Dennis
2021-12-12 20:48:45 UTC
Droeshout Engraving – Figure of Disorder
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Prospero:
This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine
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The Grotesque: A study in Meanings
Frances Barasch
Chimeras
‘Chimera’ or ‘monster against nature’ was a preferred meaning of ‘grotesque’ during the first half of the seventeenth century. Ben Jonson, Sir William D’Avenant, Roger Boyle, Lord Orrery, and Sir Thomas Browne used ‘grotesque’ for specific hybrid figures, which usually were minor details in the larger grotesque designs of Italian origin. The chimera was only a synecdoche of the entire corpus of art treasures found in the Roman grottoes, but it became an important meaning in the word ‘grotesque’.
In Ben Jonson’s Discoveries, we learn that the work ‘Chimaera’s was being replaced by ‘Grottesque’, among the vulgar at any rate. He interrupts his retelling De Progressu Picturae to notice Vitruvius’ attitude toward Augustan painters and to comment on the contemporary use of ‘Grottesque’:
“See where he [Vitruvius, VII] complaines of their painting Chimaera’s by the vulgar unaptly called Grottesque; Saying, that men who were borne truly to study, and emulate nature, did nothing but make monsters against nature; which Horace [Ars Poetica, l.1-10] so laught at.
Jonson takes the opportunity of the moment to indicate his own preference over ‘Grottesque’ for the term ‘Chimaera’s’ or the phrase “monsters against nature” and to support Vitruvius by invoking Horace’s authoritative ridicule of the famous mermaid, which we have already noticed in connection with Montaigne and Vauquelin.
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HOR., Ars Poet. 1.
Suppose a painter wished to couple a horse’s neck with a man’s head,
and to lay feathers of every hue on limbs gathered here and there, so
that a woman, lovely above, foully ended in an ugly fish below; would
you restrain your laughter, my friends, if admitted to a private view?
Believe me…a BOOK will appear uncommonly like that PICTURE, if
impossible figures are wrought into it – *like a sick man’s dreams* –
with the result that neither head nor foot is ascribed to a single
shape, and unity is lost*.
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In his translation of Horace’s _Art of Poetry_ Jonson translates ‘Minerva’ as ‘Nature’
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Invita Minerva
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Jonson, in the verse prologue to _Every Man in his Humour_, characterizes Shakespeare's plays as 'Monsters'
SCENE,---LONDON
PROLOGUE.
Though need make many poets, and some such
As art and nature have not better'd much;
Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,
As he dare serve the *ill customs of the AGE*,
Or purchase your delight at such a rate,
As, for it, he himself must justly hate:
To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's king jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see
One such to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard
To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.
I mean such errors as you'll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:
Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then,
*You, that have so grac'd MONSTERS, may like men*.
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Bartholomew Fair: Jonson
T H E
I N D u C T I O N
O N T H E
S T A G E.
It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That
how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is
to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a
Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and
Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the
present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the
Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser,
with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as
good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind-
heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her
Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers
for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead
of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A
sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an
Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be ne-
ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he
says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to MAKE NA-
TURE AFRAID in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tem-
pests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his Head with other
Mens Heels; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances,
reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Pup-
pets will please any body, they shall be entreated to
come in.
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‘Mix his head with other men’s heels’: Antick/Topsy-Turvy/Carnivalesque/Harlequin
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Jonson
Timber/Discoveries
(In the difference of wits, note 10)
Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly
seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that
is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not
recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their
sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and
are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as
lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow.
Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are
thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever
election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first,
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The true artificer will
not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from
life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his
hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat,
it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-
chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical
strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant
gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but
artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called
barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can
come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment,
knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him.
He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men,
will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing,
his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his
readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what
sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in
men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their
minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold
what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is
beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which
strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided
faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate
phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which
is worse), especially for that it is naught.
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Sending up the Oxfordian Sublime
Cynthia’s Revels, Ben Jonson
Amorphus [Oxford]. That's good, but how Pythagorical?
Phi. I, Amorphus. Why Pythagorical Breeches?
Amor. O most kindly of all, 'tis a conceit of that FORTUNE,
I am bold to hug my Brain for.
Pha. How is't, exquisite Amorphus?
Amor. O, I am rapt with it, 'tis so fit, so proper,
so happy. --
Phi. Nay do not rack us thus?
Amor. I never truly relisht my self before. Give me
your Ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their trans-
migration into several shapes.
Mor. Most rare, in sweet troth.
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Milton
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
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Milton’s ‘grottesque’ – cavernous
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The Grotesque: A Study in Meanings
Frances Barasch
Milton’s ‘grottesque’ appears in the fourth book of Paradise Lost (1667) in the description of Satan’s envious view of the hill of Eden crowned by Paradise itself:
SO on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied;
The ascent to Eden is “grottesque and wilde”, but Paradise, “A Silvan Scene” with “Shade above shade” of trees is an orderly arrangement of concentric circles crowning the top of the hill. This crown is the “lovely Landskip” Milton described in subsequent lines:
and overhead up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar and pine and fir and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung;
(...)
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,
Milton’s distinction between the lower and upper slopes and the crown of the hill is significant: it is made more than once in the same section:
Now to th’ascent of that steep savage Hill
Satan had journied on, pensive and slow;
But furder way found none, so thick entwin’d,
As one continu’d brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplext
All path of Man or Beast that passed that way: (ll. 172-7)
The steep ascent is savage, perplexing as well as grotesque, wild, inaccessible. But Satan, neither man nor beast, “overleap’d all bound/Of Hill or Highest wall” and landed “on the Tree of Life,/The middle tree and highest there that grew”. On the crown of Eden’s hill are orderly ranks of tress, arranged “shade above shade”, that is, symetrically, row upon row as in a “theatre” of circus. And in the exact center is the Tree of Life. This Platonic and Dantesque view of Paradise is based on the classical circle. It suggests all that is ideal and heavenly in Milton’s aesthetic. Milton’s “lovely Lantskip” is a harmonious classical landscape, not a pleasingly irregular scene. The ascent to Paradise, on the other hand, is entangled by undergrowth; its savage, hairy sides symbolize the disorder and confusion of this world. It was a place where both man and beast groped confusedly, without clear direction, toward salvation. Among the properties of man’s disordered natural world were fearsome caves and stony grots, traditionally “Deepe, darke, uneasy, dolefull, comfortlesse”, as Spenser described them. These disorders of the natural world are created in part “by grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades” (Comus) and “infamous hills” (Comus) Milton’s ‘grottesque’ belonged to this natural world. It is indeed part of irregular nature, but it is never pleasing. It is plainly the horrific antithesis of a classical, ideal landscape.
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masque/anti-masque
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The Grotesque: A study in Meanings
Frances K. Barasch
When Sir Thomas Browne used ‘grotesque’ for chimeras and fantastic creatures in 1643 and 1646, he still associated the word with pictorial delineations and painting techniques, but he introduced the word into a new sphere of thought and made it serve for the fantastic and unnatural concepts perpetuated in ancient axioms. As a modern philosopher, Browne reversed these ancient premises: The only indisputable Axiom”, he insisted, is “there are no Grotesques in nature”.
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The Comical Scene: Perspective and Civility on the Renaissance
Stage – Peter Womack
.....For Jonson, the main point of the unities is not so much
verisimilitude as proportion. As he writes in Discoveries,
paraphrasing Heinsius:
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.
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). Although his plays were not
written for a Serlian stage, Jonson reproduces its boundedness at the
level of their construction through his self-imposed limitations of
place and time. The classical architecture of the dramatic form, with
its firm symmetries and commanding point of view, stands in for the
perspective scene.
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Amorphus/Oxford/Shakespeare:
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)
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LOGODAEDELUS: Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe
Note 55. Ingenuus, an especially rich term, yields a noun (ingenuitas)and an adverb (ingenue) in Perottie. One acts ingenue whose comportment is “as befits a free man, without fear, without anything to do with servility. (ingenue adverbium, hoc est libere, unde ingenue loqui dicimus eum, qui ita loquitur, ut liberum hominem decet, nihil dimidum, nihil servile habens).
indeed free
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Image, Imagination, and Cognition: Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice
...David Zagoury traces the art theoretical term ‘ingegno’ in the Florentine art world, the birthplace of Renaissance and early modern art, and in particular in the writings of Benedetto Varchi (1503-1565), a philosopher deeply engaged in Florentine cultural debates. A cognate of genius, ingegno was understood as a cognitive ability, and thereby related to imagination. As Zagoury shows in the course of a micro-historical analysis of events that took place over several weeks in 1547 and in which Varchi plays the central role, ingegno, a NATURAL or INBORN ability, was contrasted with ‘fatica’ or physical labour, and the role of each in artistic production carefully weighed and judged.
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Ben Jonson, in his translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry, translates Minerva as ‘Nature’.
Jonson, on Shakespeare
Nature herself was proud of his DESIGNS
And joy'd to wear the DRESSING of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, 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;
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;
In each of which he SEEMS to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the EYES of ignorance.
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Minerva in the Forge of Vulcan: Ingegno, Fatica, and Imagination in Early Florentine Art Theory
David Zagoury
It is significant that the two most important authors writing about Michelangelo after the publication of Varchi’s lectures both praised Michelangelo’s imagination. In 1553 Ascanio Condivi (1525-1574), a keen reader of the _Due lezzioni_, underlined Michelangelo’s supremely powerful ‘virtu imaginativa’. In the second edition of his Vite (1568), Vasari amended his biography of Michelangelo by inserting praise of his ‘immaginativa’ in a passage particularly relevant here, in which he calls the artist ‘questo ingegno’ – a term one is tempted to translate as ‘this genius’:
Michelangelo had such a distinctive and perfect imagination [immaginative] and the works he envisioned were of such a nature that he found it impossible to express such grandiose and awesome conceptions [concetti] with his hands, and he often abandoned his works, or rather ruined many of them, as I myself know, because just before his death he burned a large number of his own drawings, sketches and cartoons to prevent anyone from seeing the labours [fatiche] he endured or the ways he tested his ingegno, for fear he might seem less than perfect. [...] And although [these drawings] display the greatness of this ingego, _they also reveal that when he wanted to bring forth Minerva from the head of Jupiter he needed Vulcan’s hammer_.
[Gabriel Harvey – Oxford’s Jovial Mind]
Vasari’s final remark is, of course, a disguised reference to the exchange between Michelangelo and Varchi quoted above. However, Vasari adds the fact that what comes out of Jupiter’s head is Minerva, a detail Michelangelo had omitted. Since Latin antiquity, Minerva was associated with ingenium and rhetorical talent. The parallel had been applied to the ingenia of poets, as in an encomium of Dante (long attributed to Boccaccio but most probably of sixteenth-century vintage) where on top of praise for his alta fantasia Dante is named ‘the obscure Minerva’:
I am Dante Alighieri, obscure Minerva
Intelligent and artful, in whose ingegno
Maternal elegance unites with the sign
That is considered a great miracle of nature
My high fantasia ready and assured
Went through Tartarus and in the kingdom of heaven
And I made my noble book worthy
Of both temporal and spiritual reading.
The survival into the Renaissance of the association of a deity with an idea or concept – in particular, Minerva with ingegno – comes as no surprise.This allegorical mode underwent considerable expansion in the age of Vasari. Following the mid-Cinquecento surge of interest in emblematics and symbolism, artists increasingly used personifications to derive visual representations of complex notions such as the relationship between different concepts, or something like a theory. We may ask ourselves whether the reception of Varchi’s lectures did not give rise to pictorial attempts of this kind. As far as his 1547 discussion of the realation between ingegno and fatica [labour/toil] is concerned, we ought to consider a small painting on copper by Vasari now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Known as The Forge of Vulcan, it also has been referred to under the title of Ingenium and Ars.
Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580) – a Benedictine monk and philologist, and Vasari’s foremost advisor on all matters iconographic – devised the painting’s invenzione. His initial idea survives in a manuscript in Borghini’s hand and addressed to Vasari. Borghini suggested a depiction of Vulcan forging Achilles’s shield following the descriptions of Homer and Virgil, but adapted to our purpose, as we have mused together’, where Thetis, who commissioned the shield, would be replaced by Minerva. Vasari painted Borghini’s ‘blazing furnace’ and ‘three naked young men making various weapons and armors’, with assistants and putti. He also rendered Minerva holding a set square and a pair of compasses, emblems of theory, pointing to her prominent (pregnant?) belly. Vasari departed from the invenzione with regard to the interaction between the two gods While Borghinini wanted Vulcan to be showing the shield to Minerva, Vasari painted Vulcan actively sculpting while looking at a sheet of paper shown to him by the goddess. This drawing is in the hand of the deity associated with the MIND, in keeping with the ideal definition of DISEGNO in Vasari’s Vite (1568) as an ‘expression of the concetto imagined in the mind’. Vasari thus fully exploits the polysemy of the word disegno which, in addition to a drawing, could also signify the product of thought (disegnare meant ‘to think’).
Vasari’s image mirrors the mutual dependence of conception and execution, while suggesting the interrelationship of the inventore (Borghini) and the arteficer (Vasari himself). Indeed, some authors described the relationship between ars and ingenium as an inseparable unity, and even compared it to the conjunction between mind and body. In the chapter ‘Ars et Ingenium’ of his Hieroglyphica (1556) Pierio Valeriano Bolzano mentions a story of the marriage between Pallas (Minerva) and Vulcan which was appropriated by the ancients ‘as seen in the Orphic hymns’ to explain that Minerva’s and Vulcan’s respective strengths coexist in each being. This, writes Valeriano, is the reason why androgyny, or the coincidence of female and male, was regarded as a sign of higher perfection in antiquity.
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Harvey to Oxford:
Do thou but
go forward boldly and without hesitation. Mars will
obey thee, Hermes will be thy messenger, Pallas striking
her shield with her spear shaft will attend thee, thine own
breast and courageous heart will instruct thee. For a
long time past Phoebus Apollo has cultivated thy mind in
the arts. English poetical measures have been sung by
thee long enough. Let that Courtly Epistle 1 -more
polished even than the writings of Castiglione himself-
witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters. I have seen
many Latin verses of thine, yea, even more English
verses are extant; thou hast drunk deep draughts not
only of the Muses of France and Italy, but hast learned
the manners of many men, and the arts of foreign countries.
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Harvey – Four Letters
And that was all the fleeting that I every felt, saving that another company of special good fellows (whereof he was none of the meanest that bravely threatened to conjure up one which should massacre Martin’s Wit, or should be lambacked himself with ten years’ provision) would needs forsooth very courtly persuade the Earl of Oxford, that something in those letters, and namely, the Mirror of Tuscanismo, was palpably intended against him; whose noble Lordship I protest I never meant to dishonour with the least prejudicial word of my tongue or pen, but ever kept a mindful reckoning of many bounden duties toward the same: since in the prime of his gallantest youth he bestowed angels upon me in Christ’s College in Cambridge, and otherwise vouchsafed me many gracious favours, at the affectionate commendation of my cousin M. Thomas Smith, the son of Sir Thomas, shortly after Colonel of the Ardes in Ireland. But the noble Earl, not disposed to trouble his JOVIAL mind with such SATURNINE paltry, still continued, like his magnificent self: and that fleeting also proved, like the other, a silly bullbear, a sorry puff of wind, a thing of nothing.
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Jonson
Nature herself was proud of his DESIGNS
And joy'd to wear the DRESSING of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
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Dressing/painting/plastering:
Timber, Jonson
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 they can. 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
having 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 on: Clothes agazend Titles, the Birdlime
of Fools.
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TO THE
SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,
The Court.
Hou art a Bountiful and Brave Spring, and waterest all the Noble Plants of this Island. In thee the whole Kingdom dresseth it self, and is ambitious to use thee as her Glass. Beware then thou render Mens Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. It is not Powd'ring, Perfuming, and every day smelling of the Taylor, that converteth to a Beautiful Object: but a Mind shining through any Sute, which needs no False Light, either of Riches or Honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the Reign of C Y N T H I A, (a C R I T E S and an A R E T E.) Now, under thy P H œ B U S, it will be thy Province to make more: Except thou desirest to have thy Source mix with the Spring of Self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcom a Discovery of thy Days, as was then made of her Nights.
Thy Servant, bu
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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
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Look with our understanding and not our senses - Jonson
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!
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In the pen of a Puritan, ‘Grotesco’ denoted ‘fantastic’ and suggested supersitious, ignorant, pedantic, and priestly, all attributes of the King’s university men. On the Royalist side, ‘Grottesco’ (a motley creature) was used metaphorically for the Puritan state. (...) Cleveland’s use of Grottesco’ had distinct affiliations with the sphere of art adn farce literature where pibald and motley garments were worn by the clowns and Jack Puddings of the piece. D’Avenant’s and Browne’s uses of ‘groteque’ show that the word was still closely associated with fantastical pictorial phenomena, and while Hall’s metaphor betrays no direct kinship with the arts, he seems to have derived it from Browne and extended it to the popular character of farce and legend, Will o’ the Wisp”, the English Harlequin.
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Cynthia’s Revels
Crites: What ridiculous Circumstance might I devise
now, to bestow this reciprocal brace of Butter-flies one
upon another?
Amorphus/Oxford. Since I trode on this side the Alpes, I was not
so frozen in my Invention. Let me see: to accost him
with some choice remnant of Spanish, or Italian? that
would indifferently express my languages now: mar-
ry then, if he should fall out to be ignorant, it were
both hard and harsh. How else? step into some ra-
gioni del stato, and so make my induction? that were
above him too; and out of his Element, I fear. Feign
to have seen him in Venice or Padua? or some face neer
his in similitude? 'tis too pointed, and open. No, it
must be a more quaint, and collateral device. As —
stay: to frame some encomiastick Speech upon this our
Metropolis, or the wise Magistrates thereof, in which
politick number, 'tis odds, but his Father fill'd up a
Room? descend into a particular admiration of their
Justice, for the due measuring of Coals, burning of
Cans, and such like? as also Religion, in pulling
down a superstitious Cross, and advancing a Venus, or
Priapus, in place of it? ha? 'twill do well. Or to talk
of some Hospital, whose Walls record his Father a
Benefactor? or of so many Buckets bestow'd on his
Parish-church, in his life time, with his name at length
(for want of Arms) trickt upon them? Any of these?
Or to praise the cleanness of the Street, wherein he
dwelt? or the provident painting of his Posts against he
should have been Prætor? Or (leaving his Parent) come
to some special Ornament about himself, as his Rapier,
or some other of his Accoutrements? I have it: Thanks,
gracious Minerva.
*******************************
Prospero:
This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine
******************************
The Grotesque: A study in Meanings
Frances Barasch
Chimeras
‘Chimera’ or ‘monster against nature’ was a preferred meaning of ‘grotesque’ during the first half of the seventeenth century. Ben Jonson, Sir William D’Avenant, Roger Boyle, Lord Orrery, and Sir Thomas Browne used ‘grotesque’ for specific hybrid figures, which usually were minor details in the larger grotesque designs of Italian origin. The chimera was only a synecdoche of the entire corpus of art treasures found in the Roman grottoes, but it became an important meaning in the word ‘grotesque’.
In Ben Jonson’s Discoveries, we learn that the work ‘Chimaera’s was being replaced by ‘Grottesque’, among the vulgar at any rate. He interrupts his retelling De Progressu Picturae to notice Vitruvius’ attitude toward Augustan painters and to comment on the contemporary use of ‘Grottesque’:
“See where he [Vitruvius, VII] complaines of their painting Chimaera’s by the vulgar unaptly called Grottesque; Saying, that men who were borne truly to study, and emulate nature, did nothing but make monsters against nature; which Horace [Ars Poetica, l.1-10] so laught at.
Jonson takes the opportunity of the moment to indicate his own preference over ‘Grottesque’ for the term ‘Chimaera’s’ or the phrase “monsters against nature” and to support Vitruvius by invoking Horace’s authoritative ridicule of the famous mermaid, which we have already noticed in connection with Montaigne and Vauquelin.
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HOR., Ars Poet. 1.
Suppose a painter wished to couple a horse’s neck with a man’s head,
and to lay feathers of every hue on limbs gathered here and there, so
that a woman, lovely above, foully ended in an ugly fish below; would
you restrain your laughter, my friends, if admitted to a private view?
Believe me…a BOOK will appear uncommonly like that PICTURE, if
impossible figures are wrought into it – *like a sick man’s dreams* –
with the result that neither head nor foot is ascribed to a single
shape, and unity is lost*.
**********************************
In his translation of Horace’s _Art of Poetry_ Jonson translates ‘Minerva’ as ‘Nature’
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Invita Minerva
**********************************
Jonson, in the verse prologue to _Every Man in his Humour_, characterizes Shakespeare's plays as 'Monsters'
SCENE,---LONDON
PROLOGUE.
Though need make many poets, and some such
As art and nature have not better'd much;
Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,
As he dare serve the *ill customs of the AGE*,
Or purchase your delight at such a rate,
As, for it, he himself must justly hate:
To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's king jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see
One such to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard
To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.
I mean such errors as you'll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:
Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then,
*You, that have so grac'd MONSTERS, may like men*.
***************************************
Bartholomew Fair: Jonson
T H E
I N D u C T I O N
O N T H E
S T A G E.
It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That
how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is
to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a
Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and
Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the
present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the
Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser,
with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as
good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind-
heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her
Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers
for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead
of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A
sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an
Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be ne-
ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he
says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to MAKE NA-
TURE AFRAID in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tem-
pests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his Head with other
Mens Heels; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances,
reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Pup-
pets will please any body, they shall be entreated to
come in.
************************************
‘Mix his head with other men’s heels’: Antick/Topsy-Turvy/Carnivalesque/Harlequin
************************************
Jonson
Timber/Discoveries
(In the difference of wits, note 10)
Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly
seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that
is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not
recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their
sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and
are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as
lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow.
Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are
thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever
election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first,
and <>
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The true artificer will
not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from
life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his
hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat,
it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-
chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical
strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant
gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but
artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called
barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can
come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment,
knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him.
He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men,
will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing,
his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his
readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what
sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in
men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their
minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold
what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is
beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which
strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided
faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate
phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which
is worse), especially for that it is naught.
********************************
Sending up the Oxfordian Sublime
Cynthia’s Revels, Ben Jonson
Amorphus [Oxford]. That's good, but how Pythagorical?
Phi. I, Amorphus. Why Pythagorical Breeches?
Amor. O most kindly of all, 'tis a conceit of that FORTUNE,
I am bold to hug my Brain for.
Pha. How is't, exquisite Amorphus?
Amor. O, I am rapt with it, 'tis so fit, so proper,
so happy. --
Phi. Nay do not rack us thus?
Amor. I never truly relisht my self before. Give me
your Ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their trans-
migration into several shapes.
Mor. Most rare, in sweet troth.
************************************
Milton
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
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Milton’s ‘grottesque’ – cavernous
***********************************
The Grotesque: A Study in Meanings
Frances Barasch
Milton’s ‘grottesque’ appears in the fourth book of Paradise Lost (1667) in the description of Satan’s envious view of the hill of Eden crowned by Paradise itself:
SO on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied;
The ascent to Eden is “grottesque and wilde”, but Paradise, “A Silvan Scene” with “Shade above shade” of trees is an orderly arrangement of concentric circles crowning the top of the hill. This crown is the “lovely Landskip” Milton described in subsequent lines:
and overhead up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar and pine and fir and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung;
(...)
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,
Milton’s distinction between the lower and upper slopes and the crown of the hill is significant: it is made more than once in the same section:
Now to th’ascent of that steep savage Hill
Satan had journied on, pensive and slow;
But furder way found none, so thick entwin’d,
As one continu’d brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplext
All path of Man or Beast that passed that way: (ll. 172-7)
The steep ascent is savage, perplexing as well as grotesque, wild, inaccessible. But Satan, neither man nor beast, “overleap’d all bound/Of Hill or Highest wall” and landed “on the Tree of Life,/The middle tree and highest there that grew”. On the crown of Eden’s hill are orderly ranks of tress, arranged “shade above shade”, that is, symetrically, row upon row as in a “theatre” of circus. And in the exact center is the Tree of Life. This Platonic and Dantesque view of Paradise is based on the classical circle. It suggests all that is ideal and heavenly in Milton’s aesthetic. Milton’s “lovely Lantskip” is a harmonious classical landscape, not a pleasingly irregular scene. The ascent to Paradise, on the other hand, is entangled by undergrowth; its savage, hairy sides symbolize the disorder and confusion of this world. It was a place where both man and beast groped confusedly, without clear direction, toward salvation. Among the properties of man’s disordered natural world were fearsome caves and stony grots, traditionally “Deepe, darke, uneasy, dolefull, comfortlesse”, as Spenser described them. These disorders of the natural world are created in part “by grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades” (Comus) and “infamous hills” (Comus) Milton’s ‘grottesque’ belonged to this natural world. It is indeed part of irregular nature, but it is never pleasing. It is plainly the horrific antithesis of a classical, ideal landscape.
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masque/anti-masque
*************************
The Grotesque: A study in Meanings
Frances K. Barasch
When Sir Thomas Browne used ‘grotesque’ for chimeras and fantastic creatures in 1643 and 1646, he still associated the word with pictorial delineations and painting techniques, but he introduced the word into a new sphere of thought and made it serve for the fantastic and unnatural concepts perpetuated in ancient axioms. As a modern philosopher, Browne reversed these ancient premises: The only indisputable Axiom”, he insisted, is “there are no Grotesques in nature”.
************************
The Comical Scene: Perspective and Civility on the Renaissance
Stage – Peter Womack
.....For Jonson, the main point of the unities is not so much
verisimilitude as proportion. As he writes in Discoveries,
paraphrasing Heinsius:
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.
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). Although his plays were not
written for a Serlian stage, Jonson reproduces its boundedness at the
level of their construction through his self-imposed limitations of
place and time. The classical architecture of the dramatic form, with
its firm symmetries and commanding point of view, stands in for the
perspective scene.
************************************
Amorphus/Oxford/Shakespeare:
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)
**********************************
LOGODAEDELUS: Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe
Note 55. Ingenuus, an especially rich term, yields a noun (ingenuitas)and an adverb (ingenue) in Perottie. One acts ingenue whose comportment is “as befits a free man, without fear, without anything to do with servility. (ingenue adverbium, hoc est libere, unde ingenue loqui dicimus eum, qui ita loquitur, ut liberum hominem decet, nihil dimidum, nihil servile habens).
indeed free
*************************************
Image, Imagination, and Cognition: Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice
...David Zagoury traces the art theoretical term ‘ingegno’ in the Florentine art world, the birthplace of Renaissance and early modern art, and in particular in the writings of Benedetto Varchi (1503-1565), a philosopher deeply engaged in Florentine cultural debates. A cognate of genius, ingegno was understood as a cognitive ability, and thereby related to imagination. As Zagoury shows in the course of a micro-historical analysis of events that took place over several weeks in 1547 and in which Varchi plays the central role, ingegno, a NATURAL or INBORN ability, was contrasted with ‘fatica’ or physical labour, and the role of each in artistic production carefully weighed and judged.
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Ben Jonson, in his translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry, translates Minerva as ‘Nature’.
Jonson, on Shakespeare
Nature herself was proud of his DESIGNS
And joy'd to wear the DRESSING of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, 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;
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;
In each of which he SEEMS to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the EYES of ignorance.
***************************************
Minerva in the Forge of Vulcan: Ingegno, Fatica, and Imagination in Early Florentine Art Theory
David Zagoury
It is significant that the two most important authors writing about Michelangelo after the publication of Varchi’s lectures both praised Michelangelo’s imagination. In 1553 Ascanio Condivi (1525-1574), a keen reader of the _Due lezzioni_, underlined Michelangelo’s supremely powerful ‘virtu imaginativa’. In the second edition of his Vite (1568), Vasari amended his biography of Michelangelo by inserting praise of his ‘immaginativa’ in a passage particularly relevant here, in which he calls the artist ‘questo ingegno’ – a term one is tempted to translate as ‘this genius’:
Michelangelo had such a distinctive and perfect imagination [immaginative] and the works he envisioned were of such a nature that he found it impossible to express such grandiose and awesome conceptions [concetti] with his hands, and he often abandoned his works, or rather ruined many of them, as I myself know, because just before his death he burned a large number of his own drawings, sketches and cartoons to prevent anyone from seeing the labours [fatiche] he endured or the ways he tested his ingegno, for fear he might seem less than perfect. [...] And although [these drawings] display the greatness of this ingego, _they also reveal that when he wanted to bring forth Minerva from the head of Jupiter he needed Vulcan’s hammer_.
[Gabriel Harvey – Oxford’s Jovial Mind]
Vasari’s final remark is, of course, a disguised reference to the exchange between Michelangelo and Varchi quoted above. However, Vasari adds the fact that what comes out of Jupiter’s head is Minerva, a detail Michelangelo had omitted. Since Latin antiquity, Minerva was associated with ingenium and rhetorical talent. The parallel had been applied to the ingenia of poets, as in an encomium of Dante (long attributed to Boccaccio but most probably of sixteenth-century vintage) where on top of praise for his alta fantasia Dante is named ‘the obscure Minerva’:
I am Dante Alighieri, obscure Minerva
Intelligent and artful, in whose ingegno
Maternal elegance unites with the sign
That is considered a great miracle of nature
My high fantasia ready and assured
Went through Tartarus and in the kingdom of heaven
And I made my noble book worthy
Of both temporal and spiritual reading.
The survival into the Renaissance of the association of a deity with an idea or concept – in particular, Minerva with ingegno – comes as no surprise.This allegorical mode underwent considerable expansion in the age of Vasari. Following the mid-Cinquecento surge of interest in emblematics and symbolism, artists increasingly used personifications to derive visual representations of complex notions such as the relationship between different concepts, or something like a theory. We may ask ourselves whether the reception of Varchi’s lectures did not give rise to pictorial attempts of this kind. As far as his 1547 discussion of the realation between ingegno and fatica [labour/toil] is concerned, we ought to consider a small painting on copper by Vasari now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Known as The Forge of Vulcan, it also has been referred to under the title of Ingenium and Ars.
Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580) – a Benedictine monk and philologist, and Vasari’s foremost advisor on all matters iconographic – devised the painting’s invenzione. His initial idea survives in a manuscript in Borghini’s hand and addressed to Vasari. Borghini suggested a depiction of Vulcan forging Achilles’s shield following the descriptions of Homer and Virgil, but adapted to our purpose, as we have mused together’, where Thetis, who commissioned the shield, would be replaced by Minerva. Vasari painted Borghini’s ‘blazing furnace’ and ‘three naked young men making various weapons and armors’, with assistants and putti. He also rendered Minerva holding a set square and a pair of compasses, emblems of theory, pointing to her prominent (pregnant?) belly. Vasari departed from the invenzione with regard to the interaction between the two gods While Borghinini wanted Vulcan to be showing the shield to Minerva, Vasari painted Vulcan actively sculpting while looking at a sheet of paper shown to him by the goddess. This drawing is in the hand of the deity associated with the MIND, in keeping with the ideal definition of DISEGNO in Vasari’s Vite (1568) as an ‘expression of the concetto imagined in the mind’. Vasari thus fully exploits the polysemy of the word disegno which, in addition to a drawing, could also signify the product of thought (disegnare meant ‘to think’).
Vasari’s image mirrors the mutual dependence of conception and execution, while suggesting the interrelationship of the inventore (Borghini) and the arteficer (Vasari himself). Indeed, some authors described the relationship between ars and ingenium as an inseparable unity, and even compared it to the conjunction between mind and body. In the chapter ‘Ars et Ingenium’ of his Hieroglyphica (1556) Pierio Valeriano Bolzano mentions a story of the marriage between Pallas (Minerva) and Vulcan which was appropriated by the ancients ‘as seen in the Orphic hymns’ to explain that Minerva’s and Vulcan’s respective strengths coexist in each being. This, writes Valeriano, is the reason why androgyny, or the coincidence of female and male, was regarded as a sign of higher perfection in antiquity.
***********************************
Harvey to Oxford:
Do thou but
go forward boldly and without hesitation. Mars will
obey thee, Hermes will be thy messenger, Pallas striking
her shield with her spear shaft will attend thee, thine own
breast and courageous heart will instruct thee. For a
long time past Phoebus Apollo has cultivated thy mind in
the arts. English poetical measures have been sung by
thee long enough. Let that Courtly Epistle 1 -more
polished even than the writings of Castiglione himself-
witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters. I have seen
many Latin verses of thine, yea, even more English
verses are extant; thou hast drunk deep draughts not
only of the Muses of France and Italy, but hast learned
the manners of many men, and the arts of foreign countries.
*****************************************
Harvey – Four Letters
And that was all the fleeting that I every felt, saving that another company of special good fellows (whereof he was none of the meanest that bravely threatened to conjure up one which should massacre Martin’s Wit, or should be lambacked himself with ten years’ provision) would needs forsooth very courtly persuade the Earl of Oxford, that something in those letters, and namely, the Mirror of Tuscanismo, was palpably intended against him; whose noble Lordship I protest I never meant to dishonour with the least prejudicial word of my tongue or pen, but ever kept a mindful reckoning of many bounden duties toward the same: since in the prime of his gallantest youth he bestowed angels upon me in Christ’s College in Cambridge, and otherwise vouchsafed me many gracious favours, at the affectionate commendation of my cousin M. Thomas Smith, the son of Sir Thomas, shortly after Colonel of the Ardes in Ireland. But the noble Earl, not disposed to trouble his JOVIAL mind with such SATURNINE paltry, still continued, like his magnificent self: and that fleeting also proved, like the other, a silly bullbear, a sorry puff of wind, a thing of nothing.
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Jonson
Nature herself was proud of his DESIGNS
And joy'd to wear the DRESSING of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
*************************************
Dressing/painting/plastering:
Timber, Jonson
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 they can. 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
having 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 on: Clothes agazend Titles, the Birdlime
of Fools.
*********************
TO THE
SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,
The Court.
Hou art a Bountiful and Brave Spring, and waterest all the Noble Plants of this Island. In thee the whole Kingdom dresseth it self, and is ambitious to use thee as her Glass. Beware then thou render Mens Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. It is not Powd'ring, Perfuming, and every day smelling of the Taylor, that converteth to a Beautiful Object: but a Mind shining through any Sute, which needs no False Light, either of Riches or Honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the Reign of C Y N T H I A, (a C R I T E S and an A R E T E.) Now, under thy P H œ B U S, it will be thy Province to make more: Except thou desirest to have thy Source mix with the Spring of Self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcom a Discovery of thy Days, as was then made of her Nights.
Thy Servant, bu
**********************
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
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Look with our understanding and not our senses - Jonson
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!
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In the pen of a Puritan, ‘Grotesco’ denoted ‘fantastic’ and suggested supersitious, ignorant, pedantic, and priestly, all attributes of the King’s university men. On the Royalist side, ‘Grottesco’ (a motley creature) was used metaphorically for the Puritan state. (...) Cleveland’s use of Grottesco’ had distinct affiliations with the sphere of art adn farce literature where pibald and motley garments were worn by the clowns and Jack Puddings of the piece. D’Avenant’s and Browne’s uses of ‘groteque’ show that the word was still closely associated with fantastical pictorial phenomena, and while Hall’s metaphor betrays no direct kinship with the arts, he seems to have derived it from Browne and extended it to the popular character of farce and legend, Will o’ the Wisp”, the English Harlequin.
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Cynthia’s Revels
Crites: What ridiculous Circumstance might I devise
now, to bestow this reciprocal brace of Butter-flies one
upon another?
Amorphus/Oxford. Since I trode on this side the Alpes, I was not
so frozen in my Invention. Let me see: to accost him
with some choice remnant of Spanish, or Italian? that
would indifferently express my languages now: mar-
ry then, if he should fall out to be ignorant, it were
both hard and harsh. How else? step into some ra-
gioni del stato, and so make my induction? that were
above him too; and out of his Element, I fear. Feign
to have seen him in Venice or Padua? or some face neer
his in similitude? 'tis too pointed, and open. No, it
must be a more quaint, and collateral device. As —
stay: to frame some encomiastick Speech upon this our
Metropolis, or the wise Magistrates thereof, in which
politick number, 'tis odds, but his Father fill'd up a
Room? descend into a particular admiration of their
Justice, for the due measuring of Coals, burning of
Cans, and such like? as also Religion, in pulling
down a superstitious Cross, and advancing a Venus, or
Priapus, in place of it? ha? 'twill do well. Or to talk
of some Hospital, whose Walls record his Father a
Benefactor? or of so many Buckets bestow'd on his
Parish-church, in his life time, with his name at length
(for want of Arms) trickt upon them? Any of these?
Or to praise the cleanness of the Street, wherein he
dwelt? or the provident painting of his Posts against he
should have been Prætor? Or (leaving his Parent) come
to some special Ornament about himself, as his Rapier,
or some other of his Accoutrements? I have it: Thanks,
gracious Minerva.