Dennis
2020-12-18 21:10:19 UTC
At the front of the First Folio Jonson branded/stamped Shakespeare as an author who wrote the wrong way - (would he had blotted a thousand). The Droeshout is ambisinister, disproportionate and without symmetry. It is the visual equivalent of Shakespeare's extravagant figureurality and wild invention - from the perspective of Jonson's own neoclassical sensibilities.
It is a cautionary figure - a warning - a monster.
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University of Cambridge
The etymology of monstrosity suggests the complex roles that monsters play within society. 'Monster' probably derives from the Latin, monstrare, meaning 'to demonstrate', and monere, 'to warn'. Monsters, in essence, are demonstrative. They reveal, portend, show and make evident, often uncomfortably so. Though the modern gothic monster and the medieval chimaera may seem unrelated, both have acted as important social tools.
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Monsterification of Shakes-speare:
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to SHOW
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.(Jonson)
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Thou art a monument without a tomb - Jonson, First Folio mock encomium
monument (English)
Origin & history
From Old French monument, from Latin monumentum ("memorial"), from monēre ("to remind")
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Look not on his Picture, but his Booke:
Ben Jonson:
Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.
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“Man's speech is just like his life - Seneca
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A body without proportion cannot be goodly -
Jonson, Discoveries
In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost bound, how far with fitness, and a necessary proportion, he may produce, and determine it…*For, as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no more can the action, either the comedy, or tragedy, without his fit bounds*.
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Ben Jonson
De Shakspeare NOSTRAT. - Augustus in Hat. - I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their IGNORANCE who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most FAULTED;
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Boundedness is the condition of all proportion and fitness; nothing can be good without its proper limits. It is a principle that goes beyond poetics, informing for example these comedies' preoccupation with the idea of humor. Asper, the authorial mouthpiece of Every Man Out, defines humor as "whatsoe'er hath flexure and humidity, / As wanting power to contain itself," and explains that the medical humors (choler, melancholy, and so on) are so called "By reason that they flow continually / In some one part, and are not continent" ("Grex," ll. 96-101). The follies we are about to see, then, are types of incontinence, ugly and absurd because of their lack of any limiting principle. A comedy that wandered whimsically from country to country would be complicit with the humors it displayed. Rather, it should emulate the wise men who RULE their lives by KNOWLEDGE, "and can becalm / All sea of humour with the marble trident / Of their strong spirits" (The Poetaster, 4.6.74-76). -- Peter Womack
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Jonson
Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow’d with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d: Sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power; would the RULE of it had beene so too
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Jonson, To Shakespeare
75But stay, I see thee in the HEMISPHERE
76Advanc'd, and made a CONSTELLATION there!
77Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
78 Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage
79Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,
80And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
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Hemisphere/Constellation:
R Goodwin, ‘Vindiciae Jonsoniae’
Even so, these Gallants, when they chance to heare
A new Witt peeping in ***THEIR*** HEMISPHERE,
Which they can apprehend, their clouded Braines,
Will Straight admire, and Magnifie his Straines,
Farre above thine; though all that he hath done,
Is but a Taper, to thy brighter Sun;
Wound them with scorne! Who greives at such Fooles tongues,
Doth not revenge, but gratifie their wrongs.
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Compromise Classicism: Language and Rhythm in Ben Jonson's Poetry
George A.E. Parfitt
Perhaps the first thing one notices on looking closely at the language of Jonson's poems is the comparative sparseness of imagery and that many images are submerged: often the nearest we get to an image is the figurative use of a verb, so that King James is said to have "purg'd" his kingdom and the soul of Jonson's daughter is spoken of as "sever'd" from her body. Where 'full-scale' imagery does occur it is frequently simile (which preserves a distinction between referee and referent) and usually brief.
Soul of the Age - imitating the 'noise of Opinion'.
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In Poetaster, Virgil and his privileged homogeneous circle are precisely placed 'above', at the highest level of a Neoplatonic scale of being which underpins the play, Virgil, in particular, being identified at once as an embodiment of 'poor vertue' (v.ii.33), and, more specifically, as a 'rectified spirit' 'refin'd/From all the tartarous moodes of common men' (v.i.100 and 102-3: author's emphasis), refined, that is, from the material, impure - and Tartarean - moods motivating the 'common men' (and all the women) of the play, who are placed at the lowest level of the play's scale of being, the level closest to matter. The place of Virgil and his circle is the same as that occupied, in a well-known passage in Timber, by an elite of 'good men' identified as absolute 'Spectators' over 'the Play of Fortune' 'on the Stage of the world'. Indeed, Virgil is likened to a 'right heavenly body' (v.i.105, just as the good men are described as 'the Stars, the Planets of the Ages wherein they live' - images which underscore not only the absolute, transcendent place of these spectator figures, but their normative and regulatory function, their function, that is, as over-seers.
(Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil)
In Every Man in his Humour (performed 1598), this hierarchical binary opposition is articulated, even as it is worked for in the place of production, by a quotation from the Sibyl's description in Aeneid 6 of the few permitted to escape from the underworld into the upper air - 'pauci, quos aequus amavit/Juppiter' (lines 129-30, quoted in Every Man In, III,i, 21-2.) In Cynthia's Revels (performed 1600), the quotation recurs, translated, in a context which makes explicit what the spectator/reader of Every Man In must divine, that the description is to be understood in terms of the canonical Neoplatonic mediations of the Virgilian underworld as a description of the few permitted, on account of the 'merit' of their 'true nobility, called virtue', to escape from the Dis or Tartarus of contingent, material existence into an absolute, fixed and transcendent place 'above'. As we shall see, those who understand are granted, by virtue of their understanding, a means of 'grace', a means, that is, to escape from the multiple, particular heterogeneities of every man in his humour, to join the privileged homogeneous circle which the Virgilian voice in Every Man In both addresses and describes. (Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil, 116-117.)
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TO THE READER.
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle SHAKSPEARE cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to out-do the life :
O could he but have drawn his wit
As well in BRASS, as he has hit
His face ; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in BRASS :
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.
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Metaphors of MIND: An Eighteenth-Century Dictionary
By Brad Pasanek
BRASS and BRONZE
Bronze and brass are two “BASE” ALLOYS put to figurative use in the eighteenth century. (Dr.)Johnson notes that “brass” does not strictly differentiate brass from bronze but is used “in popular language for any kind of metal in which copper has a part” (“BRASS” and “BRONZE”). Brass is a metal of impudence so that “BRAZEN” is defined by Johnson, in this case without comment on the term’s figurative or literal status, as “impudent.” Brass has a bright luster but not the heft of a precious metal: it is SHOW without value, glister without the gold.
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John Chamberlain, who himself regularly reported masques and masquing, illustrates how they became news, explaining to Dudley Carleton:
For lacke of better newes here is likewise a ballet or song of Ben lohnsons in the play or shew at the lord marquis at Burley, and repeated again at Windsor.... There were other songs and deuises of BASER ALAY, but because this had the vogue and general applause at court, I was willing to send it.
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John Oldham on Jonson
V.
Sober, and grave was still the Garb thy Muse put on,
No tawdry careless slattern Dress,
Nor starch'd, and formal with Affectedness,
Nor the cast Mode, and Fashion of the Court, and Town;
But neat, agreeable, and janty 'twas,
Well-fitted, it sate close in every place,
And all became with an uncommon Air, and Grace:
Rich, costly and substantial was the stuff,
Not barely smooth, nor yet too coarsly rough:
No refuse, ill-patch'd Shreds o'th Schools,
The motly wear of read, and learned Fools,
No French Commodity which now so much does take,
And our own better Manufacture spoil,
Nor was it ought of forein Soil;
But Staple all, and all of English Growth, and Make:
What Flow'rs soe're of Art it had, were found
No tinsel'd slight Embroideries,
But all appear'd either the native Ground,
Or twisted, wrought, and interwoven with the Piece.
VI.
Plain Humor, shewn with her whole various Face,
Not mask'd with any antick Dress,
Nor screw'd in forc'd, ridiculous Grimace
(The gaping Rabbles DULL delight,
And more the Actor's than the Poet's Wit)
(snip)
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William Cartwright:
...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was FREE
As his, but without his SCURILITY;
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Oldham on Jonson, con't.
Such did she enter on thy Stage,
And such was represented to the wond'ring Age:
Well wast thou skill'd, and read in human kind,
In every wild fantastick Passion of his mind,
Didst into all his hidden Inclinations dive,
What each from Nature does receive,
Or Age, or Sex, or Quality, or Country give;
What Custom too, that mighty Sorceress,
Whose pow'rful Witchcraft does transform
Enchanted Man to several monstrous Images,
Makes this an odd, and freakish Monky turn,
And that a grave and solemn Ass appear,
And all a thousand beastly shapes of Folly wear:
Whate're Caprice or Whimsie leads awry
Perverted, and seduc'd Mortality,
Or does incline, and byass it
From what's Discreet, and Wise, and Right, and Good, and Fit;
All in thy faithful Glass were so express'd,
As if they were Reflections of thy Breast,
As if they had been stamp'd on thy own mind,
And thou the universal vast Idea of Mankind.
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King Arthur, Scotland, Utopia, and the Italianate Englishman: What Does Race Have to Do with It? By: GUTIERREZ, NANCY A., Shakespeare Studies (0582-9399), 05829399, 1998, Vol. 26
While the discovery of the New World most manifestly inculcated an awareness of race in the English of the later-sixteenth century, its effect occurred within a world conditioned by the tenets of humanism in its variety of guises: as an educational regimen; as a return to origins, both biblical and classical; as a revaluing of public life and works. The elitism and conservatism of humanism in general meant that the few, rather than the many, were privileged, and this in turn resulted in a hierarchy closed to those who were not male, not educated, and not in the higher levels of society. Further, the rise of humanism was concurrent with a period of political and social flux in which feudal relationships were being redefined in terms of a centralized court and the nation state. Such a world resulted in a discursive tendency to compartmentalize, to establish concrete identities, to build walls, to shut out. (Of course, the fact that this was also a period in which fluidity of movement characterized class structure serves only to reinforce this discursive evidence.) As the English began to be aware of themselves as a single entity with its own national identity, the culture simultaneously began to define anything "not-English" as dangerous and other. In other words, this world established itself as civilized, chosen--as white.
A cursory examination of seminal texts of this period reveal that the English national identity was being created in opposition to a series of threats to its culture, and these threats were presented both directly through polemic and indirectly through not-so hidden fictions. As the English national identity was crystallized, the psychic boundaries of the people were also being circumscribed--against cultures, ideologies, even other national borders.
"The New Learning" of humanism, by its very name, puts into opposition forms of education and intellectual endeavor prevalent in England during the fifteenth century, especially prior to the accession of Henry VII, the first monarch to patronize fully those men who had been trained in the new philosophy. In counterpoint to the system of chivalry advanced in Malory's stories of King Arthur as elegant and courtly, the early humanists characterized the middle ages as barbarous and Gothic. As Roger Ascham said in his introduction to Toxophilus:
"In our fathers tyme nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherin a man by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but onely to manslaughter and baudrye." (xiv)
After the Reformation, English humanists literally demonized the influence of Roman Catholicism on humanist learning.
"And yet ten Morte Arthures do not the tenth part so much harme, as one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in England. They open, not fond and common wayes to vice, but such subtle, cunnyng, new, and diuerse shiftes, to cary yong willes to vanitie, and yong wittes to mischief, to teach old bawdes new schole poyntes, as the simple head of an English man is not hable to inuent, nor neuer was hard of in England before, yea when Papistrie ouerfiowed all." (231)
The Englishmen who are tempted to give in "to the inchantments of Circes, brought out of Italy" have this said of them:
"And so, beyng Mules and Horses before they went [to Italy], returned verie Swyne and Asses home agayne: yet euerie where verie Foxes with suttle and busie heades; and where they may, verie wolues, with cruell malicious hartes. A meruelous monster, which, for filthines of liuyng, for dulnes to learning him selfe, for wilinesse in dealing with others, for malice in hurting without cause, should carie at once in one bodie, the belie of a Swyne, the head of an Asse, the brayne of a Foxe, the wombe of a wolfe." (228)
In sum, this beast is not an Englishman: Englese Italianato, e vn diabolo incarnato, that is, "The Italianate Englishman is the devil incarnate."
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Speculum Tuscanismi - Satire on Earl of Oxford
Gabriel Harvey:
See Venus, archegoddess, howe trimly she masterith owld Mars.
See litle CUPIDE, howe he bewitcheth lernid Apollo.
Bravery in apparell, and maiesty in hawty behaviour,
Hath conquerd manhood, and gotten a victory in Inglande.
Ferse Bellona, she lyes enclosd at Westminster in leade.
Dowtines is dulnes ; currage mistermid is outrage.
Manlines is madnes ; beshrowe Lady Curtisy therefore.
Most valorous enforced to be vassals to Lady Pleasure.
And Lady Nicity rules like a soveran emperes of all.
TYMES, MANNERS, FRENCH, ITALISH ENGLISHE.
Where be y e mindes and men that woont to terrify strangers ?
Where that constant zeale to thy cuntry glory, to vertu ?
Where labor and prowes very founders of quiet and peace,
Champions of warr, trompetours of fame, treasurers of welth ?
Where owld Inglande ? Where owld Inglish fortitude and
might ?
Oh, we ar owte of the way, that Theseus, Hercules, Arthur,
And many a worthy British knight were woo'nte to triumphe in.
What should I speake of Talbotts, Brandons, Grayes, with a thousande
Such and such ? Let Edwards go ; letts blott y e remem-braunce
Of puissant Henryes ; or letts exemplify there actes.
Since Galateo came in and Tuscanismo gan usurpe
Vanity above all ; villanye next her ; Statelynes empresse,
NO MAN but minion : stowte, lowte, playne, swayne, quoth a
LORDINGE.
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Cynthia's Revels/Amorphus/Italianate Traveller/Oxford
Cynthia’s Revels, Jonson
Act V Sc. 1
Mercury.
We believe it.
But for our sake, and to inflict just pains
On their prodigious follies, aid us now:
No man is presently made bad with ill.
And good men, like the sea, should still maintain
Their noble taste, in midst of all fresh humours
That flow about them, to corrupt their streams,
Bearing no season, much less salt of goodness.
It is our purpose, Crites, to correct,
And punish, with our laughter, this night's sport,
Which our court-dors so heartily intend:
And by that WORTHY SCORN, to make them know
How far beneath the dignity of man
Their serious and most practised actions are.
Cri.
Ay, but though Mercury can warrant out
His undertakings, and make all things good,
Out of the powers of his divinity,
Th' offence will be return'd with weight on me,
That am a creature so despised and poor;
When the whole court shall take itself abused
By our ironical confederacy.
Mer.
You are deceived. The BETTER RACE in court,
That have the true nobility call'd virtue,
Will apprehend it, as a grateful right
Done to their separate merit; and approve
The fit rebuke of so ridiculous heads,
Who, with their apish customs and forced garbs,
Would bring the name of courtier in contempt,
Did it not live unblemish'd in some few,
Whom equal Jove hath loved, and Phoebus form'd
OF BETTER METAL, and IN BETTER MOULD.
Cri.
Well, since my leader-on is Mercury,
I shall not fear to follow. If I fall,
My proper virtue shall be my relief,
That follow'd such a cause, and such a chief.
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Author: Holland, Abraham
Title: Naumachia, or Hollands sea-fight Date: 1622
A Caveat to his Muse
Well Minion you'le be gadding forth then? Goe,
Goe, hast unto thy speedy overthrow:
And since thou wilt not take my warning: Hence,
Learne thy owne ruine by experience.
Alas poore Maid (if so I her may call
Who itches to be prostitute to all
Adulterate censures) were it not for thee
Better, to live in sweet securitie
In my small cell, than flying rashly out,
Be whoop't, and hiss't, and gaz'd at all about
Like a day-owle: Faith Misris you'le be put
One of these daies to serve some driveling slut,
To wrap her sope in, or a least be droven
To keepe a Pie from scorching in the Oven:
Or else expos'd a laughing stock to sots,
To cloke Tobacco, or stop Mustard pots,
Thou wilt be grac't if so thou canst but win
To infold Frankincense or Mackrills in,
You deem it a matter of high worth
To have a fame among 'em: New come forth:
And thinke your chiefe felicity is marr'd
If you be not perch't up in Paules Church-yard
Where men a farre may know you in a trice,
By some new-fangled, brasse-cut Frontispice.
Such book's indeed as now-dayes can passé
Had need to have their faces made of brasse.
Is it not then sufficient for you
To stay at home among the residue
Of better sisters: where my dearest Will, (my note - Will Browne?)
And other friends would praise and love thee still:
Him and my other harts-halfes I account
Intire assemblies, and thinke they surmount
A GLOBE OF ADDLE GALLANTS: I averre
One judging Plato worth a Theater.
(snip)
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Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor
On Art.
Can anyone be an artist without art? Or have you ever seen a bird flying without wings, or a horse running without feet? Or if you have seen such things, which no one else has ever seen, come, tell me please, do you hope to become a goldsmith, or a painter, or a sculptor, or a musician, or an architect, or a weaver, or any sort of artist at all without a teacher? But how much easier are all these things, than that you develop into a supreme and perfect orator without the art of public speaking. There is need of a teacher, and indeed even an excellent teacher, who might point out the springs with his finger, as it were, and carefully pass on to you the art of speaking colorfully, brilliantly, copiously. But what sort of art shall we choose? Not an art entangled in countless difficulties, or packed with meaningless arguments; not one sullied by useless precepts, or disfigured by strange and foreign ones; not an art polluted by any filth, or fashioned to accord with our own WILL and judgment; not a single art joined and sewn together from many, like a quilt from many rags and skins (way too many rhetoricians have given this sort of art to us, if indeed one may call art that which conforms to no artistic principles).
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Cynthias Revels, Amorphus/Oxford:
He that is with him is Amorphus
a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds
of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. He walks
most commonly with a Clove or Pick-tooth in his
Mouth, he is the very mint of Complement, all his Be-
haviours are printed, his Face is another Volume of
Essayes; and his Beard an Aristrachus. He speaks all
Cream skim'd, and more affected than a dozen of wait-
ing Women. He is his own Promoter in every place.
The Wife of the Ordinary gives him his Diet to main-
tain her Table in discourse, which (indeed) is a meer
Tyranny over the other Guests, for he will usurp all
the talk: *Ten Constables are not so tedious*.
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Shakespeare, Much Ado (Sc3
WATCHMAN
(aside) I know that Deformed. He has been a vile thief this
seven year. He goes up and down like a gentleman. I
remember his name.
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Rich, Barnabe, 1540?-1617. Title: Faultes faults, and nothing else but faultes
Date: 1606
There is nothing more formall in these dayes then Deformitie it selfe. If I should then begin to write, according to the time, I should onely write of new fashions, and of new follies that are now altogether in fashion, whereof there are such a|boundant store, that I thinke they haue got the Philosophers stone to multiplie, there is such a dayly multiplicitie both of follies, and fa|shions.
In diebus illis, Poets and Painters, were priui|edged to faine whatsoeuer themselues listed: but now, both Poet and Painter, if he be not the Tailors Ape, I will not giue him a single halfepenie for his worke: for he that should either write or paint, if it be not fitte in the new fashion, he may go scrape for commendation, nay they will mocke at him, and hisse at his conceit.
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Author: Rich, Barnabe, 1540?-1617.
Title: The honestie of this age· Proouing by good circumstance that the world was neuer honest till now. By Barnabee Rych Gentleman, seruant to the Kings most excellent Maiestie.
Date: 1614
...In former ages, he that was rich in knowledge was called a wise man, but now there is no man wise, but he that hath wit to gather wealth, and it is a hard matter in this Age, for a man to rayse himselfe by honest principles, yet we doe all seeke to climbe, but not by Iacobs Ladder, & we are still de|sirous to mount, but not by the Chariot of Elyas.
Vertue hath but a few that doe fauour her, but they bee fewer by a great many in number that are desirous to fol|low her.
But is not this an honest Age, when ougly vice doth beare the name of seemly vertue, when Drunkennes is called Good fellowship, Murther reputed for Manhoode, Lechery, is called Honest loue, Impudency, Good audacitie, Pride they say is Decen|cy, and wretched Misery, they call Good Husbandry, Hypocri|sie, they call Sinceritie, and Flattery, doth beare the name of Eloquence, Truth, and Veritie, and that which our predeces|sors
would call flat Knauery, passeth now by the name of wit and policy.
(snip)
And are not our gentlemen in as dangerous a plight now
(I meane these APES of FANCY) that doe looke so like Attyre|makers maydes, that for the dainty decking vp of themselues, might sit in any Seamsters shop in all the Exchange. Me thinkes a looking glasse should be a dangerous thing for one of them to view himselfe in, for falling in loue with his owne lookes, *as NARCISSUS did with his owne shadow*.
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Jonson - On Poet-Ape
Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,
Whose works are e’en the frippery of wit,
From brokage is become so bold a thief,
As we, the robb’d, leave rage, and pity it.
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown
To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,
He takes up all, makes each man’s wit his own:
And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
The sluggish gaping auditor devours;
He marks not whose ‘twas first: and after-times
May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?
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Soul of the Age!
Jonson, Discoveries
Censura de poetis. - Nothing in our AGE, I have observed, is more PREPOSTEROUS than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for MIRACLES, who yet are so VILE that if a man should go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have done but one BLOT. Their good is so entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the other’s death with it. A sponge dipped in ink will do all:-
“ - Comitetur Punica librum
Spongia. - ” {44a}
Et paulò post,
“Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ
. . . una litura potest.”
Cestius - Cicero - Heath - Taylor - Spenser. - Yet their vices have not hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved for nothing else. And this false opinion grows strong against the best men, if once it take root with the IGNORANT.
Cestius, in his time, was preferred to Cicero, so far as the ignorant durst. They learned him without book, and had him often in their mouths; but a man cannot imagine that thing so foolish or rude but will find and enjoy an admirer; at least a reader or spectator. The puppets are seen now in despite of the players; Heath' s epigrams and the Sculler' s poems have their applause. There are never wanting that dare prefer the worst preachers, the worst pleaders, the worst poets; not that the better have left to write or speak better, but that they that hear them judge worse; Non illi pejus dicunt, sed hi corruptius judicant. Nay, if it were put to the question of the water- rhymer' s works, against Spenser' s, *I doubt not but they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the VULGAR have to lose their judgments and like that which is naught.*
Poetry, in this latter age, hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then tendered their visits, she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions (both the law and the gospel) beyond all they could have hoped or done for themselves without her favour. Wherein she doth emulate the judicious but preposterous bounty of the time' s grandees, who accumulate all they can upon the parasite or fresh-man in their friendship; but think an old client or honest servant bound by his place to write and starve.
Indeed, the multitude commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers, who if they come in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence are received for the braver fellows; when many times their own rudeness is a cause of their disgrace, and a slight touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. But in these things the unskilful are naturally deceived, and judging wholly by the bulk, think rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed; nor think this only to be true in the sordid multitude, but the neater sort of our gallants; for all are the multitude, only they differ in clothes, not in judgment or understanding.
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Soul of the Age!
Soul of an Ignorant Age:
TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE OF HONOR, AND VERTVE, THE MOST NOBLE WILLIAM EARLE OF PENBROOKE, &c.
MY LORD,
IN so thicke, and darke an *IGNORANCE, as now almost couers the AGE*, I craue leaue to stand neare your Light: and, by that, to be read. Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour, and Thanks; when it shall know, that you dare, in these JIG-GIVEN times, to countenance a Legitimate Poëme. I must call it so, against all noise of Opinion: from whose crude, and airy Reports, I appeale, to that great and singular Faculty of Iudgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from Error. It is the first (of this RACE) that euer I dedicated to any Person, and had I not thought it the best, it should haue beene taught a lesse ambition. Now, it approacheth your Censure chearefully, and with the same assurance, that Innocency would appeare before a Magistrate.
Your Lo. most faithfull Honorer. Ben. Ionson.
*****************************
Ruling/Restraining Shakespeare's Quill:
From 'To the Deceased Author of these Poems' (William Cartwright)
by Jasper Mayne
... For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:
A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)
******************************THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 17. 1934
...With regard to Martin Droeshout, whose portrait of Shakespeare, appears on the title page of the First Folio , in 1923; as Durning-Lawrence savs, "Droeshout is scarcely likely to have ever seen Shakespeare, as he was only 15 years of age when Shakespeare died." DULL DRAWING. The face in Droeshout's picture certainly expresses no trace of that almost divine intelligence which one would expect to find there, and the figure, out of all drawing, is clothed in an Impossible coat, the sleeves of which are composed, to all appearance, of the back and front of the same left arm. This fact was remarked upon In "The Tailor and Cutter." in its issue of March 9, 1911; and in the April following, under the heading "Problem for the Trade," the "Gentleman's. Tailor" magazine printed the two halves of the coat arranged tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, and said : "It is passing strange that something like three centuries should have, been allowed to elapse before the tailor's handiwork should have been appealed to In this' particular manner." Facing this portrait in ' the First Folio, are these words, attributed to Ben Jonson, which after stating that "the Figure" was Intended for that of Shakespeare, and that the "graver" had a struggle to out-do the life, conclude with: O, could he but have drawn, hit wit As well lo brasse. as he hath hit His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that was ever writ In Brasse. But, since he cannot. Reader looks Not on his Picture, but his Booke. Ben Jonson could never have seriously considered that the dull, wooden, face in the engraving was anything like that of the author of the plays, and may have sarcastically bidden the beholder "looke not on his picture, but his book." BEN JONSON. Facing the title page of the 1640 folio of Ben Jonson's works, is a portrait of that poet by Robert Vaughan. a contemporary engraver, . which, like that of Martin Droeshout, Is a very rough, uncouth, piece of work, though it certainly expresses a certain amount of individuality and intelligence, yet not very much; and the figure Is very ungainly, though Jonson became very stout as he grew older, as we know by one of his Epigrams, and would be difficult to draw. Durning-Lawrence savs that In a very rare and curious little volume published anonymously in 1645, under the title of "The Great Assises holden In Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours," Ben Jonson is described as the "Keeper of the Trophonian Denne," and in an Imaginary Westminster Abbey his medallion bust appeared clothed in a left-handed coat, like the figure by Martin Droeshout in the First Folio, and Stowe is quoted as having written regarding this: O' rare Ben Jonson what, a turncoat grown! Thou ne'er want such. till clad In stone; Then let not this disturb thy sprite. Another age shall set thy buttons right.
*********************************************
Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius
...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;
*Excluding those from life in after-time,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence*:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..
************
Jonson - Keeper of the TROPHONIAN DENNE:
George Wither: The Great Assises holden In Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours
Hee them assur'd they must expect t' inherit
Parnassus honours not by time, but merit.
But when Apollo with his radiant looke
The Pris'ners had into amazement strooke,
Hee caus'd those guiltie soules to bee convey'd
To the TROPHONIAN DENNE, there to bee laid
In Irons cold, untill they should bee brought
To tryall for those mischiefs they had wrought.
****************
Billy Budd - Melville
Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor. Through the rose-tan of his complexion, no pallor could have shown. It would have taken days of sequestration from the winds and the sun to have brought about the effacement of that. But the skeleton in the cheekbone at the point of its angle was just beginning delicately to be defined under the warm-tinted skin. In fervid hearts self-contained, some brief experiences devour our human tissue as secret fire in a ship's hold consumes cotton in the bale.
But now lying between the two guns, as nipped in the vice of fate, Billy's agony, mainly proceeding from a generous young heart's virgin experience of the diabolical incarnate and effective in some men--the tension of that agony was over now. It survived not the something healing in the closeted interview with Captain Vere. Without movement, he lay as in a trance. That adolescent expression previously noted as his, taking on something akin to the look of a slumbering child in the cradle when the warm hearth-glow of the still chamber at night plays on the dimples that at whiles mysteriously form in the cheek, silently coming and going there. For now and then in the gyved one's trance a serene happy light born of some wandering reminiscence or dream would diffuse itself over his face, and then wane away only anew to return.
It is a cautionary figure - a warning - a monster.
**************************
.
University of Cambridge
The etymology of monstrosity suggests the complex roles that monsters play within society. 'Monster' probably derives from the Latin, monstrare, meaning 'to demonstrate', and monere, 'to warn'. Monsters, in essence, are demonstrative. They reveal, portend, show and make evident, often uncomfortably so. Though the modern gothic monster and the medieval chimaera may seem unrelated, both have acted as important social tools.
***************************
Monsterification of Shakes-speare:
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to SHOW
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.(Jonson)
***************************
Thou art a monument without a tomb - Jonson, First Folio mock encomium
monument (English)
Origin & history
From Old French monument, from Latin monumentum ("memorial"), from monēre ("to remind")
***************************
Look not on his Picture, but his Booke:
Ben Jonson:
Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.
.
“Man's speech is just like his life - Seneca
****************************
A body without proportion cannot be goodly -
Jonson, Discoveries
In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost bound, how far with fitness, and a necessary proportion, he may produce, and determine it…*For, as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no more can the action, either the comedy, or tragedy, without his fit bounds*.
*************************
.
Ben Jonson
De Shakspeare NOSTRAT. - Augustus in Hat. - I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their IGNORANCE who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most FAULTED;
*****************************
Boundedness is the condition of all proportion and fitness; nothing can be good without its proper limits. It is a principle that goes beyond poetics, informing for example these comedies' preoccupation with the idea of humor. Asper, the authorial mouthpiece of Every Man Out, defines humor as "whatsoe'er hath flexure and humidity, / As wanting power to contain itself," and explains that the medical humors (choler, melancholy, and so on) are so called "By reason that they flow continually / In some one part, and are not continent" ("Grex," ll. 96-101). The follies we are about to see, then, are types of incontinence, ugly and absurd because of their lack of any limiting principle. A comedy that wandered whimsically from country to country would be complicit with the humors it displayed. Rather, it should emulate the wise men who RULE their lives by KNOWLEDGE, "and can becalm / All sea of humour with the marble trident / Of their strong spirits" (The Poetaster, 4.6.74-76). -- Peter Womack
***************************
Jonson
Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow’d with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d: Sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power; would the RULE of it had beene so too
***************************
Jonson, To Shakespeare
75But stay, I see thee in the HEMISPHERE
76Advanc'd, and made a CONSTELLATION there!
77Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
78 Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage
79Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,
80And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
************************
Hemisphere/Constellation:
R Goodwin, ‘Vindiciae Jonsoniae’
Even so, these Gallants, when they chance to heare
A new Witt peeping in ***THEIR*** HEMISPHERE,
Which they can apprehend, their clouded Braines,
Will Straight admire, and Magnifie his Straines,
Farre above thine; though all that he hath done,
Is but a Taper, to thy brighter Sun;
Wound them with scorne! Who greives at such Fooles tongues,
Doth not revenge, but gratifie their wrongs.
*****************************
Compromise Classicism: Language and Rhythm in Ben Jonson's Poetry
George A.E. Parfitt
Perhaps the first thing one notices on looking closely at the language of Jonson's poems is the comparative sparseness of imagery and that many images are submerged: often the nearest we get to an image is the figurative use of a verb, so that King James is said to have "purg'd" his kingdom and the soul of Jonson's daughter is spoken of as "sever'd" from her body. Where 'full-scale' imagery does occur it is frequently simile (which preserves a distinction between referee and referent) and usually brief.
Soul of the Age - imitating the 'noise of Opinion'.
**********************************
In Poetaster, Virgil and his privileged homogeneous circle are precisely placed 'above', at the highest level of a Neoplatonic scale of being which underpins the play, Virgil, in particular, being identified at once as an embodiment of 'poor vertue' (v.ii.33), and, more specifically, as a 'rectified spirit' 'refin'd/From all the tartarous moodes of common men' (v.i.100 and 102-3: author's emphasis), refined, that is, from the material, impure - and Tartarean - moods motivating the 'common men' (and all the women) of the play, who are placed at the lowest level of the play's scale of being, the level closest to matter. The place of Virgil and his circle is the same as that occupied, in a well-known passage in Timber, by an elite of 'good men' identified as absolute 'Spectators' over 'the Play of Fortune' 'on the Stage of the world'. Indeed, Virgil is likened to a 'right heavenly body' (v.i.105, just as the good men are described as 'the Stars, the Planets of the Ages wherein they live' - images which underscore not only the absolute, transcendent place of these spectator figures, but their normative and regulatory function, their function, that is, as over-seers.
(Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil)
In Every Man in his Humour (performed 1598), this hierarchical binary opposition is articulated, even as it is worked for in the place of production, by a quotation from the Sibyl's description in Aeneid 6 of the few permitted to escape from the underworld into the upper air - 'pauci, quos aequus amavit/Juppiter' (lines 129-30, quoted in Every Man In, III,i, 21-2.) In Cynthia's Revels (performed 1600), the quotation recurs, translated, in a context which makes explicit what the spectator/reader of Every Man In must divine, that the description is to be understood in terms of the canonical Neoplatonic mediations of the Virgilian underworld as a description of the few permitted, on account of the 'merit' of their 'true nobility, called virtue', to escape from the Dis or Tartarus of contingent, material existence into an absolute, fixed and transcendent place 'above'. As we shall see, those who understand are granted, by virtue of their understanding, a means of 'grace', a means, that is, to escape from the multiple, particular heterogeneities of every man in his humour, to join the privileged homogeneous circle which the Virgilian voice in Every Man In both addresses and describes. (Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil, 116-117.)
**********************************
TO THE READER.
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle SHAKSPEARE cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to out-do the life :
O could he but have drawn his wit
As well in BRASS, as he has hit
His face ; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in BRASS :
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.
*********************************
Metaphors of MIND: An Eighteenth-Century Dictionary
By Brad Pasanek
BRASS and BRONZE
Bronze and brass are two “BASE” ALLOYS put to figurative use in the eighteenth century. (Dr.)Johnson notes that “brass” does not strictly differentiate brass from bronze but is used “in popular language for any kind of metal in which copper has a part” (“BRASS” and “BRONZE”). Brass is a metal of impudence so that “BRAZEN” is defined by Johnson, in this case without comment on the term’s figurative or literal status, as “impudent.” Brass has a bright luster but not the heft of a precious metal: it is SHOW without value, glister without the gold.
*********************************
John Chamberlain, who himself regularly reported masques and masquing, illustrates how they became news, explaining to Dudley Carleton:
For lacke of better newes here is likewise a ballet or song of Ben lohnsons in the play or shew at the lord marquis at Burley, and repeated again at Windsor.... There were other songs and deuises of BASER ALAY, but because this had the vogue and general applause at court, I was willing to send it.
*****************************
John Oldham on Jonson
V.
Sober, and grave was still the Garb thy Muse put on,
No tawdry careless slattern Dress,
Nor starch'd, and formal with Affectedness,
Nor the cast Mode, and Fashion of the Court, and Town;
But neat, agreeable, and janty 'twas,
Well-fitted, it sate close in every place,
And all became with an uncommon Air, and Grace:
Rich, costly and substantial was the stuff,
Not barely smooth, nor yet too coarsly rough:
No refuse, ill-patch'd Shreds o'th Schools,
The motly wear of read, and learned Fools,
No French Commodity which now so much does take,
And our own better Manufacture spoil,
Nor was it ought of forein Soil;
But Staple all, and all of English Growth, and Make:
What Flow'rs soe're of Art it had, were found
No tinsel'd slight Embroideries,
But all appear'd either the native Ground,
Or twisted, wrought, and interwoven with the Piece.
VI.
Plain Humor, shewn with her whole various Face,
Not mask'd with any antick Dress,
Nor screw'd in forc'd, ridiculous Grimace
(The gaping Rabbles DULL delight,
And more the Actor's than the Poet's Wit)
(snip)
****************************************
William Cartwright:
...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was FREE
As his, but without his SCURILITY;
**************************************
Oldham on Jonson, con't.
Such did she enter on thy Stage,
And such was represented to the wond'ring Age:
Well wast thou skill'd, and read in human kind,
In every wild fantastick Passion of his mind,
Didst into all his hidden Inclinations dive,
What each from Nature does receive,
Or Age, or Sex, or Quality, or Country give;
What Custom too, that mighty Sorceress,
Whose pow'rful Witchcraft does transform
Enchanted Man to several monstrous Images,
Makes this an odd, and freakish Monky turn,
And that a grave and solemn Ass appear,
And all a thousand beastly shapes of Folly wear:
Whate're Caprice or Whimsie leads awry
Perverted, and seduc'd Mortality,
Or does incline, and byass it
From what's Discreet, and Wise, and Right, and Good, and Fit;
All in thy faithful Glass were so express'd,
As if they were Reflections of thy Breast,
As if they had been stamp'd on thy own mind,
And thou the universal vast Idea of Mankind.
*************************************
King Arthur, Scotland, Utopia, and the Italianate Englishman: What Does Race Have to Do with It? By: GUTIERREZ, NANCY A., Shakespeare Studies (0582-9399), 05829399, 1998, Vol. 26
While the discovery of the New World most manifestly inculcated an awareness of race in the English of the later-sixteenth century, its effect occurred within a world conditioned by the tenets of humanism in its variety of guises: as an educational regimen; as a return to origins, both biblical and classical; as a revaluing of public life and works. The elitism and conservatism of humanism in general meant that the few, rather than the many, were privileged, and this in turn resulted in a hierarchy closed to those who were not male, not educated, and not in the higher levels of society. Further, the rise of humanism was concurrent with a period of political and social flux in which feudal relationships were being redefined in terms of a centralized court and the nation state. Such a world resulted in a discursive tendency to compartmentalize, to establish concrete identities, to build walls, to shut out. (Of course, the fact that this was also a period in which fluidity of movement characterized class structure serves only to reinforce this discursive evidence.) As the English began to be aware of themselves as a single entity with its own national identity, the culture simultaneously began to define anything "not-English" as dangerous and other. In other words, this world established itself as civilized, chosen--as white.
A cursory examination of seminal texts of this period reveal that the English national identity was being created in opposition to a series of threats to its culture, and these threats were presented both directly through polemic and indirectly through not-so hidden fictions. As the English national identity was crystallized, the psychic boundaries of the people were also being circumscribed--against cultures, ideologies, even other national borders.
"The New Learning" of humanism, by its very name, puts into opposition forms of education and intellectual endeavor prevalent in England during the fifteenth century, especially prior to the accession of Henry VII, the first monarch to patronize fully those men who had been trained in the new philosophy. In counterpoint to the system of chivalry advanced in Malory's stories of King Arthur as elegant and courtly, the early humanists characterized the middle ages as barbarous and Gothic. As Roger Ascham said in his introduction to Toxophilus:
"In our fathers tyme nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherin a man by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but onely to manslaughter and baudrye." (xiv)
After the Reformation, English humanists literally demonized the influence of Roman Catholicism on humanist learning.
"And yet ten Morte Arthures do not the tenth part so much harme, as one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in England. They open, not fond and common wayes to vice, but such subtle, cunnyng, new, and diuerse shiftes, to cary yong willes to vanitie, and yong wittes to mischief, to teach old bawdes new schole poyntes, as the simple head of an English man is not hable to inuent, nor neuer was hard of in England before, yea when Papistrie ouerfiowed all." (231)
The Englishmen who are tempted to give in "to the inchantments of Circes, brought out of Italy" have this said of them:
"And so, beyng Mules and Horses before they went [to Italy], returned verie Swyne and Asses home agayne: yet euerie where verie Foxes with suttle and busie heades; and where they may, verie wolues, with cruell malicious hartes. A meruelous monster, which, for filthines of liuyng, for dulnes to learning him selfe, for wilinesse in dealing with others, for malice in hurting without cause, should carie at once in one bodie, the belie of a Swyne, the head of an Asse, the brayne of a Foxe, the wombe of a wolfe." (228)
In sum, this beast is not an Englishman: Englese Italianato, e vn diabolo incarnato, that is, "The Italianate Englishman is the devil incarnate."
***************************************
Speculum Tuscanismi - Satire on Earl of Oxford
Gabriel Harvey:
See Venus, archegoddess, howe trimly she masterith owld Mars.
See litle CUPIDE, howe he bewitcheth lernid Apollo.
Bravery in apparell, and maiesty in hawty behaviour,
Hath conquerd manhood, and gotten a victory in Inglande.
Ferse Bellona, she lyes enclosd at Westminster in leade.
Dowtines is dulnes ; currage mistermid is outrage.
Manlines is madnes ; beshrowe Lady Curtisy therefore.
Most valorous enforced to be vassals to Lady Pleasure.
And Lady Nicity rules like a soveran emperes of all.
TYMES, MANNERS, FRENCH, ITALISH ENGLISHE.
Where be y e mindes and men that woont to terrify strangers ?
Where that constant zeale to thy cuntry glory, to vertu ?
Where labor and prowes very founders of quiet and peace,
Champions of warr, trompetours of fame, treasurers of welth ?
Where owld Inglande ? Where owld Inglish fortitude and
might ?
Oh, we ar owte of the way, that Theseus, Hercules, Arthur,
And many a worthy British knight were woo'nte to triumphe in.
What should I speake of Talbotts, Brandons, Grayes, with a thousande
Such and such ? Let Edwards go ; letts blott y e remem-braunce
Of puissant Henryes ; or letts exemplify there actes.
Since Galateo came in and Tuscanismo gan usurpe
Vanity above all ; villanye next her ; Statelynes empresse,
NO MAN but minion : stowte, lowte, playne, swayne, quoth a
LORDINGE.
********************************
Cynthia's Revels/Amorphus/Italianate Traveller/Oxford
Cynthia’s Revels, Jonson
Act V Sc. 1
Mercury.
We believe it.
But for our sake, and to inflict just pains
On their prodigious follies, aid us now:
No man is presently made bad with ill.
And good men, like the sea, should still maintain
Their noble taste, in midst of all fresh humours
That flow about them, to corrupt their streams,
Bearing no season, much less salt of goodness.
It is our purpose, Crites, to correct,
And punish, with our laughter, this night's sport,
Which our court-dors so heartily intend:
And by that WORTHY SCORN, to make them know
How far beneath the dignity of man
Their serious and most practised actions are.
Cri.
Ay, but though Mercury can warrant out
His undertakings, and make all things good,
Out of the powers of his divinity,
Th' offence will be return'd with weight on me,
That am a creature so despised and poor;
When the whole court shall take itself abused
By our ironical confederacy.
Mer.
You are deceived. The BETTER RACE in court,
That have the true nobility call'd virtue,
Will apprehend it, as a grateful right
Done to their separate merit; and approve
The fit rebuke of so ridiculous heads,
Who, with their apish customs and forced garbs,
Would bring the name of courtier in contempt,
Did it not live unblemish'd in some few,
Whom equal Jove hath loved, and Phoebus form'd
OF BETTER METAL, and IN BETTER MOULD.
Cri.
Well, since my leader-on is Mercury,
I shall not fear to follow. If I fall,
My proper virtue shall be my relief,
That follow'd such a cause, and such a chief.
*******************************
Author: Holland, Abraham
Title: Naumachia, or Hollands sea-fight Date: 1622
A Caveat to his Muse
Well Minion you'le be gadding forth then? Goe,
Goe, hast unto thy speedy overthrow:
And since thou wilt not take my warning: Hence,
Learne thy owne ruine by experience.
Alas poore Maid (if so I her may call
Who itches to be prostitute to all
Adulterate censures) were it not for thee
Better, to live in sweet securitie
In my small cell, than flying rashly out,
Be whoop't, and hiss't, and gaz'd at all about
Like a day-owle: Faith Misris you'le be put
One of these daies to serve some driveling slut,
To wrap her sope in, or a least be droven
To keepe a Pie from scorching in the Oven:
Or else expos'd a laughing stock to sots,
To cloke Tobacco, or stop Mustard pots,
Thou wilt be grac't if so thou canst but win
To infold Frankincense or Mackrills in,
You deem it a matter of high worth
To have a fame among 'em: New come forth:
And thinke your chiefe felicity is marr'd
If you be not perch't up in Paules Church-yard
Where men a farre may know you in a trice,
By some new-fangled, brasse-cut Frontispice.
Such book's indeed as now-dayes can passé
Had need to have their faces made of brasse.
Is it not then sufficient for you
To stay at home among the residue
Of better sisters: where my dearest Will, (my note - Will Browne?)
And other friends would praise and love thee still:
Him and my other harts-halfes I account
Intire assemblies, and thinke they surmount
A GLOBE OF ADDLE GALLANTS: I averre
One judging Plato worth a Theater.
(snip)
**********************************
Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor
On Art.
Can anyone be an artist without art? Or have you ever seen a bird flying without wings, or a horse running without feet? Or if you have seen such things, which no one else has ever seen, come, tell me please, do you hope to become a goldsmith, or a painter, or a sculptor, or a musician, or an architect, or a weaver, or any sort of artist at all without a teacher? But how much easier are all these things, than that you develop into a supreme and perfect orator without the art of public speaking. There is need of a teacher, and indeed even an excellent teacher, who might point out the springs with his finger, as it were, and carefully pass on to you the art of speaking colorfully, brilliantly, copiously. But what sort of art shall we choose? Not an art entangled in countless difficulties, or packed with meaningless arguments; not one sullied by useless precepts, or disfigured by strange and foreign ones; not an art polluted by any filth, or fashioned to accord with our own WILL and judgment; not a single art joined and sewn together from many, like a quilt from many rags and skins (way too many rhetoricians have given this sort of art to us, if indeed one may call art that which conforms to no artistic principles).
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Cynthias Revels, Amorphus/Oxford:
He that is with him is Amorphus
a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds
of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. He walks
most commonly with a Clove or Pick-tooth in his
Mouth, he is the very mint of Complement, all his Be-
haviours are printed, his Face is another Volume of
Essayes; and his Beard an Aristrachus. He speaks all
Cream skim'd, and more affected than a dozen of wait-
ing Women. He is his own Promoter in every place.
The Wife of the Ordinary gives him his Diet to main-
tain her Table in discourse, which (indeed) is a meer
Tyranny over the other Guests, for he will usurp all
the talk: *Ten Constables are not so tedious*.
*****************************
Shakespeare, Much Ado (Sc3
WATCHMAN
(aside) I know that Deformed. He has been a vile thief this
seven year. He goes up and down like a gentleman. I
remember his name.
****************************************
Rich, Barnabe, 1540?-1617. Title: Faultes faults, and nothing else but faultes
Date: 1606
There is nothing more formall in these dayes then Deformitie it selfe. If I should then begin to write, according to the time, I should onely write of new fashions, and of new follies that are now altogether in fashion, whereof there are such a|boundant store, that I thinke they haue got the Philosophers stone to multiplie, there is such a dayly multiplicitie both of follies, and fa|shions.
In diebus illis, Poets and Painters, were priui|edged to faine whatsoeuer themselues listed: but now, both Poet and Painter, if he be not the Tailors Ape, I will not giue him a single halfepenie for his worke: for he that should either write or paint, if it be not fitte in the new fashion, he may go scrape for commendation, nay they will mocke at him, and hisse at his conceit.
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Author: Rich, Barnabe, 1540?-1617.
Title: The honestie of this age· Proouing by good circumstance that the world was neuer honest till now. By Barnabee Rych Gentleman, seruant to the Kings most excellent Maiestie.
Date: 1614
...In former ages, he that was rich in knowledge was called a wise man, but now there is no man wise, but he that hath wit to gather wealth, and it is a hard matter in this Age, for a man to rayse himselfe by honest principles, yet we doe all seeke to climbe, but not by Iacobs Ladder, & we are still de|sirous to mount, but not by the Chariot of Elyas.
Vertue hath but a few that doe fauour her, but they bee fewer by a great many in number that are desirous to fol|low her.
But is not this an honest Age, when ougly vice doth beare the name of seemly vertue, when Drunkennes is called Good fellowship, Murther reputed for Manhoode, Lechery, is called Honest loue, Impudency, Good audacitie, Pride they say is Decen|cy, and wretched Misery, they call Good Husbandry, Hypocri|sie, they call Sinceritie, and Flattery, doth beare the name of Eloquence, Truth, and Veritie, and that which our predeces|sors
would call flat Knauery, passeth now by the name of wit and policy.
(snip)
And are not our gentlemen in as dangerous a plight now
(I meane these APES of FANCY) that doe looke so like Attyre|makers maydes, that for the dainty decking vp of themselues, might sit in any Seamsters shop in all the Exchange. Me thinkes a looking glasse should be a dangerous thing for one of them to view himselfe in, for falling in loue with his owne lookes, *as NARCISSUS did with his owne shadow*.
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Jonson - On Poet-Ape
Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,
Whose works are e’en the frippery of wit,
From brokage is become so bold a thief,
As we, the robb’d, leave rage, and pity it.
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown
To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,
He takes up all, makes each man’s wit his own:
And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
The sluggish gaping auditor devours;
He marks not whose ‘twas first: and after-times
May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?
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Soul of the Age!
Jonson, Discoveries
Censura de poetis. - Nothing in our AGE, I have observed, is more PREPOSTEROUS than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for MIRACLES, who yet are so VILE that if a man should go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have done but one BLOT. Their good is so entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the other’s death with it. A sponge dipped in ink will do all:-
“ - Comitetur Punica librum
Spongia. - ” {44a}
Et paulò post,
“Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ
. . . una litura potest.”
Cestius - Cicero - Heath - Taylor - Spenser. - Yet their vices have not hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved for nothing else. And this false opinion grows strong against the best men, if once it take root with the IGNORANT.
Cestius, in his time, was preferred to Cicero, so far as the ignorant durst. They learned him without book, and had him often in their mouths; but a man cannot imagine that thing so foolish or rude but will find and enjoy an admirer; at least a reader or spectator. The puppets are seen now in despite of the players; Heath' s epigrams and the Sculler' s poems have their applause. There are never wanting that dare prefer the worst preachers, the worst pleaders, the worst poets; not that the better have left to write or speak better, but that they that hear them judge worse; Non illi pejus dicunt, sed hi corruptius judicant. Nay, if it were put to the question of the water- rhymer' s works, against Spenser' s, *I doubt not but they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the VULGAR have to lose their judgments and like that which is naught.*
Poetry, in this latter age, hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then tendered their visits, she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions (both the law and the gospel) beyond all they could have hoped or done for themselves without her favour. Wherein she doth emulate the judicious but preposterous bounty of the time' s grandees, who accumulate all they can upon the parasite or fresh-man in their friendship; but think an old client or honest servant bound by his place to write and starve.
Indeed, the multitude commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers, who if they come in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence are received for the braver fellows; when many times their own rudeness is a cause of their disgrace, and a slight touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. But in these things the unskilful are naturally deceived, and judging wholly by the bulk, think rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed; nor think this only to be true in the sordid multitude, but the neater sort of our gallants; for all are the multitude, only they differ in clothes, not in judgment or understanding.
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Soul of the Age!
Soul of an Ignorant Age:
TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE OF HONOR, AND VERTVE, THE MOST NOBLE WILLIAM EARLE OF PENBROOKE, &c.
MY LORD,
IN so thicke, and darke an *IGNORANCE, as now almost couers the AGE*, I craue leaue to stand neare your Light: and, by that, to be read. Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour, and Thanks; when it shall know, that you dare, in these JIG-GIVEN times, to countenance a Legitimate Poëme. I must call it so, against all noise of Opinion: from whose crude, and airy Reports, I appeale, to that great and singular Faculty of Iudgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from Error. It is the first (of this RACE) that euer I dedicated to any Person, and had I not thought it the best, it should haue beene taught a lesse ambition. Now, it approacheth your Censure chearefully, and with the same assurance, that Innocency would appeare before a Magistrate.
Your Lo. most faithfull Honorer. Ben. Ionson.
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Ruling/Restraining Shakespeare's Quill:
From 'To the Deceased Author of these Poems' (William Cartwright)
by Jasper Mayne
... For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:
A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)
******************************THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 17. 1934
...With regard to Martin Droeshout, whose portrait of Shakespeare, appears on the title page of the First Folio , in 1923; as Durning-Lawrence savs, "Droeshout is scarcely likely to have ever seen Shakespeare, as he was only 15 years of age when Shakespeare died." DULL DRAWING. The face in Droeshout's picture certainly expresses no trace of that almost divine intelligence which one would expect to find there, and the figure, out of all drawing, is clothed in an Impossible coat, the sleeves of which are composed, to all appearance, of the back and front of the same left arm. This fact was remarked upon In "The Tailor and Cutter." in its issue of March 9, 1911; and in the April following, under the heading "Problem for the Trade," the "Gentleman's. Tailor" magazine printed the two halves of the coat arranged tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, and said : "It is passing strange that something like three centuries should have, been allowed to elapse before the tailor's handiwork should have been appealed to In this' particular manner." Facing this portrait in ' the First Folio, are these words, attributed to Ben Jonson, which after stating that "the Figure" was Intended for that of Shakespeare, and that the "graver" had a struggle to out-do the life, conclude with: O, could he but have drawn, hit wit As well lo brasse. as he hath hit His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that was ever writ In Brasse. But, since he cannot. Reader looks Not on his Picture, but his Booke. Ben Jonson could never have seriously considered that the dull, wooden, face in the engraving was anything like that of the author of the plays, and may have sarcastically bidden the beholder "looke not on his picture, but his book." BEN JONSON. Facing the title page of the 1640 folio of Ben Jonson's works, is a portrait of that poet by Robert Vaughan. a contemporary engraver, . which, like that of Martin Droeshout, Is a very rough, uncouth, piece of work, though it certainly expresses a certain amount of individuality and intelligence, yet not very much; and the figure Is very ungainly, though Jonson became very stout as he grew older, as we know by one of his Epigrams, and would be difficult to draw. Durning-Lawrence savs that In a very rare and curious little volume published anonymously in 1645, under the title of "The Great Assises holden In Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours," Ben Jonson is described as the "Keeper of the Trophonian Denne," and in an Imaginary Westminster Abbey his medallion bust appeared clothed in a left-handed coat, like the figure by Martin Droeshout in the First Folio, and Stowe is quoted as having written regarding this: O' rare Ben Jonson what, a turncoat grown! Thou ne'er want such. till clad In stone; Then let not this disturb thy sprite. Another age shall set thy buttons right.
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Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius
...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;
*Excluding those from life in after-time,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence*:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..
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Jonson - Keeper of the TROPHONIAN DENNE:
George Wither: The Great Assises holden In Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours
Hee them assur'd they must expect t' inherit
Parnassus honours not by time, but merit.
But when Apollo with his radiant looke
The Pris'ners had into amazement strooke,
Hee caus'd those guiltie soules to bee convey'd
To the TROPHONIAN DENNE, there to bee laid
In Irons cold, untill they should bee brought
To tryall for those mischiefs they had wrought.
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Billy Budd - Melville
Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor. Through the rose-tan of his complexion, no pallor could have shown. It would have taken days of sequestration from the winds and the sun to have brought about the effacement of that. But the skeleton in the cheekbone at the point of its angle was just beginning delicately to be defined under the warm-tinted skin. In fervid hearts self-contained, some brief experiences devour our human tissue as secret fire in a ship's hold consumes cotton in the bale.
But now lying between the two guns, as nipped in the vice of fate, Billy's agony, mainly proceeding from a generous young heart's virgin experience of the diabolical incarnate and effective in some men--the tension of that agony was over now. It survived not the something healing in the closeted interview with Captain Vere. Without movement, he lay as in a trance. That adolescent expression previously noted as his, taking on something akin to the look of a slumbering child in the cradle when the warm hearth-glow of the still chamber at night plays on the dimples that at whiles mysteriously form in the cheek, silently coming and going there. For now and then in the gyved one's trance a serene happy light born of some wandering reminiscence or dream would diffuse itself over his face, and then wane away only anew to return.
