertie to certain
Italiens to make shewe of an instrument there, marveling that he did
it not at their first request" Probably the Mayor was reluctant to
comply in the first instance, as Speight observes, but "the Italians
evidently had friends at Court" (p.55), where they must have performed
before receiving the permit to play in public..( )..According to P.C.
Ferrigni's 1884 history of Italian puppetry, the letter of July 14
granted the Italians permission "to settle in the city and to carry on
their strange motions as in the past and from time immemorial."
(snip)
Whether used by live actors or puppets, commedia texts,
improvisations, and their English adaptations were fertile ground for
the transmission of new Italian comedy to both literate and illiterate
London audience. Here were ready-made playing versions of learned
Italian texts with romantic lovers and comic interludes which pitted
roguish servants against indifferent young masters and rapacious old
merchants. Pastoral fantasies, tragedies and pure farce were also part
of the profane repertoire borrowed from the Italian eruditi and
transmitted through the symbolic forms of puppet figures, each
sculpted and costumed to represent a social type. The new culture was
rapidly absorbed by the English theatrical community of the 1570's and
1580's. We learn from Stephen Gosson's complaint that there were first
"sente over many wanton Italian bookes," and "because all cannot
reade," the English soon made "Comedies cut by the same paterne."
Gosson lashed out at the new learning adopted by those who "bear a
sharper smack of Italian devices in their heads, than of English
religion in their hearts," but the new Italianate fashion drew large
crowds and could "sweep whole Cities" to the theater. While gosson saw
these plays as sinful conveyances of "love, cosenedge, flatteried,
bawderie, slye conveyhance of whoredom," the audience might
consciously observe in the fixed types of puppet theater the
behavioral models of its own class in wooden images of "cookes,
queans, knaves, baudes, parasites, courtezannes, lecherous olde men,
amorous young men." In the Italianate plots the audience also might
note the same hypocrisies and contradictions among characters situated
both below and within the ruling system.

(snip)

In the decades following Bartholomew Fair, Jonson continued to
introduce puppets to his plays, while English actors took puppet
adaptations of Shakespeare abroad. Nino Amico reports the discovery by
Ingrid Hiller of a thirteen-page plot outline of a Hamlet puppet show,
entitled Der Berstreftebrudermord, oder Prinz Hamlet aus Danemark,
performed in 1626 in Dresden, followed by presentations in Hamburg,
Danzig, and Frankfurt. There also survives a marionette of "Amleto" in
the Collection of Zanella Pasqualini, dated 1660, (Bologna Exhibit,
1999): this youthful figure with sober expression wears a shoulder-
length blonde wig, white ruffles ,black tunic, knee pants, and white
hose.

OPHELIA
You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
HAMLET
I could interpret between you and your love, if I
could see the puppets dallying.

********************************

Nicole

********************************

King James and the Reformation of Manners:

Griffiths, Huw. "Review of Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics and
the Translation of Empire." Early Modern Literary Studies 4.3
(January, 1999): 11.1-20

· The chapter on Antony is, despite sharing some of these same
pitfalls, also particularly interesting. In this play, (author) James
sees the theatre as beginning to invent its own 'cultural space,' to
imagine its options as it responds to the new theatrical contexts,
that have emerged following the accession of James. "The play and its
cultural moment suggest options for the theatre, positions for it to
occupy: to be co-opted, to collude playfully, to rival or to
oppose" (148). The theatricality of the characters, Antony and
Cleopatra, a feature drawn attention to by critics many times, is seen
by James as a model for the Shakespearean theatre as it co-opts
authorities for its own uses. In this model, Alexandria becomes the
playful arena of the playhouse, and the endpoint of Rome, venue for
Octavius' projected triumph, mirrors the masque culture of the
Jacobean court.

· Within the playfulness of Alexandrian 'theatre' Antony wrests
control of his own inheritance within the translation of empire.
Whilst ventriloquising his own emasculated status, Aeneas trapped and
effeminised by a sensuous Dido, he attempts to rewrite and defy that
story. For James, this conscious rewriting is part of the
Shakespearean stage's iconoclasm in relation to its authorities. "The
Antony I favor is iconoclastic and anachronistic: partly aware of his
presence on the Jacobean stage and distinctly aware that literary
history will deform and fragment him" (131).

http://www.wga.hu/art/c/cossa/schifano/2april/2april_0.jpg

******************************

If care or skill could conquer vain desire,

Or REASON's reins my strong affection stay, (Edward de Vere)

******************************

Reason/Desire, Rider/Horse

King: It falls right.
You have been talk'd of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
Wherein they say you shine, Your sun of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one; and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.
Laertes: What part is that, my lord?
King: A very riband in the cap of youth-
Yet needfull too; for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears
Thin settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness. Two months since
Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
I have seen myself, and serv'd against, the French,
And they can well on horseback; but this gallant
Had witchcraft in't. He grew unto his seat,
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse
As had he been <<incorps'd and demi-natur'd >>
With the brave beast. So far he topp'd my thought
That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
Come short of what he did.
Laertes: A Norman was't?
King: A Norman.
Laertes: Upon my life, Lamound.
King: The very same.
Laertes: I know him well. He is the broach indeed
And gem of all the nation.
King: He made confession of you;
And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defence,
And for your rapier most especially,
That he cried out 'twould be a sight indeed
If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation
He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you oppos'd them. Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o'er to play with you.
Now, out of this-

*****************************

Venus Adonis and the Horses
Robert P. Miller

In selecting a horse as the main actor of the passage Shakespeare was
able to expand a very common traditional image: that of the horse, the
bridle and the rider. At least as old as the black horse of Plato's
Phaedrus, this image provides a useful analogy with the faculties of
man. The horse, in later convention, symbolizes the lower appetites of
the flesh, while the rein and rider stand for the powers of reason
which are theoretically supposed to control and direct such lusts.

[Dennis]

MIRANDA.

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!

PROSPERO.
'Tis new to thee.

******************************

Wonder and Ceremonies of Waking in Shakespeare's Late Plays
Abstract:
Peter G. Platt has suggested, in Reason Diminished, that in
Shakespeare's late plays wonder might "diminish" reason, offering the
reader an alternative, intuitive route to knowledge. In response, this
paper examines the epistemology of ceremony in each of the late plays,
arguing that Shakespeare seeks to provoke intuitive understanding in
his audience, through wonder, by staging marvels within ceremonies.
The ritual is meant to awaken the audience's minds and spirits and
incite spiritual and ontological inquiry that can lead to the
translation of their spiritual and ethical identities. Shakespeare
uses the ceremonies within these plays, which are conducted with
constructed, within-the-play audiences, to demonstrate or model the
means by which ceremonial wonder might revitalize and awaken the
understanding. Finally, by their emphasis on ceremonial knowledge,
these late plays mark a shift in Shakespeare's modus operandi, from
deliberative rhetoric and disputatio in utramque partem to a more
epideictic rhetoric.

*******************************

Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder
Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture (No. 9)
T. G. Bishop

Playwrights throughout history have used the emotion of wonder to
explore the relation between feeling and knowing in the theatre. In
Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder, T. G. Bishop argues that wonder
provides a turbulent space, rich at once in emotion and self-
consciousness, where the nature and value of knowing is brought into
question. Bishop compares the treatment of wonder in classical
philosophy and drama, and goes on to examine English cycle-plays,
charting wonder's ambivalent relation to dogma and sacrament in the
medieval religious theatre. Through extended readings of three of
Shakespeare's plays - The Comedy of Errors, Pericles and The Winter's
Tale - Bishop argues that Shakespeare uses wonder as a key component
of his dialectic between affirmation and critique. Wonder is shown as
vital to the characteristic self-consciousness of Shakespeare's plays
as acts of narrative enquiry and renovation.

******************************

In _Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder_, T.G. Bishop attempts to
analyze the place of wonder in the history of Western aesthetics,
particularly with regard to drama, and to apply the insights based on
earlier theories and drama to three Shakespearean plays. Although
Bishop discusses a broad range of historical documents, he does not
take a historicist approach - in fact, his introduction offers some
cogent criticism of recent historicist work. Bishop defines wonder as
an experience that occurs and often mediates between such differing,
perhaps even opposing, entities as word and flesh, pleasure and pain,
philosophy and poetry, loss and recovery, speech and silence, actors
and audience, historical time and performance time. He begins by
establishing a history of wonder as a liminal phenomenon with his
discussion of Plato and Aristotle, both of whom, he asserts, see
wonder as affecting both intellect and emotion, although wonder's
appeal to the latter makes both writer's uneasy. Bishop also provides
brief discussions of Longinus as describing wonder's dangerous
rhetorical power and the Renaissance's concern for wonder as a feature
of theology, philosophy, politics and exploration, as well as art and
aesthetic theory.
(snip)
(However) The three plays discussed in detail - The Comedy of
Errors, *PERICLES* and the Winter's Tale - are not forced into a
theoretical Procrustean bed, as Bishop is admirably attentive to the
particulars of each drama. Nevertheless, common elements of the
"theater of wonder" emerge within the context of each play, in
including the uses (good and bad) of narrative, sexuality, doubling or
twinning, violence and ultimate reunion, particularly reunion with the
mother. IN all of these plays, wonder serves as a way of focusing on
what Bishop calls "INCARNATION," Shakespeare's attempt to apprehend
the world by fusing material reality and language. Bishop describes
Shakespeare's practice as "the dramaturgy of a deep psychology of
metaphor" that self-consciously uses wonder to stimulate the
audience's self-consciousness. The wonder with which the plays end is
magnified by the skepticism which the playwright generates by
emphasizing improbabilities and then helps his audience transcend.
(Linda Anderson, Virginia Polytechnic)

************************************

Two months since
Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
I have seen myself, and serv'd against, the French,
And they can well on horseback; but this gallant
Had witchcraft in't. He grew unto his seat,

And to such WONDROUS doing brought his horse

As had he been <<incorps'd and demi-natur'd >>
With the brave beast. So far he topp'd my thought
That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
Come short of what he did.

******************************

[Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA]

MIRANDA If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow'd and
The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO Be collected:
No more amazement: tell your piteous heart
There's no harm done.

MIRANDA O, woe the day!

PROSPERO No harm.
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.

MIRANDA More to know
Did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO 'Tis time
I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magic garment from me. So:

[Lays down his mantle]

Lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.

******************************

What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, [ 5 ]
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our WONDER and ASTONISHMENT
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart [ 10 ]
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie, [ 15 ]
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.

[Dennis]

Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England, by Daniel Javitch.
Princeton

Javitch traces the rise and decline, 1580-1600, of the idea of
courtliness in manners and in poetry; he explains how, when the
*methods of the courtier became suspect, the mantle of arbiter of
manners and morals passed from courtier to poet*. His most original
discussion is a comparison of the conduct taught in Castiglione's
_Courtier_ to the poetic stances and devices recommended in
Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_. Although Javitch is too ready to
extend to the verse of all periods the kinds of indirection, irony,
and dissimulation typical of his courtly poets, his study opens an
important new route to the understanding of Renaissance rhetoric and
poetics.

******************************

1590's -- "attack on the authority of court manners".

During the 1590s, "the myth of the ideal courtier loses its force.
Now, instead of the courtier providing a model of deportment to the
poet, it is the other way around - the poet becomes the maker of
manners, the arbiter of true courtesy."

Oxford, associated with Castiglione, becomes subject to accusations of
deformity and corruption. Styled as one of the chief 'deformities' and
sources of corruption in the court. (Oxford as 'prototype' of the
'Thing' in Donne's Satyre IV.)

1593 - 'Poet' William Shakespeare enters public arena.- Courtly
challenge to the authority of the 'poets'?

"Kneel hinds to trash, me let bright Phoebus swell
With cups full flowing from the muses' well."

*******************************

Review of _Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England_. Daniel
Javitch

A connection - something more, at least, than a simple analogy -
has often been seen between the conduct of poetry and the "poetry of
conduct" in Elizabethan England. As long ago as 1936, C.S. Lewis
writes, of Colin Clout's vision of the Graces in Book VI of The Faerie
Queene, "The meaning of the graces...is perfectly clear: they are
'inspiration'...the mysterious source of beauty. But not, Spenser holds,
of literary beauty alone. There is a similar inspiration that comes
and goes in all human activities...and especially in our social
activities...To Spenser, in fact, as to Shelley or Plato, there is no
essential difference between poetic beauty and the beauty of
characters, institutions, and behaviour." What Daniel Javitch has done
in this attractive short book is to draw out systematically some of
the implications of this position, emphasizing the closeness of poetic
ideals to those of "civilitie."

....The discussion begins with a comparison between Castiglione's
_Courtier_ and Cicero's _De Oratore_. The differences between the
oratorical ideal of Cicero and the courtly ideal of Castiglione
"suggest why *Renaissance courts were unreceptive to the political
motives of humanist eloquence*" and "begin to indicate why these
aristocratic establishments found poetry so compatible." They found
poetry "compatible" because, as Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_
shows, the requirements of poetry are the requirements of courtly
behaviour. The courtier, it is argued, does not need literary
prescriptions about decorum, "decencie," "seemelynesse," as Puttenham
calls it, because this is part of his instinct and good breeding.
Sidney also comments in his Apology that he has "found in divers
smally learned courtiers a more sound style than in some professors of
learning." Not only decorum but dissimulation is part of the necessary
equipment of poet and courtier alike.<< The Arte describes at length
various devices of irony , itself a branch of allegoria, devices by
which "words beare contrary countenance to th'intent." Nor are the
affinities between courtly and poetic behaviour limited to small
devices, "dark" figures; they extend, Mr. Javitch suggest, to "larger
strategies of deception" - the emblem, the pastoral mode, full-scale
allegory.>> And there is "a larger characteristic of poetry that would
be preeminently attractive to courtly society: its playfulness" (the
author bows in the direction of _HOMO LUDENS_). The courtier for his
part works at his personality, he fashions it artistically, he tries
to sustain what Mr. Javitch in one of his rare lapses into jargon
calls a "dramatistic identity."
Alas, this happy, mutually supportive rivalry in true "civilitie" was
not to last. In the last decade of the century, the argument
continues, there was "a positive deterioration in official
morality" (L.Stone), "growing corruption" (Neale): or, to use the
Queen's own words, "The wit of the fox is everywhere on foot, so as
hardly a faithful or virtuous man may be found." Consequently, the
myth of the ideal courtier loses its force. Now, instead of the
courtier providing a model of deportment to the poet, it is the other
way around - the poet becomes the maker of manners, the arbiter of
true courtesy.
(snip)
The comparative lack of context, as distinct from text, is a matter
of deliberate policy - (" it is not my intent to consider actual
behaviour at Elizabeth's court in any detail.") It would be wrong to
blame Mr. Javitch for not doing what he never intended to do. On the
other hand he does himself make so much of the court's general falling
away from high standards of conduct in the 1590s, and calls such
weighty historians to witness it with reported fact, that one is left
pondering the relation between ideal and actual behaviour. Can conduct
ever have been so perfect that poets could feed their inspiration on
it, or fallen off so completely that poets had to supply the ideal out
of their own imaginations? This part of the argument (i.e. the
reversal of poet/courtier at the end of the Queen's reign) is perhaps
the least convincing thing in the book.
(John Stevens, Magdalene College, Cambridge)

******************************

Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England Daniel Javitch
Review by L.G. Black

While others have attributed the greatness of Elizabethan
literature primarily to the influence of Humanism, especially in its
educational emphasis, Mr. Javitch points out that this does not
explain the prominence of poetry (which was not much admired by
Humanist thinkers). Indeed the success of poetry implies, in some
sense, a failure of the Humanist ideal, or its partial replacement by
a rival courtly ideal more sympathetic to poetry and even sharing some
of the same principles as poetry. This alliance between poetic and
courtly ideals lies at the heart of Mr. Javitch's book.
(snip)
Mr. Javitch compares the ideal of the courtier, prescribed by
Castiglione, with that of the Humanist orator, described primarily by
Cicero. He *shows how Humanist preoccupations could become social and
political ideals which would not be generally acceptable in
Renaissance courts*, where the ideal courtier needed to cultivate such
virtues as moderation and flexibility.
The alliance between poetry and courtliness becomes clearer in Mr
Javitch's comparison of Castiglione's _Courtier_ with Puttenham's
_Arte of English Poesie_, and it is useful to have these two works
brought together. Mr. Javitch reminds us of the central importance of
Puttenham's work, differentiating it from other rhetoric books not so
concerned with poetry, and showing how it is often supported by
Sidney's _Defence of Poesie_.
As Mr. Javitch elaborates his concept of courtliness, however, one
has some misgivings about his presentation of the ideal. The courtier,
in his view, practices in a sheltered and privileged milieu ("the
drawing room...within the palace'), he is anxious to please rather than
defend a firmly held point of view, he must ingratiate himself and
disregard the majority. In discussing Castiglione's principle of
sprezzatura (which he properly sees as the basis of much courtly art
and behaviour) Mr. Javitch emphasizes concealment, subterfuge, even
deceit. What he fails to see in it is what seems to me central - its
relationship with humility and selflessness; <<the musician is
encouraged to draw attention not to his own performance, but to the
excellence of the music.>> Puttenham's comments about courtly figures
such as Meiosis and Epitropsis (quoted by Mr. Javitch as condoning
deception) propose a tact which is more concerned with others than
oneself. Mr. Javitch never seems to feel that a courtly ideal might be
encouraging its followers to place others before themselves - to risk,
in the end, their lives.
Mr. Javitch's abstract treatment means that he can write about the
failure of courtly ideals in the vaguest of terms: "Some were bound to
violate the delicate sanction of dissimulation in their inept attempts
to be fashionable', etc. It is only when advancing a view of
increasing court corruption in the 1590's that Mr. Javitch cites some
examples. Attacks on courtly failings grow in the 1590s, and some
poets (such as Spenser) seem to take on themselves the role of
propounding ideals of proper behaviour through their works. Mr.
Javitch would like to see this as an indication that the poet has
taken over the ideal which the courtier has failed, but surely most
Renaissance idealists would have accepted that ideas are seldom fully
realized in practice at any period (for the world is a fallen place),
and also that the poet has always had a right to teach as well as to
delight. Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (used by Mr. Javitch to
indicate Spenser's disenchantment with the courtly ideal) treats rival
ideals with some subtlety: pastoral/contemplative, courtly/active and
ideals of love. Colin may be aware of courtly lapses but he sees also
the difficulty of right behaviour, of achieving the proper balance,
and seems to conclude that he cannot himself hope to enter the public
arena with any greater chance of success - a view further investigated
in Book VI of the Faerie Queene. (snip)

******************************
_Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England_. Daniel Javitch
Review by Hallet Smith

The "courtliness" in the title is an ideal. The author says he is
not interested in commenting on the actual behaviour of Elizabethan
courtiers; instead he intends to expound Castiglione, Puttenham, and
Spenser, particularly Book VI of the Faerie Queene and Colin Clouts
Come Home Againe. His thesis is that the court fostered poetry and was
a more significant influence on it than rhetoric or humanism. Up to a
point, that is. "Ties between poetry and court conduct served to
enhance what poets did only so long as that conduct won the admiration
of Englishmen; as long as Elizabethans continued to believe in the
myth of the perfect courtier, that is, poets could rely on the
authority of court manners to justify their art.' But by the nineties,
Javitch thinks, poets became disillusioned and regarded the court as
'the corruption rather than the cultivation of beautiful manners'.
Obviously there is some slippage here, and what started out to be
prescribed, ideal conduct has somehow got contaminated with actuality.

G.K Hunter's book on John Lyly studied the experience of a gifted
humanist turned courtier. It was an acute case of frustration, but out
of this kind of frustration, Hunter maintained, came the great
literature of the sixteen (sic) eighties and nineties. Javitch, on the
other hand, tries to see positive value in the manners of the court, a
value appropriate to the creation of poetry. That value, it seems, is
playfulness - "the ability of the participants to fashion a human
ideal while playing a parlor game'.

It is from Puttenham, mainly, that Javitch draws his conclusions
about the inter-relationship of courtly etiquette and poetry: 'the
code of conduct cultivated at court was as stylized and artificial as
the poetry it fostered. Poetry was bound to flourish, I contend,
because the court subscribed to such a code." In his fourth chapter
Javitch argues that *the distinctive elements shared by courtliness
and poetry - ornament, dissimulation, and playfulness - were scorned
in English society outside the court*. One can of course find plenty
of denunciations from moralists and Puritans, but some of these traits
were apparently derided by the courtiers themselves. It is Sir Walter
Ralegh, prominent in any list of courtier poets, who directs the soul
to

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood,

And it is Prince Hamlet, possessed of the courtier's, soldier's,
scholar's eye, tongue, sword, who holds up to ridicule the ornament,
dissimulation and playfulness of the young courtier Osric.

Javitch depends upon the social historians for the evidence that a
critical decline in courtly probit took place in the fifteen nineties.
He also notes that Stefano Guazzo's *Civil Conversation*, translated
as early as 1581, began to displace the Courtier as a courtesy book.
Its emphasis is anti-courtly. The satirists of the last decade of the
century give the name Castilio to a courtly fop, though that is the
name Sir Thomas HOby gave to the Italian nobleman he was translating.

In his last chapter Javitch wonders how Spenser *would dare to
lecture his social superiors on courtesy in Book VI of the Faerie
Queene.* He finds his answer in an interpretation of the Mt. Acidale
episode in Canto X. According to that, Spenser was subtly indicating
that salutary deception, 'the art of giving truth beautiful guises,'
was no longer to be sought in the behavior of the courtier but in the
practice of the poet. 'In the end, then,' Javitch concludes, 'the
decline of the myth of the perfect courtier helped the English
Renaissance poet as the rise of the myth had helped him. For in the
course of its decline it prompted the revival of another, more lasting
myth that has always been of service to poets: that society can be
saved by their art'.

******************************

Ambition, Rank, and Poetry in 1590s England
John Huntington. Ambition, Rank, and Poetry in 1590s England.
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. xii + 194 pp.
index. $35. ISBN: 0-252-02628-4.

Huntington produces innovative and convincing interpretations of
George Chapman's early work, informed by a socioeconomic theory of
culture derived from Pierre Bourdieu. In readings that seek to dispute
the common view of Chapman as a "stolid moralist" and to "tease out
the social agenda" (15) in such works as The Shadow of Night (1594),
Ovids Banquet of Sence (1595), and Hero and Leander (1598), Huntington
situates the poet at the leading edge of an ill-fated but prescient
social and aesthetic movement among certain non-aristocratic poets of
the 1590s, whose "sensitivity to their own social position begins to
generate distinctions that will later evolve into the taste culture
which we now inhabit" (vii). Along with, to varying degrees, Marlowe,
Spenser, Jonson, Lodge, and Roydon, "Chapman makes explicit an agenda
for increasing the value of poetry as cultural capital in a world in
which epideictic compliment, aristocratic self-display, and moral
education have been seen as the justifications for literature" (vii).
By focusing on the formation of anti-aristocratic attitudes and anti-
courtly aesthetics, Huntington provides valuable supplements to the
work of Daniel Javitch (Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England
[1978]) and Frank Whigham (Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes
of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory [1984]).
In chapter 1, Huntington examines "how the privilege of rank touches
the field of culture" (19) in three texts by "writers who felt
excluded by or critical of the system" (20). Two of these works--
Phillip Stubbes' Anatomy of Abuses (1583) and the anonymous Willobie,
His Avisa (1594)--appear merely moralistic but became controversial in
their time because of their veiled but angry attacks on "the
privileges and presumptions of nobility" (19). The third text, Barnabe
Barnes' Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593), generated immediate
contempt "among courtiers and courtly aspirers" for its pretentious
and inept imitation of courtly Ovidian eroticism (38). The chapter
introduces the dilemma that drives "poor poets" toward resentment, the
topic of chapter 2: awareness of class breeds resentment, which
stimulates protest and ambition and inspires poets to create a
language and a stance to serve their needs. Using examples from
Chapman and others, Huntington recreates a cultural moment, "perhaps
unheard of before" in England, in which poetry asserts its independent
power over privilege (65). Chapman argues, in effect, that poetry of
true learning and virtue can "transform cultural capital into social
dignity" (64), which, in turn, can "improve [the] material conditions"
of poor poets (56).
In the next three chapters, Huntington explores three qualities of
Chapman's poetic and philosophic project that, together, celebrate an
elite but classless aristocracy of learned poets. In the course of
exploring "the idea of true nobility, the championing of obscurity,
and the invocation of poetic furor" (11), Huntington explicates source
texts, provides insightful readings of Chapman's poems, and interprets
brief selections from Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Jonson, often
as partially negative examples that hedge some of Chapman's bets. In a
highlight of chapter 3, Huntington extracts from William Jones'
Nennio, or a treatise of Nobility (1595; translated from the 1542
Italian text) an idea of "true nobility" that embodies learning and
virtue and becomes, for Chapman and others, a "coded signal" for class-
consciousness (77). Chapter 4 investigates obscurity as a poetic
principle that "makes the poetry exclusive," offering meaning to
initiates while rendering it deniable or incomprehensible to those ou
tside the elite group (92). In chapter 5, during a wideranging
discussion of furor poeticus, Huntington presents Chapman attempting
to create an "aristocracy of the inspired" in which poet and audience
share "true nobility" (112). Chapter 6 brings Chapman's whole program
to bear on the wonderful Ovids Banquet of the Sences; according to
Huntington, Chapman embraces Ovid as a social ally and seeks "to
reinstate the classical dignities of poetry" (129), including the
class-conscious dictum that "the opposite of erotic rapture is not
lust but avarice" (140). Huntington concludes his book with a
"Postscript" that enlists Aemilia Lanyer as a potentially prophetic
fellow traveler during a time in which James I "close [d] down" the
"utopian promise" that Huntington thinks Chapman and others
"envision[ed]" (147).

******************************

1593 William Shakespeare -

Kneel hinds to trash, me let bright Phoebus swell
With cups full flowing from the muses' well.

******************************

<<O, could he have but drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His Person,>>

Hobbes: etymology of the word 'person':

The word Person is latine: instead whereof the Greeks have prosopon,
which signifies the Face, as Persona in latine signifies the disguise,
or outward appearance of a man, counterfeited on the stage; and
sometimes more particularly that part of it, which disguiseth the
face, as a Mask or Visard: And from the Stage, hath been translated to
any Representer of speech and action, as well in Tribunalls, as
Theaters. So that a Person, is the same that an Actor is, both on the
Stage and in common Conversation; and ot Personate, is to Act or
Represent himselfe, or an other; and he that acteth another, is said
to beare his Person, or act in his name...and is called in diverse
occasions, diversly: as a Representer, or Representative, a
Lieutenant, a Vicar, and Attorney, a Deputy, a Procurator, and Actor,
and the like. (taken from "Hamlet or Hecuba: Carl Schmitt's Decision"
Victoria Kahn)

******************************

<<"For , let your soule be assur'd of this (in any ranke, or
profession what-ever) the more generall, or major part of opinion

*goes with the FACE, and (simply) respects nothing else*. Therefore,

if that can be made exactly, curiously, exquisitely, thorowly, it is
inough" (2.3.53-57)>> Amorphus, Cynthia's Revels

******************************

In thankes
whereof, I returne you the honor of leading forth so many good and
great names (as my verses mention on the better part) to their
remembrance with posteritie. Amongst whom, if I have praysed,
unfortunately , any one, that doth not deserve; or, if all answere
not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them: I hope it will
be forgiven me, that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like

the PERSONS. But I foresee a neerer fate to my book, then this: that

the vices therein will be own'd before the vertues (though, there, I
have avoyded all particulars, as I have done names) and that some will
be readie to discredit me, as they will have the impudence to belye
themselves. For, if I meant them not, it is so. Nor, can I hope
otherwise. For, why should they remit any thing of their riot, their
pride, their self-love, and other inherent graces, to consider truth
or vertue; but , with the trade of the world, lend their long eares
against men they love not: and hold their deare Mountebanke, or
Jester, in farre better condition, then all the studie, or studiers of

humanitie? For such, I would rather know them by their VISARDS, still,
then they should publish their FACES, at their perill, in my Theater,

where CATO, if he liv'd, might enter without scandall.

Your Lo: most faithfull honorer,

Ben. Jonson (Dedication to William Herbert - Epigrammes)

******************************

******************************