Challenging Humanism:

Essays in Honor
of Dominic Baker-Smith

Ton Hoenselaars
Arthur F. Kinney
Editors

Newark: University of Delaware Press

Challenging Humanism

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PAGE 2
Challenging Humanism
Essays in Honor
of Dominic Baker-Smith

Edited by
Ton Hoenselaars and
Arthur F. Kinney

Newark: University of Delaware Press

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䉷 2005 by Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Challenging humanism : essays in honor of Dominic Baker-Smith / edited by Ton

Hoenselaars and Arthur F. Kinney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87413-920-1 (alk. paper)
1. Humanism. I. Baker-Smith, Dominic. II. Hoenselaars, A. J., 1956–
III. Kinney, Arthur F., 1933–
B821.C455 2005
144—dc22 2005009988

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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Contents

List of Illustrations 7
Foreword 11
Ton Hoenselaars
Introduction 18
Arthur F. Kinney
Utopia’s First Readers 23
Arthur F. Kinney
Taking More Seriously: Humanism, Cultural Criticism,
and the Possibility of a Past 54
Andrew D. Weiner
Thomas More at Epigrams: Humanism or Humanisms? 75
Elizabeth McCutcheon
Melanchthon, Latomus, Ramus: Teachers of Careful Reading 90
Kees Meerhoff
Christian Humanism in John Rolland’s Court of Venus 108
Roderick J. Lyall
In Praise of Dancing: A Paradoxical Encomium by Hendrik
Laurensz. Spiegel (1549–1612) 126
Marijke Spies
Early Texts of Donne’s ‘‘Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward’’:
Manuscripts and Their Omissions, and the Provenance of
the Earliest Translation, by Constantijn Huygens (1633) 135
Richard Todd
Sidney’s Critique of Humanism in the New Arcadia 154
Donald Stump
Shakespeare, Henri IV, and the Tyranny of Royal Style 179
Victor Skretkowicz
Bacon’s Spenser 209
W. A. Sessions
Humanism in Hard Times: The Second Earl of Leicester
(1595–1677) and His Commonplace Books, 1630–60 229
Germaine Warkentin

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6 CONTENTS

Making World War with Literature 254

John Neubauer
Recycling the Renaissance in World War II: E. W. & M. M.
Robson Review Laurence Olivier’s Henry V 269
Ton Hoenselaars
Of Music and Silence: The Harmonies of Thomas Whythorne
and Rose Tremain 290
Helen Wilcox

Dominic Baker-Smith: A Bibliography 311

List of Contributors 318
Index 323

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Illustrations

1. Map of Utopia (1516) 36

2. Map of Utopia (1518) 37
3. The Utopian alphabet 38
4. Abraham Ortelius, Utopiae Typus 40
5. The Renaissance book-wheel 50
6. Title page of Francis Bacon, Instauratio magna 51
7. Carolus Magnvs Redivivus (1592) 188
8. A sample of Whythorne’s ‘‘orthografye’’ and handwriting 293
9. Woodcut of Whythorne made for his Songes (1571) 307

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Challenging Humanism

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PAGE 10
Challenging Humanism
A Foreword
Ton Hoenselaars

DURING THE MID-1590s, ANTHONY MUNDAY, HENRY CHETTLE, THOMAS

Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare worked to-
gether on what was to remain a relatively obscure play, Sir Thomas
More. This biographical history play about the life and death of
Thomas More shows the major events of his career, focusing mainly
on the period from 1517 to 1535. First, we see how Thomas More as
Sheriff of London quenches the Ill May Day riots against the foreign
inhabitants of London by pacifying the Londoners with his remark-
able skills as a public speaker. Next, after managing successfully to
combat this early modern instance of inner city violence, More rises
to become lord chancellor of England under King Henry VIII. Soon
he experiences the occupational hazard, as Henry VIII declares him-
self the head of the Anglican Church. More refuses to support the
king’s opening move in the political phase of the English Reforma-
tion and marks the occasion by resigning his post. In response, the
king sends More to the Tower of London and sentences his one-time
lord chancellor to death by beheading.
One scene in the play, positioned in the pivotal third act, helps us
to gain a special insight into the early modern perception of Henri-
cian humanism. The scene shows the first meeting between the
play’s hero Thomas More and the Dutchman Desiderius Erasmus,
who happens to be accompanied by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
The meeting comes as no surprise. The audience has been prepared
for it earlier, in a short scene (2.1) where More also plans a practical
joke on Erasmus. Here, More asks his servant Randall to dress up as
More, and in that disguise to welcome Erasmus to the City of Lon-
don. The interesting point would be to see if Erasmus could tell the
fake More from the real More. As More says to Randall:

I’ll see if great Erasmus can distinguish

Merit and outward ceremony.1

11

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12 TON HOENSELAARS

In the event, Erasmus is not fooled by More’s practical joke. On

stage, we witness Randall, dressed up as Thomas More, while More
himself, the audience knows, is secretly observing the proceedings
in the wings. When Erasmus enters and sees Randall-as-More, he
asks the Earl of Surrey: ‘‘Is that Sir Thomas More?’’ (3.1.138), a
question he will repeat nearly verbatim a number of lines later
(3.1.163). Matters are resolved when the ‘real’ Thomas More
emerges from his hiding place and stops the charade. More tells
Randall to stop his act with the words: ‘‘Fool, painted barbarism, re-
tire thyself / Into thy first creation’’ (3.1.173–74), and apologizes to
Erasmus for this practical joke which, as he explains, again, really
served to show that often people respect others who dress up extrav-
agantly, and treat as fools learned men who dress in simple garb.
There is some relevance to the academic merriment enjoyed here
by the model courtier, translator, and creative sonneteer Henry
Howard, the machiavellian though apologetic schemer Thomas
More, as well as the protopacifist and praiser of Folly, Desiderius
Erasmus. There is a profound challenge inherent in these three
men’s jollity, as the sartorial twist to the scheme interrogates the
ideal of the courtier, the notion of the Machiavel, and, last but not
least, the image of the humanist scholar. The scene challenges the
virtue of the social graces propagated by Castiglione, rehearses with
modesty the machiavellian skills applied by those who (as Polonius
puts it) ‘‘of wisdom and of reach’’ may ‘‘by indirections find direc-
tions out,’’ and presents as pivotal the issue regarding the true schol-
ar’s ability to distinguish social display from individual worth. As
More explains to Surrey and Erasmus, what he arranged was really a
playful exercise, with the pedagogical aim to discover if Erasmus
could distinguish between ‘‘merit’’ and ‘‘outward ceremony,’’ and
with the intention to exhibit

how far respect

Waits often on the ceremonious train
Of base illiterate wealth, whilst men of schools,
Shrouded in poverty, are counted fools.
(3.1.175–78)

More’s practical joke, as his didactic justification of it brings to view,

emerges from a need implicit in humanism itself to test or challenge
the very values that have long been considered the mainstay of the
scholarly enterprise. In a similar way, the late twentieth-century chal-
lenge that has inspired scholars like those represented in this collec-
tion to rewrite the history of humanism was also inherent in the

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FOREWORD 13

historical movement itself, part of its recognized instruments as well

as goals. Equally, historians’ and critics’ current challenge of the
ideological constructs that have tended to obscure what may still be
reclaimed from the early modern past and its aftermath, is both a
continuation of the original quest and the ultimate justification of
their own current venture. Erasmus’s repeated question in the piv-
otal act of the play—‘‘Is this Sir Thomas More?’’—echoes through-
out the challenging first chapter of Renaissance Self-Fashioning.
Erasmus’s skepticism and his preparedness to reconsider the subject
position are also characteristic of the essays of this liber amicorum,
presented as a tribute to the inspiring personality and work of Domi-
nic Baker-Smith.2 They acknowledge the perpetual challenges inher-
ent in humanism: those recognized by the movement at the time,
but also those perceived by later generations, or those put forward
by revisionist critics, historians, and readers with a more or less pres-
entist orientation in recent decades.

Arthur F. Kinney discusses More’s Utopia and its great variety of con-
temporary readers. He approaches Utopia as a book whose structure
was designed to invite many readings and to confirm none. This ex-
plains how, throughout the sixteenth century, the text could already
elicit such an impressive range of different as well as differing re-
sponses from humanist scholars, politicians, rhetoricians, and travel-
ers. In his analysis of the contemporary reading practice of authors
like Guillaume Budé, Peter Giles, and Richard Hakluyt, Kinney illus-
trates how the continuing interpretive uncertainties vis-à-vis More’s
landmark text may really be situated in the period itself, and the
challenge that we as modern readers perceive inherent in Tudor hu-
manism.
Andrew Weiner, too, writes on Sir Thomas More and the different
ways to read his Utopia. Weiner’s perspective, however, is mainly a
methodological one, as he describes in detail the challenging views
that current historians may bring to More. It concentrates on Ste-
phen Greenblatt’s contextual, New Historicist reading of More’s Uto-
pia on the one hand, and, on the other, explores Quentin Skinner’s
alternative approach to this seminal text which honors its linguistic
status and grants new critical space to authorial intentionality. The
latter methodology provides one of the few means of countering the
constraints on our readings and knowledge of earlier periods in his-
tory. ‘‘Objectivity,’’ says Weiner, ‘‘may be a chimera, but unless we
are willing to try to encounter the historical other as other, we con-
demn ourselves only to seeing ourselves reflected everywhere we
look.’’

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14 TON HOENSELAARS

Elizabeth McCutcheon reassesses More’s Epigrammata. Her read-

ing of the Epigrams and the critical studies of them reveals the need
to think seriously in terms of humanisms plural rather than a single
humanism that would ignore the apparent inconsistencies, contra-
dictions, and failures. At the heart of the humanist enterprise was a
serious crisis, and this is captured in the Epigrammata themselves,
which allege, question, and subvert all at the same time. To More
the epigram was not a closed form, but an open-ended reflection on
the challenges inherent in the humanism that warrants, if anything,
an acknowledgment of the movements’s pluralism.
Kees Meerhoff presents a comparative survey of the careers of
Philip Melanchton, B. Latomus, and Peter Ramus, who were all im-
portant authors of textbooks and commentaries, and deeply influ-
enced by the founding fathers of Northern humanism, Agricola and
Erasmus. Meerhoff illustrates how these writers—who differed con-
siderably in age and circumstances but were closely linked together
by personal correspondence and personal contact—had many
things in common. His painstaking and well-informed contextual-
ization of these three humanists brings into focus their shared inter-
ests in rhetoric and logic, their involvement with commentary, as
well as their pursuit of the integration of disciplines.
Roderick J. Lyall studies John Rolland’s Court of Venus (1575). He
challenges its date of publication, arguing that it may well date from
a good deal earlier than 1548. Lyall then recontextualizes Rolland’s
poem in the 1540s and argues that its maker was really in the van-
guard of those who transmitted the materials and, to a degree, the
values of continental Christian humanism into Scotland.
Marijke Spies writes about a paradoxical encomium by the Dutch
poet Hendrik Laurensz. Spiegel (1549–1612), explaining its roots in
Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum. The paradox—defined there as ‘‘the
proof of a true thesis which is nevertheless at odds with generally
accepted opinion’’—represented the ideal rhetorical type of chal-
lenge. As the most Socratic way of argumentation, it was also consid-
ered the best means to achieve insight into truth. Following a
meticulous rhetorical analysis of Spiegel’s Praise of Dancing, Spies
provides a discussion of the ambivalent moral stance on the dance
in its contemporary cultural, political, and religious contexts, in a
way that has cross-European relevance for an appreciation of enter-
tainment and morality during the 1570s and 1580s.
Richard Todd, too, takes us to the European continent as he illus-
trates the relevance for a reliable edition of John Donne’s ‘‘Good
Friday’’ of Constantijn Huygens’s Dutch translation of the poem,
dating from 1633. In bibliographical terms, the contemporary

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FOREWORD 15

Dutch text has marked consequences for the precise collation of the
poem. As a translation, Huygens’ rendering of ‘‘Good Friday’’ may
also be looked upon as a personal dialogue with the English poet,
since we witness a Dutchman of the period adjusting the original
poem to his own confessional beliefs.
Like a number of other contributors, Donald Stump is alert to the
subtly shifting face of humanism during the early modern period.
Stump, for example, argues that the revised version of Sir Philip Sid-
ney’s Arcadia represents a sustained and systematic critique of the
very humanist ideals that critics have seen as central to Sidney’s view
of the world. Comparing the two versions of Arcadia in terms of the
way they represent such topics as education, counsel, rhetoric, and
ethics, Stump convincingly identifies in the New Arcadia a consider-
ably less optimistic perception of humanism that has its roots in
Protestantism. Sidney’s changing views, it is Stump’s belief, may be
explained in the light of his increasing preoccupation with religion
during the early 1580s.
Victor Skretkowicz explores the connection between Shakespeare
and the Continental Renaissance by tracing the impact of the
French King Henri IV on Shakespeare’s growing preference—
captured in The Rape of Lucrece and developed in the plays written
during the reign of the French king, between 1595 and 1609—to
represent popularly and constitutionally limited monarchy as this
had been advocated in the New Arcadia by Sidney, whose role as the
spokesperson of the English monarchomachist Shakespeare may
have wanted to take over. Shakespeare adopted not just the political
views, but also developed for his tyrants ‘‘a peculiarly detached, for-
mal royal style’’ whose roots may also have been continental. Finally,
with Cymbeline, written around the time of the assassination of Henri
IV in 1609, this rhetorical style would have shifted in accordance
with Shakespeare’s interest in reforming papal tyranny and asserting
British independence.
Like Skretkowicz, W. A. Sessions focuses on the reigns of both Eliz-
abeth I and James I. In his essay, he addresses the problem of writing
the nation along Protestant lines and illustrates how first Edmund
Spenser took up this challenge and how, in his footsteps, Francis
Bacon more or less adopted his model to frame the mythological
structures that were to serve as the basis of his impressive and influ-
ential scheme of science and technology. If, Sessions argues, Bacon
launched a vision of modern science and technology through his
texts, this phenomenon cannot be understood and assessed prop-
erly without acknowledging the mediation of Spenser and his trans-

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16 TON HOENSELAARS

formation of the old popular Arthurian myths and legends into a

new collective mythology.
In an essay that aptly complements Sessions’s trenchant observa-
tions about Spenser and Bacon, Germaine Warkentin writes about
the commonplace books of Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester
(1595–1677), and enhances our knowledge of the genre as a whole.
In a rich and detailed account of the materials (which cover the pe-
riod from 1630 to 1660), Warkentin sharply delineates the interna-
tional tensions of the age as she evokes a period during which the
commonplace book tradition as the encyclopedic mode of humanist
learning was slowly being challenged and eroded by a powerful new
tradition of science that propagated practical education and special-
ization.
This collection concludes with a number of essays that begin their
consideration of humanism in the near past and the present, before
returning to European humanism’s early modern roots. John Neu-
bauer addresses the issue of early twentieth-century literature and
art, devoting special attention to Ernest Psichari and his 1913 novel
L’Appel des armes which, as its title indicates, advocated the war that
came to be known as the Great War for Civilization, and which most
of us remember as the First World War. Curiously, Psichari belongs
to those who, from within the traditional bulwark of culture, ‘‘propa-
gated a virile, adventure-seeking, and martial spirit’’ and ‘‘attacked
traditional humanism and aestheticism.’’
War’s uneasy alliance with humanism is also central to the essay
by Ton Hoenselaars, which looks at a unique Second World War ap-
propriation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poetry produced by the
British film critics E. W. and M. M. Robson. Rewriting the work of
Sidney—who represented ‘‘the profound humanism which was the
predominant current in Elizabethan England’’—the Robsons
sought to produce a neo-Renaissance poetics for the film industry,
and to act as its guide in mobilizing the ‘‘moving image’’ in its fight
against European fascism. The continuing popularity of Laurence
Olivier’s film version of Henry V (1944) has now eclipsed the Rob-
sons’ strongly worded disapproval.
In this collection’s final contribution, Helen Wilcox compares the
autobiographical Book of Songs and Sonetts (1576) by Thomas Whyth-
orne and Rose Tremain’s Music and Silence (1999), a historical novel
which recounts the fortunes of a fictional English lutenist at the
court of the seventeenth-century Danish king, Christian IV. Assess-
ing musical culture from the Renaissance humanist perspective and
evaluating the extent of its continuing presence in our modern cul-

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FOREWORD 17

ture, Wilcox’s essay appropriately ends a collection that remembers

its beginnings throughout.
The essays in this book honoring the academic achievement of
Dominic Baker-Smith, are, nearly as a matter of course, interna-
tional in subject matter and author. Also, in a gesture that acknowl-
edges Baker-Smith’s inspiration as a teacher and scholar, these
contributions concentrate on the Tudor period with its newly classi-
cal orientation as well as its afterlives, devoting attention to Renais-
sance traditions and to the later redefinition of humanism under
the pressure of profound religious and political changes, and two
world wars. In view of the pedagogically motivated disguise trick in
Sir Thomas More, the challenge which these essays acknowledge in
the history of humanism would seem to mark their greatest debt to
the tradition.

Notes
1. Sir Thomas More: A Play by Anthony Munday and Others, rev. Henry Chettle,
Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare, ed. Vittorio Gabrieli
and Giorgio Melchiori, The Revels Plays (Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press, 1990), 2.1.40–41. Further references to this edition of the play are given after
quotations in the text.
2. Stephen Greenblatt, ‘‘At the Table of the Great: More’s Self-Fashioning and
Self-Cancellation,’’ in his Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 11–73.

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Introduction
Arthur F. Kinney

SHORTLY BEFORE HE LEFT HIS BELOVED CAMBRIDGE FOR HIS FIRST UNIVER-
sity appointment, Dominic Baker-Smith invited his future wife Ve-
ronica to join him in New Zealand; he had been offered a job, he
told her, in Saskatoon. By the time of his inaugural lecture as the
new chair of English at University College, Cardiff, on June 1, 1978,
he had a clearer sense of geography, recalling ‘‘the winter-gripped
prairies of Saskatchewan.’’ ‘‘I was standing in the Great Hall of Sas-
katoon,’’ he told the audience in Cardiff, ‘‘and I can remember
watching this manly figure stride onto the platform to deliver an en-
thralling lecture on the Vikings in Greenland. It was a memorable
performance and I do not wish to detract from it in any way when I
say that its impact was considerably heightened by the prospect of
walking home through the Arctic night in a temperature of minus-
sixty. Certainly the thought of the skeleton of the last Viking in
Greenland haunted me for a long time.’’
So did travel, as a theme and trope fundamental to humanism.
For Dominic, humanists in the early Tudor years of England kept
alive the fires of learning that burned in the formative period of
Western civilization: he traced humanism as a movement of the
mind back to its antique roots. It was the lynchpin between Plato
and Raphael Hythlodaeus in More’s Utopia that was the subject of
the Cardiff lecture, ‘‘Thomas More and Plato’s Voyage.’’
Plato could only claim a journey to Italy and Egypt and his ill-fated
voyage to found a philosophical state in Syracuse. Such limited
travel experience scarcely rivals Ulysses’ ten years of wandering, un-
less we begin to sense that this platonic style of travel goes outside
space and time. This would explain why Raphael journeys to an is-
land which is literally called ‘‘Nowhere.’’ Above all, for Raphael as
for Plato, the most important feature of travel is its power to detach
the mind from the pressures of normal life and focus it on essential
forms. Travel to the Americas as described in Vespucci’s Mundus
Novus, travel to the ancient world made possible in imagination by
the salvage operation of humanism, travel to a realm of pure ideas

18

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INTRODUCTION 19

supported by a revived platonic philosophy: all these could serve to

sharpen awareness of the discrepancy between individual aspira-
tions and institutional facts. An evident nostalgia for the ancient
world revealed in so many humanist authors from Petrarch onwards
lends the force of myth to their private dissatisfaction with contem-
porary life. So the renaissance movement ‘‘ad fonts’’ is much more
than an academic exercise, it is often a strenuous journey in search
of authenticity and of ideal forms.
Indeed, the two authors to whom Dominic would devote most of
his unusually distinguished scholarly career, Desiderius Erasmus and
Thomas More, he remarked, turned to ‘‘Epictetus, Plutarch, Cicero,
Seneca, and above all Plato.’’ For Dominic, renovatio or renascientia
suggested not a backward movement but rather a source of inspira-
tion and example that could be found also in what he called ‘‘the
realm of intelligibles,’’ in the pre-Constantinian Church, and (more
humbly) in Nature itself. The key texts twinned in the Cardiff lec-
ture were Plato’s allegory of the cave drawn from the Republic and
the Utopia—both visionary descriptions of alterity which could re-
lease persons imprisoned in their own stale lives and thoughts by
showing them what might be rather than what was. For Plato, it was
a matter of unbearable light; for More, it was Raphael’s unbearable
insistence that a communal society harmonizing intellect and will
was the inevitable consequence of rational conduct. According to
Plato’s Epistle VII, Socrates’s Syracuse where the philosopher would
be king was aborted, collapsing before what Plato calls μυθεν,
brute folly. Hytholadaeus shares this view, declining to counsel rul-
ers who govern societies of self-interest. But for Dominic, Plato
would not have the last word: Cicero would, and his advancement of
dialogic form as the basis for all rhetoric. ‘‘More is too good a pupil
of Cicero,’’ he told those at Cardiff, ‘‘to make his dialogue work to
an absolute conclusion. [W]e can only feel our way towards proba-
bilities.’’ Rhetoric opened the way to poetic, and the traveling mind
to a mind of inquiry.
On April 11, 1983, Dominic gave his second inaugural lecture,
this time as chair of English at the University of Amsterdam (import-
ing with him, writes one of our contributors, a home that was ‘‘the
geographical equivalent of a time-capsule, a corner of a foreign city
that was forever England’’). ‘‘On the Use of History’’ was a title he
borrowed from his predecessor in the Amsterdam chair, Gerard Vos-
sius, who had delivered his talk in January 1632: a true humanist act
of imitation. ‘‘As an Englishman who has made a particular study of
humanism and its great Dutch exponents my first intention is to
honour the learned and humane tradition, one of the glories of the

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20 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

Netherlands, which Vossius represents.’’ Dominic’s thoughts had

only deepened. ‘‘Humanism fought to establish historical studies in
opposition to the abstract concerns of the scholastics,’’ he noted in
Amsterdam, ‘‘and it had no doubts about access to the accumulated
wisdom of the Past.’’ Cicero was again at the heart of humanism with
his ideal orator, a master of encyclopedic learning who ordered his
speeches and his whole corpus not by system but by the concern with
moral action. ‘‘Imagination and dialogue are, after all, inseparable,’’
Dominic went on; ‘‘we project possibilities onto the unknown and
adapt to the response we encounter.’’ For him this understanding
brought together Vossius, Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense, and his own un-
derstanding:

The literary text occupies a special place in our response to history: it

leads us back to the point of genesis while remaining active at the point
of reception. The social controls and formal resources of a work create
the possibility of expression, but in order to achieve it the work must
transcend the sum of its inherited parts. To read a literary text we must
be alert to codes and conventions, to the originating context, but there
remains an element beyond the inherited where we respond to the per-
suasion of the text. As readers we enter a dialogue in which our own
familiar terms both contribute to the experience and are themselves
modified. Interpretation of the text can no more be final than it can be
separated from interpretation of ourselves. Literary history (as opposed
to the history of literature) can never achieve finality; each reading of
a text, each fusion of horizons, generates a new significance. Thus the
interpreter is held firmly in the confines of probability, the world of rhet-
oric and the human will.

He ended by quoting Gadamer: ‘‘ ‘all encounter with the language

of art is an encounter with a still unfinished process and is itself part
of this process.’ ’’
Over the years I have known Dominic, such rigorous thought was
almost always belied by the serenity of his manner, his courteous-
ness, his affability. Like his subject St. Thomas More, his sense of
humor often took a turn into self-irony. Once he recalled to me the
desperation he felt when he and Veronica, at the last moment, took
down from the walls and off from the shelves of their home in Am-
sterdam all signs of their Catholic faith upon learning that their ten-
ant was anti-Catholic; and then hurriedly replaced them all again
when he learned that the tenant was a devout Catholic after all. He
relaxed—often in an old rectory in Suffolk back in East Anglia—by
horse riding, becoming proficient at 26-mile rides involving many
jumps. When his beloved horse broke his leg, Dominic took the in-

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INTRODUCTION 21

surance money to go on an African horseback safari, riding the

horse Robert Redford rode in the film Out of Africa. A lover of music,
he was often in attendance at the Concertgebouw, living just around
the corner from the concert hall and the Van Gogh Museum.
For a brief period, Dominic ran the Sir Thomas Browne Institute
at the University of Leiden, following Jan van Dorsten’s untimely
and unexpected death. This would be the occasion of my most cher-
ished memory of Dominic. Jan and I had begun to organize a quat-
ercentenary conference on the life and legend of Sir Philip Sidney
to be held at Leiden in 1986, three years after Dominic’s inaugural
lecture at Amsterdam, and Dominic took up the task in 1985 follow-
ing Jan’s death. I joined him to help once again through the sum-
mer months of 1986, having last been at Leiden for the spring term
of 1984. The splendid international tribute was to be held in Zut-
phen where Sidney had died, having fallen in battle at the outskirts
of the town. Zutphen had been preparing for over a year: they had
isolated the location of Sidney’s fall in battle and had mounted a
special exhibit in the local museum. But then Dominic was notified
that a Marxist group would attempt to close down the conference
because a major speaker was from South Africa, then home to apart-
heid. The mayor and town aldermen of Zutphen had second
thoughts. Fearing severe damage to the town, they voted not to hold
the conference there, and Dominic found the campus of Leiden
closed to him, too, eventually relocating the conference at a church
four blocks from the University. Subsequently, the mayor, fearing
the cost of the loss of business, overrode the council and agreed to
Zutphen as its site; Dominic moved the conference back; and the
aldermen outvoted the mayor. The conference returned, with only a
day or two to go, to the Leiden church and Dominic bused overseas
speakers from Zutphen to Leiden. In an attempt to forestall further
trouble, he called a press conference, explaining that the speaker
was an enemy of apartheid—Sidney and the conference, after all,
were characterized by humanism—and the evening before his talk
television and newspapers throughout the Netherlands ran the
story; plainclothed policemen were hired to circulate and observe.
It was to no avail. When I went to open the church the next day—we
had moved the speaker to the earliest slot in the morning, but Domi-
nic was exhausted from making and supervising arrangements—a
group of rioters, mostly boys in their late teens, pulled into the
street, blocked both ends and, about fifty in number, descended on
the church, still locked as I waited for the key. Eventually police were
called by the institute staff member bringing the key and noting the
situation, the rioters were all arrested and taken off, and the confer-

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22 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

ence delegates held for two hours in a hotel some blocks from the
church. The conference resumed, with the South African scholar,
after lunch. For academics, it was an especially harrowing experi-
ence, covered that evening on the front page of the Amsterdam
newspaper. Later, an eminent British scholar, himself awarded a war
decoration, wrote Dominic that ‘‘men had won the Military Cross
for less.’’ Dominic’s chief scholarly concern—humanism—had been
put to the test, nearly causing an international incident: clearly, hu-
manism had much to teach through experience as well as through
research.
In time, Dominic would be decorated himself—made an Officer
of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to English
teaching in The Netherlands. In ‘‘Counsel and Caprice,’’ his fare-
well address as chair at Amsterdam, delivered on September 9, 1998,
two decades after his lecture at Cardiff, Dominic returned to hu-
manism and to the lessons of Seneca as employed in the Tudor
court. Whether or not the fated Sidney conference at Leiden was
still on his mind, Dominic would talk there about Seneca’s need for
stoicism, his passion for the art of persuasion rather than coercion,
and his pragmatism. Seneca’s humanist lesson to the likes of Eras-
mus and More, Dominic commented, was his practice of ‘‘invoking
general principles to meet particular needs’’ rather than ‘‘establish-
ing a formal system.’’ It was flexibility of action through the imagina-
tive and practical use of rhetoric. This appeal to principle, rather
than to system, Dominic remarks, ‘‘helped his later reception by a
Christian readership.’’ He taught the symbiosis of wise sayings and
wise deeds. Dominic was giving to Seneca the values of humanism
not only Erasmus and More but he too had come to know, not only
in libraries, research institutes such as the Centre for Reformation
and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto (where he pur-
sued work on the large international edition of the works of Eras-
mus), and societies such as the Society for Renaissance Studies in
England of which he was a founding member—but on the streets of
Leiden and the sanctuary of its church.
Perhaps Dominic never saw a greater challenge to humanism than
the near-riot in Leiden. But humanism has faced challenges from
More’s time until our own, challenges brutal and subtle, recognized
and unremarked. The very basis (and faith) of humanism, as well as
responses to it across the centuries, are the subject of the essays that
follow, inspired by and dedicated to one of the twentieth century’s
leading humanist scholars.

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Utopia’s First Readers
Arthur F. Kinney

I Suppose you are assembled here, supposing to reape the fruite of my

travayles: and to be playne, I meane presently to presente you with a
Comedie called Supposes: the verye name wherof may peraduenture
drive into every of your heades a sundry Suppose, to suppose, the mean-
ing of our supposes. Some percase will suppose we meane to occupie
your eares with sophisticall handling of subtill Suppositions. Some other
wil suppose we go about to discipher unto you some queint conceiptes,
which hitherto haue bene onely supposed as it were in shadowes; and
some I see smyling as though they supposed we would trouble you with
the vaine suppose of some wanton Suppose. But vnderstand, this our
Suppose in nothing else but a mystaking or imagination of one thing for
an other. For you shall see the master supposed for the seruant, the seru-
ant for the master: the freeman for a slaue, and the bondslaue for a free-
man: the stranger for a well knowen friend, and the familiar for a
stranger. But what? I suppose that euen already you suppose me very
fonde, that haue so simply disclosed vnto you the subtilties of these our
Supposes: where otherwise in deede I suppose you shoulde haue hearde
almoste the laste of our Supposes, before you coulde haue supposed
anye of them arighte.1

George Gascoigne’s self-consciously playful ‘‘Prologue or argu-

ment’’ to his translation of Ariosto’s I Suppositi, which he published
in his Hundreth Sundrie Flowres of 1573, proposes that the meaning
of his work is polyvalent and that any meaning rests not only in the
author’s intention but in the reader’s response. It may even be possi-
ble that a reader can hold in suspension several readings simultane-
ously. Gascoigne’s witty invitation has a more concrete reality in the
Renaissance book wheel which allowed a reader to read one text or
several, and collate meanings as possible interpretations. In this way,
books themselves became propositions, one possible statement
among many, contextualized by the other texts on the wheel, and it
follows that a book that was most open to the most possible readings

23

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24 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

would be read or consulted more often and might be relevant, in

changing ways, for a far longer time. I want to argue that we may
find just such a case in Thomas More’s Utopia to which a series of
meanings could be applied throughout the sixteenth century. Hu-
manists could read the book as a discussion of the best form of gov-
ernment and as a book of counsel for princes; rhetoricians could
read the book for its poetic strategies; travelers could read the book
as a voyage of discovery; and even skeptics could see in the book the
relativity of knowledge and of understanding. No one reading was
ever fixed or final. Readers reading More’s Utopia throughout the
Tudor period came to possess it in different ways: the man for all
seasons, as William Roper called him, had written a book for all sea-
sons.

II
Let us start at the beginning. The Utopia was written and first read
in conjunction with its immediate predecessor, the Encomium Moriae
of Erasmus, composed, Erasmus tells us, in More’s house in Chelsea.
Erasmus saw the similarity clearly enough and made something of
it; he claims in a letter to Ulrich von Hutten that More wrote Utopia
at first in the same way Erasmus wrote his praise of Folly: he began
with a wise and witty declamation, a monologic praise of wisdom
which, on the surface at least, would satisfy even a petulant Martin
Dorp.2 This oration ultimately became the many-layered book 2 of
Utopia, weaving its many meanings by approaching and diverging
from shared humanist texts of antiquity. More’s narrator, like Eras-
mus’s Folly, begins by telling of himself and then continues to ex-
pound (despite apparent inconsistencies) on the virtues of the
Utopian way of life; and where Folly ended by discussing the holi-
ness of Christian fools, Hythlodaeus, as More’s narrator, concludes
with a visionary republic drawn from Plato and the prayers of
Christ’s apostles.3 Both ground themselves in memorable prosopo-
peias: Folly who is by turns rational and irrational; Raphael Hythlo-
daeus who projects both his names in his oration—he can be
revelatory, a messenger from God; or a retailer of nonsense. The
orations of each protagonist imperceptibly weave wisdom and folly
without making any apparent distinctions; both draw on antique
pagan and sacred sources by way of rhetorical imitation, forcing
readers to take upon themselves the burden of determining when
their remarks are traditional or revolutionary, acceptable or objec-
tionable, forcing readers to measure any divergence from the texts

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 25

and ideas that initially inspire them. Both Folly and Hythlodaeus
combine hyperbole with litotes, sweeping generalizations with par-
ticularized anecdotes. Both move through various social and politi-
cal levels, through varied professions and generations, in an attempt
to seem comprehensive when in fact they select carefully the targets
of their attention. Erasmus sets up this doubling perspective from
the start, with his very title: Encomium Moriae means In Praise of Folly;
it also means In Praise of [Thomas] More. Openly it equates the two;
actually, Folly is forever questioning the relationship by implication.
More follows suit, an imitator further imitating. Utopia—his own ne-
ologistic trope taken from the Greek topia or place—adds the prefix
u (meaning No, meaning No Place) which More himself makes re-
flexive in his first letter to Peter Giles in the paragena which accom-
pany the text: ‘‘I thinke nothing could fall out of my mind’’ (40).4
But Greek u is homologous with eu (Good, or Good Place). Guil-
laume Budé joins in by adding still a third prefix in a letter to
Thomas Lupset: ‘‘Udepotia’’ or ‘‘Never-land.’’5 And as with the Enco-
mium Moriae, where Folly invites us to a game only to involve us, to
turn up our own portraits on her face cards, so in Utopia, as Hythlo-
daeus proceeds, his thoughts turn to war, slavery, and imperialism.
It must have seemed serious to its early readers despite its frequent
jocularity—as when soft gold is used to make chains for prisoners or
when baby chicks follow the motherly human who artificially incu-
bated them—until we (or they) realize what Gascoigne might tell us:
both Enconium Moriae but especially Utopia are conjectural. For early
readers, knowing the foundational texts or seeing the jokes, both
Encomium Moriae and Utopia are supposes.
Unlike Gascoigne, however, and even unlike Erasmus, More’s Uto-
pia had far more readers of far more editions in far more languages,
ensuring its popularity—its very centrality in Western thought and
literature—throughout the sixteenth century and well beyond. Why
was that? To ask why, I think, also asks how. I want to propose that a
major reason for its wide readership is a direct result of the wide
range of appeal it had to its first generations of readers in some
fairly likely supposes of my own.

III

Our first witness is Niccolò Machiavelli. On December 10, 1513—

from his farm outside Florence after suffering from torture and in-
carceration—he wrote his friend Francesco Vettori:

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26 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

Partitomi del bosco, io me ne vo a una fonte, a di quivi in un mio uccel-

lare. Ho un libro sotto, o Dante a Petrarca, o un di questi poeti minori,
come Tibullo, Ovvidio e simili: leggo quelle loro amorose passioni e
quelli loro amori, ricordomi de’ mia, godomi un pezzo in questo pen-
siero. Transferiscomi poi in su la strada nell’osteria, parlo con quelli che
passono, dimando delle nuove de’ paesi loro, intendo varie cose, e noto
varii gusti e diverse fantasie d’uomini. . . . Venuta la sera, mi ritorno in
casa, et entro nel mio scrittoio; et in su l’uscio me spoglio quella veste
cotidiana, piena di fango e di loto, a mi metto panni reali e curiali; e
rivestito condecentemente entro nelle antique corti degli antiqui uo-
mini, dove, da loro ricevuto amorevolemente, mi pasco di quel cibo, che
solum è mio, a che io nacqui per lui; dove io non mi vergogno parlare
con loro, e domandarli della ragione delle loro azioni; e quelli per loro
umanità mi rispondono; e non sento per 4 ore di tempo alcuna noia,
sdimentico ogni affanno, non temo la povertà, non mi sbigottisce la
morte: tutto mi trasferisco in loro.

Leaving the wood, I go to a spring, and from there to my bird-snare. I

have a book with me, either Dante or [Petrarch] or one of the lesser
poets like Tibulus, Ovid, and the like; I read about their amorous pas-
sions and about their loves, I remember my own, and I revel for a mo-
ment in this thought. I then move on up the road to the inn, I speak
with those who pass, and I ask them for news of their area; I learn many
things and note the different and diverse tastes and ways of thinking of
men. When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go into my study;
and on the threshold, I take off my everyday clothes, which are covered
with mud and mire, and I put on regal and curial robes; and dressed in
a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient courts of ancient
men and am welcomed by them kindly, and there I taste the food that
alone is mine, and for which I was born; and there I am not ashamed to
speak to them, to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they, in
their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I feel no boredom, I dis-
miss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I trouble at the
thought of death: I become completely part of them.6

PETRARCH HAD WRITTEN TO VERGIL, PRAISING HIS NEAR-CHRISTIAN VIR-

tue and to Cicero reporting his surprise at his messy involvement in
the world of politics, but Machiavelli supposes his pagan teachers
actually present in his room; and talks with them. What ensues is a
dialogue—a passing between them, back and forth—so that a
shared horizon of expectations constructs meaning. The ideas of
past humanist authorities are fragmented, parcelled out, and re-
emergent in supposed conversations. Later in this same letter Mach-
iavelli will outline his restoration of past ideas and exempla in Il
Principe: moments of cohesive thought reassembling and rearrang-

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 27

ing works and words from the revered past. Such matter employed
by such means is thoroughly humanist in scope and practice, Il Prin-
cipe like Utopia structurally realizing a demonstrative oration in full
dress. In 1553 Thomas Wilson would, following Agricola, define for
English humanists such an arrangement: it is ‘‘a meane wherby we
do praise, or dispraise thynges, as vertue, vice, tounes, citees, castles,
woddes, waters, hilles, and mountaines,’’ supposes so confirmed by
proofs bringing honesty, profit, and execution that the work would
‘‘teache men the truth of it.’’ The classical scholar turns sage: ‘‘the
Logician shewes hymselfe.’’ These directions from Wilson’s Arte of
Rhetorique are transparent, visible in the six places of logic to which
More turns to fashion Utopia through Hythlodaeus’s presentation to
Peter Giles, John Clement, and the More-persona within the text
and to us outside it: definition, causes, parts, effects, things adjoin-
ing, and contraries. ‘‘I do not se[e] otherwise,’’ Wilson writes ‘‘but
that these [places] of Logique must first be mynded ere thother can
well be had.’’7 Utopia II in its transparency hews to this line, at once
constituting a model humanist text and diverging from that model
in the Encomium Moriae. The first humanist readers of Utopia would
discern that where Folly asks only that we commend her perform-
ance, Hythlodaeus asks us to believe in the soundness of his argu-
ments, logical in the sequence of thoughts and sensible in the
application of principles.
We can ascertain humanists among More’s first readers for the
Utopia, and not only because he sent them copies, encouraged them
to circulate his work, and to recognize its form from that of the ora-
tion. His method is also outwardly humanist. Derived from John
Cheke and Johannes Sturm, it anticipates Roger Ascham’s Schoolmas-
ter, which instructs that ancient wisdom is the groundplot of argu-
mentation by way of imitatio. Ascham provides the following
example:

1. Tully retaineth thus much of the matter, these sentences, these

words.
2. This and that he leaveth out, which he doth wittily to this end
and purpose.
3. This he addeth here.
4. This he diminisheth here.
5. This he ordereth thus, with placing that here, not there.
6. This he altereth and changeth either in property of words, in
form of sentence, in substance of the matter, or in one or other
convenient circumstance of the author’s present purpose,

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28 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

and adds, ‘‘In these few rude English words are wrapped up all the
necessary tools and instruments wherewith true imitation is rightly
wrought withal in any tongue.’’8 This revival of classical learning and
classical texts as models is ‘‘celebratory’’ for Elizabeth Eisenstein,9
while Edward Surtz, S. J., lists those most prominently in the shadows
of Utopia: ‘‘Plato and Plutarch among the Greeks and Cicero and
Seneca among the Latins.’’10 In addition, ‘‘Lucian contributes to the
comic tone, and he is supplemented by Tacitus, with his reflections
as decadent contemporary society’’ (clvi).
The poem at the start of the 1518 Utopia signals to readers More’s
referential use of Plato: ‘‘Alone of all lands, without the aid of ab-
stract philosophy, I have represented for mortals the philosophical
city’’ (4:19), and More-persona reminds Hythlodaeus of this in Peter
Giles’s garden setting of book 1: ‘‘ ‘Your favorite author, Plato, is of
opinion that commonwealths will finally be happy only if either phi-
losophers become kings or kings turn to philosophy’ ’’ (87). To such
an end, says Plato’s Socrates in More’s source, the Republic, true navi-
gators make true visionaries (488D), perhaps the initial inspiration
of Hythlodaeus. Indeed, the land of Utopia which Hythlodaeus de-
scribes in Utopia II shares much with Plato’s republic: both have re-
publican governments ensuring a strong central authority; both
have a rigid class system for the peace and well-being of all. Both
emphasize the role of reason to restrain and direct impulses. Both
also create a stratified nation of faceless citizens. The premium Plato
places on education—with its regulated readings, its aesthetics of
morality, and its use of literature as self-fulfilling propaganda—
corresponds nearly enough to the portrait Hythlodaeus shares with
More-persona and Giles of Utopia. Mealtime readings and leisure
time activities perpetuate the state’s influence.
What is often forgotten, however, is that the Republic is not simply
Socrates’ declamation praising the ideal state but an inherent dia-
logue in which Socrates, especially in books 8 and 9, advances the
possibility of the moral degeneration and corruption of man. In de-
fending imperfect societies—the timarchy, which creates a split
community that encourages the use of force and relies on an evil
lack of intelligence; the democracy, which harbors anarchy and eter-
nal class struggle; and the tyranny, which frees man’s criminal in-
stincts—Socrates realizes the full possibilities of the Foundation
Myth, which makes humanity at various stages of perfection (and im-
perfection) analogous to the earth’s metals. This double edge of
Socrates’ understanding of man and his institutions is more dra-
matic and explicit than Hythlodaeus’s fatuous report on Utopia, but
it is just this obviousness of the pattern that allows More to work

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 29

largely through insinuation. But Hythlodaeus’s literal-minded-

ness—not possible with those humanists who formed the supposed
earliest readers—easily forgets that, for Socrates, Glaucon and Adei-
mantus are merely stalking horses. Unlike Hythlodaeus, Socrates
combines unrealized propositions along with actualized discourse,
the split becoming apparent by book 10 when his theory of art is
discovered to be twice removed from reality: the imitation not of fact
but of imitation. The imagination projects, but neither validates nor
realizes, the ideal republic in human history. Hythlodaeus misses all
this, as More’s humanist readers would not: like the Encomium Mo-
riae, the Utopia rests on a learned joke; and it is the joke that turns
analysis and revelation into a suppose.
Plato’s descriptions of imperfect societies artfully refer to Lycur-
gus’s Sparta among other actual governments—an allusion Jerome
Busleyden for one recognized11—but it is now difficult to tell
whether this reference, or the communism shared by Sparta and
Plato’s ideal republic, or the reference to Solon (with whom Plato
compares and contrasts Lycurgus as the other great lawmaker) in
the Timeaus recalled Plutarch’s life of Lycurgus to More initially. But
Plutarch frequently supplies the content as Plato supplies the form
for Hythlodaeus’s presentation in Utopia II. For instance, Plutarch is
the referential humanist text when Hythlodaeus, unwittingly, draws
on many of Lycurgus’s innovations, such as
his institution of a senate, or Council of Elders . . . by making the power
of the senate a sort of ballast for the ship of state and putting her on a
steady keel, it achieved the safest and the most orderly arrangement,
since the twenty-eight senators always took the side of the kings when it
was a question of curbing democracy, and, on the other hand, always
strengthened the people to withstand the encroachments of tyranny.
(5.6–7)12

He persuaded his fellow-citizens to make one parcel of all their territory

and divide it up anew, and to live with one another on a basis of entire
uniformity and equality. (8.2)

Next, he undertook to divide up their movable property also, in order

that every vestige of unevenness and inequality might be removed; and
when he saw that they could not bear to have it taken from them directly,
he took another course, and overcame their avarice by political devices.
In the first place, he withdrew all gold and silver money from currency,
and ordained the use of iron money only. (9.1–2)

With a view to attack luxury still more and remove the thirst for wealth,
he introduced his third and most exquisite political device, namely, the

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30 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

institution of common messes, so that they might eat with one another
in companies, of common and specified foods, and not take their meals
at home, reclining on costly coaches at costly tables, delivering them-
selves into the hands of servants and cooks to be fattened in the dark,
like voracious animals. (10.1)

For one of the noble and blessed privileges which Lycurgus provided for
his fellow-citizens, was abundance of leisure. (24.2)

He did not permit them to live abroad at their pleasure and wander in
strange lands, assuming foreign habits and imitating the lives of peoples
who were without training and lived under different forms of govern-
ment. (27.3)

[Lycurgus] trained his follow-citizens to have neither the wish nor the
ability to live for themselves; but like bees they were to make themselves
always integral parts of the whole community, clustering together about
their leader. (25.3)

Senators are elected for life (26.3). Lycurgus drives away visitors
(27.3–4). Lawsuits vanish (24.4). Burials are simple and free of su-
perstition (27.1–2). Plutarch’s approval is unalloyed. But there is an-
other side to all this. Boys are separated from girls in Sparta and
subjected to stern discipline by older men; they practice sodomy to
relieve themselves (17.1); they turn effeminate (22.1). Lycurgus’s so-
ciety is widely known for its simplicity, but it is a life based on hard
and unrelenting physicality with no luxury, no splendor, and little
joy. These sharp disjunctions serve as warnings to More’s humanist
readers that there are flaws, too, in Hythlodaeus’s unvarnished en-
comium. Plato realizes it: he has the Spartans reliant on Helot slaves
and ridicules their form of government in Republic VIII. Hythlo-
daeus’s visionary account is untenable at any stage of its develop-
ment.
Cicero deals with laws and the rhetoric of law, but he also takes up
in De Finibus I the Epicureanism that is the basis of Utopian philoso-
phy. Cicero claims that pleasure is the chief good (1.9.29ff.), a plea-
sure that, naturally perceived, sought, and achieved, leads to natural
fulfillment and therefore to wisdom, temperance, and reason
(1.14.46–47).

Here is indeed a royal road to happiness—open, simple, and direct! For

clearly man can have no greater good than complete freedom from pain
and sorrow coupled with the enjoyment of the highest bodily and mental
pleasures. Notice then how the theory embraces every possible enhance-
ment of life, every aid to the attainment of that Chief Good which is our

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 31

object. Epicurus, the man whom you denounce as a voluptuary, cries

aloud that no one can live pleasantly without living wisely, honourably
and justly, and no one wisely, honourably and justly without living pleas-
antly. (1.18.57)13

But then, having set this forth, Cicero himself attacks Epicureanism
in De Finibus II where it may lead to happiness but may just as well
lead to pride. Cicero sees how Epicureanism can leave out of ac-
count virtue and moral worth. This exercise of humanist reading
practices is instructive: humanists read on beyond passages lifted out
of fuller pagan texts; and, by implication, they thereby demonstrate
the partiality of Hythlodaeus’s account. To such classical authorities
More also adds the wit of Lucian (something surely beyond Hythlo-
daeus’s recognition): he may very well be drawing on the reservoirs
of his own memory when he had previously translated Lucian’s Phi-
lopseudes, an attack on liars which is really an anatomy of human cre-
dulity. This, too, signals More’s treatment of the sailor turned
narrator in Utopia II. It is with bifocal surveillance—with one eye on
classical resources and one eye on the present treatise of Utopia—
that the book’s learned first readers understood the purpose and
accomplishment of More’s suppose.

IV

For early readers, then, the Utopia was constructed in a classical

neighborhood. But other contemporary authors lived alongside
their forbears: Erasmus, for instance. His Encomium Moriae—so in-
fluential a work on the Utopia—turned an oration into a dialogue
between the wise and the foolish and then into a triangulation with
the reader who is always in the mediating, as well as the receiving,
position. Although we do not often think of it, the Encomium Moriae
rests on so slender a thematic proposition that those early readers
must also have supposed it an illustration of another famous work
by Erasmus, and one that kept expanding throughout his lifetime,
De Copia. This spur to the imagination awakens the joys of creativity.
One of the more famous, even now, is Erasmus’s illustration using
the death of Socrates. This ‘‘can be used to show that death holds
no fear for a good man, since he drank the hemlock so cheerfully;
but also to show that virtue is prey to ill will and far from safe amidst
a swarm of evils; or again that the study of philosophy is useless or
even harmful unless you conform to the general pattern of behav-
iour. This same incident can be turned to Socrates’ praise or

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32 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

blame.’’14 Citing this example, Eugene R. Kintgen notes that for

Erasmus,

the ‘‘Philosophy’’ or ‘‘moral implications’’ of a passage are not always

straightforward, may in fact even be contradictory, and the existence of a
commonplace book, with its myriad pigeonholes to be filled, could have
encouraged an alert reader to use each passage for as many entries as
possible. But for Erasmus, this is not a matter of great—or even minor—
concern: the value of the story inheres not in the lasting verities it illus-
trates but in the ways it can be deployed, and an example that can be
used in many different ways may well be more valuable, because more
useful, than one that is more limited. Or, as Erasmus goes on to exclaim,
‘‘If you look at this example of Socrates and determine its successive
scenes, how many subject headings will you thus elicit!’’ (639)15

The passage is contagious, perhaps delirious, in its sense of possi-

bility.
And what is true of Erasmus for Socrates’s death is true of Hythlo-
daeus for Utopia’s virtues. Narrating a suppose where all is held in
common to eliminate pride and greed—the twin evils of sixteenth-
century Europe for Hythlodaeus—he revels in what is common
among Utopians: the garments they wear, the games they play, the
meals they eat, the texts they hear, the farm they tend as apprentices,
the houses they rotate. Nothing is ever private. Appropriating the
Tudor commonplace that the polity can be likened to the family in
its governance and dependence, Hythlodaeus makes Utopia one
large family, too, but a family that knows each others’ business and
a family where every member aligns himself and herself with every
other family member. No secrets, in fact, are allowed: nuptials are
conducted after a mutual inspection of the future partner’s nude
body. No privacy means no trust. But no trust redounds rather dif-
ferently as it transforms the meanings of pride and greed and self-
identity they constitute. Yet Hythlodaeus is not More’s only victim in
this dimly understood suppose: More-persona is also culpable. At
the end of Utopia I Hythlodaeus sums up his case against the capital-
ist societies of Europe at the dawn of the sixteenth century, and
More-persona stoutly defends them. They are at an impasse. Oddly
enough, though, Hythlodaeus makes precisely the same case at the
end of Utopia II—and More-persona wavers. ‘‘I cannot agree with all
that he said. But I readily admit that there are very many features in
the Utopian commonwealth which it is easier for me to wish for in
our countries than to have any hope of seeing realized’’ (4.245–47).
But that is the point, of course, of all the copious illustrations of Uto-
pia: there is no way to get there and so it is left out. There is no way

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 33

to get Nowhere, to arrive at Never-Never Land, to realize the Ideal

Place.
But then, Quentin Skinner has acutely remarked, ‘‘Almost every-
thing about More’s Utopia is debatable.’’16 We may be excused if we
suppose, on the face of it, that the Utopia is deeply, powerfully, hu-
manist itself. It attempts to liberate a country’s citizens from jeal-
ousy, pride, and poverty. It denounces injustice and immorality. It
attacks the European abuse of power, the oppression of the weak,
the self-serving rule that causes factionalism and war. It guarantees
that no desire of an individual undermines the legitimation or gov-
ernance of the state. It erodes materialism. It encourages moral and
intellectual improvement. It assigns the greatest importance to
learning; and, indeed, we are told, the Utopians surpass any of their
neighboring nations. But the price that is paid for this is individual
oppression. Control can be repressive, ruthless even brutal: exile,
slavery, and imperialism are not unknown—are, indeed, fostered as
necessary means for the state’s ends. There is no unlicensed travel
and no real freedom of expression. Those who fear death are si-
lently buried; those who commit suicide or die from a terminal ill-
ness are refused any proper burial. What glistens in Hythlodaeus’s
eyes, and is reflected in his desire to return to Utopia, speaks to his
own pride and greed.
This suppose did not pass unnoticed among Utopia’s first readers.
Budé writes to Lupset of the book as ‘‘very pleasant reading as well
as reading likely to be profitable’’ but the real likelihood comes in
the perceived effects of the book (especially in terms of profit):

I had the book by me in the country as I ran up and down very busily and
gave directions to the workmen, for, as you have partly come to know by
yourself and partly heard from others, I had been expending much en-
ergy on the business of my country estate now for the second year. As I
learned and weighed the customs and laws of the Utopians, the reading
of the book impressed me so much that I almost neglected and even
forsook the management of household affairs.17

He continues, ‘‘Now, the island of Utopia, which I hear is called also

Udepotia, is said, by a singularly wonderful stroke of fortune (if we
are to believe the story), to have adopted the customs and the true
wisdom of Christianity for public and private life and to have kept
this wisdom uncorrupted even to this day’’ (4:11)—if we are to believe
the story. The sheer insistent weight of copia does not make it so. ‘‘I
personally, however, have made investigation and discerned for cer-
tain that Utopia lies outside the limits of the known world. Undoubt-

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34 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

edly, it is one of the Fortunate Isles, perhaps close to the Elysian

Fields’’ (4:13). Peter Giles, who after all was there, according to Uto-
pia I and his own account, echoes Budé in a letter to Busleyden:

As to More’s difficulty about the geographical position of the island, Ra-

phael did not fail to mention even that, but in very few words and as it
were in passing, as if reserving the topic for another place. But, somehow
or other, an unlucky accident caused us both to fail to catch what he
said. While Raphael was speaking on the topic, one of More’s servants
had come up to him to whisper something or other in his ear. I was
therefore listening all the more intently when one of our company who
had, I suppose, caught cold on shipboard, coughed so loudly that I lost
some phrases of what Raphael said. I shall not rest, however, till I have
full information on this point so that I shall be able to tell you exactly
not only the location of the island but even the longitude and latitude—
provided that our friend Hythlodaeus be alive and safe. (4:23)

But why, we might ask sharing in this suppose, did you not ask him
a second time, to repeat what he had just said? ‘‘There are various
reports circulating about the man’’ now, Giles goes on (4:25). Per-
haps Giles knew that from the beginning. We might easily suppose
he did.

V
To foster, solidify, or perhaps even to end supposings about the
Utopia, early texts were not only preceded by a parade of letters
which, commenting seriously or satirically on More’s work, never-
theless added to its very materiality. The Utopia appeared in the
midst of the first great age of bookmaking: of dedications, prefaces,
letters of commendation, even of multiple dedications to honor pa-
trons and friends. In the earliest texts of More’s Utopia, the multiple
dedication was displaced by a multiple title: The Best State of a Com-
monwealth and the New Island of Utopia; in which Best State might be
synonymous or antonymous with Utopia; in which Commonwealth was
taken more precisely than customary. The subtitle is also open to
various supposings: A Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than
Entertaining—and no more? If Golden here is meant to introduce the
scorn awarded to gold in Utopia II, or its impracticality, then Benefi-
cial is transformed in meaning and becomes synonymous rather
than antonymous with Entertaining. This passage finally concludes
with: by the Distinguished and Eloquent Author THOMAS MORE Citizen
and Sheriff of the Famous City of London. Here too the relationship be-

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 35

tween Distinguished and Eloquent is unclear: might we suppose that

one causes the other? or remains independent of it? As for More, he
is both ruled and ruler, Citizen and Sheriff. Either way, however, he
is of London, not of Utopia, and not even in Antwerp where Hythlo-
daeus was living, at least for a time.
Moreover, ‘‘The reader who opened Thierry Marten’s edition,’’
Dominic Baker-Smith writes,

once he had absorbed the significance of the title page, was confronted
by a map of the unknown island and several other items which appeared
to support its authenticity: the Utopian alphabet, a short poem in Uto-
pian with a Latin translation and a further poem in Latin by Raphael’s
nephew, Anemolius. This opening section was followed by the com-
mendatory letters and verses provided by several humanists, the ‘‘glow-
ing testimonials’’ which More had asked Erasmus to solicit [!]. The body
of this introductory material, the parerga or ornaments of the text, plays
a subtle part in the elaboration of the fiction, and the most important
thing for the moment is to note the way in which it lures the reader into
the Utopian game through such apparently objective features as the map
and the alphabet.18

Even here, there was not one map; there were two: in 1516 a simple
one, with the Utopian crescent of land representing a human head,
the ship which carried Hythlodaeus ready to enter port. In 1518,
though, Hythlodaeus is off the ship, and standing alongside More-
persona while, from another corner, lurking, Peter Giles looks on.
The ship seems to be leaving rather than arriving; and the whole
island has become more complicated with a decoration at the top
that might be an artist’s added touch—the bells confused, merging
characters that are somewhere between Greek and Hebrew.
Supposing an ideal commonwealth stretched through the Tudor
age. Just months after the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, Armigail
Wade sent to her ideal reader—the Queen—a chart entitled ‘‘The
distresses of the Comon Welth with ye meanes to remedy them.’’ In
the 1560s, an anonymous writer provided ‘‘A treatise on the well gov-
ernment of a commonwealth under heads’’ of which there were
four: ‘‘Faith, Concord, Order, and Discipline.’’ William Blandy por-
trayed the ideal land not as an island but as a castle inhabited by a
king, a justicer, a soldier, a merchant, an artificer, and a tiller of the
ground. Lupset himself joined in with the dialogue SIUQILA: Too
Good To Be True in 1580. ‘‘Dedicated to Sir Christopher Hatton,’’ Wil-
liam Sherman tells us, ‘‘the text documents the travels of the godly
citizen ‘Siuqila’ (whose name, reversed, reads ‘Ailquis,’ or any-
body).’’ He continues,

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1. Map of Utopia (1516) from Thomas More’s Utopia, printed at Louvain, Courtesy
of the Yale University Library.

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2. Map of Utopia (1518) from Thomas More’s Utopia, published by John Froben
in Basel. It is the work of Ambrosius Holbein, brother of Hans Holbein the
Younger. Courtesy of the Yale University Library.

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38 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

3. The Utopian alphabet from Thomas More’s Utopia. Courtesy of the Yale
University Library.

Tired of the ‘‘wickednesse, naughtinesse, falsehode, and other great

enormities of his own Countrie’’ (which is that ‘‘famous and most fertile
Iland called ‘Ailgna’ ’’ [‘‘Anglia’’]), he wandered among papists, Turks,
and cannibals until he landed upon the shores of ‘‘Mauqsun’’ (‘‘Nus-
quam,’’ or nowhere). Here he met ‘‘Omen’’ (‘‘Nemos’’ or nobody),
who—although he refused to bring Siuqila to his countrymen—gave in
to a detailed comparison of the two societies. This device—like More’s

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 39

division of the two books of Utopia—affords Lupton the opportunity to

critically characterize the conditions in Ailgna while praising ‘‘com-
mendable customes, the plaine meaning and true dealing, the Lordes
liberalitie, the Ladies great courtesie, the husbands fidelitie, the wiues
obedience, the maydens modestie, the masters sobrietie, the seruants
diligence, the Magistrates affabilitie, the Judges equitie, the commons
amitie, the preferring of publique commoditie, the generall hospitalitie,
the exceeding mercie, the wonderfull charitie, and the constant Christi-
antie’’ of the Mauqsunians.

But ‘‘In spite of its utopian formula,’’ Sherman concludes, ‘‘Lupset’s

Siuqila begs to be read in a different context—not that of dialogic
play or moral philosophy but of prescriptive analysis and common-
wealth policy.’’19 Another mapmaker volunteered his cartographical
Utopia, too: the distinguished Abraham Ortelius executed a copper
engraving of Utopia in 1595–96 at the request of J. M. Wackher a
Wackenfels and Jacob Monau. Although Ortelius follows contempo-
rary geographic conventions, his island resembles Australia more
than the crescent shape described by Hythlodaeus. He does draw in
the fifty-four towns and the capital Amaurotum, but adds his own
fanciful names for those left nameless in More: Horsdumonde (‘‘out
of this world’’), for example; Nulleville (‘‘no place’’); Sansterre
(‘‘lack of land’’). The same is true for the rivers: Sanspoisson fleuve
(‘‘river without fish’’) and Sanseau fleuve (‘‘river without water’’),
and adds as well mountains and forests, wheatfields, vineyards, and
animals.20

VI
By the mid-sixteenth century, however, humanist supposes
grounded in oratorical and dialogic visionary portraits were being
superseded by the influence of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Libro del
Cortegiano Englished by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561. Castiglione’s ex-
traordinarily fertile work continues employing the propositional
quality of speech and debate, resting as it must on methexis, but he
vastly extends the voices, attitudes, and allusions by setting his inves-
tigation within a highly cultivated social and political setting and
conversation: here prosopographia, in the court of Urbino imagined
in 1506, joins prosopopaeia, both raised to marmoreal art. Given the
refinements of civilization Castiglione means to suppose his is a
work stressing not only eloquence but elegance. He counterfeits his-
toric personages who in the aggregate might suppose the ideal
courtier. About this he is, in a dedicatory epistle to ‘‘the Reverend

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40 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

4. Abraham Ortelius, Utopiae Typus, ex Narratione Raphaelis Hythodaei, Descriptione

D. Thomas Mori (Antwerp, 1595–96).

and Illustrious Signor Don Michel de Silva, Bishop of Viseu,’’ openly

unapologetic:

Others say that since it is so difficult, and well-nigh impossible, to find a

man as perfect as I wish the Courtier to be, it was wasted effort to write
of him, because it is useless to try to teach what cannot be learned. To
such as these I answer (without wishing to get into any dispute about the
Intelligible World or the Ideas) that I am content to have erred with
Plato, Xenophon, and Marcus Tullius; and just as, according to these
authors, there is the Idea of the perfect Republic, the perfect King, and
the perfect Orator, so likewise there is that of the perfect Courtier. And
if I have been unable to approach the image of the latter, in my style,
then courtiers will find it so much the easier to approach in their deeds
the end and goal which my writing sets before them. And if, for all that,
they are unable to attain to that perfection, such as it is, that I have tried
to express, the one who comes the nearest to it will be the most perfect;
as when many archers shoot at a target and none of them hits the bull’s
eye, the one who comes the closest is surely better than all the rest.21

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 41

Il Cortegiano is a suppose, then, rooted in paradox: reaching for the

unreachable, realizing the unrealizable. Always conscious of this, as
Hythlodaeus never was, Castiglione grounds his work in wit, ambigu-
ity, feigning. Manner becomes indivisible from matter; feigning
civilized ease even when it is untrue—what he termed sprezzatura—
Castiglione encourages indirection to find direction out. Simulation
is indivisible from dissimulation. His English disciple was not a
writer of fiction, or of treatises about ideality, but the rhetoricial
George Puttenham, who emphasizes the great variety of rhetorical
devices used to bring supposes to life, to energize thought and imag-
ination. Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (that is, imaginary writing)
in 1589 stresses figures of speech like metaphor and allegory in
which ‘‘we speake one thing and thinke another’’ in which ‘‘our
wordes and our meanings meete not’’ (186). The ‘‘chiefe ring-
leader and captaine of all other figures’’ is the ubiquitous allegoria
or false semblant: ‘‘The use of this figure is so large, and his vertue
of so great efficacie as it supposed no man can pleasantly utter and
perswade without it, but in effect is sure never or very seldome to
thrive and prosper in the world, that cannot skilfully put [it] in ure
[⳱use]’’ (186).
Under this general heading, Puttenham lists enigma, irony, hy-
perbole; they are ‘‘holding somewhat of the dissembler, by reason
of a secret intent to appearing by the words, as when we go about
the bush, and will not in one or a few words expresse that thing
which we desire to have knowen, but do chose rather to do it by
many words’’ (193). He prizes the quick wit that is scorned by Roger
Ascham and John Lyly (in Euphues, 1580). His open admission of
feigning allies him to Sir Philip Sidney’s sense of poetry in his Defense
(ca. 1580) as well. And, accustomed to this, a second generation of
readers turned back to More’s Utopia seeing in it double entendres, be-
ginning with the name of the island and its sailor-historian-narrator.
Rereading Utopia as a suppose of the 1580s, readers might find the
consequences of enclosure paradoxical, good and bad, for it both
introduced a strong new economy and resulted in a massive disloca-
tion of part of the populace. There is, again, the matter of thievery.
Hythlodaeus argues in Utopia I that because thieves and murderers
are sentenced alike to capital punishment, killing is encouraged:
‘‘Since the robber sees that he is in as great danger if merely con-
demned for theft as if he were convicted of murder as well, this sin-
gle consideration impels him to murder the man whom otherwise
he would only have robbed. In addition to the fact that he is in no
greater danger if caught, there is greater safety in putting the man
out of the way and greater hope of covering up the crime if he leaves

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42 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

no one left to tell the tale. Thus, while we endeavor to terrify thieves
with excessive cruelty, we urge them on to the destruction of honest
citizens’’ (75). Such spurious reasoning cannot withstand scrutiny in
the 1580s, when men and women were alerted to the malleability
and variety of expression. Hythlodaeus ignores the purpose of the
law he alludes to, its first cause: in a country overpopulated with the
poor, it is a nice question whether murder is worse; in a country in
short supply, theft is tantamount to a capital offense. Stealing needs
sterner control because, driven by debt, men are more apt to steal
than to slay; English law knows human nature if Hythlodaeus does
not know himself. And he surely does not: his diatribe on pride at
the close of Utopia I is the proudest speech in the entire work. The
bridge in the letter to Giles from More is pure Puttenham as well:

According to my own recollection, Hythlodaeus declared that the bridge

which spans the river Anydrus [‘‘without water’’; so why the bridge?] at
Amaurotum is five hundred paces in length. But my John says that two
hundred must be taken off, for the river there is not more than three
hundred paces in breadth. Please recall the matter to mind. If you agree
with him, I shall adopt the same view and think myself mistaken. If you
do not remember, I shall put down, as I have actually done, what I myself
seem to remember. Just as I shall take great pains to have nothing incor-
rect in the book, so, if there is doubt about anything, I shall rather tell
an objective falsehood than an unintentional lie—for I would rather be
honest than wise. (41)

The whole anecdote may be arranged for this final remark, divorc-
ing honesty from wisdom, itself a conundrum; but this in turn is un-
dermined since there need be no difficulty if the bridge arcing the
river came down over the land one hundred paces at each end as it
would most likely do. This fussiness for suitable presentation—this
self-consciousness—is given fuller illumination (and play) in Castig-
lione, as the art of feigning and the use of irony and ambiguity was
brought to the fore, establishing under the tutelage of Castiglione a
wholly new aesthetic.
At the same time Puttenham was encouraging a kind of heady de-
light in rhetorical practices, Sir John Harington, turning his atten-
tion to Ariosto and the interlacement of Orlando Furioso, was
emphasizing the need and appeal of simple narrative line, of plot.
This, he reminded his own readers, was what truly ‘‘holdeth chil-
dren from play, and old men from the chimney corner’’22 —‘‘a tale.’’
Clear sequence of events and ideas is what Thomas Blundeville advo-
cates in The True Order and Method of Wryting and Reading Hystories
(1574). Writing with patterns makes reading purposeful.

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 43

And though we seeke by reading Hystories, to make our selves more

wyse, aswell to direct our owne actions, as also to counsell others, to
sturre them to vertue, and to withdrawe them from vice, and to beautyfie
our owne speache with grave examples, when we discourse of anye mat-
ters, that therby it may have the more authoritie, waight, and credite.
(sigs. H2v-H3)

Moreover, human supposes follow the orderly if mysterious provi-

dence of God.

First that we may learne therby to acknowledge the providence of God,

whereby all things are governed and directed. Secondly, that by the ex-
amples of the wise, we may learne wisedom wisely to behave our selves
in all our actions, as well private as publique, both in time of peace and
warre.
Thirdly, that we maye be stirred by example of the good to follow the
good, and by example of the evill to flee the evill. (sigs. F2v-F3)

Blundeville’s reading of More’s suppose differs from the witty ele-

gance of Castiglione and the witty playfulness of Erasmus. Essentials
are mined out of the dross also containing accidents.

In the observing of meanes to attayne the ende, it is meete to marke well

the order of those meanes, and howe they are linked togither, which
order may proceede three maner of waies, that is, eyther in beginning
wyth the verye first thing that tendeth to any ende, and so forward from
one thing to an other, you come to the last, or else contrarywise in begin-
ning with the last meane, next to the end, and so backewarde from
meane to meane untill you come to the first, or leaving both these waies,
you maye take the thirde, which is to devide all the meanes into their
general kinds, and to consider of all the meanes contayned in every
kinde, apart by themselves. (sigs. G2-G2v)

Blundeville’s approach is sequential, developing a traditional narra-

tive so as to contextualize ideas and make them mnemonic; or it is
segmental, dividing matters into cause and effect, ‘‘quicklye to dis-
cerne which meanes bee good, and which be not, to bring anye
thing to passe’’ (sig. G4v). Thus readers will ‘‘reduce all things into
a briefe summe’’ (sig. G4v).

And therefore when we finde any such [useful example] in our reading,
we must not onely consider of them, but also note them apart by them-
selves in such order, as we may easily finde them, when soever we shall
have neede to use them. And the order of such examples, would not be
altogither according to the names of the persons, from whence they are

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44 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

taken . . . but rather according to the matters & purposes whereto they
serve. (sig. H3)

For readers in the 1580s, then, Utopia might seem a double narra-
tive: the biography of Hythlodaeus in book 1 succeeded by the chro-
nological history of the island in Utopia II, moving from geography
to politics, from society to religion, and ending with a grand philoso-
phy that is meant to pull together all the threads of Hythlodaeus’s
two narratives. In reading More’s suppose this way, later Tudor read-
ers would mediate and reconcile the angry Hythlodaeus of Utopia I,
rigidly critical, sternly unsympathetic with the ways of contemporary
Europe; and the disillusioned Hythlodaeus of Utopia II who is exiled
from the land he dearly admires: a misfit in his secular Eden.

And bycause we finde manye tymes, that like meanes have bene used to
the obtayning of like endes, (as we suppose) & yet not with such like
successe, we ought therefore diligently to consider the divers natures of
thinges, and the differences of tymes, and occasions, and such like acci-
dents, to see if we can possibly finde out the cause why mens purposes
have taken effect at one time, and not at an other. (sig. H1)

Reading has become highly personalized with Blundeville: the pur-

chase of self-awareness with More’s suppose in the later 1500s is that
the social concerns urged by Hythlodaeus and the political conse-
quences—the duty to counsel princes that More-persona presses on
him—are displaced. The purchase comes at some real cost.

VII

Reading habits were again changing in the twilight Tudor years.

The publications of Richard Hakluyt—Diuers Voyages Touching the Dis-
couerie of America in 1582 followed by editions of his Principall Naviga-
tions, Voiages and Discoueries of the English Nation beginning in
1589—captured the attention and imagination of late Tudor read-
ers while numerous other single works were also prominently on dis-
play in Paul’s Churchyard—or so we may very likely suppose. Amir
D. Aczel has shown that the magnetic compass began with antiquity
in China but became prominent in Europe with Henry the Naviga-
tor toward the end of the fifteenth century. The first notable
achievement was during the time of the first Tudor, Henry VII, when
Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal in 1497.

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 45

At the latitude of Sierra Leone, da Gama made a bold and unprece-

dented move. All previous voyages of the Age of Exploration had contin-
ued south by east, following the coast of Africa. This would have been
the logical choice, and the one that would have kept his ships not too
far from land throughout their route down the Gabon-Congo-Angola
coastline toward Guinea. But da Gama, who had no experience com-
manding such ships, was not bound by tradition. Trusting his instincts
and his ability to navigate by compass and stellar observations, he de-
cided to do the unexpected. Da Gama chose to turn west-southwest and
sail straight into the open Atlantic.23

Whether da Gama was a courageous hero or a foolish risk-taker

would not have been clear at the time. More catches all this at the
outset of the Utopia. Peter Giles introduces Hythlodaeus to More-
persona by stating that ‘‘He left his patrimony at home—he is a Por-
tuguese—to his brothers, and being eager to see the world, joined
Amerigo Vespucci and was his constant companion in the last three
of those four voyages which are now universally read of, but on the
final voyage he did not return with him’’ (51). The choice da Gama
faced happened on Hythlodaeus’s journey too, as Raphael proudly
relates:
Their mariners were skilled in adapting themselves to sea and weather.
But [Raphael] reported that he won their extraordinary favor by show-
ing them the use of the magnetic needle of which they had hitherto
been quite ignorant so that they had hesitated to trust themselves to the
sea and had boldly done so in the summer only. Now, trusting to the
magnet, they do not fear wintry weather, being dangerously confident.
Thus, there is a risk that what was thought likely to be a great benefit to
them may, through their imprudence, cause them great mischief. (53)

The challenge of the unknown and the untried seemed irresistible.

One motive may have been the thrill; another, the record of being
first to discover a new place; but for Hythlodaeus—and for philoso-
phers from Plato onward—the fundamental motive was acquiring
new knowledge. We know that someone as landlocked as Hakluyt
could not resist the tales of explorers, just as Peter Giles and More-
persona (and More’s readers) could not. Hakluyt recounts the joy
and the seduction of hearing of journeys into the unknown regions
of the world in his now-famous letter to Sir Francis Walsingham,
principal secretary to Elizabeth I and chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster, in his dedicatory letter in 1589:

Right Honorable, I do remember that being a youth, and one of her

Majesties scholars at Westminster that fruitfull nurserie, it was my happe

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46 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

to visit the chamber of M. Richard Hakluyt my cosin, a Gentleman of the

Middle Temple, well knowen unto you, at a time when I found lying
open upon his boord certeine bookes of Cosmographie, with an univer-
sall Mappe: he seeing me somewhat curious in the view therof, began to
instruct my ignorance, by shewing me the division of the earth into three
parts after the olde account, and then according to the latter, & better
distribution, into more: he pointed with his wand to all the knowen Seas,
Gulfs, Bayes, Straights, Capes, Rivers, Empires, Kingdomes, Dukedomes,
and Territories of ech part, with declaration also of their speciall com-
modities, & particular wants, which by the benefit of traffike, & enter-
course of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the Mappe he
brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107 Psalme, directed mee
to the 23 of 24 verses, where I read, that they which go downe to the sea
in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord,
and his woonders in the deepe, &c. Which words of the Prophet to-
gether with my cousins discourse (things of high and rare delight to my
yong nature) tooke in me so deepe an impression, that I constantly re-
solved, if ever I were preferred to the University, where better time, and
more convenient place might be ministred for these studies, I would by
Gods assistance prosecute that knowledge and kinde of literature, the
doores whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me.24

The moment, we can easily suppose, was intoxicating for the young
boy and he remained exhilarated, just as Hythlodaeus’s long speech
in Utopia II is the consequence of enthusiastic learning of the state
of Utopia. ‘‘Whatsoever testimonie I have found in any authour of
authoritie appertaining to my argument, either stranger or naturall,
I have recorded the same word for word, with his particular name
and page of booke where it is extant,’’ Hakluyt adds in his preface
to the reader (1:xxiii): he takes the place of a fascinated Peter Giles
and a recording More-persona, anxious to get every detail right,
such as that of the bridge over the Anydrus River.
The Utopia, then, catches the polyvalent spirit of exploration and
discovery financed by Elizabeth I in Hythlodaeus’s protracted de-
scription of a hitherto unknown land. Arriving there, his observa-
tions are mixed: the country is isolated, peaceful, surrounded with
dangerous reefs, and mounted with defensive weapons.

As the winds are kept off by the land which everywhere surrounds it, the
bay is like a huge lake, smooth rather than rough, and thus converts al-
most the whole center of the country into a harbor which lets ships cross
in every direction to the great convenience of the inhabitants.
The mouth of this bay is rendered perilous here by shallows and there
by reefs. Almost in the center of the gap stands one great crag which,
being visible, is not dangerous. A tower built on it is occupied by a garri-

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 47

son. The other rocks are hidden and therefore treacherous. The chan-
nels are known only to the natives, and so it does not easily happen that
any foreigner enters the bay except with a Utopian pilot. In fact, the en-
trance is hardly safe even for themselves, unless they guide themselves
by landmarks on the shore. If these were removed to other positions,
they could easily lure an enemy’s fleet, however numerous, to destruc-
tion.
On the outer side of the island, harbors are many. Everywhere, how-
ever, the landing is so well defended by nature or by engineering that a
few defenders can prevent strong forces from coming ashore. (111)

The fascination and hesitation here, the need to know and the dan-
ger of knowledge, themes throughout the Utopia, surface, and they
anticipate (and resonate in) the many pamphlets Hakluyt so success-
fully collected and distributed. Here is part of an account, for in-
stance, of Hore’s voyage of 1536 under Elizabeth’s father to
Newfoundland and Cape Briton:

M. Oliver Dawbeny, which (as it is before mentioned) was in this voy-

age, and in the Minion, told M. Richard Hakluyt of the middle Temple
these things following: to wit, That after their arrivall in Newfoundland,
and having bene there certaine dayes at ancre, and not having yet seene
any of the naturall people of the countrey, the same Dawbeney walking
one day on the hatches, spied a boate with Savages of those parts, rowing
downe the Bay toward them, to gaze upon the ship and our people, and
taking vewe of their comming aloofe, hee called to such as were under
the hatches, and willed them to come up if they would see the natural
people of the countrey, that they had so long and so much desire to see:
whereupon they came up, and tooke viewe of the Savages rowing toward
them and their ship, and upon the viewe they manned out a ship-boat
to meet them and to take them. But they spying our ship-boat making
towards them, returned with maine force and fled into an Island that lay
up in the Bay or river there, and our men pursued them into the Island,
and the Savages fledde and escaped: but our men found a fire, and the
side of a beare on a wooden spit left at the same by the Savages that were
fled. (8:4–5)

The voyagers are multiplied by the voyeurs hearing and reading this
account, positioning themselves exactly as Giles and More-persona
are positioned in Utopia II. And Hythlodaeus’s disgust at European
materialism is frequently on display in Hakluyt’s varied accountings,
too. In the ‘‘briefe and true report’’ of Sir Walter Ralegh’s voyage to
Virginia as written by Thomas Harriot, there is a strong emphasis on
the material gains (like the gold of the Utopians) more prized by
the invaders than by the natives: grass silk, worm silk, flax, hemp,

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48 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

allum, pitch and tar and resin and turpentine, sassafras, cedar, wine,
oil, furs, deer hides, copper, pearls, sweet gum for the apothecaries,
dyes for coloring, woad—the list seems endless in the acquistiveness
even of the hearing (8:353–58). Indeed, the very world was chang-
ing around the Elizabethans; and it is impossible not to suppose the
new dimensions that revived interest in the Utopia. It seems in hind-
sight to serve as a template for most of the accounts in Hakluyt.25

VIII
The forces of world expansion under Elizabeth were tempered,
under James, by another emphasis: on introspection and reflection.
The moment is heralded by John Florio’s splendid folio of Mon-
taigne’s Essais in English in 1603. Like Francis Bacon and other Jaco-
beans whose emphasis on empiricism arose from a scientific interest
in investigation—one that was rational and skeptical rather than
bordering on the imaginary—Montaigne captured not the passion-
ately spirited and prejudicial perspective of Hythlodaeus, as one who
seeing Utopia has become an enlightened prophet to the world, but
the persistent doubts which More-persona feels nagging at him at
the end of Utopia II. While more persuaded after Hythlodaeus’s un-
interrupted oration than before it, More-persona still has reserva-
tions—‘‘I cannot agree with all that he said’’ (245). Montaigne
catches More-persona’s very spirit in an essay on the imagination:

Fortis imaginatio generat casum: A strong imagination begetteth chance, say

learned clerks. I am one of those that feele a very great conflict and
power of imagination. All men are shockt therewith, and some over-
throwne by it. The impression of it pierceth me, and for want of strength
to resist her, my endevour is to avoid it.26

Montaigne catches the mood of More-persona and we can suppose

he also captured and extended the feelings of some readers of the
Utopia:

Those which exercise themselves in controuling humane actions, finde

no such let in any one part, as to peece them together, and bring them
to one same lustre: For, they commonly contradict one another so
strangely, as it seemeth impossible they should be parcels of one Ware-
house. (‘‘Of the Inconstancie of Our Actions,’’ 2.1; 292)

[T]ruth is of so great consequence, that wee ought not disdaine any In-
duction, that may bring us unto it. Reason hath so many shapes, that wee

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 49

know not which to take hold of. Experience hath as many. (‘‘Of Experience,’’
3.13; 963)

We reason rashly, and discourse at random, saith Timeus in Plato: For, even as
we, so have our discourses great participation with the temeritie of hazard. (‘‘Of
the Uncertaintie of Our Judgement,’’ 1.47; 247)

The fundamental humanist texts such as the Republic and the Life of
Lycurgus have been demonstrably displaced by those more skeptical,
such as the Timaeus and the works of the Pyrrhonian skeptics. It is
helpful to remember that Montaigne lined his private study with the
sayings of Sextus Empiricus; that in his ‘‘Apologie of Raymond Seb-
ond’’ he queried his ignorance of what his cat might ask or think of
him even as he thought he knew what he thought of his cat (399).
Montaigne’s radical questioning, like More-persona’s, is not meant
to result in nihilism, but only to prevent self-delusion, mistaken
judgment, misdirection of attention, faulty because incomplete or
lazy thought. We can suppose that the world Montaigne spoke to is
the world of readers of Utopia who found inconsistency in exiling
citizens, in proclaiming peace and on occasion promoting war, in
preaching contentment and practicing imperialism, in boasting of
perfection while maintaining strict surveillance: all features of Hyth-
lodaeus’s Utopia that must awaken a reader’s notice. His mimesis is
not Hakluyt’s mimesis of a larger physical world but the mimesis of
the behavior of the human and individual mind. The propositions
and arguments of Utopia strongly invite considering this mimesis,
too, and the promotion of Utopia as the special and individual ac-
tion of Raphael Hythlodaeus, messenger from God and retailer of
nonsense. ‘‘We assume unto our selves imaginarie and fantasticall
goods, future and absent goods, which humane capacitie can no way
warrant unto her selfe; or some other, which by the overweening of
our owne opinion, we falsly ascribe unto our selves; as reason, hon-
our, and knowledge’’ (‘‘An Apologie of Raymond Sebond,’’ 2.12;
431). Montaigne’s authority—if he had just one—was not Hythlo-
daeus, but, pointedly, Diogenes (cf. 2.12; 408).

IX

Dominic Baker-Smith reminds us that ‘‘In the Phaedrus (275c)

Socrates complains of the way in which a thing, once it is put in writ-
ing, drifts out of the control of the writer’’ (85). In an infinite world
of supposes—prompted by what Sidney in his Defense calls More’s

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5. The Renaissance book-wheel. Agostino Rameli, Le diverse et artificioise machine
(Paris, 1588). Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas,
Austin.

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6. Title page of Francis Bacon, Instauratio magna (London, 1620). Courtesy of the
Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst.

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52 ARTHUR F. KINNEY

‘‘feigned image’’ of a commonwealth—the danger of misreading

(or even suggesting a single reading) is ever-present. The ‘‘commu-
nity of interpretation’’ which Stanley Fish has argued helps to expli-
cate a text may be a clue on how readers first read the Utopia,
however. We know what else some of those readers were reading:
classical texts emulated by the humanists; rhetorical texts employing
the strategies outlined by Puttenham; travel accounts such as those
collected by Hakluyt; and works of skeptical empiricism illustrated
by the essays of Montaigne. While every book (like every manu-
script) was ‘‘a hub from which innumerable receptions might ema-
nate,’’ as Roger Chartier has it, we know that in the late sixteenth
century the invention of the book wheel made contextualization far
easier and perhaps more prevalent.27 Such wheels carried multiple
books on rotating shelves to be stopped at the will of the reader,
checking out, perhaps, his most recent suppose. (They were, An-
thony Grafton tells us, flanked by other devices and in many librar-
ies; some still survive.28) The concrete machinery thus upheld
Bacon’s advice in his essay on books: ‘‘Reade not to Contradict, and
Confute; Nor to Beleeve and Take for granted; Nor to Find Talke
and Discourse; But to weigh and Consider.’’29 To Bacon—or his
printer—we owe one of the most splendid images that might be-
come associated with the Utopia, merging Plato with Hakluyt as it
does. This is the grand title-page of Bacon’s Instauratio magna (1620)
which shows how the advancement of learning is related to sailing
out into the great ocean beyond the pillars of Hercules. For Bacon
and his readers, such a voyage into the unknown, into the yet-to-be-
discovered, when disciplined by reason and experience, still re-
mained the greatest suppose of all.

Notes
1. George Gascoigne, The Posies (1575 edition), sig. A2v.
2. Opus Epistolarvm Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen, 12 vols. (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1910), 4:21.
3. Plato, Republic, trans. Paul Shorey, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press; and London: Heinemann, 1930–35), 3–6;
acts 4:31–35.
4. All references to the Utopia are to volume 4 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas
More, ed. Edward Surtz, S. J., and J. H. Hexter (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1965). The translation is a modified one by Fr. Surtz.
5. See CW 4:464 n. 32.
6. Anthony Grafton, ‘‘The Humanist as Reader,’’ in A History of Reading in the
West, ed. Guglieemo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, 180
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999).

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UTOPIA’S FIRST READERS 53

7. Quoted in Arthur F. Kinney, Rhetoric and Poetic in Thomas More’s ‘‘Utopia’’

(Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1979), 7–8. The reference is to Thomas Wilson,
The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), sigs. C4v–D1.
8. Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster, ed. Lawrence V. Ryan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1967), 118.
9. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979), 118.
10. Edward Surtz, ‘‘Introduction,’’ CW 4:cliv.
11. In his letter to More in CW 4:35.
12. Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library
(1914; repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).
13. Cicero, De Finibus, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (1914; repr.,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961).
14. Erasmus, De Copia, trans. and ed. Betty I. Knott, Collected Works of Erasmus (To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 24:639.
15. Eugene R. Kintgen, Reading in Tudor England (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1996), 37.
16. Quentin Skinner, ‘‘Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and the Language of Renais-
sance Humanism,’’ in The Language of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, ed. An-
thony Pagden, 123 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).
17. Budé in CW 4:5.
18. Dominic Baker-Smith, More’s ‘‘Utopia’’ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2000), 78.
19. William Sherman, ‘‘Anatomizing the Commonwealth: Language, Politics,
and the Elizabethan Social Order,’’ in The Project of Prose in Early Modern Europe and
the New World, ed. Elizabeth Fowler and Roland Greene, 110–11 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, l997). Sherman also cites Wade, the anonymous author of
‘‘A treatise on the well government’’ and Blandy on 110.
20. Utopia, in The Search for the Ideal in the Western World, ed. Roland Schaer, Greg-
ory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent, 100 (New York: Oxford University Press for
the New York Public Library, 2000).
21. Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles S. Singleton (Gar-
den City, NY: Doubleday & Co. Anchor Books, 1959), 6–7.
22. Sir John Harington and the quotation from Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poe-
sie about children and old men are cited by Kintgen, 89 n.12.
23. Amir D. Aczel, The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World
(New York: Harcourt, 2001), 140–41.
24. Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the
English Nation (Repr., New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), 1:xvii–xviii.
25. See, for instance, the account of Martin Frobisher in Hakluyt, 7:28ff.
26. The Essays of Montaigne, John Florio’s translation (New York: Modern Library,
n.d.): ‘‘Of the Force of Imagination,’’ book 1, chapter 20; 63.
27. Roger Chartier, ‘‘Reading Matter and ‘Popular Reading’: From the Renais-
sance to the Seventeenth Century,’’ in A History of Reading in the West, 277.
28. Grafton, 209; he elaborates on this description.
29. Francis Bacon, ‘‘On Books,’’ quoted by Kintgen, 186.

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Taking More Seriously: Humanism, Cultural
Criticism, and the Possibility of a Past
Andrew D. Weiner

IN THE INTRODUCTION TO HIS ACCLAIMED RENAISSANCE SELF-FASHIONING

from More to Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt sounds the call of what
has come to be known as the New Historicism, rejecting formalist
literary criticism in favor of ‘‘a more cultural or anthropological criti-
cism’’ based on the ‘‘conviction that men are born ‘unfinished ani-
mals,’ that the facts of life are less artless than they look, that both
particular cultures and the observers of these cultures are inevitably
drawn to a metaphorical grasp of reality, that anthropological inter-
pretation must address itself less to the mechanics of customs and
institutions than to the interpretative constructions the members of
a society apply to their experiences.’’1 Greenblatt adds, ‘‘A literary
criticism that has affinities to this practice must be conscious of its
own status as interpretation and intent upon understanding litera-
ture as a part of the system of signs that constitutes a given culture;
its proper goal, however difficult to realize, is a poetics of culture’’ (4–5).
Yet in achieving its understanding of the ‘‘given culture’’ it seeks to
interpret, ‘‘if cultural poetics is conscious of its status as interpreta-
tion, this consciousness must extend to an acceptance of the impos-
sibility of fully reconstructing and reentering the culture of the
sixteenth century, of leaving behind one’s own situation’’ (5). In
calling for a historicist criticism that despairs of the possibility of any-
thing approaching objective historical understanding, Greenblatt
has opened the way for a series of Foucauldian mediations on
power—the key defining feature of sixteenth-century English cul-
ture for New Historicists generally—often, though now not invari-
ably, introduced by the retelling of an anecdote whose apparently
peripheral relationship to the text or texts under discussion be-
comes the machine that wrenches our prior frame of interpretation
into a new shape conditioned upon the discovery of a perspective
that makes the previously marginal central to a new understanding
of the text(s).

54

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 55

Greenblatt’s chapter on Sir Thomas More is a case in point. Green-

blatt begins with a ‘‘merry tale’’ from More’s Dialogue of Comfort
against Tribulation (1534), a transformed memory of a dinner party
at Cardinal Wolsey’s long ago. In this tale about how inferiors flatter
superiors, Greenblatt finds the emblem for More’s entire career. It
is as if he were watching the enactment of a fiction, and he is equally
struck by the unreality of the whole performance and by its immense
power to impose itself upon the world. This is, in fact, one of the
central perceptions of the Dialogue of Comfort, repeated again and
again in a variety of guises. No sooner is one fantasy laid to rest than
another pops up to be grappled with in turn and defeated, until the
whole world, the great body of man’s longings, anxieties, and goals,
shimmers like a mirage, compelling, tenacious, and utterly unreal.
But why should men submit themselves to fantasies that will not
nourish or sustain them? In part More’s answer is power, whose quint-
essential sign is the ability to impose one’s fictions upon the world;
the more outrageous the fiction, the more impressive the manifesta-
tion of power (13).
Certain characteristic notes are sounded with great eloquence in
this passage. For Greenblatt, the world has no physical or historical
reality; rather it is merely ‘‘the great body of man’s longings, anxie-
ties, and goals.’’ It may be ‘‘compelling’’ and ‘‘tenacious,’’ but it is
finally ‘‘utterly unreal.’’ To combat this unreality, humanity has nei-
ther ideas nor beliefs, goals nor hopes, but only ‘‘fantasies that will
not nourish or sustain them.’’
Moreover, the More Greenblatt posits, the More whose vision of
the world is so strikingly postmodern, is something ‘‘quite excep-
tional’’ in the context of early sixteenth-century England. In place
of Erasmus’s More, who seemed ‘‘born and designed for’’ friend-
ship, who was so ‘‘sweet’’ of disposition that he ‘‘enliven[ed]’’ the
melancholy, who found ‘‘entertainment’’ in all of human life, who
‘‘applied his whole mind to the pursuit of piety’’ yet who ultimately
‘‘chose to be a god-fearing husband rather than an immoral priest’’
because ‘‘he could not shake off the desire to get married,’’ Green-
blatt offers us a More who ‘‘wishes, as it were, to stop modern history
before it starts, even as he wishes to cancel his own identity.’’2 To
Greenblatt, More represents self-fashioning man: ‘‘his life seems
nothing less than this: the invention of a disturbingly unfamiliar
form of consciousness, tense, ironic, witty, poised between engage-
ment and detachment, and above all, fully aware of its own status as
an invention’’ (31). This More, always conscious of being both his
own creator and his own self-mocking critic, Greenblatt sees as the
More who authored Utopia, ‘‘the perfect expression of his self-con-

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56 ANDREW D. WEINER

scious role-playing and an intense meditation upon its limitations’’

(33).
Utopia largely becomes in this reading a psychomachia between
the public self More crafted and ‘‘all that More deliberately ex-
cluded from the personality he created and played,’’ here repre-
sented by Raphael Hythlodaeus, ‘‘the sign of More’s awareness of his
own self-creation, hence his own incompleteness’’ (33). Although
Greenblatt tends to privilege Raphael’s arguments (the authentic
self rebelling against the ultimately empty public gestures of the
public man), he does finally remind us that ‘‘Hythlodaeus means
‘well-learned in nonsense,’ that More deliberately introduces comic
and ironic elements that distance his fantasy from himself and his
readers, and that More remains ambivalent about many of his most
intensely felt perceptions’’ (54). Yet ultimately what is important
here is not the public statement but the private revelation: ‘‘The
work is, after all,’’ Greenblatt insists, ‘‘an expression of More’s inner
life, the life that it dreams of engineering out of existence’’ (54).
‘‘It is as if he were watching the enactment of a fiction’’: More
watching himself create himself is for Greenblatt the image of
More’s life and the image of Utopia, the ‘‘supremely constructed self ’’
constructing a fiction that would not permit him to exist in his own
creation. It is, perhaps, a fascinating vision, but not one that would
have been readily available to the eyes of More’s contemporaries. In
what sense, then, does this reading exemplify Greenblatt’s desire for
a criticism that can enable us to see the ‘‘interpretative construc-
tions the members of a society apply to their experiences’’? On the
contrary, it seems rather to insist upon Greenblatt’s caution that ‘‘if
cultural poetics is conscious of its status as interpretation, this con-
sciousness must extend to an acceptance of the impossibility of fully
reconstructing and reentering the culture of the sixteenth century,
of leaving behind one’s own situation.’’ By insisting upon the impos-
sibility of realizing the reality of the past, Greenblatt insists that we
place ourselves in More’s position, creating fictions that we know to
be fictions because we have acknowledged the impossibility of ever
approaching those lost realities for which we can only yearn help-
lessly, our own dream of completeness shattered by the reality of in-
completeness and historical unreality. While this may strike some as
a rather heroic critical stance, others, whose despair over history’s
absent presence is less profound, may find it somewhat unsatisfac-
tory.
In recent years, Quentin Skinner’s work has provided an alterna-
tive to Greenblatt for those not totally content to historicize the past
into their own image. Skinner has rather tartly remarked that ‘‘if

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 57

historical studies are not to be studies of what genuine historical

agents did think (or at least could have thought), then they might as
well be turned into fiction by attainment. History (notwithstanding a
fashionable attitude among philosophers) cannot simply consist of
stories: a further feature of historical stories is that they are at least
supposed to be true.’’3 Skinner’s theoretical work on interpretation
of historical texts has focused on the question of intentionality, and
he has argued that

the essential question . . . we . . . confront, in studying any given text, is

what its author, in writing at the time he did for the audience he in-
tended to address, could in practice have been intending to communi-
cate by the utterance of this given utterance. It follows that the essential
aim, in any attempt to understand the utterances themselves, must be to
recover this complex intention on the part of the author. (63)

Skinner suggests that the reader ought first ‘‘to delineate the whole
range of communications which could have been conventionally
performed on the given occasion by the utterance of the given utter-
ance, and, next, to trace the relations between the given utterance
and this wider linguistic context as a means of decoding the actual
intention of the given writer’’ (63–64). Rather than begin, as Green-
blatt would, with the social, political, or ideological contexts of the
work, Skinner insists that the linguistic governs the social:

Once the appropriate focus of the study is seen in this way to be essen-
tially linguistic and the appropriate methodology is seen in consequence
to be concerned in this way with the recovery of intentions, the study of
all the facts about the social context of the given work can then take its
place as a part of this linguistic enterprise. The problem about the way
in which these facts are handled in the methodology of contextual study
is that they get fitted into an inappropriate framework. The ‘‘context’’
mistakenly gets treated as the determinant of what gets said. It needs
rather to be treated as an ultimate framework for helping to decide what
conventionally recognizable meanings, in a society of that kind, it might
have been possible for someone to have intended to communicate. (64)

Given the Renaissance insistence upon the agency of the writer

and the consequent intentionalism of their poetics, Skinner’s theory
at least has the advantage of committing us to the project that
Greenblatt desired to attempt while despairing of achieving it, to ad-
dress the ‘‘interpretative constructions the members of a society
apply to their experiences.’’ To this end, Skinner offers two general
rules for the interpretation of ‘‘other people’s intentions.’’ His first

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58 ANDREW D. WEINER

rule invites us to ‘‘focus not just on the text to be interpreted but on

the prevailing conventions governing the treatment of the issues or
themes with which the text is concerned’’ because ‘‘to understand
what any given writer may have been doing in using some particular
concept or argument, we need first of all to grasp the nature and
range of things that could recognizably have been done by using
that particular concept, in the treatment of that particular theme, at
that particular time.’’4 This first rule invites us to see the writer as
taking part in a continuing debate on a given issue in such a way
that his intended audience would be capable of seeing his text as
participating in that debate. His second rule I take to be a vital corol-
lary designed to prevent a leveling of individual utterances into the
general pool of discourse available at that time:

focus on the writer’s mental world, the mental world of his empirical
beliefs. This rule derives from the logical connection between our capac-
ity to ascribe intention to agents and our knowledge of their beliefs. (78)

We may not ever succeed fully into entering into the mental world
of another, but there seems no reason not to make the effort to ex-
plore as much of that world as possible.
Skinner has discussed More’s Utopia in his Foundations of Modern
Political Thought, but the framework of his argument leads him there
to emphasize the first of his two general rules at the expense of his
second. Skinner sees More as typical of the Northern humanist at
the same time that he is ‘‘by far the greatest of these political theo-
rists’’:

As well as employing the same genres as their Italian precursors, the

northern humanists generally shared their way of thinking about the
role of the political theorist in political life. . . . They accordingly tended
to see themselves essentially as political advisers—as writers of political
handbooks and purveyors of sage counsels to kings, princes and magis-
trates.5

Because he is looking for political advice, Skinner, like Greenblatt,

tends to take Raphael Hythlodaeus as More’s spokesman in the
debate in book 1 of Utopia and likewise tends to see Raphael’s de-
scription of the Utopian state in book 2 as presenting More’s pre-
scriptions for improving England in particular and Christendom
generally. As a political theorist, More must be offering a political
solution to the problem of injustice and poverty in European socie-
ties that Raphael attacks so vigorously both in the beginning of book
1 and at the end of book 2:

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 59

If private property is the source of our present discontents, and if our

basic ambition is to establish a good society, then it seems undeniable to
More that private property will have to be abolished. This means that,
when he presents his description of Utopian communism in Book II, he
must be taken to be offering a solution—the only possible solution—to
the social evils he has already outlined in Book I. And this in turn sug-
gests that, in giving Utopia the title of ‘‘the best state of a common-
wealth,’’ he must have meant exactly what he said. (262)

Unfortunately More’s title does not provide such conclusive evi-

dence that Utopia is ‘‘the best state of a commonwealth,’’ since the
full title is actually
DE OPTIMO REIPVBLICAE STATU DEQUE noua insula Vtopia libellus uere
aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festiuus, clarissimi disertissimique uiri THO-
MAE MORI inclytae ciuitatis Londinensis ciuis & Vicecomitis / [concerning]
THE BEST STATE OF A COMMONWEALTH AND THE NEW ISLAND OF
UTOPIA. A Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining, by
the Distinguished and Eloquent Author THOMAS MORE, Citizen and Sheriff
of the Famous City of London.6

The title of More’s little book does not equate Utopia with ‘‘the best
state of a commonwealth,’’ nor does it promise to offer us a picture
of that state; rather it promises to entertain us beneficially with dis-
cussions of both of those topics.
However with the recent resurgence of interest in all things politi-
cal, the political theory supposedly embodied in More’s Utopia has
again come to govern discussions of the text, and many have fol-
lowed Skinner in assuming that in order to take More seriously, we
must take the ambiguously titled Utopia as More’s picture of ‘‘the
best state of the commonwealth,’’ as a happy place or ‘‘eu-topia’’
and not as a no-place or ‘‘ou-topia.’’ This, of course, is the way Sir
Philip Sidney took it in his Defense of Poetry:
But even in the most excellent determination of goodness, what philoso-
pher’s counsel can so readily direct a prince, as the feigned Cyrus in
Xenophon; or a virtuous man in all fortunes, as Aeneas in Virgil; or a
whole commonwealth, as the way of Sir Thomas More’s Eutopia? I say the
way, because where Sir Thomas More erred, it was the fault of the man
and not of the poet, for that way of patterning a commonwealth was
most absolute, though he perchance hath not so absolutely performed
it. For the question is, whether the feigned image of poetry or the regu-
lar instruction of philosophy hath the more force in teaching.7

Sidney assumes, like many of More’s other critics, that by using the
‘‘feigned image’’ of that ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘happy place’’ (and Sidney uses

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60 ANDREW D. WEINER

the appropriate ‘‘eu’’ prefix to specify which place he has taken Uto-
pia for), More has set out to offer ‘‘directions’’ to a ‘‘whole common-
wealth’’ on how it should reform itself according to the ‘‘absolute’’
pattern of his Utopian state. Sidney assumes, that is, that More is a
philosopher, whose ‘‘sailing,’’ like Raphael Hythlodaeus’s, has ‘‘not
been like that of Palinurus, but more that of Ulysses, or rather of
Plato.’’8 In this view, to understand More one needs to attend seri-
ously to Raphael’s description of Utopia, presumably seeing Ra-
phael as More’s stalking horse, under whose guise More is able to
voice ideas and positions that he could not safely speak in his own
voice.
This is a not-unattractive way of reading Utopia: the institutions
of the Utopian commonwealth are sometimes sensible, frequently
appealing in an ascetic sort of way, and often novel; the easy assump-
tion is that like the many ‘‘Utopian’’ writers who have followed in
his footsteps, More is here donning his prophetic robes and singing
of a future inevitably coming our way and indeed one that ought to
come our way. Unfortunately, it is a reading that I believe More went
out of his way to discourage us from adopting in the two letters to
Peter Giles he appends to the work, in the ‘‘dialogue of counsel’’
between Raphael and persona More that he apparently added to
book 1 after he had already written book 2, and in the structuring
of the description of the Utopian institutions in book 2. Rather, I
believe that if we attempt to enter, as Skinner’s second rule insists,
into More’s ‘‘mental world, the world of his empirical beliefs,’’ we
may discover that More is writing in the context of his defenses of
Erasmian humanism and of Erasmus’s presentation of the ‘‘philo-
sophia Christi’’ in his 1516 New Testament. In my view, More’s other
‘‘literary works’’ of this period—the letter to Dorp (1515–16), the
letter to Oxford (1518), the letter to a monk (1519), and the letter
to Lee (1519)—offer us reasons to consider the possibility that the
Utopia might well be read as a companion to Erasmus’ Praise of Folly
in which More is ‘‘praising’’ wisdom as Erasmus has ‘‘praised’’ folly.
Rather than considering all of these works, however, after some brief
remarks about More’s letter to Dorp, written, More tells us, while he
was at Bruges, just before his king called him home and so, accord-
ing to the chronology established in Utopia, just after meeting Ra-
phael Hythlodaeus and hearing his story, I will turn to More’s
contributions to the volume in which his Utopia was published in its
first two editions.
Martin Dorp was a young humanist turned scholastic theologian
at the University of Louvain, a former friend of Erasmus who turned
on him to voice the conservative response to both the Praise of Folly

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 61

and Erasmus’s projected Greek Text (with Latin paraphrase) of the

New Testament. Erasmus and More took his publicly circulated let-
ter to Erasmus seriously enough that each wrote a lengthy response
to it (More’s is about half as long as the Utopia itself ). More takes
the stance that Dorp is not motivated by malice, but that he is merely
a bit confused about many issues, issues upon which More will un-
dertake the office of a friend and attempt a clarification for Dorp.
More begins with Dorp’s dismissal of Erasmus from the ranks of the
theologians on the grounds that Erasmus is a grammarian who
knows nothing about the science of dialectics, the basic tool of the
theologian. More’s response distinguishes, as many other defenses
of humanism (beginning with Petrarch’s ‘‘On His Own Ignorance
and that of Many Others’’) had, between the modern practice of
dialectics and the function of reason:

I do believe that even you will admit that rhetoric is a very special gift of
his, and if you grant that, I do not see how you can so completely strip
him of dialectics. Not the lowliest of philosophers were correct when
they maintained that dialectics and rhetoric were no more distinct than
are the fist and the palm of the hand, because what dialectics holds to-
gether more tightly, rhetoric unfolds more freely, and just as the former
strikes with the point of the blade, so the latter by its sheer force com-
pletely prostrates and destroys. . . . Take a man who has some learning
and a moderate supply of talent—I mean one with far less talent than
Erasmus. Such a man I do not think will take second place in an argu-
ment to every dialectician, provided both parties are acquainted with the
subject under discussion; native talent will supply the deficiency in for-
mal training. The very precepts of dialectics are merely the products of
man’s native intelligence; that is to say, they are methods of reasoning
which reason has observed as useful for investigating things.9

More’s defense of Erasmus clearly suggests that rhetoric, whose field

is the probable, can be a far more useful way of approaching a
reader than the science of dialectics, which More goes on to attack
for its current practitioners’ excessive reliance on abstraction, indul-
gence in wresting the sense of a word’s meaning to permit any fa-
vored interpretation, and lack of common sense.
Like Petrarch earlier, More sees a distinction between the effec-
tiveness of dialectics’ tightly held together syllogistic argumentation
and rhetoric’s freely unfolding but overwhelmingly powerful argu-
ment, which ‘‘completely prostrates and destroys’’ a listener’s objec-
tions. Like Petrarch earlier, More positions himself on the humanist
side with respect to the relative efficacy of philosophic disputations
on the nature of truth and rhetorical persuasions to action:

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62 ANDREW D. WEINER

For though our ultimate goal does not lie in virtue, where the philoso-
phers locate it, it is through the virtues that the direct way leads to the
place where it does lie; and these virtues, I must add, must be not merely
known but loved. Therefore the true moral philosophers and useful
teachers of the virtues are those whose first and last intention is to make
hearer and reader good, those who do not merely teach what virtue and
vice are and hammer into our ears the brilliant name of the one and the
grim name of the other but sow into our hearts love of the best and
eager desire for it and at the same time hatred of the worst and how to
flee it. It is safer to strive for a good and pious will than for a capable
and clear intellect. The object of the will, as it pleases the wise, is to be
good; that of the intellect is truth. It is better to will the good than to
know the truth. The first is never without merit; the latter can often be
polluted with crime and then admits no excuse. Therefore those are
wrong who consume their time in learning to know virtue instead of ac-
quiring it, and, in a still higher degree, those whose time is spent in
learning to know God instead of loving Him. In this life it is impossible
to know God in His fullness; piously and ardently to love Him is pos-
sible.10

Discourse should not simply seek to present the truth; the truth
must be presented in such a way that those who meet it love it. This
means that the mode of presentation must be not dialectics but elo-
quence, and it is for this eloquence that Erasmus prays in his preface
to his New Testament, the Paraclesis:

I indeed might heartily wish, if anything is to be gained by wishes of this

kind, so long as I exhort all men to the most holy and wholesome study
of Christian philosophy and summon them as if with the blast of a trum-
pet, that an eloquence far different than Cicero’s be given me: an elo-
quence certainly much more efficacious, if less ornate than his. Or
rather . . . an eloquence which not only captivates the ear with its fleeting
delight but which leaves a lasting sting in the minds of its hearers, which
grips, which transforms, which sends away a far different listener than it
had received.11

If the goal is to transform the hearer, to make him both wholesome

and holy, not theological dialectics but rhetorical persuasion must
be the tool employed by the one who would send ‘‘away a far differ-
ent listener than [he] had received.’’
After discussing Dorp’s horror that if Erasmus were allowed to
carry out his project, anyone, not just theologians, could study the
Bible—a horror More did not yet share, thinking it better they do so
than ‘‘keep themselves from it, as some men do, who hung up for
their entire lives on petty questions, never condescend to search the

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 63

Scriptures, as if it were not at all pertinent’’ (Rogers, 28)—More

turns to Dorp’s proposal that Erasmus make amends to those in-
sulted by the Praise of Folly by writing a Praise of Wisdom. More ridi-
cules such a project, on the grounds that

they are indeed wise men if they think that by this Praise of Folly Folly has
been so lauded as to want wisdom lauded in the same manner! If that is
what they want, why are they angry? They too have been copiously
lauded by Folly that has been so lauded. Besides, I do not see how Eras-
mus could appease the ill-will of such men towards himself; rather he
would only aggravate it . . . because he would be forced to expel them
from the coterie of Wisdom, just as now he has been forced to admit
them into the company of the most gifted priests of the secret rites of
Folly. (62)

More, who was always less concerned than Erasmus with appeasing
his enemies, might have found such a work intriguing, and if he
had, might have chosen, as Erasmus chose Folly for his spokesman,
an appropriate narrator to praise wisdom, perhaps even one named
both ‘‘Raphael,’’ whom Pico had praised as the ‘‘celestial physician’’
who ‘‘may set us free by moral philosophy and dialectic as though
by wholesome drugs’’ (Oration on the Dignity of Man) and ‘‘Hythlo-
daeus’’ (a Greek coinage meaning ‘‘babbler of nonsense’’).12
In fact, in his second letter to Giles, added to the second edition
of Utopia, More, by way of denying the intention to do anything
other than tell a ‘‘true’’ story, points particularly to the work’s nam-
ing of names as a guide to readers. In this second letter, More tells
Giles of a ‘‘very sharp man’’ who ‘‘posed this dilemma about my Uto-
pia: if the story is put forward as true, he said, then I see a number
of absurdities in it; but if it’s a fable, then it seems to me that in
various respects More’s usual good judgment is at fault’’ (124). This
reader, who More insists ‘‘has pleased me more than anyone else
since the book was published,’’ read the book all the way through,
‘‘read slowly and attentively, noting all the particular points,’’ and
gave careful and considered approval to all but the matters he ‘‘sin-
gled out’’ for criticism (124). As a reader, More goes on to say, his
only fault is to have too high a standard: ‘‘It’s easy to see what a high
opinion he has of me when he expresses disappointment over read-
ing something imperfect or inexact—whereas I don’t expect to say
more than one or two things which aren’t totally ridiculous’’ (124).
More goes on to excuse himself on the grounds of necessity:

I don’t see why he should think himself so keen . . . just because he’s
discovered some absurdities in the institutions of Utopia, or caught me

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64 ANDREW D. WEINER

putting forth some half-baked ideas about the constitution of their state.
Isn’t there something absurd in the institutions of most other states else-
where in the world? and haven’t most of the philosophers who’ve written
about the state, its ruler, and even the office of a private citizen managed
to say something that needs correcting? (124)

If no earthly institution can be free of absurdities, no one who writes

about them can write without sharing in the general folly. More in-
sists that if he had been writing a fable about the state and not simply
reporting the truth, rather than trying to get everything right, he
would have been content merely to make one or two points, warning
the wise that he was writing a fiction about ‘‘a republic’’ by ‘‘giving
special names to the prince, the river, the city, and the island, which
hinted to the learned that the island was nowhere, the city a phan-
tom, the river was waterless, and the prince had no people, that
would not have been hard to do, and would have been a good deal
more clever than what I actually did. Unless I had an historian’s de-
votion to fact, I am not so stupid as to have used those barbarous
and senseless names of Utopia, Anyder, Amaurot, and Ademus’’
(124–25), which do, in fact, mean precisely that!
If the choice were between absurdities inherent in the real world
or in philosophizing about it, as More’s anonymous reader had sug-
gested, by the end of the letter, the ‘‘learned’’ may now be sure that
Utopia is a fiction and that More has deliberately given it some fea-
tures that would alert his readers to that fact by their absurdity. This
rather contorted acknowledgment makes the pose More had
adopted in his first letter to Giles, which functions as a preface to
Utopia in its early editions, more obviously a pose and the self he
portrays there and in book 1 of the work itself a ‘‘fictional’’ self, to
whom I will refer throughout as persona More. In that letter, More
introduces himself as a hard-working subject to the king, the state,
and his family, whose book must take the last claim on his time.
Apologizing for the delay to Giles, persona More insists that it falls
into the class not of a rhetorical work, which had to undergo the
artful process of composition—invention, disposition, and stylistic
embellishment—but a simple, factual narrative of another man’s
travels: ‘‘Truth in fact is the only quality at which I should have
aimed, or did aim, in writing this book’’ (109). Had anything more
been called for, persona More insists, that would have been beyond
his competence: ‘‘if the matter had to be set forth with eloquence,
and not just bluntly and factually, there’s no way I could have done
that, however hard I worked, for however long a time’’ (110). Truth
is all persona More cares for, and that soon raises two problems for
him, both relating to the state of truth in this world.

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 65

First, truth is not always apparent, even to those who earnestly

seek it. Persona More appeals to Giles to settle a dispute between
himself and his servant. While he remembers Raphael as having said
that a bridge was 500 paces long, John Clement, who has no motive
for lying, believes Raphael to have said it was only 300 paces wide:
If your recollection agrees with his, I’ll yield to the two of you and con-
fess myself mistaken. But if you don’t recall the point, I’ll follow my own
memory and keep my present figure. For as I’ve taken particular pains
to avoid untruths in the book, so I would rather make an honest mistake
than say what I don’t believe. In short, I’d rather be truthful than cor-
rect. (110)

The translation I have been using is a little misleading here. More’s

Latin for the last phrase quoted reads ‘‘quod malim bonus esse quam
prudens,’’ which More’s Tudor translator, Ralph Robinson translates
more pointedly as, ‘‘I will rather tell a lie than make a lie, because I
had rather be good than wily.’’13 The importance of the passage is
insisted upon in the early editions by Erasmus’ marginal note to the
reader: ‘‘Nota Theologicam differentiam inter mentiri & mendacium di-
cere’’ (Yale Utopia 1965, 40). More is engaged here in trying to influ-
ence the way in which we see persona More. Given the difficulty in
recognizing truth in a world where memory may fail and lead good
men to disagree, persona More says that unless there is a consensus
against him, he will be true to his inner sense of truth rather than
cleaving to what another tells him is true.
If persona More is a good man, however, he is not a naive one. His
awareness that all men are not good has led him to wonder whether
there is any point in his publishing his book at all:
men’s tastes are so various, the tempers of some are so severe, their
minds so ungrateful, their tempers so cross, that there seems no point
in publishing something, even if it’s intended for their advantage, that
they will receive only with contempt and ingratitude. . . . Most men know
nothing of learning; many despise it. The clod rejects as too difficult
whatever isn’t cloddish. . . . Finally, some men are so ungrateful that
even though they’re delighted with a work, they don’t like the author
any better because of it. They are like rude, ungrateful guests who, after
they have stuffed themselves with a splendid dinner, go off, carrying
their full bellies homeward without a word of thanks to the host who
invited them. A fine task, providing at your own expense a banquet for
men of such finicky palates, such various tastes, and such rude, ungra-
cious tempers. (111)

Persona More, a good man knowledgable in the ways of the world but
believing himself incapable of eloquence, sees little point in publish-

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66 ANDREW D. WEINER

ing his book since it is unlikely to have much of an effect on anyone

else. Here, I believe, we may see More, announced on the title page
of the second and third editions as the eloquent author of an elo-
quent and beneficial handbook, trying to alert us to one of the dif-
ferences between himself and his persona. More the humanist,
believing eloquence to have the power to overcome the waywardness
of readers, actively participated in the production of his work, writ-
ing a series of impatient letters to Erasmus, to whom he had en-
trusted the chief responsibility for publication, urging him to collect
laudatory letters from their friends and to get his book out.
More’s ethical persuasions continue in the first book of Utopia
proper, where persona More continues to be portrayed as a good but
ineffective man, obedient to his king, loving to his family, generous
in praise to his friends, and concerned about the fate of the state.
Our sense of persona More’s goodness is accentuated by More’s con-
trasting portrait of Raphael Hythlodaeus, who has no interest in his
family (whom he has provided for materially so that he does not
have to ‘‘enslave’’ himself ‘‘to any king whatsoever,’’ 7), no interest
in the fate of any European commonwealth, in fact no interest in
anything other than in living ‘‘as I please’’ (7–8). When persona
More suggests that ‘‘if you would devote your time and energy to
public affairs, you would do a thing worthy of a generous and philo-
sophical nature, even if you did not much like it’’ (8), Raphael at-
tempts to excuse himself on the grounds that the courtiers wouldn’t
listen to him unless they knew that their superiors agreed with him.
Persona More repeats again that Raphael ought to serve: ‘‘I think if
you could overcome your aversion to court life, your advice to a
prince would be of the greatest advantage to mankind. This, after all,
is the chief duty of every good man’’ (20; italics added). After Raphael
again attempts to show that his advice that kings give up waging war
on others to make their kingdoms greater and enriching themselves
at their people’s expense would not be welcome, persona More re-
bukes his methods sharply:

I don’t think you should offer advice or thrust upon people ideas of this
sort which you know will not be listened to. What good will it do? When
your listeners are already prepossessed against you and firmly convinced
of opposite opinions, what good can you do with your rhapsody of new-
fangled ideas? (25)

Rather than taking this as a proof that ‘‘[t]here is no place for phi-
losophy in the councils of kings,’’ as Raphael is quick to suggest, per-
sona More continues that this shows that there is a place for

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 67

everything and that Raphael must learn the proper place for differ-
ent kinds of counsel: ‘‘This academic philosophy is quite agreeable
in the private conversation of close friends, but in the councils of
kings. . . . There is no place for it’’ (25). Rejecting ‘‘this scholastic
philosophy which supposes that every topic is suitable for every occa-
sion,’’ persona More insists, ‘‘[t]here is another philosophy that is
better suited for political action, that takes its cue, adapts itself to
the drama in hand, and acts its part neatly and well’’ (25). That phi-
losophy – Erasmus’ marginal note names it as a ‘‘philosophia civilior’’
(Yale Utopia 1965, 98), a more civil philosophy—sounds very much
like Folly’s arguments in favor of her kind of prudence:

When a comedy of Plautus is being played, and the household slaves are
cracking trivial jokes together, you propose to come on stage in the garb
of a philosopher, and repeat Seneca’s speech to Nero from the Octavia.
Wouldn’t it be better to take a silent role than to say something wholly
inappropriate, and thus turn the play into a tragicomedy? You pervert
and ruin a play when you add irrelevant speeches, even if they are better
than the original. So go through with the drama in hand as best you can,
and don’t spoil it all simply because you happen to think another one
would be better. That’s how things go in the commonwealth, and in the
councils of princes. If you cannot pluck up bad ideas by the root, if you
cannot cure long-standing evils as completely as you would like, you
must not therefore abandon the commonwealth. Don’t give up the ship
in a storm because you cannot direct the winds. And don’t arrogantly
force strange ideas on people who you know have set their minds upon
a different course from yours.14

Because persona More has no faith in the efficacy of eloquence, his

vision is limited to a merely ameliorative one (‘‘thus what you can-
not turn to good you may at least make less bad. For it is impossible
for all institutions to be good unless you make all men good, and
that I don’t expect to see for a long time to come’’ [26]). Yet making
all men good was the dream of the humanists in general and of Eras-
mus and More in particular, and eloquence, as we have seen, was the
tool they felt could be used to do so.
Raphael dismisses persona More’s arguments out of hand: ‘‘ ‘The
only result of this,’ he answered, ‘will be that while I try to cure oth-
ers of madness, I’ll be raving along with them myself ’ ’’ (26). Playing
one’s part in the play at hand, while it may be madness, is for Eras-
mus the essence of the philosophia Christi, and even Christ himself
accommodated himself to the play of life during his time on earth.
As Erasmus argued in ‘‘Sileni Alcibiades,’’ an adage added to the 1515
edition of the Adagia:

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68 ANDREW D. WEINER

Of course it would have been easy for Christ to have set up his throne
over all the earth, and to possess it, as the old rulers of Rome vainly
claimed to do [. . .] to impose silence on all the philosophers and over-
throw the emptiness of the Sophists. But this was the only pattern that
pleased him, and which he set before the eyes of his disciples and
friends-that is to say Christians.15

Though Raphael complains bitterly that by following persona More’s

advice he would be doing what he refuses to do, setting aside ‘‘most
of the commandments of Christ even in a community of Christians’’
and accommodating ‘‘his teaching to the way men live’’ (27), he
clearly seems more committed to the letter of Christ’s command-
ments than to their spirit. If life is a comedy, it is true wisdom (or, as
Folly would put it, true folly) to recognize that it is so because God,
the ‘‘maker of the plaie’’ (38), has so designed it. Persona More’s
rebuke takes its strength, ultimately, from our recognition that in
refusing to serve on any but his own terms, Raphael is rejecting not
simply what may be largely fruitless labor but what is also the folly of
Christ.
Yet persona More’s self-announced doubts about his ability to per-
suade are also clearly justified. His attempts to convince Raphael
that he has a duty to serve have been predestined to failure because
he has ignored his own advice and not adopted his arguments to
the ‘‘drama in hand.’’ He has appealed to a lover of wisdom with
arguments calculated to appeal to a lover of goodness. Both Raphael
and persona More have maneuvered themselves into extreme posi-
tions. Raphael, fearing that his wisdom will be rejected by those not
wholly committed to it, wishes to take it away to Utopia; persona
More, fearing all things will not be well until all men are good, has
come almost to despair of the positive power of goodness and to
conceive of the good man’s task merely as making things ‘‘as little
bad’’ as he can.
Thus we find ourselves, midway through Utopia, offered a choice
of mutually exclusive and equally unsatisfactory alternatives. We can
either play stoic wise man with Raphael and withdraw into the fruit-
less intellectual liberty of philosophy while the ship of state found-
ers—with us aboard!—in a tempest of human folly or we can join
with persona More in the fruitless labor of trying to keep things from
getting worse without any real hope of being able to make them get
any better. Raphael’s monologue about Utopia in book 2 offers us
not a new option but only a continuation of our difficulty. Although,
for Raphael, Utopia is indeed the happy place (Eutopia) he pro-
claims it to be, More adroitly confirms its internal contradictions by

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 69

a rhetorical arrangement which juxtaposes, for instance, the Utopi-

ans’ willingness to establish colonies by force on the territory of their
neighbors whenever the Utopian population increases too much
with the Utopian insistence that only bondslaves should be involved
in slaughtering animals on the grounds that ‘‘slaughtering our fel-
low-creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is
the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable’’ (42).
While various of the Utopian institutions may be good—at least bet-
ter than their European counterparts—or wise, there do not seem
to be any—at least any of which Raphael approves—that are both
good and wise.
Our frustration at having to choose only between partially accept-
able but largely problematic positions is at its height when, immedi-
ately before his conclusion, Raphael suddenly points at a solution
outside the terms supplied for the debate to this point (although he
does not accept it). Having dismissed European societies as nothing
more than a ‘‘conspiracy of the rich, who are fattening up their own
interests under the name and title of the commonwealth’’ (83), Ra-
phael concludes a hyperbolical proclamation of all the good the
elimination of money procures and all the evil it prevents (such as
fraud, theft, rapine, quarrels, disorders, brawls, seditions, murders,
treasons, poisonings, fear, anxiety, worries, toils, and sleepless
nights), when the grounds suddenly shift and pride replaces money
as the root of all evils and Christ replaces communism as man’s
savior.
Raphael had introduced communism as the only system designed
to maximize happiness by declaring ‘‘absolute equality of goods’’
(28) and he had concluded by insisting that only in Utopia can
everyone have what they need: ‘‘where everything belongs to every-
body no man need fear that, so long as the public warehouses are
filled, he will ever lack for anything he needs. . . . Though no man
owns anything, everyone is rich’’ (82). Now, however, the goods we
must seek are spiritual goods and the riches we must gather are to
be laid up in heaven, for Christian communism was instituted not to
maximize each man’s worldly wealth but to permit him to follow
Christ without worldly impediments. As Christ’s authority replaces
Plato’s, we find wisdom and goodness finally reconciled in the alter-
native that the work drives us to seek. Although Christ’s ‘‘authority’’
is only one argument in favor of Utopian communism for Raphael,
it is our only way out of the dilemma that More’s portrayals of hith-
erto ineffective goodness and inflexible wisdom have created for us.
As Utopia draws to its close with persona More swallowing his objec-
tions to the absurdities he finds in the Utopian institutions, and

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70 ANDREW D. WEINER

leading Raphael in to dinner in what is almost the only example in

the work of what Erasmus calls ‘‘that kindness to our neighbor’’
which ‘‘wrests [Mercy] from [God],’’16 we are left with the option of
accepting, as persona More seems to have done by his act of charity,
‘‘the authority of Christ our Savior—whose wisdom could not fail to
recognize the best, and whose goodness would not fail to counsel it’’
(Yale Utopia 1965, 84), or of resisting, ostensibly on the grounds of
our own estimation of what is really best, and so remaining with
pride, that ‘‘serpent from hell which twines itself around the hearts
of men’’ and ‘‘acts like the suckfish in holding them back from
choosing a better way of life’’ (Yale Utopia 1965, 84).
As Utopia comes to its sudden close and human sympathy replaces
fruitless debate, we find ourselves able to understand why, having
sought ways to revivify rhetoric by discovering an eloquence that de-
pends as much upon the structure of responses it arouses as upon
the power of words, Erasmus and More could feel that they had in-
deed found a way to put rhetoric at the service of the philosophy of
Christ and liberate it from those who would use it only to treat seri-
ous matters triflingly and frivolous matters seriously. By cultivating
an eloquence not merely verbal, Erasmus and More could more con-
fidently feel that the day when all things might be well because all
men were good might not be so far away as Dorp and persona More
had feared. By moving their audiences to a self-transforming leap of
faith, the obstacles in fallen human nature could be overcome and
a truly Christian commonwealth founded upon the philosophy of
Christ might be erected. As Erasmus put it in the Paraclesis:

If princes in the execution of their duties would manifest what I have

referred to as a vulgar doctrine, if priests would inculcate it in sermons,
if schoolmasters would instill it in students rather than that erudition
which they draw from the fonts of Aristotle and Averroes, Christendom
would not be so disturbed on all sides by almost continuous war, every-
thing would not be boiling over with such a mad desire to heap up riches
by fair means or foul, every subject, sacred as well as profane, would not
be made to resound everywhere with so much noisy disputation, and,
finally, we would not differ from those who do not profess the philoso-
phy of Christ merely in name and ceremonial. . . . If it should happen
that [princes and magistrates, bishops and their delegated priests, and
teachers] having laid aside their own affairs, should sincerely cooperate
in Christ, we would certainly see in not so many years a true and . . .
genuine race of Christians everywhere emerge, a people who would re-
store the philosophy of Christ not in ceremonies alone and in syllogistic
propositions but in the heart itself and in the whole life. (99)

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 71

Given the alacrity with which More defends the whole of the Eras-
mian program in his other works of this period, if we look not for
the political philosophy that underlines the institutions of Utopia
but for the strategies by which More tried to persuade his readers
that they must live somewhere, not in Nowhere, we may find our-
selves much closer to taking More seriously.
I would also like to suggest that there are benefits to be gained by
taking history seriously as well. Hayden White has claimed that ‘‘the
historian can claim a voice in contemporary cultural dialogue only
insofar as he takes seriously the kind of question that the art and
science of his own time demand that he ask of the materials he has
chosen to study,’’ and Lee Patterson, insisting that all interpretation
is political, has argued that ‘‘historical criticism must abandon the
hope of any theoretical foundation and come to rest upon its own
historically contingent moment, and upon convictions that find
their final support within experience.’’17 These dicta seem to me
simply to doom us to superimpose the vision of the present every-
where, to limit us to see only what our own cultural biases deem wor-
thy of notice and so to leave us with no alternative except a present
from which we have declared there is no exit. I find Skinner’s hope
for historical criticism an antidote to both the intellectual pride and
the despair that the rejection of history seems to involve:

it is a commonplace—we are all Marxists to this extent—that our own

society places unrecognized constraints upon our imaginations. It de-
serves, then, to become a commonplace that the historical study of the
ideas of other societies should be taken as the indispensable and the irre-
placeable means of placing limits on those constraints. (‘‘Meaning and
Understanding,’’ 67)

Objectivity may be a chimera, but unless we are willing to try to en-

counter the historical other as other, we condemn ourselves only to
seeing ourselves reflected everywhere we look.
If we then try to look at what More thought he was doing not from
our perspective but, as Skinner urges, from More’s own perspective,
we can get a better sense of what More thought he was doing. If by
our definitions Utopia is one of the quintessential humanist works,
how does that help us to arrive at a sense of what More would have
thought a humanist work was? In a passage I have already quoted,
persona More argues that wisdom is not enough. Rebuking Raphael
for ‘‘thrust[ing] on people ideas of this sort that you know will not
be listened to,’’ persona More insists that ‘‘[w]hen your listeners are
already prepossessed against you and firmly convinced of opposite

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72 ANDREW D. WEINER

opinions,’’ a ‘‘rhapsody of new-fangled ideas’’ will be useless (25).

Yet persona More has already urged Raphael to become an adviser to
a prince as a means of improving the commonwealth:

I think if you could overcome your aversion to court life, your advice to
a prince would be of the greatest advantage to mankind. This, after all,
is the chief duty of every good man. (20)

If, as his letters to Erasmus urging him to proceed apace with getting
Utopia published are any indication, ‘‘the Distinguished and Elo-
quent Author THOMAS MORE’’ seems to have thought that his
‘‘Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining’’
might be a way of accomplishing that duty urged on Raphael within
his book (Rogers 1961, 73, 76). Despite persona More’s fears about
the ineffectiveness of thrusting new ideas on people unwilling to re-
ceive them, More thought that there was indeed a tool for changing
people’s minds and overcoming their objections, eloquence, and a
model for those who would use it, Erasmus.
In his 1515 letter to Dorp, as we have seen, More talks about the
power of rhetoric to completely prostrate and destroy the opposi-
tion of those unwilling to hear new ideas, and he talks about Eras-
mus as one with a ‘‘very special gift’’ for rhetoric (Rogers 1961, 15).
In his letter to Edward Lee (1519), he praises Erasmus for doing
what persona More had urged Raphael to do: ‘‘I confess that I am
very fond of Erasmus, for practically no other reason than that for
which all of Christendom cherishes him, namely that this one man’s
unceasing exertions have done more to advance all students of
sound intellectual disciplines in both sacred and secular learning
than virtually anyone else’s exertions for the last several centuries’’
(Yale More 1965, 15, 159, 161). In his letter to a Monk (1519), More
again defends Erasmus by praising his efforts at practicing what we
might well see as the ‘‘more civil philosophy’’ persona More had
urged on Raphael:

If anyone carefully considers the steady stream of massive, excellent, and

numerous volumes that Erasmus has produced single-handedly, so many
that you would think that one man would not even be equal to copying
them all out, he will readily conclude that even if Erasmus were not to-
tally preoccupied with virtue he would certainly have little time to devote
to vice. Now if you look even closer with an unbiased eye, first consider-
ing the fruitfulness of his works and then appraising the testimony of
those who have derived from his works either illumination in their stud-
ies or fervor in their affections, I for one think you will not find it at all

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TAKING MORE SERIOUSLY 73

likely that the heart from which such sparks of piety leap forth to kindle
the spirits of others is utterly cold in itself. (Yale More 1965, 293, 295)

In Erasmus, whose ‘‘fruitful’’ works were essential tools for ad-

vancing ‘‘sound intellectual disciplines’’ in both the sacred and sec-
ular spheres of life and which were capable of either illuminating
those who read them or filling them with a fervor to practice what
had illuminated them, we find an adviser who can serve not just a
prince but everyone who is intelligent enough to understand what
they read and not so consumed by envy that they reject it. In a very
real way, Erasmus holds for More in his writings the place that St.
Jerome held for Erasmus in his, one who ‘‘had been born . . . for the
world at large’’ and ‘‘educated for the service of mankind.’’18 He is
what Raphael refused to become, a good man who has accepted
what More saw as the obligation to put his gifts of learning to the
service of all. If Utopia could become the means of inspiring another
Raphael to become another Erasmus, then the time when all things
could be good because all men had become good would be much
nearer than persona More believed.

Notes
1. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 4.
2. Resp. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 993 to 1121 (1519–1520), trans.
R. A. B. Mynors, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1987), letter 999, to Ulrich von Hutten, July 23, 1519; and Greenblatt, 54.
3. Quentin Skinner, ‘‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,’’ in
Meaning & Context. Quentin Skinner and his Critics, ed. James Tully (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1988), 49.
4. Quentin Skinner, ‘‘Motives, Intentions, and the Interpretations of Texts,’’ in
Meaning & Context. Quentin Skinner and his Critics, 77.
5. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Volume One: The
Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 1:216.
6. Utopia, The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. Ed-
ward J. Surtz, S.J., and J. H. Hexter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965),
4:1.
7. Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poetry, in Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney,
ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1973), 86–87.
8. Utopia, trans. Robert M. Adams, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 5.
9. Thomas More, Selected Letters, ed. Elizabeth Frances Rogers (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1961), 15.
10. Francesco Petrarch, ‘‘On His Own Ignorance and that of Many Others,’’
trans. Hans Nachod, in Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernest Cassirer, Paul

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74 ANDREW D. WEINER

Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr., 105 (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1963).
11. Paraclesis, in Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings, ed. John
C. Olin (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 93.
12. Gioanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, trans. Elizabeth
Livermore Forbes, in Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernest Cassirer, Paul Oskar
Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr., 237 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1963).
13. Thomas More, Utopia, trans. Ralph Robinson (1551) (New York: E. P. Dutton
for Everyman’s Library, 1951; repr. 1965), 9.
14. Utopia, trans. Robert M. Adams, 25–26; cf. The Praise of Folie, trans. Sir Thomas
Chaloner (1549), ed. Clarence H. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965),
37–39.
15. Sileni Alcibiades, in Erasmus on His Times: A Shortened Version of the ‘‘Adages’’ of
Erasmus, ed. and trans. Margaret Mann Phillips, 80 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1967).
16. Erasmus, Desiderius, Concerning the Immense Mercy of God, in The Essential Eras-
mus, trans. and ed. John Dolan, 264 (New York: New American Library, 1964).
17. Resp. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Balti-
more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 41; and Lee Patterson, Negotiat-
ing the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 48.
18. The Patristic Scholarship: The Edition of St. [Link] Works of Erasmus E 61.
Ed. and trans. James F. Brady & John C. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992),
25.

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Thomas More at Epigrams:
Humanism or Humanisms?
Elizabeth McCutcheon

SOON AFTER FINISHING A SHORT STUDY OF LAUGHTER IN THOMAS MORE’S

Epigrammata, I happened upon John Carroll’s Humanism: The Wreck
of Western Culture.1 Carroll is intentionally provocative: he begins and
ends his book by celebrating the death of humanism: ‘‘To say it once
again, it is time to bury the dead, and to start the difficult business
of restoring our capacity for life.’’2 Obviously, he doth protest too
much. But it is his definition of humanism that particularly startled
me. He begins by claiming that humanism ‘‘attempted to replace
God by man, to put man at the centre of the universe, to deify him,’’
and he characterizes pre-Reformation humanism as the champion
of will and reason.3 That it could be skeptical, or riddled with self-
doubt, instead, is seen simply as a later reaction to its initial convic-
tion that human beings could remake themselves and/or their soci-
ety.4 In addition to Carroll’s rhetorical overkill, his approach is an
obvious overgeneralization and simplification that seems dated and
privileges what Carroll calls ‘‘the rare masterpieces of culture,’’ ig-
noring the rest.5 Perhaps inadvertently, it also highlights an issue
that has long been the subject of critical and scholarly debate; given
the inconsistencies, contradictions, and failures of humanism, and
the humanists’ hyperbolic self-assessments, to what extent is the
term meaningful? Can we speak of humanism in the singular, in
other words, or would we be better off speaking of humanisms—not
only with reference to humanism as a large-scale movement in Re-
naissance Europe or early sixteenth-century England, but with refer-
ence to any single humanist or a single humanist work?6 Certainly
my reading of More’s Latin epigrams and the critical studies of them
pointed to the plural, even though I had been looking for some uni-
fying element in the collection and thought that I had found one in
the way that laughter, as a social and human bond, has program-
matic, social, and psychological relevance in the Epigrammata, con-
necting More with a larger, international humanist community and

75

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76 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEON

vice versa, and reinforcing shared perceptions at the same time that
(for better or worse) it excludes those with a different mind-set. I
want to revisit this issue of humanism/humanisms, then, using
More’s collection and various interpretations and readings of it as a
test case. It seems to me that the Epigrammata resists any single defi-
nition or treatment of it as humanist, although that is the label that
is customarily (and understandably) associated with it. To put
this more plainly still: while More’s collection was published with
impeccable humanist credentials, the nature of its humanism / hu-
manisms is surprisingly complicated and multifaceted, if not contra-
dictory.
The publication of the Epigrammata was itself a cooperative and
international venture. It was first printed in Basel in 1518, together
with the third edition of More’s Utopia and a collection of epigrams
of a quite different, more sober and religious sort by Erasmus. It was
printed a second time that same year, and a revised collection was
printed separately in 1520.7 In each case, the printer, who was closely
connected to Erasmus and other Northern humanists, was Johann
Froben, and the title pages call attention to More’s credentials as
a ‘‘clarissimus’’and ‘‘disertissimus vir.’’8 In a dedicatory letter to a
German humanist, Willibald Pirckheimer, Beatus Rhenanus (a well-
known editor of classical texts, an associate of Froben, and a friend
of both Erasmus and Pirckheimer), likewise writes glowingly about
More and his epigrams. He singles out More’s many accomplish-
ments and his wit, language, style, learning, and ability as both com-
poser and translator, while emphasizing the pleasure and profit that
will accrue to the reader, echoing a Horatian commonplace dear to
the Northern humanists.9
We know less than we’d like about when and why the poems were
first written or how they were circulated before they appeared in
print, however. Fewer than a quarter of the poems in the collection
(260 in the 1518 editions, 269 in 1520, which omitted two epigrams
from 1518 and added eleven new poems) are dateable.10 On Eras-
mus’s authority they have sometimes been treated as the work of a
very young man. But they actually seem to have been written over a
period of as much as twenty years on all sorts of occasions—
occasions that their titles often emphasize.11 Moreover, some of
them were presented to individuals or circulated in manuscript
among a coterie group or were published singly in another collec-
tion before they were collected and printed. This complicates any
reading of them; David Carlson has shown just how much an inter-
pretation of one of More’s epigrams may change when it is stripped
of its original context and placed among the Epigrammata.12 In any

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THOMAS MORE AT EPIGRAMS: HUMANISM OR HUMANISMS? 77

case, their publication as a collection intensified their humanist con-

text in some sense, for not only do they overlap chronologically with
More’s other humanist productions—his translations of Lucian, his
History of Richard III, and his Utopia—but their appearance in print,
directed to a humanist coterie, publicly links them with the Utopia
and with epigrams by Northern Europe’s best-known humanist.
The title and the poetic form likewise mark the collection as a hu-
manist endeavor. As a genre, the epigram, which was very popular
throughout the Renaissance, is linked to the rediscovery of the
Greek and Roman classics, perhaps the least common denominator
of the humanist impulse, which sought out antiquity, recovered old
models, and invented new ones based upon an interpretation of the
ancients, while stressing the importance of grammar and rhetoric.13
More was the first to translate and publish many of the epigrams
from the Planudean Anthology in Western Europe, and the two
1518 printings highlighted his classicism by including ‘‘pleraque e
Graecis uersa’’ on their title pages—words dropped from the revised
edition of 1520, perhaps because they obscure the original nature of
the greater number of the poems, perhaps as a response to Brixius’s
insinuations about More’s knowledge of Greek and Latin.14 ‘‘Plera’’
is somewhat hyperbolic, in any case; over one hundred (but less
than half ) of the Epigrammata are either translations of or variations
upon epigrams from a Greek text.15 But More’s major source is un-
deniably classical, up-to-date, and even forward looking, and his
other sources are extremely varied and often, though not invariably,
humanist as well. He reworks material from any number of other
classical writers (among them Plutarch, Seneca, Cicero, Diogenes
Laertius, Plato, Aristotle, Lucian, Plautus, and Martial), weaves in
biblical texts, adapts traditional jests and Aesopic fables, and trans-
lates two near contemporaneous English love lyrics.16
It would be a mistake to limit More’s classicism or humanism to
the kind of material he chose to translate or imitate, however. He
understood the formal nature of the classical epigram, what Rhena-
nus calls a ‘‘learned epigram’’ (‘‘doctum epigramma’’) in his prefa-
tory letter to the Epigrammata and helpfully defines, lest some of
More’s readers were not sufficiently informed: ‘‘an epigram, as you
know, must have wit combined with brevity; it must be lighthearted,
and then it must end promptly with a witty point (epiphonema).’’17
In fact, not all of More’s Epigrammata are epigrams, at least as we
understand the term today; there are lyrics, verse epistles, and an
ode. Nor are they always lighthearted. But his epigrams clearly have
the brevity, the often bipartite structure, the tendency to concen-
trate action in a particular instance, the topical variety, and the acu-

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78 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEON

leate, often gnomic or inscriptional quality that characterize the

classical form.18 A case in point, no. 115, ‘‘De Principe Bono Et
Malo’’ (‘‘On Kings, Good and Bad’’), which is an original political
epigram. The English reads, ‘‘What is a good king? He is a watchdog,
guardian of the flock, who by barking keeps the wolves from the
sheep. What is the bad king? He is the wolf.’’19 This translation
catches the substance of the epigram, one of many indictments of
the tyrant, a theme that More makes peculiarly his, together with its
question-answer format and its submerged transformation of images
from St. John, chapter 10. But we need More’s Latin (17 words in-
stead of English’s 31) for the bluntness and concision of the diction,
the sharpness of the contraries (good/bad, dog/wolf ), the sting of
the answers, and the full horror of guardian dog turned predator
wolf, grimly focused on the mouth. Where the mouth of the dog
protects the flock, the wolf ’s devours it:

Quid bonus est princeps? Canis est custos gregis inde

Qui fugat ore lupos. Quid malus? Ipse lupus.20

Peculiarly, the topical variety of the Epigrammata, which is yet an-

other indication of its humanism, also frustrates attempts to find a
‘‘core’’ or principle of coherence, and helps to explain the very dif-
ferent interpretations of what its humanism amounts to. For the
most part, More eschews a favorite Renaissance type—the erotic epi-
gram. Otherwise, his topics are extremely diverse and his range
much broader than his fellow humanists’; in some sense his epi-
grams constitute a world. At one extreme he writes about foolish as-
trologers, prostitutes, cuckolds, a Frenchified courtier, women who
paint their faces, and a way to eliminate bad breath after eating leeks
(by eating onions, and so on, to an earthy conclusion); at the other
there are reflections upon kingship, government, the brevity of life,
and death. In mood, too, the epigrams and other poems vary. There
are jokes, slapstick comedy, scatology, satiric jabs, expressions of
friendship, encomia, ironic reflections, aphorisms, lyric moments,
and epitaphs. More enjoys writing variations upon a theme or
motif—as in his seven epigrams upon two beggars, one blind and
one lame, who are each other’s support. But a cluster or run of epi-
grams on a similar topic will be interrupted, and jests and gnomic
treatments of mortality can follow one another in rapid succession.
There is a wide range of addressees, as well, including King Henry
VIII, potential patrons, humanist friends, More’s children, the
anonymous ‘‘Candidus,’’ the French poet Brixius, a fat priest, a
woman More loved long ago, other persons named and nameless

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THOMAS MORE AT EPIGRAMS: HUMANISM OR HUMANISMS? 79

(sometimes learned and sophisticated, sometimes the butt of a

joke), and, in some instances, himself, along with dramatic dia-
logues and monologues. Moreover, the epigrams proved easily de-
tachable, and were frequently reprinted for the next two hundred
years or so—indeed the Epigrammata long rivaled More’s Utopia in
popularity.21
Faced with such diversity as well as such a large number, critics
have tended to focus on a few that best make their case, sometimes
treating them, wittingly or not, as if they were the entire collection.
Thus, readings of the epigrams often depend upon taking a human-
ist part for a more complex humanist whole, or, as I would rather
put it, a complex mix or assemblage of humanisms. Mary Thomas
Crane’s studies of More’s epigrams, for instance, treat More’s hu-
manism as an educational project: she argues that More’s collection
(like John Constable’s and William Lily’s) was ‘‘intended to further
the political and educational aims of their authors.22 More particu-
larly, she stresses what she calls ‘‘moralizing poems,’’ poems that are
admonitory, satiric, or epideictic.23 Relegating the comic to a brief
comment and an endnote, she calls attention to More’s epigram on
the ignorant bishop who lacks the spirit that gives life (no. 202); his
poems praising Henry VIII on the occasion of his coronation (nos.
19–23); and the Progymnasmata (nos. 1–18), a group of translations
from the Greek by More and William Lily, which were written in
friendly competition and could be thought of as models for school-
boys to imitate (so that the process of composition, like the topics,
is educational and tied to the new learning, with its emphasis on
grammar and rhetoric). But these first eighteen epigrams seem to
have been intended as a kind of introductory exercise for the epi-
grams that follow, and Crane’s approach runs the risk of overweigh-
ing the didactic aspect of many of the epigrams, which are not as
transparently educational as they may seem to be, although
grounded in ethical and political situations.
By focusing on the most original topic in the Epigrammata, king-
ship, and, by extension, the political dimension, Ann Baynes Coiro
and Damian Grace offer more nuanced readings of More’s human-
ism. By Coiro’s count, there are at least 26 epigrams on kingship, by
Grace’s, thirty-one.24 Coiro, like Crane, emphasizes the educational
impulse, observing, for example, that ‘‘In this coronation epigram,
More initiates a function of the English epigrammatist as educator
of princes that will remain central.’’25 So what for some readers is
mere or mostly flattery, is, for her, ‘‘politic advice and criticism in
epigram form.’’26 And she points to the many ‘‘remarkably outspo-
ken’’ epigrams on kingship, singling out More’s epigram about the

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80 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEON

king as lion (no.162), which she views as the center or core of a col-
lection that reflects More’s own arrangement.27 Compare Coiro’s to
Damian Grace’s provocative study, ‘‘Thomas More’s Epigrammata:
Political Theory in a Poetic Idiom.’’ Preceding the studies of Crane
and Coiro, it emphasizes how More used the epigrammatic form
‘‘not only as a vehicle for political expression but as an idiom of a
political language whose finest expression was Utopia.’’28 Grace help-
fully identifies three categories (what he calls ‘‘gradations’’) of the
political; there are ‘‘the explicit, the directly ambiguous, and the
contextually suggestive.’’29 He also shows just how More applies the
otherwise familiar maxims of political theory to concrete cases—
and, more subtly, how the explicitly political poems (many of them
about the dangers of tyranny) ‘‘form a context for interpretation of
less explicit ones.’’30 So Grace’s categories overlap; a poem may be
both obviously political (and seemingly a praise of a king or his ac-
tions) and indirectly ambiguous, when, for example, it is juxtaposed
with an epigram attacking that same kind of action. Grace is equally
attentive to More’s language, arguing that More, like other North-
ern reformers, wanted to rehabilitate ‘‘discourse as an instrument of
reform.’’31
In fact, More’s language is essential for any understanding of the
epigrams as humanist. First, though, we need to consider a seem-
ingly very different, almost contrary, sort of reading to those by
Crane, Coiro, and Grace. Where they emphasize the topics, and, in
Crane’s case, the impersonality of the poems (she argues that they
‘‘are conspicuously public and anonymous’’), several critics have
read them primarily as autobiographical or self-promotional, view-
ing them in relation to More’s life, his personality, or his status as a
professional humanist.32 John Marsden’s Philomorus is an interesting
extended example of a nineteenth-century biographical approach.
He begins by recognizing the collection as a kind of vers de société
and a fashion ‘‘written upon every imaginable subject, personal or
public’’ by writers who ‘‘were bound together by a sort of freema-
sonry of scholarship.’’33 He subsequently weaves together a bio-
graphical narrative of sorts, rearranging the poems in the collection
to treat them, sometimes chronologically, sometimes topically, in
the light of More’s own life. So he juxtaposes More’s poem about a
woman he loved in his youth (no. 263) with his epitaph for his two
wives and himself (no. 258), and he argues that ‘‘Sola Mors Tyran-
nicida Est’’ (no. 80) must have been written at the time of King
Henry VII’s death, given More’s known condemnation of him.34 A
recent study, though otherwise quite different, likewise highlights
the biographical element. Questioning Erasmus’s glowing humanist

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THOMAS MORE AT EPIGRAMS: HUMANISM OR HUMANISMS? 81

portrait of the young More, Fox sees, rather, a personality subject

to contrary impulses. For Fox, More is a man who moved between
extremes, and he sees the epigrams as evidence of a movement (pos-
tulated rather than traced) from the pessimism of More’s early En-
glish poems to what he calls ‘‘the genuine Morean synthesis’’ of the
Utopia.35 For proof he cites the tremendous variety of the epigrams
that follow the fulsome optimism of the early coronation poems,
which are the first poems in the Epigrammata proper, but which
More had presented to King Henry VIII in 1509 in a handsomely
illuminated manuscript.
Critics have long been struck by the self-promotional aspect of hu-
manism; in 1959, for example, H. A. Mason pointed out that the
humanists (at least some of them) ‘‘constituted a vast mutual-admira-
tion society, and that one of their principal activities was self-praise.’’36
This link between humanism and self-promotion and/or the fash-
ioning of a public self has become a preoccupation of recent criti-
cism, given its interests in material culture, patronage, and the
literary system of exchange. In two brilliantly researched essays,
which are, however, focused on a single sort of epigram (praise/dis-
praise), David R. Carlson has shown just how far More (like other
humanists, particularly Erasmus) was willing to go to establish his
literary career and reputation among an international humanist
community—far enough to engage in duplicity or deceit. His earlier
article follows two appearances of More’s epigram in praise of Hymni
Christiani (1517), an ambitious collection of hymns by Bernard
André, a well established humanist and propagandist for the Tudor
court. An epigram by More praising (or apparently praising) An-
dré’s collection was published with it. But when the same epigram
was published in More’s own collection eight months later, it had a
new, derogatory title, so that the epigram, read ironically, became
a poem ridiculing André. As Carlson points out, now the epigram
‘‘functions as an encomium of More, who not only saw through An-
dré’s pretensions but could write such a thing as could be published
once as praise of him and once as blame.’’37 A second study, showing
how essentially occasional poems were ‘‘made over into a single,
weighty monument to More’s public self, functioning to advertise
his ingenium,’’ adds three epigrams related to Henry Abyngdon, the
choirmaster of the Chapel Royal, who died in 1497.38 The first epi-
gram (no. 159) is an elegant elegy in the classical meters beloved of
the humanists; the second (no. 160) is also an epitaph, this time,
however, in medieval rhymed meter. In the 1518 collection, these
are followed by a third epigram (no. 161), where More laughs at Ab-
yngdon’s heir, ‘‘Janus,’’ who had objected to More’s first epitaph

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82 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEON

and wanted one in rhyme, which the humanists considered barba-

rous; to More’s feigned amazement the rhymed epitaph was placed
on Abyngdon’s tomb.39
It was, then, a palpable hit (one of many) when Germanus Brix-
ius, a French humanist whose grandiloquent poem about a battle
between a French and English ship in 1512 was mocked by More in
several of his epigrams, claimed that there was only one good poem
in the 1518 Epigrammata, no. 160. ‘‘I know, More,’’ he writes, ‘‘that
the verses wherein you sing the singer Abyngdon were struck off as
a jest. But, lest you fail to note your appeal, you are fine as a laugh-
able bard; as a serious one, you are a failure’’ (‘‘Ridiculus bonus es,
serius at malus es’’).40 The insult was the more dangerous because
Brixius contrasted the ‘‘success’’ of the poem on Abyngdon with
More’s criticism of Henry VII in the coronation poems for his son.41
For much of his Antimorus, though, Brixius attacks More’s scansion
and his ‘‘utterly disgraceful solecisms and barbarisms,’’ producing
long lists of errors in his meters and in his choice of words.42 More,
who was alarmed by Brixius’s charges, some of them politically dan-
gerous, defended himself in a long rejoinder. But he also corrected
some of the errors in the 1518 texts in the revised edition of 1520.
More’s twentieth-century editors have also noted some of his prob-
lems with scansion—albeit in a much less hostile fashion.43
More’s epigrams have been denigrated on other grounds, as well.
H. A. Mason, for one, distinguishes between ‘‘bonae literae in the best
sense and belles-lettres in the bad sense,’’ and relegates More’s Epi-
grammata to the latter category, faulting them as puzzles grounded
in the taste of the age and essentially medieval, despite their human-
ist trimmings. Finally, he sees them as trivial, in some superficial
sense translations, but not creatively so.44 There is an element of
truth in Mason’s claims; some of More’s epigrams are interesting
primarily as the small change of a male coterie, and More’s epigrams
on rape (nos. 116, 167) seem like the humanist equivalent of locker-
room humor. Nor would anyone today prefer the Epigrammata to the
Utopia. I am not convinced by his conclusion, however, where he jus-
tifies his survey of More’s Latin poetry by asking readers to ‘‘contrast
this use of Latin with More’s use of it for advancing thought’’ in the
Utopia.45 There are important overlaps between More’s topics, the
rhetorical strategies, and language in the two works—particularly in
the ways that More uses ambiguity, ambivalence, and incongruity to
startle and stimulate inquiry or to invite different perspectives upon
the question of good government and other central questions of
life. Several of the critics whom I’ve already discussed, including
Coiro, Grace, and Carlson, have shown just how ambiguous More’s

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THOMAS MORE AT EPIGRAMS: HUMANISM OR HUMANISMS? 83

epigrams can be. Another detailed demonstration of this occurs in

David Rundle’s ‘‘A New Golden Age? More, Skelton and the Acces-
sion Verse of 1509.’’ Rundle begins by pointing to very real ambigu-
ities in epigram no. 201, ‘‘On the King and the Peasant,’’ which tells
how a rustic and naı̈ve peasant came to town and watched as a huge
crowd of people lined the street, first shouting that ‘‘The king is
coming,’’ and then, as he rode by, ‘‘Long live the king.’’ But the
puzzled peasant cannot see the king, even when one of the bystand-
ers points to a man who is resplendent in gold and sits on a tall
horse. ‘‘I think you are making fun of me,’’ he says; ‘‘To me he looks
like a man in fancy dress.’’46 According to a slightly later jestbook
version of this (1532?), the joke is on the peasant for not being ‘‘well
nourished up and virtuously endoctrined.’’47 So interpreted, the
joke (and the epigram) reinforce the status quo. Yet this is in the
midst of a group of epigrams that deflate pretensions and pompous
behavior. So a subversive reading that deflates the royal presence
(and invites questions about the king’s claims to power) by insinuat-
ing that the king, too, is a man, regardless of his dress, and/or that
laughs at the crowd for being taken in by the king’s appearance,
seems a more likely reading. Much depends upon point of view,
then, or where we stand as we read this and other epigrams.
Similarly, Rundle finds conscious ambiguity in what others have
read as some of More’s most straightforward poems—his accession
verses. He argues that More, like the rustic in several of the epi-
grams, was not taken in by the ceremony of the occasion, or, more
precisely, reacted ambivalently to the celebrations. Rejecting the
idea that the commonplaces are simply conventional, he also argues
that even at the time that the coronation poems were written there
is ‘‘an ambivalence which is totally in keeping with pieces like the
political epigrams, and he points to the ambiguity in the classical
parallels More uses in the ‘Carmen Gratulatorium’ ’’ (no. 19).48 In-
deed, even the notion of a return of the golden age proves equivo-
cal, for in one of his shorter accession poems (no. 21), More alludes
to the Platonic notion of the cycle of the recurrence of all the ages,
from gold to iron, undercutting the apparent optimism of his earlier
encomium of Henry VIII.49 This potential ambivalence becomes ac-
tual in a number of later epigrams. In several of these, for example,
More as ironist claims that death and/or sleep is a leveler, so that the
king is no better off than the beggar, Irus, and may even be worse off
(nos. 40, 45, 46, 80, 107, 108, 110). Some of these same epigrams
could be read in a quite different but still derogatory way, how-
ever—as evidence of frustration, if not rage or an almost Swiftian
saeva indignatio on the speaker’s part. So they could have had a more

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84 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEON

personal application, as strategies for psychological survival or peace

of mind in a world where power rules—or appears to.
Many of More’s epigrams are also ambivalent or ambiguous by vir-
tue of their word play. Here I want to cite an apparently frivolous
one, no. 106, ‘‘On a Fool,’’ a traditional joke that More translated
from the Planudean Anthology. It is an example of a popular form,
the noodle, which turns up in a later humanist work, Robert Bur-
ton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, though not attributed to More there.50
The Yale version renders More this way; ‘‘When the fleas bite Morio,
he puts out his light and says, ‘These fleas will not see me now,’ ’’
nicely preserving some part of More’s word play, which connects the
fleas that ‘‘mordent’’ with his own name.51 But if More’s version is
self-promoting (to follow Carlson’s argument), it is also self-depreca-
tory, and at one and the same time personal, social, and public. Inso-
far as it is (or could be) any or all of the three, it is also more
complex than Burton’s less dramatic version of ‘‘that stupid fellow
[who] put out the Candle, because the biting fleas should not finde
him,’’ a more abstract and distanced rendering.52 Both versions,
though, reflect humanist preoccupations with folly and the nature
of deception and perception that Democritus Junior’s preface to
Burton’s Anatomy, Erasmus’ Moria, and More’s epigrams share.
Another important rhetorical device that contributes to the ambi-
guity of More’s epigrams is his use of question and answer. ‘‘What is
the Best Form of Government’’ (no.198) is probably the best known
single example of this. In effect a dramatized monologue-dialogue,
it begins as if it were answering a question put to the speaker by an
unidentified friend: ‘‘You ask which governs better, a king or a sen-
ate. Neither, if (as is frequently the case) both are bad. But if both
are good, then I think that the senate, because of its numbers, is the
better and that the greater good lies in numerous good men.’’53 But
after he has made a strong case for a republic, and started to answer
his friend’s objection, he interrupts himself: ‘‘Is there anywhere a
people upon whom you yourself, by your own decision, can impose
either a king or a senate?’’ More could have ended the epigram
here. But the speaker continues, ‘‘Stop considering to whom you
may give power. The more basic question is whether it would do any
good if you could.’’54 So what begins as if it were a little dialogue
upon the best state of the commonwealth (compare the original
title of Utopia) becomes something far more complex, startling, and
unstable, as Clarence Miller has shown.55 Alluding to More’s Utopia
by way of word play (‘‘Est ne usquam populus’’), it turns away from
theory to the ambiguities of political life.56 Here, among other is-
sues, More anticipates the vexing differences between theory and

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THOMAS MORE AT EPIGRAMS: HUMANISM OR HUMANISMS? 85

practice and intentions and results that render the world (like many
of his epigrams and the Utopia) so problematic.
Many other epigrams likewise speak of ambiguities and ambiva-
lence in a world that resists or subverts our attempts to control it.
‘‘On a Cat and a Mouse’’ (no. 262), a disarmingly simple epigram
added to the collection in 1520, depends upon a favorite Morean
metaphor, the trap, as it inverts an old proverb, ‘‘As a cat plays with
a mouse,’’ for startling results by way of a little narrative, another
Morean strategy.57 Normally, of course, a cat plays with a mouse be-
fore eating it. In this case, though, the cat outwits herself. As she
continues her play (or ‘‘play,’’ since the epigram dramatizes just
how cruel her play is), she increases the space between herself and
the mouse until the terrified mouse manages to escape and reaches
a safe hiding place, leaving the cat to sit by the hole in vain. But
More disingenuously complicates the story. According to the narra-
tive ‘‘I,’’ the mouse ‘‘would have died in the trap if what ordinarily
destroys it had not protected and saved it—a cat.’’58 But the speaker
was the one who took the mouse from the trap to begin with and
gave it to the cat. So the epigram concludes with a reverberating
irony that confuses intentions with results and begs the question of
the narrator’s complicity and frustrated intentions, as well as the
cat’s. It also leaves us with open-ended questions. To what extent
does the cat (a miniature version of the lion, who figures as a stand-
in for the king in several epigrams) represent royal power?59 To what
extent do we emphasize the mouse’s successful, albeit ironic, escape,
instead? And to what extent is this epigram about the multiple ab-
surdities and ironies that characterize so much of life as we experi-
ence it, whether we be mouse, cat, a Morean speaker, or (even) a
king? In any case, the epigram invites reflections upon issues that
belie the apparent lightness of the narrative and signal its affinities
with no. 198.
By now Carroll’s definition of humanism can seem almost com-
pletely inapplicable to More’s epigrams, which are far more con-
scious of both the dangers of power and the limits upon human
beings than their ability to remake themselves or their world; if
nothing else, death, which escorts everyone out of this world, will
lower the mighty from their seats.60 But this is too simple, as well;
More’s epigrams return again and again to the question of power,
its uses, abuses, and subversion. In this and in many other ways, the
epigrams are very much in this world at the same time that they are
able to question, laugh, and ironically comment about the way that
More and others see it. Thus his epigrams seem, to me, ultimately
provisional, an odd thing to say, given the epigram’s reputation as

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86 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEON

a closed form.61 But More characteristically subverts, questions, or

reopens an initial claim, inverts an old proverb, or otherwise renders
an epigram open-ended, by juxtaposition, by ambiguity of language
and allusion, by exploiting different points of view and incongruities
of situation, and by innumerable other rhetorical strategies.62 Fi-
nally, then, there is no finally, but rather a fundamental inconclu-
siveness. In his recent introduction to a collection of essays on the
Renaissance, Glyn P. Norton has pointed out that the ‘‘deepest, most
central impulses of humanism are . . . critical.’’63 Writing at mo-
ments of crisis, the humanists explored various ways to look at the
world, as they sought ‘‘a language that would not only reflect the
cultural crisis at hand, but base that crisis in its own distinctiveness
as a period.’’64 This seems to me about the closest we can come to
the spirit behind the epigrams. But here, of course, I run the risk of
contradicting myself. Nor do I want to press this notion of a critical
impulse to the exclusion of the many other humanisms that are part
and parcel of More’s Epigrammata, which is neither a completely ran-
dom nor a completely unified collection, but rather a multifarious
set of takes upon self, society, and the world.

Notes
1. Elizabeth McCutcheon, ‘‘Laughter and Humanism: Unity and Diversity in
Thomas More’s Epigrammata,’’ paper delivered at the Congress of the International
Association for Neo-Latin Studies held in Cambridge, England, in 2000, forthcom-
ing in the Acta of the Congress. I have drawn upon some parts of this study in writ-
ing this essay, albeit for different purposes.
2. John Carroll, Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture (London: Fontana Press,
1993), 232.
3. Ibid., 2.
4. Ibid., 47.
5. Ibid., 7.
6. In this connection, see the interesting study by Alistair Fox, ‘‘Facts and Fallac-
ies: Interpreting English Humanism,’’ in Reassessing the Henrican Age: Humanism,
Politics, and Reform 1500–1550, ed. Alistair Fox and John Guy, 9–33 (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1986), which calls for a radical revision of English humanism. See also
the balanced review of the question by Mary Thomas Crane, ‘‘Early Tudor Human-
ism,’’ in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hatta-
way, 13–26 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003). Also valuable is James
McConica, ‘‘The Patrimony of Thomas More,’’ in History and Imagination: Essays in
Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. Hugh-Loyd Jones, Valerie Pearl, and Blair Worden,
56–71 (London: Duckworth, 1981), which carefully distinguishes Erasmus’s hu-
manism and philosophical attitudes from More’s.
7. For this and other information about the publication, see St. Thomas More,
Latin Poems, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 3, pt. 2, ed. Clarence H.
Miller, Leicester Bradner, Charles A. Lynch, and Revilo P. Oliver (New Haven, CT:

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THOMAS MORE AT EPIGRAMS: HUMANISM OR HUMANISMS? 87

Yale University Press, 1984), 3–9. All citations of More’s Latin poems and English
translations are from this edition.
8. Title pages for March 1518, November/December 1518, and 1520 are conve-
niently included in R. W. Gibson, comp., St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography
of His Works and of Moreana to the Year 1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1961), 7, 8 (second title page); 10, 11 (second title page); and 77.
9. For this part of Rhenanus’s letter, see Latin Poems, 72–75.
10. This count is based on information in Latin Poems, 9, 11. An additional ten
poems that were not part of either the 1518 or 1520 Epigrammata are included as
nos. 272–81.
11. Latin Poems, 10–11.
12. David R. Carlson, English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscript and
Print, 1475–1525 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 142–62; 239–45.
13. For a rigorous and conservative definition, see J. B. Trapp, Erasmus, Colet and
More: The Early Tudor Humanists and Their Books (London: British Library, 1991),
1–2.
14. See Gibson, Preliminary Bibliography, 7 and 8; 10 and 11; cf. the title page for
1520, on 77, which emphasizes the author’s emendations. For Brixius’s attack on
More, see below.
15. Latin Poems, 61, 12.
16. Latin Poems, 12, where Leicester Bradner and Charles A. Lynch comment
that More’s ‘‘most unusual sources’’ are the English songs he translates; cf. Trapp,
Erasmus, Colet and More, 42, on just how startling More’s use is.
17. Included in Latin Poems, 72–75. Rhenanus clearly did not have to tell Pirck-
heimer this, as Pirckheimer was himself an epigrammatist; hence, there seems to
be a double audience in mind—an inner circle of humanist elite and a larger group
of literate readers to be informed and educated.
18. See Daniel Russell’s succinct discussion, ‘‘The Genres of Epigram and Em-
blem,’’ in The Renaissance, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, ed. Glyn
P. Norton, 278–83 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Standard treat-
ments of the Renaissance epigram include J. W. Binns, ‘‘Latin Translations from
Greek in the English Renaissance,’’ Humanistica Lovaniensia 27 (1978): 128–59;
J. W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings
of the Age (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1990); Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, The Epigram in the
English Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947); Lawrence
Ryan, ‘‘The Shorter Latin Poem in Tudor England,’’ Humanistica Lovaniensia 26
(1977): 101–31; and T. K. Whipple, ‘‘Martial and the English Epigram from Sir
Thomas Wyatt to Ben Jonson,’’ University of California Publications in Modern Philol-
ogy, 10 (1925): 281–302. See also Ann Baynes Coiro, Robert Herrick’s ‘‘Hesperides’’ and
the Epigram Book Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 45–77,
which situates More’s epigrams between classical models and later English epigram-
matists.
19. Latin Poems, 165.
20. Latin Poems, 164. Besides the interesting note on the significance of the trans-
formation from shepherd to dog (Latin Poems, 364), notice how More typically em-
phasizes the collective or group that needs protection.
21. In this connection see ‘‘Appendix D’’ by Charles Clay Doyle in Latin Poems,
695–744, and the many notes on sources and analogues that have appeared in More-
ana and other journals.
22. Mary Thomas Crane, Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-
Century England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 138.

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88 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEON

23. Crane, Framing Authority, 140; cf. her earlier study, ‘‘Intret Cato: Authority and
the Epigram in Sixteenth-Century England,’’ in Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory,
History, and Interpretation, Harvard University Studies 14, ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 158–86.
24. Coiro, Robert Herrick’s ‘‘Hesperides,’’ 67; Damian Grace, ‘‘Thomas More’s Epi-
grammata’’: Political Theory in a Poetic Idiom,’’ Parergon n.s. 3 (1985): 116.
25. Coiro, Robert Herrick’s ‘‘Hesperides,’’ 67.
26. Ibid., Contrast the view in Trapp, Erasmus, Colet and More, 42; Harold Andrew
Mason, Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period: An Essay (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1959), 49–51; and Jerry Mermel, ‘‘Preparations for a Political Life:
Sir Thomas More’s Entry into the King’s Service,’’ Journal of Medieval and Renais-
sance Studies 7 (1977): 53–66.
27. Coiro, Robert Herrick’s ‘‘Hesperides,’’ 68.
28. Grace, ‘‘Thomas More’s Epigrammata,’’ 115.
29. Ibid., 117.
30. Ibid., 120.
31. Ibid., 125.
32. Crane, Framing Authority, 143.
33. John Marsden, Philomorus: Notes on the Latin Poems of Sir Thomas More, 2nd. ed.
(London: Longman’s Green, 1878), 6, 28.
34. A later literary historian, Leicester Bradner, also singles out More’s personal
epigrams; see his Musae Anglicanae: A History of Anglo-Latin Poetry 1500–1525 (New
York: Modern Language Association, 1940), 17.
35. Alistair Fox, Thomas More: History and Providence (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1982), 49.
36. Mason, Humanism and Poetry, 28.
37. David R. Carlson, ‘‘Reputation and Duplicity: The Texts and Contexts of
Thomas More’s Epigram on Bernard André,’’ English Literary History 58 (1991): 268.
38. Carlson, English Humanist Books, 150.
39. Ibid., 157–60.
40. Germanus Brixius’s Antimorus, ed. Daniel Kinney, in Latin Poems, 511 and
510. For more on the dispute between the two humanists, and the relevant primary
material, see Latin Poems, appendixes A, B, and C, along with the commentaries and
(of course) More’s epigrams. See also R. Morris Day, ‘‘Sir Thomas More and the
Defense of the Royal Navy,’’ in Personalities and Politics: Essays on English and Euro-
pean History Presented in Honor of Dr. Marguerite Potter, ed. E. Deanne Malpass (Fort
Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1977), 1–12.
41. See, in particular, Antimorus in Latin Poems, 490–97 and 508–09.
42. These lists run from 515–47 in Antimorus, ed. Kinney, in Latin Poems.
43. See, for example, Revilo P. Oliver’s comments in Latin Poems, 18–37.
44. Mason, Humanism and Poetry, 36–58.
45. Ibid., 58.
46. Latin Poems, 233.
47. David Rundle, ‘‘A New Golden Age? More, Skelton and the Accession Verses
of 1509,’’ Renaissance Studies 9 (1955): 58. Cf. the commentary in Latin Poems, 392–
93, which points to the difficulty in deciding which of two possible (and antitheti-
cal) readings seems more likely, given similar ambiguities and ironies in Morus’s
speech at the end of Utopia.
48. Rundle, ‘‘A New Golden Age?,’’ 68.
49. Ibid., 76. Cf. the interesting discussion of potentially ominous or tragic un-
dertones in the classical allusions More makes in no. 143, ‘‘To Candidus: How to

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THOMAS MORE AT EPIGRAMS: HUMANISM OR HUMANISMS? 89

Choose a Wife,’’ and in no. 19 in James Hutton, ‘‘A Speculation on Two Passages
in the Latin Poems of Thomas More,’’ in Essays on Renaissance Poetry, ed. Rita Guer-
lac (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 330–38.
50. See Charles Clay Doyle, ‘‘The Popular Aspect of Sir Thomas More’s Latin
Epigrams,’’ Southern Folklore Quarterly 37 (1973): 87–99, as well as Doyle, ‘‘Appendix
D,’’ in Latin Poems, 697–744.
51. Latin Poems, 161, and the commentary for 106/3, 362.
52. See Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nico-
las K. Liessling, and Rhonda L. Blair, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989–1994), 1:56, and Elizabeth McCutcheon, ‘‘Robert Burton/Democritus Junior
and Thomas More,’’ Moreana 35, no. 125–36 (1998): 60.
53. Latin Poems, 229.
54. Latin Poems, 231.
55. Besides the commentary on no. 198 in Latin Poems, 390–92, see Miller’s fasci-
nating analysis of the epigram, 49–50, with the many parallels drawn with Utopia.
56. Latin Poems, 230.
57. Latin Poems, 275; see the commentary, 412.
58. Latin Poems, 275.
59. See, for instance, epigrams nos. 162, 180, and 181, each of which features a
lion and is about royal power.
60. See, for instance, no. 80, ‘‘Death Unassisted Kills Tyrants,’’ Latin Poems, 145.
Cf. no. 119, ‘‘On the Vanity of this Life,’’ where the speaker meditates upon how
‘‘We are all shut up in the prison of this world under sentence of death,’’ Latin
Poems, 167. The poem is grimly ironic, but behind it I hear 1 Corinthians [Link]
‘‘For now we see through a glass darkly,’’ as well as an echo of Plato’s allegory of
the cave (line 8).
61. I have borrowed the term ‘‘provisional’’ from Terence Cave, The Cornucopian
Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: The Clarendon Press,
1979), xiii. The problems he addresses seem just as applicable to the humanist texts
of Thomas More.
62. These are, of course, characteristic of his Utopia as well.
63. Glyn P. Norton, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Renaissance, vol. 3 of The Cambridge
History of Literary Criticism, ed. Glyn P. Norton, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999).
64. Glyn P. Norton, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 1.

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Melanchthon, Latomus, Ramus:
Teachers of Careful Reading
Kees Meerhoff

Like we have done in the other areas of rhetoric, we have said

many things that you might not find to be taught by others. If
you read Cicero carefully, however, you will realize that our rules
derive directly from what he did.

Cicero, indeed, composed his speeches with great care, whereas

he produced casually his rhetorical rules.
—George of Trebizond

Two dominant characteristics of humanism during the Renais-

sance were a concern for Latin style and a taste for the practical
issues of moral philosophy. Such a combination was both a cause
and a consequence of studying Cicero, and his description of
rhetorical culture emerged as the alternative to the abstractions
of late-scholasticism.
—Dominic Baker-Smith1

IN AUTUMN OF 1525 THE ‘‘DUTCH’’ HUMANIST GERARD GELDENHOUWER

(1482–1542), born in Nijmegen and therefore known as Novioma-
gus, went from Antwerp to Wittenberg. He kept a diary of his journey
which informs us very precisely of his whereabouts. Among his halt-
ing places he mentions Rotterdam, Haarlem, Deventer, and the Ger-
man town of Osnabrück. He also reports not only on the people he
meets in the different towns, but also on the execution at the stake
of a priest who had openly given up ‘‘the regulations of the Roman
Popes,’’ as Geldenhouwer puts it. This took place in The Hague on
September 16, the day before his departure. In Osnabrück, he tells
this awful story to another sympathizer with the Reformation who
bursts into tears and thanks the Lord for the event.
Finally, he arrives at his destination, where he attends the lectures
of some famous men. ‘‘In Wittenberg, Doctor Martin Luther lec-
tured in German (enarrabat Germanice) on Exodus; Philip Melanch-
thon on the speeches of Cicero; John Bugenhagen on the letters of
Paul; Justus Jonas on the Gospel of Matthew.’’ He adds solemnly a

90

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 91

bit later on that ‘‘in the year 1525, on the 19th of October, they began
for the first time to celebrate mass in German at Wittenberg, in my
presence.’’
Geldenhouwer leaves Wittenberg on November 8. Some days later
he is brought down, severely injured and robbed by some fellow trav-
elers, who are caught within the hour. He returns home, but contin-
ues his diary. He reports, for instance, on other executions of
Protestants in the year 1529, in Cologne, Antwerp, and Brussels. He
tells us that ‘‘persecution is heavy in Brabant, Zeeland, and Hol-
land.’’ Some pages later he mentions a letter which informs him that
‘‘in Paris, King François the First has founded a trilingual institution
(trilingue . . . studium), in spite of the theologians (invitis magistris
nostris).’’2

These are words written by a humanist who has taken a serious, and
indeed a dangerous decision. Geldenhouwer had worked in Lou-
vain for many years, as a corrector of one of the major printers
there, and as an editor of important texts. He was well acquainted
with Erasmus and supervised the publication of several of his texts;
but when he tried to associate him with the cause of the Reforma-
tion, Erasmus took vigorous measures. Geldenhouwer took an active
part in the publishing of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and edited
with two other humanists, Maarten (Martin) van Dorp and Alardus
of Amsterdam, the very corrupt manuscript of Agricola’s De inventi-
one dialectica (1515). His religious convictions brought him an errant
life which he ended quietly, however, as a professor of history and
of theology at the Protestant University of Marburg. In that period
he wrote an important pedagogical treatise, Institutio scholæ chris-
tianæ (Frankfurt 1534), which is a paraphrase of Quintilian and has
recently been republished. In this treatise, he recommends the
schoolbooks of Melanchthon several times, especially those con-
cerning the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic).3 His unfor-
tunate travel accident is used by his close colleague Reinhard Lorich
of Hadamar in his commentary on the Progymnasmata of Aphthon-
ius, translated by Rudolph Agricola and very frequently used in Mar-
burg as elsewhere. It has become an elaborate example of an
exercise called ethopoiia, that is, a speech attributed to a historical
person. The set piece begins when Geldenhouwer comes to his
senses; he starts lamenting his misfortune and his lack of caution
over several pages; in the end, he turns devoutly to the Lord for help
and consolation, and rhetorically amplifies his trust in him.4
This was by no means the last time that Geldenhouwer was used
as a historical character. In the nineteenth century, he was to feature

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92 KEES MEERHOFF

in a historical novel about the arrival of the Reformation in the Neth-

erlands, written by the popular woman writer A. L. G. Bosboom-
Toussaint in a lofty style that tries to capture the ‘‘ordinary’’ language
of the sixteenth century.5

This essay is about people engaged in editing and writing in precari-

ous times; about the rise of the humanist commentary, which was,
according to Jill Kraye, a genuine ‘‘invention of the Renaissance’’;
about the new humanist institutions, founded, either in the face of
the official teachers at existing universities, or as a result of Reforma-
tion politics, as in Wittenberg and Marburg. Indeed, most of the
abovementioned towns, like Louvain, Cologne, Wittenberg, and
Paris, became real powerhouses of humanistic learning, to borrow
an expression from Ann Moss; and the traditional ‘‘academic jour-
ney,’’ the peregrinatio academica, had to be re-invented as the Refor-
mation was making progress.6
The three humanists I have chosen to present briefly have many
things in common. They were all important authors, of both text-
books and commentaries; they were all deeply influenced by the
founding fathers of Northern humanism, Agricola and Erasmus. In
addition, they are closely linked together by personal correspon-
dence and even by personal contact. Latomus wrote to Melanchthon
to report on the very strained religious and political situation in
Paris; in it, he expressed what he owed to him in terms of learning
and of belief.7 He also was the very first ‘‘royal lecturer’’ (lecteur du
roi, regius professor) of Latin eloquence at the newly founded institu-
tion, who with some other Germans, like John Sturm, introduced
the work of Agricola in Paris. People like Latomus and Sturm were
instrumental in the negotiations between the king of France and
some Protestant German princes who tried to bring Melanchthon to
Paris and to open an ‘‘oecumenical’’ council between Protestant
and Catholic theologians. This was supposed to happen in 1535, but
things went wrong and Melanchthon stayed home.8 Latomus and
Sturm were also the teachers who most influenced Peter Ramus.
Although Latomus as a German, and as a friend of Sturm, was sus-
pected to be a ‘Lutheran’ heretic, he mainly moved within progres-
sive Catholic circles and once he went back to Germany, he became
an able civil servant to the emperor and a well-known controversial-
ist writer against major Protestant leaders. Peter Ramus, however,
moved slowly but steadily toward a Protestant position; already intel-
lectually suspect as a stern critic of Aristotle and other classic author-
ities, he had to be very cautious once he had been appointed in his
turn as lecturer of philosophy and eloquence by the king of France,

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 93

this country being the ‘‘eldest daughter of the (Roman Catholic)

Church.’’ Student diaries speak of his ambiguous behavior in reli-
gious matters.9 This did not save him: his violent death during the
Saint Bartholomew’s Day is well known and dramatically presented
to the English public by Marlowe in scene 9 of The Massacre at Paris
(1593).
Let us now situate the three humanists more precisely and deter-
mine their major intellectual interests. In order to bring about simi-
larities in behavior and to point once more to the tradition of the
‘‘academic journey,’’ let us first consider briefly the career of one of
their chief heroes, Rudolph Agricola.
In the biography of Agricola written by his pupil John von Plen-
ingen, we read that Agricola was taught grammar in Groningen,
then dialectic and rhetoric in Erfurt, and that he earned his masters
degree in Louvain at the age of sixteen. He then went on to study
theology in Cologne before moving to Italy, the cradle of human-
ism, where he studied law in Pavia, to please his father rather than
out of true interest. Eventually he quit law school, and, yearning for
still higher learning, he finally turned to literature and to the studia
humanitatis, reading most of all Cicero and Quintilian. In short, he
moved from formal education in the liberal arts to the higher facul-
ties, but then, just like Petrarch, he made his discovery of the great
writers, teachers, and orators of antiquity.10
Let us compare this start of a brilliant career with those of Me-
lanchthon and Latomus. Born in Bretten in 1497, Melanchthon re-
ceived his first education in Latin in his hometown and in Pforzheim
nearby, then moved to Heidelberg and obtained his masters degree
in Tübingen at the age of sixteen (almost seventeen). He had fol-
lowed the traditional curriculum, but had also made some major dis-
coveries: classical and neo-Latin poetry on the one hand, the work
of Agricola on the other. This happened, so he tells us in an ‘‘auto-
biographical’’ sketch written much later, in 1515, shortly after the
publication of De inventione dialectica in Louvain. The result was, he
adds, that he gained a deeper understanding of the texts he read
and appreciated them more fully; he also understood for the first
time the proper use of the logical rules that he had learned pre-
viously.11 In 1518 he was appointed professor of Greek at Wittenberg
University, thanks to his exceptional abilities and to an influential
relative, John Reuchlin.
There are obviously many similarities between the two sketches.
Formal education gives way to literature, and this blissful discovery
is linked up with a second discovery: that of the proper tools to read
that literature. In the case of Agricola, the tools were handed down

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94 KEES MEERHOFF

to him by Cicero and especially by Quintilian. To Melanchthon,

Agricola offered a modern and refined version of those tools. Agri-
cola had indeed combined the benefits of formal logic with those of
classical rhetoric, and taught how to get hold of the structure of a
text, how to grasp the connections between parts of a larger whole.
He could tell you, for instance, how and where the different Tuscu-
lan Disputations of Cicero are logically linked together to form a co-
herent argumentative whole. I will return to this crucial matter
below.12
Moving on to Latomus, a comparable picture emerges.13 Long
before he was appointed in Paris, he had studied in Freiburg-im-
Breisgau, then went on to Cologne, and achieved his education in
Louvain. Already in Freiburg where he arrived in 1516 to stay for
almost seven years, he met Erasmus and discovered the work of the
young Melanchthon. From there he wrote his first letter to him,
which is now lost. We do not know exactly when or how he got ac-
quainted with Agricola; his first writings stem from his stay in Co-
logne where, as he already did in Freiburg, he combined his studies
with teaching. His first publications are the result of that teaching,
and it is obvious that by that time (the end of the 1520s) he had
discovered, and read thoroughly, the works of Erasmus, Agricola,
and Melanchthon, not to mention George of Trebizond who also
was a major source for the young Melanchthon, and a probable
source for Agricola. He saw his humanist views fully confirmed dur-
ing his short stay at Louvain, which had been a center of Agricola
studies for two decades, and where the ‘‘heretical’’ Melanchthon
had been read discretely, but avidly, as soon as he had published his
first works, around 1520.14
When we consider for a moment the writings of the three human-
ists at Louvain responsible for the publication of Agricola’s manu-
scripts—Gerard Geldenhouwer, Alardus of Amsterdam, and Martin
Dorp—we can detect the influence of Melanchthon in all three
cases. It is safe to assume that from 1520 onwards, Agricola has been
read more or less consistently with Melanchthonian eyes. In Lato-
mus’s own works this cumulative effect is quite clear as well. Whereas
he absorbed all kinds of influences, both classical and humanistic,
in his first theoretical writings, he was able to give a unique impulse
to Agricola’s fame by composing a brilliant summary of the latter’s
masterpiece: his very successful Epitome of the long and often diffi-
cult De inventione dialectica. Latomus’s Epitome is extant with two dif-
ferent prefaces: one addressed to a German protector, another to
the principal of the outstanding Parisian collège Sainte-Barbe where he
was appointed to teach rhetoric in the summer of 1531.15 Three

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 95

years later he would deliver his inaugural lecture as a royal lecturer

of Latin literature, the famous Oratio de studiis humanitatis.16 As we
have already observed, Peter Ramus was among his first students.
As we have seen, Latomus had to teach in order to pay his tuition
fees and his books. His father was a mason, as his name recalls. Peter
Ramus had even more modest origins. He had to polish the boots of
wealthy fellow students in order to survive. He had his ‘‘academic
journey’’ later, not as a student but as a famous professor. Whereas
Latomus was a rather compliant man, always tending to adapt him-
self to other persons’ views, Ramus was a relentless fighter with
strong convictions and an even stronger personality. Born in 1515
in a small village named Cuts, the main road of which is now called
the rue de La Ramée (as far as I know, there is no rue Latomus in
Arlon), he went straight to Paris and obtained his masters degree at
the age of twenty-one by defending a provocative thesis about Aris-
totle. He repeated his views about the corrupted tradition of the Ar-
istotelian corpus and the resulting confusion in the surviving texts
in his first publications. These are illustrative of an intellectual atti-
tude he would maintain throughout his life. His admiring pupils
have pictured him as a new Hercules cleaning the Augean stables.
Indeed, with his fellow countryman from Picardy, close associate
and friend Omer Talon, he attacked virtually all the established
authorities in the different branches of learning. To both of them,
critical reading of the classical texts was a prerequisite of the con-
struction of a new set of manuals in the liberal arts. Defiance toward
authority was in their eyes a basic intellectual virtue, and stern meth-
odological criticism the only road to truth.17
Because the principles of method are given in logic, Ramus him-
self started his ‘‘methodical cleansing raid’’ with the Organon of Aris-
totle. He wanted to go ‘‘back to basics,’’ that is, to the natural, innate
abilities of each human being to reason correctly. This implied that
he always wrote at least two books on each individual branch of
learning: first, a critical appraisal of the major authoritative source;
and second, a slim and well-structured manual in which he avoided
all the mistakes he had detected, and passionately denounced, in his
critical exploration of the classics.
Because of his humanistic training and of the fundamental debt
to Sturm and Latomus that he recognized rather reluctantly at the
end of his career, he was convinced of the necessity to join logic with
rhetoric. In this, he remained faithful to the tradition inaugurated
by Agricola and reinforced by Melanchthon. As a result, his second
series of attacks was launched against the two greatest Latin classics

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96 KEES MEERHOFF

in the field: Cicero and Quintilian. Both attacks are now available in
English and form an excellent introduction to his thought.18
Ramus entrusted Omer Talon with the construction of a ‘‘puri-
fied’’ rhetoric, to be written on the basis of the rather fierce attacks
I just mentioned, and as close as possible to ‘‘natural’’ eloquence.
Like the logical textbook, this ‘‘ramist’’ rhetoric was rewritten sev-
eral times and translated into the authors’ mother tongue at a cer-
tain moment—after Ramus’s appointment as a royal lecturer in
1551. Translation was indeed another way ‘‘back to nature.’’19
As a matter of course, this appointment raised hell in the intellec-
tual circles in Paris. His earlier attack on Aristotle had been officially
censured and punished by a royal decree that is still extant in the
Sorbonne library. Pamphlets in defense of Aristotle were published.
Things got worse with the publication of the attacks against Cicero
and Quintilian. New, violent replies were written. I think it is realistic
to affirm that virtually all his new colleagues, including first-rate
scholars like Adrien Turnèbe and Pierre Galland, who had suc-
ceeded Latomus as a lecturer of Latin literature, had desperately
tried to prevent his nomination.20 But a former fellow student whose
boots he had polished more than once, now a cardinal and a pair de
France, persuaded the new king, Henry II, to admit this angry young
man among his lecteurs royaux. His colleagues were deeply hurt, both
in their intellectual convictions and in their academic standing.
In spite of all their individual differences in attitude and outlook,
I have presented all three humanists as members of the same intel-
lectual family. Even though Latomus was older than Melanchthon,
it is fair to maintain the order I have proposed. Melanchthon, ap-
pointed in 1518, was a fundamental inspiration to Latomus, ap-
pointed in 1534. The latter, in his turn, played an important part in
the education of Ramus, appointed in 1551. All three authors
started their careers by publishing textbooks of logic and rhetoric in
the tradition of Agricola. Melanchthon had even started writing his
first rhetoric, the very successful De rhetorica libri tres, before his ar-
rival at Wittenberg. All three stressed that logic and rhetoric are in-
separable; and this is why Latomus, like Agricola, published a
manual in which both disciplines were fully integrated.21 Melanch-
thon and Ramus, on the other hand, wrote separate handbooks,
while stressing the importance of the combined use of logic and
rhetoric.22
Significantly, in addition, they aimed at combining theory with
practice. Their aim was eloquentia in its highest possible form: an out-
standing competence in reading, speaking, and writing Latin. All
the studia humanitatis were mobilized to achieve this goal. This led

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 97

them to quote extensively from literary sources in their handbooks;

but above all, to teach eloquence by reading the poets, historians,
and orators of antiquity. This meant that alongside their handbooks
they published commentaries in which they illustrated the use of
rhetorical and dialectical rules.23 In their theoretical manuals, they
offered tools for methodical reading and stressed the importance
of coherence and elegance in the process of writing texts through
imitation.
So in the end, rhetoric, logic, and commentary became constit-
uent parts of one and the same pedagogical approach. The skillful
reading of texts opens the gates to classical learning; and learning is
a prerequisite of elegant speaking and writing. In a historical period
of intense political and religious strife, the proper use of logic
gained, moreover, a strongly ethical dimension. It became an essen-
tial means of maintaining peaceful communication. For consistency
meant both persuasiveness and transparency. A sloppy construction
of arguments was the fastest road to conceptual confusion and ensu-
ing disagreement. The selection of examples in the textbooks, as
well as the choice of the texts to read for practice, mirrored this ethi-
cal, if not religious, preoccupation of contemporary humanists. For
texts are carriers of values; and reading texts also meant gaining in-
sight into the way essential political and moral convictions were de-
fended by the great orators and historians of the past.24
This leads us to some final considerations. The constant confron-
tation with complex texts, which is the hallmark of humanistic edu-
cation, leads to the question of the integration of the different
disciplines into a unified perspective. The curriculum, indeed,
should mirror the humanists’ awareness of the many ways in which
logic interacts with ethics, and eloquence with history. To what ex-
tent is there an overarching ‘‘philosophy’’ that makes these links ex-
plicit and offers a satisfactory conceptual background for the
creation of a coherent curriculum? Do Melanchthon, Latomus, and
Ramus share a handful of basic principles or do they differ in their
conception of the relationship between the fields of learning?
Here again, let us first cast a glance at their common spiritual
father, Agricola. As we have seen, he was first and foremost appreci-
ated as an excellent reader. But he was also considered to be a genu-
ine philosopher. Phrissemius, one of his best commentators, writes
that he used to call him a Latin Plutarch, ‘‘that is, a kind of civic and
philosophical orator’’ (civilem quondam et philosophicum oratorem). Ex-
actly ten years later, Melanchthon also wrote that Agricola was
deeply interested in history and very fond of laws (amabat leges); be-
side that, he was fascinated by theological questions.25 It is certainly

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98 KEES MEERHOFF

true that Agricola was fully aware of the importance of questions of

law and of history, both for the reader and for the orator; in the
course of his De inventione dialectica, he more than once confronts
theoretical conceptions with real practice in the law courts; and he
is ready to question traditional views, even those expressed by Cic-
ero, as a result of this confrontation with practice, ‘‘that most trust-
worthy of masters in all things,’’ as he puts it.26 It is also significant
that among the three major kinds of speeches, he underlines the
fundamental role of the epideictic genre, because it is concerned
with the values that are at the basis of forensic and political cases
as well. The Belgian philosopher Chaı̈m Perelman would have been
delighted to read these fairly uncommon remarks.27
In the appreciation of Agricola, Phrissemius and Melanchthon
doubtlessly had in mind the famous letter On the proper method of
study (De formando studio), and perhaps the truly epideictic oration
In praise of philosophy as well. In these texts Agricola presents his vi-
sion of the different disciplines that have to be mastered in order to
achieve genuine eloquence. It is a highly spiritual, if not religious
vision, in which the influence of Plato and Cicero seems to prevail.
But the classic conception of wisdom has taken a Christian bend;
philosophy is considered to derive directly from heaven, and the
human mind to be the essential link between God and man. Once
more, Agricola stresses the importance of moral philosophy; but
mathematics, physics, and medicine receive almost equal praise.
As is well known, the influence of De formando studio has been
widespread; it has been often republished separately or together
with other programmatic texts that promote the humanistic (and
Ciceronian) ideal of wisdom joined with eloquence. We know less
about the reception of the speech In praise of philosophy, except that
it had been published several times before Alardus’s edition of the
collected works in 1539.28
Although in both texts Agricola presents a unified vision of the
studia humanitatis, he doesn’t have much to say about the precise
interaction between the different fields. His praise of learning sim-
ply seems to run parallel to the high standards he sets for eloquence.
His focus is on the adequate reading of the classics and on achieving
excellence in writing and speaking.
A truly integrated vision of the different sciences appears to be the
original achievement of Philip Melanchthon. His systematic effort to
link the branches of learning has been rightly called a ‘‘theological
philosophy.’’29 It is no coincidence that his own academic speeches,
especially his inaugural lecture and his Praise of Eloquence, have been
frequently reprinted together with Agricola’s humanistic manifesto.

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 99

In contrast with Agricola’s more generic approach, Melanchthon

not only engaged actively in almost every individual discipline, but
over the years developed a more and more solid conceptual grasp
of the links between the different branches of philosophy. He was
deeply interested in the physiological foundations of moral philoso-
phy, for instance, but also in the way in which ethics interacts with
logic. What enabled him to remain faithful, both to Luther’s new
theology and to his essentially humanistic outlook, was his reflection
on the opposition between Gospel and Law. This opposition, pres-
ent in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, had become the cornerstone
of Lutheran theology and thus equally dominates Melanchthon’s
Loci Communes. Already in the earliest versions of this first Protestant
dogmatics, he develops a theory of ‘‘the law of nature’’ given by God
to mankind as soon as he created the world, long before the histori-
cal and crucial event of the Gospel that promises redemption to the
truly faithful. Human justice and justification by faith alone, sola fide,
should never be confused; nevertheless, law is a genuine gift of God,
who printed a set of moral notions in the human mind as universally
valid as the principles of mathematics and the rules of the syllogism.
The exact number of natural laws can be determined by the Chris-
tian philosopher by testing them logically: method, indeed, is as
‘‘natural’’ a gift as law.
As we can see, in his first theological handbook printed in 1521,
Melanchthon refers to mathematics, to logic, and to ethics, and
finds in the stoic (and Ciceronian) concept of ‘‘common notions’’
or ‘‘preconceptions’’ (koinai ennoiai or prolepseis) a kind of common
ground for each discipline. It is characteristic of his humanistic out-
look that he adds later in the same chapter: ‘‘If you wish, you can
join [viz., to the set of innate moral rules] specific sentences culled
from the work of poets, orators, and historians.’’30 From the outset,
his reading of classical texts is directed toward the insertion of classi-
cal wisdom into a more abstract, conceptual framework. Reading
classical poetry is useful because the Christian reader can detect in
it traces of God’s gifts to mankind. In one of his summaries of moral
philosophy, Melanchthon would affirm that great writers are spe-
cially gifted for the elegant expression of natural law.31 In the same
way, great orators base their argumentation on the universal laws,
both of ethics and of logic. This is also the ‘‘logic’’ behind what Gel-
denhouwer witnessed as a student in 1525: Luther taught Exodus,
Melanchthon Cicero’s orations. These subjects were not so diverse
after all.
It stands to reason that in his analyses of classical oratorical works,
Melanchthon is particularly sensitive to the process in which the de-

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100 KEES MEERHOFF

fense of a particular case is enhanced by referring it to a general

principle. In technical terms, this is called referring the hypothesis to
the thesis. Cicero highly recommended this technique in his rhetori-
cal works and practiced it in speeches as famous as the Pro archia
poeta, in which he defends the civil rights of an individual poet by
amplifying the role of poetry and of learning in a civilized state. Mel-
anchthon called this topic of learning useful for society a ‘‘common-
place’’ and took the opportunity to underline in his analysis the
crucial link between loci communes of politics or ethics and the syllo-
gism that constitutes the backbone of the oration. In doing so, he
systematized some illuminating remarks made by Agricola and
showed in a simple way how the principles of all the sciences interact
with eloquence.32 Along the same lines, young preachers were told
how, in the sections from Scripture they wished to deal with in their
sermons, to refer to one or more of the theological loci communes
that constituted the scientifically sound summary of biblical the-
ology.
In sum, two relatively simple sets of oppositions, viz. Law and Gos-
pel on the one hand, general rule (‘‘commonplace’’) and particular
case on the other, command the entire system and enable a regu-
lated shift from theory to oratorical practice and vice versa. Theol-
ogy, rooted in the logical and rhetorical analysis of biblical texts,
crowns it all. Ancient philosophy, as far as it shows by its methodical
makeup to be true to human nature as God created it, is accepted
within the system and both integrated in, and set apart from, the
principles of Christian faith by means of the first opposition. Thus,
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Cicero’s treatise On duties (De offi-
ciis) are fully accepted within the framework; both texts are models
of good method; Cicero, moreover, combines method with ele-
gance, and can even easier be used in Latin composition.33
I recommend reading of Melanchthon’s commentary on Cicero’s
Pro Milone to see graphically how in the analytical process the tools
offered by Christian ethics, by logic, and by rhetoric are combined.34
I further recommend the reader to compare this commentary (or
any other on pagan orators or poets) with his methodical exegesis of
biblical texts. For the integration of ancient learning and eloquence
enabled Melanchthon to use the same systematic devices while deal-
ing with sacred eloquence. It is fascinating to witness his ‘‘concep-
tual struggle’’ in the different stages of his reading, as in the prefaces
to his commentaries on Solomon’s Proverbs, and, of course, in his
famous series of commentaries on Saint Paul.35
Of the three humanists under discussion here, Melanchthon, as a
faithful ally to Luther, was the only one to use the reading tools

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 101

handed down to them by Agricola for both secular and sacred texts.
I have suggested previously that both kinds were treated within the
same Christian framework. But whereas Melanchthon explicitly re-
ferred to this framework in his commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics
and Politics, his vocabulary in his commentaries on Cicero’s speeches
is purely ‘‘classical’’ and the references to his ‘‘theological philoso-
phy’’ are bound to go unnoticed, except to insiders. To Melanch-
thon, Cicero’s eloquence was a fine example of the outstanding use
of God’s gifts to mankind; and he doubtlessly saw the use of a princi-
ple of natural law in Cicero’s defense of Milo—viz. the natural right
of self-defense—in the light of his own Christian philosophy.36 But
it is quite possible to read Melanchthon’s commentary with great
profit without accepting the whole theological framework. And the
tremendous success of his commentaries on Cicero’s speeches in
countries outside the German Protestant areas—in France, for in-
stance—indicates that many of his readers contented themselves
with only one side of his genius and tried to imitate especially the
lucid way in which he handled the tools offered by humanistic logic
and rhetoric.37
One of them was Latomus, who in contrast to several other lecteurs
royaux, was never bothered by the doctors of the Faculty of—
Catholic—Theology of the University of Paris. Latomus had enough
courage to express his sympathy with those who dismissed Scholastic
theology and recommended using the studia humanitatis to trans-
form it along Erasmian lines.38 However, contrary to John Sturm
who, as it seems, was invited by a Sorbonne doctor to join forces in
order to analyze the Letter to the Romans with the new humanistic
tools, Latomus kept away from sacred texts. He was an able and cau-
tious professor of Latin eloquence who never trespassed the limits
of the field he was appointed for, as most of his colleagues did. Be-
sides the Epitome of Agricola’s main work, his numerous commentar-
ies, especially those on Cicero’s ethical, rhetorical, and oratorical
works, brought him considerable fame all over Europe.39 He re-
frained from deeper speculation and showed no interest in building
a systematic conceptual framework of his own. His academic
speeches are fine samples of humanist eloquence, and bear witness
of Latomus’s deep concern for a proper education of the young; but
there is nothing in them that had not been said before by Agricola,
Erasmus, Budé, or Melanchthon.40 As time went by, he turned more
and more to the study of law, obtained a doctorate in Italy, and left
Paris, a few years before Ramus published his infamous attack on
Aristotle. Latomus’s friend and successor as a regius professor, Pierre

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102 KEES MEERHOFF

Galland, became, as we have seen, one of Ramus’s fiercest ene-

mies.41
In sharp contrast to Latomus, Ramus held very definite views
about the structure of the curriculum and about the best way to
teach the liberal arts. It is not easy, however, to get a clear picture of
the way in which, according to him, the different disciplines inter-
act. Indeed, Ramus spent most of his time struggling against the av-
erage humanist tendency to blur the boundaries between the arts.
In that respect, his methodological conceptions run squarely
counter to Melanchthon’s teaching practice. Whereas the latter al-
ways refers to other parts of his ‘‘system’’ in each of his manuals,
Ramus is the man of the absolute theoretical separation of the arts.
Like Melanchthon, he constantly rewrote all his texts; the numerous
attacks he was subject to were often instrumental in the evolution of
his thought.
Only in the earliest versions of his controversial manual of logic
does he show us a glimpse of something like an over-arching philos-
ophy. This occurs in a section he would erase soon afterwards and
which is called ‘‘the third level of judgment.’’ Peter Mack correctly
concluded that ‘‘it was dropped from subsequent versions of the dia-
lectical manual, probably because it does not belong within the
boundaries of dialectic.’’42
This section in itself is extant in three versions: a manuscript ver-
sion offered to King François I, in 1543, and two printed versions
printed in the same year. It is obvious that Ramus struggled with its
composition. It is based on a careful reading of Plato’s Republic, and
it puts the famous allegory of the cave in a new, entirely Christian
perspective. As is well known, Plato discusses the appropriate philo-
sophical education for the elite of his ideal state, which leads him to
an examination of the disciplines to be taught. He not only speaks
of the essential ‘‘kinship’’ between all the sciences several times
(531d), or uses the expression ‘‘sister arts’’ (511b), but also consid-
ers the power of reasoning (hê tou dialegesthai dynamis) as the ‘‘cor-
nice’’ (thrinkos, 534e) crowning the entire edifice of the higher
sciences and determining their proper order (537c).
Plato saw contemplation as something ‘‘divine’’ in human beings
(518e); and we have seen that Agricola remains faithful to that idea.
As Agricola and Melanchthon did before him, Ramus recurs to the
classic triad of logical, physical, and ethical sciences to define each
of them individually. However, instead of the Idea of the Good, that
in the allegory of the cave was symbolized by the sun, Ramus puts
the Christian God; likewise, instead of the Platonic notion of knowl-

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 103

edge as recollection, anamnesis, Ramus prefers to speak of the innate

principles of each discipline.
Of course, it is logic that gives ‘‘light’’ and ‘‘brightness’’ to all the
sciences, and the whole edifice of the sciences thus leads back to the
source of the light, ‘‘the sun itself ’’ (516b), sol ipse. ‘‘All this,’’ says
Ramus, ‘‘directs people not only to admiration and knowledge of
God, but pushes them violently to His praise and adoration.’’43
Logic, indeed, offers ‘‘an image of the divine Mind,’’ and Ramus
invites his reader to ‘‘recognize in our [own, human] minds sparks
that are divinely implanted in them.’’ Arithmetic, for instance, is
‘‘adorned with the elementary notions (notitiae) of numbers that
God has implanted in it.’’44 The idea of ‘‘participation,’’ methexis, is
in itself characteristic of Platonic thought. But the Christian inter-
pretation of this idea, and the systematic use of the concepts of
‘‘common notions’’ and ‘‘preconceptions’’ in order to give a com-
mon ground to all sciences is not so much Platonic, as it is distinctly
Melanchthonian. Not surprisingly, then, scholars who at the turn of
the century tried to reconcile the two major currents in humanistic
thought, and are therefore called ‘‘Philippo-Ramists,’’ recurred to
these very notions upon which to rest their case.45

Notes
1. George of Trebizond, Rhetoricorum libri quinque (Paris: Chr. Wechel, 1538),
56 and 400 respectively. And Dominic Baker-Smith, ‘‘Juan Vivès and the Somnium
Scipionis,’’ in Classical Influences on European Culture, AD 1500–1700, ed. R. R. Bolgar,
239 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
2. Collectanea van Gerardus Geldenhauer Noviomagus, ed. Jacob Prinsen (Amster-
dam: Müller, 1901), 78–81, 92–93.
3. See Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Ref-
ormation, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher, 3 vols. (Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 1985–1987) [henceforth COE], 2: 82–84 (G. Tournoy);
and I. Bejczy (in collaboration with M. Verweij), ‘‘Die Institutio scholæ christianæ von
Gerard Geldenhouer: Kritische Ausgabe mit Kommentar,’’ in Humanistica Lovanien-
sia 49 (2000), 55–87. On Geldenhouwer and his colleagues at the University of Mar-
burg, see Melanchthon und die Marburger Professoren (1527–1627), ed. Barbara Bauer,
2 vols. (1999; repr., Marburg, Germany: Barbara Bauer, 2000).
4. I used the edition published at Wesel (1670), 291–94 (Quaenam verba Ger-
hardus Noviomagus ex lipothymia [‘‘swoon’’] ad sese rediens olim potuisset dicere). Agrico-
la’s translation of Aphthonius was first published in 1532 in Cologne by Alardus.
See also Gerda C. Huisman, Rudolph Agricola: A Bibliography of Printed Works and
Translations (Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: De Graaf, 1985), items 151 and 251.
5. A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint, 2 vols. Het Huis Lauernesse (Amsterdam: Beijer-
inck, 1840).
6. J. Kraye, ‘‘Renaissance Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics,’’ in Vocabu-
lary of Teaching and Research between Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. O. Weijers, 96–

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104 KEES MEERHOFF

117 (99) (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1995); Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books
and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 166.
7. Correspondence of Melanchthon [⳱MBW], ed. H. Scheible et al. (Stuttgart:
Frommann-Holzboog, 1977–), MBW 1336.
8. See K. J. Seidel, Frankreich und die deutschen Protestanten (Münster, Germany:
Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1970), chap. 7; James K. Farge, Orthodoxy
and Reform in Early Reformation France: The Faculty of Theology of Paris, 1500–1543
(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1985), 150–59; H. Scheible, ‘‘Melanchthons ökumen-
ischer Einsatz in Frankreich,’’ in Melanchthon und Europa. Vol. 2: Westeuropa, ed.
G. Frank and Kees Meerhoff, Melanchthon-Schriften der Stadt Bretten, 6:2, 195–
210 (Stuttgart: J. Thorbecke 2002). Compare Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘‘The Reception
of Melanchthon in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge and Oxford,’’ in Melanchthon und
Europa, 233–54 (esp. 234–36). (King Henry VIII seeks to invite Melanchthon,
1533–35.)
9. See, for instance, Simon Wirt, Commentarii de itinere francogallico, ed. D. Martı́n-
ková (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979).
10. Commentarii seu index vite Rhodolphi Agricole . . . per doctorem Johannem de Plen-
ingen, dedicated to his brother Dietrich, one of Agricola’s closest pupils and friends.
Ed. F. Pfeifer in Serapeum (1849), 97–119. Also in Commentarii seu index vite Rhodolphi
Agricole: Relicto itaque juris studio ad maiora eluctans litteris pollicioribus et artibus, quas
humanitatis vocant, et Ciceronis Quintilianique lectioni praecipue . . . animum applicuit
(101–2). Cf. Rudolf Agricola, Vita Petrarchae, ed. L. Bertalot in Serapeum (1849); Stu-
dien zum italienischen und deutschen Humanismus, ed. P. O. Kristeller, 2 vols. (Rome:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1975), 2: 1–19 (‘‘Rudolf Agricolas Lobrede auf Pe-
trarca’’). Ibid., 5: verum ad maiora semper eluctans, quicquid ocii subripere ab aliis studiis
poterat, id omne ad has quas humanitatis artes vocant conferebat. To the modern reader,
the message clearly is: never take a Renaissance biography at face value.
11. CR 4, 716; MBW 2780. The literature on Melanchthon is incalculable. See
P. Mack, ‘‘Melanchthon, Philip,’’ in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York:
Routledge, 1998); and Kees Meerhoff, ‘‘Melanchthon, Philippe (1497–1560),’’ in
Centuriae Latinæ, ed. Colette Nativel (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 537–49, also for cur-
rently used abbreviations (CR, MSA, MBW).
12. See P. Mack, ‘‘Rudolph Agricola’s Reading of Literature,’’ in JWCI 48 (1985),
23–45. See also Agricola, De inventione dialectica, ed. Alardus of Amsterdam (Co-
logne, 1539; repr., Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: De Graaf, 1967), 2: 14 (henceforth:
DID). See also the critical edition (without Alardus’s commentary, but adequately
annotated), by L. Mundt (Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer, 1992).
13. See COE, 2: 303–4, and my chapter on Latomus in Histoire du Collège de
France, ed. A. Tuilier (Paris: Fayard, forthcoming).
14. See Kees Meerhoff, ‘‘Melanchthon lecteur d’Agricola: rhétorique et analyse
textuelle,’’ chap. 2 in Entre logique et littérature: Autour de Philippe Melanchton (Or-
léans, France: Paradigme, 2001).
15. See Gerda C. Huisman, Rudolph Agricola; and the precious bibliography of
Latomus’s works by Louis Bakelants in Bibliotheca Belgica [Link]. Cicero, Latomus, and
Terence (Brussels, 1964–1975).
16. The oration has been republished in B. Latomus, Deux discours inauguraux,
ed. and trans. Louis Bakelants (Brussels: Latomus, 1950). See also previous note.
17. The literature concerning Ramus is too vast to be quoted here. Peter Sharratt
has published no less than three ‘‘Present State’’ articles on this subject; the last of
these, ‘‘Ramus 2000,’’ appeared in Rhetorica 18 (2000), 399–455. On Omer Talon
[Talæus], see my entry in Centuriae Latinæ dedicated to Marie-Madeleine de La Gar-
anderie (Geneva: Droz, 2005), vol. 2 (forthcoming).

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 105

18. Peter Ramus’s Attack on Cicero: Text and Translation of Ramus’s ‘‘Brutinæ Quæsti-
ones’’ [1547] (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1992); Arguments in Rhetoric against
Quintilian: Translation and Text of Peter Ramus’s ‘‘Rhetoricæ Distinctiones in Quintil-
ianum’’ (1549) (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986). Both texts are
translated by Carole Newlands and come with an introduction by James J. Murphy.
19. On the evolution of Ramist rhetoric, see my Rhétorique et poétique au xvie siècle
en France (Leiden: Brill, 1986), part 3; and ‘‘La Ramée et Peletier du Mans: Une
Defence du ‘naturel usage,’ ’’ in Nouvelle Revue du Seizième Siècle 18 (2000): 77–93;
Guido Oldrini, ‘‘La retorica di Ramo e dei ramisti,’’ in Rinascimento, 2nd series, 39
(2000): 467–513.
20. See for instance ‘‘Three Unpublished Letters from Adrien Turnèbe to Pierre
Danès,’’ ed. L. C. Stevens in Studies in Philology 50 (1953): 128–43. Text and transla-
tion do not always seem trustworthy. A volume on Ramus’s struggles with his many
adversaries is now available: Autour de Ramus ii: Le Combat, ed. M. Magnien, Kees
Meerhoff, and Jean-Claude Moisan (Paris: H. Champion, 2005). Cf. infra note 41.
21. B. Latomus, Summa totius rationis disserendi uno eodemque corpore et dialecticas et
rhetoricas partes complectens (Cologne, 1527).
22. Melanchthon stresses this in all the prefaces to his manuals and repeats it in
the first pages of the texts. Explicit recommendation of the combined use of dialec-
tic and rhetoric is already found in the earliest versions of Ramus’s Dialecticæ Partiti-
ones and repeated elsewhere. But he also strongly underlines the necessity of a
theoretical separation of the disciplines. The conciliatio, consociatioque must exclu-
sively take place in practice, never in textbooks.
23. See Kees Meerhoff and Jean-Claude Moisan, ‘‘Précepte et usage: un com-
mentaire ramiste de la 4e Philippique,’’ in Autour de Ramus: Texte, théorie, commentaire
(Québec: Nuit Blanche, 1997), 305–70; P. Mack, ‘‘Ramus Reading: The Commen-
taries on Cicero’s Consular Orations and Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics,’’ in JWCI 61
(1998): 111–41.
24. See, for instance, J. Ch. Adams, ‘‘Gabriel Harvey’s Ciceronianus and the Place
of Peter Ramus’s Dialecticæ libri duo in the Curriculum,’’ in Renaissance Quarterly 43
(1990): 551–69; J. Rice Henderson, ‘‘Must a Good Orator be a Good Man? Ramus
in the Ciceronian Controversy,’’ in ‘‘Rhetorica movet’’: Studies in Historical and Modern
Rhetoric in Honour of H. F. Plett, ed. P. L. Oesterreich and Th. O. Sloan, 43–56
(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999).
25. J. Phrissemius, letter to Alardus, dated at Cologne, March 27, 1529, and re-
produced by the latter in Agricola’s Lucubrationes aliquot (Cologne, 1539; repr.
Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: De Graaf, 1967), fo†2vo; Ph. Melanchthon, letter to Alar-
dus, dated at Frankfurt, March 28, 1539, ibid. ff.†3ro–4ro (CR 3, 673–676; MBW
2169). Alardus himself calls Agricola literatorum studiosissimus, et studiosorum literatis-
simus in his commentary on DID II, 7.
26. See Rudolph Agricola, DID, II, 8 where he plays down the importance of
definition in oratorical practice (usu, certissimo rerum magistro).
27. Ibid., III, 13: Late enim patet laus, et omnium civilium quæstionum ratio prope ex
eo fonte desdendit (&c.). Agricola may have had in mind especially a speech like Cice-
ro’s Prolege Manilia which he has analyzed extensively. See the excellent modern
edition of this analysis, published by Marc van der Poel in Lias 24 (1997), 1–35; and
by the same, ‘‘Rudolph Agricola’s Method of Dialectical Reading: the Case of Cice-
ro’s De lege Manilia,’’ in Northern Humanism in European Context, 1469–1625, ed. F.
Akkerman, A. J. Vanderjagt and A. H. van der Laan, 242–66 (Leiden, Netherlands:
Brill, 1999). Cf. Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, Traité de l’argumentation,
Brussels 1970, I, § 11 (epideictic genre) and II, § 18sqq. (values).

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106 KEES MEERHOFF

28. Rudolph Agricola, Lucubrationes aliquot, 1539, quoted above (notes 12 and
25), 144–59 and 192–201. On the publishing history of both texts, see Huisman
(1985), nos. 4, 5, 83–122, 128.
29. Günter Frank, Die theologische Philosophie Philipp Melanchthons (1497–1560)
(Leipzig: Benno, 1995).
30. Ph. Melanchthon, Loci Communes [1521], ed. H. G. Pöhlmann (Gütersloh,
Germany: Mohn, 1993), 100–102, and 108. Compare CR 16, 424 (commentary on
Aristotle’s Politics, 1530).
31. Ph. Melanchthon, Philosophiae Moralis Epitome (Strasburg, 1538), 12. The
book opens with a long, classic section Quid interest inter philosophiam et Evangelium.
See also the long section on philosophy in his commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to
the Colossians (1527) reprinted in MSA 4, 230–43. There is now an interesting collec-
tion of texts available in English: Philip Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and
Education, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa and trans. C. F. Salazar (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
32. See esp. Rudolph Agricola, DID II, 12 and 19: Loci quidem communes (ut rhet-
ores vocant), non sunt aliud quam maiores ratiocinationum propositiones: &c. Cf. Cic. Or.
xxxvi, 126; De orat. III, xxvii, 106. Cf. Kees Meerhoff, ‘‘Logique et création selon
Philippe Melanchthon: à la recherche du lieu commun,’’ in Kees Meerhoff, Entre
logique et littérature, chap. 4.
33. This is not yet the case in the 1521 Loci Communes, where Aristotle is dis-
missed as a rixator (ed. quoted note 30 above, p. 102). See J. Kraye, ‘‘Melanchthons
ethische Kommentare und Lehrbücher,’’ in Melanchthon und das Lehrbuch des 16.
Jahrhunderts, ed. Jürgen Leonhardt, 195–214 (Rostock, Germany: Universität Ros-
tock, Philosophische Fakultät, 1997); H. Scheible, ‘‘Aristoteles und die Witten-
berger Universitätsreform,’’ in Humanismus und Wittenberger Reformation, ed.
Michael Beyer et al., 123–44 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1996).
34. See Mack, ‘‘Melanchthon’s Commentaries on Latin Literature,’’ in Melanch-
thon und Europa, vol. 2, 29–52.
35. Most commentaries are reprinted in the CR, although hardly ever in their
original form. See for the commentary on Solomon’s Proverbs CR 14 and MSA 4,
305–464 (1529 version, with interesting prologue); cf. also K. Hartfelder, ‘‘Aus
einer Vorlesung Melanchthons über Ciceros Tusculanen,’’ in Mitteilungen der Gesell-
schaft für deutsche Erziehungs- und Schulgeschichte 1, 168–77 (1891). Ibid., 171–72 on
notitiae naturales, including the innate insight into the immortality of the soul, ana-
lyzed by means of a syllogism.
36. See for instance the Philosophiae Moralis Epitome, 58: [Seventh law of nature]:
Defensio humani generis necessaria est . . . Huc pertinet lex: Vim vi depellere licet, videlicet in
defensione legitima. Compare with the underlying syllogism that Melanchthon detects
in the Pro Milone: this universal law offers a perfect maior propositio, as Agricola al-
ready recognized (and as Ramus will repeat). Cf. DID II, 18 (Cologne 1539 ed.,
267–68) with the remarks of Alardus (ibid. 270), who characteristically interprets
this section by referring it to the theory of dispositio as developed by Melanchthon
in his rhetorical works (combining logical syllogism with rhetorical status theory).
37. See my ‘‘Philippe Melanchthon aux Pays-Bas et en France: quelques son-
dages,’’ in the volume Melanchthon und Europa, vol. 2, 163–93.
38. This view was commonly accepted among progressive Parisians scholars. See
the edition of Latomus’ Oratio de studiis humanitatis (1951). The clash between the
theologians and the first lecteurs royaux has been studied by James K. Farge in his
well documented book Le parti conservateur au xvie siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1992).

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MELANCHTHON, LATOMUS, RAMUS 107

39. See for instance his analysis of the speech of the noble dictator Camillus
(Livy, Early History of Rome V, 51–54), partly reproduced in Autour de Ramus, 109–18.
40. See his inaugural lecture quoted above, and the speech in which Latomus
announces his intention to read the Verrine orations with his students: Oratio . . .
de laudibus eloquentiae et Ciceronis (Paris, 1535), often reprinted in collections of hu-
manistic commentaries on Cicero’s speeches. In this last speech, Latomus stresses
that social and political values are confirmed by and can survive thanks to elo-
quence.
41. Petrus Gallandius (ca. 1510–59), a close friend to the more famous Adrianus
Turnebus, edited and published a commentary by Latomus on Cicero’s De partitione
oratoria; he wrote an attack on Ramus and Talon which deserves careful [re]consid-
eration: Contra novam academiam Petri Rami oratio (Paris, 1551).
42. Mack, ‘‘Agricola and the earliest versions of Ramus’s Dialectic,’’ 31.
43. P. Ramus, Dialecticæ Partitiones (Paris, 1543) [first printed ed.], ff. 40vo–58vo.
Different reading in the Ms (BnF Latin 6659) which in lyrical terms refers to Hic
lux, hic veritas duobus testamentis impressa, consignataque legitur. . . . Hæc est non solum
metaphysis, sed etiam metamathesis, hic hominum reditus ad cœlum, hæc via est in illam
æternam beatarum mentium domum (Ms. ff. 36vo, 37vo).
44. Ibid. [first printed ed.], ff. 51vo, 56ro.
45. See Friedrich Beurhaus, De P. Rami Dialecticæ principuis capitibus disputationes
(Cologne, 1598), 4 and 30. Here, reference is made to Melanchthon’s Erotemata
dialectics (1547), as well as such notions as the notitia principiorum and the lux divini-
tus insita mentibus.

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Christian Humanism
in John Rolland’s Court of Venus
Roderick J. Lyall

IN 1575, IN THE MIDST OF A VERITABLE CAMPAIGN OF REPUBLICATION OF

earlier Scots works, the Edinburgh printer John Ross produced an
edition of Ane Treatise callit the Court of Venus, ‘‘newlie compylit be
Johne Rolland in Dalkeith.’’1 For reasons which will soon become
clear, it is certain that Ross’s assertion that the poem was new cannot
have been true in 1575: either the printer was here engaging in a
calculated misdescription of his text, or he had been misled, or he
simply took the wording of his title page from his exemplar (which
would then imply that there had been a previous edition of the
poem, probably—but not, of course, necessarily—issued when the
text was ‘‘newly compylit’’). In attempting to contextualize The Court
of Venus, then, we must examine all the available evidence in order
to determine how far back in the sixteenth century it can be located.
The result, I shall suggest, is to give Rolland’s poem a much greater
cultural significance than has been realized, placing him in the van-
guard of those who transmitted the materials, and to a degree the
values, of Continental Christian humanism into Scotland: The Court
of Venus was when it was written a remarkable, if aesthetically top-
heavy, synthesis of classical and biblical scholarship, and can be re-
lated to debates which were taking place among humanist poets in
France toward the end of the second quarter of the century, and
thus forms part of the same cultural process as the emergence of a
scholarly circle at St. Leonard’s College in St. Andrews and the work
of the expatriate Florens Wilson.2
In the prologue of his (later) poem The Seauin Seages, written in
1560, Rolland describes the circumstances in which he came to com-
pose The Court of Venus. Wishing ‘‘to schaw my diligence / To mani-
fest my waik wit and ingyne,’’ he tells us, he sought literary advice
from four distinguished poets-about-Court:
In Court that time was gude David Lyndsay,
In vulgar toung he bure the bell that day

108

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 109

To mak meter, richt cunning and expart,

And Maister Johne Ballentyne suith to say
Mak him marrow to Dauid weill we may.
And for the thrid, Maister Williame Stewart,
To mak in Scottis, richt weill he knew that Art,
Bischop Durie, sum tyme of Galloway,
For his plesure sum tyme wald tak thair part.3

Having plied them with wine, he was encouraged by this foursome

to turn his hand to the writing of a dialogue, fashionable advice
which he rejected on the grounds that ‘‘Dialogs . . . weis get anew’’;
and his caution was suitably rewarded by a vision in which Venus
appeared, inspiring him to produce The Court of Venus, a poem
which was enthusiastically approved by his four-man committee of
readers when he subsequently laid his work before them (though
subsequently not by his aunt, who complained of the poem’s diffi-
culty and its antifeminist views). It is in response to this criticism, he
continues, that he has now set about a translation of The Seauin
Seagis, a text less bedevilled with academic language and dubious
opinions.
This account, if it is to be believed, can obviously be helpful in
dating The Court of Venus, which must have been composed during
the lifetime of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, Andrew Durie, John
Bellenden, and William Stewart. The first two died in 1555 and 1558
respectively, but Bellenden seems clearly to have been deceased by
November 1548, when he was succeeded as prebendary of Lumhair
by John Kincaid.4 Mr. William Stewart, it would appear, died at just
about the same time: if, as seems virtually certain, Rolland is refer-
ring to the translator of Boece’s Scotorum historia, and if we can safely
identify this poet with the vicar of Pencaitland and rector of Quoth-
quan, then we know that he was killed in a skirmish in Edinburgh
shortly before 7 October 1548.5 Rolland’s poem cannot, therefore,
have been written after 1548, and may well date from a good deal
earlier. To assert, as A.A. Macdonald has recently done, that Rol-
land’s statement demonstrates that the Court ‘‘is a product of the age
of James V’’ is perhaps to go too far, since while it is possible that
the poem was written before James’s death in 1542, it might equally
have been composed between that year and 1548.6 Much depends
on what we make of the ‘‘sum tyme’’ in line 26: if it is merely a less
legalistic form of ‘‘umquhile,’’ it does no more than indicate that
Durie was no longer alive when Rolland wrote his preface in 1560,
but it might be taken to suggest that he was not yet bishop when the
discussion took place, in which case we would have evidence that the

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110 RODERICK J. LYALL

genesis of The Court of Venus occurred earlier than Durie’s provision

to the see in 1541–42.7 Durie, abbot of Melrose from 1526 onward,
had been appointed treasurer of the Chapel Royal (in succession to
the eminent philosopher and theologian John Major) as early as
June 1, 1520, and was therefore closely associated with the Court
from at least that time: we might therefore see the period before his
provision to Galloway as no less likely a context for this literary activ-
ity than the later one.8 But all that can positively be stated is that
Rolland’s composition must be earlier than 1548.
Although we know relatively little, even by sixteenth-century stan-
dards, about Rolland’s career, evidence recently published by John
Durkan provides us with some valuable starting points for further
research. We now know, for example, that he was born in Ayr
around 1504, and that his early career was in the west of Scotland:
only after becoming a notary public in 1528 did he move to Lothian,
practicing at Melrose and elsewhere, and eventually basing himself
in Dalkeith, where he evidently enjoyed the patronage of James
Douglas, earl of Morton.9 None of this is much help in providing a
terminus a quo for The Court of Venus, but it does suggest a framework
within which Rolland might have been in a position to make his ap-
proach to Lindsay, Bellenden, Stewart, and Durie. At the very least
we can say that, if Ross’s statement that the poem was ‘‘newly com-
pylit be John Rolland in Dalkeith’’ implies that it was actually written
there, and this implication is accurate, then it cannot have been
composed before 1528; we might, of course, go further and suggest
that the consultative process described by Rolland in The Seauin
Seages is unlikely to have occurred before Lindsay, Stewart and
Bellenden established their literary reputations at the court of James
V, which is to say, around 1530 or later. Useful as it undoubtedly is,
then, Rolland’s account of the genesis of his poem does not enable
us to be more precise than to locate the composition of The Court of
Venus between ca. 1530 and 1548, although we might bring the termi-
nus ad quem back to 1541 if we presume that Durie’s involvement
predated his nomination to the see of Galloway.
But this is already to give the poem a quite different cultural con-
text from that in which it is usually discussed, insofar as it is dis-
cussed at all. Scottish poetry in the 1570s was characterized by plain-
style lyric and the polemical verse of Robert Sempill: not until the
end of the decade would the emergence of the young James VI from
tutelage provide the impetus for a return to the courtly verse of the
earlier Makars. The Court of Venus would sit very oddly in such com-
pany; but it fits naturally enough into the milieu provided by the
court of James V and, after his death, of the governor, his widow

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 111

Mary of Guise. The combination of learned display and stylistic ele-

vation practiced by Bellenden and, in certain moods, Lindsay is car-
ried still further by Rolland, and it is not difficult to believe that they
and their fellow-courtiers greeted the poem with approval. It would,
however, be mistaken to see the context of the Court as exclusively
Scottish: even more than the work of Bellenden and Lindsay, Rol-
land’s poem draws upon classical materials and contemporary
French taste for its characters, its style, and perhaps also its themes.
While it may be difficult to relate its detail to specific contemporary
sources, the whole approach and manner of The Court of Venus is in-
fused by the spirit of the later rhétoriqueurs, and it is, as we shall see,
not improbable that Rolland was aware of the work of such men as
Jean Lemaire de Belges and Clément Marot, and perhaps even of
the contenders in the querelle des amyes (1542–47). The uncertainty
over dating here returns to haunt us: if we could be sure that Rol-
land wrote before 1542, then any direct connection with this fash-
ionable debate would be impossible. The question must remain
open, but we can at the very least observe that the central concerns
of the Court are essentially those which preoccupied many of the
poets at the court of François I through much of the 1540s. The Court
of Venus demands to be read as very precisely a poem of its time.
The central action concerns the trial of Desperance, an allegorical
protagonist who offends the goddess of love by the vehemence of
his attack on Esperance. Book 1 introduces these two characters and
gives a detailed, stylized account of their dispute, culminating in the
collapse of Esperance and the intervention of Venus on his behalf.
Book 2 describes Desperance’s search for legal help, eventually
bringing him to the palace of the goddess Vesta, who agrees to act
for him. This she does in book 3, where, after an account of the
impaneling of a jury, Rolland narrates the arguments presented by
Vesta and by Venus. Perhaps inevitably, Desperance is convicted in
book 4; his death sentence is, however, quickly lifted by Venus, and
he changes his name to Daliance to mark his acceptance of her rule.
The overall structure of the action, therefore, seems to vindicate the
claims of sexual love, and yet the force of Vesta’s arguments suggests
that the truth is actually more complex. Rolland, moreover, strik-
ingly ends his poem, in an apologetic apostrophe to the female
members of his audience, with a balancing of amatory and Christian
claims:

Praying yow all baith Ladeis ald and ying

Gif I haif said or foryit ony thing
Of my awin heid into your contrarie,

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112 RODERICK J. LYALL

To grant mercie, and gif pennance conding

First fra Venus and sine fra Cupide King,
Quhair all lufaris suld leill Heretouris be.
Now last of all praying Christ on our kne
He wald vouchesaif till heuin vs for to bring
At our last end, Amen for cheritie.
(4: 743–51)10

The sentiments expressed here could scarcely be more conven-

tional, and yet the balance which Rolland strikes is a fair reflection
of the argument of the poem as a whole, in which the amatory
theme is systematically played off against Christian wisdom, and an
unusual and, in Scottish terms at least, unprecedented display of
classical learning is carefully interwoven with biblical authorities.
Rolland’s classical knowledge and preoccupations raise some fas-
cinating questions. In structuring the allegory of a divine court
around the opposition of Venus and Vesta he may conceivably have
made use of the precedent of Jean Lemaire de Belges’ Couronne
margaritique (1504–5): the parallel is certainly striking, but Lem-
aire’s poem seems not to have been printed before 1549, and Rol-
land would therefore have had to have access to the text in
manuscript. The cult of Vesta herself was, it is true, fairly generally
known from classical sources (particularly Ovid’s Fasti, 6: 249–466),
and the scant detail Rolland provides could have come from many
intermediate authorities; in particular, he is very likely to have
known the discussion of the goddess in Boccaccio’s De genealogia
deorum, a work he is, as we shall shortly see, likely to have known.11 It
is the structural prominence he gives her, especially in the legal de-
bate on book 3 and its aftermath in book 4, which indicates that he
has seen the advantage of the Venus/Vesta opposition, and for this
Lemaire is manifestly an analogue, if not a source.
The other classical figure who is, most unusually, given a domi-
nant role in Rolland’s allegory is Rhamnusia, Venus’s ‘‘juge deput’’
(1: 928). This clearly illustrates both the extent and the limitations
of his classical knowledge: as an epithet for Nemesis, the name
Rhamnusia occurs a few times in Roman sources, but it can scarcely
be said to be a widely recognised form. Ovid mentions her once in
his Metamorphoses (iii, 406) without explaining the identification
with Nemesis, which derives from the existence of a temple of Neme-
sis at Rhamnus in Attica (Pausanias), and Statius makes a similar al-
lusion (again without naming Nemesis) in his Silvæ (2:6.73).
Rolland was evidently aware of the Nemesis association, but he ap-
parently believed that Nemesis and Rhamnusia were separate dei-

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 113

ties: the former is appointed ‘‘schiref and officiar’’ in the case

against Desperance (1:875), and Rhamnusia is then introduced four
stanzas later as ‘‘ane vther nimph.’’ This confusion about the histori-
cal use of the geographically-derived epithet as an alternative name
for Nemesis suggests that Rolland’s learning did not go very deep,
yet it seems very probable that in giving these two figures such a
prominent place in his allegory he was working directly from classi-
cal sources rather than taking his material, as medieval poets had
characteristically done, from a narrow range of standard deities and
personifications.
Apart from these major characters, The Court of Venus involves a
wide variety of lesser figures, including the numerous encyclopedic
lists for which Rolland seems to have had an irrepressible weakness.
Some of these are part of the stock-in-trade of the medieval scholar-
poet: the prologue begins with an analysis of the Four Humours,
linked to the planets, signs of the zodiac, and the elements in an
account of the physical world which Rolland could have found in
almost any standard textbook, and there is no more that is distinc-
tively modern in the lists of the ‘‘seuin digne Doctouris,’’ the Muses
and the Nine Worthies, which occur in book 2. Rolland evidently
takes as one of his models the encyclopedic poem as it had been
practiced by Lindsay and Bellenden in their role as court poets
under James V. But his prologue out-Lindsays Lindsay, and the cata-
logues in his prologue include a list of Roman kings and a thirty-
four-line passage anaphorically classifying various kinds of men, all
by way of proving that

Sa be mouing of the Planeitis and Signeis

Diuers folkis ar geuin to diuers thingis.
(Prol. 181–82)

There is, perhaps, a clearer indication of humanist interest in his

enumeration of the Sibyls (2: 481–509), especially when he follows
his list up with an account of Cumana’s exchange with the ‘‘Empri-
our Tarquine.’’ The names themselves appear to be drawn, as Walter
Gregor suggested in 1884, from Lactantius’ Divinarum Institutionum
(a work first printed in Rome as early as 1465), while the Tarquin
story may well have been influenced by the narrative in Aulus Gel-
lius’ Noctes Atticæ, which was frequently printed in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. It is, however, not necessary to suppose that Rol-
land obtained his material directly from either of these works; the
list of the Sibyls and the reference to Tarquin can both be found in
a standard mid-sixteenth century reference book, Robert Estienne’s

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114 RODERICK J. LYALL

Dictionarium proprium nominum, first published in Paris by Estienne

himself in 1541. Given the combination of extensiveness and shal-
lowness which characterizes Rolland’s classical knowledge, there are
good grounds for considering his possible debt to one or more such
works.
The most comprehensive of all Rolland’s lists is that of well over a
hundred ‘‘nymphis’’ who are described as forming part of Venus’s
court at the beginning of book 3. Here Rolland goes so far as to
indicate the authorities from whom he has taken his catalogue:

Gif sum wald seik, or to despyre be schawin

Thair nimphis names and quhair to find thame knawin
Luik Virgill weill into his Eneydois,
Als his Georgiks and Bucolikis weill drawin;
In transformatis Ouid on breid hes blawin
Intill his buik of Metamorphoseos;
Theodolus baith in his text and glos;
And De Remedio Amoris throw out sawin
Thair salbe fund, and mony mo than thos.
Alsua quha list to tak pane or laubour
Out throw to reid the Palice of Honour,
Maid be Gawine Dowglas, of Dunkell
Bischop, and als ane honest oratour,
Profound poet and perfite philosophour;
Into his dayis abone all buir the bell,
In sic practikis all vtheris did precell,
Weill put in vers in gude still and ordour
Thir nimphis names, thair he dois trewlie [tell].
(2: 100–117)

The great majority of the names provided by Rolland do, it is true,

occur in one or more of these standard sources: fifty or so are ac-
counted for by the Metamorphoses alone, and an additional eight are
mentioned in the Remedium Amoris. Forty (including a fairly high de-
gree of overlap with Ovid) are referred to in one or more of the
works of Virgil;12 eight names which do not occur in either of the
Ovidian texts identified by Rolland can be found in Virgil, and some
of these also turn up in the Ecloga Theoduli or in the commentary by
Odo of Picardy which is very probably the ‘‘glose’’ Rolland means.13
At least one other well-known name is easily accounted for: although
Hero is not mentioned in the Metamorphoses or the Remedium Amoris,
Rolland is virtually certain to have known about her from Ovid’s Her-
oides. When all these named sources have been exhausted, however,
we are left with a list of twenty-eight ‘‘nymphis’’ whose names Rol-

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 115

land must have found in works he does not identify. This group in-
cludes the seven daughters of Atlas mentioned in 3: 84–85 and the
following: Antiopa, Augeria, Candaces, Chestias, Deidamia, Erichto,
Guanor (Guenevere), Hypermnestra, Jocasta, Lampethusa, Lara,
Mirta, Nicostrata, Nictimena, Octavia, Omphale, Pandora, Philyra,
Phemonoe, Sicoris, and Tomyris. Elsewhere in the Court, Rolland ap-
peals to the authority of Boccaccio, and his De genealogia deorum is
one obvious source for several of Rolland’s list, including Antiopa
(10: 29), Ypermestra (2: 24), Lampethusa (7: 43), Lara (12: 65), Nic-
ostrata (5: 51), Nictimena (10: 30), and Pandora (4: 44). Guenevere,
of course, does not occur in any classical sources, and her intrusion
is the sole instance of Rolland’s awareness of the heritage of medie-
val romance.
Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum, however, offers only a partial ex-
planation of the range of Rolland’s list. A much higher correlation
can be found in a standard sixteenth-century handbook, Herman-
nus Torrentinus’s Elucidarius carminum et historiarum, a work which
was first published in Deventer in 1498 and which then went
through more than fifty editions in the Low Countries, France, Ger-
many, and Switzerland over the next half-century, eventually form-
ing the basis for Robert Estienne’s Dictionarium, in which, as we have
seen, Rolland might have found his material about the Sibyls.14 Tor-
rentinus’s extraordinarily successful little text seems very likely to
have been, in some form, a key source for Rolland: it was, clearly,
highly accessible, and no fewer than eighteen of the names which he
includes (assuming that we can justifiably assume that the otherwise
inexplicable Mirta represents Torrentinus’s Myrrha) can be found
in its pages.15 Recourse to such a reference work was presumably re-
sponsible for his one clear-cut mistake, that of presenting the Si-
coris, a river in Spain, as one of his classical ladies. Two of his
‘‘nimphis,’’ however, can be explained neither by reference to his
specifically named sources nor by invoking Torrentinus: Augeria
and Chestias. The former may, perhaps, derive from Auge, the
mother of Telephus, who is mentioned by Ovid and other classical
writers and listed by Estienne: in the 1541 edition of his Dictionarium,
he adds ‘‘siue Augea’’ (75). Chestias is more difficult to explain, but
presumably refers to Chesias, an alternative name of Artemis, which
occurs in a passage in Apollonius of Rhodes’ lost Naucratis cited by
Athenæus in his Deipnosophistoi; since this relatively obscure work was
first published by Aldus Manutius in 1514, it is not inconceivable
that Rolland could have known it. This would, however, suggest that
he could read Greek, for which there is no other compelling evi-

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116 RODERICK J. LYALL

dence. But since Chesias is absent from all the most likely Latin
handbooks, it is difficult to explain ‘‘Chestias’’ in any other way.
The last, in some ways most problematic element of Rolland’s cat-
alogue is the passage devoted to the Atlantides:

Thair was Athlas seuin dochteris all but leis,

To murne Hyas thair brother wald not ceis,
Ambrosia, Pasithea, Eudora,
Sithe, Pitho, Plione, Coronis . . .
(3: 82–85)

This list seems not to correspond with any traditional enumeration

of Atlas’s daughters. By specifying their mourning for Hyas Rolland
indicates that he means the Hyades and not the Pleiades, but this is
only partly helpful: although various versions of the names of the
Hyades were in circulation by the mid-sixteenth century, Rolland’s
version has some puzzling features.
Three of the names are virtually ever-present: Eudora and Coro-
nis (first mentioned by Hesiod), and Ambrosia, but thereafter the
extant sources differ quite widely. Boccaccio’s list of the Hyades
adds Phyto, Polixo, Pyidile, and Thyenes;16 Polyxo also occurs in the
names given by Hyginus, ultimately derived from Pherecydes, but
here the others are Phaisyle, Phaeo, and Dione.17 Ambrosius Calepi-
nus’s list in his frequently-reprinted Dictionarium includes Eudora,
Coronis and Ambrosia as usual, plus Pitho, Tythe, Plexaura and Pris-
ithoe.18 It is tempting to conclude that Rolland did indeed have ac-
cess to Calepinus’s Dictionarium, and that it was to this source that he
owed Pitho and (by an obvious process of scribal corruption) Sithe;
Pasithea might then be a misreading or misremembering of Prisi-
thoe, leaving only Dione unaccounted for. At any event, the pecu-
liarity of his list confirms the more general impression that Rolland’s
classical knowledge was broad but shallow, and that much of it was
probably acquired at second, or even third, hand.
Rolland’s humanist concerns are also apparent in his stylistic
choices, and in particular in the high proportion of Latinate neolo-
gisms he employs. While we have no explicit evidence in Scotland of
the kind of lexical controversy that affected sixteenth-century En-
gland, it is clear that similar differences in practice existed; and
there can be no question that Rolland implicitly places himself on
the side of Sir Thomas Elyot and other advocates of the use of ‘‘ink-
horn terms’’ rather than on that of their opponents like Sir John
Cheke and Thomas Wilson.19 What is significant is not merely the
very high proportion of words of Romance origin in Rolland’s vo-

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 117

cabulary, but the number of unusual, often polysyllabic, terms he

employs. Some of these, such as circumuene, conuallessit, exterminioun,
ociositie and stupratioun, he derives from, or at least shares with, such
other enthusiasts for learned borrowing as Gavin Douglas (whose
Palice of Honoure is, as we have already noted, an acknowledged
source for The Court of Venus), Bellenden, Lindsay, and Stewart; but
he also goes further than they do in his extension of the Scots words-
tock; and it is possible to identify at least thirty-three items for which
the Court is the first—and often the only—recorded witness. A large
proportion of these, moreover, are words derived from classical
rather than from medieval or Renaissance Latin:

confodiat; contemparaneane; depilat; enucleat; exertive; fluctuant; intoritive; la-

queat; morigerate; obnubilate; obtemperat; occise; refrenatioun; transitive; tribu-
lat; verecund; vespertine; vibrant; vltioun.

To these we can add the items which do come from later Latin
sources, sometimes influenced by previous French borrowing:

claustrall; condecent (widely used in sixteenth-century French); excandi-

date; faculent; hylair (the spelling indicates that the direct source is
French rather than Lat. hilaris); interlaqueat; invincent; pomeridiane; preex-
cogitacioun; scientive (probably from French scientif ); suspensive; triumpha-
tik; vivificative.20

A final instance is particularly striking, for the OF outrecuidance, a

fairly common word since the thirteenth century, appears in the
Court in Latin dress as ultrequedance, a spelling reminiscent of the ul-
trequidance found in England in 1541 but with no recorded French
analogue.21 As with the display of classical names, and especially the
supererogatory list of nymphs, this elaborate copiousness is doubt-
less intended to impress the reader with the poet’s erudition, and it
is probably no coincidence that all three members of Rolland’s read-
ing committee whose work survives show signs of the same preoccu-
pations, albeit in more modest proportions.
Rolland’s humanist philology is, then, wide-ranging but shallow;
he draws on a great variety of materials whose recovery was the leg-
acy of the scholarship of the past couple of generations, but there is
little evidence that he was a critical user of the information to which
he had access, and much of it may have been acquired via compen-
dia and handbooks. The structure into which he incorporates this
material is, moreover, thoroughly conservative in its allegorical pat-
terning; and it is important to acknowledge that the humanism of
the Court is essentially Christian. Two extended debates play crucial

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118 RODERICK J. LYALL

roles in the action: the first, between Esperance and Desperance

over the desirability of love (1: 313–616), causes the former’s col-
lapse and the prosecution of the latter, while the disputation be-
tween Venus and Vesta in the course of the trial (III, 199–909)
embodies the fundamental argument over the relative merits of sex-
ual and chaste love. In both cases, the participants make extensive
use of biblical citations to support their claims, and the text is fre-
quently quoted verbatim to reinforce the significance of the prac-
tice. Like humanists in France, the Low Countries, and England at
this period, Rolland evidently sees no contradiction between his
Christian themes and the classical apparatus in which he embodies
them; and he emphasizes the point through the incorporation of
scriptural quotations into his text.
In book 1, the pattern of quotation is interesting: Desperance
cites Exodus, Proverbs (twice), Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Ec-
clesiasticus, Matthew (twice), and 1 Corinthians, while Esperance
draws on Genesis, the Song of Songs (four times), and John. It is
perhaps unsurprising, in view of Esperance’s insistence that ‘‘I lufe
ay leill, and that weill lukis me,’’ that he should have such a strong
preference for the Canticles, but Rolland ensures that Desperance
repeatedly challenges his use of scripture to justify sexual love. This
strategy emerges in the first exchange of biblical authorities, when
Esperance meets his opponent’s quotation from Ecclesiastes with a
daring, almost blasphemous, application of John 15:12, Hoc est
praeceptum meum, ut diligatis invicem, sicut dilexi vos. Naturally enough,
‘‘the Saddest’’ (i.e., Desperance) objects to the suggestion that sex-
ual love is intended here:

Authoritie richt gude to me thow schawis,

Bot wo allace, thow takis it in wrang kinde:
Thow allegis the thing that thow misknawis.
Lufe thy Nichtbour, & brek not Goddis lawis
Be Fornicatioun, nor yit Adulterie;
To schame & lak thir twa thair seruand drawis.
(1: 450–55)

Faced with quotations from Exodus 20:14 and Matthew 5:28 to back
up this uncomprising stance, Esperance resorts to the injunction in
Genesis ‘‘crescite et multiplicamini,’’ only to be informed that this, too,
has a significance different from that which he claims for it. The de-
bate now centers on Solomon, with Esperance invoking a succession
of texts from the Song of Songs in support of his contention that
sexual love is authorized by biblical authority. Desperance’s first

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 119

move is to counter with a verse from Ecclesiasticus (19:2) condemn-

ing fornication, and then, when Esperance insists that the whole
book is in praise of women’s beauty, to offer the traditional allegori-
cal reading which sees the subject of the Song as ‘‘the kirk
militant, / Quhilk is the Spous of the blist trinitie’’ (1: 501–2). The
trading of biblical texts, almost without exception from the books
attributed to Solomon, continues for several more stanzas, until
‘‘the Saddest’’ ingeniously seizes his opponent’s ground by citing
the Song on his own side: Si dederit homo omnem substantiam domus
suae, pro dilectione quasi nihil despiciet eam (8:7). This does not end the
argument, but it does have the effect of ending Esperance’s (mis)-
use of Scripture; from now on, until Esperance faints from an excess
of fervor at 1: 641, the currency of the debate is rhetorical rather
than theological. There can be little doubt that Desperance wins the
match, but the inevitable consequence, at least within the rhetorical
framework of Rolland’s poem, is that he should therefore be
charged with crimes against the rule of Venus.
Rolland’s biblical learning returns to dominate what is in many
ways the intellectual heart of the poem: the forensic debate in book
3 between Vesta and Venus. The case against Desperance now seems
to be forgotten, and the legal argument centers on the broader
question of the legitimacy of sexual love. It is true that the excuse
for this is Vesta’s opening defense that ‘‘All that he said it was of
veritie’’ (3: 317), but her concern appears to be much more with
her biblical authorities than with Desperance’s cause. After a prelim-
inary skirmish over the rather obscure relationship between Reuben
and his father Jacob’s concubine Bala (Genesis 35:22)—to which
Venus not unreasonably responds that the fact that the Bible seems
to accept the fact of Jacob’s keeping a concubine is surely a point on
her side—Vesta produces a series of nine further authorities ‘‘Baith
in the new, and in the auld Testament,’’ all tending to show how

of lufe the rampand rage,

The ardent lust, and the kendilland curage,
The naturall cours, and eik the sauage blude,
Will caus ane man dekay into dotage,
Vnto the time that the lust be assuage:
And takis no thocht to ressoun, nor to gude.
(3: 388–93)

Once again, however, the champion of chastity does not have the
argument all her own way. Venus repeatedly challenges her use of
biblical authority, insisting, for example, that Joseph was culpable in

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120 RODERICK J. LYALL

his refusal to succumb to the desires of Pharaoh’s wife (3: 447–59),

and eventually invoking a fundamental exegetical difficulty: the
presence of three ‘‘fallen’’ women in Matthew’s account of Jesus’s
genealogy. Vesta has invited this objection by citing the case of Tha-
mar, whose alleged incest with Ammon is described in Genesis 38
(she mistakenly attributes the story to 3 Kings 13); Venus returns to
this question later in the argument, pointing out that one of the
twins borne by Thamar was an ancestor of Christ. Furthermore, she
adds, several generations later Salmon ‘‘maryit Raab the commoun
hure’’ (3: 671).
Vesta’s first response to this contention is that Salmon, ‘‘ane no-
bill Prince,’’ is scarcely likely to have married a common whore, but
Venus replies tersely, ‘‘Reid Mathowis first Euangell,’’ and adds that
Christ’s ancestors also included ‘‘Bersabe,’’ the wife of Uriah from
love of whom David had her husband killed:

Now I begin agane quhair I best may,

That ye consaif the storeis in certane:
First I rehersit Thamar and Raab plane,
And Bersabe, the quhilk ye can not nay,
War all of sport ladeis venereane.
(3: 716–20)

The presence of these three women, along with the convert Ruth, in
Matthew’s genealogy of Christ had been much discussed by Patristic
writers and medieval theologians alike. One of the most influential
remarks was that of Jerome in his commentary on Matthew:

Notandum in genealogia Saluatoris nullam sanctarum adsumi muli-

erum, sed eas quas scriptura reprehendit, ut qui propter peccatores uen-
erat, de peccatricibus nascens omnium peccata deleret.22

Other writers, such as Paschasius Radbertus, attempted to meet the

difficulty by resorting to allegory, interpreting the women as types
of the Church,23 while the summary provided by Aquinas gives a
characteristically balanced account of medieval views:

Notandum tamen quod in tota genealogia Matthaei non ponuntur nisi

mulieres peccatrices, vel quae in aliquo fuerant peccato notatae, sicut
Thamar, quae fornicata est (Gen. 38:24), et Ruth, quae fuit idololatra,
quia gentilis, et uxor Uriae, quae fuit adultera (2 reg. 11:2ss), et hoc ad
designandum, secundum Hieronymum, quod ille cuius genealogia texi-
tur, intravit propter peccatores redimentos. Alia ratio tangitur ab Am-
brosio, scilicet ut tolleretur confusio ecclesiae, si enim Christus ex

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 121

peccatoribus nascui voluit, non debent infideles irridere, si peccatores

ad ecclesiam veniant. Alia ratio potest assignari, credo secundum Chry-
sostom, ut ostendatur imperfectio legis: et quod Christus venit legem im-
plere.24

In centering the legal debate upon this point, therefore, Rolland is

alluding to an established hermeneutic problem.
Vesta, interestingly, does not adopt the traditional line. She begins
by reaffirming her denial of the women’s sinfulness: they were, she
claims, ‘‘richt wise and full of grauitie,’’ included in Christ’s geneal-
ogy ‘‘For thair vertew and greit humilitie’’ (3: 744–47). By arguing
in this way, she manifestly declines to associate herself with the main-
stream interpretation with its implicit acceptance of antifeminist as-
sumptions. She is supported in this by Chaistitie (3: 775–804), who
invokes Nicholas of Lyra, John Mair and ‘‘the glois . . . interlinear’’
to the effect that the male ancestors of Christ were necessarily virtu-
ous, adding that if this applies to the men it should also apply to the
women:

Heirfoir I say, Thamar and Bersabe,

Raab and Ruth in the genelogie
Of Christ ar put for prayer and gude deidis.

Venus, however, is still not beaten and draws on the passage in Je-
rome we have already noted in order to justify her claim that the
women were of her party. Christ and Mary, she insists, ‘‘come of
folkis friuolous’’

That we micht knaw his cherite ignite,

Ardent and hait our sin to abolite,
Did not disdane to tak mankinde of vs.
(3: 813–16)

With this impeccably orthodox citation, Venus rests her case. It is

striking that Rolland is careful to balance the arguments, and it
seems that this is not merely a device to prolong his poem and main-
tain the reader’s uncertainty about the outcome. The rival claims of
virginity and physical love are given equal weight, and it is not evi-
dent here, as it is in the earlier dispute between Esperance and De-
sperance, that either party is systematically distorting Scripture.
Indeed, as we have seen, it is Venus who has Jerome on her side,
and it is difficult to imagine a more respectable authority in biblical
commentary.
The ‘‘assise’’ that must judge the case against Desperance (whose

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122 RODERICK J. LYALL

fate, we may have forgotten, still hangs in the balance) also takes the
two sides seriously, if we can judge from the list of biblical, juridical,
and classical authorities they take into account (4: 1–23). Again, of
course, Rolland is showing off, listing a range of legal sources which
includes such recent figures as Nicholaus de Tedeschis (Panormita-
nus, 1386–1445), Alessandro di Imola (d. 1487), and Jason del
Maino (ca. 1435-ca. 1519). A lawyer himself, he is evidently keen to
let the reader know that he is aware of the most up-to-date authori-
ties, and the legal humanism of fifteenth-century Italy is another ele-
ment in the complex cultural mix which underlies his work. The
verdict of the court is, as the balance of the debate may have led us
to expect, carefully nuanced: Vesta’s superiority to Venus is acknowl-
edged, but at the same time it is recognized that the world would
quickly be emptied if everyone were to follow her. By the same
token, the power of Vesta is no reason to ‘‘lichtlie’’ Venus, and this
Desperance is found to have done. The sentence for his blasphemy
is death, but the court recommends to Rhamnusia, its president,
that his repentance should be taken into account, and he should be
forgiven. Two issues thus come to dominate the closing stages of the
poem: the priority of virginity over sexual love, and the possible
commuting of Desperance’s sentence. Vesta does not go out of her
way to help Desperance’s cause: on the contrary, she further enrages
Venus by successfully demanding that henceforth her court be en-
tirely independent of Venus’s (4: 292–310). Only after repeated en-
treaties, and (in a moment anticipating Isabella’s plea for Angelo in
Measure for Measure) the intervention of Esperance on Desperance’s
behalf, does she finally relent, agreeing to pardon him, renaming
him Dalience (4: 554–62). The poem’s symbolic action, therefore,
ends with the practical triumph of amatory values, whatever the the-
oretical precedence of sexual abstinence may be held to be.
Rolland, however, has one more card to play: the narrator himself
appears at Venus’s feast, begging alms, and is comprehensively re-
jected:

Go way, said scho, ane fell freik thow hes bene

That weill I knaw be thy beld, heid and ene:
With thi gude wil thow hes done that thow may,
Bot thy gude will without gude deid betwene
Is not comptit in my court worth a prene.
(4: 707–11)

The distinction between faith and works has, of course, powerful six-
teenth-century resonances, but its effect here is to concede that

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 123

whatever the narrator’s theoretical commitment to love may be, he

is not currently active in the field. Although he offers a mild protest,
reminding her that there was a time when ‘‘Ye wald haif thollit me
to byid in your bour’’ (4: 717), he does not seem unduly upset by the
rejection, kissing the gates of Venus’s palace, ‘‘thair neuer to come
agane.’’ He ends, indeed, as Henryson’s narrator begins in The Testa-
ment of Cresseid, consoling himself with a good fire and sitting down
to describe his vision. Once again the balance seems carefully struck:
within the framework of the allegory, Venus prevails, but in the nar-
rator’s own world her power has become irrelevant. Even the final,
conventional stanza is double-faced, calling on female readers who
feel slighted by the poem to forgive him in the names of Venus and
Cupid, but ending with a prayer to Christ ‘‘till heuin vs for to bring /
At our last end.’’ There can, it seems, be no single, simple solution
to the issues which the poem confronts.
As we noted at the outset, there are interesting parallels between
Rolland’s thematic concerns in The Court of Venus and the debate
about sexual love that caused so much interest in French court cir-
cles in the 1540s and that was known as the Querelle des Amyes.25 While
Rolland’s humanism does not extend to the Neoplatonism that can
be seen in such works as Antoine Héroët’s La Parfaicte Amye (1542),
the discussion that was triggered by Bertrand de La Borderie’s
L’Amye de Court (1542) has obvious affinities with the careful balanc-
ing of the rival claims of Vesta and Venus, and the awareness of the
rich heritage of classical philosophy that underlies, however thinly,
the argumentation of the Scots poem. The Court shares, too, the
conservative use of allegorical techniques that characterizes such
contributions to the Querelle as Almanque Papillon’s Le nouvel amour
(1546); and it is difficult not to see some grounds for applying to The
Court of Venus McFarlane’s remark that ‘‘many of the compositions
associated with the querelle barely stretch beyond versified prose, with
little concern for poetic quality.’’26 To make this our final judgment
on this neglected poem, however, would be less than just to the
sheer breadth of Rolland’s humanist interests, or to the care with
which he sets up his forensic debate. If his literary ambitions ulti-
mately outran his talents, The Court of Venus nevertheless provides
crucial evidence of the expanding interests of the cultured elite in
Scotland in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

Notes
1. Among other older Scots works to be printed (or reprinted) between 1565
and 1580 are Sir David Lindsay’s Warkis (three editions), Hary’s Wallace, Henryson’s

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124 RODERICK J. LYALL

Morall Fabillis (two editions), Barbour’s Brus, the anonymous Rauf Coilyear, Gavin
Douglas’s Palice of Honoure, and Rolland’s own Sevin Seages; the majority of these
works were printed ‘‘at the expensis of ’’ the Edinburgh bookseller Henry Charteris.
2. For a recent survey of Wilson’s career, see Dominic Baker-Smith, ‘‘Florens
Wilson: A Distant Prospect,’’ in Stuart Style 1513–1542: Essays on the Court of James V,
ed. J. Hadley Williams (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell Press, 1996), 1–14.
3. John Rolland, The Seuin Seages, ed. George F. Black (Edinburgh: Scottish Text
Society, 1932), 1–2.
4. RSS, iii, nnn (nos. 2237–8, 2687, 3014).
5. Joyce M. Sanderson, ‘‘Two Stewarts of the Sixteenth Century: Mr. William
Stewart, Poet, and William Stewart, Elder, Depute Clerk of Edinburgh,’’ The Stewarts
17 (1984): 25–46 (pp. 29–30).
6. A. A. Macdonald, ‘‘William Stewart and the Court Poetry of the Reign of
James V,’’ in Stuart Style, 179–200 (p. 180).
7. Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae Medii Aevi ad annum 1638, ed. D. E. R. Watt (St. An-
drews, Scottish Record Society, 1969), 132.
8. RSS, i, 543 (no. 3584) (Melrose); 479 (no. 3067) (Chapel Royal).
9. Protocol Book of John Foular, 1528–1534, ed. John Durkan (Scottish Record So-
ciety, Edinburgh, 1985), p. xix.
10. John Rolland, The Court of Venus, ed. Walter Gregor (Edinburgh: Scottish
Text Society, 1884), 135. All references are to this edition.
11. Giovanni Boccaccio, De genealogia deorum, ed. Vincenzo Romano, 2 vols.
(Bari, Italy: G. Laterza, 1951), 1: 394–95. Boccaccio refers in passing to Augustine,
De civitate Dei, 4: 10, with which Rolland is also likely to have been familiar.
12. This assumes that ‘‘Daris’’ (Court, 3: 59) can be equated with Doris, the
daughter of Oceanus and the wife of Nereus, who is mentioned in Virgil’s Eclogues
and elsewhere.
13. Odo (or Eudes) de Fouilloy was tutor to Louis, duc de Guyenne; his com-
mentary on the Ecloga Theoduli, beginning ‘‘Multi licet magna et excellenti ingenio
uiri ad presentis libelli expositionem se applicauerunt,’’ was frequently reprinted,
editions appearing in centers as widely separated as Paris, Cologne, Leipzig, and
Zamora, as well as circulating in manuscript.
14. On Robert Estienne’s contribution to the development of classical dictionar-
ies, and the relationship between his work and that of Hermannus Torrentinus, see
DeWitt T. Starnes and Ernest William Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renais-
sance Dictionaries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955); DeWitt T.
Starnes, Robert Estienne’s Influence on Lexicography (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1963), 86–120; and Elizabeth Armstrong, Robert Estienne (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1954).
15. The names included by Torrentinus are (the foliations refer to the 1498 De-
venter editio princeps): Antiopa (A6v), Candaces (C2r), Deidamia(C7r), Erichto
(D1v), Hypermnestra (E3r), Jocasta (E5r), Lara (E5v), Mirta/Myrra (E3v), Nicos-
trata (G1r), Nictimena (G1r), Octavia (G2r), Omphale (G2v), Pandora (G4v), Phi-
lyra (G7r), Phoemonoe (G7v), Sicoris (I1v), and Tomyris (K1r). Torrentinus also
mentions Pasithea (G5r), but does not make her one of the Hyades, as Rolland
does. All these names except, significantly, Nictimena can also be found in Estien-
ne’s 1541 Dictionarium; she does appear in the 1545 Antwerp edition. This very high
correlation of names compares favorably with that in the other principal handbook
of the period, Ambrosius Calepinus’s Dictionarium (1502, and frequently reprinted
thereafter), in which only half-a-dozen from this list occur.
16. De genealogia, 4: 31, ed. Romano, i, 189.

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CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN JOHN ROLLAND’S COURT OF VENUS 125

17. See Hyginus, Fabulae, ed. P. K. Marshall (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1993).

18. I have used the edition of Calepinus’s Dictionarium published by Johann Grün-
inger in Strasbourg in 1510, where the discussion of the Hyades occurs on sig. d5v.
19. On learned borrowing in sixteenth-century English, see for example R. F.
Jones, The Triumph of the English Language (Stanford, CA: Oxford University Press,
1953), 3–31 and 68–141; and C. L. Barber, Early Modern English (London: Deutsch,
1976).
20. I am grateful to Lorna Pike, of the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, for
information from the Dictionary’s unpublished files.
21. See Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, viii, 545.
22. Jerome, In Matheum, 1: 8 (Turnhout: CCSL, 1969), 8.
23. Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in Matthaeum, 1: 1, PL 120, cc. 54–67.
24. Aquinas, Super Evangelium Matthaei, 1: 2, Opera Omnia, ed. Roberto Buso
(Stuttgart, 1980), vi, 131. Aquinas is referring to Ambrose, Expositio Euangelii Secun-
dum Lucam, 3: 17–29 (CCSL, Turnhout, 1957), 84–97; Ambrose, like Aquinas, does
not mention Rahab. Aquinas’s caution about the authority of Chrysostom is justi-
fied: the latter does discuss the problem twice in his sermons on the Gospel, in 1: 6
and 3: 4 (PG 57, cc. 2, 35), but does not use this argument.
25. On this exchange, see M. A. Screech, ‘‘An Interpretation of the Querelle des
Amyes,’’ Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 21 (1959): 103–30; and I. D. McFar-
lane, A Literary History of France: Renaissance France, 1470–1589 (London, 1974):
115–24.
26. Renaissance France, 121.

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In Praise of Dancing:
A Paradoxical Encomium by Hendrik
Laurensz. Spiegel (1549–1612)
Marijke Spies

IN 1578, THE CITY OF AMSTERDAM, AFTER A SEVERAL YEARS’ BLOCKADE OF

its harbor and the loss of virtually all its trade, at last took sides with
the prince of Orange in his insurrection against the king of Spain,
who at the time was sovereign of the Netherlands. During the eleven
preceding years the town had been under direct control of the cen-
tral government in Brussels and subjected to a strict Roman Catholic
ordnance. During those years thousands of its inhabitants had been
exiled or even executed for their belief. Nevertheless there was no
strong reaction when things changed. One frantic Catholic priest,
Jacob Buyck, was forced to leave town and his library was confis-
cated. But on the whole an atmosphere of mutual peace, tolerance,
and freedom of conviction seems to have been predominant.1
Such an atmosphere was, of course, very much in the interest of
trade, Amsterdam’s core business, and therefore actively sustained
by the magistracy. One of the instruments of this policy was the
town’s ‘‘chamber of rhetoric,’’ a literary and theatrical society that
went under the name of The Eglantine and that had as its device
‘‘flowering in love.’’ Brotherly love in an Erasmian evangelical inter-
pretation was indeed its professed ideology, as was expressed in sev-
eral of its New Year’s songs. Head of this society, and as such author
of most of these songs, was Hendrik Laurensz. Spiegel, a wealthy
Amsterdam merchant, who had stayed with the Roman Catholic
church. This too testifies to the tolerant ambiance, the membership
of the Eglantine varying from convinced Calvinists to Catholics and
even so-called ‘‘free-thinkers’’ as Spiegel’s friend Dirk Volkertsz.
Coornhert.
The most important way by which the chamber tried to forward
this ideology was by popular education. Spiegel was convinced that
the human ‘‘ratio’’ could, by means of sound reasoning, give insight

126

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IN PRAISE OF DANCING 127

into truth and falsehood, good and evil, and for this reason was the
instrument ‘‘par excellence’’ to obtain civic harmony. He instigated,
and probably realized personally, the publication in Dutch of a
grammar (1584), a dialectic (1585), and a short rhetoric (1587). In
this way he tried to teach those citizens who had not attended the
Latin school, that is, most merchants, businessmen, shopkeepers,
and skilled craftsmen who constituted Amsterdam’s established mid-
dle class, the rules of humanist persuasive communication and argu-
mentation.2
The same ideas must have prompted the composition, over a span
of nearly fifty years, of a small connected series of rhymed paradoxi-
cal encomia by Coornhert, Spiegel, their friend and colleague cham-
ber member Roemer Visscher, and—several years later—Gerbrand
Adriaensz. Bredero, a coming young playwright. According to Cic-
ero in his Paradoxa Stoicorum the paradox—that is to say, the proof
of a true thesis which is nevertheless at odds with generally accepted
opinion3 —was the best means to achieve insight into truth, because
it was the most Socratic way of argumentation. As such it was also
considered an excellent exercise in argumentation itself. The tradi-
tion of pro and contra argumentation in the paradoxical school-dec-
lamations of the humanists testifies to that.4 The members of The
Eglantine must have considered such concrete examples of sound
dialectic reasoning, which at the same time presented more or less
emancipatory opinions on social behaviour, an excellent comple-
ment to their theoretical lessons. The poetical form served in their
opinion no other cause than to enhance the persuasive force of the
whole.5

Of these paradoxes Spiegel’s Praise of Dancing (Het Lof van dansen)

was undoubtedly the most controversial one. Coornhert had written
his Praise of Prison (Lof van de ghevanghenisse, 1567) primarily to venti-
late his ideas on the different categories of misbehavior nobody
could possibly object to. Visscher came somewhere between 1580
and 1612 with argumentations for and against being in love and
courting that, notwithstanding their social relevance, were neverthe-
less first meant to be amusing. Bredero also argued, respectively in
1613 and 1614, the advantages of wealth and poverty in a way that
would not raise any protest. In these cases, the paradoxical conflict
with the ‘‘communis opinio’’ was to be taken with a huge amount of
salt. But dancing was something different.
Dancing had been traditionally popular in all the ranks of Dutch
society and a generally accepted way for young people to meet each
other. There were dance halls everywhere, not only in the cities but

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128 MARIJKE SPIES

also in the smaller towns and villages.6 From the side of the Roman
Catholic church there used to be some opposition, but mostly not
very outspoken. More vehement in their educational idealism were
certain humanists. Erasmus devoted some depreciatory passages in
his Apophthegmata to the question of dancing, and Henricus Corne-
lius Agrippa von Nettesheim fulminated over several pages in his De
Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium, atque Excellentia Verbi Dei,
declamatio against its stupidity and insanity. Even Coornhert rejected
in his play Der Maeghdekens Schole (School for Maidens, ca.1570–75)
dancing at weddings as incompatible with the holiness of the occa-
sion.7 But the Calvinist reformed church was most opposed of all.
And since from the 1540s on Calvinism had gained a definitive foot-
ing its preachers did not stop arguing against what they considered
an ungodly form of amusement. The influential spokesman Lam-
bertus Danaeus, a Genevese theologian, published a Traité des danses
in 1579, in which he adduced the full flow of his learning to prove
that in all times wise men had spoken against dancing.8
But not everybody was as strict as that. Most noticeable, for in-
stance, is the opinion of Philips van Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde, cer-
tainly in every respect a stern Calvinist, but also a nobleman from
the court of William of Orange. In 1577 he defended himself in a
letter to a Calvinist minister, Gaspar van der Heyden, against the al-
legations from the Calvinist side in favor of the happy, simple, and
honest dances in which he himself loved so much to participate.9
The confusion seems to have been complete: the liberal and toler-
ant Coornhert, who so often ran into conflict with the Calvinists,
against, and Marnix, fierce defender of the Calvinist creed, in
favor.10 And, I may add, Spiegel, an intimate friend of Coornhert
and certainly no adherent of Marnix, was in his turn writing a poem
in praise of dancing.

As a matter of fact, Spiegel uses nearly all arguments pro and contra
that were put forward in the 1570s by authors such as Agrippa, Da-
naeus, and Marnix, to compose an exemplary dialectical argument
in the form of a poem that shows the same rhetorical structure and
poetical features as the paradoxical encomia by Coornhert, Visscher,
and Bredero.11 The rhetorical structure divides the text into an exor-
dium (stanzas 1–3), an argumentatio, consisting of a proposition
(stanzas 4–7) and a series of arguments (stanzas 8–24), a refutatio
(stanza 25) that turns into a final conclusio (stanzas 26–29), and a
peroratio (stanza 30). The poem has an aabccb rhyme scheme but has
no mythologies, allegories, elaborated metaphors, or complicated
rhymes, so popular in the poetry of those days. Both Coornhert and

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IN PRAISE OF DANCING 129

Spiegel would some years later explicitly reject these forms of what
they called vain literary pomp. Poetry had to serve the clear and di-
rect expression of rationally substantiated truth, and nothing else.12
In the exordium Spiegel links his text explicitly not only to Eras-
mus’s Laus Stultitiae, but also to the paradoxical poems by his friends
Coornhert and Visscher:

Different authors praise different things,

Some wisdom, art or good learnings,
Others praise fighting and battles by change;
The Praise of Folly one author sings,
Others the prison or love’s misgivings,
But now come and listen to the praise of dance.

[Verscheyden luy prysen verscheyden hanteringe,

Sommighe wijsheyt, const, ofte goede leeringe,
Andere prysen vechten, stormen en schansen,
Het lof der sotheyt hoortmen oock verbreen,
Eenighe prysen een kercker of een blaeuwe scheen:
Comt hier en hoort het lof van dansen.]
(stanza 1)

In the following two stanzas he emphasizes the difficulty of the un-

dertaking, because dancing is nowadays generally considered sinful.
If that were really true, he remarks he wouldn’t think of praising it,
but he will prove that the opposite is the case. In the exordium he
makes the reader attentive by referring to his predecessors, docile
by mentioning the subject, and benevolent by underlining its diffi-
culty and moral quality.
The foundation for his thesis that dancing is neither sinful nor
harmful is established in the first four stanzas of the argumentatio,
the so-called ‘‘propositio’’ (stanzas 4–7). Dancing, one should know,
is in itself not bad, but either neutral or good. It may, however, have
turned bad by those who practice it. The division in good, bad, and
neutral was a well-known philosophical distinction used by Coorn-
hert in his Zedekunst dat is Wellevenskunste (Ethics, that is the Art of Liv-
ing well, 1586) and by Marnix in his apology.13 The examples of those
evildoers are however not given by Marnix. The Israelites who
danced around the golden calf, as well as the dancing of Herodias’
daughter, are directly taken from Danaeus. Also taken from Da-
naeus is the example that illustrates the first then following positive
argument: the old Israelites used to honor and praise God by
dancing.

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130 MARIJKE SPIES

Dancing surely is worthy of praise,

As David by dancing God’s honor raised,
And ordered us to further in dancing God’s laudation;
Moses’ sister also danced in honor of God glorious,
And Israel often danced at an outcome victorious;
So that dancing isn’t evil follows from this argumentation.

[’tDansen in hem selven dat is seer pryselijck:

Met dansen loofde David God jolyselijck,
En ghebiedt ons met dansen Gods lof te verbreden.
Moses Suster heeft Gods lof gedanst en gesprongen.
Israel heeft haer victory dick ghedanst en gesonghen:
Dat het dansen niet quaet is, volcht uyt dese reden.]
(stanza 8)

Danaeus had refuted the validity of these examples, saying that mod-
ern Christians had developed far better forms of prayer and thanks-
giving.14 Spiegel, however, expands on them and even refers to the
dance of the heavens to prove the holiness of this form of jubilation.
When the Israelites, and even the stars dance and the Bible approves
of it, why then scold it? (stanzas 9–10)
At this point the essential benefit of dancing has been proven, for
in sixteenth-century dialectic examples, and ‘‘a fortiori’’ ‘‘biblical
examples,’’ were considered to be empiric proof. Spiegel then pro-
ceeds with a counterargument: the Bible forbids amusement with
female dancers (stanza 11). But given the principles laid down in
the beginning of his argument, what is wrong or right depends on
the dancer himself:
The greatest fiend of all forms of art
Is when the one who in practicing it isn’t smart:
That is an old saying and very true;
And that dancing is an honest exercise,
That may be cultivated by one who is wise,
Is by these arguments proven to you.

[Alle Const voorwaer gheen meerder vyandt heeft,

Als die, die van de selfde gheen verstandt heeft:
Dits een out spreeckwoort, en seker warachtich,
Dattet dansen is een eerlijcke exercitie,
Diemen wel ghebruycken can sonder malitie:
Dat blijckt aen alle dese reden eendrachtich.]
(stanza 12)

There then follows a whole series of positive arguments (stanzas 13–

19). As with the dance of the heavens, they are mostly taken from

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IN PRAISE OF DANCING 131

Lucian’s dialogue De Saltatione (On dancing). In Greece, the Tessali-

ans and Lacedemonians used to dance, as well as the priests at
Delos. Plato had given laws to it, Homer had described the dancing
of Meriones and Neoptolemus before Troy, and even Socrates had
wanted to learn it. Castor and Pollux, Orpheus and Musaeus, had all
been dancers in their times.15
Most of these instances are also given by Agrippa in is De Incertitud-
ine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium, but not all, so there can be no
doubt that Spiegel, who was a learned man, has deduced them from
Lucians’s dialogue himself. That next to Lucian he nevertheless also
consulted Agrippa’s declamation may be concluded from the fact
that he begins this series of examples with the Roman actor Roscius,
whose dancing would have inspired the public more than even Cice-
ro’s speeches. This anecdote, and the mention of the Roman ‘‘salii,’’
priests who danced in honor of Mars, are of course not found in
Lucian nor in Danaeus. As I have shown elsewhere, Agrippa’s text
was well known by Roemer Visscher, and we may safely assume that
Spiegel was acquainted with it as well.16
Most remarkable, however, is the twofold interruption by more ar-
gumentative stanzas that direct his interpretation. Dancing is joyful
when it is practiced in an honest and honorable way (stanza 14), and
it serves spiritual as well as corporal health (stanza 18). And from
stanza 20 onwards, the argumentation continues in the same vein:
dancing teaches moderation and self-control; it is a joyous pastime
that prevents boredom, drunkenness, and other forms of misbehav-
ior and has always been favored by our ancestors (stanzas 20–24)
Although Spiegel expands on them far more, these are in essence
the same points as Marnix had put forward:

And I cannot think what harm there can be in round dancing, which
testifies to simple joy in a happy soul, and a festive congratulation, when
one leads the young maidens or the honorable ladies to the dance at the
music of violins . . . Yes, I judge the dancing holy that is practiced in
this country with great joy after banquets, to prevent drinking, dicing,
gambling and the like . . . and I myself have often danced in gatherings
by way of entertainment, especially to further my health and spirit.

[Ende ick en kan oock niet bevroeden wat quaets daer soude zijn in de
Reyen, in welck getoont wert een eenvoudige vrolijckheyt van een ver-
heught gemoet, ende een Feestelijcke geluck-wenschinge, so men met
de jonge Dochters, oft eerbare Juffrouwen op de maet van de Violen om-
wandelt ofte om-loopt . . . Ja ick houde alhier de Danssen voor heyligh,
die men hier te lande houdt met groote vreught nae de maeltijden,
omme voor te komen het droncken drincken, in-swelgen, dobbelen,

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132 MARIJKE SPIES

spelen, ende tuysschen . . . ende [ick] dickmael Gedanst hebbe tot ver-
maeck van het geselschap daer ick by was, ende voornamentlijck om
mijn gesontheyt ende met eenen om mijnen geest te verquicken.]17

It is only with the refutation of a final, very weighty objection that

Spiegel returns to Danaeus. Danaeus had put emphasis on the at-
tacks by the Fathers of the Church on dancing. Saint Basil, Saint Am-
brose, Saint John Chrysostom all had linked dancing with loose
living.18 Now, at last, Spiegel can make full use of the fundamental
definition he had given at the beginning of his argument, that the
moral quality of the deed depends on the doer. In the time of the
Romans, pantomime players who danced may have threatened all
virtues, but today we can prevent such dangers, he argued (stanza
25). This refutation leads to the sort of conditional conclusion that is
characteristic for the deliberative genre the paradoxical encomium
belongs to (stanzas 26–29). If dancing by couples bears moral dan-
gers, that does not comment on round dancing. This also corre-
sponds to Marnix’s opinion:

I have found on the contrary that honest round dancing by men and
women has been in use in all times and nearly with all people of the
world.

[Anders bevinde ick, dat t’allen tijden, ende schier by alle volckeren der
werelt, eerlijcke Reyen en Danssen van Mannen en Dochters in swang
gegaen zijn.]19

The positive examples from the Old Testament given by Danaeus

are repeated: was not Israel dancing after the drowning of the Egyp-
tians, after the defeat of Goliath, and after the victories of Jephthah
and David?20 Spiegel himself adds to this the return of the prodigal
son, but nobody could possibly misunderstand his purpose to re-
buke Danaeus’s position in the first place. Plato demonstrated in his
Laws that dancing brought about moral corruption that could be
repaired.
With this conclusion the dialectic argument comes to an end. But
rhetorically, there remains the peroration.

This subject could still be further explored,

But my mouth is tired, I can not say much more,
It has been enough for those who will listen all:
Indecent dancing I will not praise,
I only have some arguments raised,
That honest dancing is surely permissible.

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IN PRAISE OF DANCING 133

[Hier sou noch wel meer te segghen vallen,

Maer mijn mont is moe, ick can niet meer kallen,
Daer is ghenoech gheseyt, diet wil verstaen,
Het onmanierich dansen wil ick niet prysen:
Maer ick heb alleen hier willen bewysen,
Datmen wel eerlijck te dans mach gaen.]
(stanza 30)

As in most of Spiegel’s literary work, his In Praise of Dancing was pub-

lished only after his death. Together with some sixty other small
poems from his hand, it was printed at the end of the first author-
ized edition of the collected poetry of his friend Roemer Visscher,
Brabbeling (Babbling 1614).21 There is no reason to believe that their
nonappearance during the author’s lifetime had anything to do with
possible Calvinist objections. Such clerical influence was unthink-
able in Holland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
where truth, even paradoxical truth could—mostly—be openly spo-
ken. But even up to the first decade of the seventeenth century it
was often not considered very well-mannered to have one’s poems
put in print. And dancing was perhaps not so important after all.
As to paradoxical encomia in general: as we have seen, Spiegel’s
lessons were a generation later taken to heart by the young Bredero.
But with the advancement of the classicist poetical ideology the en-
thusiasm for dialectical argumentation in literary texts, and espe-
cially paradoxical dialectical argumentation, gradually diminished.
Poetry increasingly came to occupy itself, at the exclusion of almost
everything else, with beautiful descriptions and the evocation of
emotions. And as the wealth and power of the reigning olicharchy
increased, even the need for argumentative social skills as such
slowed down. Now and then a paradoxical encomium was still writ-
ten, but it was experienced as a burden, not seen as a public lesson
in argumentation. It was only in the age of reason before the need
for popular argumentative education was felt again.

Notes
1. Hendrik Brugmans, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 2nd ed., rev. I. J. Brugmans,
6 vols. (Utrecht, Netherlands: Het Spectrum, 1972), 2:75–127.
2. Marijke Spies, ‘‘The Amsterdam Chamber De Eglentier and the Ideals of Er-
asmian Humanism,’’ in From Revolt to Riches: Culture and History of the Low Countries,
1500–1700. International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Theo Hermans and Rei-
nier Salverda, 109–18 (pp. 109–12) (London: Centre for Low Countries Studies,
1993); Marijke Spies, ‘‘Rhetoric and Civic Harmony in the Dutch Republic of the
Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century,’’ in Rhetorica Movet: Studies in Histori-

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134 MARIJKE SPIES

cal and Modern Rhetoric in Honour of Heinrich F. Plett, ed. Peter L. Oesterreich and
Thomas O. Sloane, 57–72 (pp. 63–65, 71). (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999).
3. Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem. Facsimile reprint of Lyon 1561 edi-
tion. Edited and introduced by August Buck (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann,
1964), 3.118, 164 b.
4. Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum, proeemium 4–5. See Cicero in Twenty-eight Volumes
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press London: Heinemann, 1960–1982), 4:
256–57; Marc. M. G. van der Poel, De ‘Declamatio’ bij de humanisten. Bijdrage tot de
studie van de functies van de rhetorica in de renaissance (Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: De
Graaf, 1987), 199–205; Spies, ‘‘Rhetoric and Civic Harmony,’’ 60–61, 65.
5. Marijke Spies, ‘‘Between Ornament and Argumentation: Developments in
16th-century Dutch Poetics,’’ in Rhetoric-Rhétoriqueurs-Rederijkers: Proceedings of the
Colloquium, Amsterdam 1993, ed. Jelle Koopmans, Mark A. Meadow, Kees Meerhoff,
and Marijke Spies, 117–22 (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1995).
6. A. T. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion and
Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland, trans. Maarten Ultee (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).
7. Desiderius Erasmus, Apophthegmatum libri octo (Antwerpen, 1564), 586, 601;
Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum
et Artium, atque Excellentia Verbi Dei, declamatio (Antwerpen, 1531), 34v-36r; [D. V.
Coornhert,] Der Meaghdekens Schole. Comedia, lines 2196–97. See Het Roerspel en de
comedies van Coornhert, ed. P. van der Meulen (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1955),
319–401 (p. 400).
8. H. P. Clive, ‘‘The Calvinists and the Question of Dancing in the 16th Cen-
tury,’’ in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance. Travaux et Documents 23 (1961),
296–308.
9. Marnixi Epistulae: De briefwisseling van Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde, ed. Aloı̈s
Gerlo and Rudolf De Smet, vol. 2 (1577–78) (Brussels: University Press, 1992), no.
81 (pp. 76–84).
10. H. Bonger, Leven en werk van D.V. Coornhert (Amsterdam: Van Oorschot,
1978), 71–72.
11. Marijke Spies, ‘‘ ‘Ick moet wonder schryven’: Het paradoxale lofdicht bij de
leden van de Eglentier,’’ in Eer is het Lof des Deuchts: Opstellen over renaissance en classic-
isme aangeboden aan dr. Fokke Veenstra, ed. H. Duits, A. J. Gelderblom, and M. B.
Smits-Veldt, 43–51 (pp. 44–45) (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1986).
12. Marijke Spies, ‘‘Hier is gheen Helikon . . .’’: Het rederijker perspectief van de zeven-
tiende-eeuwse literatuur. Inaugural oration (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1995), 8–13.
13. The letter wherein Marnix defends himself was at the time translated in
Dutch and published in Delft in 1577 under the title Brief, aengaende de kerckelijcke
tucht ende het danssen (Letter on ecclesiastical discipline and dancing, 1577; repr., Ant-
werp 1598). See Marnixi Epistulae, 2:78 and 83–84. Spiegel must have known it, and
this the more so, because some of the other arguments shared by both of them are
not to be found elsewhere. I will return to that.
14. Clive, ‘‘The Calvinists and the Question of Dancing,’’ 298–99, 302.
15. Lucian in Eight Volumes, trans. A. M. Harmon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press London: Heinemann, 1913–1967), 5: 220–45.
16. Agrippa, De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium, 34v-36r; Spies, ‘‘Rhet-
oric and Civic Harmony,’’ 69–71.
17. Cited in J. C. M. Pollmann, Ons eigen volkslied (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1935),
78–80; Marnixi Epistulae, 2: 81–83.
18. Clive, ‘‘The Calvinists and the Question of Dancing,’’ 306–7.
19. Pollmann, Ons eigen volkslied, 80; Marnixi Epistulae, 82.
20. Clive, ‘‘The Calvinists and the Question of Dancing,’’ 299.
21. Roemer Visscher, Brabbeling (Amsterdam, 1614), 211–17.

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Early Texts of Donne’s ‘‘Goodfriday, 1613.
Riding Westward’’: Manuscripts and Their
Omissions, and the Provenance of the Earliest
Translation, by Constantijn Huygens (1633)
Richard Todd

Introduction
WHAT LIGHT CAN TEXTUAL VARIANTS IN EXISTING SCRIBAL COPIES IN
English, and Constantijn Huygens’s draft holograph August 31,
1633 translation, of ‘‘Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward’’1 cast on our
knowledge of how this poem was disseminated in its early years? This
essay is an attempt to formulate such questions as usefully as possible
and to suggest some answers.
There are twenty-four existing scribal manuscript copies of the
normative forty-two-line text of this poem henceforth referred to as
GoodF.2 This paper will survey, in varying detail, all twenty-four. It will
take account of the seven seventeenth-century printed editions from
1633 through 1669. It will also appraise the draft translation into
Dutch of a scribal copy of the poem made by Constantijn Huygens
and preserved in Huygens’s own working holograph in the Konink-
lijke Bibliotheek (KB) or Royal Library, The Hague, the Nether-
lands as ms. KA XLa 1633, fol. 4r. To date, no systematic collation of
these scribal copies in English has been made, either involving all
twenty-four or, indeed, any of the seven printed editions. As a result,
although Donne’s editors from Grierson, 1912, onwards have re-
corded occasional variants, there has so far been no account of the
entirety of the seventeenth-century forms in which this poem has
survived. Nor has there been any systematic study of Huygens’s holo-
graph draft ms., either as an artifact in its own right or as having
been made from a (presumably now lost) scribal copy. No attempt
has thus yet been made to read Huygens’s translation other than as
having been made (mistakenly, as I intend to show) from the 1633
printing.

135

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136 RICHARD TODD

As a result, the poem that has come down to us as Donne’s has

been canonized from the 1633 imprint from the 1920s onward.
Grierson regarded this imprint as authoritative, emending eclectic-
ally (as future editors were likewise to do) and consulting manu-
script copy only where it seemed to diverge significantly from the
1633 imprint. While Grierson (it is true) consulted a commendably
high number of mss., and recorded a commendably high number
of variants, his apparatus is incomplete. No later editor prior to the
Donne Variorum has taken the trouble to collate or record many
more variants (except John Shawcross, although his apparatus is also
incomplete).3 There has therefore been no systematic study of the
various forms in which the poem exists, and as a result, no investiga-
tion into the various ways in which the poem was read by a variety
of recipients, both identified and anonymous, during the first half-
century of its existence.
Accordingly this essay, which may in part be read as a preparatory
exercise in the establishment of the Donne Variorum text of GoodF,
will survey the poem’s major substantive variants, including the title;
make some attempt in the present state of knowledge to contribute
to a preliminary filiation of the existing artifacts; and argue which
ms. tradition seems to have supplied Constantijn Huygens with his
copy, and consider what Huygens himself made of the confessional
stance of the poem he appears to have read. The ultimate object of
the exercise is to demonstrate that the editing process is not an end
in itself whereby an ‘‘ideal’’ lost original or revised holograph is pos-
tulated and, through a process of filiation and stemmatology recov-
ered, but to urge that that very process of filiation and stemmatology
can make genuine contributions to what Harold Love has recently
termed ‘‘the culture and commerce’’ of the entire social matrix
within which seventeenth-century texts were transmitted in both
manuscript and print.4 There is an extensive scholarship in both
Dutch and English on many of the separate issues touched on in this
paper, but the particular synthesis I offer in what follows has never
been made because no one has yet either examined all existing
scribal copies of Donne’s poem in English—or been prepared to fol-
low through the implications of the assumption that Huygens trans-
lated not from print but from manuscript.

The title
The poem’s title, as indicated, takes several forms in the scribal
tradition. These are set out in figure 1. Examination of the title’s

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 137

Figure 1
Titles of group 1, 2 and 3 mss. of GoodF. The original spelling is kept, but other
orthographical features have been normalized.

Group 1

B32: Goodf[ ]day. 1613. Riding to Sir Edward Harbert in wales

C02: Goodfriday. 1613. Ridinge towards Wales.
C08: Goodfridaie. 1613. Riding towards wales.
O20: Goodfriday. 1613. Riding towards wales.
SP1: Good friday. 1613. riding towards wales

Group 2

DT1: Good friday Made as I was Rideing westward that daye

H04: Good Friday Made as I was Rideing westward, that daie
WN1: Good Fryday Made as I was riding Westward that daie.
CT1: Good friday Made as I was rideing westward that daye.
B07: Good friday Made as I was ridinge westward that daye
SA1: Good ffryday made as I was rideing westward that day.

Group 3

B46: Good Fryday: 1613

H05: A Meditation vpon Good Friday. 1613.
C09: Goodfryday: 1613: Riding towards Wales
H06: Good fryday. 1613 Riding towards Wales

The early prints

A (1633): Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward

B (1635): Goodfriday, 1613. riding Westward.
G (1669): Goodfriday, 1613. riding Westward

forms strongly suggests that what Marriot used in producing his text
was a copytext based not solely on either a group 2 or a group 3
source, but—on the basis of what has come down to us—an eclectic
mixture of the two. The group 2 titles uniquely contain ortho-
graphic variations on the words ‘‘riding westward’’; the group 3 titles
contain the date ‘‘1613.’’ The latter (the date 1613) is also a feature
of the group 1 titles, and it is possible that they fed Marriot’s text,5

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138 RICHARD TODD

but to include the group 1 titles in any discussion offers a less eco-
nomic hypothesis for what Marriot confected: he need only have
seen a group 2 and a group 3 title to have produced his own. For
evidence emerging from other textual work being carried out under
the auspices of the Donne Variorum suggests that some while after
beginning to set his type, Marriot was approached by the owner of
H6, and incorporated certain readings of this, the O’Flahertie
manuscript, which he, Marriot, seems to have preferred:6 the date
may have been one of these readings. At any rate, examination
strengthens the argument that Huygens made his translation from
manuscript rather than print. Figure 1 effectively lists the titles as
found in the three major groups. Group 1 (consisting in this case of
O20, SP1, B32, C2 and C8)7, read along the lines of ‘‘Goodfriday.
1613. Riding towards wales’’ (this is the form found in O20; SP1, C2
and C8 offer minor variations) or ‘‘Good Friday. 1613. Riding to Sr
Edward Harbert in Wales’’ (B32). The group 3 readings are ‘‘Good
Fryday: 1613’’ (B46), ‘‘A Meditation vpon Good Friday. / 1613’’
(H5), or the C9-H6 pair which substantively read (here I follow C9)
‘‘Goodfryday: 1613: Riding towards Wales.’’ Other mss. that include
the 1613 date are H3 and H8 and are ‘‘traditionally associated with
Group 3.’’ The title is omitted in C1 and B11.
It is on the basis of this evidence that it seems most likely that Mar-
riot coined an eclectic title, including the date, from a mixture of
group 2 and group 3 material. HH1 and H7 simply entitle the poem
‘‘Good Friday,’’ and B13, the Skipwith ms., dated by Beal between
1620 and 1650, is unique not simply in attributing the poem to
Donne but in incorporating that attribution in the form of the title,
as ‘‘I: Dun̄’’.
This rapid survey accounts for all the scribal copies that either in-
clude the date 1613, or omit the title altogether, or depart too radi-
cally from Marriot (omitting the words ‘‘riding westward’’) to be
considered as a source for his version of the title: that is, sixteen mss.
in total. Two further mss., one discovered in 1974 and both pre-
sented that year in a series of items in the Times Literary Supplement,
not only omit the date but provide what is, when read against Mar-
riot, a surplus of information in their subtitle.8 The single sheet PT2
reads ‘‘Meditation on a good Friday ridinge from London into ye
west Countrey,’’ and P2 (also on a single sheet), possibly an imper-
fect copy of PT2—Beal follows those who argue that it is in the same
scribal hand, that of Sir Nathaniel Rich (?1585–1636)—entitles the
poem ‘‘Meditation vpon [a] Good Friday, ryding from London
towards Exceter, westward.’’ The use in these two mss. of the word

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 139

‘‘meditation’’ is unique to them and to H5, from which, since H5 is

most likely the earlier, the latter may indirectly derive: in other
words, PT2 and P2 would by these criteria (also) be ‘‘associated with
Group 3.’’
Let us now recall the remaining six mss., which are assigned to
group 2. They are WN1, CT1, B7, SA1, and DT1 and its copy H4.
They are distinguished from the other eighteen mss. not simply by
the absence of the date 1613, but by the remarkable similarity in
wording: all, with minor nonsubstantive variations in orthography
or spelling, read (spelling modernized): ‘‘Good Friday[,] made as I
was riding westward that day.’’ Several observations may be made
here. First, this form of the title is apparently restricted exclusively
to the group 2 tradition. Second, because the early, at times authori-
tative, and fundamentally maverick, WN1 (which sometimes evinces
group 1 copy) follows this form of the title, it may be considered as
a group 2 artifact for the purposes of this poem. Third, on the evi-
dence available, it is clear that group 2 copy on its own in no way
provided Marriot (or indeed any of the other six seventeenth-
century imprints) for copy as far as at the very least the title is con-
cerned—although Marriot, while ignoring or passing over the lack
of date, may have been attracted by the wording ‘‘riding westward’’
(spelling modernized) confecting his title (as we have suggested)
from a group 1 or group 3 ms. that did contain the date. And fourth,
the translation of Constantijn Huygens, reading as it does in his
holograph draft dated August 31, 1633 (NS) Goede Vrijdagh Rijdende
Westwaert, and in its title at least showing no signs of cancellation,
must surely derive from a lost group 2 exemplar, a group that, as I
have just argued, cannot have been used, or at least used exclusively,
by Marriot in 1633. For Huygens was obsessive about recording and
dating his work to an extent, perhaps, unequalled by any other poet
in early modern Europe, and so we may be certain that had the title
in front of him contained a date, Huygens would decidedly have in-
corporated it.9
Indeed, it will be seen in what follows that Huygens’s readings
elsewhere support group 2 and contra-indicate influence from any
printed edition. Although not all variants adopted by Huygens are
equally relevant to the present paper, my point thus far is to demon-
strate from the outset that in establishing the provenance of the
Huygens draft, and assessing the changes he made to it, we are in
fact obliged to take the entire ms. tradition of scribal copy in English
into account.

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140 RICHARD TODD

Scribes

It is at this point that we may usefully distinguish between what we

may term ‘‘amateur’’ scribes, such as the translator Huygens, or (if
it be he) Sir Nathaniel Rich (see above), and ‘‘professional’’ scribes.
Amateur scribes will be collectors and/or owners of their ms. copy;
we may well know their identity; and they will not regard their copy
as sacrosanct: if they make changes, these will be conscious and de-
liberate. Professional scribes will be copying as an assignment, and
possibly to deadline; we will likely not know their identity (a fine
example is the unidentifiable ‘‘Feathery,’’ about whom Beal 1998
has written at length); if they depart from their copy this will be evi-
dent only in nonsubstantive matters of orthography or purely biblio-
graphical errors such as eyeskip.
In this last connection, it is worth bearing the distinction between
amateur and professional in mind, since once the title of GoodF has
been considered, the first feature of any examination of a raw colla-
tion of the various mss. to strike the textual scholar is the absence of
certain lines in certain copies (see figure 2), absences that clearly
assist the process of filiation and the deduction of a stemma. But in

Figure 2
Omitted lines in Group 1:

C02: 1 = = = = 21 [om 22===25] 26 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 42

C08: 1 = = = = 21 [om 22===25] 26== 30 [om 31==33] 34 = = = = = 42

O20: 1 = = = = = 23 [om 24=25] 26 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 42

SP1: 1 = = = = = 23 [om 24=25] 26 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 42

Omitted lines in PT2 and PO2:

PT2: 1 = = = = = = 16 [om 17=18] 19 = = = = = = = = = = = = = =42
PO2: 1 = = = = = = 16 [om17=====20] 21 = = = = = = = = = = = 42

Omitted lines in other extant mss.:

B13: 1 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =35 [om 36==38] 39 = = =42

C01: 1-2 [om 3 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =42]

H03: 1 = = = = = = = = = =23 [om 24=25]26 = = = = = = = = = = =42

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 141

reviewing these omissions, we need to keep in mind the distinction

between amateur and professional scribes. We may be able to de-
duce that a given scribe altered on his own authority: we are very
likely dealing, in such cases, with an amateur owner or collector. We
may, on the other hand, find alterations or omissions to be traceable
through mss. that can be shown to be direct descendants of each
other or to derive from a common exemplar: in all likelihood we will
be dealing here with a professional scribe, or a line of transmission
involving such a scribe, whose task is to copy exactly what is in front
of him.
Against this background, I shall in passing note which variants are
supported by Huygens’s draft and which are excluded, and I shall
examine those changes Huygens himself made, changes unsup-
ported by any existing ms. exemplar in English, but clearly made
after he had completed his draft reading, a reading that is supported
by the scribal tradition in English. In this way, we may postulate how
Huygens himself seems to have read GoodF, the only religious poem
of Donne’s out of the 19 he translated in total in August 1630 and
during August through October 1633.

Omissions
The normative text of GoodF consists of a ten-syllable iambic pen-
tameter rhyming couplet ‘‘default’’ structure amounting to forty-two
lines. Huygens’s rendering in forty-four lines appears to be deliber-
ate, and to be based on a scribal version from which no lines were
omitted—that is, examination of Huygens’s holograph draft does
not support any evidence to suggest that he used a version that omit-
ted any of these forty-two lines, nor that he suppressed any himself.
One ms. fragment, C1, which is as we have seen untitled, consists
only of the poem’s first two lines and will be of no further concern
here. Otherwise the major omissions are as follows. These can be
divided under two headings.
There is, first, a cluster of omissions in the group 1 stemmatologi-
cal tradition that is of considerable help in filiating the various mem-
bers of this group, as well as substantiating the hypothesis that in
working to produce an eclectic text, Marriot made no use of this
group. O20 and SP1 omit lines 24–25. C2 and C8 also omit these
lines, and omit the two preceding lines (22 and 23) as well. (C8 fur-
ther omits lines 31–32, as we shall see.) These omissions are all the
more interesting because it has elsewhere been shown that C8 is the
work of a highly accurate and professional scribe. Together with C2,

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142 RICHARD TODD

Figure 3 (stemma based on ElBrac)

δ

B32 λ O20

C2 C8 SP1

C8 shares a common progenitor, so that any eyeskip—the most plau-

sible bibliographical explanation for these omissions—is most un-
likely to have originated with these artifacts. It presumably did so
with their progenitor, yet both C2 and C8 are generally considered
to derive at one remove from B32, which contains no omissions (see
figure 3). Whatever copy C2 and C8 used must therefore have de-
rived from a copy that also led indirectly to O20 and SP1 (see figure
4). This point will be taken up again later in this paper.
What was the nature of the eyeskip that provoked the omissions
at 22–23 and 24–25? Whatever scribal copy was used by O20 and SP1
seems to have moved from the normative 23, which O20 and SP1
read almost identically as ‘‘Cold I behold that Endles Height [SP1:
behould yt endless height], wch is,’’ omitting 24–25, and picking up
again at 26: ‘‘The Seate of all our Soules, if not of hys [SP1: his].’’
Whatever scribal copy was used by C2 and C8 further omits 22–23,
moving from ‘‘Cold I behould those hands, wch span the Poles’’ to

Figure 4 (stemma based on GoodF )

δ

B32 δ1

O20

C2 C8 SP1

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 143

26: ‘‘The seate of all our Soules, Yf [C8: if] not of hys, [C8: his.].’’
The deviant spelling of ‘‘Cold’’ (C2 and C8)/ ‘‘Colde’’ (O20 and
SP1) for ‘‘Could’’ (along with the arguable presence of a page-break
in their common progenitor10) has assisted in the process: the word
provides the first at line 21 in all four mss. and that of 23 (in the
form ‘‘Cold’’) in O20 and SP1. In other words, it seems on biblio-
graphical grounds that both the C2 and C8 scribes worked from a
copy that had picked up the form ‘‘Cold’’ from the common pro-
genitor of O20 (which itself fed SP1) and imported it into the begin-
ning of normative line 23 instead of line 21.
As already indicated, there is a further omission in C8, not shared
by any of the other three mss. in the group 1 traditions represented
by O20-SP1 and C2-C8. This suggests a very rare independent in-
stance of eyeskip on C8’s part: C2 and C8 follow a common progeni-
tor, both of which omit lines 22 through 25, and C8 further omits
31 through 33 (see figure 1). Line 31 contains a word (here modern-
ized for convenience’ sake as ‘‘partner’’ or ‘‘pattern’’ according to
the ms. family in question) that offers the most significant substan-
tial variant in the poem.
Moving to the second area of omission, we find that lines 17
through 18 are omitted by PT2, and lines 17 though 20 by P2. Again,
on bibliographical grounds, and assuming that these two artifacts
are indeed in the same hand, this suggests scribal carelessness, espe-
cially as P2 appears to have been memorized from PT2, itself (as we
shall see) a memorized text.11 In the title, a caret [ˆ] precedes the
scribal insertion of the indefinite article; at line 2 an ‘‘e’’ has been
clearly added before the elision so that the final reading is ‘‘The’In-
telligence’’; and lines 9 and 10 have clearly been emended (‘‘this
day’’ has been removed from line 9 and inserted as the opening foot
of line 10; ‘‘goe vnto’’ has been changed to ‘‘trauayle vnto’’ at line
9, and the majuscule ‘‘W’’ that had opened line 10 has been altered
to minuscule in order to accommodate the change). Yet PT2, the
supposed exemplar, is not without evidence of memorial error ei-
ther: at line 9, ‘‘that’’ has been added; at line 10 the first two letters
of ‘‘day’’ have been written over; and at line 11 ‘‘sitt’’ has been can-
celed in favor of ‘‘sett’’ (this last either a scribal correction or—less
likely—one in a later hand). Most strikingly, PT2 originally omitted
lines 5 and 6 altogether, inserting them (presumably either on com-
pletion or during the writing) above line 4 on one line, punctuated
clearly with a colon so as to make clear it is a couplet, but with no
caret to indicate that the lines are inserted. If it was Sir Nathaniel
Rich who copied P2 and PT2, one is bound to conclude that, as
scribe or indeed owner of these artifacts, he was considerably more

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144 RICHARD TODD

cavalier in his practice than a professional scribe might have been.12

These remarks are intended to give some indication of the nature
of the evidence that would be needed to press the case that PT2 (it-
self as has been suggested above a memorial reconstruction, as the
treatment of lines 5–6 suggests) has been memorially reconstructed
to produce P2.
Are we to make anything more of the omission of lines 17–18,
shared by P2 and PT2? At line 17 the normative Donne text as ren-
dered by Marriot in 1633 A reads:

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;

What a death were it then to see God dye?

It is possible that the omission of 17–18 in PT2 and of 17–20 in P2

may reflect more than simply a bibliographical problem such as
carelessness or (specifically) eyeskip—even though these two arti-
facts reveal more scribal carelessness than most other scribal ver-
sions of this poem that have survived. It is possible that the lost
exemplar from which they derive was copied by a scribe who was
genuinely troubled by the implications of seeing God’s face and
dying, and by the manner in which the normative argument (which
we may assume was Donne’s own) then takes this concept one dra-
matic step further, asking, with Marriot’s 1633 A text: ‘‘What a death
were it then to see God dye?’’

Substantive verbal variants

The substantive verbal variants in the twenty-three mss. under

consideration here (excepting the two-line fragment C1) are as fol-
lows. To simplify matters, I here explictly omit inversions of word
order—such as those at lines 5 and 11, as well as one or two instances
where a ‘‘to’’/‘‘towards’’ variant affects or may affect the stress pat-
tern of the line in question, or where the variant involves a singular
or plural form, since these have no bearing on the argument of this
paper.15 This exercise leaves us with two variants, and a third which
is a borderline case in the sense that it is of clear interest in filiating
within one group. First, the borderline case. At line 32, it is possible
to distinguish all but one of the four group 3 mss. These read ‘‘the
sacrifice’’ for ‘‘that Sacrifice’’ (Marriot’s 1633 reading): uniquely
among this group, H5 also reads ‘‘that,’’ manifestly unaltered.
Second, line 22 presents an editor of this poem with the variant
of the most substantial interest from the purely bibliographical

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 145

point of view. Establishing what Donne’s original reading was proves

to be an almost insoluble conundrum. Unlike the group 1 mss.
which, where the line is present, all read ‘‘tune,’’ as do all three
group 3 mss except H5, all the group 2 mss. read ‘‘turn’’ (for Marri-
ot’s ‘‘tune’’); WN1 reads ‘‘turne’’ and on these grounds as well as
those of its title must be assigned to group 2 for this poem; HH1 has
inserted a superscript ‘‘r’’ into ‘‘tune,’’ so someone clearly read it
against a group 2 artifact. Each reading makes sense: the principle
difficilior lectio potior can be used to support either reading.
‘‘[T]urne’’ may ostensibly seem the more difficult reading, but in
maintaining this, one is obliged on the basis of the surviving evi-
dence to argue that all other scribal artifacts trivialize (or do they,
rather, sophisticate?) to ‘‘tune’’: this includes all the scribes in
groups 1 and 3. It is unlikely that this reading will ever be established
to universal satisfaction.14
Yet let us, for a moment, postulate (defensibly) that DT1 comes
as close to Donne’s holograph as any surviving exemplar. The cou-
plet of which the line in question is the second reads:

Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,

And turne all Spheres att once pierced with those holes[?]

It is easy to see how—not just paleographically through some kind

of minim error or other form of confusabilia in secretary hand, but
also in terms of sense—‘‘turne’’ could be read as ‘‘tune.’’ The scribe
expects a collocation such as ‘‘the tuning of the spheres,’’ and is
duly wrong-footed: yet the wrong-footing is subtle and produces an
interesting reading. This is not the place to argue that the reading
is more interesting. Yet to ‘‘turn’’ the spheres is necessarily to cause
them to produce music, since music is what they produce when they
move. I dwell on this variant briefly because it seems evident that
Huygens read from a group 2 ms. here too, and not just in the title
of his translation. What he read forms the first line (his line 25) of a
couplet, from which I quote the first line. It is absolutely unaltered
in his draft:

En geuen met een draeij elck hemel-rond sijn toon?

The word draeij (a twist or a turn, cf. Mod. Du. draaien, to turn) indi-
cates incontrovertibly that what Huygens read was ‘‘turn’’ or
‘‘turne.’’ Netherlandicists have, however, been puzzled by the final
word toon, which they have read as supporting the idea that perhaps
after all Huygens was reading against ‘‘tune.’’ But such readers are

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146 RICHARD TODD

misled by the similarity between ‘‘tune’’ and toon; the latter word is
cognate not with English ‘‘tune,’’ but with ‘‘tone.’’ I believe that what
happened in this line is that Huygens read ‘‘turn(e)’’, found it to be
unexpected but perfectly susceptible to sense, and so translated it as
such nevertheless. Then instead of altering it, as one or more En-
glish-speaking scribes had evidently done or were to do, Huygens im-
ported into his translation the thought behind the word, that if one sets the
spheres in motion, they will inevitably sound a musical tone or toon.
In this way it is possible to regard Huygens’s rendering of this line
as a brilliant piece of learned and succinct improvisation.
This argument is a necessary digression, since I am using it to sup-
port the idea that Huygens’s copytext can be proved, bibliographi-
cally, to derive from group 2 copy (and incidentally, therefore, not
from print). If we follow this line of argument, we will be able to see
that whatever Huygens does change, such changes should be dis-
cussed against what he actually read. He cannot have read a group 1
or a group 3 version, and he cannot have read the 1633 imprint.
We come, third, to group 1’s most substantive variant, which as we
have already seen is the line 31 ‘‘partner’’/‘‘pattern’’ reading in
O20-SP1, and C2[-C8, where the line is omitted]. We shall see in a
moment that in his group 2-based translation Huygens indepen-
dently opted for a fascinating solution to the problem he seems to
have been confronted with in reading ‘‘partner.’’ Paleographically
speaking, to emend (not trivialize) ‘‘partner’’ to ‘‘pattern’’ (spelling
modernized) cannot, on the evidence available, be seen as a mis-
reading in the bibliographical sense, if ‘‘partner’’ were misread as
‘‘pattern’’ and spelled ‘‘patterne’’ by the scribe in question. All
other mss. read ‘‘partner’’ and only WN1, P2 and PT2 capitalize the
word.
However, B32 (fascinatingly) retains ‘‘partner.’’ This reading
obliges us to return to the abovementioned theory of the line of
transmission leading from B32 to C2 and C8, and to O20 leading to
SP1 (see figure 3). The B32 reading shows that the stemma pro-
duced for ElBrac (Stringer, et al. 2000: 46) does not hold for GoodF,
for it is now clear that there must have been an intermediate stage
␦1, feeding O20 and SP1, between the postulated group 1 exemplar
␦ and the artifact ␭ that fed C2 and C8 (see figures 3 and 4).
Stemmata of the kind the Donne Variorum constructs cannot, by
their nature, be ‘‘wrong.’’ The stemma produced for ElBrac is the
product of an immense amount of thought and a scrupulous mar-
shaling of evidence. It is not necessarily to be expected that the
group 1 ur-stemma for these early poems will be absolutely identical
to that of a relatively late poem such as GoodF. Nor, indeed, is it to

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 147

be supposed that each kind or sequence of Donne poem will yield

exactly the same stemma. A scribal miscellany, particularly an exten-
sive one, need not always derive from exactly the same progenitor
in the case of every poem, particularly if the poems are generically
different from each other. What is suggested here is that on the basis
of the knowledge we have, it is possible to deduce that for the Elegies,
B32 descended from a progenitor that also supplied (a) the copy
from which O20 derived (and that SP1 derived from O20), and (b)
the lost copy from which C2 and C8 each derived. The most eco-
nomic explanation is the most preferable one. This particular model
cannot be applied to GoodF. The bibliographical evidence shows in-
controvertibly that there must have been an intermediate stage be-
tween the progenitor of B32 and (a) the copy from which O20
derived (and that SP1 derived from O20), and (b) the lost copy
from which C2 and C8 each derived.15

Huygens’s alterations

On the evidence of a close examination of his draft holograph,

which shows signs of having been composed in unusual haste, Huy-
gens made alterations in exactly half of the forty-four lines to which
he expanded the normative forty-two lines of what he had in front
of him. Some of these corrections are of a zofort nature; one remains
as an open variant (Huygens’s practice was to underline a word he
wished to return to, and occasionally, as at his line 16 behouden, the
word remains underlined but unrevised). Others manifest minor fe-
licitous improvements. There are perhaps half-a-dozen lines at
which Huygens has labored, making at least three quite substantial
attempts in each case, to find a formulation that satisfies him.
Perhaps the most remarkable alteration in Huygens’s draft holo-
graph is to be found not in these heavily altered and scored-through
lines but at his line 33, which originally read: Hoe ’t met de Moeder
stond, die deel hadd in dit doen. We may render this as ‘‘[did I dare
observe and see] / How his Mother fared, who was implicated in
these actions.’’ With die deel hadd in dit doen, Huygens is clearly fol-
lowing a ‘‘partner’’ exemplar: it is just not possible to see these lines
as translating ‘‘pattern,’’ and from the bibliographical point of view
this is what we would expect, since the latter is a reading confined
exclusively to group 1. But Huygens did not leave his line as it stood:
he canceled the words ’t met de Moeder stond and altered them to Sij
te moede was, so that the sense of the line now becomes ‘‘[did I dare

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148 RICHARD TODD

observe and see] / How She felt, who was implicated in these ac-
tions.’’
Three features strike one as of interest here. First, Huygens re-
moves the word Moeder (‘‘Mother’’), which he had expressly capital-
ized, replacing it (second) with Sij (‘‘She’’), the pronoun also
capitalized. The Virgin Mary is thus ostensibly excised from the
poem in the sense that, having been named explicitly, she is now
referred to only pronominally and implicitly, even though she is still
revered enough to deserve a capital letter in the pronominal form.
But third, and strangest of all, despite being expunged by name, the
Virgin Mary leaves a punning textual trace in Huygens’s line: the
word moede is cognate with English ‘‘mood’’ and its equivalent in its
modern Dutch syntactical forms would relate to ‘‘brave’’ or ‘‘brav-
ery.’’ The idiom Sij te moede was seems best rendered by ‘‘She felt’’
(i.e., ‘‘perceived’’ or ‘‘sensed’’). It is as though Huygens is troubled
by Donne’s idea of explicitly bringing the Virgin Mary into partner-
ship with God as Christ on the Cross, an idea acceptable in the
teaching of both the Roman church of Donne’s upbringing and the
English church he had become a part of by 1613. Instead Huygens
constructs a meditative parallel whereby the speaker’s astonishment
at his own audacity in contemplating these actions reflects the
equally human state of mind of the Virgin as she is obliged to witness
those very same actions. In a quite extraordinarily deft sleight of
hand, then, the Virgin, along with all mankind, is redeemed, and
the potential Mariolatry of the scene has been toned down to a med-
itative phrase in which the Catholic teaching of Christ’s mother hav-
ing being immaculately conceived is, according to orthodox
Calvinist doctrine, challenged.16

Conclusion
As the Donne variorum project continues to show, previous edito-
rial practice concerning Donne’s text has been marred by two major
shortcomings. The first is the assumption, honorably but mistakenly
put forward by Grierson in 1912, and unhesitatingly accepted by
subsequent editors, that Marriot’s 1633 text is not just the editio
princeps but in effect the editio definitiva against which the readings
in all other texts or artifacts, whether ms. or later prints, should be
judged. The second, even though Grierson himself only knew of a
fraction of the manuscript material now known to exist, and collated
what he knew more thoroughly than any editor until Shawcross in
1967, is that no full collation (even of a poem such as GoodF that

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 149

exists in relatively few mss. versions) has yet been made, or made
publicly available. (Although the present paper is the first to claim
to be based on a full collation of GoodF, it does not, of course, claim
to offer the definitive variorum text.)
What has been presented in this paper leads to four conclusions.
First, a group 2 artifact (probably, as it turns out, DT1) will prove to
be the most admissible copytext of the lost original holograph of
Donne’s ‘‘Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward.’’ Editing this copytext
will involve a painful choice between the readings ‘‘turne’’ and
‘‘tune’’ at line 22. Second, the group 1 stemma for this poem is
more complicated than can be illustrated on the basis of the Elegies.17
Third, Huygens used a (now presumably lost) group 2 artifact for
his translation of this poem, and not a printed source. And fourth,
although my discussion of the English scribal tradition has restricted
itself to overwhelmingly to bibliographical matters, there is some evi-
dence that Huygens, at least, was troubled by aspects of the poem’s
confessional position, and felt that he could offer creatively ambiva-
lent and indeed elegant solutions to what troubled him. In the end,
however, it is of less importance to attempt to ‘‘label’’ confessional
positions. Rather, this paper will have served its purpose if it has suc-
ceeded in indicating that, only with as full attention as we are pre-
pared to give to the bibliographical evidence available, can we base
any interpretative judgment on the poem that is worth serious con-
sideration.

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Appendix

LIST OF SIGLA REFERRED TO IN THE ABOVE PAPER. FILIATIONS INDICATED

in the text above have dictated the order in which group 1, 2, and 3
mss. are listed here; others (‘‘miscellaneous’’) are listed in alphabet-
ical order according to their Donne Variorum sigla. Beal sigla refer
to individual artifacts even when these exist within collections to
which Beal gives the combined siglum ‘‘⌬’’: for this reason Beal ‘‘⌬’’
sigla have been omitted here.

Donne
Variorum Traditional Beal Shelfmark/
siglum siglum1 siglum call number Manuscript name

Group 1:

O20 D DnJ 1408 Eng. poet. e. 99 Dowden

SP1 SP DnJ 1412 49.B.43 St. Paul’s
B32 H49 DnJ 1409 Harley 4955 Newcastle
C2 C57 DnJ 1410 Add. 5778(c) Cambridge Balam
C8 Lec DnJ 1411 Add. 8467 Leconfield

Group 2:

WN1 DC DnJ 1415 Dolau Cothi 6748 Dolau Cothi

CT1 TCC DnJ 1416 R.3.12 Puckering
B7 A18 DnJ 1413 Add. 18647 Denbigh
SA1 Grey DnJ 1429 7 a 29 (formerly 2 a 11) Grey
DT1 TCD DnJ 1417 877 Dublin (I)
H4 N DnJ 1414 Eng. 966.3 Norton

Group 3:

B46 S96 DnJ 1418 Stowe 961 Stowe I

H5 Dob DnJ 1419 Eng. 966.4 Dobell

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 151

B6 O‘F DnJ 1420 Eng. 966.5 O‘Flahertie

C9 Lut DnJ 1421 Add. 8468 Luttrell

Miscellaneous:

B11 A23 DnJ 1426 Add. 23229 Conway

B13 A25 DnJ 1422 Add. 25707 Skipwith
C1 C DnJ 1427 Add. 29 Edward Smyth
H3 Cy DnJ 1423 Eng. 966.1 Carnaby
H7 S DnJ 1424 Eng. 966.6 Stephens
H8 Hd DnJ 1428 Eng. 966.7 Utterson
HH1 B DnJ 1425 EL 6893 Bridgewater
P2 none DnJ 1430 none none
PT2 none DnJ 1431 none none
1
As used by Grierson and subsequent editors prior to the Donne Variorum.

The initial letter or letters of the Donne Variorum sigla identify the
location: thus B is the British Library; C the Cambridge University
Library; CT the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge; DT the Li-
brary of Trinity College, Dublin; H the Harvard University Library;
HH the Henry E. Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA; O the Bod-
leian Library, Oxford; P indicates private ownership; PT the
Princeton University Library’s Robert H. Taylor Collection; SA the
South African Public Library, Capetown; SP the Library of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, London; and WN the National Library of Wales.

Notes
This paper is an acknowledgment of Dominic Baker-Smith’s contribution to
Donne scholarship and of his long-time residence in the Netherlands. Its particular
challenge to humanism lies in the reassessment it offers of the tradition of editing
Donne on the basis of print rather than manuscript.
1. This wording of the poem’s title may not be Donne’s (see what follows). It is
given here in the form in which it appears in Grierson’s 1912 edition of Donne,
which follows the Marriot edition of 1633 (Donne Variorum, siglum A). See The
Poems of John Donne, ed. H. J. C. Grierson, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1912)
and Poems, By J.D. With Elegies on the authors death (London: [J]ohn Marriot, 1633.
Facsimile reprint, Menston, UK: Scolar Press, 1970). This, in turn, is the form in
which the title is given (with minor variations in spacing) in all seventeenth-century
printed editions down to 1669 (DV siglum G), and it is this form in which the poem
has been canonized. Gary Stringer read an earlier version of this paper and made

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152 RICHARD TODD

many useful comments: a later version was critiqued equally helpfully by Stringer
along with Ernest W. Sullivan II and Dennis Flynn at a meeting at the University of
Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, in their capacity as editors of the ongoing Donne
Variorum project (see the Web site ⬍[Link] I am grate-
ful to the humanities section of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
(NWO) for a travel and subsistence grant. A shorter version of this paper, omitting
the Huygens material, appeared in the John Donne Journal. For assistance in decipher-
ing the Huygens manuscript, I am indebted to Ad Leerintveld (KB, The Hague) and
Nanne Streekstra of the University of Groningen.
2. These copies are listed in Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. I (1450–
1625, pt. I: Andrewes-Donne), compiled by Peter Beal (London: Mansell / New York:
R. R. Bowker 1980). I follow the practice adopted in The Variorum Edition of the Poetry
of John Donne, general editor Gary Stringer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1995–).
3. The Complete Poems of John Donne, ed. John Shawcross (Garden City, NY: An-
chor Books, 1967).
4. In addition to Harold Love, The Culture and Commerce of Texts: Scribal Publica-
tion in Seventeenth-Century England, with a foreword by David D. Hall (Amherst: Uni-
versity of Massachussetts Press, 1993), the major works in this field are Arthur F.
Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1995); H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts,
1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); and Peter Beal, In Praise of Scribes:
Manuscripts and their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England, The Lyell Lectures, Ox-
ford 1995–96 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
5. Although the presence of ‘‘1613’’ in the group 1 headings may have corrobo-
rated the 1635 imprint’s inclusion of that feature in the title.
6. Gary Stringer, private communication.
7. For DV ms. sigla, see appendix 1 below. Nonsubstantive orthographical vari-
ants other than superscriptions are silently omitted unless to do so would be to
overlook a variant that might be regarded as substantive.
8. See Beal, Index of English Literary Manuscripts, DnJ 1430 and 1431. See also
R. S. Thomson and David McKitterick announced the discovery of P2, at first mis-
takenly believing it to be holograph. See ‘‘A Donne Discovery: John Donne’s Kim-
bolton Papers,’’ TLS, August 16 (1974), 869–73; Nicolas Barker reassessed PT2 in
‘‘ ‘Goodfriday 1613’: by whose hand?’’, TLS September 20, 1974, 996–97. Barker
argued that it and P2 were in the same hand and that that hand was not Donne’s.
Alton and Croft identified the hand as Rich’s, an attribution that has not, to my
knowledge, been contested since Beal. See R. E. Alton and P. J. Croft, ‘‘John
Donne,’’ letter to the TLS, September 27, 1974.
9. See also A. M. Th. Leerintveld, ‘‘Leven in mijn dicht: Historisch-kritische uit-
gave van Constantijn Huygens’’ Nederlandse gedichten (1614–1625),’’ (PhD diss.,
University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, 1997).
10. I owe this plausible suggestion to Gary Stringer.
11. This conclusion was reached in discussion with Stringer, Sullivan, and Flynn
(see note 1).
12. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 103–9.
13. They will, however, be of importance in determining the Donne Variorum
copytext of this poem. In this note I list only readings that are unique or nonfiliable
(with the exception of one or two shared only by P2 and PT2); normative readings
are as in Marriot’s 1633 imprint for convenience’ sake. At line 2, H8 reads ‘‘rules’’
(for ‘‘moves’’); at line 5, PT2 uniquely reads ‘‘hurled’’ and P2 ‘‘whyrled’’ (for ‘‘hur-

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EARLY TEXTS OF DONNE’S ‘‘GOODFRIDAY, 1613. RIDING WESTWARD’’ 153

ried’’); at line 6, H5 uniquely reads ‘‘course’’ (for ‘‘forme’’); at line 13, P2 reads
‘‘this day’’ and SP1 ‘‘the Cross’’ (for ‘‘this Crosse’’); in the same line, WN1 reads,
distinctly but incomprehensibly, an uncorrected ‘‘an’’ (for ‘‘on’’); at line 15, the
reading ‘‘am’’ (for ‘‘dare’’) is found only in SP1, PT2, and P2, whereas C9 has
‘‘did’’ for ‘‘do’’ (H5 corrects ‘‘did’’ to ‘‘doe’’); at line 21, B11 reads ‘‘from’’ (for
‘‘span’’); at line 25, H5 corrects ‘‘beneath’’ to ‘‘below’’ (this is unlikely to be a post-
imprint correction, since it is made in the scribal hand as though it has been read
beside a normative reading: both words are enclosed, within the line itself, within
square brackets); at line 29, B7 reads ‘‘those’’ (for ‘‘these’’); at line 30, B13 reads
‘‘wretched’’ (for ‘‘miserable,’’ a reading to be changed in all six seventeenth-cen-
tury imprints from 1635 through 1669 to ‘‘distressed’’); in the same line SA1 reads
‘‘an’’ (for ‘‘mine’’); at line 33, P2 and PT2 omit initial ‘‘Though’’ and correct the
meter by the insertion of ‘‘thus’’ between ‘‘as I’’; at line 35, P2 and PT2 omit ‘‘For’’
and correct the meter with an extra syllable (‘‘lookest’’); at line 36, B46 reads ‘‘on’’
(for ‘‘upon’’); at line 40, P2 and PT2 both read initial ‘‘Scoure’’ (for ‘‘Burne’’); and
at line 41, P2 and PT2 both read initial ‘‘Renew’’ (for ‘‘Restore’’).
14. Ernest W. Sullivan II points out to me that the Donne Variorum copytext of
Mark and BoulNar is based on group 2 copy. See The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of
John Donne, vol. 6. The Anniversaries and The Epicedes and Obsequies, Gary Stringer,
gen. ed., et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 112–59. Similarly,
ElAut, ElProg, and ElExpost in The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, vol. 2.
The Elegies, Gary Stringer, gen. ed., et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2000), are based on group 2 copy. If, as seems certain, group 2 copy (probably
DT1) forms the Donne Variorum copytext of GoodF, the bibliographical choice will
be between accepting ‘‘turne’’ or emending to ‘‘tune.’’ If the emendation is ef-
fected, it will be as a result of a decision not lightly taken: it cannot be stressed often
enough that Donne Variorum textual policy is not eclectic.
15. As it happens, this revised stemma endorses that postulated for group 1 by
Helen Gardner although the reasoning in this paper is fundamentally different
from hers. See John Donne: The Divine Poems, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1952), lxii.
16. I am grateful to my Amsterdam colleague Theo Bögels for reading these
lines of Huygens with me and making me make better sense of them than I thought
I could.
17. I am deeply indebted to Gary Stringer for pointing out the significance of
what my examination of the collation of these manuscripts revealed.

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Sidney’s Critique of Humanism
in the New Arcadia
Donald Stump

THE STORY OF SIDNEY’S LONG AND UNHAPPY WAIT FOR A ROYAL PREFER-
ment in the years 1577–85 is well known. Less fully studied are the
effects of the wait in shaping his mature views of the humanist proj-
ect that had prepared him to serve his Queen as a soldier, a courtier,
a royal advisor, and a diplomatic envoy. Evidence from the two ver-
sions of Arcadia suggests that the effects were severe—that he had,
in fact, lost faith in the system of education that had in so many ways
defined his life until his return from his embassy to the court of Em-
peror Rudolph in 1577.
It is often asserted that Sidney was himself a humanist, or at least
that his views were deeply informed by humanism, and there is
much to be said for this view so long as one concentrates on his early
years or on specialized matters such as his poetic theory.1 Having
grown up with the example before him of his father, the governor
of Wales and lord deputy of Ireland, and of his uncles, the powerful
Earls of Leicester and Warwick, he was bred to public service. His
father was educated at Oxford in the days of the noted humanists
Sir John Cheke and Roger Ascham and founded grammar schools
during his tenure in Ireland. Philip studied the classics at Shrews-
bury and Oxford and adopted as his mentor and close friend the
French humanist Hubert Languet. In letters advising his brother
Robert and Edward Denny on their education, he concentrates on
Greek and Roman classics, virtually excluding Christian texts other
than the Bible.2 At pains to recommend the proper way to gain
‘‘worldly wisdom’’ through reading and travel,3 he stresses the im-
portance of history and the liberal arts, with special emphasis on
rhetoric, arithmetic, and geometry and considerable attention to
physical training and the practice of martial arts.4 Preeminent in his
recommendations to both men is the study of Greek moral and po-
litical philosophy and the application of its conclusions to public af-
fairs. As Sidney reminds his brother Robert, ‘‘your purpose is, being

154

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 155

a gentleman born, to furnish yourself with the knowledge of such

things as may be serviceable to your country,’’5 and his notion of
what is ‘‘serviceable’’ is grounded in the principles of Aristotle’s Eth-
ics and Politics.6 Humanism, in short, shaped both his aims and his
most deeply held assumptions as he prepared for his own life of pub-
lic service.
In 1577, however, after completing his studies and his Continental
tour, Sidney faced his first major test. Assigned a sensitive diplomatic
mission to the court of Emperor Rudolph and the Counts Palatine
to sound them out on the prospects of a Protestant League, he over-
stepped his instructions, meeting with the Jesuit Edmund Campion
and entertaining successive offers of marriage to a German princess
and the daughter of William of Orange. In the eyes of the Queen,
he had failed his test, and her trust proved difficult to regain.7 Years
of fruitless waiting for a suitable preferment followed, and by Octo-
ber 1580, he had, as he admits to his brother Robert, begun to write
about such things as education and public service ‘‘as one that, for
myself, have given over the delight in the world.’’8 The Old Arcadia,
which was written in the years 1579–81, shows signs of second
thoughts about the humanist project to bring about a better and
more orderly world by educating monarchs and magistrates, soldiers
and courtiers, in the wisdom of the ancients.9 By the time he com-
posed New Arcadia—mainly in 1583–84, after he had endured years
of humiliating financial distress and political frustration—he was
prepared to go further, subordinating humanism to Protestantism
as the dominant influence on his work.10 I would argue, in fact, that
the revised Arcadia mounts a sustained and systematic critique of the
very humanist ideals that critics from Kenneth Myrick to Nancy
Lindheim and Karl-Heinz Magister have seen as central to Sidney’s
view of the world.11 The New Arcadia seems to me too dark in its
assessment of human nature and too acute in its attacks on the effi-
cacy of a classical education to support such a reading.
In the original version of the romance, humanist education lies in
the background. We learn little about the early schooling of the he-
roes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, and though we are told somewhat
more about their grand tour in Asia, even that part of their educa-
tion is narrated only briefly in comparison with more elaborate ac-
counts in the New Arcadia. The adventures in Asia Minor are
rendered, not for their own sake, but as a way to woo Pamela and
Philoclea. In the revised Arcadia, however, Sidney expands the ac-
counts far beyond the requirements of the main action, concentrat-
ing instead on what a humanist education teaches the princes
before their Asian adventures, the skills they command in conse-

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156 DONALD STUMP

quence, and the efficacy of those skills in amending the evils of a

fallen world. In book 2, the princes have mixed success, and in book
3, Sidney contrasts their active virtues with virtues of suffering that
have little to do with their humanist education. Influenced by the
women they love, the heroes pursue—not a five-act tragicomic pro-
gression that leads them from public achievement to private passion
and from private passion to deception, calamity, judgment, and re-
habilitation, as in the original Arcadia but—an epic journey that con-
fronts them with the limits of their own education.
The additions to books 2 and 3 raise questions, then, about the
means employed by the humanists to prepare princes, magistrates,
courtiers, and counselors for service to the state. Sidney first ex-
plores the value of the humanists’ program of paideia, interrogating
its stress on the arts of the counselor and the persuasive orator and
questioning its confidence that ‘‘worldly wisdom’’ and martial prow-
ess can redress the injustices of a fallen world. In the process, he
presents the classical ideal of sapientia et fortitudo as both unattain-
able and inadequate. At the end of the revised Arcadia, he presents
an alternate view of heroism that has its origins, not in the humanist
schoolrooms of his youth, but in the Protestant households where
he languished after his loss of favor at court.

Paideia
In the Old Arcadia, the kind of education that Pyrocles and Musi-
dorus have received is not much discussed. We learn only that they
‘‘gave themselves wholly over to those knowledges which might in
the course of their life be ministers to well doing’’ and that they fin-
ished their education by undertaking the equivalent of a Continen-
tal tour intended to increase their ‘‘worthiness’’ by putting their
learning to the test (OA 10–11, 104).12 Having been called to visit
Euarchus and having suffered shipwreck in Asia Minor, the young
princes proceed to defend ladies from wrong and to restore ‘‘disin-
herited persons’’ to their rights (11). There is nothing much in Sid-
ney’s sketchy comments on their education to call sixteenth-century
humanism specifically to mind or to invite reflection on its merits.
In a lengthy passage added to the New Arcadia, however, an elabo-
rate, humanist educational system is spelled out, and questions
about its efficacy arise from the start.
In the passage on the education of Pyrocles and Musidorus, Sid-
ney begins with a description of Euarchus (‘‘good ruler’’), who
serves as the primary exemplar of manly excellence for his son and

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 157

nephew. The settled habits of the Macedonian king include Aristot-

le’s master virtue, magnanimity, and the four classical virtues of
courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice, which Sidney lays out
schematically as if he were offering a textbook example:

[He,] contenting himself to guide that ship wherein the heavens had
placed him, showed no less magnanimity in dangerless despising, than
others in dangerous affecting, the multiplying of kingdoms (for the
earth hath since borne enow bleeding witnesses that it was no want of
true courage); who as he was most wise to see what was best, and most just
in the performing what he saw, and temperate in abstaining from anything
anyway contrary, so, think I, no thought can imagine a greater heart to
see and contemn danger. (NA 159; italics added)

Having held up classical virtues as the ideal, Sidney then lays out the
well-known humanist means for attaining them:

by the good order of Euarchus, well performed by his sister [the mother
of Musidorus and foster mother of Pyrocles], they were so brought up
that all the sparks of virtue which nature had kindled in them were so
blown to give forth their uttermost heat [ . . . ]; for almost before they
could perfectly speak they began to receive conceits not unworthy of the
best speakers; excellent devices being used to make even their sports
profitable, images of battles and fortifications being then delivered to
their memory, which, after, their stronger judgements might dispense;
the delight of tales being converted to the knowledge of all stories of
worthy princes, both to move them to do nobly, and teach them how to
do nobly, the beauty of virtue still being set before their eyes, and that
taught them with far more diligent care than grammatical rules; their
bodies exercised in all abilities both of doing and suffering, and their
minds acquainted by degrees with dangers; and in sum, all bent to the
making up of princely minds [ . . . ] nature having done so much for
them in nothing as that it made them lords of truth, whereon all the
other goods were builded. (NA 163–64)

Put to their lessons at an early age, subjected to training in grammar

as a basis for the more important task of emulating ‘‘the best speak-
ers,’’ taught to progress from literary narratives (‘‘tales’’) to histori-
cal narratives (‘‘stories of all worthy princes’’), exercised in body,
engaged in games with serious lessons for the art of war, and gradu-
ally acclimated to suffering and danger—the education of Pyrocles
and Musidorus has been a model of humanist preparation for ser-
vice to the state. Underlying the program is the humanist assump-
tion that ‘‘all the other goods’’ are built upon becoming ‘‘lords of
truth.’’ The rationalism of the claim—its confidence that inner

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158 DONALD STUMP

promptings of ‘‘nature,’’ informed by the outward discipline of edu-

cation, are sufficient in themselves to lead men such as Musidorus
to virtue—sounds an odd note in a work by an author who elsewhere
laments the impediments to the ‘‘purifying of wit [ . . . ] which com-
monly we call learning’’ that arise from ‘‘our degenerate souls, made
worse by their clayey lodgings.’’13 Musidorus may believe that knowl-
edge is the foundation on which all other goods are built and that
classical education has the power to equip men—and it is men, not
women, who are in question here—with all the truth they need, but
one wonders whether Sidney does.
Signs that we are meant to interrogate Musidorus’s humanist ideal
are woven into the passage itself. That the young hero should so
complacently assert that nature and education have made him one
of the ‘‘lords of truth’’ is ironic, since even as he speaks, he is en-
gaged in a tangle of lies involving his claim to be a shepherd named
Dorus. Both he and Pyrocles are, moreover, utterly blind to the de-
structive forces that their deceptions are unleashing in Arcadia.
Even if Sidney intended to reshape the last books of the romance as
extensively as he did books 1–3, the retention and elaboration of the
original Delphic oracle suggests that the princes are hardly destined
to have the sort of salutary effects on the state envisioned by their
humanist teachers. Although Musidorus praises Euarchus for mak-
ing it ‘‘his first and principal care . . . to appear unto his people such
as he would have them be, and to be such as he appeared’’ (160),
the prince is not much concerned to follow his uncle’s example.
Even more revealing is Musidorus’s attitude toward the second
great formative influence on his childhood, namely the prophecies
uttered at his birth. Although he has so far dedicated his life to Euar-
chus’s humanist agenda, the words of the soothsayers suggest the
importance of powers with an agenda of their own that lies beyond
human reason. Musidorus tells Pamela that, as an infant,

scarcely was [he] made partaker of this oft-blinding light when there
were found numbers of soothsayers who affirmed strange and incredible
things should be performed by that child. Whether the heavens at that
time listed to play with ignorant mankind, or that flattery be so presump-
tuous as even at times to borrow the face of divinity, but certainly so did
the boldness of their affirmation accompany the greatness of what they
did affirm (even, descending to particularities, what kingdoms he should
overcome). (NA 162)

Musidorus’s remarks on the prophecies display the same sort of divi-

sion of mind as his comments on the value of being what one seems

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 159

and seeking to be a ‘‘lord of truth.’’ Even allowing for courteous self-

deprecation, his way of speaking of the higher powers is surprising,
since it suggests that the gods play cruelly with human beings or that
their prophets deceive and flatter them. In his skepticism about
prophecies, moreover, Musidorus resembles another rationalist in
the book, Philanax, who argues that oracles should never be con-
sulted and, if they are, that their words should be ignored (NA 20–
21). Philanax is surely right to point out that, if the gods have
ordained something and revealed it in an oracle, it is vain to attempt
to circumvent their will. He misses, however, a larger question,
which is why the gods reveal their will through oracles in the first
place. In rejecting not only unwise human reactions to oracles but
also the oracles themselves, which he terms ‘‘nothing but fancy’’
(21), he allows rationalism to blind him to their importance in re-
vealing the existence of divine powers and the inevitability and jus-
tice with which they govern.
The growing distance between Sidney’s own views and those of
Musidorus appears clearly when we compare the passage above with
the corresponding paragraph on the princes’ education in the Old
Arcadia. There, the narrator gives God a good deal more credit than
Musidorus does, remarking that the princes’ early desire for knowl-
edge and virtue arose, not simply from ‘‘sparks of virtue which na-
ture had kindled,’’ as the Musidorus of the revision says, but from
the princes’ reflection that ‘‘the divine part of man was not enclosed
in this body for nothing’’ (10). The shipwreck that begins their
Asian tour comes about because ‘‘so pleased it God, who reserved
them to greater traverses, both of good and evil fortune’’ (10). In
the New Arcadia, however, the provident God who ‘‘reserves’’ people
for good fortune and bad has been elided. Musidorus says of the
favorable sailing weather just before the storm that ‘‘they had . . . as
pleasing entertainment as the falsest heart could give to him he
means worst to,’’ and he soon finds himself ‘‘as in a tumultuous
kingdom,’’ with the ‘‘face of heaven’’ blacked over, ‘‘preparing as it
were a mournful stage for a tragedy to be played on’’ (165–66).
Once again, the prince leaves the impression that God is a mysteri-
ous and cruel being, a ruler with ‘‘falsest heart’’ who reigns over a
tragic and tumultuous kingdom.
The two alternative worldviews implicit in the passages on paideia
in the New Arcadia—those of the humanist Musidorus and of the
soothsayers—provide the poles between which, it seems to me, we
are invited to navigate the ‘‘tumultuous kingdom’’ represented in
Sidney’s epic. We should not assume that Sidney was equally op-
posed to all forms of humanism. The sort espoused by his devoutly

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160 DONALD STUMP

Protestant mentor, Hubert Languet, would probably have been

more congenial to him than the classical variety seen in Musidorus,
with its tendency to worldliness, rationalism, and skepticism in mat-
ters of religion. Yet to the extent that all humanists relied on educa-
tion in the pagan classics, with special emphasis on Greek ethical
and political thought, Latin oratory, ancient and modern history,
and the arts of counsel and war, his work bears on the movement in
general. In the adventures of Pyrocles and Musidorus, Sidney inter-
rogates not only the humanists’ ideal of paideia but also the other
means that they advocated to bring disordered kingdoms under ra-
tional control. Let me begin with two of these means, reasoned
counsel and oratorical skill.

Counsel and Rhetoric

Even in the Old Arcadia, giving advice to princes is a thankless job.
When, ‘‘for fashion’s sake,’’ Basilius seeks counsel of Philanax con-
cerning the proper response to the Delphic Oracle, he does so
‘‘rather for confirmation of fancies than correcting of errors’’ (OA
6). When the nobleman gives a well-reasoned reply—pointing out
that prophecies are ‘‘either not to be respected or not to be pre-
vented’’ and arguing that ‘‘wisdom and virtue be the only destinies
appointed to man to follow’’—Basilius is irritated rather than en-
lightened, feeling ‘‘grieved to have any man say that which he had
not seen’’ (7–8). Though Philanax accurately predicts most of the
ills suffered by the royal family because of the king’s decision to re-
treat to his rural lodges, Basilius pays no attention.
There are in Philanax’s speech, moreover, ironies that tell against
him as counselor as well as against his master as ruler. Inveighing
against Basilius’s impulse to lock up his daughters, Philanax points
out that it will ‘‘argue suspicion, the most venomous gall to virtue’’
(OA 8). Later, when the prophecy is fulfilled in the apparent death
of the king, Philanax (whose name means ‘‘lover of the ruler’’) is so
aggrieved that he falls prey to suspicion himself, changing from a
rational counselor to one of ‘‘vindictive resolution’’ who is ‘‘trans-
ported with an unjust justice’’ (287). Though of Stoic temper, he
finds in the end that he is better at counseling others to be patient
and rational in protecting those they love than he is at carrying out
his own advice.
Other instances of good counsel prove similarly futile or ironic.
In both versions of the book, Musidorus’s advice that Pyrocles not
demean himself by impersonating a woman is followed almost im-

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 161

mediately by Musidorus’s decision to demean himself by imperson-

ating a shepherd. In the New Arcadia, Pyrocles’ success in ending
the Laconian civil war by counseling the Helots to make a truce with
the aristocrats succeeds, but for the wrong reason, since the Helots
are ‘‘as much moved by his authority as persuaded by his reasons’’
(39). Philanax’s sound advice that Basilius not knuckle under to Ce-
cropia’s threats to kill his daughters and Zelmane unless the siege is
lifted is also ignored. The king withdraws, not for reasons of state
but because his wife has cast herself at his feet and because he se-
cretly wishes to preserve Zelmane’s life in hopes of an adulterous
affair (418). Nothing in either version of Arcadia suggests that offer-
ing carefully reasoned advice is likely to have beneficial effects. Even
Euarchus, the model of humanist virtue, seems to have little use for
counselors, preferring to make decisions by his own lights. Sidney’s
inability to bring Queen Elizabeth to see reason about the need for
a Protestant League, the danger of a French marriage, and the ur-
gency of sending troops to the Netherlands may well have been on
his mind as he devised such instances of the futility of giving good
advice.14
In his critique of humanism, training in rhetoric fares little better
than skill in counsel. When, in the Old Arcadia, a drunken birthday
party for Basilius leads some of the humbler Arcadians to attack the
royal lodges in order to force the King out of retirement and to reg-
ister discontent at the growing influence of Pyrocles (in his guise as
Zelmane), Pyrocles swiftly contains their violence, mostly by employ-
ing his extraordinary gifts as an orator. In the revised version, how-
ever, the incident has been altered in ways that call in question the
very power of oratory that the passage once served to illustrate. For
one thing, Pyrocles and Musidorus confront a less tractable crowd
and quickly fall into an orgy of maiming and killing, only afterwards
making use of the power of words.15 For another, Sidney has Musi-
dorus offer admiring comments which suggest that the effectiveness
of Pyrocles’ speeches depends largely on such things as his appear-
ance, gestures, tonality, and skill in arousing emotions rather than
on anything of substance in the speeches themselves:

The action Zelmane used, being beautified by nature and apparelled

with skill (her gestures being such that, as her words did paint out her
mind, so they served as a shadow to make the picture more lively and
sensible; with the sweet clearness of her voice rising and falling kindly,
as the nature of the word and efficacy of the matter required), all to-
gether in such an admirable person . . . gave such a way unto her speech
through the rugged wilderness of their imaginations . . . that instead of

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162 DONALD STUMP

roaring cries there was now heard nothing but a confused muttering.
(287)

Although sixteenth-century humanists were fond of saying that wis-

dom and eloquence are indivisible, that is not the case here.16 The
commoners are more like beasts charmed by their senses than
human beings persuaded by reason.
The speeches of Pyrocles also raise troubling ethical issues. He be-
gins by shamelessly flattering the rioters, telling them that they
‘‘show indeed in themselves the right nature of valure’’ and suggest-
ing what he knows to be equally false, namely that they did not real-
ize that their king was among the helmeted knights whom they
assailed (NA 283). He proceeds by asking questions that divide
them, provoking jealousy ‘‘by the acquaintance [he] had with such
kind of humours’’ until he has succeeded in inciting bloody fighting
within their ranks (285, 287–90). He does so, moreover, under a
false show of fearing the very effects that he is seeking, addressing
them ‘‘as though [he] took great care of their well-doing and were
afraid of their falling out’’ (284). Finally, he allies himself with the
faction most eager to receive Basilius’s pardon, thus pursuing his
own self-interest by further ingratiating himself with the royal family
and the King. In the process, the crowd forgets the two complaints
that moved them in the first place: that their King has abdicated his
responsibilities, turning rule of Arcadia over to Philanax, and that a
foreign woman, Zelmane, has gained a dangerous degree of influ-
ence over the royal family. Though the citizens may be besotted, ig-
norant, and wrong to take violent action against their King, they are,
in fact, quite right to worry and complain. Pyrocles’ skillful rhetoric
thus distracts both King and commons from the issues that should
be uppermost in their minds, namely Basilius’s inappropriate reac-
tion to the Delphic Oracle, his abdication of his royal responsibili-
ties, and his blinding by erotic desire. In consequence, the kingdom
drifts unimpeded toward the calamities that the Delphic Oracle had
foretold.
That Sidney means us to have mixed feelings about Pyrocles’ ex-
traordinary ability to move the crowd is also suggested by the intro-
duction of a second orator in the revised version. The treacherous
Clinias, who has fomented the insurrection, acts as an ironic mirror
in which Pyrocles is reflected in a far less flattering light than in the
Old Arcadia. Though the prince is nobler and better educated than
Clinias, they are uncomfortably alike. While pretending to be moved
by loyalty and respect for the King, both are pursing secret agendas
that run counter to Basilius’s wishes and to the unity of his family

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 163

and state. Both are also engaged in calming waters that they them-
selves first helped to stir up, Clinias by taking Basilius’s part in an
insurrection that he himself fomented and Pyrocles by putting down
a popular disturbance for which he, in his disguise as Zelmane, was
a principal cause. Both use flattery, and both achieve their ends by
moving people to violence. Both seem, moreover, to have been edu-
cated by humanists. As Sidney remarks, ‘‘This Clinias in his youth
had been a scholar (so far as to learn rather words than manners,
and of words, rather plenty than order) and oft had used to be an
actor in tragedies (where he had learned, besides slidingness of lan-
guage, acquaintance with many passions, and to frame his face to
bear the figure of them), long used to the eyes and ears of men’’
(288). The allusion here is probably to the common practice of put-
ting on student performances of classical plays in humanist gram-
mar schools. Though of better moral character that Clinias, Pyrocles
is also adept in the ‘‘slidingness of language’’ and understands the
passions and how to ‘‘frame his face,’’ as the narrator suggests at
one point when he describes his putting on a studied demeanor of
‘‘angerless bravery and an unbashed mildness’’ (285). Both Pyrocles
and Musidorus are also fond of comparing themselves to actors in a
stage tragedy.17 In their false shows and deceptions, they are becom-
ing more like Clinias all the time.
To an unusual extent, sixteenth-century humanists pinned their
hopes for establishing a just and humane political order on the
power of words. Sidney repeatedly shows, however, that the ‘‘in-
fected wills’’ of his characters are reflected in their rhetoric. Amphi-
alus is a case in point. In defending the rebellion begun by his
mother, he buys time by crafting letters to potential supporters that
make cunning use of the principles of classical rhetoric. First he ana-
lyzes his audience, ‘‘to each . . . conforming himself, after their hu-
mours: to his friends, friendliness; to the ambitious, great
expectations, to the displeased, revenge; to the greedy, spoil.’’ Then
he makes his case, ‘‘from true commonplaces fetch[ing] down most
false applications’’ (324–25) and balancing arguments for the revolt
with refutations of likely objections. Of this display of well-schooled
rhetoric—undertaken in the knowledge ‘‘how few there be that can
discern between truth and truthlikeness, between shows and sub-
stance’’—Sidney remarks that it had the desired effect, not just on
naive listeners, but also on those sufficiently astute to see through
its shoddy reasoning. He writes that ‘‘To this effect, amplified with
arguments and examples, and painted with rhetorical colours, did
[Amphialus] sow abroad many discourses, which, as they prevailed
with some of more quick than sound conceit . . . , so in many did it

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164 DONALD STUMP

breed a coolness to deal violently against him’’ (326). The tempta-

tion to employ the humanist linguistic skills honed for bad ends
seems to have been much on Sidney’s mind, for in the revised Arca-
dia, nearly all the new references to oratory show its power to mis-
lead and deceive. Of Plexirtus, he writes, ‘‘though no man had less
goodness in his soul than he, no man could better find the places
whence arguments might grow of goodness to another; though no
man felt less pity, no man could tell better how to stir pity’’ (185).
Of Pamphilus attempting to justify himself to the women he has
wronged, we read, ‘‘he seeing himself confronted by so many, like a
resolute orator went not to denial, but to justify his cruel falsehood,’’
using ‘‘jests and disdainful passages’’ to disarm their wrath—though
not, as it turns out, successfully (NA 239). Sidney also makes a telling
change in commenting on the power of words over the mob in book
2. Whereas, in the Old Arcadia, it is the narrator himself who ana-
lyzes the rhetoric, in the revised version it is the sly and despicable
Clinias who explains how shrewd oratory achieves its remarkable ef-
fects.18 In interrogating the humanists’ emphasis on skill with words,
the author invites us, then, to see not only disturbing similarities be-
tween Pyrocles and Clinias, but also—if we’ve read both versions, as
Sidney’s sister and friends had—between Clinias and the original
narrator, who takes a delight in the manipulative power of language
from which the later Sidney prefers to distance himself.
Sidney’s revisions do not, of course, call into question the need
for wisdom in counsel or skill in rhetoric. It is the foolish and cor-
rupt uses that human beings make of such abilities that concern
him. Ultimately, his quarrel with humanism has less to do with its
preoccupation with the ability to speak than with its optimistic ap-
praisal of human nature and the virtues of which it is capable, to
which I now turn.

Sapientia et Fortitudo
In interrogating the humanist ideal of virtus, or manly excellence,
Sidney does not deny the praiseworthiness of the ethical and politi-
cal virtues to which his heroes have dedicated their lives.19 In the
revisions to the New Arcadia, however, he does cast doubt on the
prospect that any mere mortal will ever fully attain such virtues or
that they will bring order to a fallen world.
In the Old Arcadia, Sidney had shown more confidence in his he-
roes. The flashbacks to their Asian adventures present grand images
of two extraordinarily able young men successfully righting wrongs

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 165

in a barbarous part of the world. Other than Erona—whose final

rescue Sidney saves for ‘‘some other spirit to exercise his pen in’’
(417)—not one of the deserving people whom Pyrocles and Musi-
dorus assists comes to grief, and other than Erona’s captor Artaxia,
not a single evil person escapes unpunished (OA 153–59). The origi-
nal Asian episodes seem designed, then, to demonstrate the merits
of Greek education and the values that it instills. The heroism of
Pyrocles and Musidorus in defending the Arcadian royal family from
a lion and a bear at the end of book 1 and from the rebellious mob
at the end of book 2 suggests that, whatever darkening of reason or
lapse in virtue their frustrated desires for the princesses may bring
them to, Sidney is not questioning the premises of their education.
The princes fall, but in a very conventional Greek way. One of the
recurrent themes of Attic tragedy and its later Roman and Hellenis-
tic imitations, to which Sidney constantly compares the Old Arcadia,
is the power of eros to overwhelm temperance and to cloud moral
and political judgment. In writing of men who turn aside from he-
roic quests to woo forbidden women, Sidney is simply following a
well-established humanist tradition exemplified in such tragic myths
as Aeneas’s truancy with Dido and Hercules’ lapses with Iole and
Omphale.20 In the Asian adventures of the New Arcadia, however,
the wisdom and fortitude required of the heroes are both harder to
master and less efficacious,21 and the reasons have little to do with
the effects of eros on the heroes.
Just how thoroughly Sidney’s confidence in humanist remedies
for the ills of the world had been shaken between the completion of
the original version and the crafting of the revisions to book 2 can
be measured by a comment offered by the original narrator.
Tempted to relate the travels of his young heroes at greater length,
he remarks, ‘‘what valiant acts they did, . . . how many ladies they
defended from wrongs, and disinherited persons restored to their
rights, it is a work for a higher style than mine’’ (OA 11). When,
however, Sidney got around to adding new material to book 2 in a
higher style, he did not pile one heroic rescue on another, as he
seems to have intended. In fact, of all the victims of injustice that
Sidney added to the revised Arcadia, only Leonatus is restored to his
rights, and even he is not exactly an instance of the sort of poetic
justice that the narrator of the Old Arcadia seems to have had in
mind. Leonatus’s tormentor, his bastard half-brother Plexirtus, man-
ages to avoid paying for his many crimes by putting on shows of false
repentance, in one of which he lulls his generous-hearted brother
into trusting him again and nearly succeeds in poisoning him. Plex-

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166 DONALD STUMP

irtus then goes on to commit a long series of villainies and is never

brought to justice.
In situations where women are the subjects of abuse, we find a
similar tendency to add episodes in which heroic virtue does not
prevail. For example, Pyrocles’ attempt to save Dido from her en-
raged lover Pamphilus, who intends to have her killed before her
father’s eyes, goes awry when her father, the miserly Chremes, dis-
covers Pyrocles’ identity and turns on him in order to collect a
bounty offered by Artaxia (NA 242–48). Subsequently, in an ambush
prepared by Chremes, Dido does in fact die before her father’s eyes
as Pamphilus had hoped, though Chremes is so consumed by other
worries about his possessions that he does not much care. Dido’s
undeserved death is made all the more disturbing by the fact that
Pyrocles had earlier saved Pamphilus from her and other angry
women whom he had seduced and abandoned (236–41). Hardly a
‘‘master of truth’’ in such complex situations, Pyrocles saves the
wrong person, allowing Pamphilus to continue his villainies and
leading Dido unwittingly to her death in her father’s ambush. In
consequence, Pamphilus is free to seduce yet another unsuspecting
victim, Leucippe, who is forced to live out her life in a nunnery
(259–60). Although Pyrocles and Musidorus do extraordinary deeds
in Asia, freeing the kingdoms of Phrygia, Pontus, and Paphlagonia
from tyrants and ending the Bythinian civil war, Sidney’s revisions
suggest that no system of paideia is adequate to prepare the young
for evils of a more tangled and insidious kind.
Signs of the princes’ delusion in thinking themselves equal to
such challenges are evident almost from the start. When they decide
not to join Euarchus in Byzantium and instead to undertake adven-
tures ‘‘to the good of mankind,’’ they

go privately to seek exercises of their virtue, thinking it not so worthy to

be brought to heroical effects by fortune or necessity (like Ulysses and
Aeneas) as by one’s own choice and working. And so went they away . . . ,
making time hast itself to be a circumstance of their honour, and one
place witness to another of the truth of their doings. (179)

The overweening confidence in their own wisdom and prowess, the

presumption that their education has prepared them to overgo even
the greatest heroes of classical epic, the desire to make time itself go
faster in order to gain honor as quickly as they can—these signs of
hubris do not bode well, and the results are progressively more
tragic. Early triumphs give way to later calamities, ending in the most
pitiful of the misfortunes that beset them, namely the deaths of two

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 167

blameless young members of the Iberian royal family, Palladius and

Zelmane, who give their lives in helping them to escape from the fix
that they have gotten themselves into with Andromana.
As the narrator remarks, ‘‘private chivalries’’ are ‘‘more danger-
ous, though less famous’’ than public ones (186), and it is private
entanglements that stymie the princes. It is no accident, I think, that
Sidney’s own career suffered shipwreck because of honorable but
ill-advised private dealings with persons in power. In attempting to
strengthen the Protestant League by entertaining offers of marriage,
in standing up to the Earl of Oxford rather than relinquish a tennis
court, and in offering Queen Elizabeth unsolicited advice about her
negotiations for a French marriage, Sidney set a brave but impru-
dent course not unlike that of Pyrocles and Musidorus, and by the
time he returned to Arcadia to make revisions, he had paid a heavy
price.22

Human Nature
Beyond coming to terms with the ways of the world, Sidney seems
to have been rethinking his assumption that human beings are en-
dowed with what Musidorus calls ‘‘sparks of virtue’’ that only need
to be fanned by education in order to develop.23 In the revised ver-
sion of the princes’ adventures in Asia, evil characters are both more
numerous and more depraved than they are in the Old Arcadia. Al-
though the original Andromana is willful and incontinent, impris-
oning Pyrocles and Musidorus in hopes of coercing them to have
sex with her, Sidney complicates the reader’s view of her by making
her a victim of even greater villainies by an Arabian prince who has
seduced her on promise of marriage and has subsequently turned
his army against her. Even after their ordeal in prison, Pyrocles and
Musidorus still pity her and think her worthy of rescue. The Andro-
mana of the revised Arcadia, however, has no such extenuating his-
tory. Having bedded the youthful Plangus and then seduced and
married his father, she becomes enraged when Plangus rejects her
offer of a ménage à trois. Poisoning his father’s opinion of him in
ways so subtle and cunning that they call Shakespeare’s Iago to
mind, she then drives Plangus from his home and his kingdom (NA
215–22). Besides reshaping such characters, Sidney also adds new
ones who are equally depraved: Baccha, who, having married Pam-
philus, proves a sexual predator even more heartless than he; Anax-
ius and his two brothers, who, having vainly proposed marriage to
Pamela, Philoclea, and the disguised Pyrocles during their captivity,

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168 DONALD STUMP

decide to rape them all; Tiridates, who, having been rejected by

Erona, ‘‘wrote as it were sonnets of his love in the blood, and tuned
them in the cries, of her subjects’’ (206); Artaxia, who, having lost
her brother Tiridates, holds the innocent Erona hostage in order to
bring Pyrocles and Musidorus to pay for his death.
The extraordinary evils of which human nature is capable in the
revised Arcadia are illustrated most memorably in the life of the bas-
tard Plexirtus, on whom Shakespeare modeled the character of Ed-
mund in King Lear. Having beguiled, dominated, and ultimately
destroyed his own father, Plexirtus seizes power from his brother
and, when forced to restore it, lays cunning traps to murder him and
others who are sufficiently trusting to give him a second chance. So
convincing is he in the role of a humble, reformed sinner that, even
Pyrocles and Musidorus, who know all about his past treacheries—
including a device by which he brought two devoted brothers,
Tydeus and Telenor, to disguise themselves and kill one another—
offer him their trust and friendship. His plot to assassinate the
princes during their return to Greece calls in question their faith in
humanist teachings about the tractability of human nature. There is
no one quite like Plexirtus in the Old Arcadia. Tyrants and brutes
play a part there, of course, but no one is so self-interested, so cun-
ning and ruthless as he, hardened against all appeals to moral de-
cency, familial piety, or fear of the gods. In the revised Arcadia,
however, there are many who are similarly wicked. It is revealing of
Sidney’s larger purposes in the revised Arcadia that he elevates the
shipwreck caused by Plexirtus, making it the first image that we be-
hold after the departure of Urania. It serves as a fitting emblem for
his fictional world.
Now it might be argued that it is misleading to regard the princes’
inadequacies in dealing with figures such as Pamphilus and Chre-
mes, Andromana and Artaxia, Tiridates and Plexirtus as a reflection
on classical education. The ancient Greeks defined their ideals in
contradistinction to those of cultures in Asia Minor and never made
much headway in defeating or assimilating such cultures. In the re-
vised Arcadia, however, Sidney makes little distinction between the
kinds of barbarity to be found beyond the Hellespont and those of
Greece itself. Such differences as we see are of degree rather than
of kind.
Consider the many similarities between incidents involving the
Greeks and those involving ‘‘barbarians.’’ The Bythinian civil war re-
sembles that in Laconia, and Pyrocles and Musidorus end it by simi-
lar means. Antiphilus’s desire to enjoy two very different kinds of
women—his submissive wife Erona and the martial Queen Artaxia—

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 169

resembles Basilius’s desire to possess both the Amazonian princess

Zelmane and his more domesticated wife, Gynecia. Erona’s rebel-
lion against the god of love and her subsequent suffering when she
falls in love with a man outside her social rank parallels Musidorus’s
disdain for love and subsequent crossing of class lines to woo Pamela
in the guise of a shepherd. Andromana’s dominance over her less
clever husband, the King of Iberia, and her jealousy of her daugh-
ter’s love for Pyrocles resembles Gynecia’s relationship with Basilius
and Philoclea. The difficulty that Pyrocles and Musidorus face when
required to accord proper respect to the lascivious Queen Andro-
mana without dishonoring her husband resembles the dilemma in
which Pyrocles finds himself in dealing with Queen Gynecia. The
cruel means employed by Erona’s father to force her to marry Tiri-
dates—‘‘making a solemn execution to be done of another, under
the name of Antiphilus, whom he kept in prison’’ (205)—
foreshadows similar cruelties undertaken by Cecropia against Phi-
loclea and Pamela.
Asia and Greece are not, then, so very different. At the beginning
of the book, Sidney invites us to ponder the similarities by having
his Greek heroes assume Asian names. At the end, he shows us the
similarity of characters from both sides of the Bosporus by having
the Asian princes Anaxius, Zoilus, and Lycurgus take center stage in
a rebellion originally undertaken by Greeks who are nearly as intem-
perate, ambitious, and lawless as they. Arcadia, once a stable and
peaceful state sheltered in central Greece from the troubles that Eu-
archus has been dealing with on the northern and eastern frontiers,
quickly develops its own version of ‘‘Asian problems,’’ first in the
love intrigues of its royal family and then in its slide into civil war
during Amphialus’s rebellion. In his revisions, Sidney sets aside the
narrow tragicomic focus of the Old Arcadia in favor of a wider epic
panorama in which Greek ideals are called into question by the prev-
alence of ‘‘Asian’’ vices, both at home and abroad.
The civil war described in book 3 provides the final and most re-
vealing test of the manly virtus idealized by Sidney’s heroes, and in
the end, their abilities prove of surprisingly little use in resolving the
conflict. Doing all that natural gifts and superb training allow, Musi-
dorus manages to incapacitate Amphialus in single combat, yet just
when it seems that martial heroism will win the war, Cecropia threat-
ens to kill Basilius’s daughters and his beloved Zelmane, and the
King lifts the siege. The focus then shifts from outward strength to
inward wisdom as Sidney turns his attention from the lists to the
inner chambers of Amphialus’s castle. With force of arms having
brought nothing but spiraling cycles of violence, Pyrocles is left to

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170 DONALD STUMP

succeed by other means. Yet he, too, fails. For all his ingenuity and
prowess, he proves helpless to prevent Cecropia from pursuing a
marriage between her son and one of the Arcadian princesses,
much as Sidney found himself unable to forestall Catherine de Me-
dici in her diplomatic initiative to match her son, the Duke of
Anjou, with Queen Elizabeth in the fall of 1579.

Passive Heroism
It is, I would argue, precisely Pyrocles’ humanist education that
prevents him from responding appropriately to the sufferings in-
flicted by Cecropia. Pamela and Philoclea, who have not had the
benefit of his classical paideia, do better. In trying their resistance,
Cecropia begins by confronting them with cunning and irreligious
arguments, then proceeds to whipping and other forms of physical
abuse, and finally undertakes a savage campaign of psychological
torture, forcing each to look on as her sister is apparently murdered.
Though the princesses believe what their eyes tell them, neither wa-
vers in her courage or her moral integrity. The one who breaks is
Pyrocles.
Although he has shared their captivity and some of their tor-
ments, the prince (whose name suggests his fiery temperament) can
muster neither the calm nor the wisdom of the princesses. After the
second scene of execution and the apparent death of Philoclea, he
explodes in a ‘‘wild fury,’’ a fit of ‘‘madness,’’ which quickly leads
from despair to attempted suicide. Before seeking to brain himself
on the castle wall, he reveals just how far he has departed from Sid-
ney’s ideal of true wisdom by indicting the higher powers, crying
out, ‘‘O tyrant heaven! Traitor earth! Blind providence! No justice?
How is this done? How is this suffered? Hath this world a govern-
ment? If it have, let it pour out all his mischiefs on me’’ (431). It is
one of the most notable features of Sidney’s revisions of Arcadia that
he added numerous references to divine providence and the justice
of the higher powers, calling attention to all the ways in which it is
at work even when people least think it is.24 The attitude of Phi-
loclea—the more timid and less philosophical of the royal sisters—
offers a telling contrast to that of Pyrocles.
When Cecropia threatens to kill her sister if she does not marry
Amphialus, Philoclea calmly offers to die in her sister’s place. Fash-
ioning her own resolve on the unchanging constancy of the gods,
she tells her tormentor, ‘‘Do what you will with us. For my part,
heaven shall melt before I be removed’’ (424). Her courage comes

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 171

in part from imitating Pamela, who had earlier demonstrated similar

courage, refusing to yield to Cecropia’s threats and carrying on a
lengthy theological debate with her tormentor which has as one of
its conclusions, ‘‘This world . . . cannot otherwise consist but by a
mind of wisdom which governs it’’ (362). Philoclea, having wit-
nessed what she thought was the execution of her sister, imitates her
in her own hour of trial. Though Pyrocles urges her to temporize
and mislead Cecropia about her feelings for Amphialus in order to
preserve her life, she refuses. After surviving her own mock execu-
tion and witnessing Pyrocles’ attempted suicide, Philoclea then re-
proaches her lover for losing his ethical bearings. Of his suggestion
that she deceive Cecropia, she says,

Pyrocles, my simplicity is such that I have hardly been able to keep a

straight way; what shall I do in a crooked? But in this case there is no
mean of dissimulation, not for the cunningest. Present answer is re-
quired, and present performance upon the answer. . . . Trouble me not
therefore, dear Pyrocles, nor double not my death by tormenting my res-
olution. Since I cannot live with thee, I will die for thee. (430)

That Philoclea and Pamela analyze their situation as clearly and

face death as steadily and self-effacingly as they do is heroism of a
high order. It is, moreover, a kind of heroism that their lovers, who
approach life with humanist assumptions, are ill equipped to under-
stand or imitate. The course of events in the Captivity Episode seems
designed to point up contrasts between the worldview of the prin-
cesses, who ground their morality in religious faith, and that of the
princes, who base theirs in rational calculation of earthly means and
ends. Educated in Aristotelian ethics, which takes earthly happiness
as its telos and regards the rational ordering of the state as essential
to that happiness, the princes cannot see the point in their ladies’
willingness to die rather than temporize, to leave the state without
heirs rather than hatch schemes for their own survival. For their
part, the princesses see no point in compromising their principles to
preserve life when the gods are watching over them, providentially
guiding their lives to ends beyond their understanding.
The contrast is part, I believe, of a larger pattern that Mary Ellen
Lamb finds in Sidney’s works between the ethos cultivated in the
humanist schoolroom and that prevalent in the circles of women
who raised boys like Sidney before they began their formal educa-
tion.25 We see the same contrast elsewhere in Arcadia, notably in the
pivotal episode that brings the Asian adventures of Pyrocles and
Musidorus to a disastrous close and leads them to Arcadia. Impris-

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172 DONALD STUMP

oned by Andromana, the princes manage to escape, but only be-

cause, unbeknownst to them, Zelmane, the daughter of Plexirtus,
has fallen in love with Pyrocles and has risked her life to aid them.
Like the princesses of Arcadia, Zelmane represents an ideal of wis-
dom and fortitude quite different from that of the princes. Unlike
their active heroism, hers is largely passive, showing itself in suffer-
ing rather than in striving. Concealing her identity behind the attire
of a page and adopting the name Daiphantus, she sacrifices her
identity, her gender, and her place in the Iberian royal family in
order to follow the man whom she secretly loves, revealing her iden-
tity to him only after sickness brings her near to death. So moved is
Pyrocles by her self-sacrifice that he adopts her name and imitates
her actions as a lover, first calling himself Daiphantus and later Zel-
mane and concealing his gender in order to be near Philoclea.
Here, however, the similarities between Pyrocles and Zelmane
end. As his conduct during the Captivity Episode reveals, he has
taken her name without altogether assimilating her ethos. His desire
that Philoclea should bend the truth and yield a little to Cecropia in
order to survive reveals the problem. Raised on the inherently active
and worldly ethics of Aristotle, Pyrocles has neither the willingness
to suffer nor the faith in an order beyond human wisdom needed to
relinquish earthly hopes and aspirations. As the entire course of his
secret dealings in Arcadia confirms, he will go to almost any
length—including bringing danger on the royal family and violent
division to the state—in order to gain the woman he loves. Though
he tells Philoclea that Zelmane’s self-denial moved him ‘‘with such
grief that I could willingly at that time have changed lives with her’’
(267), his words are deeply ironic. He has had an opportunity to
emulate Zelmane by concealing his love and serving patiently, and
he has passed it by. Had he emulated her humility, refusing to put
himself forward in the dazzling figure of an Amazon princess, he
might have avoided the disruptions that he brings to Philoclea’s
family and state. It is not, however, in his make-up to follow Zel-
mane’s example in submitting to higher powers and setting aside
his own personal aspirations. One cannot imagine him speaking the
simple prayer that she utters as she approaches her death, ‘‘Oh God!
How largely am I recompensed for my losses!’’ (267), or feeling
grateful, as Zelmane does, simply to be mourned by the one she
loves. In this respect, Pyrocles is more like his old alter-ego, Musi-
dorus, than his new one. Clearly, it takes more than the name and
clothing of a woman to bring a humanist such as Pyrocles to the sort
of heroic self-abnegation that Sidney holds up as his highest ideal in
the revised book 3.

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 173

Now it might be argued that Sidney is not abandoning the earlier

humanist ideal but simply offering an alternative form of heroism
adapted to the special conditions of a hostage standoff. If that is the
case, the princesses do indeed have something to teach men about
courage and wisdom, but only in circumstances where women’s tra-
ditional subservience gives them wisdom and experience that male
heroes lack. According to this view, once the standoff is resolved,
Sidney would have reverted to more traditional models of heroism.
This view finds some support in the closing pages of the New Arca-
dia, where Pyrocles recovers his sword and kills Lycurgus and Zoilus,
and also in the treatment of women in the Old Arcadia. As Jean How-
ard’s work on female literary characters of the early modern period
who cross-dress or otherwise violate traditional expectations for
their gender suggests, even in works where women transcend their
traditional subordinate roles in society, there is usually a strategy of
recuperation by which they are eventually brought back to some-
thing like their original positions.26 One thinks of Pamela and Phi-
loclea in the original Arcadia, who rebel against their father’s
control by attempting to elope and then are brought back to their
traditional subordination when he awakens at the end of book 5.
Jean Howard’s thesis can, in turn, be usefully related to the work of
Thomas Lacqueur,27 Laura Levine,28 and others who have analyzed
the defensiveness and stridency with which some Elizabethan writ-
ers—notably the Puritan critics of the theaters—asserted their sense
of masculine difference. Such studies suggest that, instilled with the
belief that biological and cultural differences between men and
women are fragile, such writers felt vulnerable and were therefore
all the more aggressive in defending their traditional masculine pre-
rogatives. Here again, the Old Arcadia seems to offer a prime illustra-
tion. From Musidorus’s warnings to Pyrocles about the danger of
losing his manhood by cross-dressing as an Amazon to the narrator’s
subsequent stress on the ‘‘poison’’ of love and its effeminizing and
subversive effects on men, the romance presents manhood as fragile
and in need of careful cultivation. In the Old Arcadia, at least, one
sees tendencies in Sidney very much like those of the male authors
involved in the antitheatrical debates.
By the time Sidney wrote the New Arcadia, however, his views had
changed a great deal. Not only had he come to question the value
of paideia in all the ways that I have been discussing, but as Margaret
Sullivan,29 Katherine Duncan-Jones,30 and others have argued, he
had also begun to represent women such as Pamela and Philoclea
and cross-dressed figures such as Pyrocles and Zelmane in a more
favorable light than he had in the Old Arcadia. In the period 1581–

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174 DONALD STUMP

85, just before he went to the Netherlands to fight and die against
the growing power of Spain, Sidney was also growing more and
more preoccupied with religion, as we can see from his interest in
translating du Bartas’ La Semaine, Mornay’s Trueness of the Christian
Religion, and the Psalms. This turn away from classical models may
have disposed him to an ethic in which religiously motivated self-
sacrifice is valued over ‘‘worldly wisdom.’’ Certainly, his translating
projects immersed him in authors for whom the depravity of human
nature and the limited efficacy of rational schemes to amend it are
fundamental assumptions. In the homes of his sister, of his uncle,
the Earl of Leicester, and of his father-in-law, Sir Francis Walsin-
gham, where Sidney spent much of his time between 1577 and 1584,
the influence of Calvin and others who stressed such doctrines
would also have been strong.31 One revision that Sidney seems to
have made to book 4 of the Old Arcadia between 1581 and his death
reveals his thinking in this period. Of Dametas’s key role in disclos-
ing the elopements of the royal lovers and bringing the action to its
final catastrophe, the narrator says, ‘‘The almighty wisdom ever
more delighting to show the world that by unlikeliest means greatest
matters may come to conclusion; that human reason may be the
more humbled, and more willingly give place to divine providence
. . . brought in Dametas to play a part in this royal pageant.’’32
Sidney was also growing increasingly concerned about the
chances that Spain might successfully invade and subjugate En-
gland. As we can see from the positions that he adopted as part of
the anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic faction headed by his uncle, the
Earl of Leicester, and from the pains that he took as Master of Ord-
nance to prepare the naval defenses at Dover harbor, the possibility
of actual captivity and martyrdom in a Spanish invasion of an En-
glish civil war was very real to him. The closeness of his relationship
to his sister Mary, for whom Arcadia and some of the religious works
of this period were written, may also have contributed to the sea-
change in his attitude toward the value of passive, feminine
strengths in comparison with aggressive, masculine ones. It is sig-
nificant, in this light, that Arcadia was dedicated to her and to the
ladies of her circle.
Whatever the reasons, in the revised version of books 2 and 3, the
heroics of Pyrocles and Musidorus in Asia Minor and in the Arca-
dian civil war seem increasingly ineffectual as a response to the vio-
lence, corruption, and treachery of the world around them. By
contrast, the heroics of Pamela and Philoclea in bravely enduring
and resisting the torments inflicted on them by Cecropia have a
powerful appeal—though not, perhaps, to a humanist bent on re-

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 175

forming the state or subduing the world according to the dictates of

human reason. The sort of heroism practiced by Philoclea, Pamela,
and the original Zelmane offers a noble alternative to the unending
cycles of violence in which the heroes of more traditional epics such
as Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas are represented when they meet
force with force. By contrast, the passive heroism of Pamela and Phi-
loclea maintains the primacy of religious faith and personal integrity
above all else, refusing to fight evil with evil, even when the conse-
quence may well be political failure, personal suffering, and death.
This change in the very conception of the heroic also warrants
a reassessment of Sidney’s position in early modern reappraisals of
gender roles. In his last great work, the sense that masculinity is frag-
ile and mutable does not, as it does in the Old Arcadia and other
works by male writers of the period, lead to a correspondingly stri-
dent defense of ‘‘manly’’ virtue but rather to an exploration of the
value of ‘‘womanly’’ virtue. In this, moreover, there is no likelihood
of ‘‘recuperation,’’ for the turn to a passive ideal of heroism seems
deeply rooted in the author’s own outlook at this period in his life.
Nothing, moreover, in the words of the Delphic Oracle in the New
Arcadia or in the course of later events in the Old Arcadia suggests
that he intended to question or supersede the kind of heroism dis-
played by the princesses in Cecropia’s dungeons. When unraveling
the complexities of Elizabethan attitudes toward gender, cultural
critics would do well to look closely, not just at medical and marital
treatises and at works in the antitheatrical debate and the drama,
but also at heroic fictions like Arcadia that idealize womanly suffer-
ing and endurance.
If I am right about Sidney’s turn from active to passive heroism as
he reshaped his youthful romance into a prose epic, prevailing views
of his place in the development of heroic poetry also need to be
reassessed. In writing about Samson Agonistes, Mary Beth Rose has
identified a long and influential tradition of heroic literature that,
unlike classical epic, celebrates patient endurance as of greater
worth than martial aggression. In works such as saints’ lives, patient
Griselda stories, accounts of the Protestant and Jesuit martyrs, and
exempla embedded in Stoic treatises, Milton found models of ‘‘pas-
sive heroics’’ that were important not only for Samson but also for
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.33 In such works, it is the virtues
traditionally regarded as feminine that are idealized, rather than the
masculine qualities celebrated in the Aeneid and other classical
works that were more central to the educational agenda of Renais-
sance humanism. I would argue that Sidney’s revisions to the Old

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176 DONALD STUMP

Arcadia transformed it into the sort of heroic poem that Milton real-
ized much more consistently and perfectly nearly a century later.

Notes
1. See, for example, Arthur F. Kinney, ‘‘Humanist Poetics and Elizabethan Fic-
tion,’’ Renaissance Papers (1978), 31–45; Fritz Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order
in Tudor England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 176–80; Sir Philip
Sidney: Selected Prose and Poetry, ed. Robert Kimbrough, 2nd ed. (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1983), xiii-xiv; A. C. Hamilton, ‘‘Sidney’s Humanism,’’ in Sir
Philip Sidney’s Achievements, ed. M[ichael] J. B. Allen, Dominic Baker-Smith, Arthur
F. Kinney, and Margaret Sullivan (New York: AMS, 1990), 109–16; An Apology for
Poetry or The Defence of Poesy, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (London: Thomas Nelson &
Sons, 1965), introduction, 19–25.
2. See the recommended readings in his letter to Edward Denny of Whitsunday
1580, in Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones, Oxford Authors Series,
287–90 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
3. See his letters to Robert of October 18, 1580, and ca. May 1578 (Duncan-
Jones, 291–94 and 284–87). By ‘‘worldly wisdom’’ Sidney means that ‘‘which stands
in the mixed and correlative knowledge of things: in which kind comes in the
knowledge of all leagues betwixt prince and prince: the topographical description
of each country; how the one lies by situation to hurt or help the other; how they
are to the sea; well harboured, or not; how stored with ships; how with revenue;
how with fortifications and garrisons; how the people, warlike trained or kept
under.’’ He also means ‘‘knowing of religions, policies, laws, bring up of children,
discipline, both for war and peace, and such like’’ (Duncan-Jones, 285).
4. In the letter to Robert of October 18, 1580, he stresses mathematics and
‘‘play at weapons’’—particularly training with sword and dagger and exercise ‘‘at
the tournament and barriers.’’ Though he discounts Ciceronianism as ‘‘the chief
abuse of Oxford,’’ he stresses the study of ‘‘orations e re nata’’ in Greek and Roman
histories and the need to mark them ‘‘with the note of rhetorical remembrances,’’
presumably marginalia identifying the various tropes and figures.
5. Letter ca. May 1578 (Duncan-Jones, 284).
6. See the letters to Languet of February 4, 1574, to Robert ca. May 1578, and
to Denny of Whitsunday 1580 (Duncan-Jones, 280, 284, and 288).
7. On the most likely reasons for Sidney’s loss of royal favor, see Duncan-Jones,
Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 133–35.
8. Duncan-Jones, Oxford Authors edition, 293.
9. See Andrew D. Weiner, Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism: A Study
of Contexts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), 54–100; and Richard
Helgerson The Elizabethan Prodigals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976),
133–41. Weiner identifies in the characters of the Old Arcadia ‘‘classical formula-
tions of the nature of man,’’ from Epicureanism and Stoicism to Aristotelianism to
Platonism, each of which is shown to be wanting. Helgerson argues that the work
moves the reader from approval of ‘‘civic humanism’’ to ‘‘detached tolerance’’ for
the prodigal princes and finally to a questioning of the justice of the humanist Euar-
chus.
10. See Alan Sinfield, Literature in Protestant England, 1560–1660 (London:
Croom Helm, 1983), 23–39 and 55–63; and Franco Marenco, Arcadia Puritana:

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SIDNEY’S CRITIQUE OF HUMANISM IN THE NEW ARCADIA 177

L’uso della tradizione nella prima ‘‘Arcadia’’ di Sir Philip Sidney (Bari, Italy: Adriatica
Editrice, 1968), passim.
11. See Kenneth O. Myrick, Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Craftsman, 2nd ed. (Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 7–13; Nancy Lindheim, The Structures of
Sidney’s ‘‘Arcadia’’ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 122–25; Karl-Heinz
Magister, ‘‘Philip Sidneys Arcadia: Ein höfisch-humanistischer Renaissance-
Roman,’’ Shakespeare-Jahrbuch (Weimar) 117 (1981): 109–26.
12. Throughout this essay, I cite The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The Old Arca-
dia), ed. Jean Robertson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), here abbreviated OA,
and The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), ed. Victor Skretkowicz (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1987), abbreviated NA.
13. The Defence of Poetry, in Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine
Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten, 82 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
14. On parallels between Basilius and Elizabeth that reflect Sidney’s experiences
at court, see Duncan-Jones, Courtier Poet, 177–79.
15. It is not clear that Stephen Greenblatt is right to suggest that Sidney endorses
the princes’ brutality here, since it is one of the writer’s favorite devices to lull his
readers into accepting conduct in his heroes that is later shown to be wrong. Musi-
dorus, not Sidney, narrates the incident, and earlier in book 2, even he shows more
sense, condemning princes who delight in humiliating commoners and holding up
the example of Euarchus, who ‘‘virtuously and wisely acknowledging that he with
his people made all but one politic body whereof himself was the head, even so
cared for them as he would for his own limbs’’ (NA 161). That, in showing off his
skill and valor to impress Pamela, Musidorus should take an unseemly delight in
the hacking off of the limbs of commoners shows more, it seems to me, about him
than about Sidney. See Greenblatt, ‘‘Murdering Peasants: Status, Genre, and the
Representation of Rebellion,’’ Representations 1 (February 1983): 1–29.
16. See Shepherd, 21.
17. See my article, ‘‘Sidney’s Concept of Tragedy in the Apology and in the Arca-
dia,’’ Studies in Philology 79 (Winter 1982): 41–61.
18. See the passages beginning ‘‘Oh weak trust of the many-headed multitude’’
(OA 131, NA 288), ‘‘Public affairs were mingled with private grudge’’ (OA 127, NA
291), and the narrator’s subsequent analysis of the ‘‘humours’’ that led the mob to
revolt.
19. On the classical tradition that located such excellence in the virtues of sapi-
entia and fortitudo, particularly as they are represented in the epics of Homer and
Virgil, see Ernest R. Curtius, European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Wil-
lard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1953), 167–82.
20. On Sidney’s imitation of the first four books of Virgil’s Aeneid and his fre-
quent appropriation of the myth of Hercules in delineating the character and ac-
tions of Pyrocles, see Josephine A. Roberts, Architectonic Knowledge in the ‘‘New
Arcadia’’ (1590): Sidney’s Use of the Heroic Journey (Salzburg: Institut für englische Sp-
rache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1978), 129–38, 149–50, and 153–58; and
‘‘Herculean Love in Sir Philip Sidney’s Two Versions of Arcadia,’’ Essays in Renais-
sance Culture 4 (Spring 1978): 43–54. See also Lindheim, 43–51 and 117; and Skret-
kowicz, ‘‘Hercules in Sidney and Spenser,’’ Notes and Queries, n.s. 27 (August 1980):
306–10.
21. See Roberts, 65–78 and 99–103.
22. Scholars have remarked on similarities between the sexually predatory An-
dromana and Queen Elizabeth, noting parallels between Philisides encounter with
Lelius at the Iberian Queen’s annual birthday celebration and Sidney’s encounter

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178 DONALD STUMP

with Sir Henry Lee at Elizabeth’s Accession Day tournament in 1581. Such allusions
contribute to the impression that the Asian adventures of book 2 had autobiograph-
ical resonances. See James Holly Hanford and Sara Ruth Watson, ‘‘Personal Alle-
gory in the Arcadia: Philisides and Lelius,’’ Modern Philology 32 (August 1934): 1–10;
Frances A. Yates, ‘‘Elizabethan Chivalry: The Romance of the Accession Day Tilts,’’
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957): 4–25, reprinted in Yates,
Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1975), 88–111.
23. See Franco Marenco, ‘‘Per una nuova interpretazione dell’Arcadia di Sid-
ney,’’ English Miscellany 17 (1966): 9–48, which argues that Sidney’s aim is at once
Protestant and humanist in that he seeks to reflect both the fullness of glory and
the depth of degradation of which human beings are capable. For a similar posi-
tion, see David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 91–108.
24. See Sinfield, 38–39; and Dorothy Connell, Sir Philip Sidney: The Maker’s Mind
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 143–45.
25. Lamb, ‘‘Apologizing for Pleasure in Sidney’s Apology for Poetry: The Nurse of
Abuse Meets the Tudor Grammar School,’’ Criticism 36 (Fall 1994): 499–519.
26. Jean Howard, ‘‘Sex and Social Conflict: The Erotics of The Roaring Girl,’’ in
Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage, ed. Susan Zimmerman, 170–90 (New
York: Routledge, 1992).
27. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 125–42.
28. Laura Levine, Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-Theatricality and Effeminization,
1579–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 14–25.
29. Margaret Sullivan, ‘‘Amazons and Aristocrats: The Function of Pyrocles’ Am-
azon Role in Sidney’s Revised Arcadia,’’ in Playing with Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit,
ed. Jean R. Brink, Maryanne C. Horowitz, and Allison P. Coudert, 62–81 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1991).
30. Duncan-Jones, Courtier Poet, 260–66.
31. On the religious worldview of Sidney’s most influential relatives, friends, and
allies, see Weiner, 5–18.
32. OA, textual apparatus to page 265.
33. Mary Beth Rose, ‘‘ ‘Vigorous Most / When Most Unactive Deem’d’: Gender
and the Heroics of Endurance in Milton’s Samson, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, and
Mary Astell’s Some Reflections upon Marriage,’’ Milton Studies 33 (1997): 83–109.

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Shakespeare, Henri IV, and the
Tyranny of Royal Style
Victor Skretkowicz

Shakespeare and Essex

IN 1589, THE HUGUENOT LEADER HENRI DE BOURBON (1553–1610), BETTER

known as Henri III of Navarre, succeeded his brother-in-law Henri
III as king of France. On July 25, 1593, Navarre declared himself a
Catholic. He was finally crowned on January 14, 1594, and was assas-
sinated on May 14, 1610.1 It is unlikely to be coincidental that,
between 1595 and 1609, the years spanning Henri IV’s reign, Shake-
speare creates a series of dramatizations representing a preference
for popular, voluntarily limited monarchy. From Richard II to
Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare’s tyrants employ a pecu-
liarly detached, formal royal style in the manner cultivated and per-
fected by Henri III. Like Henri III, the last remaining son of Henri
II and Catherine de Médicis, they knowingly use this rhetorical con-
trivance to distance themselves from their subjects. To their admir-
ers, they assume the properties of demi-gods. To their victims, their
unbounded arrogance legitimizes opposition, however violent.
Henri of Navarre brought a new bloodline and Calvinist inspired
ideas of reformed Christianity to the throne. Although by the time
of his coronation Navarre had become a publicly avowed Catholic,
he bucked the political and religious trends of his predecessor. He
was a progressive and uniting king, implementing the Edict of
Nantes (1598), which granted generous, though limited, rights of
Protestant worship where none had previously been tolerated. And
he maintained close links with those Protestant allies who for many
years assisted him in his armed resistance to the repressive Catholi-
cism of Henri III’s regime. These included James VI of Scotland,
Elizabeth I of England, and the many Huguenot-supporting court-
iers in the Essex-Sidney circle.
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (1566–1601), was the brother of
Philip Sidney’s passion Penelope Devereux. He was a dyed-in-the-

179

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180 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

wool supporter of the tolerant, left-wing Protestant group that took

shape under his stepfather, who was also Sidney’s uncle and Eliza-
beth’s favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532?-88). Leices-
ter had intimate connections with the English supporters both of
William of Orange (1533–84), as he fought to liberate the Nether-
lands from Spanish occupation, and of Orange’s immediate ally in
France, Henri III of Navarre.
Leicester’s group of spiritual and political brethren consisted of
senior courtiers who, like him, had grown up in the courts of Henry
VIII and Edward VI. Second-generation English Protestant adher-
ents to ‘‘the Church in England,’’ they included Leicester’s brother-
in-law Henry Sidney; Henry Herbert, second Earl of Pembroke, who
married Sidney’s daughter Mary; and the Secretary of State Francis
Walsingham, whose daughter Frances married Philip Sidney. These
families became further interrelated when Leicester married Essex’s
mother, Lettice Knollys, dowager Countess of Essex.
In 1586, the young Essex served in the Netherlands under Leices-
ter, along with Leicester’s nephews Philip (1554–86) and Robert
Sidney (1563–1626). In 1587, Essex secretly married Philip Sidney’s
widow, Frances Walsingham, and recreated himself as Sidney’s polit-
ical and moral successor. When Leicester died in 1588, Essex as-
sumed the leadership of a youthful group of militant Calvinist
nationalists. In 1591, he led the English force fighting for the Hu-
guenots at the disastrous siege of Rouen and met with Henri of Na-
varre. Even the death of his elder brother Walter at Rouen further
integrated his political family, for Walter’s widow Margaret Dakin,
or Dakins, (1571–1633) married Thomas Sidney (1569–95), the
younger brother of Philip and Robert Sidney, and Mary Sidney Her-
bert, countess of Pembroke.
Essex’s clique ardently supported the tens of thousands of French
Huguenots in their fight for the right to practice what they believed
was the true Christian religion. Their determination did not dimin-
ish when on July 25, 1593, Navarre renounced Protestantism in
order to succeed to the throne, though Shakespeare’s portrayal of
Navarre in Love’s Labours Lost (1594–95) may dramatize their imme-
diate concerns about the Huguenot leader’s apparent wobble.

Monarchomachia, Tyrannicide, and Respublica

At least twelve months before writing Love’s Labours Lost, Shake-
speare successfully insinuated himself into the Essex-Sidney circle.
He did so by dedicating his challenging humanist poems Venus and

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 181

Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) to Essex’s passive Cath-
olic protégé, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton and Baron
Titchfield (1573–1624). Nine years older than Southampton, senior
to Essex by two, and younger than Robert Sidney by one, when
Shakespeare gained admittance to Essex’s group, he adopted their
antityrannical politics, placing tyranny and usurpation at the heart
of The Rape of Lucrece.
The English monarchist reformers were confirmed monarcho-
machists. Along with their Protestant counterparts in the German
states, the Netherlands, and France, they believed that tyrants, be
they kings, church leaders, or family patriarchs, should be opposed
and killed. Essex’s group was encouraged by the examples con-
tained in Sidney’s Arcadia. And Sidney’s romance in turn reflected
arguments contained in the influential anonymous publication by
Henri of Navarre’s allies, the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (Edimburgi
[i.e., Basle], 1579). Its alleged authors, Hubert Languet (1518–81),
Henri Estienne (ca. 1532–98), and Philippe du Plessis-Mornay
(1549–1623), were well known among the English advocates of Eu-
ropean Protestant union. Evidence of their support for—and depen-
dence on—the left-wing English Protestants is that, despite their age
differences, all three became admiring friends and mentors of Es-
sex’s role model, Philip Sidney.
The Vindiciae is specifically directed against Navarre’s enemy,
Henri III of France. Its arguments for tyrannicide clearly and logi-
cally reiterate those long adduced by Catholic churchmen. Follow-
ing this orthodox line, its authors vindicate the assassination of a
tyrant who sins by usurpation, or a tyrant who sins by oppression.
But the Vindiciae contains a sting in its tail. Its principal additions to
the standard Catholic arguments are what Mousnier describes as the
scripture-based ‘‘double covenant theory’’ and the ‘‘partial resis-
tance theory.’’ The two-tiered ‘‘double covenant theory’’ invokes a
spiritual covenant ‘‘between king and people on one hand and God
on the other;’’ and a political covenant ‘‘between the king on one
hand and people on the other.’’ The ‘‘partial resistance theory’’
opens the floodgates in a way that had not been anticipated by
French Catholic thinkers. It was accepted that ‘‘a private person was
free to kill his monarch without a trial if he was a tyrant by usurpa-
tion,’’ but the Huguenots and extreme papists felt that this license
extended to any sort of tyranny. Tyrannicide was justified by God.
Even a single individual, inspired by God, might act on his own to
kill a king.2 Such a personal interpretation of divine inspiration is
worthy of the most politically radical of the Romantics. Heinous acts

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182 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

might be committed on the basis of perverted concepts of Calvinist

election, as in James Hogg’s The Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
The Rape of Lucrece demonstrates Shakespeare’s engagement with
a group asserting the priority of divine goodness in kings over their
divine right. The divinity of monarchy was a hotly disputed issue
among Protestant factions. Extreme Calvinists asserted the divinity
of republican government over monarchy, invoking the authority of
1 Samuel 8. Samuel describes how the Israelites’ demand to be given
a king in emulation of their neighbors was a travesty of God’s nonin-
stitutional political organism. God would not deny the Israelites’ in-
sistent request, but they would suffer because, when their monarch
became a tyrant, he would turn a deaf ear to their complaints. Mon-
archy was a despotic form of government, and monarchic tyranny
the curse of God. More realistic Calvinists accepted the alternative
interpretation that monarchy itself was a divine gift that later be-
came corrupted. This view forms the basis of James VI of Scotland’s
line-by-line analysis of 1 Samuel 8 in The Trew Law of Free Monarchies
(1598). There James asserts God’s role in the appointment of kings,
emphasizing the sin inherent in opposing a king’s authority. The
concept of king-killing was as repulsive to him as papal interference
in monarchic autonomy.3
While continental humanist scholars had long been occupied in
translation, the Church of Rome stood firm on the language of the
Bible. Linguistically as well as spiritually liberated, Genevan Calvin-
ists translated both biblical and ancient texts into French and
glossed secular texts with politicized biblical commentary. Inspired
by this Genevan model, the anglicizing process of ancient texts be-
came integral to the expression of English political doctrine. Thus it
was that, toward the last quarter of the sixteenth century, humanist
learning in England increasingly became patronized by a group of
philhellenists dedicated to achieving a western European Protestant
reformation. Strongly influenced by Calvinism, they associated
themselves with ancient Greek democracy and Roman republican-
ism, and encouraged translation and adaptation of Greek and
Greco-Roman writers.
English philhellenist Protestant representations of the ancient
world are free from the ideology of the Catholic Church. In fact,
many actively resist it. Sidney’s Arcadia, written in two versions be-
tween 1579 and 1584, was first published in 1590. The expanded
‘‘complete’’ edition came out in 1593, the year of Venus and Adonis.
Sidney determinedly and consistently opposes the Council of
Trent’s assertion that kings are the political subjects of the pope.
Through the actions of his monarchomachist Greek heroes, the

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 183

princes Pyrocles and Musidorus, he deposes tyrants, reinventing

kings as the subjects of their people. Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lu-
crece is yet another illustration of how, during Elizabeth’s reign, rep-
resenting ancient history, literature, philosophy, and politics in the
vernacular had become more than an assertion of the capability and
dignity of the English language.

The Birth of the Roman Republic

Both Sidney and Shakespeare, who promote nationalism through

linguistic and rhetorical sophistication, portray kings who remain
defiantly independent. They must also be responsible, and respon-
sive to public opinion. Almost a representation of the Calvinist polit-
ical theory that underpins this position, The Rape of Lucrece portrays
the advent of monarchomachism and, as its corollary, the develop-
ment of the Roman republic. In the Argument, Shakespeare de-
scribes how the Roman people suffer under the harsh misrule of
Tarquinius Superbus, their seventh and last king, and a usurper:

Lucius Tarquinius (for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus), after he

had caused his own father-in-law Servius Tullius to be cruelly murdered,
and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying
for the people’s suffrages had possessed himself of the kingdom, went
accompanied with his sons and other noblemen of Rome to besiege
Ardea.4

Tarquinius Superbus, whose grandfather was fifth king, came to

power violently. Married to the elder daughter of the popular sixth
king, Servius Tullius, he also enjoyed a liaison with his wife’s sister,
Tullia. Inspired by Tullia to remove the obstacles to their marriage
and the throne, Tarquinius murders his wife and Tullia’s husband.
He then dispatches Servius, over whose body Tullia drives her char-
iot.5 Significantly, in adapting this legend to a monarchomachist
perspective, Shakespeare astutely avoids all reference to the brutal,
erotic motivation behind Tarquinius Superbus’s accession. Focusing
solely on Tarquinius as a totalitarian usurper who bypasses legal and
democratic processes, Shakespeare’s Argument offers no hint of the
familial libidinous disposition of Tarquinius Superbus’s son, Sextus
Tarquinius. Nonetheless, it is Sextus’s rape of Lucretia that provides
the justification to repudiate a usurping king’s authority and
changes the political structure of Rome.
Collatine and the legendarily virtuous Lucrece share an idyllic

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184 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

marriage. The concord of their domestic government metonymic-

ally represents the civil ideal. The configuration that Shakespeare
creates for their marriage is described in terms of a symbiotic feudal
relationship. Man is on top, honored and supported by his wife. This
is not through defeat and submission, but rather, according to the
natural law of the chain of being, through love and good will:

Her breasts like ivory globes circled with blue

A pair of maiden worlds unconquerèd,
Save of their lord no bearing yoke they knew,
And him by oath they truly honorèd.
(ll. 407–10)

What Shakespeare describes may be reminiscent of Sidney’s Argalus

and Parthenia, ‘‘he ruling because she would obey—or rather, be-
cause she would obey, she therein ruling,’’ but the perspective sug-
gests vulnerability.6 However much Lucrece accepts and honors
Collatine’s authority, her ‘‘maiden worlds unconquerèd’’ invite in-
vasion and predation.
Like Milton’s envious Satan, Sextus Tarquinius aspires to assert his
tyrannical disposition over this Edenic couple. Shakespeare oppor-
tunely politicizes their personal and domestic realms, linking the
moral outrage of rape—in particular the rape of a wife—with trans-
gression against the divine right of kings:

These worlds in Tarquin new ambition bred,

Who like a foul usurper went about
From this fair throne to heave the owner out.
(ll. 411–13)

Tarquin’s subversion of Roman domestic political order shakes the

entire rotten monarchy. His act initiates a democratic decision to
banish the Tarquinii and leads to the commencement of Roman re-
publicanism:

bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted the people with the
doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyr-
anny of the King; wherewith the people were so moved that with one
consent and a general acclamation the Tarquins were all exiled and the
state government changed from kings to consuls.

In denouncing tyranny and commemorating the beginning of the

Roman republic in The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare demonstrates
his worthiness—perhaps even his desire—to succeed Philip Sidney

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 185

as the main literary spokesperson of the English monarchomachists.

Shakespeare at a stroke made good Essex’s principal deficiency.
Essex could emulate Sidney’s heroic militant Protestantism, but he
spectacularly lacked Sidney’s talent for writing large-scale political-
historical fiction in the Greco-Roman mode.

France and Scotland

As monarchists, the English philhellenist Protestants with whom
Shakespeare became associated in the 1590s acknowledged that the
formation of a European republic on the Swiss model was an unat-
tainable goal. What they did support was popularly and constitution-
ally limited monarchy, on the model advocated by Sidney in the New
Arcadia. Sidney’s ideal national political structure consists of popu-
larly supported, heritable or elected limited monarchy. Internation-
ally, such free Protestant monarchies should best be linked through
marital bonds, creating blood relationships that in the long term
offer the possibility of pan-European-Asian stability. It is a theory
that Sidney’s niece Mary Wroth develops tenfold in The Countess of
Montgomery’s Urania (1621).
As the following genealogical mapping illustrates, all that was re-
quired to develop a union of Protestant monarchies was a change of
emphasis. The thrones of France, Scotland, Spain, and England
were already interconnected through the children of Henry
(Tudor) VII and Elizabeth of York. Their daughter Margaret Tu-
dor’s first husband was James IV of Scotland, the father of James V.
James V’s first wife Madeleine de Valois, daughter of François I, died
in July 1537, shortly after their marriage. His second wife Mary
(1515–60), the daughter of Claude, Duke of Guise of the house of
Lorraine, gave birth to Mary, queen of Scots.
On April 24, 1558, Mary, queen of Scots, niece of the Duke of
Guise, married the dauphin François, the son of Henri II of France
and Catherine de Médicis. Catherine was the daughter of Lorenzo
de Médici, Duke of Urbino. Her uncle Giulio de Médici served as
Pope Clement VII from 1523 to 1534. In 1533, she married Henri of
Orléans, Henri II of France, who belonged to the house of Valois, a
descendant of the Capetians.
Henry VIII’s daughter Mary Tudor became the second wife of
Philip II of Spain. She died on November 17, 1558. On June 21,
1559, in a joint celebration, Henri II and Catherine de Médicis’
daughter Elisabeth (1546–68) was married by proxy to Philip II of
Spain, and Henri II’s sister Marguerite de Valois became engaged to

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186 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

the Duke of Savoy. A festive tournament turned to tragedy when

Henri II received a mortal wound. He died on July 10, 1559. His son
François II, husband of Mary, queen of Scots, was crowned on Sep-
tember 18, 1559. Mary’s Guise uncles enjoyed only a brief reign of
tyranny, for François died on December 5, 1560, to be succeeded
by his brother Charles IX (1550–74). On May 30, 1574, Charles was
succeeded by Henri III.
The widowed queen of France, Mary, queen of Scots, married her
first cousin, Henry Lord Darnley, on July 29, 1565. Their son James
was born on June 19, 1566. His godparents at his christening on De-
cember 17 were Charles IX of France, his uncle the Duke of Savoy,
and his distant cousin Elizabeth I of England. They were all related,
for Darnley’s grandfather Archibald Douglas, sixth Earl of Angus,
was Margaret Tudor’s second husband.7 Held apart by opposed in-
terpretations of the politics of the church, Mary, queen of Scots, was
executed on February 8, 1587.

Henri of Navarre and Love’s Labours Lost

The central figure in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost is Ferdi-
nand, king of Navarre. His living counterpart was Henri III of Na-
varre, the recently crowned Henri IV of France. When on August 18,
1572, Charles IX gave his sister Marguerite de Valois (1553–1615)
in marriage to Navarre, he became third in line to the crown of
France. Those in front were Henri, duc d’Anjou (1551–89), and
François, duc d’Alençon (1554–84). When Charles IX died in 1574,
Henri succeeded as Henri III, and François assumed the title of
Anjou. This is the title under which he courted Elizabeth I from
1579. Anjou died on June 10, 1584, leaving Navarre as heir to the
throne.
Navarre’s wedding led on August 22, 1572, to the Guise-inspired
St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre. In June 1587, Henri of Navarre
sent the poet Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas to Scotland to propose
marriage between his sister Catherine of Navarre and James VI. The
political climate in France changed during the following two years.
By December 1588, the Guises’ extremism led Henri III of France to
arrange the murders both of Henri, third Duke of Guise, and his
brother Louis, second cardinal of Lorraine. The backlash drove him
in April 1589 to reconcile his differences with Navarre. Whether or
not James was influenced by this appeasement, by May 1589 he de-
cided against marriage to Navarre’s sister. But though he opted for
the younger and more attractive Anne of Denmark, whom he mar-

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 187

ried by proxy on August 28, 1589, he did not keep Navarre and the
Huguenots at arm’s length.8 From at least the spring of 1589, James
supported Navarre with Scottish soldiers who, under an arrange-
ment with Elizabeth I, fought under English pay.9
On August 1, 1589, four weeks before James’s marriage, Henri III
of France, deemed by Catholic monarchomachists to have become
a tyrant, was assassinated.10 His choice of Navarre as his successor
met stiff opposition. For years Henri had engaged the Catholic es-
tablishment in an expensive religious war. In 1585, his Protestantism
led the Guises, in collaboration with Philip II, to exclude him from
the succession. Pope Sixtus V deprived Navarre of his kingdom and
lands, and forbade him to hold the throne of France. Further, he
was subjected to accusations of having an illegitimate claim by de-
scent, for he was only related to Henri III through the male line in
the twenty-second degree.11
Henri III of Navarre was the son of Antoine de Bourbon, duke of
Vendôme, and Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre. Jeanne’s father
was Henri, king of Navarre, and her mother Margaret d’Angoulême.
Sister of François I of France, Margaret is best known as the reform-
ist author Margaret of Navarre. After her first husband Charles
d’Alençon died in 1525, she married Navarre in 1527. As her grand-
son, Henri III of Navarre was regarded by Catholic nationalists as a
Capetian usurper, with only a questionable claim to the throne.
The Huguenots moved dexterously to hold their ground. Henri
appointed influential Huguenot courtiers such as du Plessis Mornay
to his council.12 Calvinists, desperate to support the coronation of a
Protestant king, strenuously tried to legitimize Henri IV’s pedigree.
The lengthy panegyric, Carolus Magnus redivivus (1592), by Johan
Guilielmo Stuck (Stuchius) of Zurich, hails him as the new national-
ist savior Charlemagne. The book, published by Joannes Wolphius,
exudes European Protestant propaganda: ‘‘Charlemagne Lives
Again! A Comparison of Charlemagne, the greatest king . . . in the
world, with Henry the great, the most eminent king of France and
Navarre.’’ The title page portrays Carolus M[agnus] looking at Hen-
ricus M[agnus], whose eyes fix on the reader. Both are armed. Char-
lemagne’s sword is drawn; Henri holds the butt of a lance. (See
illustration 7.) To emphasize Henri’s role as savior, the subtitle and
running title announce, ‘‘Carolus Magnus Redivivus in Christo,
Vivat, Valeat, Vincat’’—‘‘Charlemagne lives again in Christ, he will
live, he will be powerful, he will triumph.’’
Through Carolus Magnus redivivus, Stuck seeks support for Henri
from his powerful eighteen-year-old dedicatee, Frederick IV (1574–
1610), the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. In the eyes of similar-

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7. Carolus Magnus Redivivus (1592). Courtesy of Victor Skretkowicz.

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 189

minded Calvinists, Frederick was one of the principal guardians of

the Christian Republic. It was only in January 1592 that he had suc-
ceeded his uncle John Casimir, who had been Philip Sidney’s friend.
When Casimir visited England in 1579, he brought with him Sid-
ney’s old mentor Hubert Languet, and in 1583 he nominated Sid-
ney as his proxy during his installation as Knight of the Garter.
Casimir had brought Frederick up to be a staunch Calvinist. In 1593,
he confirmed his belief in the pan-European Protestant cause when
he married William of Orange’s daughter, Louisa Juliana. They be-
came the parents of the Elector Palatine Frederick V, who in 1613
married James’s daughter Elizabeth. The four ambassadors ap-
pointed by James to escort them to Bohemia were Robert Sidney,
the Earls of Lennox and Arundel, and John Harrington.13 The rela-
tionships within this nexus of tireless Protestant reformers thus ex-
tend from Elizabeth’s court into that of James, embracing the
German Protestant states, the Netherlands, and the France of Henri
IV, Henri of Navarre.
The efforts of Stuck and other like-minded Calvinists to create a
Protestant momentum that would sweep Navarre into popular favor
failed. The French court and city fathers of Paris remained hostile
to Protestantism, refusing to accept his regal authority. But Henri
knew well when to duck and when to weave. The St. Bartholomew
Day’s Massacre, August 22, 1572, following Henri’s wedding to Mar-
guerite of Valois, pressured him to renounce his atheism in order to
survive and, while necessary, to declare himself a Catholic. He would
not now permit his own truculence to divide his country further. On
July 25, 1593, Henri of Navarre accepted that he had to convert to
Catholicism for a second time. This time his rejection of Protestant-
ism proved to be the act of political reconciliation that won him his
kingdom.
In England, Elizabeth I was rocked by Henri IV’s conversion. She
sent Robert Sidney as her ambassador to seek reassurance that
Henri would continue to protect the Protestants of France. Sidney
met Henri frequently between February 8, 1594, and the end of
March. They went hawking, and they remained friends. Sidney’s reg-
ular reports to Robert Cecil confirm that Henri asked for three thou-
sand soldiers to support the Huguenots.14 Sidney remained with
Henri throughout the period of his coronation on February 27,
1594. Then, after Henri decreed his allegiance to the Catholic faith
on March 20, Sidney joined him in his momentous and unexpect-
edly peaceful entry into Paris on the twenty-second. Finally, on
September 17, 1595, Clement VIII granted Henri’s request for abso-
lution, and among great festivity he was proclaimed the ‘‘most Chris-

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190 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

tian King of France and of Navarre.’’15 It was a title much earlier

accorded to him by Stuck and the Huguenots (fol. 79 verso), to
whom its inverted application now would have spelled the triumph
of the antichrist.
Shakespeare’s dedications of The Rape of Lucrece (1593) and Venus
and Adonis (1594) to Southampton demonstrate that, by this time,
he was closely affiliated with the philhellenist Essex-Sidney Protes-
tant circle. His consciously obtuse allegory in Love’s Labours Lost
(1594–5) overlaps and resonates with Henri’s tergiversation in 1594.
In the play, Navarre is unsympathetically portrayed as a grandiose
poseur who changes his mind. Navarre and his courtiers—Dumaine
(de Mayenne), Biron, and Longueville—make an ascetic, quasi-
monastic vow to devote themselves to study and to abjure the com-
pany of women for three years. They become distracted on the arrival
of the king of France’s daughter and her entourage. She brings a
demand that Navarre, rather than receiving half the compensation
owed him for his father’s military support, should instead pay that
amount to the king. (2.1.127–51) Navarre and his men engage in
courtship games with the princess and her ladies, but when the king
of France dies, the princess is recalled. The multiple dalliance is
postponed for a year. Navarre and his associates accept the test of
passing the year as hermits, with the courtier Biron further chal-
lenged to set aside his cynicism and learn how to bring happiness to
the dying.
Love’s Labours Lost criticizes the ease with which Navarre and his
court break their promises and their laws without the least com-
punction. It captures and parodies a historical moment. Biron corre-
sponds with one of Henri’s known Protestant courtiers. But the
presence of the comic figure Don Adriano de Armado, a Spaniard,
and Navarre’s friendship with Mayenne, who historically was at the
helm of the hard-line, anti-Navarre, Holy Catholic League, implies
that the play post-dates and satirizes Henri’s abrupt change to Ca-
tholicism. This suggests that Love’s Labours Lost emanates from the
Essex-Sidney group around the time that the antityrannical The Rape
of Lucrece is being written and published.
Within the play, major allegorical significance must attach to the
king of France’s death. If the real Navarre was already crowned,
those of Essex’s circle who had engaged in war on his behalf now
probably viewed him as a thoroughly fickle dastard. Certainly Hen-
ri’s renunciation of Protestantism worried Elizabeth and split his
Huguenot supporters. At that moment, he seemed to be a lost cause,
and effectively dead. Perhaps in Navarre’s ascetic vow Shakespeare
reflects a notion, or a hope, that the real Navarre would never last

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 191

out the year as a Catholic. He did. However, he did not disappoint

his allies. By including both Protestants and Catholics on his coun-
cil, he set the precedent that James would follow in creating a bal-
ance for the irreconcilable oppositions of Christianity.

The Royal Style

The royal style that Shakespeare employs for tyrants during the
period corresponding to Henri IV’s reign is cold and detached. In
its balanced clauses, rhythmic repetitions, and lengthy periodic sen-
tences, it exudes Ciceronian artificiality. To an audience steeped in
the simplifying tendencies of the Calvinist philhellenist Protestants,
it sounds reactionary and authoritarian. As likely as not it is a parody
of the artificial ‘‘style royale’’ that Henri III consciously developed for
his important state speeches. By adopting this style, it is as if Shake-
speare is restating the political contrast between the Roman republi-
cans and the tyrannical Tarquinii, pitting the Calvinist influenced
Henri IV against his enemies, the Papist successors of Henri III. In
doing so, Shakespeare dramatizes the political agenda of the Essex-
Sidney group, with its resonances of the monarchomachism of the
Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos.
The royal style that becomes the butt of Shakespeare’s satire car-
ries significant political baggage. It was developed in France through
the impetus of the nationalist movement. In the Projet d’éloquence roy-
ale (1579), attributed to Henri III’s tutor Jacques Amyot, French
humanism becomes interrelated with a nationalist linguistic refor-
mation. Amyot attempted to beautify French with the modest appli-
cation of Greco-Roman rhetorical formulae in his translations of
Heliodorus’s An Ethiopian Story (1547), Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe
(1559), and Plutarch’s Lives (1559) and Morals (1572). But Amyot
in Paris was out-done by the exiled nationalist Calvinists. In Geneva,
the indefatigable Huguenot publisher Henri Estienne took human-
ist learning to new heights. His scholarly Greek edition of Plutarch,
and his publication of Amyot’s translations of Plutarch with Simon
Goulart’s Huguenot commentaries, struck at the cultural heart of
the French court.
The English court was not oblivious to these developments. In
1574, following the death of Charles IX and the accession of Henri
III, Roger North was sent as ambassador to the court of France.
North, an activist within the English philhellenist Protestant group,
took with him his brother Thomas, who translated Plutarch’s Lives
from Amyot’s version. It was published in 1579, the year of Anjou’s

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192 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

courtship of Elizabeth, of the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, of Spenser’s

Shepheardes Calendar, probably also of Sidney’s Letter to Queen Elizabeth
protesting against the Anjou marriage proposal, and of Amyot’s Pro-
jet d’éloquence royale.
In his Projet d’éloquence royale, Amyot advises Henri III to develop
a style of rhetorical address that is peculiarly ‘‘royal.’’ It should be
detached, dignified, and clearly distinguishable from any known
style. In the same year, at Henri III’s invitation, Henri Estienne at-
tended at court and published his own Projet de l’oeuvre intitulé de la
précellence du langage françois (1579)—‘‘a plan for a work called the
superiority of the French language.’’16 Estienne was carefully walk-
ing a political and cultural tightrope, for only months earlier he
completed and anonymously published Deux dialogues du nouveau
langage françois, italianizé et autrement desguizé, principalement entre les
courtisans de ce temps (Geneva, 1578), satirizing the Italianate fashions
and loan-words of Henri III’s court.17 Estienne maintains a consis-
tent position in his Projet, promoting nationalist, religious, and lin-
guistic puritanism on humanist grounds. He argues that the ancient
French language possesses linguistic affinities with, and is capable of
the beauties of, ancient Greek. Building on this thesis, Estienne’s
dedicatory Epitre ‘‘au Roy’’ proposes that Henri III should learn to
speak ‘‘royalement.’’ This would be a distinctive royal style, created
by adopting the rhetorical sophistications of ancient Greek. True
French, unadulterated by the Italian of Catherine de Médicis’ papist
court, is fully capable of answering his needs.

The Philhellenist Protestant Reaction

Estienne’s nationalistic ideals made an impact on English philhel-
lenist Protestant literary figures such as his friend Philip Sidney, and
Sidney’s early associate Edmund Spenser. Sidney parallels Estienne’s
satirical mode, and his ideas for modifying religion and politics
through language and literature, in A Defence of Poetry, written about
1580. In this Protestant parody of stuffy humanist criticism, he em-
phasizes the divine origins of poetry, the poet’s divine gift, and the
poet’s responsibility to serve the reformation. He also represents the
philhellenists’ nationalistic determination to purify the mother
tongue by reinstating disused or unfashionable diction.
In 1579, Spenser joined Leicester’s household and dedicated his
Shepheardes Calendar to Sidney. Adopting a position that very closely
resembles Estienne’s, E.K.’s prefatory epistle praises Spenser’s at-
tempt to purge English of unwanted foreign loan-words: ‘‘he hath

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 193

labored to restore, as to theyr rightfull heritage such good and natu-

rall English words, as haue ben long time out of vse and almost
cleane disherited.’’18 English Celtic-British monarchomachists,
many of whose Norman names retained vestiges of their Gallic roots,
remained conceptually flexible over what constituted their mother
tongue. The common factor between Sidney’s and Shakespeare’s
modern English, Spenser’s artfully antiqued English, and James’s
anglified Scots, is their adoption of a clear, lightly figured Greco-
Roman style.
Neither Sidney nor Spenser associate the revival of a national dic-
tion with the abandonment of moderately stylized rhetoric. In addi-
tion, Sidney purposefully introduces several Greek forms of
versification, accompanied by their patterns of scansion, into the
Old Arcadia. They become part of his case for demonstrating, in the
manner of Estienne, that English is adaptable to ancient forms in a
way that other languages are not. It cannot be an accident that the
languages to which Sidney compares English, finding his native
tongue more versatile, are those at that moment under the political
domination of the Catholic church: Spanish, Dutch, French, and
Italian.19
In the Faerie Queene of 1590, Spenser moderates his use of the ‘‘old
rustic language’’ of The Shepheardes Calendar. While retaining the al-
literation that gives it an antique ‘‘English’’ flavor, he writes in a
comparatively free-flowing, modestly figured style that is quite stun-
ning for its clarity. It is this Atticized style, combined as in book 5
with a nationalistic allegory supporting the war against Philip II of
Spain (as Grantorto), that in 1596 confirms Spenser’s continued ad-
herence to the goals of the philhellenist Protestants. If there is no
discernible shift in the rhetorical style of his narrative, it is because
Spenser, like Sidney, had always been a committed adherent to the
Greco-Roman principles of Plutarch and the sophistic novelists,
Longus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus.
But more significant for an appreciation of Shakespeare’s repre-
sentation of the ‘‘style royale’’ as the voice of tyrants is its contrast with
the public style adopted by Elizabeth I. When Elizabeth delivers her
antityrannical address to her troops at Tilbury on August 8, 1588,
she speaks in a lightly figured Greco-Roman style. Where Henri III
intends to distance himself from his people, Elizabeth makes a cal-
culated effort to create a close personal bond with her subjects. Her
use of ‘‘we’’ must not be mistaken for the affected Victorian ‘‘royal
‘we’.’’ On the contrary, Elizabeth thoughtfully uses ‘‘we’’ and ‘‘I’’ to
distinguish between her public role as queen, and her commitment
to her people as an individual:

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194 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

My loving people,
We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take
heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treach-
ery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and
loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that,
under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal
hearts and good-will of my subjects.20

The warm confidence that Elizabeth tries to inspire could hardly be

a greater contrast to the rhetorical distancing that Henri III con-
trives to achieve through his ‘‘style royale.’’ Contemporary reports of
his address to the Estates-General in October 1588 confirm that his
audience reeled with delight at his unexpectedly regal, and other-
worldly eloquence. His style represented the pinnacle of achieve-
ment in perfecting a distinctively ‘‘royal’’ style. It was a conscious
rhetorical affectation that raised his status to that of demi-god and
confirmed his regal superiority.21
Henri III’s advocating religious toleration in this speech no doubt
contributed to the rage in those reactionary quarters that branded
him a heretic. Far from being an isolated gesture, it was symptomatic
of the attempt at accommodation that only ended with his murder.
On December 23, 1588, after Philip of Spain’s armada failed to cap-
ture the English throne, Henri III had the extremist third Duke of
Guise, and his brother Louis, second cardinal of Lorraine, executed.
His position was further eased on January 5, 1589, when his mother,
Catherine de Médicis, died. He was last of the Valois kings and child-
less. In April he established a partnership with his heir Navarre, even
though Rome had declared that Navarre’s Protestantism barred him
from the crown.22 In the eyes of the church, the king exceeded his
privilege by associating with the anti-Christ. On August 1, 1589, he
was assassinated as a tyrant.

Plainness Encoded

Within the Huguenot-supporting Essex-Sidney circle, the rhetori-

cal excesses associated with Henri III’s detached, Greco-Roman,
French royal style came to represent tyrannical extremism. As early
as 1592, when Mary Sidney Herbert published her 1590 blank verse
translation of Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine, the denigration of dec-
orative rhetorical style, and the politique associated with it, becomes
overt. Garnier wrote his allegory on the wastefulness of the French
religious wars in heavily figured neoclassical Alexandrine couplets.

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Sidney Herbert systematically reduces Garnier’s style from one exud-

ing Ciceronian and Senecan richness to one resembling Plutarchan
simplicity. Further, her patronage and encouragement of like-minded
philhellenist Protestant writers ensured that decorative restraint be-
came the hallmark of the English Huguenot supporters. Her pro-
tégé Samuel Daniel, for example, takes the clarity of Plutarchan
plainness to an extreme in his Cleopatra (1594) and The Civil Wars
(1595; entered October 11, 1594).
A similar marked tendency toward rhetorical simplicity character-
izes Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece
(1594). These poems emanate from the Essex wing of the philhelle-
nist Protestants, which include Robert Sidney. It is noticeable that,
as Shakespeare comes increasingly under the influence and patron-
age of Essex’s Huguenot supporters from the mid-1590s onwards,
his sensitivity to the politicization of rhetorical style substantially in-
creases. Rapidly adopting the role of the literary figurehead of Es-
sex’s philhellenist Protestants, Shakespeare soon begins to mimic
Henri III’s ‘‘style royale’’ in order to ridicule tyrannical behavior. The
contrast between abusive kingship expressed through the royal style,
and good government through a plainer style, remains a regular fea-
ture of his plays from Richard II in 1595 through to The Winter’s Tale
in 1609.

The Politics of Plain Style

Sidney Herbert published her ascetic, rhetorically simplified ren-
dering of Garnier as the second piece in a volume that opens with
her translation of Philippe du Plessis-Mornay’s Discourse of Life and
Death. There can be no doubt that this publication was a major polit-
ical gesture, and that she intended her radical alteration of Gar-
nier’s style to signal this. Her late brother Philip Sidney had worked
closely with du Plessis Mornay. Now, in January of 1592, du Plessis
Mornay came to England with his wife, urgently seeking military sup-
port for Essex’s beleaguered troops at Rouen. The siege was going
badly. Essex had lost his brother and issued a challenge to the com-
mander of Rouen. The bulk of his soldiers were sick. In exchange
for unknown quantities of aid, Elizabeth managed to secure Henri
IV’s permission for his recall.
Sidney Herbert published her book shortly after du Plessis Mor-
nay’s departure. Her openly associating herself with the Huguenot
cause would have encouraged further support from the Queen. Na-
varre’s position remained desperately precarious. His right to the

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196 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

succession was flatly rejected by the Catholics of Rouen, Paris, and

other strongholds of the Holy League, and he required interna-
tional assistance. This is the crisis that prompted Stuck’s Carolus
Magnus redivivus (1592), with its title page optimistically claiming
that ‘‘Rex Gallus Gallos protegit’’—‘‘the French King protects the
French.’’ It was a slogan designed to reassure the Huguenot faithful,
to muster the support of Frederick IV, and to demonize the Catholic
establishment as traitors to their nation.
The aspirations of the Huguenots and their supporters suffered a
body blow with Henri’s conversion politique in 1593. Nonetheless, the
pessimism brought about by Henri IV’s renunciation of Protestant-
ism proved to be unjustified. From the conservative perspective, his
court contained a disturbing number of Protestants. By 1606 he per-
mitted Protestant worship at Charenton in Paris, defying the Edict
of Nantes (1598), which conditionally legalized Protestantism in
parts of France and excluded Paris.23 But like King Macbeth, Henri
IV continued to be regarded as a tyrant by usurpation. In the eyes of
papists, he ‘‘had acquired by force of arms a kingdom to which he
had no legal right,’’ and defied the Council of Trent. In 1610 he was
duly assassinated by a Catholic monarchomachist.24

James I’s Plainness

Like Henri IV of France, James VI of Scotland regarded himself
not so much a Protestant as a Catholic reformer. His Basilicon Doron,
an uncompromising manifesto on the divine right of kings, was first
printed in 1599. On his accession to the English throne in 1603, an
expanded version was reprinted virtually throughout Europe. And
by the time Henri IV was killed, James had long been engaged in a
pamphlet war with Rome, criticizing corruption in the Roman
church. More significantly, he openly rejected the usurping powers
granted by the Council of Trent, which gave the Church the right to
maintain authority over kings.
As king of England, James’s opening salvo against Rome’s inter-
ference in the state comes at the end of his first speech to Parlia-
ment, on March 19, 1603. With regal immodesty, James paraphrases
the order of marriage, and Elizabeth I, St. Paul and Jesus Christ:
‘‘What God hath conioyned then, let no man separate. I am the Hus-
band, and all the whole Isle is my lawfull Wife; I am the head, and it
is my Body; I am the Shepherd, and it is my flocke.’’25 James couches
this part of his speech in ancient biblical rhythms and imagery, but
he rapidly abandons their sophisticated beauty. He quickly slips into

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 197

the less rhythmic Plutarchan / Calvinist style used by Mary Sidney

Herbert, Daniel, and Shakespeare in order to denounce Romanist
subversives: ‘‘At my first comming, although I found but one
Religion. . . . Yet found I another sort of Religion, besides a priuate
Sect, lurking within the bowels of this nation.’’ These are not ‘‘the
trew Religion, which by me is professed.’’ They are ‘‘the falsly called
Catholikes, but trewly Papists,’’ and ‘‘the Puritanes and Nouelists.’’26
James had every right to be wary of Catholic activists. Pope Clement
VIII (1592–1605) required Catholics in England to ensure that the
crown went only to a Catholic, and as a result, ‘‘James I stood con-
demned as a tyrant by usurpation.’’ Little wonder that the papist-
inspired monarchomachia of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 led di-
rectly to James’s demands for the Oath of Allegiance (1606).27
In his speech to Parliament in 1603, James parries charges of hav-
ing a weak claim to the throne. Such accusations became a common-
place in the Papist-Protestant struggle—they were leveled at Henri
IV, then valiantly refuted by Calvinists such as Stuck. James takes the
initiative by arming himself with a defense of his ancestral right to
the throne, exploiting the English side of his family tree to justify
possession of the crown. He also claims that he can bring internal
peace to England and Wales, and that he alone holds the key to the
peaceful unification of mainland Britain through the union of the
kingdoms of Scotland and England:

by my descent lineally out of the loynes of Henry the seuenth, is reunited

and confirmed in mee the Vnion of the two Princely Roses of the two
Houses of LANCASTER and YORKE. . . . which, as it was first setled and
vnited in him, so is it now reunited and confirmed in me, being iustly
and lineally descended, not onely of that happie coniunction, but of
both the Branches thereof many times before. But the Vnion of these
two princely Houses, is nothing comparable to the Vnion of two ancient
and famous Kingdomes, which is the other inward Peace annexed to my
Person.28

The conclusion of this speech is most unusual in having a rhetorical

focus. In it, James confirms a belief in the association between pre-
tentious, indirect Ciceronian style and the rhetorical evasiveness of
tyrannical politics. His strong commitment to plainness binds him
rhetorically to the politics of the Huguenots, and to the aspirations
of the old Essex-Sidney philhellenist Protestants, reformers anxious
to achieve a greater say in Elizabethan government. Among those
who carried on that tradition, and whom James brought into the
center of his court, were Shakespeare’s old patron Southampton, as

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198 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

well as Robert Sidney, and Sidney’s nephews William and Philip Her-
bert, who in 1623 became the patrons of Shakespeare’s First Folio.
James’s remarks on plain style become intertwined with a state-
ment on monarchic responsibility. His conscious use of clear, native
English diction would have been music to the ears of Calvinist lin-
guistic nationalists. There is also a possibility that the Northern/
Scots linguistic ring in the past participle ‘‘throwne,’’ meaning
‘‘twisted,’’ reinforces his concept of a united ‘Great Britain’:

it becommeth a King, in my opinion, to vse no other Eloquence then

plainenesse and sinceritie. By plainenesse I meane, that his Speeches
should be so cleare and voyd of all ambiguitie, that they may not be
throwne, nor rent asunder in contrary sences like the old Oracles of the
Pagan gods. . . . That as farre as a King is in Honour erected aboue any
of his Subiects, so farre should he striue in sinceritie to be aboue them
all, and that his tongue should be euer the trew Messenger of his heart:
and this sort of Eloquence may you euer assuredly looke for at my
hands.29

James defines the plain style as representing the honesty and respon-
sible government called for under the double covenant theory pro-
posed by the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos. Through this link between
plainness and Calvinist principles of good monarchy, in the manner
of Mary Sidney Herbert, Daniel, and the followers of Essex, James
declares his affinities with the English supporters of his spiritual and
regal brother, Henri IV of France.

Shakespeare, Royal Style, and Tyranny

By the time of Elizabeth’s death and James’s accession in 1603,
Shakespeare had represented the styles of regal speech in many dif-
ferent modes. The early declamatory Henry VI plays, written prior to
his affiliation with Essex’s group, make little distinction between
kings and their advisors. This homogeneity of style continues
through 1592–93, when Shakespeare writes Richard III. The plot
concludes with Richard losing his throne in battle against his succes-
sor Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who is crowned Henry VII. With
Henry VII’s marriage to Elizabeth of York, and the amalgamation of
the houses of Lancaster and York, this play marks the end of the
Wars of the Roses, a fact which would not have been lost on James I.
By necessity, Shakespeare gives the final speech to Henry. It is lightly
metaphorical, rhythmically measured, notably clear, and the royal
‘‘we’’ does not dominate the end-stopped pentameters:

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 199

Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled

That in submission will return to us,
And then—as we have ta’en the sacrament –
We will unite the white rose and the red.
(5.8.16–19)

The play then concludes with Henry’s metaphorically laden, though

verbally unpatterned, prayer for peace:

Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,

That would reduce these bloody days again
And make poor England weep forth streams of blood.
Let them not live to taste this land’s increase,
That would with treason wound this fair land’s peace.
Now civil wounds are stopped; peace lives again.
That she may long live here, God say ‘‘Amen.’’
(5.8.35–41)

Ten years later, but only one year after the third quarto edition of
this popular play, in his first speech to Parliament James I recalls this
moment of England’s rebirth. His particular outlook on monarchy
allows him to identify it as a nation where Peace, personified in his
own self, would choose to dwell—and this desirable locale would be-
come even more especially inviting to Peace if it were united with
Scotland.
Shortly after writing Richard III, during a period that corresponds
with his becoming an acolyte of Essex and his circle, Shakespeare
develops the detached, Ciceronian royal style that characterizes his
tyrants up to 1609. There is a stark contrast between the tyrannical
Saturninus in Titus Andronicus (1592–93), who still forbears to use
the affected royal ‘‘we,’’ and the particularly artificial style adopted
for Richard II, written about 1595. Richard’s rhetorical style stands
out as peculiarly regal, even by contrast to the dying John of Gaunt’s
well-larded eulogy on England. Gaunt’s rhythmic style represents
the gentler courtliness of a bygone era: ‘‘This royal throne of kings,
this scepter’d isle, / This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, / This
other Eden, demi paradise . . . This nurse, this teeming womb of
royal kings,’’ and so forth (2.1.40–51). Its repetitive anaphora
heaves with metaphors expressed in half-lines, end-stopped lines,
and effective enjambment. Its emotive, exaggerated claims neverthe-
less contain an earnest lament for the passing of honorable monar-
chic standards of behavior.
In contrast to Gaunt’s humanist decorum, Richard’s heavily em-
broidered declamatory style sets him apart from his nobles. His style

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200 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

is a code that instantly identifies him as a tyrant. As he sentences

Mowbray and Bolingbroke to exile, the royal ‘‘we’’ predominates.
The sounds of Richard’s tyranny are embedded within a dispropor-
tionately long Ciceronian period. To create this special effect,
Shakespeare embroiders a monosyllabic matrix with repetitious, bal-
anced conditional clauses; complex, slowly evolving metaphors; and
an unusually high frequency of compound epithets:

Draw near,
And list what with our council we have done.
For that our kingdom’s earth should not be soil’d
With that dear blood which it hath fostered;
And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect
Of civil wounds plough’d up with neighbours’ sword;
And for we think the eagle-winged pride
Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,
With rival-hating envy, set on you
To wake our peace, which in our country’s cradle
Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep;
Which so roused up with boisterous untuned drums,
With harsh-resounding trumpets’ dreadful bray,
And grating shock of wrathful iron arms,
Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace
And make us wade even in our kindred’s blood;
Therefore, we banish you our territories.
(1.3.123–39)

The remorseless forward movement of these rhythmically pro-

tracted clauses imparts a distinctively pretentious royal flavor. Its ex-
aggerated hyperbole continues beyond all meaningful rhetorical
function and is little more than decorative copiousness. This pro-
longed and empty proclamation adapts and parodies the stylistic ex-
cesses that raged through Elizabeth’s court during the 1570s and
1580s. Coming from Richard’s mouth, such rhetorical flaws become
all the more poignant to Mowbray and Bolingbroke. They realize
that their sentences of banishment come from a hollow-brained ty-
rant.
A monarchomachist audience would call for Richard to be de-
posed and executed and see its ambitions fulfilled. The king’s assas-
sination in this play de facto categorizes Richard II as a monarchomachist
statement of monumental proportions. It remained meat and drink to
Essex’s Calvinist supporters. After a sustained campaign and many
squabbles with the queen, on March 25, 1599, the plain-speaking
Essex was appointed lieutenant and governor-general of Ireland. It

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was around that time that Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar. In Febru-
ary 1601, Essex’s idealistic monarchomachist beliefs led him to at-
tempt a coup and got him executed. If it was not Shakespeare’s
Richard II, then certainly another about Richard II’s deposition was
intended to have been staged on the eve of his rebellion.
In Julius Caesar (1599), Shakespeare demonstrates how easily the
quasi-republican principles represented by plain-speaking political
figures can be thrown into turmoil. Throughout the play, the style
used by Shakespeare’s Brutus reflects the historical Brutus’s plain
republican rhetoric. At a key moment in the play—the turning
point, as it happens—during Brutus’s prose eulogy over Caesar’s
body, Shakespeare silences republican plainness. He makes Brutus’s
eulogy contorted and singularly unattractive to the massed citizens,
and goes on to demonstrate how easily the glib Antony misappropri-
ates plain style in order to subvert republican values.
Shakespeare creates an ironic perspective in Brutus’s tyrannical
imperative, ‘‘Be patient till the last. / Romans, countrymen, and lov-
ers, hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear’’ (3.2.12–
14). This is a far cry from Elizabeth’s appealing opening at Tilbury,
‘‘My loving people.’’ For all its beguiling duplicity, the freely flow-
ing, lightly metaphorical style that Shakespeare gives Mark Antony’s,
‘‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears’’ (3.2.70) is far
more successful. In this play, however, Shakespeare is not represent-
ing a simplistic opposition between a failing, poorly articulated re-
publicanism and the tyrannical inclinations of those who employ the
decorative ‘‘royal style.’’ Instead, Julius Caesar is used to map out a
very specific rhetorical direction. It is the final speech of the play,
Octavius’s consciously plain eulogy for Brutus, which confirms that
Shakespeare has not suddenly abandoned the propagandist func-
tion of rhetorical style:

According to his virtue let us use him,

With all respect and rites of burial.
Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie,
Most like a soldier, ordered honourably.
So call the field to rest, and let’s away
To part the glories of this happy day.
(5.5.75–80)

To Essex and his Calvinist followers, Shakespeare’s portrayal of Oc-

tavius offers hope for a plain-dealing, antityrannical, constitutional
monarchy. This, they anticipated, would arrive with James’s succes-

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202 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

sion. King Lear (1604–5), written for the King’s Men, reflects the re-
formers’ ongoing concerns about tyrannical power and succession.
In a play where the dominant royal style smacks of proclamation,
the misguided tyrannical Lear infelicitously condemns his daughter
Cordelia’s plainness:

Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

I do invest you jointly with my power,
Pre-eminence, and all the large effects
That troop with majesty. Ourself by monthly course,
With reservation of an hundred knights
By you to be sustained, shall our abode
Make with you by due turn. Only we shall retain
The name and all th’addition to a king.
(1.1.127–34)

Here the second person plural pronoun as a characteristic of an un-

favorable royal style persists. Shakespeare continues to use it in The
Winter’s Tale (1609–10). There the gradual transformation of Leontes’
clipped speech into a full-blown ‘‘royal’’ style establishes it as the
rhetorical imprimatur of a tyrant. Leontes even adopts the distanc-
ing tone and rhythms of a royal proclamation as he commands Anti-
gonus to abandon Perdita:

We enjoin thee,
As thou art liegeman to us, that thou carry
This female bastard hence, and that thou bear it
To some remote and desert place, quite out
Of our dominions; and that there thou leave it,
Without more mercy, to it own protection
And favour of the climate.
(2.3.173–79)

Failure, he threatens, is ‘‘On thy soul’s peril and thy body’s torture’’
(2.3.181). By contrast, the more direct styles utilized by Paulina and
Hermione identify them as representatives of the peace and truth.
Paulina’s clever equivocation saves her skin: ‘‘I’ll not call you
tyrant; / But this most cruel usage of your queen . . . something sa-
vours of tyranny’’ (2.3.115–20). No statement could be clearer, more
controlled, less pretentious, or a stronger confirmation of Shake-
speare’s symbolic use of rhetorical style.
Among the series of tyrants whose identity is signified by their
royal style, Macbeth (1606?) perforce remains an anomaly. Shake-

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 203

speare creates in Macbeth a misguided tyrant of both usurpation and

of oppression, ‘‘an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered’’ (4.3.105). Mac-
beth is inspired, and his seizing the throne is justified, first, by the
antichrist in the form of a coven of witches, and second, by his
‘‘fiend-like queen.’’ Under their guidance, he ascends the ladder
from loyal monarchist hero to absolute tyrant, a ‘‘butcher’’ who, as
master of ‘‘cruel ministers,’’ exercises his ‘‘snares of watchful tyr-
anny’’ (5.11.33–35).
Macbeth’s Hamlet-like self-consciousness inhibits his rhetorical
presentation, making him an atypical Shakespearean tyrant from
this period. Even within Shakespeare’s repertoire, as an individual,
Macbeth is an aberration. But the rhetorical style associated with tyr-
anny is ever in his ear. His wife’s assertive rhetorical prowess, with
its metaphorical subtlety, and unanticipated integration of unusual
diction with figured sound patterns, easily compensates for his mod-
eration. Forceful enough to scold Macbeth into regicide, the most
substantive example of Lady Macbeth’s other-worldly regal style is
her rhythmic, treble invocation of diabolical powers:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry ‘‘Hold, hold!’’
(1.5.38–52)

Macbeth, distinguished by its hero’s psychotic megalomania and per-

verted regicide, closes with a justified monarchomachist backlash. It
demonstrates cooperative resistance engaged in tyrant killing. The
play’s Scottishness, and its prognostication of the kingship passing
to Banquo’s line (1.3.65), believed to be that of James’s Scottish an-
cestors, prefigures the nationalistic panegyric that Shakespeare re-
peats in Cymbeline (1609–10) and All is True (or Henry VIII, 1613).

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204 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

James I, Sovereignty, and the Conclusion of Cymbeline

In Triplici Nodo [. . .] or an Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (1607),
a denunciation of papal authority, James condemns the atrocity per-
petrated by papists against Henri III of France. For all his faults, he
was James’s mother’s brother-in-law by her first marriage, and a
king. Like Henri IV, Henri III had upheld the tenets of the Gallican
Church, the national church of France, which accepted papal au-
thority only in spiritual matters. The understanding Henri III
achieved with Henri of Navarre by 1589 made him the target of a
Catholic extremist. In 1605, the same conflict between church and
state would lead to an attempt on James’s life in the Gunpowder
Plot.
On May 14, 1610, Henri IV, who never confirmed his adherence
to the Council of Trent, and was a tyrant by usurpation in the eyes
of Rome, fell victim to a papist. It was one day after his second wife,
Marie de Médici, niece of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was formally
crowned. They had married in 1600, following the annulment of
Henri’s marriage to Marguerite of Valois. In 1601, Marie gave birth
to Henri’s successor, Louis XIII.30
Henri IV’s rule was compromised from the outset by papal tyr-
anny. The same demand for papal control over political as well as
spiritual matters equally undermined Elizabeth I in England and
James VI in Scotland. With Henri IV’s death in 1610, James was left
as the principal leader of the Protestant nations. He was the only
king left to espouse Protestantism, the only one to defy the Council
of Trent by maintaining the independence of his monarchy from
papal control. Now more than ever, he made himself the target of
rogue monarchomachists from both extremes of the religio-political
divide.
In his memoirs, Henri IV’s Protestant minister of finance, Maxi-
millien de Béthune, duc de Sully, records that the king he served
aspired toward the creation and leadership of a peaceful European
Christian union. It is a goal not far from James’s own. In 1609 James
furnished the second edition of Triplici Nodo with an extended pref-
ace, A Premonition to all Most Mightie Monarches, Kings, Free Princes, and
States of Christendome. He dedicated his work to the elected Holy
Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and all the other kings and princes of
Europe, to whom he sent copies. By circulating his treatise, he as-
sumed the intellectual leadership of the princes of Christendom. He
also defended his personal interests in maintaining political inde-
pendence from Rome.
In Triplici Nodo, James urges all Christian princes to defy Pope Paul

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SHAPESPEARE, HENRI IV, AND THE TYRANNY OF ROYAL STYLE 205

V (1605–21). James summarizes the pope’s totalitarian demands in

fourteen propositions. They begin, ‘‘1. That I King James, am not
the lawfull King of this Kingdome, and of all other my Dominions.
2. That the Pope by his owne authoritie may depose me,’’ either him-
self or by any other means. A Premonition continues James’s defiance,
refuting arguments put by the pope’s spokesman, Cardinal Bellar-
mine. Its publication embroiled James in a European controversy
that only reinforced his long-held belief in the divinity of kingship.31
He predictably rejected Bellarmine’s defense of the papal right ‘‘to
intervene in the temporal affairs of states, to deprive monarchs of
their kingdoms and bestow them elsewhere, and to make and un-
make laws.’’32
James remained the sole obstacle to complete papal authority in
matters between a king and his state. Isolated in this way, he publicly
associated himself with Henri IV of France. That he held Henri in
the highest esteem is clear from the preface to his Déclaration in de-
fense of le droit des rois, et indépendance de leurs couronnes (1615), trans-
lated by R. B[etts]. as A Remonstrance for the Right of Kings, and the
Independance of their Crowns (1616). There James recalls his ‘‘late en-
tire affection to K. Henry IV. of happy memorie, my most honoured
brother, and my exceeding sorrow for the most detestable parricide
acted vpon the sacred person of a King, so complete in all heroicall
and Princely vertues.’’33 Nor, it should be noted, was James at this
point hostile toward Henri III, another king who promoted Chris-
tian reconciliation within a national church.
Around 1609–10, Shakespeare abandons the cynical ‘‘style royale’’
associated with authoritarian rule. Cymbeline, which closely follows
The Winter’s Tale, marks a clear break from nearly fifteen years of rhe-
torical practice. In this play, Shakespeare introduces a fresh royal
style that symbolizes tolerant moderation. Lines flow freely into one
another as the syntax requires. The tone is characterized by sophisti-
cated polysyllabic diction, used unpretentiously and without nega-
tive connotation. Shakespeare continues to use this new royal style
in The Tempest and in the play on Henry VIII. It also happens to be
James’s own preferred style, adopted about the time that he takes
on a new role in European politics.
James’s fraternal bond with Henri IV lay in their insistence on the
sanctity of kingship. On August 18, 1609, Henri’s ambassador to the
pope conveyed a message from James. It effectively echoes Henri’s
own position as head of a national church, though it is one on which
Henri maintained a discreet silence. In his message, James adopted
a position that was at once conciliatory and confrontational. He
‘‘was prepared to recognize the pope as first bishop and head of the

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206 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

Church in spiritual matters provided the pope would renounce his

power to depose kings.’’34 The pope’s perspective was that his doing
so would make him a heretic. They had reached stalemate.
The pope’s response to James’s proposal in August 1609 suggests
that Cymbeline, a masque-like panegyric, may be an optimistic propa-
gandist representation relating to this exchange. Portraying the
strength of a unified Great Britain, Cymbeline combines the themes
of nationalist independence with the possibility of conditional rec-
onciliation with Rome. The plot revisits the simple demand for pay-
ment that forms the basis of Love’s Labours Lost. In Cymbeline, Rome
demands overdue tribute, attacks Britain, and is then defeated.
When Lucius presents the case for paying tribute to Augustus Cae-
sar, and King Cymbeline replies, the discussion is conducted in mea-
sured tones, separating the issue from personalities (3.1.60–81).
The debate is brief, but clear, forceful, and formalized. While Luci-
us’s demand is colored by the echoes of a binding legal document,
it is definitely not characterized by the declamatory style used earlier
by Shakespeare in political exchanges with tyrants:

When Julius Caesar—whose remembrance yet

Lives in men’s eyes, and will to ears and tongues
Be theme and hearing ever—was in this Britain
And conquered it, Cassibelan, thine uncle,
Famous in Caesar’s praises no whit less
Than in his feats deserving it, for him
And his succession granted Rome a tribute,
Yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately
Is left untendered.
(3.1.2-10)

At stake here are principles, not personalities. An aggressive por-

trayal of either side in the ‘‘style royale’’ would be an unwelcome in-
trusion. The entire play forms a many-sided argument leading only
to a single conclusion. It requires a thoughtful rhetorical sophistica-
tion that, unlike Shakespeare’s parodic royal style, does not in itself
carry the burden of allegorical significance. Cymbeline’s reply is
therefore equally measured:

You must know,

Till the injurious Romans did extort
This tribute from us we were free. Caesar’s ambition,
Which swelled so much that it did almost stretch
The sides o’ th’ world, against all colour here
Did put the yoke upon ’s, which to shake off

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Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon

Ourselves to be.
(3.1.44–51)

Having defeated the Romans, Cymbeline offers to ‘‘submit to

Caesar / And to the Roman empire, promising / To pay our wonted
tribute’’ (5.6.460–62). This paradoxical conclusion of Cymbeline has
to be understood in the light of A Premonition, as well as the ex-
change between James and the pope in August 1609. From that per-
spective, the play’s allegory is perfectly clear. James reasserts the
Huguenot and English philhellenist Protestant acceptance of the
original, uncorrupted form of Christianity as it existed under the
Augustan Roman republic. But he also rejects any trace of political
subjugation to Rome. James will extend his hand to Rome, but
Rome must first accept defeat on the issue of sovereignty.
In real life, James would not have his way. But Shakespeare’s shift
in register after 1609, from the rhetorical posturing of a monarcho-
machist toward the mellower tones of an international diplomat,
can be read as a reflection of how the king’s own acting company
supported his life-long endeavor to reform papal tyranny, and to as-
sert British independence.

Notes
1. Roland Mousnier, The Assassination of Henry IV, trans. Joan Spencer (London:
Faber and Faber, 1973), 111–13.
2. Ibid., 94, 104.
3. The Political Works of James I, ed. Charles Howard McIlwain, Harvard Political
Classics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918; repr. New York: Russell
and Russell, 1965), 53–70.
4. Shakespeare’s texts are quoted from The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen
Greenblatt et al. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).
5. Piero Treves, ‘‘Brutus (1),’’ ‘‘Lucretia,’’ ‘‘Servius Tullius,’’ ‘‘Tarquinius (2)
Superbus,’’ and ‘‘Tullia (1),’’ in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Nicholas Geof-
frey Lemprière Hammond and Howard Hayes Scullard, 2nd ed., 183, 622, 981,
1038, 1098 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
6. Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (the New Arcadia), ed. Vic-
tor Skretkowicz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 372.
7. Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (1969; repr., London: Mandarin Paper-
backs, 1989), 116, 336–37; Caroline Bingham, James VI of Scotland (London: Weiden-
feld and Nicolson, 1979), 7–8, 22.
8. Bingham, James VI of Scotland, 105, 114–16.
9. Julian Goodare, ‘‘James VI’s English Subsidy,’’ in The Reign of James VI, ed.
Julian Goodare and Michael Lynch, 110–25 (118 n.) (East Linton: Tuckwell Press,
2000).
10. Mousnier, Assassination, 110–11.

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208 VICTOR SKRETKOWICZ

11. Ibid., 106.

12. Ibid., 155.
13. Millicent V. Hay, The Life of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester (1563–1626) (Wash-
ington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984), 218.
14. Ibid., 147–51.
15. Mousnier, Assassination, 111–15.
16. Henri Estienne, Projet de l’oeuvre intitulé de la précellence du langage françois, ed.
Edmond Huguet (Paris, 1896).
17. Henri Estienne, Deux dialogues du nouveau langage françois, edited with an in-
troduction by Pauline Mary Smith (Geneva: Slatkine, 1980).
18. The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. E. Greenlaw et al., 11 vols.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1932–58), 7:8.
19. Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van
Dorsten (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 120.
20. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, ed. Meyer Howard Abrams, 6th ed.
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 1:999.
21. Jacques Amyot, Projet d’éloquence royale, ed. Philippe-Joseph Salazar (Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 1992), 15–16, 26–30.
22. Mousnier, Assassination, 111.
23. Ibid., 112, 140, 153–55.
24. Ibid., 107.
25. James VI and I, Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 136.
26. Ibid., 138.
27. Mousnier, Assassination, 171.
28. James VI and I, Political Writings, 134–35.
29. Ibid., 145–46.
30. Compare Mousnier, Assassination, 152, 158 ff.
31. The Political Works of James I, lix–lxiii, 86.
32. Mousnier, Assassination, 103.
33. The Political Works of James I, 169.
34. Mousnier, Assassination, 176.

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Bacon’s Spenser
W. A. Sessions

IT HAS LONG BEEN ASSUMED THAT JOHN MILTON REPRESENTED SPENSER’S

most pervasive influence on early modern England. I want to argue
that Francis Bacon (1561–1626) represents a deeper and more en-
during influence, not only in terms of Bacon’s texts but more sig-
nificantly in terms of Bacon’s framing of his own mythological
structures. These structures became the heart of Bacon’s vast
scheme of science and technology that, for all its fundamental ideo-
logical differences, starts, as I shall show, with the same epic and so-
cial intentions Bacon would have read in Spenser’s poetic texts in
the 1590s, and in his letter to Raleigh. Bacon especially responds
to Spenser’s profound originality in inventing his hero, the plural
Arthur.
What is perhaps more important to note is a larger context for
this intertextuality. All three—Spenser, Milton, and Bacon, unlike
Shakespeare or Sidney for that matter—intended to write epics that
had a direct relationship to history and to society, to what St. Paul in
Ephesians 5:19 (Geneva translation) calls ‘‘redeming the time.’’
They were, in short, ideological. With differing visions but starting
with the same premise of the breakdown in their own time of his-
tory—meaning a new burning of Troy, a new Fall—each of these
contemporaries marked labor (or labors) as the method for the res-
toration of order.1 In Bacon’s terms, this serial labor would be re-
vealed in the hexemeral program of his Instauratio magna (the Great
Instauration), published in 1620, at the height of Bacon’s immense
power as Lord Chancellor.2 Furthermore, the originating model for
all three, as it was not for Shakespeare or Sidney, was, as I argue,
Virgil. What each sought to reinvent then was nothing less than the
Virgilian project of recovering communal order from collapse and
chaos. This recovery, at least Virgil’s, entailed not only heroic ethical
and personal disciplining but virtual social engineering. In Augus-

209

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210 W. A. SESSIONS

tan Rome’s political and moral empire, as R. R. Bolgar has re-

marked, ‘‘Virgil was to replace a legion.’’3
Whether Virgil’s Rome became in later texts the empire within or
the empire without, epic representation of Virgil’s Rome for Bacon,
Spenser, and Milton meant redeeming a disjointed time. Just as with
Virgil after the mid-century civil wars of his time, so all three English
masters shared a particular historicity. That is, all three responded
to the dominating historical dilemma of their time that would even-
tually lead to England’s own Civil War in the mid-seventeenth cen-
tury. This was the cultural breach initiated by Henry VIII that the
modern British historian Scarisbricke calls ‘‘a remarkable act of na-
tional amnesis’’ a 1,000-year-old culture—and that Eamon Duffy and
others have recently and fully documented.4 The breach bespeaks
an effect clearly evident in a collective sensibility. All around re-
mained a landscape, internally and externally, of, in Shakespeare’s
line, ‘‘bare ruined choirs’’—a line that Shakespeare borrowed from
a famous recusant poem possibly written in the late 1580s or early
1590s by the grandson of the poet Earl of Surrey, Philip, Earl of Aru-
ndel, whom Elizabeth I imprisoned in the Tower where he died a
Catholic martyr.5
Thus, however one considers the good or evil of the ‘‘ruined
choirs,’’ the cultural disaster left a void in English humanists, what-
ever their religion. From the ex-Carmelite monk John Bale onwards,
in varying ways, they posed the central question: how to mythologize
a new society (or an old culture newly stripped) and give it pur-
pose?6 The Protestant Bale and his friend John Foxe both began
early, when they were refugees at the house of the Duchess of Rich-
mond, Surrey’s sister, to look at this question of re-mythologizing
their fragmented culture. It was a cultural rehabilitation the Reform-
ers took on with complete consciousness, especially Foxe in his evo-
lutionary and primitivist theories, as, a millennium before, their
earlier culture had shaped its own mythological unity, whatever po-
litical and social diversities, out of another collapse, the fall of
Rome. In differing ways, then, Bale, Foxe, and reforming contempo-
raries like Bishop Jewel undertook active programs, especially build-
ing on what Erasmus had already indicated in his famous call to
arms in his dedicatory epistle to Leo X: ‘‘Ad fontes.’’7
Significantly, this call appeared in Erasmus’ 1516 dedication to
the Roman pontiff of his new Latin translation from the original
Greek of the Christian New Testament. This new text had the effect
of an earthquake on Luther. It was hardly accidental, therefore, that
when Luther and the early Protestant reformers found a radical
primitivism in Erasmian texts and methods, their own texts of radi-

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BACON’S SPENSER 211

cal transformation would make it their own. Thus, so they could

argue, out of the deepest primitive past (or the most remote for
modern Europe) could come surprisingly contemporary and origi-
nal ‘‘redeming’’ texts. These writings could offer what they consid-
ered solutions for the corruption of their time and their inherited
historical chaos.
Inevitably and logically, the question of how to transform the past
in terms of a desired future led Bale, Foxe, and countless other early
English reformers to social and political answers. The question, in
its many variants, would have equally variant answers, the English
Civil War giving the most conclusive in the middle of the seven-
teenth century. Sadly, the ambiguity and complexity of earlier vari-
ants were lost in the absolute ideologies that led to the final
dismantling not only of a 1,000-year-old culture but of the Henrician
and Jacobean and Caroline political and cultural solutions to the di-
saster. The pretenses of early modern England effectively collapsed
with this war. After that traumatic event, a new model of culture—
largely rising from Bacon and his ideological masterpiece, the New
Atlantis—began to dominate the Restoration and Enlightenment,
whatever their nostalgic echoes, with new undercurrents and subver-
sions.8
But in that period of uncertainty before the annealing force of
the English Civil War, a fertility of solutions rose from the very di-
lemma and ambiguity early modern England had discovered in it-
self. The Civil War showed, in fact, that these solutions had never
fully answered the profound complexity of the original question
Henry VIII had opened up. But in this interim Spenser, Milton, and
Bacon did dramatize their own solutions to this question of what
constitutes a valid cultural frame. Despite different genre and liter-
ary strategies, they all sought to represent an absolute basis for pre-
revolutionary English culture, such as one had existed, for better or
worse, before Henry VIII. Ironically, their language and metaphor,
their own textual solutions, became more permanent than the ideol-
ogies and destruction of civil war. Remarkably, their conclusions
were similar for the development of a new society out of their own.
The strategies of all three were essentially Virgilian, and particu-
larly for Spenser and Bacon, it was the Roman poet’s own specific
remedy of georgic labor for the building of a new empire out of the
breakdown and disjunction of the old destroyed culture (the burn-
ing of Troy). Virgil’s were texts all three knew from their earliest
humanist training. The question then of what renovatio would serve
England—as the new Rome had Virgil—became their question. Vir-
gil’s texts at the heart of the Western culture of their time could lead

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212 W. A. SESSIONS

them to face questions that were haunting that time and to put their
solutions into literary texts in the mode of Virgil. But seeking cul-
tural solutions had been in the works in the 1530s and 1540s, when
the question of cultural identity was first asked. The earliest reform-
ers like Bale and Foxe had themselves confronted the question of
how, in their own modern England, a past like theirs, which they saw
as disgraced and diseased, could become a present model, much less
a future one, for the development and building of their own history.
How could it ‘‘redeme the time’’? The Renaissance and humanist
early modern England could provide enough Greek myths and
Roman narratives but they were hardly credible in themselves as
models for society. In place of the forbidden prayers to the Virgin
Mary, and the like, where did the new English citizen go for a frame
to his world? Most of all, what had happened to all the English he-
roes that used to define ideals of human existence, especially those
of the Arthurian legends, still the most popular fiction read in Eliza-
bethan England?9 It was to these questions that Virgil offered
Spenser, Bacon, and Milton the hope of an answer, namely, a means
to write their own texts of renovatio, as he had written his at the be-
ginning of a new empire with the hero of Aeneas.

II
By no accident, all three—Spenser, Milton, and Bacon—faced, at
one time or another, the metonymic paradox of an old Arthur for a
new England. How could the old culture’s Arthur of the Round
Table become the new hero of an epic in a culture with totally differ-
ent concepts of time and history? Spenser and Bacon still saw
around them medieval England in its fresh ruins (and what re-
mained, Oliver Cromwell in Milton’s time would wipe out), but the
cultural supports for its systems had vanished. Thus, with humanist
and Protestant goals, like Virgil’s, how to restore a true living his-
tory? Each began with a simple equation. Labor in building a new
society or a new Rome—even a collection of labors—could have no
meaning unless it was conjoined, as in the Virgilian epic, with a hero
or, more likely, a heroic center, to unify such labor or labors. There
could never be, of course, a return to the myth of transcendence
that surrounded the original Arthur and his own Round Table of
collectivity. Time and the nature of subjectivity could never be the
same after the Ochamite split of the Thomistic synthesis of grace
and time or Nicholas of Cusa’s determination of the one and the
many or Erasmus’s own concepts of language and communication

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BACON’S SPENSER 213

building on these shifts, among others.10 There could never be a re-

turn to any Arthuriad that focused on the personal hero himself,
who uniquely represented the community as a whole, as Aeneas had
for Virgil. Tudor or Jacobean society could not agree on such a com-
posite heroic figure as ancient Rome had; philosophical and theo-
logical tables could no longer be round because, in the first place,
around one, so few would sit together. Most crucially, Lutheran and
Calvinist concepts of time and history had built on a cosmology of a
fallen humanity, a broken hero, that only Christ could redeem.
Human institutions and certainly representative personal heroes
were as cursed and fallen as society itself.
Thus, the old transcendent Arthur as unifying hero, if brought
forward, could only be a cultural anachronism. If a new Arthur, his
signifiers could not be structured through a 1,000-year-old commu-
nal process, as had the old Arthur. Most of all, the individual text-
maker may want to respond to the losses of community in his own
culture, but the response could only be his, his own text to create
the right community. His could never be the community so centrally
figured as Virgil’s. For their fragmented world, then, the only hero
could be plural, never the centrally conceived hero of a unified
Rome. Such an invented hero would have to face, in the ideologies
that either directly or indirectly entered his text, the limitless per-
spectives of Renaissance painting. These would translate into the
perspectives of Spenser’s endless narrative or the wide turbulent
ocean surrounding Bacon’s island utopia. Even in the most absolute
of the redemptive early modern texts built on Virgil, Milton’s hero
is surprisingly plural and his antihero actually the nearest to the old
Arthur of ideological certainty. But long before Milton, Spenser, and
Bacon had made major originating choices in revising their own Ar-
thurs. It is these choices I want to analyze here and so demonstrate
not only the profound originality of Spenser in inventing Arthur but
the universalizing Bacon brought to Spenser’s plural Arthur.

III
Spenser’s choice could be nothing if not anachronistic. For one
thing, the Elizabethan poet had been born in the reign of Mary I
and had spent his first crucial years in a world shaped by her cultural
imperatives, so many of which—including the primitivist motto from
Erasmus, Veritas temporis filia—her sister would employ. Spenser had
known from the start there could be no return. After all, as a boy
and young man, had he not walked amid the broken-down institu-

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214 W. A. SESSIONS

tional buildings of monasteries and churches all over London,

which the Spanish ambassador had commented on during those
years?11 The young Spenser had also known first-hand what mythic
appeal the old systems still held for Tudor England, not least the
extremely popular corpus of Arthurian legends. Thus, the task of
the poet was to turn around the anachronism of Arthur, if he wanted
that figure to center his epic poem. His strategy would be paradoxi-
cal and, no doubt, for his audience as shocking as a modernist avant-
garde text at the beginning of the last century. Spenser’s Arthur
would be reconstituted out of old England precisely to indicate a
new progressive history at work. Whatever the appearance of nostal-
gia that thus formalized Spenser’s re-invention of the lost culture,
Spenser’s Arthur was designed to be a true ‘‘once and future’’ hero,
with the emphasis on a future leading out of the destruction. Cen-
tered on the national hero, his epic would build, as his prefatory
letter to Raleigh makes clear, on a genuine prolepsis. What Spenser
here announces as his anticipated first twelve books emphasizes the
proleptic nature of the epic. His heroic structure would thus have
clarity and direction, whatever the disjunction of his Tudor world.
But then Spenser faced a question of convincing such an audience
in the actual ‘‘delivering . . . forth’’ in Sidney’s phrase: how to build
a convincing proleptic text, a prophetic epic, out of the ‘‘bare ru-
ined choirs’’ early Tudor culture had brought forth?
Spenser knew quite well there were texts of anachronism being
written around him. Queen Mary herself had sought to transform,
as the poet knew, the new English culture, which was irrecoverably
broken, as she recognized wisely, from its past. Her method, with the
aid of the English Cardinal Pole, himself of royal blood, was to bring
to their native land the dynamic mythology of the Counter-Reforma-
tion sweeping Europe—their own ‘‘once and future’’ history. By no
accident, it was she who moved Chaucer’s remains to Westminster
Abbey and founded Poets’ Corner. With her progressive ideology,
the real hero of an English epic dedicated to her might indeed have
been a beneficent Lancashire Grantorto. Her sister also had no such
illusions about the past, but Elizabeth I also knew the new English
mythology had to be grounded in that most central social phenome-
non of her time and early modern Europe, as Nietzsche, Foucault,
and Bloch have shown: genealogy.12 It was by no accident, therefore,
that two great sociological and political texts written in the first dec-
ades of her reign—Spenser’s youth—asserted a new genealogy for
the new ideology of Elizabethan England. John Foxe’s Actes and Mon-
uments argued that new English martyrs and their Protestant Chris-
tian culture had recovered true religion. So did Bishop Jewel’s

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BACON’S SPENSER 215

Defense of the English Church. Translated from the Latin by Bacon’s

mother, Lady Anne Bacon (for C. S. Lewis, ‘‘the best of all sixteenth-
century translators’’13), Jewel’s Defense had extraordinary influence
on all forms of English Protestantism. It argued that the Elizabethan
settlement had purified the Church by returning to its earliest tradi-
tions.14 Both Foxe and Jewel wrote originating primitivist texts that
operated, as Spenser could read, on a principle of anachronism.
So a new hero had to be found amid the chaos if a young poet of
the late 1570s and 1580s wanted to write an epic to ‘‘redeme the
time’’ and build a lasting empire like Virgil’s. Whether inspired by a
dynastic epic like Tasso’s (or, for that matter, Virgil’s last six books)
or whether Spenser did indeed want the Earl of Leicester to be rep-
resented as the Arthur who might marry Gloriana as Elizabeth and
produce great offspring, he had a problem. He had to reconstruct
something more than a discredited medieval figure centralizing a
Holy Grail and the knights seeking it. If the labors of these knights
constituted an earlier English version of Virgil’s georgics, Spenser
could certainly not authenticate the ridiculous miracles associated
with those labors. Almost sixty years ago, Josephine Bennett traced
the steps by which the young Spenser elected to choose Prince Ar-
thur. Bennett caught the unusual nature of Spenser’s anachro-
nism.15
As she documents, Arthur had generally been written off by mod-
ern English culture. Certainly by the 1570s and 1580s, when all the
major choices for Spenser’s epic had been made, Erasmus, More,
Ascham, and countless humanists, especially Protestants, had shown
courtiers that the Arthurian material was not respectable. To go
back then meant confronting the bad taste of anachronism, agree-
able in amusing entertainments like, say, Shakespeare’s comedies,
but problematic, not for a serious epic. Only in the last two decades
of Elizabeth I’s reign did the reputation of Arthur ascend, as Ben-
nett shows, when culturally and historically any lie might work to
glorify the success of the Tudor queen and her marvelous ability to
build a breakthrough up from the nightmare she had inherited in
1558. As later generations would learn, Elizabeth’s seeming political
success was only tenuous. The new horror and nightmare known as
the Stuarts and the violence of the English Revolution soon de-
scended.
But in the 1570s, if the young poet desired to follow, as Cuddie
says, ‘‘the Romish Tityrus [Virgil]’’ and ‘‘sing of warres and deadly
drede, / So as the Heauens did quake his verse to here,’’16 then he
would need such a national hero, anachronism or not. At this point,
trying to work around the problem of cultural disjunction, the

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216 W. A. SESSIONS

young Spenser might indeed have re-read Virgil and recognized the
epic dialectic the Roman poet composed when he finished the
Georgics around 30 bc and began the Aeneid. That is, as the unfin-
ished text of Virgil’s epic asserts, cultural disjunction could become
a source of cultural solution. The point was to identify the hero with
a cultural hero like Augustus and a salvific ideology, with more em-
phasis on the second than on the first. If the breakdown of Roman
civil wars could lead, so Virgil textualized, to the breakthrough of an
imperial Rome figured in Augustus, so a young Tudor poet reading
Virgil might dream of his own revolutionary text that could quake
the heavens and, as prolepsis, indicate a future for his culture.17
But how to create the right ‘‘antique image,’’ in Spenser’s phrase,
so that it would be credible for a modern audience and centralize
an innovative text for glorifying a new empire and promising a new
pax romana? Empires were built on such texts, and, for a text maker
in Ireland, the need to find a proleptic text even greater. Spenser’s
answer was that this past ‘‘Image’’ could be recovered, but only iron-
ically. That is, the right ‘‘image’’ could be recovered or rewritten
from the past, but only in a plural epic designed to ‘‘fashion,’’ as
Spenser says in his letter to Raleigh, future heroes. In this letter, the
emphasis is on the heroes but only as they exist in a dialectic with a
hero. Thus, any ‘‘image’’ would have to build on plurality. Aristote-
lian probability—the heart of Sidney’s argument in his Defense of Poe-
sie—could only be realized in quite an original text suited to the way
Tudor society now viewed its time. This meant a text for Tudor audi-
ences built on a concept of fallen history that called for action that
could never be complete or transcendent but must always be serial
and ongoing, a new kind of collectivity built, like Bacon’s inductive
logic, on diffused parts. This meant a text built on a process of ellip-
sis or diffused action, a serial narrative, an epic of plurality whose
‘‘endlesse worke’’ represented redemptive labors both centrifugal
and centripetal. At no point, unlike the Arthurian legends, however,
do they meet at a Round Table. Whatever the originating or con-
cluding points outside of the narrative, in the text the line of Spens-
er’s plot is linear, forward, singular, and the hero ‘‘pricking on the
plaine’’ is ‘‘war-faring’’ (or in Milton’s variant in the 1644 Areopagi-
tica, ‘‘way-faring,’’ Milton’s whole passage directly invoking Spenser).
The power of Spenser’s example could be found in the famed el-
liptical style and language of the Bacon of the 1597 Essays and the
very calculated aphorisms of Bacon’s Novum Organon, not to men-
tion the vast catalogues of his Historiae and elsewhere throughout
Bacon’s vast canon. The point is not so much exact parallels (al-

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BACON’S SPENSER 217

though these exist) as that Spenser’s ideological and dialectical uses

of the method of ellipsis within a proleptic or prophetic English epic
gave Bacon permission, so to speak, to develop his own originating
structures. Spenser had built his elliptical method through a
method of deliberate parody, as Bacon would also use this method.
Thus, in another primitivist example of ironic reversal, Spenser pa-
rodies not only the diffuse narratives of the Round Table but those
of the old Catholic but now despised Golden Legend. Both types of
medieval narratives were elliptical in structure, and Spenser bla-
tantly appropriates the term of Legend for each of his wandering
knights. So, like the reformers such as Foxe, Spenser uses a primitiv-
ism renversée. Ellipsis in these earlier narratives served the purpose
Spenser would now appropriate. He, too, would interrupt, shorten,
so that the whole can be seen. It is this strategy Bacon would appro-
priate.
Bacon also saw, in his own texts of ellipsis and prolepsis, just how
Spenser sets up his dialectic of presentation. That is, in Spenser’s
strategy, absence was necessary to see the presence of the transcen-
dent whole, the movement of the whole toward meaning. Such a
whole could never be reached, or meaning fully recovered, unless
through immanent individual acts—Legends—of heroism or sanc-
tity. These acts could be endless but were always collective, proleptic
in their promise. Thus, a dialectic was needed to direct the relation-
ship of this one and the many, and it needed to be actualized, made
alive, in a literary text working at both ends of the spectrum. As with
the centrifugal old Holy Grail legends and knights, Spenser needed
a centralizing figure. Only another Arthur could promise closure, if
not achieve it, in the centripetal movement of Spenser’s epic. The
Elizabethan poet did not need any figure with a sacramental mon-
archial presence or any kind of potential stasis as center—but a
catalysis for the centrifugal and centripetal appearances and disap-
pearance that formed the plural labor, the real subject of his epic.
In this active process, it is hardly a surprise that Spenser’s Arthur is
a prince, a becoming, never a king.
Thus, this interplay of processing center and part, absence and
presence, helped to produce for the Tudor reader a believable cul-
tural myth, at least an Aristotelian probability. In this sense, disjunc-
tion, the experience of Tudor life, could always be placed in a
process of linguistic, metaphorical, and ideological certitude—at
least for the moment of reading the text. Such experience and strat-
egies of disjunction and conjunction would translate directly, as I
have noted, into the texts of Bacon. As many commentators on
Bacon’s Essays and Instauratio magna have noted, central to his

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218 W. A. SESSIONS

canon are both Bacon’s theory and practice of the aphorism and its
own dialectical representations.18 It was Bacon’s reading, I believe,
of the greatest and most originating poet of his age that led him,
among many influences, to rethink and develop his own sense of
elliptical style and prophetic history.
But the main point for both Spenser and Bacon is that within the
texts, the plural heroes—the human frames for the readers—exist
only in community or not at all. Wayne Erickson’s observation on
the actual ellipsis in the text Prince Arthur is reading in the House
of Alma is helpful here: ‘‘Spenser excises the historical Arthur from
his poem and from chronicle history; the historical Arthur ceases to
exist except as an inference born of an absence in the minds of read-
ers whose conscious or unconscious cognizance of cultural myth in-
stinctively mends the gap that stands open at the end of Briton
moniments.’’19 Spenser’s Arthur is thus ironically present in the poem
and distant at the same time. By his very name and the legends ac-
cruing to it, Spenser’s hero can bring old history forward. But
through Spenser’s powerful parody of the old medieval genre, espe-
cially its method of ellipsis, that is, its form of disparate georgic la-
bors, Spenser can set up a new equation: ellipsis is prolepsis, and
prolepsis is ellipsis—at least as Spenser defines his method in The
Faerie Queene. There can be no completeness, except through a series
of endless labors and ever-new perspectives, a world suited to Bruno,
Galileo, and Renaissance painting.
Thus, if a hero like Arthur were to embody a solution to the Tudor
cultural dialectic—that is, as an English hero who continues the past
in its metamorphosis into the future—the new Arthur had to repre-
sent a genuine textual probability. This meant a literary text, no mat-
ter how social the epic or soteriological the ideology Spenser held.
Poetic artefact alone could embody such a plural hero. Only lan-
guage could transform—deliver ‘‘forth’’—an abstract hope into a
living mythic reality for the whole of society. As Sidney wrote in the
Defense of Poesie: ‘‘the skill of each artificer standeth in that idea [Sid-
ney’s emphasis]’’ and ‘‘that the poet hath that idea is manifest, by
delivering them forth in such excellency as he had imagined them,’’
so that we have not just ‘‘a particular excellency, as nature might
have done, but [may] bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many
Cyruses, if they will learn aright why and how that maker made
him.’’20
This defense of the universalizing force of poetry by the young
hope of the Dudley family leads us finally to the meaning of Spen-
ser’s method. We can now see the validity of Arthur as anachronism
in Spenser’s epic that Bacon would creatively transform. Thus, such

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BACON’S SPENSER 219

figuration as Spenser’s plural Arthur arises only in a dialectic be-

tween history and probability, in a gap that allows us not only to have
Sidney’s ‘‘particular excellency’’—a nationalist hero, a product of
legend and fact—but ‘‘to bestow’’ an Arthur or probability ‘‘upon
the world to make many’’ Arthurs. This bestowing will be in an ellip-
tical method that represents another georgics of labors, both within
the text and within its readers. This parodic method in The Faerie
Queene operates as a series of actions in a collective and proleptic
text, as does Spenser’s one probable Arthur and the many ‘‘Ar-
thurs’’ representing ‘‘endlesse’’ Legends. Only such a text for a
Tudor poet in Ireland can bring prophetic meaning to what James
Joyce calls ‘‘the nightmare of history.’’ With such a text, the young
Spenser could rewrite the Virgilian solution to historical disjunction
and originate a new kind of history and culture for his time and
place. In this intention, as with Virgil’s in Augustan Rome, past and
present and future have meaning only in the poet’s myth, the proba-
bility, the text itself and its centralizing hero. The new plural Arthur
is defined textually by a process of history: prolepsis as its ellipsis and
its ellipsis as prolepsis.

IV

Bacon’s final major work, the utopia New Atlantis, shows how the
Jacobean lord chancellor transformed Spenser’s epic form and pro-
duced for the first time, at least textually, the modern idea of prog-
ress and a new mode of science fiction. The center of this
transformation focused on Arthur as anachronism and took, at least
in Bacon’s last work, an amazing transfer from Virgil and Spenser.
Bacon’s first published work in 1586 was entitled ‘‘The Misfortune
of Arthur’’21 and his final utopia, The New Atlantis can be viewed, I
now suggest, as a collective Arthur redivivus. From it, in the guise of
science and technology and an updated Round Table in the Solo-
mon’s House of Bacon’s imaginary utopia, another Arthur entered
and dominated the mythology of the modern world. I have argued
that Spenser’s anachronism of Arthur in the 1580s was central to
his o’er-leaping the cultural break of his time—to make his Arthur
modern, pluralistic in a world separated from the medieval by Cusa-
nus, Giordano Bruno, and others. As with Spenser, time and history
are for Bacon not merely more horizontal than vertical (meaning:
transcendent) in their trajectory but exist in an infinite universe
with its own ‘‘endlesse worke,’’ an enormous ocean like the un-

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220 W. A. SESSIONS

charted South Pacific where islands of the future like Bensalem are
waiting to be discovered.
In this difference of time and history, Bacon took another impor-
tant step that built on the past but was radically original. The New
Atlantis represents an utterly new future, immediately, as Bacon’s au-
diences saw, different from all previous utopias they had known.
What was remarkable for them was that Bacon’s text actualizes the
idea of progress in a new setting. The future as controlling a text was
hardly new. In Virgil, the concept of a future determining a present
occurs in the words of Jupiter himself in the first book of the Aeneid.
There is then, from the beginning of this intertextuality, a sense of
promise. With it comes also an idea of progress or progression of
history toward some fulfillment. Such an idea of progress informs,
as Bacon saw, Spenser’s own originating text. Spenser’s entire struc-
ture of laboring knights wandering centrifugally and centripetally is
one of hope. For Bacon, the shift toward hope is more dramatic.
Bacon’s entire canon, especially all of the Instauratio magna, is
driven, one might say, by such a ‘‘once and future’’ concept of time
and history. It should be further noted that Bacon, too, derives his
idea of progress in a kind of root-primitivism, the truly archaic or
remote that would displace the immediate corrupt past—what he
had inherited from earlier humanist texts. From Lorenzo da Valla
to Erasmus to John Bale to the English Protestants, Bacon utilizes
this central humanist method whose ideology his mother had trans-
lated into the Tudor world at the time of his birth. Ironically, such
primitivism becomes more pronounced as each of the three masters
devises his epic solution to the disjunction of their history.
Spenser’s recall of a medievalism less than fifty years old turned
the Virgin Mother into a redemptive Gloriana with her own secular
forms of intercession; Bacon’s Platonic island in the uncharted
South Pacific was found largely by old texts of discovery of every
kind, including geographies of the mind; and finally Milton’s ulti-
mate human archaism describes the fall in the Garden as a remy-
thologized Virgilian georgics in the midst of a civil war that had
stripped the illusions of the Henrician settlement. In this method of
humanist primitivism, nostalgia or the anachronism of Arthur trans-
lates into action and the building of a new society. In the Virgilian
paradigm of burning Troy becoming new Rome, Milton’s heroes
Adam and Eve descend from the lost Garden into the plain; Bacon’s
new convert leaves the collective world of the hidden island to an-
nounce its superior technology; and in Spenser, wandering knights
‘‘pricking on the plaine’’ always return, after instauration in a spe-
cial house or garden or mountain-top, to the ‘‘endlesse worke’’ that

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BACON’S SPENSER 221

contains the promise of restoring a fallen time. In this sense, in both

Spenser and Milton, and especially in Bacon, a utopia exists to in-
form a broken world. The result is, as the Marxist Frederic Jameson
defines all such utopia making, that hortatory and communal
agenda as in Spenser, Bacon, and Milton ‘‘betray a complicated ap-
paratus’’ that displaces the poet’s own time in terms of a special nar-
rative history. A dialectic of two histories follows. What Jameson calls
‘‘the topical allusion’’ of the author’s historical society is juxtaposed
to a language of probability about that society whose words and
myth finally subsume it—and replace the society itself.22 As Bolgar
notes, Virgil would replace a legion in building an empire.

V
Thus it should be no surprise that the young ambitious lawyer of
the early 1590s, Francis Bacon, must have read Spenser’s epic imme-
diately on its appearance, as did most of London. There is clear evi-
dence that he incorporated its structures into the early masques he
was composing for the Earl of Essex.23 As Raleigh had faded, Essex,
who had married the widow of Sir Philip Sidney and was building on
Sidney’s beatified image, became one of Spenser’s court hopes. This
was not least because he represented a counterforce to Burleigh,
Bacon’s uncle by marriage, and his son Robert Cecil, both of whom
impeded Bacon’s career, as the father had Spenser’s. With his con-
stant anxiety about the court, Spenser would have known of Bacon,
the son of a lord chancellor, from the 1580s onwards and no doubt
knew of the later crucial intellectual event of the appearance of
Bacon’s Essays in 1597. Their rhetorical structure and inscription
had announced a new type of humanist courtier. Of course, for
Bacon, it was precisely the difference of his new kind of anti-
Romance hero—the courtier of his Essays—from a figuration like
Spenser’s Sir Calidore, for example, that conversely made Spenser
so valuable as a source of parody and origination. Bacon could view
Spenser as Spenser had the medieval Arthurian epic: that is,
through the distancing that produces composition, the dialectic of
a new myth-making.
For both epic makers, this dialectic was built on parody, an an-
cient process useful at times of historical dislocation, particularly
where there arises, as Bacon names it in a scientific work, the ‘‘tab-
ula abrasa’’ of a broken culture and another to be written in.24 In
Bacon’s case, the statesman and politician of Stuart England had
seen all too clearly his world on the edge of civil war. Indeed, such a

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222 W. A. SESSIONS

method of parody has recently been seen by Bacon scholarship as a

viable means to interpret Baconian science. Paolo Rossi makes this
point, for example, in discussing Bacon’s 1609 De sapientia veterum
(The Wisdom of the Ancients), where Bacon parodies Greek myths
to explain scientific and social reality—Cupid as the atom; Orpheus
as natural philosophy; Diomedes as religious zeal. Rossi also elabo-
rates the value of parody for Bacon in his discussion of Bacon’s 1622
De principiis atque originibus (Things and Origins). In that text, to
prove his structural theory of the atom, amazingly like those of mod-
ern physics, Bacon uses the myths of Cupid and Coelum. Both, notes
Rossi, are ‘‘allegorical, mythological works and contain the most
coherent and complete renderings of Bacon’s thought in its materi-
alistic phase.’’25 Thus, Bacon’s parody is constructive and not de-
structive, as Bacon himself defines the method in his private
notebook of 1608, Commentarius solutus: ‘‘To consyder wt opynions
are fitt to nourish tanquam Ansae and so to grift the new upon the
old, ut religiones solent’’ (11:65). Even Bacon’s specific use of Vir-
gil’s Georgics operated with this same constructive method of parody.
He takes the Roman poet’s second major work and uses it in the
1605 Advancement of Learning to justify a theory of labor Bacon is de-
veloping for the mind itself: ‘‘to instruct and suborn action and ac-
tive life, these Georgics of the mind, concerning the husbandry and
tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical descriptions of
Virtue, Duty, and Felicity’’ (3:419).
Bacon’s utopia begins with the same kind of opening as the Aeneid
and Spenser’s Faerie Queene, a condition of loss that needs a soterio-
logical act of intercession. In the Aeneid, a storm has forced Aeneas’s
fleet to Africa and Carthage; at the start of the narrative of Spenser’s
epic, a storm drives the Red Crosse Knight and Una into the Wan-
dering Wood and so initiates the conflict. The New Atlantis opens
with a storm at sea, the kind of imitation of Virgil Bacon would have
seen recently reenacted at the 1612 wedding of James I’s daughter,
the Princess Elizabeth, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Bacon too
funded and may have written parts of his own rather Spenserian dra-
matic presentations for James I in the next three years).26 In Bacon’s
short narrative, the terrible storm has driven a group of European
sailors to a strange island in the uncharted South Pacific—the kind
of standard popular first-person explorers’ narrative familiar to both
Bacon and Spenser. Bacon’s transformation of this popular form,
like Spenser’s, is remarkable. He elaborates in his text this device of
subjectivity and the method of a central consciousness—easy for a
reader to identify with—for a central irony: through this subjectivity,
the most objective series of scientific and technological wonders can

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BACON’S SPENSER 223

be revealed. An enormous elliptical catalogue at the end of Bacon’s

epic offers glimpses of just what Europe’s future might be.
The revelation of this new Faeryland develops with a single driv-
ing narrative intent of conversion. Such had also been the intent,
one way or another, of each of Spenser’s six labors, a turning away
and then a turning toward the ultimate reality of Gloriana. Like the
catechesis in the House of Alma or the House of Caelia or the visions
of Scudamour at the temple of Venus or of Calidore on Mount Aci-
dale, Bacon’s confessional fiction develops its narrative by a series of
events-qua-teaching. Bacon’s method is realistic, not allegorical, but
symbolic and mythic discourses surround the events of the story.
Thus, as soon as the strangers are allowed to enter the island, the
governor of the House of Strangers, arrayed with a vast turban, nar-
rates, as they visit special places of the island, the wonders of an ear-
lier ruler, King Solomon. He established the center of the island, an
institution of science and research that led both to Experiments of
Light and Experiments of Fruit, the dialectic for Bacon of all human
activity and knowledge. It is soon clear that Bacon is operating with
a number of parodies here, not least of the Bible. These strange
aliens use Jewish customs, rituals, dress, and names from the Old
Testament, but their most remarkable parody comes from the New
Testament, as the governor relates. They are Christians, of a third
kind beyond Protestant and Catholic, and they were evangelized in a
miracle by that one apostle whose name would always rouse English
Protestants, Saint Bartholomew.27 A small ark floated near the island
miraculously identified by a vast ‘‘cylinder of light’’ and inside were
‘‘all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments’’ sent by
the apostle (3:137–38). These texts form the ideological center of
the island and operate in a kind of fundamental dialectic to the
community of holy scientists and to the social alien celebrations like
the Feast of the Tirsan, with its sexual imagery celebrating males
‘‘who have 30 or more descendants of their body’’ (3:147) and to
the narratives and appearance of Joabin the Jew, an inscription sig-
nificant in the evolution of modern European society.
The narrative concludes with the grand appearance in Bensalem
of the Father of Solomon’s House. The Father singles out the young
sailor for a special catechesis and final healing. The Father is not
only an Arthur Redivivus, head of a new round table, but director
for a group like that collective which Bacon admired, the most
avant-garde collective in early modern Europe, the fiercely active
celibate Jesuits. This new holy Father will teach the convert-son how
to redeem society. He will first be given a vast listing of specific

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224 W. A. SESSIONS

achievements of Solomon’s House (including new medicines,

strange fruits and vegetables, inventions like the telephone) and
then, most important of all, the aggregate and dynastic method by
which knowledge is processed, a model of corporate organization
which Marxists have praised. But not only is the new convert sent
out to reveal these tidings of great joy. He is given what runs the
whole system and fires its research and technology: capital, money
in this case from the state. A new social technology has evolved:
‘‘And so he left me,’’ says the charged young man in the last line of
this unfinished epic, ‘‘having assigned a value of about two thousand
ducats, for a bounty to me and my fellows’’ (3:166).
The sailor’s subjectivity has thus been transformed into social and,
one assumes, political action through a narrative, a myth. The con-
vert now carries this message of the myth, as does Bacon’s utopia, to
all society, to all readers. Spenserian Faeryland thus allowed Bacon
the imagining not only of an archaic utopia, Aristotelian probabili-
ties Spenser had built his epic upon, but Bacon could now appro-
priate this most seminal of modern English epic to create a myth
and narrative of collective hope in the midst of a common ‘‘aborigi-
nal calamity’’ and a specific cultural ‘‘tabula abrasa.’’ It is precisely
this emphasis on collectivity which Bacon found in Spenser that the
Marxists have admired in Bacon and that distinguishes Bacon’s the-
ory of science and technology from that, for example, of the mathe-
matical and abstract physics of Galileo or the solipsistic conclusions
of Descartes.28
Thus, what Bacon parodies in Spenser is not so much specific de-
tail as larger mythic structures—exactly, one might add, the relation-
ship of Milton to Spenser. Clark Hulse takes this point about mythic
structure in Bacon and Spenser a step further and sets it in a more
georgic frame: ‘‘Within the problematics of the interpretation of
myth, each found a key to the relationship of learning to politics.’’
The key was in the concept of the labors of knights, as Virgil had
dramatized choices to his ancient audience who needed the proba-
bility of myth to direct political action from civil wars and build an
empire. ‘‘Only when [Bacon],’’ continues Hulse, ‘‘has subjected
Spenser’s mythological discourse to the criticism of the politiques
does Bacon make a last attempt to reformulate it in Machiavellian
terms.’’29 Those terms would be to formulate a new science within a
public and social domain, setting a House in his New Atlantis, Solo-
mon’s House. Here technocrats can train young knights or seamen
so they may better redeem the time. Bacon would thus institutional-
ize Spenser’s labor with the clarion cry Bacon took from Virgil and
the Habsburgs of ‘‘plus ultra,’’ the call to progress. Less than fifty

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BACON’S SPENSER 225

years later, the utopic Solomon’s House had become the actual
Royal Society, and in Cowley’s famous ode to it, Bacon is called its
new ‘‘Moses.’’ For the next three centuries, Bacon’s idea of progress
based on collective and organized labor described in the New Atlan-
tis began to dominate European and then global intellectual life.
Once more, a new Virgil would replace a legion and build an empire
far more vast than ancient Rome’s.
It is therefore hardly surprising that many historians of science
have seen Baconian myth as establishing the modern social concept
of science and technology. Bacon’s fictional image of collectivity
and technology has led to the envisioning of institutions like the
present-day MIT, the Salk Institute, Cal Tech, Imperial College, and
the computer centers in cities from Berlin to Tokyo, in the valleys of
California, and on the plains of south India. If indeed Bacon did
launch such a vision of modern science and technology through his
texts, then Spenser helped to launch Bacon and transform into a
new collective mythology the old popular Arthurian myths and leg-
ends. In this sense Spenser’s experiments and powerful originality
opened his text and Bacon’s to the modern world. His wandering
knights and an anachronistic plural hero marked the transition of
the heroic from one world culture to another. Bacon was to take this
anachronism and plurality of labor a step further and invent, at least
textually, the modern idea of progress. For better or worse, the dom-
inant mythology of world culture in the twenty-first century emerged
from this synthesis of epics in early modern England.

Notes
1. See the full discussion of this process in W. A. Sessions, Francis Bacon Revisited
(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), part 2. Also, see the definitions of such geor-
gic labor in my monograph, ‘‘Spenser’s Georgics,’’ English Literary Renaissance 10
(1980): 202–38. These works provide the background and greater context for my
arguments in this essay. For an important analysis of how this Christian, especially
Protestant, concept of radically fallen human nature operates as a fundament in
Bacon’s dialectical method, see Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science,
trans. Sacha Rabinovitch (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), esp. 129 passim
and 206 passim.
2. Sessions, Francis Bacon Revisited, chap. 4 for a fuller discussion of the six parts,
a deliberate parody of the Genesis story of the creation.
3. R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1954), 61.
4. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–
1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). Duffy’s sources are crucial here
in establishing his case of the shock of the cultural breach, and his bibliography
more than indicates the context of his argument. See esp. Christopher Haigh, The

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226 W. A. SESSIONS

English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). These

studies have marked a revolutionary turn in English historiography, in many ways
reversing the Whiggish analysis of the Elton school. The 1990s debate about Shake-
speare’s recusancy and Arthur Marotti’s recent studies on Catholic underground
activity confirm this sense of devastation. It should be noted that these studies have
opened entirely new perspectives, not least in recent studies like those of Stephen
Greenblatt on the concept of purgatory.
5. See the full text of this poem lamenting the destruction of medieval En-
gland’s (and northern Europe’s) most famous shrine to the Virgin Mary—a Bod-
leian Library Manuscript Rawl. Poet. 291 fol 16 identified since the early nineteenth
century as a recusant text—in The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse, ed.
Emrys Jones, 550–51 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); and in Duffy, 377–
78. Shakespeare’s borrowing—proof of his coterie reading of the manuscript of the
poem—and his parodic contextualization are obvious in their acknowledgment of
the central fact of cultural desolation.
6. For a broader context for this argument, esp. the place of the early Protes-
tant Reformers, see W. A. Sessions, Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey: A Life (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. the section ‘‘Surrey’s Blank Verse:
Britain,’’ 281–84, in chap. 10, ‘‘The Origins of Blank Verse.’’ See also the chapter
by the same author in the New Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), ed. Janel Mueller and
David Loewenstein, ‘‘The Early Tudor Court and Literature.’’
7. Desiderius Erasmus, Collected Works (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1974–) 3: 221–24, esp. lines 45–55 of 224. This letter appears in Erasmus’s Novum
instrumentum, actually dated at Froben in February 1516. Similar ideas appear in the
Paraclesis and elsewhere.
8. For a full bibliography of this transition and for a broad comprehensive of
modern Bacon scholarship, see W. A. Sessions, ‘‘Recent Studies in Francis Bacon’’
in English Literary Renaissance 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1987): 351–71. For an interpreta-
tion of Bacon’s influence on the English Revolution itself and the period, see Chris-
topher Hill, The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1965), esp. chap. 3.
9. C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1962), esp. pages 149 passim and 282 passim. Lewis merely
touches on the popularity of the editions of Malory and the other Arthurian leg-
ends throughout the century and up until the Civil War.
10. Among many studies of this shift in the concept of time and subjectivity, see
Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario
Domandi (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), and John Bossy, Christianity and
the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
11. There are a number of new studies on the wreck London had become, but
for the simplest analysis of what Mary I and her government had to contend with,
see David Loades, Mary Tudor (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), and Thomas Mayer, Regi-
nald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp.
chap. 7.
12. For an extended discussion of this most vital component of early modern
European society, see Sessions, Henry Howard, esp. chap. 13.
13. C. S. Lewis, English Literature, 307.
14. An Apology of the Church of England by John Jewel, ed. J. E. Booty (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, published for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1974).
For the intellectual and theological context of this primitivism, see Fr. Booty’s excel-

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BACON’S SPENSER 227

lent introduction. The ideal primitive church had been a famous Ochamite proph-
ecy, as it was throughout the entire Church Universal in the late Middle Ages and
in the time of Savonarola’s experiments in Florence, contemporaneous with Eras-
mus and the young Luther. For an example of how Bacon adapted his mother’s
conceptual language into his own strategies, especially in using certain texts from
classical Greece as primitivist devices, see W. A. Sessions, ‘‘Francis Bacon and the
Classics: the Discovery of Discovery,’’ in Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts: ‘‘The Art of
Discovery Grows with Discovery,’’ ed. W. A. Sessions, 237–53 (New York: AMS Press,
1990).
15. Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution of ‘‘The Faerie Queene’’ (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1942), esp. 61–79, although the entire book sets a context
for this definition of hero. There are some problems in her Old Historicist method
and she has one serious misreading, but she makes a genuine attempt to under-
stand Spenser’s choice. The choice of Arthur also haunts the Spenser Variorum
writers, and in the critical mode of the old historicism and sources studies, other
works investigated Spenser’s choice of the medieval Arthur. The best summary of
all this—with his own insights into the choice—is James Nohrnberg, The Analogy of
‘‘The Faerie Queene’’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), esp. in the
First Part, ‘‘The One and the Many,’’ the sections ‘‘The Institution of the Hero’’
and ‘‘Arthurian Torso,’’ 22–58.
16. Edmund Spenser, The Shorter Poems, ed. William A. Oram, Einar Bjorvand,
Ronald Bond, Thomas H. Cain, Alexander Dunlop, and Richard Schell (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 173.
17. See the discussion of the evolution of such a georgic ideal in Sessions,
‘‘Spenser’s Georgics.’’
18. Brian Vickers, Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968) is the classic contemporary study of Bacon’s prose style. Be-
ginning with Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), the discussion of Bacon’s theory and
practice of discourse has received a number of excellent studies, especially noting
Bacon’s dialectical structures, not least Stanley E. Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts: The
Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1972), esp. chap. 2 ‘‘Georgics of the Mind: The Experience of Bacon’s Essays,’’ who
argues that the dialectic of indeterminacy necessary for reading Bacon’s essays or
expanded aphorisms is itself the meaning of the text. For a more dialectical study of
the aphorism in Bacon, see Alvin Snider, Origin and Authority in Seventeenth-Century
England: Bacon, Milton, Butler (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).
19. Wayne Erickson, Mapping ‘‘The Faerie Queene’’: Quest Structure and the World of
the Poem (New York: Garland, 1996), 29.
20. Sir Philip Sidney, ‘‘Defense of Poesie,’’ in Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden, ed.
Allan Gilbert (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962).
21. Kenneth Alan Hovey, ‘‘Bacon’s Parabolic Drama: Iconoclastic Philosophy
and Elizabethan Politics,’’ in Sessions, Legacy, 215.
22. Frederic Jameson, ‘‘Of Islands and Trenches: Naturalization and the Produc-
tion of Utopian Discourse,’’ Diacritics 7 (1977): 2–21.
23. Hovey, ‘‘Bacon’s Parabolic Drama,’’ Legacy, 215–32.
24. The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High
Chancellor of England, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon
Heath (1858; repr., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friederich Frommann Verlag, 1963),
1:39, hereafter identified in the text.
25. Rossi, 132.

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228 W. A. SESSIONS

26. Hovey, 215.

27. See the discussion in Sessions, Francis Bacon Revisited, 155–56.
28. There is considerable literature on this difference of Bacon’s concept of sci-
ence. See Sessions, Bibliography, esp. 354–59, 362–64.
29. Clark Hulse, ‘‘Spenser, Bacon, and the Myth of Power,’’ in The Historical Re-
naissance: New Essays on Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture, ed. Heather Dubrow
and Richard Strier, 320 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

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Humanism in Hard Times:
The Second Earl of Leicester (1595–1677) and
His Commonplace Books, 1630–60
Germaine Warkentin

IN MAY 1619, JAMES HAY, VISCOUNT DONCASTER, LEFT ENGLAND ON AN

embassy to Germany, dispatched by James I in his attempt to medi-
ate between the Emperor Matthias and Protestant rebels in Bohemia
after the defenestration of Prague. John Donne accompanied him
as chaplain, and among the attendant gentlemen was Hay’s young
brother-in-law Robert Sidney (1595–1677), who had recently be-
come Viscount Lisle when his father, also Robert, was named first
Earl of Leicester of the second creation in 1618.1 Leicester’s heir was
twenty-three years old, and had already begun a soldier’s career; in
1614 his father, then governor of Flushing, had given him the com-
mand of a company of foot. Like his brother and sisters, he had
been educated at home (a matter over which his parents took great
care), and in 1607, aged eleven, matriculated at Christ Church, Ox-
ford, as had his father and his uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, the poet.2
There he would have received an education ‘‘quintessentially hu-
manistic in nature, though far more irenic and ecumenical than that
envisaged by its Italian progenitors.’’3 By his early twenties, Lisle was
already a book collector; the titles he purchased between 1618 and
1626, recorded in the general accounts kept by his servant Philip
Maret, show that his interests were learned as well as military.4 In
mid-June Hay’s entourage arrived in Heidelberg, and among Lisle’s
accounts we find the entry, ‘‘June 29 to the Library keeper at Heidel-
berg 00-02-00.’’ It is probable that the young book-lover paid a visit
to the renowned Palatine Library, and for some reason, perhaps tips
to the servants, money changed hands.5
The Palatine Library of the early seventeenth century was the
most important scholarly library of northern Europe. The University
of Heidelberg, renowned as the ‘‘Geneva of the north,’’ was by 1619
tending toward a Christian humanism closer to that of Erasmus and

229

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230 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

Melanchthon than to Calvin, argues Notker Hammerstein. ‘‘Court

and university were moulded by the late humanistic irenical attitude
of many professors and councillors, in effect pursuing a form of reli-
gion for the scholarly elite.’’6 In 1619 the overseer of the Palatine
Library was Janus Gruterus, a Continental intellectual from circles
well known to the generation of Lisle’s father and uncle. Jan van
Dorsten has traced the complex familial relationships among Grut-
erus, Daniel Rogers, and Janus Dousa (the latter two well known to
Philip and Robert Sidney).7 Included in this genealogy is Marcus
Geraerts or Gheeraerts, who painted Robert’s wife Barbara and her
children, including the infant Robert, about 1596. Connected with
the same family were Franciscus Junius the biblical translator, Abra-
ham Ortelius the mapmaker, and Emanuel van Meteren the histo-
rian; the library at Penshurst would eventually include works by all
three.
Gruterus was a classical scholar (collector of the important In-
scriptiones antiquae, 1602, in which he was assisted by Scaliger), the
editor of many Latin authors including Tacitus and Livy, and a Latin
poet, but he is best known today as an indefatigable anthologist, par-
ticularly of Renaissance Latin poetry.8 Though Lisle was interested
in the drama, he would prove to be insensible to poetry. The cata-
logue of the library he was assembling possessed at least two works
by Gruterus, published under the pseudonym of Joannes Gualterius.
No reader of the future earl’s commonplace books will be surprised
that these were the Chronicon Chronicorum Politicum, quo Imperatores
Reges, etc. recensentur and the Chronicon Chronicorum Ecclesiastico-
Politicum (both Frankfürt, 1614).9 Another member of the same cir-
cle, and one well known to both Philip Sidney and Lisle’s father
Robert, was Paulus Melissus (Paul Schede), who had written a cor-
dial farewell poem to Philip Sidney as he left Germany after his em-
bassy to the emperor in 1577. Melissus too had been a keeper of
the library in Heidelberg, and it was Gruterus who succeeded him
in 1602.
Significant intellectual links also drew these Leiden friends of the
Sidneys—Janus Dousa, Daniel Rogers, Melissus, and above all the
distinguished philologist and moral philosopher Justus Lipsius—
into contact with learned men elsewhere, figures such as Jacques
Auguste De Thou, George Buchanan, Johannes Sturm, William
Camden, and Isaac Casaubon.10 Two features important for this
essay characterize the intellectual world of these widely scattered
scholars. The first is the generally neostoic character of their
thought, which (to generalize broadly) united humanist philologi-
cal methods with an investigation of the problem of rights grounded
in the writings of that formidable critic of tyranny, the Roman histo-

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 231

rian Tacitus.11 ‘‘From 1580 to 1640,’’ writes Peter Miller, ‘‘this Chris-
tianized, aristocratic, eclectic, stoical and skeptical philosophy of
living was the fashionable intellectual language for educated Euro-
peans from Seville to Danzig and from Jutland to Lower Austria.’’12
The problem of political action posed by such views is suggested in
the writing of the Sidneys’ friend Justus Lipsius, who in dialogues
such as De constantia (1584) stressed the need for balance among the
passions and a supreme detachment in the conflicts of public life. As
the seventeenth century progressed an irenic tendency developed in
these circles, a movement away from strict Calvinism toward a more
comprehensive vision of the unity of Christianity which could be
found, for example, in the works of David Pareus, who was teaching
theology at Heidelberg at the time of Lisle’s visit, and in the thought
of Hugo Grotius, whom Lisle would encounter in Paris in the
1630s.13
Along with this neostoic detachment, with its ambiguous view of
monarchies and weary desire for Christian peace, was a preoccupa-
tion among late humanists such as Gruterus with encyclopedic
methods and projects. They envisioned the collecting and annotat-
ing of texts as an essential philological task that the new sources of
information proliferating during the early seventeenth century
would at last make possible. The work of these late humanists,
though erected on the rhetorical and philological foundations laid
down by Petrarch, Valla, and Poliziano, placed a high value on order
and decorum, both political and textual. ‘‘Their typical achieve-
ments,’’ writes William Bouwsma, ‘‘were reference works for schol-
ars. . . . At the same time the apparatus accompanying works of
scholarship became increasingly elaborate. . . . Philological study
particularly flourished in the Netherlands, where scholars published
huge anthologies of obscure ancient and medieval texts.’’14 This en-
thusiasm for the assembling of collections was exemplified in hun-
dreds of late humanist publications, and would be one of the aspects
of the erudition of the times most forcibly rejected by the founders
of the new natural and political sciences: Bacon, Mersenne, Grotius,
Hobbes, and Locke. In their eyes the late humanists endured, and
deserved to endure, the ‘‘death by sclerosis’’ deplored by Anthony
Grafton in his compensatingly vigorous defense of the continuing
vitality of late humanist rhetoric and scholarship.15
It was this late humanist culture—philological, stoical, ireneic,
and above all encyclopedic—of which Gruterus was a part, and as we
shall see it was also that of Lisle, who would inherit his father’s title,
his papers, and his books in 1626. When the future earl visited Hei-
delberg in 1619, the sad fate of Janus Gruterus was unenvisioned;

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232 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

three years later the imperial forces of Count Tilly would capture
Heidelberg, disperse Gruterus’ personal collection, and hand over
the Palatine Library as spoils of war to Maximilian of Bavaria,
whence 2,500 manuscripts and 8,000 printed books eventually made
their way to the Vatican.16 Richard Tuck comments on the fittingly
Lipsian resignation of Gruterus’s later years, spent cultivating his
garden in a country house near the abandoned university.17
Something of the same resignation would be required of the sec-
ond Earl of Leicester several decades later. The civil conflicts of the
1640s and the political tensions of the 1650s in England posed
major challenges for the head of a family that had a well-established
reputation for antiabsolutist views but whose immediate practical
need was to preserve the family’s aristocratic status and material es-
tate. Leicester’s own position has never been really clear. As early as
1639, Archbishop Laud was writing to Wentworth that he was ‘‘a
most dangerous practising Puritan, none like [him] in the king-
dom,’’ yet in the 1650s, John Maudit, the intruded vicar of Pens-
hurst, would attack the earl from the pulpit at his own gate for his
popish ways.18 During these years it was the neostoic and encyclope-
dic phase of late humanism that Leicester would rely on to sustain
his intellectual life, not only in his reading but in the way he re-
corded what he read. He was not a compiler of commonplaces on
the scale of his contemporary Sir William Drake, whose fifty-four vol-
umes of notes, writes Kevin Sharpe, constitute ‘‘the greatest archival
resource we have to chart how an early modern English gentleman
read, and how reading shaped his mental universe.’’19 However,
Leicester left a solid body of evidence about his own mental uni-
verse: the catalogue of the extensive library which he was already
assembling by 1619, and the half-dozen heavy folio notebooks and
files he compiled as he read between about 1630 and 1660. Al-
though set down in the hand of a Sidney, these collections are not
particularly distinguished in their contents; nevertheless they pro-
vide an exceptional window through which to view the structure of
knowledge as it was imagined by a man of Leicester’s status and gen-
eration. Through it we can also glimpse the possible reasons for a
political inaction on the part of the second earl which has puzzled
commentators from Clarendon to Conrad Russell.

As Maret’s accounts show, courtier or not, Viscount Lisle at
twenty-three was already a discriminating collector of learned works.
In the months before his European journey, he had, among others,
purchased two books by Girolamo Cardano, De rerum varietate libri

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 233

xvii and De utilitate ex aduersis capienda libri IIII, ‘‘Sandarus’’ (proba-

bly Nicholas Sanders, De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani), ‘‘Ar-
chimedes Gk & Latin,’’ ‘‘ffonseca’s logicke’’ (Pedro Fonseca,
Institutionum dialecticarum libri octo), the Dominican Sisto da Siena’s
Bibliotheca sancta, and Emanuel van Meteren’s Historia Belgica (all in
his later library catalogue).20 His father, Robert Sidney, the first earl,
had possessed a worthy small library, as is demonstrated by the titles
cited in the four extensive commonplace books he compiled.21 As
several remarks in his papers testify, the second earl honored and
clearly learned from his father’s practice; however, he was self-
consciously aware of the difference between the reading of a cul-
tured aristocrat and the techniques of serious scholarship. In a
passage written some time around 1635 he observed,

They that have been acquainted with me, and my Education, and me,
know that I am not, nor was bred to be a Schollar, So as I have always
wanted Language, Especially Greek, and never knew I wanted that, and
many other parts of learning, until it was too late, and I was too Old to
learne them. Cato they say learned Greek at 80 years old, but many
things might be thought well done in him (who was so much Esteemed
by the world and deserved it) which would be thought, and indeed be
faults in me, though I have not yet attained unto . . . half that age.22

The lack of Greek is perhaps the reason why he usually read his Plu-
tarch in French, but it did not prevent him from collecting many
books in Greek, and there is evidence that he made later efforts to
repair the omission.
Lisle became Earl of Leicester in 1626, inheriting his father’s li-
brary and with it a heavy burden of debt from which he had to free
the estate. In 1632, he was sent to Denmark on his first embassy, and
in 1635, he went to Paris, spending six fruitless years as ambassador
extraordinary, charged with persuading Louis XIII to aid Charles I’s
brother-in-law Frederick in regaining the Palatinate. His time in
France was marked, if we are to judge from the books on French
topics entered in the later library catalogue, by heavy book buying.
However, his embassy yielded no results beyond an acquaintance-
ship with the distinguished legal theorist Hugo Grotius, a fellow am-
bassador, and in 1641 he returned to England, passing from the
fraught politics of the Thirty Years’ War to the perplexing conflict
between king and people that had developed during his absence.
For three years, Leicester attempted to serve his royal master; as
he wrote to his other brother-in-law the Earl of Northumberland in
1642, ‘‘your lordship knowes I am a servant, and I could not run

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234 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

away if I would.’’23 On his return the King had appointed him lord
lieutenant of Ireland (his grandfather Sir Henry’s old office, and
later in the 1640s his son Philip’s). But influenced perhaps by
Laud’s opposition as well as what appear to be emerging stubborn
uncertainties on Leicester’s part, Charles eventually withdrew the
appointment. In June 1644, the second earl retired to his books at
Penshurst and the edification of the newly built Leicester House in
London.24 Leicester’s difficulty, in large part, was that he saw himself
as equally obligated to the King and to Parliament, where a more
politic nobleman would have recognized the practical necessity of
choosing between them. He did not make his position much easier
by retiring to Kent, where political opinion would oscillate between
the King and Parliament over a critical two decades.25 At Penshurst
Leicester endured the successive alignments of his neighbors in
nearly complete political silence; his extant correspondence is
chiefly concerned with family, estate, and national affairs, and
though he kept a journal between 1646 and 1661, of which more
later, its main focus is chiefly on events in Parliament.26 Although
sworn of the Privy Council at the Restoration in 1660, he never led
a public life again.
In a much-quoted verdict, Clarendon would later describe the sec-
ond earl as ‘‘a man of great parts, very conversant in books, and
much addicted to the mathematics . . . [but] in truth rather a specu-
lative than a practical man and expected a greater certitude in the
consultation of business than the business of this world is capable
of: which temper proved very inconvenient to him through the
course of his life.’’ Leicester, he wrote, ‘‘was a man of honour and
fidelity to the King, and his greatest misfortunes proceeded from the
staggering and irresolution in his nature.’’27 However, there is a no-
ticeable contrast between Leicester’s capable diplomatic perform-
ances and his inaction in this period. The biographer of John,
Viscount Scudamore, the English ambassador in Paris when Leices-
ter was Ambassador Extraordinary, observes that ‘‘the earl was much
the better politician.’’28 But Felix Hull has commented on Leices-
ter’s tense financial relationship with his wife, chronicled by the earl
in a memorandum of about 1650, and his problems may have been
personal as well as political.29 For example, in 1642, faced as lord
lieutenant of Kent with the need to grant commissions to his depu-
ties under the Militia Ordinance, he at first procrastinated and then
resigned his appointment.30
A rigid man by nature, with a good measure of the hot Sidney
temper, Leicester may have simply found himself in a situation nei-
ther rigor nor temper could resolve. In August 1642, he wrote to his

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 235

sister-in-law Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, widow of the James Hay in

whose entourage he had traveled to Germany:

I am environed by such contradictions, as I can neither get from them,

nor reconcyle them. The Parliament bids me go presently; the King com-
mands me to stay till he dispatch me. The supplyes of the one, and the
authority of the other, are equally necessary. I know not how to obtain
them both, and am more likely to have neither; so now they are at such
extremes, as to please the one is scarce possible, unless the other be op-
posed. I cannot expect the Parliament should supply me, because it is
not confident of me; and as little reason is there to thinke that the king
will authorise me, for he is as little confident. The one says, Why should
we give money and armes, which may be employed against us? and the
other says, Why should I give power and authority, which may be turned
against me? . . . . How soon I shall get myself out of this labyrinth I cannot
tell your ladyship.31

It was precisely such contradictions which Leicester would spend the

next two decades investigating, his method—and perhaps his ther-
apy—the system of inquiry afforded by the encyclopedic mind-set of
late humanism.

Leicester’s early years as soldier, courtier, and ambassador exhib-
ited at least the outward form of that life of dutiful negotium which
humanists of the preceding century looked for in a public man. A
neo-Latin poem addressed to him in the late 1630s praises him in
these terms:

Ingenio priscos generis tu vincis honores,

Et quos maiores laudat imago tuos.
Ingens Paladium cingit sapientia pectus,
Cui eloquium interpres, regula, iustitia,
Sustinet immensum regni sapientia pondus,
Insita quæ regnat pectore clara tu[a]
Iustitiaeque vias defendis legibus æquis
Cui defers studium nocte dieque tuum.32

In 1623 ‘‘Lord Lisley’s studye,’’ with its ‘‘six faier peecis of Tapestrye
hanginge’’ with ‘‘Imajarye worke’’ (pictorial scenes with figures) al-
ready resembled the studies of the Continental eruditi described by
Dora Thornton.33 In a letter of 1580 his late father had been teased
by elder brother Philip, ‘‘I would by the way your worship would
learne a better hand, yow write worse than I, and I write evill
enough.’’34 Leicester in contrast wrote a decent cursive italic, not en-

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236 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

tirely illegible even in his later years. When he withdrew to his books
at Penshurst, he was apparently well prepared for the otium which
ought to have been his reward. That this may have been his ambi-
tion, or that someone in his circle thought of him in such terms, is
suggested by his portrayal as the learned, wise and noble ‘‘Synesius’’
in the Arcadian romance Theophania, written by an unknown author
about 1645.35 Throughout the political events of the 1640s and
1650s, Leicester collected books assiduously (unlike some other
learned aristocrats, he does not seem to have been interested in arti-
facts), apparently edified a proper library room, and about 1652 set
his servant Gilbert Spencer to writing out a fair catalogue of his
books.36 By 1665 they would number nearly 4,500, constituting one
of the more substantial aristocratic libraries of the period in En-
gland.37 Leicester thus represents an example of the late humanist
ideal: a well-educated nobleman (as well as Latin and some Greek,
he read French, Italian, and Spanish), one with international intel-
lectual contacts, a library rich in classical authors, a well-furnished
study, a refined hand, and time at his disposal to reflect on the pub-
lic events in which his family had played a role since the 1550s.
The Kent to which he withdrew in the 1640s was a prosperous
county with an independent-minded elite densely interconnected by
ties of marriage and inheritance. Had he sought it, he could have
found distinguished intellectual companionship among fellow book
collectors and annotators: if not the absolutist Sir Robert Filmer,
then perhaps the conservative moderate Sir Roger Twysden, or
other learned men of families like the Derings, Oxindens, Love-
laces, Tuftons, and Haleses. Whatever their political views, these
men read widely in the English and Continental political and theo-
logical writers of the time and in the Latin authors who constituted
the foundation of any reputation for wisdom and learning. Leices-
ter’s most important personal relationships, however, were with men
of the court like his wife’s brother Algernon, Earl of Northumber-
land, not only Charles I’s lord admiral, but a well-informed and ex-
pert art collector.38 Although Henry Hammond, the Royalist vicar of
Penshurst personally chosen by Leicester in 1633 for his preaching
ability, is known to have corresponded with Sir Edward Dering,
Leicester himself seems to have had little to do with his fellow Ken-
tish intellectuals.39 Unlike his genial father, who had striven hard at
court for the grandee status that was his legacy to the next genera-
tion, Robert, the second earl, had little gift for amicitia, Ciceronian
or otherwise.
There is a contrast, furthermore, between Leicester’s reading
practices and those of figures such as Filmer, Twysden, and Dering.

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 237

All three read widely but purposively, concerned to relate what they
read to their responsibilities as heads of families, landowners, and
members of Parliament. As Peter Laslett long ago observed, their
assiduous study of theology, law, and local custom would produce
the first great school of English local history.40 In Twysden’s case this
led to (among other works) his edition of the Historiae Anglicanae
Scriptores Decem (1652), in Filmer’s to his treatise Patriarcha (ca.
1631–42), and in Dering’s to an antiquarian’s absorption in the col-
lecting of early English manuscripts. Their Buckinghamshire con-
temporary Sir William Drake took the need for practical reading to
an extreme; at one point he cautioned himself, ‘‘Be sure not to study
much books of learning for they divert business, take up the mem-
ory too much, and keep one from more useful things.’’41 This was
far from the case with the Kentish gentry, a number of whom were
deeply learned, but it is a wry indication of the immediate uses to
which a good library could be put in times of civic uncertainty.
Leicester too made reading notes in profusion, covering many of
the same books known to Drake and the Kentish gentry. Besides the
mortgaged library, he had inherited his father’s four, large, partly
filled commonplace books, and over the next four decades he would
assemble at least five more of his own, in addition to producing
many unbound sheets of annotations or adversaria.42 However, it was
precisely the meditative perusal of learned writings scorned by
Drake that was central—perhaps even psychologically necessary—to
Leicester’s later life. In 1683, his son Algernon would tell the judge
trying him for treason, ‘‘I believe there is a brother of mine here has
forty quires of paper written by my father, and never one sheet of
them was published; but he writ his own mind to see what he could
think of it another time, and blot it out again, may be.’’43 What he
was describing, as Leicester’s notebooks confirm, are the late hu-
manist practices of copying, collation, and evaluation of sources as
he daily witnessed his father engage in them.
‘‘The practice of keeping notebooks and commonplace books in
general was one of the most widespread activities of the educated
classes in contemporary England,’’ observes Peter Beal; ‘‘they consti-
tuted the primary intellectual tool for organizing knowledge and
thought among the intelligentsia.’’44 Leicester’s father had been in-
structed in the art of commonplacing on humanist principles by his
elder brother Philip. In a letter of 1580, the poet observed,

The last poynt which tendes to teach profite is of a Discourser, which

name I give to who soever speakes non simpliciter de facto, sed de qualitatibus
et circumstantiis facti; and that is it which makes me and many others

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238 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

rather note much with our penn then with our minde, because wee leave
all thes discourses to the confused trust of our memory because they
being not tyed to the tenor of a question . . . that I wish herein, is this,
that when yow reade any such thing, yow straite bring it to his heade, not
only of what art, but by your logicall subdivisions, to the next member
and parcell of the art. And so as in a table be it wittie word of which
Tacitus is full, sentences, of which Livy, or similitudes whereof Plutarch,
straite to lay it upp in the right place of his storehouse . . . such a little
table yow may easelie make.

The early copy of this letter still among the family papers was en-
dorsed by Leicester himself, ‘‘My uncle’s letter to my father abroad
in his travail’’; he must have known its advice well.45
Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, their source Gabriel Harvey’s
annotated copy of Livy in the Princeton University library, have ar-
gued that Sidney’s letter reflects a view of commonplacing deter-
mined by the reading of Livy that he and Harvey had undertaken
together in 1576–77.46 Harvey engaged in four such ‘‘readings,’’ and
their analysis of the four illustrates the tact with which we have to
situate any given commonplacer’s activity within his reading prac-
tice. As Grafton and Jardine describe it, about 1570–71 Harvey de-
bated Livy with Colonel Thomas Smith Jr., their purpose to consider
the political implications of impending military campaigns. Five
years later, read Livy with Sir Philip Sidney. It is evident that both of
these ambitious men had courtly political practice in mind. Reading
about 1584 with Thomas Preston, master of Trinity Hall, the focus
was on the need to ‘‘provide political theory to match contemporary
political requirements’’ (52–53). Finally, there is Harvey’s own soli-
tary reading of Livy with St. Augustine at hand, undertaken around
1590. Of all the readings, it is this one—‘‘genuinely Augustinian in
tone and content’’ (54)—which Grafton and Jardine found most dif-
ficult to reconcile with the pragmatism of the others. Both Livy and
Augustine would play instructive roles in the reading of Philip’s
nephew four decades later.
Robert Shephard, who is closely familiar with the commonplace
books of the elder Robert Sidney, speculates that they were com-
piled chiefly in an attempt to educate his heir for public life.47 The
first earl’s reading followed the lines to be expected in a family with
historic antiabsolutist convictions and strong Dutch, and therefore
‘‘republican,’’ connections. His heavily annotated copy of Tacitus’s
Annals, for example, is in the British Library,48 and it is evident that
he was sharply aware of the public role of a well-informed and active
aristocracy; not surprisingly, he had a skeptical view of the royal pre-

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 239

rogative. In their turn the second earl’s notebooks, as Jonathan Scott

observes, ‘‘are full of Grotius’s . . . political ideas; interspersed with
notes on his other favourite authors . . . in particular Livy, also Cic-
ero, Suetonius, Coke, Littleton, Selden, Buchanan, Hooker and Su-
arez,’’ and he comments on ‘‘their flavour of Aristotle, Bodin, and
Tacitus.’’49 However, Leicester’s employment of such books, as well
as the many others to which he also referred, marks a significant
difference between the intellectual culture of an ambitious Jacobean
courtier and that of a frustrated mid-century grandee, and his inten-
sive note-taking strikingly illuminates that difference. In his hands
his father’s heavy folios would multiply into a full-scale humanist en-
terprise, but one much more inward-looking, speculative, and less
oriented toward the immediate issues of politics. In the second earl,
in fact, we discover an interesting paradox: the political culture of
anti-absolutism is inflected through the operations of an obsessively
orderly, precedent-conscious mind.50

The evidence for Leicester’s reading lies among his papers in the
Centre for Kentish Studies and the British Library. In the former,
there are four folio volumes of notes in Leicester’s hand, plus a sewn
booklet: U1475 Z1/4,5,8,9 and Z/9. Their dates can be roughly es-
tablished by occasional references to current English and continen-
tal newsletters, gazettes, and diurnals, though today they have
archival numbers in reverse order of their estimated time of produc-
tion, Z1/4 being in general the latest. The British Library yields sec-
ondary evidence that at least one other book existed, excerpts from
which were copied by Thomas Birch in the mid-eighteenth century.
In addition, the Centre for Kentish Studies holds numerous loose
sheets and booklets of various dates, collectively described as U1475
Z47.51 The earliest dateable note is 1630 (Z47/1), but there is one
reference to a Mercure François of 1615 in Z47/19, and since (in gen-
eral) newsbook citations appear to be from fairly current issues, that
entry may have been made in Leicester’s very young manhood. The
four bound volumes are topically organized, though on differing
plans; the set of loose sheets grouped as Z47 provides material evi-
dence of work in progress, especially Leicester’s intensive biblical
studies of the 1630s, and the excerpts copied by Thomas Birch sug-
gest that its original may have been more personal and reflective
than the papers that remained at Penshurst, a possible reason for
Birch’s interest in it.
The earl’s bound notebooks fully exemplify the blurring of bound-
aries between commonplace book and encyclopedia that Ann Moss

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240 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

detects in seventeenth-century printed commonplace books.52 The

format and mise-en-page of each of these volumes differs; Z1/5 is or-
ganized under alphabetized Latin words (Aetas, Aethiop, Lex et
Legislator, Liber, Libido, Taciturnitas, Templum, and so on), while
Z1/9 is a hybrid of reading notes and entries under such topical
headings as ‘‘Authors, Learned Men,’’ ‘‘Nobility wth Titles, prece-
dences, etc.,’’ ‘‘People, rights, Libertyes, pretended.’’ Several refer-
ences to the need to make entries in one book ‘‘follow on’’ entries
in another suggest that single volumes were comprehended in some
larger bibliographic scheme no longer possible to reconstruct be-
cause essential material has been lost.53 As the overlapping dateable
references show, Leicester kept several volumes in progress at the
same time; the latest such citation, from 1662, actually appears in
Z1/9, which was being compiled in the years after his return from
Paris. Note-taking ceases in the early 1660s, when it is apparent from
complaints in the earl’s letters that his eyesight is weakening and his
hands are becoming arthritic.
The physical evidence suggests that Leicester’s volumes were
bound up, and in some cases the headings entered, before he began
to copy extracts into them.54 In compiling them he may have made
on-the-spot entries in the kind of ‘‘table book’’ Sir Philip Sidney had
recommended, but no physical evidence of these now remains.55
However, there are many excerpts and comments written on small
slips of paper; some of these still remained between the leaves a few
years ago, although they have since been brought together and
given archival numbers. All of this material, except for some late ex-
cerpts copied for him by a steward from European newsletters, is in
his own hand; he worked, it seems, in solitude. To manage his large
volumes and many small slips, Leicester developed extensive cross-
references, a habit of organization that also characterizes his library
catalogue. As a result of this continuous process of compilation all
of the notebooks, whatever their arrangement, are drawn into the
same set of preoccupations, to an extraordinary extent constituting
a complete and self-sufficient intellectual world.
One aspect of that world, however, is closed to us. This is the inter-
est in mathematics commented on by Clarendon and which made
Leicester a friend of Thomas Hariot, whom he would have met in
the circle of the ninth Earl of Northumberland whose daughter he
married in 1616. There are several references in Leicester’s note-
books to his regard for Hariot, and the feeling must have been
shared since the great mathematician, who died in 1621, made the
young viscount one of the executors of his will. In a note of rare
affection, Leicester would later write of ‘‘Mr. Harriote that same

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 241

Mathematician, and admirable Scholler, my particular frend and

preceptor’’ (Z1/4, 478). Hariot left him some copies of his mathe-
matical papers and charged him with realizing the value of his books
to defray his debts.56 Though mathematical works are a noticeable
feature of the library catalogue, there is no indication that any of
them might have once belonged to Hariot. More to the purpose
here, if Leicester kept any mathematical notebooks of his own, they
have entirely disappeared, and with them an important dimension
of his life.
Despite his excellent collection of the canonical Latin texts, this
exploiter of late humanist methods was not much interested in Latin
literature for its own sake. He almost never cited the poets, except
for a few allusions to Juvenal and Ovid. There are many references
to a substantial range of antique historians, biographers, and anec-
dotalists—Tacitus, Livy, Plutarch, Josephus, Aulus Gellius, in particu-
lar—but what astonishes in his notebooks is their contemporaneity.
Except in U1475 Z1/5, the ‘‘dictionary’’ of Latin words and con-
cepts for which he entered citations in the early 1650s, modern ref-
erences far outnumber those from the classics. English citations are
frequent—to Bede, Matthew Paris, William of Malmesbury, Hooker,
Camden, Coke, and current English controversialists such as Wil-
liam Prynne—but the intellectual world in which Leicester moves
with greatest ease is that of the historians, chronographers, and
court gossips of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century conti-
nental Latin culture.
Leicester often cited Tacitus and Livy as well as other classical his-
torians, but he was just as likely to resort for information about the
antique past to books such as Pierre Ayrault’s Rerum ab omni antiqui-
tate iudicatorum pandectae (1588); his copy is known to have been the
edition of 1615.57 Ayrault must have been his constant companion,
for throughout his decades of note-taking he refers continually to
‘‘Aerodii Pandect.’’58 Pierre Ayrault (1536–1601), a pupil of the
great Jacques Cujas, was one of the major civil advocates of his time
in France, and president of Angers during the disorders of the
League. His heavy folio is not the collection of laws its name would
suggest. Rather, it comprises a vast historical commentary on issues
in the civil law, following somewhat the same categories as Justini-
an’s Institutes, but relying almost exclusively on classical authors.
(Some sense of Ayrault’s approach can be gained from his initial
definition of the term ‘‘law,’’ which he drew from the Rhetorica ad
Herrenium and Cicero’s Topica). The subsequent pages are rich in ci-
tations and anecdotes from Greek and Roman historians and lawgiv-

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242 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

ers, all thoroughly indexed, and Leicester has clearly used them to
quarry Ayrault for historical information of every sort.
In Z1/9, where most of the dateable entries are from 1638–45,
Leicester’s references are wide-ranging, but almost entirely to con-
temporary or recently published Latin and French historians and
memoirists, or drawn from his considerable collection of such chro-
nographers as Calvisius (the Chronologia, ex autoritate potissimum sa-
crae scripturae, et historicorum fide dignissimorum of Seth Kallwitz,
27r26) and Johann Carion, Chronicon Carionis in the version of Mel-
anchthon and Peucer (no fewer than seven copies of various edi-
tions, 29r03–08, including a duplicate). Thus we find excerpts from
and references to, among others, Giovanni Catena’s Vita del gloriosis-
simo Papa Pio Quinto (31r01); Jean de Serres, Inventaire general del’His-
toire de France (174v15; a favorite also with his father); Nicolas Vignier
the Elder’s Bibliothèque historiale (21r16); Laurent Bouchel’s Decret-
orum Ecclesiae Gallicanae ex conciliis eiusdem oecumenicis . . . libri VIII
(23r06); and, in particular, a book that must have absorbed him for
many weeks, the letters of that astute observer of the papal court
Arnaud, Cardinal d’Ossat (Lettres de l’illustrissime . . . cardinal d’Ossat
. . . au roy Henri le Grand et à M. de Villeroy, depuis l’année 1594 jusques
à l’année 1604; 97v09, in a folio edition as well as the quarto of 1624).
In Z1/4 (dateable entries in the 1650s) Leicester cites at least once
each such authors as Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Livy, and Pomponius
Mela. But by far the largest number of his references and excerpts
come from works already mentioned, and from books such as Luis
de Mármol Caravajal, Descripcion general de Africa (29r31); Alessandro
Ziliolo, Delle istorie memorabili de suoi tempi (78r05); Esteban de Gari-
bay y Zamalloa, Compendio Historial di las Chronicas . . . de Todos los
reynos de España (62r26, another favorite of his father’s), and again
d’Ossat and Pierre Ayrault.
Tacitus and Livy appear with some regularity throughout these
commonplace books, and the earl refers at one point to his ‘‘collec-
tions from Livy,’’ now apparently lost (Z1/9, slips g and h). However,
these Latin authors, so central to the theorists of classical republi-
canism, do not seem to be cited because Leicester either agreed or
disagreed with their ideas. Rather, like the other works he perused
so intently, they are used as source books for the collation and com-
parison of the ideas of different authors and for the evaluation of
their authority. The Reports and Institutes of Chief Justice Coke are
exploited in the same way, as are the works of Leicester’s sometime
friend, Hugo Grotius. Leicester clearly admired Grotius, though
their relationship cannot have been a close one, as they seem never
to have exchanged letters after the earl returned to England.59 He

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 243

had many of the great jurist’s works in his library and cites them
often. However, a long entry from De iure belli ac pacis on servitude
and liberty (Z1/4, 401) makes it plain that Leicester sees Grotius less
as an author making an argument than as a source of learning to be
situated in a complex of related ideas, in this particular case biblical.
Later in the same volume (519) De iure belli ac pacis is cited again,
this time casually under the heading ‘‘death.’’
A typical instance of Leicester’s procedure appears in Z1/8 (date-
able entries 1646–56), on pages 151–87. Under the heading ‘‘Law,
Parlements, Edict, Proclamation, Act of Councell, Custome,’’ where
one might expect strong opinions from a Sidney, he initially copies
out, in a densely written central column extending over four pages,
a long excerpt on consanguinity from Luis de Molina’s De Iustitia
(117v10). Down the left side of page 152 this acquires an extended
gloss drawn from Davila’s Delle guerre civili in Francia concerning the
royal blood and succession in France, buttressed by a historical ref-
erence from Calvisius. On the right side he pauses to gloss the word
maioribus in Molina’s text:

Maioribus dominus est honorum vinculatorum Molina Tract: 2. Disput.

3. That is, wch cannot be alienated wth only ye consent of ye Prince in law
v: p. 162 [with further brief citations from Molina][. . .]. This seems to
be another Molina, cited by Ludovicus Molina [. . .] where he mentions
ye book De Primogenitura wch I have also.

The entries from Molina are followed by thirty-six more pages on

the same topic, initially from André Du Chesne, Histoire généalogique
de la Maison de Montmorency et de Laval (75r22), but glossed in the
margin by Camden’s Britannia (27r27) and citing among others Wil-
liam Prynne, who on page 156 receives the pungent annotation,
‘‘Mr. Prynne, whose authority I do not valew, but only make use of
his citations to see if they be right, when I have time to looke upon
ye authors.’’ Passages from Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis appear in
both the main text and the margins and, other works referred to
include Speed’s The theatre of the empire of Great Britaine (178v07?),
Higden’s Polychronicon, (148r01), Holinshed (79v14), Grafton’s
Chronicle (66r23), Nicolaus Reusnerus’s Itinerarium totius orbis
(163v19), and works by Carlo Sigonio and J. A. de Thou. Leicester
returns to ‘‘maioribus’’ again on page 168, making careful reference
to his earlier gloss, and from time to time comments on what he is
copying out: ‘‘he might have named John of Gant’’ he observes tartly
at one point (160), and later on, in the margin of page 162, ‘‘Grotius
cites and refutes Barthol. for the same opinion.’’ This massive sec-

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244 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

tion (which I have not described exhaustively) concludes with a ref-

erence to Coke and an anecdote about Archimedes.
A telling instance of Leicester’s capacity for thinking in the mode
of a commonplacer is the journal he began in December 1646 and
kept until May 1661. In part personal (it contains a moving account
of the death of his wife, though it marks without much comment the
marriages and deaths of various children), it is chiefly devoted to
affairs in Parliament. Here Leicester turns chronographer himself,
recording events as they happened, and often in the words of men
he knew well, with his own sparse comments confined to the mar-
gins. In its latter pages, Leicester’s journal becomes a compilation
pure and simple, drawing on various newsbooks and diurnals to re-
port events from which the earl was now wholly distanced. Two loose
bifola in Z1/9 suggest that he may have attempted at some point to
draft a treatise on civil society, but the argument is undiscernable
amidst the welter of citations.60

The record of Leicester’s commonplacing takes us into the experi-
ence of what commonplacing must have been like—why it gave plea-
sure, seemed a resource, was what a thoughtful person needed to do
to master a problem. We can see this in the fact that he quarries his
excerpts almost entirely from volumes in his own library, and they
are often very long, as for example in the exceptional body of selec-
tions from the letters of Cardinal D’Ossat. These passages, stretch-
ing across three decades (in Z1/4, /8, 9, and Z9) must have taken
him many weeks, perhaps months, to copy out. Evidently the very
activity of copying was important to him, since he can hardly have
needed a record of such extensive excerpts from a text of which he
apparently possessed two copies. At one point he observes while
reading Leo Africanus, ‘‘This, in chronologye and due order of his-
tory should have been sayd before, but the author not considering
methode, takes this time to shew the originall of the Mamelukes, by
beginning wth Saladin who first invented that discipline’’ (Z9, 254).
Yet as entry after entry illustrates, he does not use his library as the
basis for either a chronological or discursive approach to the record
of human knowledge. Rather, it is the ongoing activity of organiza-
tion and annotation that matters to him, the constant process of as-
similation during which one authority is compared with another
(often with some skepticism) and where words and concepts are
subjected to etymological, if not genuinely philological analysis. Cat-
egories are linked to each other, and one volume to another, in a
system which cannot be fully penetrated because essential parts of

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 245

it—the volume Birch excerpted, the mathematical notes, the ‘‘col-

lections from Livy’’—are now lost. Leicester’s commonplacing is nei-
ther rhetorical, and thus (to use Ann Moss’s categories) in the
Ciceronian tradition with its emphasis on style, nor dialectical and
thus in the philosophical tradition, with its emphasis on the need to
draw inferences.61 In its intense exploitation of historical, chrono-
logical, legal, and biblical sources it represents an earnest attempt
to establish, in the sheer activity of collation and comparison, what
had happened in the past, or what can happen in the future. This is
precisely why, in its modernity and historicity, his excerpting is fo-
cused on current history as this former ambassador understood it.
At the same time, Leicester’s reading does not precisely conform
to the action-oriented process of reading as Grafton and Jardine ex-
plicated it in their study of Gabriel Harvey’s annotated copy of Livy,
or at least to the first three versions of that process: military (though
Leicester had been a soldier), courtly (though he had been a court-
ier), or political (though he had been an ambassador). Rather,
Leicester sees history, both antique and modern, from a consistently
moral vantage point, and his commentaries and marginal glosses are
deployed to test and judge the worth and authority of his sources in
that light. Although seemingly skeptical in character, this is just as
likely to be a method he drew from the rhetorical works of Philip
Melanchthon. In Melanchthon, as Ann Moss shows, both the stylistic
and dialectical methods of structuring knowledge give way to one
which is probative, designed to set human knowledge in its ethical
setting, and direct the unnumbered commonplace collectors of Re-
naissance Europe to the constant testing of their ideas within a
moral framework. ‘‘Melanchthon’s commitment to a truth beyond
language underlies the prominence he gives to ratiocinative proce-
dure, his grounding of rhetoric in the places of argument it shares
with dialectic, and his insistence that the commonplaces signify how
the world is structured rather than store gathered flowers for creat-
ing artificial gardens of linguistic plenitude.’’62 It was Melanchthon
who had edited (in effect, rewritten to make it his own) Johann Cari-
on’s Chronicle, one of Leicester’s favorite works of history, a work he
cited often, and of which, as I noted above, he possessed no less than
seven copies.
Among Leicester’s resources for a moral reading of history was a
fine collection of Bibles in different languages. One of his notes
(Z47/1, b) shows him diligently comparing the Spanish and English
translations of the sacred text, and his library catalogue lists no fewer
than sixteen different editions of the Bible, in six languages besides
Hebrew and Greek. He cites scripture constantly, and to many differ-

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246 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

ent purposes: historical, etymological, and theological, often but by

no means exclusively in the version of Tremellius and Junius.63 In
the 1630s, Leicester had engaged in an intensive period of biblical
studies (Z/47, g), using as his companion Henry Ainsworth’s Anno-
tations upon the five bookes of Moses, and the booke of Psalmes (1622; cata-
logue 5r22). One of the few extant printed books with marginalia in
his hand is his personal Bible, which is still at Penshurst. This is a
copy of the King James version which—and in the same questioning
spirit—he has annotated so intensively in every available blank space
that it has nearly fallen apart.64
It is in his devotion to biblical study that we begin to sense the
rationale for Leicester’s attempt to systematize the record of con-
temporary history as he understood it within the pages of his densely
written folios—and, perhaps, his seeming lack of concern, mani-
fested in the variant organizations of his books, for ever bringing
his system to perfection. Among the books he cited most often is St.
Augustine’s De civitate Dei, a work he refers to constantly as well as
to the accompanying commentary by Juan Luis Vives. Like Gabriel
Harvey before him, he exploits both Augustine and Vives as sources
of historical information, a practice which, given its encyclopedic
character, The City of God certainly encourages.65 But if Leicester
drew on Ayrault for historical information on antique custom, and
on the chronographers (Calvisius being perhaps the most fre-
quently cited) to situate events in human time, it was to the last of
the great Latin authors that he turned for an understanding of the
divine plan for human history. The rich historical detail of August-
ine’s narrative would have kept before him his uncle’s old recom-
mendation to concentrate in reading on ‘‘who soever speakes non
simpliciter de facto, sed de qualitatibus et circumstantiis facti.’’ Augustine
treats the city of God ‘‘both as it exists in this world of time, a
stranger among the ungodly, living by faith, and as it stands in the
security of its everlasting seat.’’66 His insistence on the separation be-
tween the city of man and the City of God would also have estab-
lished for Leicester, a fundamentally eschatological vision of the
order of history, one which justified both his absorption in the in-
trigues of the papal court, and his devout study of God’s word. At
the same time, it situates the studies of this angry, reclusive man di-
rectly in the tradition of philosophical and moral humanism. ‘‘For
all pronouncements of Christian truth, for all theological declara-
tions and arguments,’’ writes Charles Trinkaus,

there had to be a constant buttressing by Biblical citation in order to

prove the conformity of the statement with orthodoxy . . . the squaring

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 247

of the meaning with the Scriptures with what was currently held to be
the eternal verity. Since verity encountered variety at least in its external
form, it was necessary to engage in constant interpretation and exegesis
of the Holy Writ to prove the correspondence of its truth with less sancti-
fied statements thereof in subsequent hands.67

Yet, as Trinkaus notes, ‘‘paradoxically the humanists offered

through their writings a new affirmation of the possibility and value
of human action. They presented a vision of man controlling and
shaping his own life and future course of his history and they
stressed a new conception of human nature modelled on their own
image of the Deity’’ (2:767). For the second earl, such action could
only take the form of exegesis itself.

In his will (September 28, 1665), Lord Leicester made provision
(inadequate, as it turned out) for the future of his collections; he
left

the said bookes papers and other thinges . . . to be used by my said son
Viscount Lisle during his life. And after his decease I will and give the
same to my grandchild Robert Sidney his eldest sonne for his use during
his life and after to remaine from one heire Male to another. . . . And I
desire and require . . . that every of them in his tyme do carefully look
to and preserve the same for the good and benefitt of those that shall
succeed them as I have done in my time and larger increased them.68

By now his library must for him have resembled the great erudites’
collections he would have encountered in Heidelberg in 1619 and
in Paris in 1635–41. The inclusion of his papers in the legacy as well
as his printed books projects the significance of his commonplace
books into the future, and signals his hope, never to be fulfilled, that
later Sidneys would benefit from his ‘‘encyclopedia’’ in the same way
that his father, whom he revered, had preserved his knowledge for
his own son.
In the face of Leicester’s withdrawal from the world of action it
would be easy to claim either that he had failed the culture of late
humanism, or that it had failed him, but the realities of his situation
were fearsomely complex, as his desperate sense that he was ‘‘envi-
roned by contradictions’’ would suggest. Consider these complexi-
ties: as Earl of Leicester, he is a proud aristocrat who, like his father
before him, is troubled by extreme claims for the royal prerogative.
But raised in an honor culture, and possessing a profoundly hierar-
chical and orderly temperament, he nevertheless understands him-

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248 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

self to be a servant of the King. His intellectual culture is that of the

erudite anthologists of his family’s skeptical, neostoic circle; and so
deeply vested in it is he that he establishes in the Penshurst living a
famously learned vicar who happens to be a Royalist. Yet as his En-
glish contemporaries increasingly were doing, he believes strongly
in the king’s need for the consent of Parliament in his actions, and
his sons are active republicans. A Clarendon might have found a way
to turn these contradictions to his own purpose. Leicester, instead,
compares the forces afflicting him one with another, and sees no
way out. In the world of a prospective lord lieutenant, collation and
comparison will not suffice, and a year after his letter to the Count-
ess of Carlisle he leaves behind the labyrinth (demonic version, per-
haps, of the ideal of encyclopedic knowledge) and retires to his
library, where the comparison of authorities can be carried on until
the City of God is attained.
A different path was taken by most of his contemporaries, for
whom the resources of humanist learning were beginning to seem
a historic phase rather than an essential method; the world of late
Renaissance humanism was being transformed by the new intellec-
tual framework being erected by figures like Hobbes. The breadth
of his reading testifies to the fact that Leicester would have been
unsurprised at the vision of the City of Man in Hobbes’ Leviathan, a
book which he made sure to add to his library (97v16). But the dif-
ference between the concept of a moral rhetoric in constant action
which his commonplacing exemplified and the logical, discursive
textuality of the new generation is yet one more symptom of a criti-
cal turning point in the history of European learning. Locke, in The
Conduct of the Understanding, would pour contempt on the concept
of broad-ranging scholarship in which Leicester and his contempo-
raries had been educated (though he wrote influential instructions
for commonplacing himself ).69 The scientific age of practical educa-
tion with its attendant specialization is at hand—Sir William Drake,
in his own way, is in the vanguard—and the humanistic one with its
moral vision and encyclopedic learning seems to be passing away.
Leicester’s despair at the task of living in such times is evident in a
stoical entry Thomas Birch copied out of what appears to have been
the earl’s most personal notebook. Under the heading ‘‘On Life,’’
Leicester wrote—it is not apparent when, or from what source—‘‘If
there be another Life after this, let us do that which is good. If there
be none, it is no matter what we do, for this life hath nothing worth
the caring for’’ (BL Add. 4464, f. 33r). Did Leicester avail himself of
Robert Burton’s remedy for such distress ‘‘to ease my mind by writ-
ing’’? Two years after his trip to Heidelberg Philip Maret recorded

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 249

that he had ‘‘pd for democritus Junior 00-06-00.’’70 Whatever the

case, it is the anthologizing, citation-ridden, probative textual cul-
ture of readers like Leicester that provided the seedbed for a new
school of history, the ‘‘nuova scienza’’ of the next century, one
which would be deeply indebted to humanism and its resources.
Freed from the seventeenth-century obsession with decorum, just
such a renovation of humanism would begin to evolve with Giambat-
tista Vico, born in Naples in 1668, around the time when Leicester
and others of his generation were finally laying down their weary
pens.

Notes
I am grateful to Joseph L. Black, Michel Brisebois, Clare Browne, Roger Kuin,
Elisabeth Leedham-Green, Hilary Maddicott, Michael Milway, Annabel Patterson,
Robert Shephard, Patricia Vicari, and Daniel Woolf for kind advice on various
points during the writing of this essay.
1. For this embassy, see Letters and Other Documents Illustrating the Relations Be-
tween England and Germany at the Commencement of the Thirty Years’ War, ed. S. R. Gardi-
ner, The Camden Society, first series, 90 (London: Camden Society, 1865).
2. For the elder Sidneys’ concern with the education of their children, see Re-
port on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle & Dudley Preserved at Penshurst Place (London:
HMSO, 1925–66, hereafter HMC), 2, 227, 269, 424, 434, and 437; for the younger
Robert’s matriculation at Oxford, see HMC, 3, 464n.
3. Mordechai Feingold, ‘‘The Humanities,’’ in The History of the University of Ox-
ford, vol. 4, Seventeenth-Century Oxford, ed. Nicholas Tyacke, 213 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997).
4. Maidstone, Centre for Kentish Studies (hereafter CKS), De L’Isle Mss.,
U1475 A41/1–14, covering the period from June 1618 to August 1626.
5. CKS U1475 A41/1, f. 10v.
6. Notker Hammerstein, ‘‘The University of Heidelberg in the Early Modern
period: aspects of its history as a contribution to its sexcentenary,’’ History of Univer-
sities 6 (1986–87), 105–33 (116).
7. J. A. Van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers
and the Leiden Humanists (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 21.
8. For Gruterus’ life and work see J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 2: 359–62.
9. Leicester’s library catalogue, ca. 1652–65, nos. 68r25 and 68r26. For the cata-
logue, see CKS U1475 Z45/2; with William R. Bowen and Joseph L. Black, I am
currently editing it for publication. References to Leicester’s catalogue in the fol-
lowing pages are to the modern editorial numeration, thus: 68r25 signifies folio 68
recto, 25th entry on the page. For information on the library and its history, see
Germaine Warkentin, ‘‘The World and the Book at Penshurst: the Second Earl of
Leicester (1595–1677) and his Library,’’ The Library, sixth series, 20:4 (December,
1998): 325–46.
10. On the English dimensions of this intellectual world, see Kevin Sharpe, Sir
Robert Cotton 1586–1631. History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford: Ox-

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250 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

ford University Press, 1979), esp. chap. 3 on Cotton and the historical scholarship
of Western Europe.
11. For a general survey of the political implications of neostoic and skeptical
thought, see Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1993). Adriana McCrea, Constant Minds: Political Virtue and
the Lipsian Paradigm in England, 1584–1650 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1997) discusses Lipsian neo-stoicism in England; her ‘‘Prologue’’ is useful for its
explication of current terminological debates in a vexed field.
12. Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 13.
13. See Howard Hotson, ‘‘Irenicism and Dogmatics in the Confessional Age: Pa-
reus and Comenius in Heidelberg, 1614,’’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46, no. 3
(July, 1995): 432–53. For Grotius on Christian unity, see Tuck, Philosophy and Gov-
ernment 1572–1651, 185–88.
14. William Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance 1550–1640 (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2000), 180–81.
15. Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of
Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 11.
16. On the fate of the Palatine Library, see Sandys, A History of Classical Scholar-
ship, 2: 361.
17. Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 131.
18. The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D. (Oxford: John
Henry Parker, 1860), 7: 568. For Maudit, see Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and
the Great Rebellion 1640–60 (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1966), 226.
See also Maudit’s own pamphlets: Antiprobale, or A defence of the minister of Pensherst
(London: T.R. for the author, 1660; Wing M1327), and The practises of the Earl of
Leycester against the minister of Pensherst (London: T.R. for the author, 1660; Wing
M1330), as well as his own slightly longer account of this debacle, Oxford: Bod. Ms.
Rawl. A58, ff. 83–87.
19. Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: the Politics of Reading in Early Modern En-
gland (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 73.
20. CKS U1475 A41/1, ff. 2, 3, 3v. In the later library catalogue these are: Car-
dano 27v43 and 44; Sanders 170v03; Archimedes 11r28 or 30?; Fonseca 58v12, Sisto
176v10, and Meteren 115v13. Lisle bought several books on his trip to Germany;
the only one specifically named is recorded on June 30: ‘‘for a book de Sensibus
00-09-00’’; this might be Aristotle, but is more likely either Hieronymus Provenzalis,
De Sensibus Hieronymi Provenzalis . . . tractatus (Rome, 1597; 153r09) or Julius Casse-
rius, Pentaestheseion, hoc est de quinque sensibus liber (Venice, 1609; 29v09).
21. CKS U1475 Z1/1, Z1/2, Z1/3, Z1/10. Robert Shephard is currently at work
on a detailed analysis of the references the elder Sidney made to the books in his
possession (personal communication, August 2, 1999).
22. BL Add. 4464, f.1. For Birch’s copy of a lost commonplace book of Leicester,
see below.
23. Leicester to Northumberland, September 9, 1642. See Sydney Papers, ed. R. W.
Blencowe (London: John Murray, 1825), 265.
24. For Leicester’s account of these events, and the date of his return to Pens-
hurst, see HMC 6: 554–59.
25. Alan Everitt traces these swings of opinion in The Community of Kent and the
Great Rebellion, passim.
26. HMC 6, appendix 3, ‘‘Journal of the Earl of Leicester December 31, 1646–
September 8, 1661,’’ 559–624; for Leicester’s resistance to attending sittings of Par-

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 251

liament, see 362. In 1650 he subscribed to the Engagement, essentially to maintain

his rights before the courts.
27. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ed. W. D. Macray
(Oxford, 1888), 2: 531.
28. Ian Atherton, Ambition and Failure in Stuart England: The Career of John, First
Viscount Scudamore (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999), 181.
29. For Leicester’s state of mind in this period, see Felix Hull, ‘‘Sidney of Pens-
hurst—Robert, 2nd Earl of Leicester,’’ Archaeologia Cantiana 111 (1993): 43–56.
30. For his refusal to sign commissions, see Everitt, The Community of Kent and the
Great Rebellion, 107–08.
31. Sydney Papers, ed. R. W. Blencowe, xxii.
32. Roger Heffernan, Illvstrissimo nobilissimoqve domino D. Roberto Sydnaeo Lecestriæ
comiti, vice-comiti de l’Isle, baroni de Penhvrst, nec-non serenissimi magnæ Brittanniæ regis
ad Lvdovicvm XIII. Legato (broadsheet; n.p., 1638?), ll. 7–14. The only known copy
is in the British Library, Luttrell 1: 176.
33. CKS U1500 E120, f. 20v (inventory of Penshurst in 1623). I owe the explana-
tion of ‘‘Imajarye’’ or ‘‘imagery’’ to Clare Browne of the Victoria and Albert Mu-
seum. For the mise-en-scène of the learned man, see Dora Thornton, The Scholar in
His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1997).
34. Letter 42, cited above. Philip in fact wrote a beautifully legible italic.
35. Internal historical references suggest Theophania was written about 1645, al-
though it was not published until 1655 (T. Newcomb for Thomas Heath [Wing,
2nd. ed., S371]). For its problematic authorship and dating see Theophania: Or, Sev-
eral Modern Histories Represented by Way of Romance, and Politickly Discoursed Upon, ed.
Renée Pigeon (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1999). Pigeon remarks that ‘‘The representa-
tion of . . . Leicester as Synesius, ‘a most perfect cavalier,’ is among the most inter-
esting in Theophania because of the marked discrepancy between the fictional
character and his historical counterpart’’ (75). For Synesius’s learning, see Theopha-
nia (1999), 108–09.
36. For these and other details about Leicester’s library, see Warkentin, ‘‘The
World and the Book at Penshurst.’’
37. Because a number of the entries are cross-references, there are 5,869 actual
entries representing about 4,500 titles (still in process of verification); counting
sets, we estimate the library contained about 5,000 actual volumes. This appears a
very substantial collection for its period when we compare it with that of Leicester’s
learned father-in-law, the ninth Earl of Northumberland (about 2,000 titles in
1632), or that of his book-loving Kentish contemporary the younger Sir Edward
Dering (about 1,500 ca. 1656–62).
38. For the connoisseurship of Leicester’s brother-in-law, see Jeremy Wood, ‘‘Van
Dyck and the Earl of Northumberland: Taste and Collecting in Stuart England,’’ in
Van Dyck 350, ed. Susan J. Barnes and Arthur K. Wheelock (Washington, DC: Na-
tional Gallery of Art / University Press of New England, 1994), 281–324. I owe this
reference to Hilary Maddicott.
39. Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, 62.
40. On the intellectual vigor of the Kentish gentry and aristocracy, see Peter Las-
lett, ‘‘The Gentry of Kent in 1640,’’ Cambridge Historical Journal 9, no. 2 (1947–49):
148–64.
41. Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 125.
42. For a diverting history of marginal annotation and adversaria see H. J. Jack-
son, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2001).

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252 GERMAINE WARKENTIN

43. ‘‘ ‘The Trial of Colonel Algernon Sidney at the King’s Bench for High Trea-
son’: 35 Charles II. A.D. 1683,’’ in Cobbett’s State Trials (London 1809–26), IX, col.
878. This was no casual remark; private papers—their format, hands, and loca-
tion—played a central role in the evidence at Sidney’s trial.
44. Peter Beal, ‘‘Notions in Garrison: The Seventeenth-Century Commonplace
Book,’’ in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society,
ed. W. Speed Hill (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
1993), 131–47 (pp. 131 and 134).
45. CKS U1475 C7/8, Philip Sidney to Robert Sidney, October 18, 1580. In The
Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1963), vol. 3, letter 42, 131–32. The letter is a contemporary copy,
but the endorsement is in Leicester’s hand. He seems to have kept a ‘‘table book’’;
in a note to himself of 1640, Leicester writes, ‘‘This I presently writt in my Table
bookes the same day, but I transcribed it in this paper the 5th of January, 1640.’’
See Sydney Papers, ed. R. W. Blencowe, 263.
46. Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, ‘‘ ‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Har-
vey Read His Livy,’’ Past and Present 129 (November, 1990): 30–78 (pp. 37 and 77).
47. Personal communication, Robert Shephard, August 7, 2001; I am much in-
debted to his analysis of the senior Sidney’s reading.
48. The elder Robert Sidney’s copy of Tacitus is the edition of Lipsius published
by Christopher Plantin, Antwerp 1585 (BL c.142.e.13, 186r06 in the Penshurst li-
brary catalogue). For the anti-absolutism of the Sidneys, see Blair Worden, ‘‘Classi-
cal Republicanism and the English Revolution,’’ in History and Imagination: Essays in
Honour of H.R. Trevor-Roper, ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl, and Blair Worden
(London: Duckworth, 1981), 182–200; and his ‘‘The Commonwealth Kidney of Al-
gernon Sidney,’’ Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 1–40; Jonathan Scott, Algernon
Sidney and the English Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1988); and
his Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis 1677–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1991); and Scott Nelson, The Discourses of Algernon Sidney (Madison,
NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993); J. G. A. Pocock reviews the entire
discussion in ‘‘England’s Cato: the Virtues and Fortunes of Algernon Sidney,’’ The
Historical Journal 37 (1994): 915–35.
49. Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 54–55.
50. See for example the marginal comment on a passage copied from the letters
of Cardinal D’Ossat (U1475 Z9, pg. 6): ‘‘But that formality is necessary, for els how
shall it be known what quality is given to the messanger by his Master that sends
him, unless by accident another Ambr be upon ye place as Sillery was here.’’
51. Except for ‘‘Birch’’ all of the notebooks and papers discussed here belong to
CKS class U1475, and I will refer to them without the prefatory U1475. In chrono-
logical order according to dateable entries they are as follows:

Z47, loose items, possibly 1615, certainly 1630–48.

Birch (scribal; excerpts only, BL Add. 4464), ca. 1634–41.
Z1/9, bound volume, 1638–45 with entries from 1652, 1662.
Z9, sewn gathering intended as part of Z1/9, 1646–47.
Z1/8, bound volume, 1646–56 with an entry from 1660.
Z1/5, bound volume, 1648–57.
Z1/4, bound volume, 1650–56.

I omit here two smaller notebooks classified by early archivists as ‘‘commonplace

books’’ but merely comprising extensive quotations (Z1/6) from Juan de Mariana,

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HUMANISM IN HARD TIMES 253

De ponderibus et mensuris liber (109v20) and a treatise on money attributed to Sir Wil-
liam Beecher (Z1/7). Neither constitutes a ‘‘mathematical notebook’’ as described
above.
52. Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), esp. chap. 8 and 9. Like everyone else who tries
to write about late-humanist commonplacing, I am deeply indebted to Moss’s book
in the discussion that follows.
53. The notebook excerpted by Birch and now unretrievable is an example;
other lost material would include the ‘‘collections from Livy’’ and the mathematical
notebooks mentioned below.
54. The headings all appear to have been entered in Leicester’s own hand ex-
cept for those in the ‘‘dictionary,’’ Z1/5, where it is possible another hand entered
the headings and the earl altered them to suit himself from time to time.
55. None of the documents in the De L’Isle papers corresponds precisely to the
kind of table book he speaks of in his comment of 1640 (see note 45, above) but
there is ample evidence among the papers of almost obsessive casual note-taking.
56. For Hariot’s will see Henry Stevens, in Thomas Hariot the Mathematician, the
Philosopher, and the Scholar (1900; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.), 193–203.
57. I am much indebted to Joseph L. Black for identifying the specific edition of
Ayrault.
58. There are (at a minimum) six references to Ayrault in Z1/4, at least fifty in
Z1/5, half a dozen (some on loose slips) in Z1/8 and the same in Z1/9. This count
is by no means complete.
59. There are no letters between the two either in Grotius’s voluminous pub-
lished correspondence or in the De L’Isle papers, although during Leicester’s so-
journ in Paris Grotius referred to the earl many times in his letters to others.
60. Ann Moss cautions shrewdly against the modern assumption that a work
composed of citations could not achieve a discursive purpose; see her ‘‘The Politica
of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace Book,’’ Journal of the History of Ideas 59
(1998): 421–36.
61. For the distinction, see Moss, Printed Commonplace Books, chap. 1–3, passim.
62. Moss, Printed Commonplace Books, 124. See also 124–33, 136.
63. The Bibles are 19v24–29 and 21r01–11. The languages are French (4), Latin
(4), English (1), Italian (2), German (1), Spanish (1), Hebrew and Greek (1), He-
brew OT (1) and Greek NT (1).
64. The Bible is an edition of 1613 with the Psalms of 1614, possibly STC 2227–
28, 2230–31, or 2233. The other books with annotations are: 1) Edward Ayscu, A
History contayning the Warres, Treaties, Marriages and other occurents betweene England
and Scotland (London: G. Eld, 1607. STC 1014. Chicago: Newberry Library, case
oDA 765 .98 1607). 2) Augustine Vincent, A Discourse of errours in the first edition of
the Catalogue of nobility, published by Ralph Brooke, 1619 (London: W. Jaggard, 1622.
STC 24756. Oxford: Bodleian Library, Gough [Link].214. Not in library cata-
logue). The last-named is particularly interesting, having been heavily annotated by
both the first and second earls.
65. Grafton and Jardine, ‘‘Studied for Action,’’ 45, 53.
66. Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Betten-
son (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1984), 5.
67. Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian
Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 2:564.
68. PRO Prob. 11/355, fols. 215r-v , 337–43 (probate December 19, 1677).
69. Feingold, ‘‘The Humanities,’’ 221. For Locke and the commonplace tradi-
tion, see Beal, ‘‘Notions in Garrison,’’ 140–42.
70. U1475 A41/2 f. 2v, purchased March 16, 1621.

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Making World War with Literature
John Neubauer

IN A KEY SCENE OF ERNEST PSICHARI’S NOW ALL BUT FORGOTTEN NOVEL,

L’Appel des armes (1913), Captain Timothée Nangès strolls around
Paris with Colonel Servat. Passing Les Invalides they join the crowd
to pay their respect to Napoleon. When they leave the tomb, Servat
recites verses from Victor Hugo’s poem ‘‘Waterloo,’’ starting with
‘‘Restless man’’ (‘‘L’homme inquiet’’).1 As if listening to him, the
narrator remarks:
Who will find this ridiculous? This is inevitable! It occurs spontaneously!
To recall these admirable verses that are now part of us is no cultural
fact, no literary knowledge. This is instinct. It comes from more distant,
more profound regions than intelligence. Our philosophers would say
that our subconscious enters into play.2

Servat’s own concluding commentary shifts the subject from poetry

to history:
the danger is to forget history. This culture vanishes like so many others.
But knowing the earlier fortunes of our race teaches us to live in the
present and to raise ourselves above the contingencies of social action.3

The two commentaries complement each other: following a power-

ful nineteenth-century tradition, both Servat and the narrator be-
lieve that history must not be forgotten and poetry, more than
historical discourse, is the best way to keep it alive. Poetry shapes
national identity by providing foundational myths and historical fic-
tion about the nation’s origin and heroic life. Servat cites a great
national poet (Hugo) on a great national hero (Napoleon) to re-
mind the reader that French history had more glorious memories
than the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71.

I
The idea that literature is a storekeeper of national memory has
historical connections to Napoleon, albeit in a negative sense: it

254

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MAKING WORLD WAR WITH LITERATURE 255

emerged in the German-speaking countries under his threatening

shadow. The paradigmatic formulation of this view is to be found
in the sixteen public lectures that Friedrich Schlegel held between
February 27 and April 30, 1812 on Geschichte der alten und neuen Li-
teratur (History of the Older and Newer Literature) to a brilliant au-
dience in Vienna. Friedrich, one of the fathers of literary history,
started out as a cosmopolitan revolutionary but was by now serving
Metternich, to whom indeed he dedicated the 1815 publication of
the lectures. He valued poetry and literature now for their national
contributions. The main purpose of his lectures was to represent the
influence of literature ‘‘on real life, on the fate of nations, and on
the march of time.’’4 Noting that German and other European liter-
atures regained their national spirit at the end of the eighteenth
century, Friedrich characterized literature, for the first time it
seems, as a keeper of national memory:

For the whole further development, nay for the whole spiritual life of a
nation it is supremely important . . . that a volk has great and ancient
national memories, . . . their preservation and celebration is the highest
task of poetry. Such national memories—the most wonderful heritage a
volk can have—are an irreplaceable advantage. And if a nation rises in
self-estimation and feels, as it were, ennobled, because it possesses a
great past, memories of ancient times, in a word: poetry, then it will be
raised to a higher level in our eyes and our judgment as well.5

And in a foreword to the journal Deutsches Museum, which aspired to

become a treasurehouse of the national past, Schlegel wrote the
same year: ‘‘Every literature has to and must be national; this is its
destination, and this alone can endow it with its true and full
value.’’6
This national view of literature appealed to politicians and educa-
tors; it justified in their eyes both literature and the institutionaliza-
tion of philology and literary studies. In the course of the nineteenth
century, all European countries established university chairs for
their national literature, and all of them introduced it into the cur-
riculum of the secondary schools. Philologists, folklorists, poets, nov-
elists, and dramatists turned to the national past to construct (and
frequently to forge) from it foundational myths and great national
epics; they canonized national poets that came to serve as icons of
the nation’s identity; they furthered the building of national the-
aters and national operas that not only stimulated the writing of na-
tional tragedies but also served as public spaces for the celebration
of the nation. Last but not least, the philologists wrote national liter-

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256 JOHN NEUBAUER

ary histories that integrated the founding myths, the revival of

medieval literature, the story of the language revival, and the canon-
ization of national poets into comprehensive grand narratives. Cro-
ce’s comment that the protagonist of De Sanctis’s Storia della
letteratura italiana (1870–71) was Italian literature, even Italy, and
that individual writers were presented only as phases in the general
development would hold, mutatis mutandis, for most others as well.7
De Sanctis had in fact been dreaming from very early on about writ-
ing a history of Italian literature that would also be a history of Italy
(De Sanctis 2: 421). National literary histories became uplifting ac-
counts of the nation’s spiritual fortunes. ‘‘I cannot claim that I can
reconstruct the soul of the whole nation,’’ wrote the Polish literary
historian Piotr Chmielowski, adding, ‘‘but I shall attempt to offer
some hints about the changes it underwent, as reflected in the litera-
ture of the last nine centuries.’’8 Others saw their task in similar
terms: they constituted the nation as a logical subject or a collective
hero, and they suppressed or excluded elements threatening the in-
tegrity of the story. As Ernest Renan stated in his famous lecture,
‘‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’’ (1882), collective amnesia is as impor-
tant to a national consciousness as shared remembrances.9 In the
French nation that absolutism had forged, people had to forget the
great southern massacres of the thirteenth century and the night of
St. Bartholomew: the cultivation of the national language and litera-
ture went hand in hand with the suppression of minority cultures,
languages, and literatures.
In the following, I present two case studies on a specific, and
rather late manifestation of this national idea of literature: the way
in which literature and philology participated in the preparation of
World War I, by keeping the national memory alive and whipping
up patriotic enthusiasm. Interweavings of the war and memory, so
impressively initiated in Paul Fussell’s now classic study The Great War
and Modern Memory (1975), and recently reenacted in Pat Barker’s
novel trilogy Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road
(1991–95), tend to be retrospective and analeptic. They tend to
foreground the traumas and disillusionments we find in the poetry
of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Franz Werfel, Georg Trakl; and
in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929),
Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu (1916), Jean Giraudoux’s Simon le pathétique
(1918), Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Schweik (1920–23). But a
large body of prewar literary culture mobilized memories prolepti-
cally, in an anticipatory way: exhorting readers to prepare for and
enthusiastically carry out the war. My two texts were written by poets
of the sword, both of whom were killed in battles: Ernest Psichari

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MAKING WORLD WAR WITH LITERATURE 257

(1883–1914) fell in the first days of World War I, Theodor Körner

(1791–1813) in the war against Napoleon, though, as I shall show,
philology kept his memory alive.

II

Ernest Psichari was Renan’s grandson. L’Appel des armes adopts

both Schlegel’s notion that literature is national memory and Re-
nan’s that national memory represses as much as it preserves.10 But
the lost voice that Psichari wanted to recuperate belonged to the
military, not to the downtrodden; in his eyes, the Third Republic
repressed the martial spirit: ‘‘The army has its own internal moral,
law, and mystique. And these are neither the morale nor the mys-
tique of the nation.’’11 Indeed, Psichari considered the army an arti-
cle of faith, war as divine, and the French soldiers that died in the
Sahara as religious martyrs.12
L’Appel des armes is a type of Bildungsroman, for it recounts the
education of an adolescent, Maurice Vincent. Nangès, his mentor,
awakens his slumbering patriotism and his military mystique, and
this awakening is presented repeatedly as an allegory of a national
revival. The Third Republic is depicted as a product of the national
defeat in 1870–71; it is a defeatist, pacifistic, liberal, immoral, cor-
rupt, and dispirited system based on economics and money. To be
sure, Maurice’s biological father is a morally upright representative
of the Third Republic. But this liberal, antimilitarist, and anticoloni-
alist schoolteacher, who probably carries traits of Psichari’s own phi-
lologist father, is portrayed negatively. Only the church and the
army resist the decline of ancient morals that material progress
brings about. Nangès succeeds in ‘‘converting’’ Maurice by telling
him stories about military life in the Sahara and by introducing him
to a military discipline that subjugates the self to a ‘‘higher cause.’’
His success recalls that of Napoleon and demonstrates that a na-
tional renewal is possible:

But behold how the case of our little Frenchman becomes a sort of sym-
bol, takes the value of a historical fact. Behold how this little Frenchman
becomes France itself. The war was reviled. Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] just
taught us to love human beings, the Revolution just taught us that peo-
ple are free and conquest is unfair. People found themselves within a
perfect idyll. And a little lieutenant of the artillery sufficed to stamp a
great army out of the ground [ . . . ]. Astonishing paradoxes that comple-
ment and explain each other. The case of Vincent explains us that Bona-

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258 JOHN NEUBAUER

parte found the instrument he needed, and, inversely, the imperial epic
teaches us why and how Maurice Vincent is always possible in France.13

Adopting the martial spirit means submission to discipline for its

own sake while rejecting women, love, comfort, and at times even
reason. Sexual self-denial is paramount. Maurice is never at ease
with his fiancée, especially once he is initiated into the male society
of the military (51). Indeed, on the rare occasions that Nangès and
Maurice are intimately with a woman they seem to do nothing else
but deliver interior monologues on the necessity of cutting them-
selves free (58f; 184–85; 216). Women are ‘‘animal joli’’ (256),
‘‘bête blessée,’’ or ‘‘belle animalité’’ (262) that one may pity but also
guard against, lest one gets captured and locked away: ‘‘Happy are
the young men of our days who lead the frugal, simple, and chaste
life of the warriors.’’14 The speaker of such frequent sententious re-
marks usually remain unclear for they are presented in free indirect
discourse: they may be said by Maurice or Timothée, but also by the
narrator. Sometimes the narrator explicitly states that he is merely
articulating a view that the characters instinctly feel but cannot ex-
press. In contrast to the modernist novels, which use free indirect
discourse to discriminate between different points of view, L’Appel
des armes leaves the speaker indistinct because the individual merely
represents general trends and views. As Hargreaves rightly remarks:
‘‘Without exception, all the main characters share essentially the
same outlook, which in turn is identical with the narrator’s. The re-
sult is a remarkably flat narrative, almost completely lacking in dra-
matic tension.’’15
The army rejects the existing social and political reality but offers
as a compensation homoerotic male comradery and a quasi-mystical
attachment to an idea of the nation. The ultimate purpose of the
military machinery so created is combat and its concomitant: vio-
lence. Although the soldiers in Psichari’s novel are not trained to
commit atrocities, they are taught the art of killing. The foot soldier
that Nangès most admires used to be an activist in union movement;
when asked what he would do if he were to be commanded to shoot
at strikers, he now replies: ‘‘I would try to kill as many striking work-
ers as the number of soldiers I used to wish to kill’’ (65).
The revival of the military mystique involves both remembering
concrete historical events and fashioning legends and myths around
them. Of the two national military legends, Jeanne d’Arc and Napo-
leon, Psichari appeals only to the second: for him, the tomb at Les
Invalides is a visible reminder that the reawakening of the slumber-
ing martial spirit may be possible even in the spoiled, lazy, pleasure

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MAKING WORLD WAR WITH LITERATURE 259

seeking, and materialistic Third Republic. But women dislike Napo-

leon and his memory (114); perhaps because, as the narrator says,
Napoleon preferred his grenadiers to all women (99).
It hardly comes as a surprise then that, in the misogynic male
world of Maurice and Timothée, Jeanne d’Arc reappears in a male
incarnation, namely as the figure Timoléon d’Arc that Psichari
adopted from Alfred de Vigny’s Servitude et grandeur militaires
(1835).16 The adoption is as curious as the reference to Hugo, and
one may well ask why the conservative Psichari used subtexts from
progressive romantic writers rather than from the classics of the
seventeenth century, which were the admired exemplars for royalists
and conservatives. Whatever the reason, Psichari’s use of Vigny is as
reductive as his use of Hugo, for Servitude et grandeur militaires, a
string of three narrative episodes accompanied by reflections, is
highly critical of the military and of war—and not only because the
army was in decline when Vigny served as an officer in the post-
Napoleonic decades. Timoléon appears in the second episode of the
book, which describes how the gunpowder deposit at Vincennes ex-
ploded on August 17, 1819. But in the story of the explosion, which
Vigny actually witnessed, and in the fictional story that Vigny builds
around it, Timoléon is merely a secondary character, and not a very
attractive one.
In Psichari’s novel, Timoléon appears to Nangès as a vision in the
Sahara. The encounter interlinks the nineteenth- and twentieth-
century officers as well as the past and the present decline of the
military. As Timoléon remarks: ‘‘You, like captain de Vigny and like
myself, have experienced the great sadness of the army. Like us, un-
fortunately, you have experienced more of the servitude than of the
greatness.’’17 Yet, there is a difference: Timoléon, who was stationed
with Vigny in the desolate garrison of Vincennes after the collapse
of Napoleon’s army (306), is envious of Timothée’s opportunity to
participate in the ‘‘exquisite and voluptuous charm’’ (‘‘ce charm
atroce et voluptueux’’) of the colonial adventure in the Sahara
(304). According to him, hatred drives Nangès’ generation toward
a promising future. ‘‘You have tasted for forty years the frightful poi-
son of defeat. Whatever you do, there will remain at the bottom of
your heart an impotent rage, a bitter sadness, an unquenched
thirst.’’18 But, he adds, ‘‘since you are spurned on this way, you will
be greater than we were . . . We thought only of that great shadow
[of Napoleon] that dominated us, while you, you are waiting for
somebody.’’19 Timoléon obviously expects another great and dicta-
torial military leader à la Napoleon.
When the pen calls for the sword, writing is marginalized. Indeed,

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260 JOHN NEUBAUER

Psichari is skeptical about art, and he perceives aesthetic qualities in

the military instead; it is military discipline that must be seen as an
art for art’s sake (199). Hence, Nangès quotes with pleasure a re-
mark that Vigny was supposed to have said in praise of a soldier: ‘‘He
exercizes the art of war not out of ambition but as an artist.’’20 When
he quotes Pascal (19, 22, 102, 200), Chateaubriand (102), or Flau-
bert (106) he is concerned with religion, not art itself. Even Hugo
and Vigny are marginal: Hugo’s poetry itself remains silent, and
Vigny is referred to only as a soldier, not as a writer. Indeed, as Timo-
léon acknowledges, Vigny’s text nowhere speaks of grandeur in the
military. Grandeur makes its appearance only in isolated individuals
who loyally serve a disembodied ideal.
The historical Vigny turned away both from the military and from
society at large in order to lead a withdrawn life in what Sainte-Beuve
called his ‘‘ivory tower.’’ Psichari’s fictional Timoléon says he fol-
lowed Vigny into a tower that was more beautiful than an ivory
tower, namely the (military) donjon of Vincennes (306). But the al-
legorical ‘‘ivory tower’’ of Psichari’s novel is the Sahara, and the
story inevitably ends ironically, with a return to sordid reality: Mau-
rice is wounded in the first insubstantial skirmish against desert ban-
dits and is forced to serve the rest of his life as a clerk in some dusty
room of the defense ministry. The disappointed Nangès, dying of
boredom, prepares for another adventure in the colonies. Psichari
was perhaps lucky to die in one of the first combats of World War I,
together with Charles Péguy, Alain-Fournier, and other prominent
French writers.
L’Appel des armes was no isolated case in France, but part of a con-
servative and aggressive literary wave that emerged at the end of the
nineteenth century and crested in the prewar years. The title itself
echoes Maurice Barrès’s L’Appel au soldat (1900). Next to Barrès,
members of this literary conservatism included the monarchist and
anti-Dreyfussard Charles Maurras; Léon Daudet, who co-edited with
him the ultra-right-wing Action Française; Henri Massis, who later eu-
logized Psichari in three books; Charles Péguy and many others. For
all their differences, these men were all creating male myths of ad-
venture, militarism, and war. Whether they were responding to a
broad change of sentiment in youth or whether, reversely, they were
fomenting this very spirit, is difficult to say. The survey that Henri
Massis and Alfred de Tarde conducted among the pupils of the elite
secondary schools and universities indicates that they were both re-
sponding and fomenting. Their famous conclusions in Les Jeunes
gens d’aujourd’hui, published in 1913 under the pseudonym Aga-
thon, spoke in the subtitle of ‘‘Disposition toward Action,’’ ‘‘Patri-

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MAKING WORLD WAR WITH LITERATURE 261

otic Faith,’’ and ‘‘Catholic Renaissance.’’21 According to the authors,

the new youth rejected the apathy, skepticism, aestheticism, paci-
fism, and egotism of the decades after the French defeat of 1870–71;
they overcame doubt, disdained introspection, and prepared to re-
gain the lost territories of Alsace and Lorraine. The journal L’Opi-
nion, which first published this survey, also published Psichari’s
L’Appel des armes as an exemplification of the spirit that the survey
revealed. The myth, created by the cultural memory in the novel,
became a fact in the survey and a rhetorical device in fomenting mil-
itarism.
On its outer edges, this wave of militarism shaded into a great vari-
ety of other currents that were in no sense militaristic, but which
nevertheless had some affinity with it. After placing L’Appel des armes
in L’Opinion, Massis, the secretary of that journal recommended to
the editors Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes, but the editors re-
jected it because they considered it too delicate and unengaged.
They were no doubt correct in their evaluation. And yet, this neoro-
mantic novel and the great article of Alain-Fournier’s friend Jacques
Rivière, ‘‘Le roman d’aventure,’’ were also rebelling against the lit-
erature and the spirit of late nineteenth-century France when in
search of adventure and excitement.22 Like Psichari, Alain-Fournier
was among the first casualties of the war.
Broad currents of European literature and art prepared rather
than resisted or rejected the coming war. The currents assumed dif-
ferent colors from country to country, from movement to move-
ment, and from writer to writer, but they negated traditional
distinctions between left and right, conservative and liberal, reac-
tionary and avant-garde. However different they may have been, all
of them propagated a virile, adventure-seeking, and martial spirit,
and all of them attacked traditional humanism and aestheticism.
In this respect, Psichari’s conservative novel overlapped with Mari-
netti’s famous futurist manifesto of 1909, which declared that war
was ‘‘hygenic’’ and a roaring car more beautiful than the Victory of
Samothrace.23 To be sure, Marinetti affirmed militarism and rejected
aestheticism because he anticipated a new, technological world,
whereas Psichari rejected technology as a product of capitalism and
materialism that destroyed a national military myth. But the end ef-
fects were similar.

III
Theodor Körner is as thoroughly forgotten today as Psichari.
From a purely aesthetic point of view, this is surely justified, but in a

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262 JOHN NEUBAUER

cultural and political history of literature his case becomes in many

respects paradigmatic. To recall it, we have to retrace our steps to
Friedrich Schlegel’s mentioned 1812 Vienna lectures, for young
Körner became a frequent guest at the Schlegels after his arrival at
Vienna on August 26, 1811. As a good north German he was some-
what irritated by the fervent papism of Schlegel’s lectures, but he
reacted enthusiastically to the idea that literature must once more
become part of the national life and the national past.24 After
quickly making a name for himself in Vienna with poems and two
comedies that were performed in the Burgtheater in January 1812,
Körner proceeded with great speed to write what was to become his
opus magnum, the drama Zriny. He researched the historical mate-
rial in the spring and wrote it down within three weeks in June. After
some delay by the censors, it was performed in the Burgtheater on
December 30, 1812. Körner volunteered for the army in March 1813
and was killed on August 26 of the same year.
Zriny, which Körner subtitled a Trauerspiel, is based on a historical
event known and cherished by all Hungarians: Miklós Zrinyi’s he-
roic defense of the tiny fortress Szigetvár (in the southwestern part
of present Hungary) against the overwhelming Turkish army of
Suleman II (1566). When defense no longer seemed possible, Zrinyi
and his remaining men charged out of the ruins into their deaths.
Suleman II had died a natural death at the siege a few days earlier.
The historical stuff is a fascinating complex of stories, profoundly
implicated in regional politics. The Zrinyis, originally from Dalmatia
and called De Brebirio, assumed their name in 1347, when King
Lajos gave them the fortress of Zrin in Croatia.25 To this day, the
family has a Croatian as well as Hungarian identity, and Nikola Šubić
Zrinski, as the Croats call the hero of Szigetvár, is as much a Croatian
national hero as Miklós Zrinyi is a Hungarian one. To be sure, the
Hungarian claim on him is bolstered by the hero’s great-grandson,
also called Miklós and also an important politician and military
leader, who wrote an epic poem, in Hungarian, about the siege: The
Peril of Szigetvár (1645–46).26 It is generally recognized as the high-
point of seventeenth-century Hungarian literature. But Miklós’s
brother, Petar, executed by the Habsburgs on charges of treason,
somewhat evened the account by making a free translation of the
epos into Croatian.
Körner may have known about the epos,27 but since no German
translation of it existed in 1812 he had to turn to other historical
and literary sources for his drama.28 What matters for our purposes
is that Körner appropriated the patriotic story of this ‘‘Hungarian
Leonidas’’ (letter to his family, March 5, 1812) for purposes of his

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MAKING WORLD WAR WITH LITERATURE 263

own patriotism, by staging the dying Suleman II and the resistance

against him as an allegorical exhortation to fight the waning power
of Napoleon. The political message was surely a major factor in the
huge success of a play that was, by general admission, dramatically
and aesthetically flawed. Two theaters immediately offered Körner a
post as resident dramatist—but he preferred the sword to the pen,
and followed his dramatic character in his death.29
This combination of patriotic life and poetry made Körner a fa-
vorite of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The bibliogra-
phy of German books for 1790–1910 lists more than fifty collected
or complete editions of his works (in Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Stutt-
gart, and even New York), most of which went through several print-
ings, some reaching even above ten. Some forty individual editions
of Zriny are listed for the same period, many of them for use in
schools and amateur theaters, some adapted for male-only casts in
Catholic schools.30 In the bibliography for the following period, I
found for 1910–14 six new complete editions and four new ones of
Zriny; only one new edition of the play is listed for the war years, but
we may assume that earlier editions were kept in print due to the
topicality of its martial spirit.31 Prof. Dr. Schmitz-Mancy, for instance,
warmly recommended the play in 1916 for high schools because of
its political relevance:
The drama, which was created under the terrible pressure of the time,
is . . . the Song of Songs on liberating the fatherland, with a thrilling
glorification of patriotic love, selfless devotion to duty, and fearless brav-
ery . . . Körner did not just sing of Zriny’s heroism, he lived it as well—he
and thousands and thousands of men and even women! . . . when poetry
and truth flow into each other, as they do with Körner, one explains the
other with eternal youth . . . spirit and character, as they appear to us in
‘‘Zriny,’’ will, in times that decide on the existence and non-existence of
the fatherland, help us to overcome its enemies in a power onrush, as in
the present World War.32

Zriny continued to be popular in the Weimar Republic, for seven

new complete editions of Körner’s works and ten new editions of
the play were published between 1918 and 1933. In contrast, only
four new editions of Zriny appeared under the national socialist re-
gime, and none since 1945. The only collected edition after the war
was published in the GDR! Scholarly and popularizing publications
on him and on Zriny have practically come to a standstill.
That it was German nationalism that sustained the immense pop-
ularity of Zriny in the nineteenth and early twentieth century is obvi-
ous enough. But the success is rather puzzling, for unlike Kleist’s

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264 JOHN NEUBAUER

Hermannsschlacht and other patriotic works, Körner’s play was not

about indigeneous, German patriotism, and it did not treat an event
from the national past. Its Napoleonic allegory, ‘‘imported’’ from
the East, sought to rouse German/Austrian audiences with the patri-
otism of a Hungarian/Croatian hero. To make matters worse, the
patriotism of the historical Zrinyi was not exclusively directed
against the Turks but also against the Habsburgs, whose legitimacy
to the Hungarian throne was contested. Emperor Maximilian assem-
bled a great army against the Turks but let Zrinyi die, for he was
only concerned with the protection of Vienna. The anti-Habsburg
element became more pronounced in the lives and writings of Zri-
nyi’s two great grandsons, and by 1812, when the Turks were gone
and Hungary became dominated by the Austrians, much of the
Hungarian national awakening turned against the Habsburgs. Alle-
gorical readings of Zrinyi’s story could become exhortations to fight
the Habsburgs; indeed, some Hungarian opponents of the Habs-
burgs sympathized with Napoleon.
These complications may explain why, in spite of its intense patri-
otism, Zriny cleared censorship only after extended scrutiny.33
Though the original manuscript did not survive, traces of the censo-
rial intervention abound, and they are quite evident in the general
replacement of ‘‘Hungary’’ and its cognates by terms like ‘‘father-
land’’ and emperor. Indeed, Körner’s Zrinyi repeatedly stresses his
loyalty to the emperor, and in act 2, scene 6, which may have been
inserted at the request of the censor, he explicitly reprimands those
who complain that the imperial army did not come to his rescue:
‘‘do not speak sacrilegiously about our good Emperor . . . Life looks
different from the throne . . . The individual goes down in the
general. / It is the Emperor’s hereditary right: / He can demand a
sacrifice from thousands, / If the good of millions is at stake.’’34

IV
Körner’s play put a Janus-faced Hungarian patriotism to the ser-
vice of Metternich by covering up one of its two faces. It fuelled pa-
triotism in Germany with transmogrified Hungarian nationalism.
But, to complete a bizarre story, if German schools and theaters
(mis)appropriated a Hungarian patriotism, Körner’s German na-
tionalism was in turn appropriated by the Croats, who actually just
reclaimed a hero they always had regarded as their own. It is not
surprising that the Croatian composer Ivan Zajc and his librettist
Hugo Badalić should have thought of the hero of Szigetvár when

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MAKING WORLD WAR WITH LITERATURE 265

searching for a topic suitable for a national opera. By the 1870s,

most countries experiencing a national awakening already had na-
tional operas: in Italy it was Verdi’s Nabucco (1842), in Hungary it
was Ferenc Erkel’s Hunyadi László (1844) and Bánk Bán (1861), in
Poland it was Stanislaw Moniuszko’s Halka (1848), in Bohemia it was
Bedrich Smetana’s Bartered Bride (1869). National operas reached
into the nation’s historic past and native musical tradition; their per-
formance occasioned national self-celebrations.
Zrinyi/Zrinski was an ideal national hero for Zajc and Badalić, but
the Croatian version of the epos was apparently too sprawling and
undramatic for the stage. Instead, the composer and the librettist
decided to ‘‘re-nationalize’’ Zriny for Croatian purposes. Körner (or
his censors) made their task easier by neutralizing Hungarian patri-
otism and partially converting it into loyalty to the Habsburgs. The
opera Nikola Šubić Zrinski, first performed on November 4, 1876,
makes good use of this: time and again it simply substitutes Croatia
or one of its cognates for indefinite terms like Vaterland. To be sure,
this was not quite without danger in the early years of the dual mon-
archy, which held the Croats in a subordinate position both with re-
spect to the Hungarians and the Austrians. Croatian nationalism
played complicated and shifting roles throughout history; in the
nineteenth century it was directed, with varying intensity and direc-
tion, both against the Habsburgs and the Hungarians. Once more,
a national awakening had to confront foreign censorship, once
more the existence of censorship left its traces in the text. Not, to be
sure, in the Croatian version but in its German retranslation: where
the indigenous Croat text explicitly speaks of Croat heroism, the
German will use, time and again, Körner-like vague expressions like
Vaterland.35
It would be idle to speculate what exact role the opera’s Croat
nationalism played during the First and Second World Wars, during
the existence of Yugoslavia, and in Croatia’s recent struggle against
the Serbs. That the opera was recently (and probably for the first
time) performed in Hungary, gives one the hope, however, that
making war in literature and on the stage need not always lead to
new wars.

Notes
1. The reference to Hugo is obscure and may well be a mystification. Neither
the 3-vol. Pléiade edition of the Oeuvres poétiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1964–74) nor
the 1,700 pages of the Oeuvres poétiques complètes edited by Francis Bouvet (Paris:

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266 JOHN NEUBAUER

Pauvert, 1961) contains a poem by Hugo with that title. Book 1 in part 2 of Les
Misérables (pp. 339–97 in the Pléiade edition of 1951) is a magnificent account of
the battle of Waterloo, but contains no verses and the phrase ‘‘L’homme inquiet’’
does not seem to occur in it. To complicate matters further, Hugo was no admirer
of Napoleon and the military.
2. ‘‘Servat ne put s’empêcher de réciter à mi-voix ces vers de Hugo, Waterloo,
depuis: ‘‘L’homme inquiet . . .’’ Qui trouverait cela ridicule? C’est tellement fatal!
Ça va tellement de soi! Ce n’est plus un fait de culture, de connaissance littéraire
que d’évoquer cet admirable lyrisme qui fait maintenant comme partie de nous-
mêmes. C’est de l’instinct. Cela vient de plus loin que de l’intelligence, de beau-
coup plus profond. Nos philosophes diraient que c’est le subconscient qui entre là
en jeu.’’ See Ernest Psichari, L’Appel des Armes (1913), 4th ed. (Paris: Oudin, 1918),
222f.
3. ‘‘le danger, c’est d’oublier l’histoire. C’est une culture qui se perd, comme
tant d’autres. Et c’est pourtant la connaissance des destinées antérieures de nos
races qui nous apprend à vivre dans le présent et à nous élever au-dessus des contin-
gences de l’action sociale’’ (Psichari, 223).
4. ‘‘die Literatur in ihrem Einflusse auf das wirkliche Leben, auf das Schicksal
der Nationen und den Gang der Zeiten darzustellen,’’ in Friedrich Schlegel, Kriti-
sche Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, edited by Ernst Behler et al. (Paderborn, Germany:
Schöhning, 1961), 6: 9.
5. ‘‘Wichtig vor allen Dingen für die ganze fernere Entwickelung, ja für das
ganze geistige Dasein einer Nation erscheint es auf diesem historischen, die Völker
nach ihrem Wert vergleichenden Standpunkte, daß eine Volk große alte National-
Erinnerungen hat, welche sich meistens noch in die dunkeln Zeiten seines ersten
Ursprungs verlieren, und welche zu erhalten und zu verherrlichen das vorzüglich-
ste Geschäft der Dichtkunst ist. Solche National-Erinnerungen, das herrlichste Erb-
teil, das ein Volk haben kann, sind ein Vorzug, der durch nichts anders ersetzt
werden kann; und wenn ein Volk dadurch, daß es eine große Vergangenheit, daß
es solche Erinnerungen aus uralter Vorzeit, daß es mit einem Wort eine Poesie hat,
sich selbst in seinem eigenen Gefühle erhoben und gleichsam geadelt findet, so
wird es eben dadurch auch in unserem Auge und Urteil auf eine höhere Stufe
gestellt’’ (Schlegel, 15f ).
6. ‘‘Jede Literatur muß und soll national seyn; dieß ist ihre Bestimmung und
kann ihr allein erst ihren wahren und vollen Werth verleihen.’’ See Deutsches Mu-
seum (1812. repr. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975),
1: 2.
7. Francesco De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana. 2 vols. [1870–71] (Bari,
Italy: Laterza, 1925), II, 433.
8. Piotr Chmielowski, Historya Literatury Polskiej [History of Polish Literature], vols.
1–6 (Warsaw: Biblioteka Dzieł Wyborowych, 1899–1900), 1: 23.
9. Ernest Renan, ‘‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’’ (1882), in Oeuvres Complètes, ed.
Henriette Psichari, 10 vols., 887–906 (p. 892) (Paris: Callmann-Lévy, 1947–61), I
(1947).
10. On the relation between ideas of Renan and Ernest Psichari see Simone
Fraisse, ‘‘D’Ernest Renan à Ernest Psichari,’’ Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France
(1994), 114–23. Many critics, including Barrès and Massis, saw Ernest Psichari’s
conversion to Catholicism in 1914 as a symbolic redemption of his iconoclastic
grandfather. Fraisse indicates a more complex set of analogies and contrast be-
tween the two Ernests. On Psichari, see further: Daniel-Rops, Psichari, rev. ed.
(Paris: Plon 1947); Wallace Fowlie, Ernest Psichari (New York: Longmans Green &

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MAKING WORLD WAR WITH LITERATURE 267

Co. 1939); A.-M. Goichon, Ernest Psichari d’après documents inédits, 2nd ed. (Paris:
Conard, 1946); Alec G. Hargreaves, The Colonial Experience in French Fiction: A Study
of Pierre Loti, Ernest Psichari and Pierre Mille (London: Macmillan, 1981); Henri
Massis, La Vie d’Ernest Psichari (1916), Evocations (1931), and Notre ami Psichari
(1936); Henriette Psichari, Ernest Psichari, mon frère (Paris: Plon, 1933).
11. ‘‘L’armée comporte en elle-même sa morale, sa loi et sa mystique. Et ce n’est
ni la morale ni la mystique de la nation’’ (197).
12. ‘‘L’armée est un article de foi’’ (22); ‘‘La guerre est divine’’ (314); ‘‘le sang
des martyrs de l’Afrique était utile’’ (295).
13. ‘‘Mais voici que le cas de notre petit Français devient une sorte de symbole,
prend la valeur d’un fait historique. Voici que ce petit Français devient la France
elle-même.
On maudissait la guerre. Jean-Jacques venait de nous apprendre l’amour des
hommes, la Révolution venait de nous apprendre que les peuples sont libres et que
la conquête est inique. On était en plein dans l’idylle. Et il a suffi d’un petit lieuten-
ant d’artellerie pour que sortı̂t de terre la grande armée . . . Paradoxes étonnants
qui s’expliquent l’un l’autre et se complètent. Le cas Vincent nous explique que
Bonaparte ait trouvé l’instrument qu’il lui fallait, et, en retour, l’épopée impériale
nous apprend pourquoi et comment Maurice Vincent est toujours possible en
France’’ (207–08).
14. ‘‘Hereux les jeunes hommes qui, de nos jours, one mené la vie frugale, sim-
ple et chaste des guerriers!’’ (297).
15. Op. cit., 109f.
16. Oeuvres complètes, ed. Paul Viallaneix (Paris: Seuil, 1965), 354–411.
17. ‘‘Comme le capitaine de Vigny, et comme moi, vous avez éprouvé la grand
tristesse de l’armée. Commme nous, hélas! vous en avez éprouvé les servitudes plus
que les grandeurs’’ (303).
18. ‘‘Depuis quarante ans que vous avez goûté l’affreux poison de la défaite,
quoi que vous fassiez, il reste au fond de vous-mêmes la rage impuissante, l’amère
tristesse, une soif inassouvie’’ (305).
19. ‘‘tant que vous aurez cet aiguillon, vous serez plus grands que nous n’étions
. . . nous ne pensions qu’à cette grande ombre qui nous dominait. Au lieu que vous,
vous attendez quelqun’’ (306).
20. ‘‘Il exerce, non en ambitieux, mais en artiste, l’art de la guerre’’ (298).
21. Agathon [Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde], Les Jeunes gens d’aujourd’hui: Le
Goût de l’action la foi patriotique—Une Renaissance catholique le réalisme politique, 6th ed.
(Paris: Plon, 1913).
22. Nouvelle Revue Française 9 (1913), pp. 748–65, 914–31 and 10 (1914), pp.
56–77.
23. Le Figaro, February 20, 1909. Following him, the Russian Cubo-Futurists Bur-
liuk, Majakovskij, and Xlebnikov advocated throwing Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy
and other canonized writers from the ‘‘Steamship of Modernity.’’ See Princeton Ency-
clopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1993), 446.
24. See his letter to his family, dated May 2, 1812, about Schlegel’s closing lec-
ture, in Theodor Körners Briefwechsel mit den Seinen, ed. A. Weldler-Steinberg (Leipzig:
Quelle & Meyer, 1910), 186f.
25. See Tibor Klaniczay, Zrinyi Miklós, 2nd ed. (Budapest: Akadémiai Könyvki-
adó, 1964), 10f.
26. Published in Vienna in 1651 in a volume entitled Adriai tengernek Syrenája
(The Siren of the Adriatic Sea).

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268 JOHN NEUBAUER

27. Friedrich Schlegel, who spent some time in Hungary and learned a smatter-
ing of the language, remarked in his tenth lecture that the Hungarians retained an
interest in the heroic epos throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (6:
237), but he does not name Zrinyi. It is not unreasonable to assume that he had a
role in Körner’s choice of topic, but we have no hard evidence on this.
28. His father supplied him with the most important historical sources. The most
important literary source was probably the three-act play Niklas Zrini oder die Belager-
ung von Sigeth by the minor Swabian author Friedrich August Clemens Werthes
(1748–1817), published in 1790. See Reinhard Kade, ‘‘Zu Körners Toni und Zri-
nyi,’’ Die Grenzboten 48 (1889): 171–80, 224–30.
29. Schwert und Leier (Sword and Lyre) was the title of a collection of Körner’s
lyric poems; the contrast was also a topos in the poetry of Miklós Zrinyi.
30. Gesamtverzeichnis des deutsprachigen Schrifttums (GV) 1700–1910 (Munich: Saur,
1983), vol. 79, 117–23. An exact tally is all but impossible because many editions
have no publication date and the number of printings is only intermittently given.
Furthermore, many editions were in series, under different names.
31. Gesamtverzeichnis des deutsprachingen Schrifttums (GV) 1911–1965 (Munich: Ver-
lag Dokumentation, 1978), vol. 71, 147–51.
32. ‘‘Entstanden unter dem furchtbaren Druck der Zeitverhältnisse . . . ist das
Drama mit seiner hinreißendenVerherrlichung aufopfernder Vaterlandsliebe,
hingebender Plichterfüllung und furchtloser Tapferkeit das Hohelied von der Be-
freiung des Vaterlandes. . . . Körner dichtete das Heldentum Zrinys nicht nur, er
lebte es auch; er und Tausende, ja aber Tausende deutsche Männer und selbst
Frauen! . . . Wo Dichtung und Wahrheit so ineinanderfließen, wie bei Körner, da
verklärt eines das andere mit unvergänglicher Jugend, . . . Geist und Gesinnung,
wie sie und in Körners ‘‘Zriny’’ entgegentreten, werden in Zeiten, wo es sich um
Sein und Nichtsein des Vaterlandes handelt, helfen, dessen Feinde in gewaltigem
Ansturm zu überwinden, wie im jetzigen Weltkriege.’’ See Schmitz-Mancy, Erläuter-
ungen zu Körners ‘‘Zriny’’ (Paderborn, Germany: Schöningh, 1916), 13–14.
33. Körner reported on June 27, 1812, to his family that he completed the writ-
ing. He read parts of it the following day to Friedrich Schlegel. (Körner to his fam-
ily, July 11, 1812). But on September 12, he reported that Zriny had not yet passed
Metternich; on September 19 he wrote that Zriny is being dragged out until the end
of October; on October 23 that he hoped to get an answer from the censor the
next day. The permission finally came on October 31. Körner remarked that he
could not complain about all too-extensive deletions (letter of October 31 to his
family), but this must be taken with a grain of salt: due to the long waiting he must
have feared the worse.
34. Lines 1621, and 1638–41. See Theodor Körner, Werke (Berlin: Bong, n.d.),
2:114–15.
35. The discrepany is still evident in the booklet that accompanies the Croatian
cd I acquired. The booklet was produced in the 1990s, and claims to contain a re-
vised German text, but this text quite consistently tones down the Croat national
element in the libretto.

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Recycling the Renaissance in World War II:
E. W. & M. M. Robson Review
Laurence Olivier’s Henry V
Ton Hoenselaars

AFTER MORE THAN A CENTURY OF FILM, SHAKESPEARE ON THE SCREEN HAS

become booming business, in the cinema, the classroom, and the
academic’s study. Current interest focuses on the interaction be-
tween the traditional stage and the modern screen, the appropria-
tion and dissemination of a canonical early modern author by the
primary medium of mass popular culture, and the phenomenon of
cinematic adaptations as postmodern offshoots.1 This essay discusses
what many have recognized as the first major British Shakespeare
film, Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944). Over the years since its re-
lease, Henry V has, of course, received more than its fair share of
attention from critics and scholars. However, parts of its early his-
tory still remain unexplored, in particular the contemporary, mid-
century writings on the British cinema by Emanuel W. and Mary
Major Robson. Before discussing the Robsons’ views of Shakespeare
and Henry V, however, it seems both relevant and appropriate briefly
to dwell also on their other work devoted to film history, if only to
recognize the Robsons’ total output as a neglected context of Olivi-
er’s Henry V, a corpus of criticism hinging on an effort to align the
cinematic arts of the mid-twentieth century with those of the history
and literature of Elizabethan England, whose representatives in-
cluded Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville, John Northbrooke, as well
as Shakespeare.
Emanuel and Mary Robson were two sociologically oriented Brit-
ish film critics, active during the 1930s and 1940s. Together, they
wrote a number of reviews, treatises, and books on the cinema, in-
cluding The Film Answers Back (1939), In Defense of Moovie [sic]
(1941), The Shame and Disgrace of Colonel Blimp (1944), Bernard Shaw
among the Innocents (1945), and The World is My Cinema (1947). The
Robsons’ view of the British cinema represented a curious brand of

269

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270 TON HOENSELAARS

liberal humanism mixed with ultraconservative views on marriage

and the family as the cornerstones of a civilization that developed
along Darwinian lines, and crossbred with a highly inflammable
brand of insularity and xenophobia.
The Robsons’ first full-length study, The Film Answers Back, which
appeared just before the Second World War and which contained a
number of insightful comments about the Fascist regime in Ger-
many, was well received, despite its curious thesis that film produc-
ers should raise their standards of quality by studying box-office
figures.2 Reviewers of The Film Answers Back called the Robsons ‘‘a
pair of able chroniclers’’ who had written ‘‘a book no serious film
student should overlook,’’ describing it as ‘‘[t]he most interesting
and at the same time the most aggravating volume ever written on
films.’’3 However, under the pressure of the war, it would appear, the
Robsons became ever more extreme in their views, and ever more
intolerant vis-à-vis those of others. Representative is their vitupera-
tive review of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (dirs. Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger, 1943), in which they argued that the film’s
representation of Englishmen and Germans tended to be too criti-
cal of the former and too lenient with regard to the latter. In fact,
the Robsons denounced Colonel Blimp as ‘‘a vivid example of how the
living, breathing germs of World War Three [were] being carefully
hatched.’’4 Their criticism—which may well have met with the ap-
proval of Churchill, who had unsuccessfully tried to suppress the
film5 —occasioned a huge controversy, which seriously undermined
any creditable reputation the Robsons might have cherished in the
annals of film history. In a 1978 paper devoted to Powell and Press-
burger as the makers of Colonel Blimp, John Russell Taylor still con-
sidered it ‘‘weird’’ that ‘‘the extreme right wing, jingoistic Robsons
were accusing the high Tory Powell and the committedly anti-Nazi
Pressburger of being insufficiently out of sympathy with that famous
reactionary zealot Adolf Hitler and his pack of unspeakable Huns.’’
Taylor was prepared to acknowledge that the Robsons had been on
to something without realizing what it was, but he nevertheless
spoke of the couple as ‘‘happily now long forgotten.’’6
Due to the oblivion that the Robsons appear to have called on
themselves, one fascinating feature about their work has not re-
ceived the attention it deserves. This is the way in which they drew
on the English Renaissance, its history, and its literature, as a varie-
gated model for the British film industry in the turbulent 1930s and
1940s. Anxious to secure world peace, they developed a theory
about the way in which the British cinema might make a major con-
tribution:

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RECYCLING THE RENAISSANCE IN WORLD WAR II 271

the talkie film and the wireless are mightier than the bombing plane and
the big howitzer. The historical process is already showing, even though
things in Europe may look black for the moment, that the new weapons
of international understanding will eventually put the weapons of de-
struction out of commission. (The Film Answers Back, 99)

Just as the Elizabethan period saw the impetuous advance of the

printing press, the Robsons argued, so the interbellum saw the ad-
vance of radio and the talkie film as the instruments of a new social
order. To achieve its militant mission, the cinema had to be pre-
pared to recognize the multiple analogies between contemporary
and early modern history, and decide to shape, or, rather, reshape
and improve itself accordingly.
The 1930s film industry in Britain, as the Robsons interpreted it,
was in a state of decadence, as a result of imitating and borrowing
from the predominantly unwholesome international film scene.
The democratically oriented U.S. film industry had long functioned
as a model, but even the Hollywood of the 1930s was beginning to
show signs of degeneration. As a consequence, the British film in-
dustry was in need of a serious boost. In response to the situation
they recognized, the Robsons defined as one of their credos that the
British cinema should present unambiguous praise of virtue and the
punishment of vice. English cinema, they believed, was too permis-
sive in its presentation of authoritarianism, and might, in this way,
also promote it. The old class system in English cinema produced
film that was nondemocratic and expressed contempt of human dig-
nity. Instead, they wished to see the ‘‘Hitler type humbled in the
dust’’ in the way Charlie Chaplin mocked the despot even before
the release of The Great Dictator (The Film Answers Back, 168). It was
also against this background that the Robsons termed Laurence
Olivier’s role in The Divorce of Lady X unchivalrous, referring to the
part that Olivier played as an ‘‘unassailable Fuehrer’’ (182), while
asking themselves how long it would be before such antisocial behav-
ior led to ‘‘the next logical step, the snatching of other people’s
property and jobs on the cock-and-bull excuses of ‘Jews’ ’’ (184). In
this manner, the Robsons really criticized ‘‘a very light, highly pol-
ished comedy of errors, never intended to be taken seriously’’; and
their verdict, Olivier’s biographer John Cottrell argues, was ‘‘an indi-
cation of the stuffiness of the age.’’7
The Robsons argued for a degree of social commitment at odds
with the subjectivist, art for art’s sake ideal, which betrayed ‘‘a desire
among a section of the intelligentsia to rest on their oars, to enjoy
the fruits of humanism bequeathed to them by the Renaissance and

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272 TON HOENSELAARS

the French Revolution without reference to the future movement of

society’’ (The Film Answers Back, 187). To the Robsons, the cinema
should realize its humanizing potential vis-à-vis the masses, and to
support their argument, they cited Huntley Carter’s The New Spirit in
the Cinema (1930). In Carter’s account of his peregrinations through
a war-torn Europe, he mentions an occasion on which he was briefly
imprisoned, but managed to get his rough prison guards to arrange
a joint visit to the cinema, after which ‘‘[s]omething had humanized
them, had made them no longer guards but guides’’ (106).
Film’s social commitment advocated by the Robsons was not an
unproblematic issue. Recognizing film as the new medium of the
people, one needed not only to recognize their needs, but also to
instruct mass audiences. In other words, the Robsons’ view of film
created the need for a substantial educational strategy, so as to pre-
vent situations that occurred in the early days of film:

commendable attempts were made . . . to interest the public in fifteen-

minute versions of the plays of Shakespeare and the poems of Dante.
Even Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was persuaded to appear in one of
them. But these pictures cut very little ice with the public. Showmen, no
matter how well intentioned, had yet to learn that nothing has ever
grown from the top downwards . . . it was only amongst the people that
the film was to find its roots.8

The consequent pedagogical imperative of this vision, coupled with

the notion that the early modern period might serve as a model for
the developing British film industry, accounts for the Robsons’ re-
writing of Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poetry as a poetics for the new
cinema entitled In Defense of Moovie [sic]. The ideal of educating the
masses also explains the idiosyncratic style of this neglected off-
shoot.
‘‘In Defense of Moovie’’ by Sir Philip Sidney (1581–1941). Transcribed
from ‘‘In Defense of Poesie’’ appeared in Edinburgh in December 1940.
Curiously, one searches in vain for any reference to the Robsons’
rewriting of Sidney’s Defense in the major Sidney bibliographies. Al-
though In Defense of Moovie has always been traceable under ‘‘Sid-
ney’’ in the British Library index, the pamphlet is not included in
either Samuel and Dorothy Tannenbaum’s Concise Bibliography of
1941 (covering the period from Sidney’s death through 1940), or
Mary Washington’s annotated bibliography of Sidney criticism from
1941 through 1970.9 Given the fact that In Defense of Moovie appeared
in Edinburgh in December 1940, it is likely that the Tannenbaums
did not see a copy of the book before their own bibliography ap-

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RECYCLING THE RENAISSANCE IN WORLD WAR II 273

peared in print less than a year later. The reason for the pamphlet’s
absence from the bibliography by Washington may be that she ‘‘did
not attempt to check the period prior to 1941’’ (Washington 1972,
1). Whichever the case may be, it is certain that due to the hiatus
in both major bibliographies, Renaissance scholars and film studies
specialists have been deprived of an eccentric chapter in the English
reception history of Sir Philip Sidney.
The Robsons’ rationale behind their choice of Sidney was the con-
viction that the Defense of Poetry was ‘‘a literary work of such brilliance
and psychological acumen that with only slight alterations its teach-
ings [were] as serviceable [during World War II] as when it was com-
pleted about the year 1581.’’10 What had been a cultural guide for
the Elizabethans struggling against Philip the Second, the Robsons
argued, could also serve as a humanist model for a nation at war
against Hitler. The Robsons’ target audience were the ‘‘ordinary
folk,’’ the ‘‘common people,’’ who ought not, as was the case in Ger-
many, be separated from the national expressions of poetry and
drama (In Defense of Moovie 7). The Robsons argued a case for
‘‘human reason’’ joined to ‘‘the life, the liberty, and the happiness
of the people’’ (8). They sought ‘‘the Anglo-Saxon path of social
sanity, humanity, and democracy,’’ not that of scholasticism which
had given rise to Nazidom.
Sidney’s dying words were interpreted as a universal plea for hu-
manity, as ‘‘a story that has confirmed mankind in their faith in
humanity . . . in every part of the world’’ (9–10). To the Robsons,
Sidney represented ‘‘the profound humanism which was the predom-
inant current in Elizabethan England’’ (10). They wholeheartedly
subscribed to Fulke Greville’s claim, prefiguring Jacob Burckhardt’s
nineteenth-century definition of expansionist Renaissance human-
ism, that Sidney ‘‘was a true model of worth, a man fit for reform,
conquest, colonisation’’ (10).
In an act of Fluellenism, the Robsons continued to list the paral-
lels between the early modern situation and the contemporary
plight in Europe. Just as Sidney fought against his godfather, Philip
II, England now played a leading part in combatting Hitler. Under
Philip as well as Hitler, constitutional rights and freedom were to-
tally suppressed. Just as Philip II relied on the Inquisition, Hitler de-
pended on the Gestapo. Just as Philip II had murdered Don Carlos,
Hitler was responsible for the deaths of his followers. Just as Hitler
had his Gauleiters, so Philip II had had the Duke of Alba as well as
the Guise and Medici families.
In the introduction to their rewriting of the Defence of Poetry, it was
the Robsons’ aim to recall ‘‘the essentially social and Christian im-

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274 TON HOENSELAARS

pulse which influenced the greatest men of the sixteenth century, to

build that tremendous cultural pyramid that culminated in the work
of Shakespeare, and the publication of the authorised version of the
Bible in 1611’’ (19). The Robsons praised the poets and playwrights
who mastered the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian tongues, not as
a form of self-satisfaction, but as ‘‘a privilege and a social obliga-
tion.’’ At the center of their neo-humanist ideals was the conviction
that men like Sidney, More, and Shakespeare, through their study,
attempted to realize a world ‘‘where human values might reign su-
preme and men may live in fellowship and mutual productive en-
deavour’’ (21).
To present a eulogy on Renaissance humanism, however, was only
part of the Robsons’ objective. Their utopian neo-humanism was
really a stalking horse to further their mission vis-à-vis the British cin-
ema, which, as they had already argued in The Film Answers Back, was
overly elitist in subject matter and language, and still inferior to its
infinitely more democratic Hollywood counterpart. The Robsons
felt that it could only be improved by catering to broad audiences
whose tastes, likes, and dislikes could be identified by studying their
box office behavior. This approach to film making would delight
and teach audiences, lead to a healthier society, improve the British
cinema, and make it a powerful weapon in the war on Hitler.
Clearly, the humanist potential of the cinema, as they envisaged it,
was not devoid of another agenda, which again drew on the early
modern period as its model, seen through the nineteenth-century
eyes of Burckhardt and John Addington Symonds. In a typical in-
stance of ‘‘conscripting the earlier humanists to the commercial,
scientific and imperial expansionism of the later nineteenth cen-
tury,’’ the Robsons hoped that with Sidney’s poetics properly inter-
preted and put in practice, they might further the broader cultural
cause of Britain abroad.11 Preferring to see the early humanists’ self-
ordained task ‘‘not as the discovery of the future but as the recovery of
the past,’’ the Robsons expressed the belief that ‘‘[t]he best of Brit-
ain’s culture, as in Elizabeth I’s day, should be made to illumine the
world.’’12
For all the seriousness with which the Robsons advanced their the-
ories about the future of the British cinema, it is difficult on occa-
sion to suppress a chuckle at the rather naive rewriting of Sidney’s
Defence for the masses considered in need of education, although
they nevertheless effected a subtle reformulation of Sidney’s dictum
that poetry should teach and delight and thus move to virtuous ac-
tion, to read that the pictures should move (as in movies) in order
to teach and delight. A few examples of the Robsons’ rewriting of

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RECYCLING THE RENAISSANCE IN WORLD WAR II 275

Sidney should suffice. In the Defence of Poetry, Sidney speaks of the

merits of Aesop’s fables as follows:

the poet is the food for the tenderest stomachs, the poet is indeed the
right popular philosopher, whereof Aesop’s tales give good proof, whose
pretty allegories, stealing under the formal tales of beasts, makes many,
more beastly than beasts, begin to hear the sound of virtue from these
dumb speakers.13

In the version by the Robsons this becomes:

But the Moovie is the food for the tenderest stomachs—the Moovie is
indeed the right popular Philosopher, whereof Walt Disney’s tales give
proud proof, whose charming allegories, stealing under the formal ex-
ploits of animals, make many begin to hear the sounds of virtue from
these players. (In Defense of Moovie, 42)

A similar transfer takes place in Sidney’s argument about the lessons

of the Stoa to be learned from dramatic literature. Sidney brings in
Sophocles:

Anger, the Stoics said, was a short madness: let but Sophocles bring you
Ajax on a stage, killing or whipping sheep and oxen, thinking them the
army of Greeks, with their chieftains Agamemnon and Menelaus, and
tell me if you have not a more familiar insight into anger than finding
in the schoolmen his genus and difference. (Defense of Poetry, 86)

The Robsons, again, draw on Walt Disney:

Anger, the Stoics have told us, is a short-lived madness. Let but Disney
bring us Donald Duck upon the Moovie Screen, threatening his enemies
in a violent fury of anger, and then you can tell me if you have not a
better insight into anger upon seeing this outburst of violence than you
could ever have by consulting the learned scholars for a definition of
what anger is. (In Defense of Moovie, 42–43)

The ‘‘friendship in Nisus and Euryalus’’ to which Sidney refers (De-

fence of Poetry, 86), is replaced by the friendship ideal represented
in the plot of Victor Fleming’s Test Pilot, a film which postdates the
Hollywood star system, and which has Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Spen-
cer Tracy, and Lionel Barrymore, ‘‘disinterestedly pulling together
in the interests of the production as a whole.’’14 A phrase in Sidney
like ‘‘glad will they be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus,
Aeneas’’ (Defence of Poetry, 92) is modernized to read: ‘‘glad they will

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276 TON HOENSELAARS

be to see and hear the tales of the Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles, and the
valiant boarding of the Altmark’’ (In Defense of Moovie, 49). Where
Sidney mentions Amadis de Gaule as the type of poetry that might
incite to ‘‘the exercise of courtesy’’ (Defence of Poetry, 92), the Rob-
sons choose Captains Courageous as their example (In Defense of Moo-
vie, 50), the film with Spencer Tracy playing a Portuguese sailor who
‘‘stands out for his dignity, his humanity, his sane regard for the
eternal human values’’ (The Film Answers Back, 316). Sidney may
wonder, ‘‘Who readeth Aeneas carrying old Anchises on his back,
that wisheth not it were his fortune to perform so excellent an act?’’
(Defence of Poetry, 92); the Robsons read, ‘‘Who that saw Gary Cooper
in Mr Deeds Goes to Town did not wish it were his fortune to do good
in such excellent performance?’’ (In Defense of Moovie, 50). The ulti-
mate question is not why ‘‘England, the mother of excellent minds,
should be grown so hard a stepmother to poets’’ (Defence of Poetry,
110), but ‘‘to the Moovie Industry’’ (In Defense of Moovie, 71). It is not
the genre that is to blame for the state of the British cinema; it is
‘‘the fault of Moovie Apes and not of Moovie Makers’’ (85).
It is only a small step from the Robsons’ use of the Renaissance as
a period providing ample analogies with the turbulent present to
their veneration for Shakespeare, even if, as I shall illustrate below,
Shakespeare and the cinema, to them, were not compatible. To-
gether with the authorized version of the Bible, Shakespeare for
them stood at the top of the ‘‘tremendous cultural pyramid’’ of the
early modern period. Shakespeare represented ‘‘the vigour, the no-
bility, the depth of human understanding’’ which were the outcome
of the ‘‘stimulating social atmosphere of England during the reign
of Elizabeth . . . when exciting new Eldorados were opening out be-
fore the gaze of men’’ (The Film Answers Back, 141). Under Elizabeth,
Shakespeare ‘‘wrote his name across the eternal realms of litera-
ture’’ (146). Shakespeare represented the pinnacle of Elizabethan
drama, and, as the Robsons saw it, this was a genre which had gone
through a process of development much like the cinema in the
twentieth century. Drawing for support on Sir Sidney Lee, the Rob-
sons developed the theory that Shakespeare had entered a theater
scene dominated by inferior authors and playwrights. Unlike them,
he had turned to catering for a playgoing public. In this way, he had
managed to delight and teach his audiences, thus ‘‘raising the stan-
dards of civilisation and social behaviour among his fellow-citizens’’
(23). Just as the earliest dramatic performances were held on crude
stages in inn yards, so the cinema had started at music halls and
fairgrounds. Just as Shakespeare had raised the dramatic genre to
unprecedented heights by setting out to delight and teach his audi-

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ences and to cater to their tastes, so the cinema could raise its stan-
dards if it took its cue from Sidney’s Defence of Poetry and address not
the elite but the masses.
Part of their praise of Shakespeare is that whereas he worked
with an eye toward the populace, English films of the interbellum
were marked by ‘‘the upper classes in England, living in a more
rarefied atmosphere,’’ and since the English film was a closer ex-
pression of their particular world, it could not, in its existing form,
achieve the world circulation of the American product, or make an
appeal to the majority of the British people.15 In short, the advan-
tage of Shakespeare, the Robsons argue, was that he limited himself
to a ‘‘healthy’’ representation of life. By way of an example, they
quote Cardinal Wolsey from Henry VIII, throwing ‘‘a shaft of light on
human moral understanding when, in his deep-felt remorse he calls
out:

O, Cromwell, I charge thee, cast away ambition.

Had I but served my God as I have served my king,
He would not, in mine age, have left me naked to mine enemies.’’
(The World is My Cinema, 168)

Particularly interesting in this context is the Robsons’ praise of

Shakespeare for enlisting history in the service of the theater and
perfecting the genre of the history play. When Shakespeare first
came to the theater, they argue, there were only chronicle plays,
‘‘mere pageants or processions of ill-connected episodes, chiefly of
English history, in which drums and trumpets and the clatter of
swords and cannon largely did duty for dramatic speech and action’’
(In Defense of Moovie, 23). Shakespeare, however, developed new stan-
dards, and proved ‘‘how genius might evoke order out of disorder
and supplant violence by power’’ (23). Shakespeare’s democratic
achievement with the history play differed rather strongly from elit-
ist Alexander Korda’s Private Life of Henry VIII, Herbert Wilcox’s Vic-
toria the Great, or Korda’s more recent Fire Over England (1937),
which ‘‘told very much more about Queen Elizabeth than about En-
gland.’’16 Against the background of such elaborate praise of Shake-
speare and the English history play, it is curious indeed to find that
the Robsons saw no real use for the playwright in the movie me-
dium. Their discussion of Olivier’s Henry V leaves one in little doubt.
Olivier’s film version of Henry V, first released in 1944, is now
firmly situated in the canon of film literature. This has not always
been the case. As Harry Geduld usefully reminds us in the introduc-
tion to his anthology of early criticism devoted to the Olivier project,

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278 TON HOENSELAARS

‘‘the film did not find unanimous acceptance.’’17 Initially, there was
disagreement about the ‘‘textual deletions’’ which oversimplified
the character of the king. Also, the way in which the Globe scenes
had been made to frame the Agincourt campaign was considered ‘‘a
confusion of convention’’ (67). Manny Farber found the film
‘‘stagy,’’ recalling ‘‘grade-school operetta’’ (67). Philip Hartung
considered the opening scene ‘‘a great bore’’ as he did the scenes
‘‘showing Shakespeare’s so-called clowns in action’’ (68). Finally,
the film’s political stance has been described as ‘‘quite ambiguous’’
(69). Olivier himself argued that this was essentially a film about
‘‘Anglo-British relations’’ (Geduld 1973, 17). The French, however,
were not convinced. At the time of the film’s release, for example, a
party of Free French sailors stationed in Britain are said to have left
the auditorium, and the French authorities were seriously con-
cerned by its stereotypical representation of the French national
character.18 Yet, none of the rather less polite expressions of criti-
cism vis-à-vis Olivier’s now canonical film epic equals the assault on
the film from the Robsons. Both in their Bernard Shaw among the In-
nocents (1945), and in their chapter on Henry V included in The World
is My Cinema, they took the film to task on a number of grounds,
some familiar, others less so.
The Robsons dismissed the film almost categorically. The only fa-
vorable words they spent on it were the following:

There is only one commercial justification for making an historical film,

a ‘‘costume’’ picture as it is called, and that is its topicality, its bearing
upon our own social and individual problems and their solution. The
elements of love and marriage and parenthood and protection of one’s
kith and kin, are eternal and therefore topical yesterday, today and to-
morrow. There are occasional flashes of topicality in the Technicolor
Henry V. (Bernard Shaw among the Innocents, 28)

The Robsons were angered by the fact that ‘‘even the work of our
greatest national poet and playwright cannot be handled by our
anti-social, anti-religious, paradox mongering film makers without
smearing religion with a tar brush’’ (The World is My Cinema, 77).
With indirect reference to the flattering accounts of the preparation
of the film script (like C. Clayton Hutton’s), the Robsons asked the
question:

by what process of reading or reasoning could those expensive transcrib-

ers have gathered from Shakespeare’s text that the Bishop of Ely should
be a scruffy-looking tramp, dressed like Grock the Clown, and that he,
and the Archbishop of Canterbury, should, between them, deliver their

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lines, clowning and fidgeting and grimacing, and dropping things all
over the place, as if they were acting for a children’s pantomime?19

Not only did the Robsons criticize the way in which Olivier repre-
sented the clergy; they also launched a fierce attack against the
film’s use of comic relief. Dreading the prospect of two and a half
hours of ‘‘Henry, Henry, Henry,’’ Olivier had argued that ‘‘the film
cried out for light relief,’’ and this is what he introduced rather pro-
fusely.20 The critics did not fail to notice this, like Bosley Crowther
who believed that ‘‘Olivier ha[d] leaned perhaps too heavily toward
the comic characters’’ (Geduld 1973, 68). Foster Hirsch described
the scenes with the comic characters, when they did not comment
on the war, as ‘‘remarkably flat.’’ ‘‘These low-comedy contretemps,’’
he wrote, ‘‘are an interference.’’21 The polite and circumspect style
of these critics is a far cry from the Robsons’ response. They called
the team behind Henry V a bunch of ‘‘clod-hopping film makers’’ for
following Henry’s ‘‘Once more unto the breach’’ speech with the
‘‘comic mockery’’ of it by Bardolph and Pistol (The World is My Cin-
ema, 78). The Robsons were certainly aware of its faithfulness to the
Shakespeare text, but they believed that it testified to ‘‘senselessness
to think that because it reads thus and thus in the book, it has to be
made exactly thus and thus slavishly for a film’’ (78). This was not
an instance of the film reviewers applying Sidney’s advice against
mingling kings and clowns; rather, it was the Robsons’ conviction
that Shakespeare wrote the Bardolph-Pistol interlude following the
Harfleur sequence as comic relief, during an interval introduced as
‘‘a physical let up’’ for Elizabethan audiences standing in the yard
(79). The need for such relief, they alleged with Darwinian fervor,
was totally out of date, unnecessary in the modern cinema with its
sedentary audience. As a consequence, the glorious heroism of
Henry and St. George on film could only be deflated by the comedy
if it was kept in. From the outset, there has been a tendency among
critics of Olivier’s Henry V to argue that the cinematic representation
of king and country is more patriotic than Shakespeare’s more am-
bivalent play text would seem to allow. Gorman Beauchamp, de-
scribed as ‘‘an extremely hostile critic,’’ even spoke of the result as
‘‘pasty patriotic ragout.’’22 It is a mark of the Robsons’ unusually self-
protective and insular outlook, that—as with Powell and Pressburg-
er’s Life and Death of Colonel Blimp—they did not consider the film
patriotic enough.
The Robsons further believed that Henry V, like most British films
of the time, relied too much on verbal communication. Whereas
Bosley Crowther praised the film for having ‘‘mounted the play with

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280 TON HOENSELAARS

faithful service to the spirit and the word’’ (Geduld, 76), the Rob-
sons identified ‘‘an absolute, pathetic, almost pathological leaning
upon words, words, words; upon the verbal imagery of Shakespeare
in Henry V’’ (The World is My Cinema, 24). Although Olivier had taken
the trouble to play ‘‘the first few scenes on the Globe stage in a
highly, absolutely deliberate, theatrical style [to] get the film audi-
ence used to the language, and let them laugh its excesses out of
their systems before the story really begins,’’ the Robsons’ verdict on
Henry V still was that ‘‘you cannot regard [the film] as more than
a photographed sound track or word track.’’23 In this respect, the
Robsons’ opinion—which Anthony Holden would classify as ‘‘high-
minded’’24 —was nearest to that of Roger Manvell who, in an essay
of 1947, the same year that saw the publication of The World is My
Cinema, expressed the conviction that ‘‘this film could not make full
use of the resources of the cinema since it was bound to the verbal
wheel of Shakespeare’s text written for the rhetorical theatre. The
camera had to record rather than take charge.’’25
The Robsons’ response is understandable, certainly given the type
of film under review, whose structure, as Richard Griffith wrote in
1967, ‘‘was designed constantly to remind the spectator of the fact
that it was a play and not a film’’ (Geduld, 77). Or, as Ernest Lind-
gren put it:

Olivier’s Henry V was a very fine filmed version of the play, but the mag-
nificence of Shakespeare’s verse alone, although spoken by our greatest
actors, is not enough to make a great film in the true sense of the word
. . . what is required is poetry of the film, instead of poetry in the film.26

Even a more recent critic like John Collick seems to share some of
the discomfort that the Robsons expressed, when he states that the
film’s production team were really ‘‘championing two different
causes’’:

On the one hand the intricate visuals of the film need little of the text
to complement their implicit reiteration of the spectacular tradition and
the mythology of British wartime culture. On the other hand Olivier and
the producers of the movie, definitely perceive the text as the idealised
source of meaning and so the speeches are delivered with the precise
and measured enunciation of a BBC radio broadcast.27

These critics may seem to be repeating the Robsons’ argument in

more careful terms. A closer look, however, reveals that for the Rob-
sons their observation about the discrepancy of the spoken word
and the visual image, the stage play and the movie, did not go far

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enough. To them, the British literary heritage was not a proper film
source:

There is a big difference between literary imagination destined for the

printed page, and filmic imaginativeness, which forms the substance of
the foremost American productions. . . . We in this country follow not
the tradition of the cinema, but the tradition of books and literature
which belongs properly to books and literature, but not to film. . . . It is
that old, sometimes halting, thousand-year-old literary outlook which
drags upon the feet of the British film industry like the fetters upon a
victim of a chain gang. It is that disability to free itself from the printed
page, that inability to learn the art of film making afresh which is hold-
ing up our progress as a film producing country at every turn.28

The very quality of Shakespeare’s verse was the main reason for its
disqualification as matter fit for a screen play:

the beauty of Shakespeare lies in his imaginative verbal exposition, or, as

his contemporaries would describe it, ‘‘figuring forth.’’ His language was
the Technicolor of the sixteenth century and the attempt to Technicol-
orise Shakespeare is, indeed, gilding the lily—a process both redundant
and anachronistic. (77)

To make the point even more clearly, the Robsons, never at a loss
for literary models to argue that ‘‘[t]he film impinges upon the pre-
alphabetical faculties of man,’’ shamelessly adapted Aquinas’s Summa
Theologica to read, ‘‘Words are to a film but things apart, They are a
novel’s whole existence.’’29
The Robsons’ criticism of Henry V was not based on the assump-
tion that the film makers had failed to do justice to Shakespeare; it
was simply Shakespeare who could not match the requirements of
the movie medium. The makers of Henry V had ‘‘forgotten that what
suited an Elizabethan audience is not necessarily meat for us in our
day and generation’’ (The World is My Cinema, 75–76). If Eric Bentley
considered that Olivier’s filmed Shakespeare was ‘‘part of the horri-
bly desecratory trend towards popularization-cum-prostitution of
the Bard,’’ the Robsons felt that the national playwright was anti-
quated and hence had no business in the cinema whatsoever.30 The
point the Robsons were trying to make was that the British cinema
should not rely on existing, literary texts as the natural basis for
screenplays:

After Henry V has gone the round of cinemas, what then? What follows?
Our film makers are back exactly where they were before, still under the

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282 TON HOENSELAARS

obligation of learning the essence of film scripting. (The World is My Cin-

ema, 79)

Apparently, they were not aware of the various stages through which
the Shakespeare play had gone to become the ultimate scenario for
the film, a script from which Olivier and his team departed even fur-
ther in the process of making the film.31 Their argument, however,
mainly focused on the perceived irreconcilability of the spoken
word and the cinematic, moving image:

Shakespeare has been a source of inspiration to authors and playwrights

for nearly four centuries, but authors and playwrights, however skilful,
are handicapped to the extent that they have to present a picture of the
world in words. The artist worker in words describes the world. The film
maker literally places ‘‘the world before your eyes.’’ (79)

Olivier, with reference to the film version of Henry V, stated that ‘‘if
you have Shakespeare’s lines, you don’t need tricks to maintain in-
terest’’ (Cottrell 1975, 196). The Robsons, as advocates of the new
medium of film, however, saw the craft of the writer, like Shake-
speare, as one fraught with ‘‘limitations’’ (The World is My Cinema,
80). Basing themselves on the prologue to Henry V, which had grown
out of ‘‘the very discomforts and inadequacies of the Elizabethan
theatre auditorium’’ (80), they proceeded to illustrate those limita-
tions also in Olivier’s Henry V. Here, they argued, ‘‘you get the form
of Shakespeare’s imagery in words followed by an underlined picto-
rial emphasis of what those words describe. Which is as if a school-
master were to put C O W on the blackboard and then paint a
picture of the animal above it so that you should make no mistake
as to what those letters stand for’’ (80). With the invention of the
movie, the Robsons rather ominously felt that there was no longer
any need to ask the audience to ‘‘suppose’’ because ‘‘the ciné-cam-
era brings the world in front of you upon the screen without need
of supposing’’ (80).
The Robsons used Olivier’s film to vent a number of their main
preoccupations, views which, even if they were shared by others to a
degree, were never expressed in more repudiating terms. If litera-
ture required the ‘‘figuring forth’’ by means of words, the Robsons
argued, film could do so by means of images. In the opinion of the
ever explicitly Darwinian Robsons, therefore, speech, dialogue, and
verbal imagery were ‘‘earlier forms of idea communication in the
line of evolution’’ and ‘‘must form only a part, a restricted and sub-
ordinate part, to the visual and moving and active’’ (81). In this way,

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Shakespeare was effectively reduced to a stopgap, since the Robsons

took it as certain that

Shakespeare and film do not go easily together . . . speech, dialogue and

verbal imagery, whether Shakespeare’s or any other playwright’s, may
only be used sparingly in the film medium. They may only be employed
to fill in the gaps which a particular film is unable to span any other way.
(81)

Ever since the film’s release, much of the debate over Laurence Oliv-
ier’s Henry V has turned around the charge that too much of Shake-
speare’s original text had been cut. This is not the debate that the
Robsons were involved in. They felt that far too little of the text had
been cut. It is a sad measure of the fanaticism mobilized for the Rob-
sons’ assault on Olivier’s Henry V, that they failed to appreciate the
most striking visual addition to the original Shakespearean play, the
battle of Agincourt.32
Gradually, in the course of their advocacy of the British cinema,
the Robsons began to renege also on other aspects of the Renais-
sance which they had applauded as a model at the beginning of the
war. If in 1939 and 1940 the Robsons had relied on the militant and
admirable early modern humanism to advance their own ideas, in
1947 they preferred to see the Renaissance as a reversion from
Christianity to paganism:

The Italian Humanists, despite their own notions of the nobility of their
cause, went back from Christianity (true Christianity), to the self-plea-
sure, self-interest in place of the collective interest. The soul . . . had
gone out of religion and communal life. (The World is My Cinema, 35–36)

The authors here discerned an analogous development in the first

half century of film history. After ‘‘weld[ing] together a polyglot
population of many races and languages into one nation,’’ there was
now a ‘‘backward, negative tendency’’ (36). Here, Olivier’s Henry V
was seen as a significant example. In his notoriously expensive Henry
V, exemplifying a ‘‘trend of lavish extravagance,’’ they argued, the
emphasis was ‘‘on things, not people; not with emotions, feelings,
aspirations and human, kindly passions.’’33 To the Robsons, the
decor, background, and costumes in Olivier’s Henry V actually re-
called Italian Renaissance painting. This Italian influence, they ar-
gued, was so unmistakable that ‘‘the breath and soul and spirit of
England tick only faintly, only intermittently’’ (The World is My Cin-
ema, 36). What the Robsons wanted instead was ‘‘Anglo-Saxonism,
both in the matter and in the manner of presentation,’’ since this

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284 TON HOENSELAARS

would be the only way to achieve and secure the status of British film
as a ‘‘world product,’’ thus realizing the objective contained in the
title of The World is My Cinema.
Any informed viewer of Olivier’s Henry V—aware that the sets were
designed on the medieval model of the Limburg brothers34 —is in a
position to see how the Robsons’ increasingly severe demands on
the new medium to establish British cinematic hegemony in the
world, blinded them to the realities in front of them. Moreover,
whereas at the outbreak of the war they had praised the English Re-
naissance humanism as the fashion of an age that imported and ap-
propriated ideas from the European continent, they now, in fact,
advocated a departure from these foreign and historical models:

The successful film is the one that absorbs, modifies and dominates the
older cultures. The successful film is the one which is not dominated by
the older forms of painting, word-poetry and drama. This is the crucial
lesson we must learn. (The World is My Cinema, 87)

Arguably the most macabre feature of their postwar argument

about the evolution of the British cinema was their call for sharper
surveillance of its moral quality. Here, the Robsons preferred the
United States as their model, in the form of the code advanced by
William Harrison Hays who proclaimed that Hollywood provide only
‘‘pure entertainment,’’ films that ‘‘were wholesome and avoided so-
cial and political issues.’’35 By the so-called Hays code it was under-
stood, among many other things, that no film should ridicule any
religion or use any ministers of religion as comic characters or vil-
lains, whereas respect was called for in the handling of religious
ceremonies.36 By these criteria, of course, Shakespeare’s Henry V was
no unproblematic text. The Robsons were quick to point this out
with reference to the representation of the clergy in the film, and it
was not without a certain glee that they quoted the Daily Express of
June 29, 1945, which made mention of the way in which Hays had
felt it necessary to bowdlerize Shakespeare’s own language in the
Olivier film:

NAUGHTY WORDS IN A GOOD WORLD

SO HAYS BANS HENRY V

More and more British films are being banned in American because of
naughty words. Latest victim of the ‘‘bad words’’ campaign is Shake-
speare. Henry V has been banned by the Hays office because the words
‘‘damn’’ and ‘‘bastard’’ are uttered and there are references to the
Deity. A cable received from America by Henry V’s producers calls for a

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reshooting of the offensive scenes to meet the rulings of the Hays pro-
duction code. Laurence Olivier, the director and star now playing
abroad to the B. L. A., will record the lines again on his return, but this
will delay the American presentation of this £450,000 film by at least a
month.37

Interestingly, for all their attempts in the late 1940s to establish the
evolutionary difference between the early modern period and the
twentieth century, in order to support their argument in favor of the
Hays code, the Robsons drew on the Renaissance model of censor-
ship. If the British cinema was to achieve full maturity, they rea-
soned, it ought to copy the way in which the London stage after a
number of formative years reached its apex with Shakespeare. In the
same way the London theater before Shakespeare had profited from
the invective employed by the ‘‘professional reformers and fanat-
ics,’’ the British film industry should institute a body like the Hays
office to prevent the disintegration of society. As an illustration of
the reformers who worked as ‘‘an abrasive that helped to clean up
the theatre stage before it could evolve to a worthier position in our
social life,’’ the Robsons quoted long passages from John North-
brooke’s 1577 Treatise against Idleness, Idle Pastimes, and Playes, ar-
guing that ‘‘[t]he Elizabethan ‘professional reformers and fanatics’
realised what we in our day tend to forget, that mortal danger threat-
ens that society which encourages loose conduct and anti-social be-
haviour either through rhetoric or acted in performance’’ (The
World is My Cinema, 54). It is difficult to find a starker instance of the
Robsons’ bizarre eclecticism than in the fact that they simultane-
ously advocated Sidney’s Defence of Poetry as a model—which, during
the war, had also led them to found The Sidneyan Society to further
their goals—as well as Northbrooke’s intolerant Treatise taking ‘‘the
plays of his time to task in a manner that might fittingly apply to
some of [the British] home-made films’’ in 1947 (54).

One of the aims of this essay has been to rescue from oblivion two
film critics whose work has not received the attention it deserves.
On the one hand, one understands how and why the Robsons were
eventually relegated to obscurity. Their notions of Britain, British
culture, as well as the surveillance of that culture have become hope-
lessly dated, and have made way for views of the nation and of cul-
ture that decenter Britain as the hub of the old empire, that refuse
to equate Britain and England and hence further political devolu-
tion, and that recognize criticism or subversion as integral compo-
nent drives of any culture’s dynamics without sensing the need to

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286 TON HOENSELAARS

reject it as ‘‘Britain-baiting’’ (Bernard Shaw among the Innocents, 13).

One understands only too well why contemporaries and near con-
temporaries (like John Russell Taylor) preferred to relegate the
Robsons and their immoderate conservative stance on the family
and the nation to forgetfulness, and have in fact been rather success-
ful. On the other hand, however, it is precisely our current apprecia-
tion of cultural diversity, as well as the newly recognized virtue of
historicizing the cultural manifestations we study, that should lead
us to explore, ever more seriously, the interacting pressures that op-
erated between, in our case, Olivier’s Henry V and the society that
both produced and perceived it. Clearly, one would err on the side
of generalization if one continued to view Olivier’s Henry V merely
as a ‘‘fairytale, whose brightly coloured glamour and spectacle was
highly appropriate for the aesthetic appetite of the time,’’ or believe
that the comic representation of the clergy was ‘‘[e]qually well
suited to the susceptibilities of a war-time audience’’ (Davies 1988,
27). In view of the Robsons’ crusade, Henry V was not the unified
expression of a nation at war. Any such view of the film, it seems,
would tend to accept as fact the assertion of national unity projected
by the Shakespearean plot, rather than sharpen the focus on genu-
ine diversity of opinion on a number of scores—generic, political,
social, as well as historical.
If, in one sense, the Robsons enable us to see Olivier’s Henry V as
a more fiercely contested film—both nationally and internation-
ally—than has long been assumed, they also help identify a World
War II image of Shakespeare that is at odds with the propaganda
purposes to which Henry V was put by Olivier or G. Wilson Knight,
or with the bardolatrous and Churchillian readings by Dover Wilson
(who was delivering his Clark lectures on Falstaff and Hal at Cam-
bridge while the film was being made), E. M. W. Tillyard, or J. H.
Walter. It is true that the Robsons uncritically accepted Shakespeare
as a national paragon, but in their view the medium of the future,
the movie, was not made for him, nor he for it.
In the writings of the Robsons, Shakespeare and Sidney began as
humanist models of a type of neohumanist, antidecadent aesthetics.
Over the years their status as models changed considerably. The
playwright Shakespeare, who had started at the summit of the early
modern ‘‘cultural pyramid,’’ became no more than an anachronism
in the British cinema. Similarly, the Elizabethan humanism of Sid-
ney—whose plea to delight and teach and ‘‘move men to take that
goodnes in hande, which without delight they would flye as from a
stranger’’ featured prominently at the beginning of The Film Answers
Back (11), and whose name graced The Sidneyan Society that the

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Robsons founded in order to propagate their ideas—was coupled to

the intolerant, Puritan rule of Northbrooke and his antitheatrical
prejudice. Gradually, the Robsons’ unorthodox views and playful ap-
propriation of England’s humanist heritage hardened into what is
perhaps best described as a prescriptive poetics, no longer a defense
of the movie as a new genre, but an attack on existing practice,
‘‘committed,’’ as Graham Holderness has put it, ‘‘to the indepen-
dence of film as an art, and hostile to any dependence of film on
the literary media.’’38 With it, they developed a degree of monoma-
nia that ironically drove them to advocate a return to the kind of
Puritan censorship that Sir Philip Sidney had meant to counter with
his Defence of Poetry.

Notes
I am grateful to William Uricchio (MIT and Utrecht University), for his encour-
agement at an early stage of this project. During the research for this paper, I have
also enjoyed the support of the staff of the Amsterdam Film Institute, José Ramón
Diaz-Fernandez (University of Malaga), Russell Jackson (University of Birmingham,
UK), and Paul Franssen (Utrecht University).
1. The field is vast and rapidly expanding. A most valuable introduction to
Shakespeare and film is The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, ed. Russell
Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); a useful anthology of ear-
lier criticism is Shakespeare on Film, ed. Robert Shaughnessy (Houndmills, UK: Mac-
millan, 1998).
2. E. W. and M. M. Robson, The Film Answers Back: An Historical Appreciation of
the Cinema (London: John Lane, 1939).
3. For excerpts from contemporary reviews see the final page of ‘‘In Defense of
Moovie’’ by Sir Philip Sidney (1581–1941). Transcribed from ‘‘In Defense of Poesie’’ by E. W.
and M. M. Robson (Edinburgh: H. & J. Pillans & Wilson, 1940).
4. E. W. Robson and M. M. Robson, The Shame and Disgrace of Colonel Blimp: The
True Story of the Film (London: The Sidneyan Society, 1944), 4.
5. For an extensive re-appraisal of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp see Neil
Rattigan, This is England: British Film and the People’s War, 1939–1945 (Madison, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 213–32.
6. John Russell Taylor, ‘‘Michael Powell: Myths and Supermen,’’ Sight and
Sound, (1978). Internet version at ⬍[Link]/steve/Powell/Reviews/
Micky/[Link]⬎.
7. John Cottrell, Laurence Olivier (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975),
129. For other reviews of The Divorce of Lady X see Olivier: The Films and Faces of Lau-
rence Olivier, ed. Margaret Morley (Farncombe, UK: LSP Books, 1978), 75.
8. The Film Answers Back, 47. In this connection, the Robsons also speak of an
ambitious Italian version of Homer’s Odyssey. When it was toured all over America,
audiences in the Middle West wanted to know whether Mr. Homer was traveling
with the company to make a personal appearance (65).
9. Samuel A. and Dorothy R. Tannenbaum, Elizabethan Bibliographies IX (1941);

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288 TON HOENSELAARS

and Mary A. Washington, Sir Philip Sidney: An Annotated Bibliography of Modern Criti-
cism, 1941–1970 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972).
10. ‘‘In Defense of Moovie,’’ 5.
11. Tony Davies, Humanism (London: Routledge, 1997), 72.
12. See Davies, 72; and In Defense of Moovie, 24.
13. A Defence of Poetry in Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine
Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten, 87, ll. 24–29 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
14. In Defense of Moovie, 43; and The Film Answers Back, 303.
15. The Film Answers Back, 142. See also: ‘‘In England there is a division between
the upper and the lower strata of society . . . by comparison with the rigidity and
frigidity that separates the upper layers of society from the lower in this country,
the Americans are living in blissful brotherhood’’ (142).
16. The Film Answers Back, 150. The Armada sequence from Fire Over England was
re-inserted in The Lion Has Wings (dir. Alexander Korda, 1939), to stress the paral-
lels between the Elizabethan struggle against Spain and Britain’s campaign against
Germany. It was soon to become the model for later propaganda. See James Chap-
man, The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939–1945 (London: I. B.
Taurus Publishers, 1998), 58–65.
17. Harry M. Geduld, Filmguide to ‘‘Henry V’’ (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1973), 67. See also the section on Henry V in Anthony Davies, ‘‘The Shake-
speare Films of Laurence Olivier,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film,
163–82.
18. D. K. C. Todd, Shakespeare’s Agincourt (Durham, UK: The New Century Press,
1985), 7. ‘‘The Battle of Agincourt was the finest part of a good film; which was not,
however, considered to be good by some members of the audience when I saw it. I
remember the occasion. I was doing my national service in Newcastle upon Tyne at
the end of the war. A party of Free French sailors sat a couple of rows in front of
me—there must have been eight or ten of them. They were the ones who walked
out (whether before or after Agincourt I can’t recall).’’ See also John W. Young,
‘‘Henry V, the Quai D’Orsay, and the Well-Being of the Franco-British Alliance,
1947,’’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 7, no. 3 (1987): 319–21.
19. C. Clayton Hutton, The Making of ‘‘Henry V’’ (London: n.p., n.d.).
20. Laurence Olivier, On Acting (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 187.
21. Foster Hirsch, Laurence Olivier (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), 72.
22. Ace G. Pilkington, Screening Shakespeare from ‘‘Richard II’’ to ‘‘Henry V’’ (New-
ark: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 110–11.
23. Olivier, On Acting, 187; and The World is My Cinema, 77. When Bosley
Crowther refers to ‘‘some critics [who] have quibblingly complained that the film
is no more than an adroitly photographed reproduction of the play,’’ he may well
be referring to the Robsons. See his ‘‘Henry V,’’ in Focus on Shakespearean Films, ed.
Charles W. Eckert, 57–62 (p. 59) (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972).
24. Anthony Holden, Olivier (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), 180.
25. Quoted in Geduld, Henry V, 76.
26. Ernest Lindgren, The Art of the Film (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 92. Quoted
in Geduld, 78–79.
27. John Collick, Shakespeare, Cinema and Society (Manchester, UK: Manchester
University Press, 1989), 50.
28. E. W. and M. M. Robson, Bernard Shaw among the Innocents (London: The Sid-
neyan Society, 1945), 23.
29. The World is My Cinema, 6 and 79, respectively.
30. On Eric Bentley, see Anthony Holden, Olivier (London: Weidenfeld and Nic-
olson, 1988), 220.

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31. For a discussion of the genesis of the film script, see Ace G. Pilkington, Screen-
ing Shakespeare from ‘‘Richard II’’ to ‘‘Henry V,’’ 100–29.
32. Anthony Davies, Filming Shakespeare’s Plays: The Adaptations of Laurence Olivier,
Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), 34.
33. The World is My Cinema, 83 and 36, respectively. It is not impossible that this
anti-Italian stance contains a veiled rejection of Filippo Del Giudice, the Italian im-
migrant who produced Henry V. Olivier acknowledged Giudice’s vital contribution
to Henry V when he gave him the Oscar he had received in March 1947, saying
‘‘Without you, dear fellow, Henry V would never have been made’’ (quoted in Cot-
trell 200).
34. Donald Spoto, Laurence Olivier: A Biography (London: Harper Collins Publish-
ers, 1991), 142. Spoto contradicts Olivier’s claim that he himself rather than Roger
Furse was responsible for the film’s design.
35. See Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Poli-
tics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: Free Press, 1987),
13–14. See also the Robsons on the Hays code in The World is My Cinema, 44–55.
36. The Robsons provide a breakdown of the various headings under which the
Hays office grouped the rules governing the representation of reality in film. They
include ‘‘Crimes against the Law,’’ ‘‘Sex,’’ ‘‘Vulgarity,’’ ‘‘Obscenity,’’ ‘‘Dances,’’
‘‘Profanity,’’ ‘‘Costume,’’ ‘‘Religion,’’ ‘‘National Feelings,’’ ‘‘Titles,’’ and ‘‘Repel-
lant Subjects’’ (The World is My Cinema 57–58).
37. Quoted in The World is My Cinema, 46. See also Cottrell, 199; and Holden,
180.
38. Graham Holderness, Shakespeare Recycled: The Making of Historical Drama (New
York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 187.

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Of Music and Silence:
The Harmonies of Thomas Whythorne
and Rose Tremain
Helen Wilcox

MUSIC WAS REGARDED IN THE HUMANIST ERA AS ONE OF THE SEVEN

liberal sciences, eloquent in skills, emotions, and ideals, and fulfill-
ing an important function as a symbol of both heavenly harmony
and earthly endeavor. As Sir Thomas Browne claimed in 1643,
‘‘there is a musicke where-ever there is a harmony, order or propor-
tion; . . . [music] is an Hieroglyphicall and shadowed lesson of the
whole world.’’1 For Browne and his contemporaries, music was au-
thorized by Apollo and Orpheus as well as by the biblical David, sig-
nifying divine order and human achievement. The art of music
inscribed, as though by means of ‘‘hieroglyphics,’’ the creator in the
creation; George Herbert, for example, was reminded emblematic-
ally of the cross and Christ’s ‘‘stretched sinews’’ when playing on the
wood and strings of his lute.2 The best in human nature was thought
to be reflected in our capacity to compose and enjoy music; as
Browne put it, ‘‘whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in
harmony’’ (149). Music was thus seen simultaneously as the expres-
sion and the confirmation of the marvel that is the human being. As
is typical of Renaissance humanism, the physical and the metaphys-
ical reinforced one another. The melodies that Browne heard in the
everyday world awakened echoes of the unheard music of creation.
‘‘Even that vulgar and Taverne Musicke,’’ he confessed, ‘‘strikes in
mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the
first Composer’’ (149). The image of Thomas Browne listening
meditatively to ballads in a seventeenth-century East Anglian ale-
house may not be the most commonly held picture of Renaissance
humanism; nevertheless it seems to me an aptly material embodi-
ment of the ideals of music in the early modern world.
Leaving Browne drinking his ale in philosophical contemplation
of those ‘‘vulgar’’ tunes, this essay will proceed to a case study of

290

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 291

music, both heard and unheard, in two parallel and yet sharply con-
trasting texts. The first, from the heyday of humanism in England,
is the autobiographical Book of Songs and Sonetts by the writer and
composer, ‘‘Thomas Whythorne, Gent.,’’ written around 1576. The
second is Rose Tremain’s historical novel, Music and Silence (1999),
tracing the fortunes of the fictional English lutenist, Peter Claire, at
the court of the seventeenth-century Danish king, Christian IV.
What do these two works have to say about music as an ideal and as
a practical way of life? What kinds of relationship do they sketch be-
tween music on the one hand and self-expression, character, love,
society, and religion on the other? In what ways is music seen to be
related to languages and other means of expression—or to what ex-
tent is it shown to be closer to silences, both positive and negative?
These and other related issues will be explored in a juxtaposition of
these two fascinating works. My purpose is not to suggest the influ-
ence of one text upon the other, but rather to assess both the Re-
naissance humanist perspective and the extent of its continuing
presence in our modern culture. The two works each have at their
center the role of music and music-making in the early modern con-
text, but in their differences of date, genre, and readership they re-
flect diverse aspects of this harmonious art across four centuries of
humanism.

I
Thomas Whythorne’s Book of Songs and Sonetts was discovered in
1955 among a collection of legal and other papers in Herefordshire,
and was subsequently presented to the Bodleian Library, Oxford.3 It
consists of an autobiographical prose ‘‘discoorse,’’ as the title-page
claims, covering ‘‘the chylds lyfe, togyther with A yoong mans lyfe,
and entring into the old mans lyfe,’’4 interspersed with Whythorne’s
own poems, which function as commentaries upon his experiences.
The manuscript also contains a long diversion in defense of music,5
sandwiched between a record of Whythorne’s own achievements as
a published composer and an account of his years as master of music
at Lambeth Palace. The Book ends with the texts of seventy of his
own poems intended to be set to music. All of this is really quite
remarkable. The text is a secular autobiography whose explicit aim
is ‘‘to lay open the most part of all my private affairs, and secrets
accomplished from my childhood’’ until the time of writing (3), a
rare phenomenon in an era when autobiography as a genre did not
exist and the impulse to self-expression was more often indirectly

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292 HELEN WILCOX

released.6 Whythorne’s Book supplies the background to the books

of madrigals and songs which were formerly all that was known of
him.7 Further, the narrative gives a detailed and vivid picture of the
work of a music teacher, composer, and poet in the late sixteenth
century. It also makes available a collection of English lyric poems
from the era of Tottel’s famous Miscellany, thereby extending our
knowledge of lyrical poems and their link with musical settings in
the late sixteenth century.8
Possibly the most remarkable feature of this unusual work, how-
ever, is that it was written in what Whythorne called his ‘‘new Ortho-
grafye’’ (1), that is, a form of phonetic spelling by which he wished
to ‘‘write words as they be sounded in speech’’ (6). This system was
based on John Hart’s Orthographie (1569), although Whythorne
adapted it in a way that renders his text relatively accessible9 while
also giving some scientific accuracy and, incidentally, supplying fasci-
nating evidence of Elizabethan English pronunciation. Whythorne’s
most commonly used devices include two characters from Old En-
glish (the thorn for th as in ‘‘this,’’ and the yogh for soft j and g), a
dot to indicate long vowel sounds (as over the y in his own name)
and the expansion of final syllables when pronounced, as in ‘‘bab-
bull’’ instead of ‘‘babble.’’ Several of his methods may strike the
reader as familiar from common modern English misspellings, such
as his consistent spelling of a concluding tion with an s as in ‘‘medita-
sion.’’ His replacement of the voiced s with a z seems to anticipate
modern American spelling, while his substitution of k for the hard c
sound (leading to words such as ‘‘okkazion’’ and ‘‘kowtenans’’) will
remind readers from the Netherlands of similar recent developments
in Dutch spelling. Apart from the curiosity value of Whythorne’s
‘‘Orthografye’’—an example of which may be seen in illustration
8—his commitment to such a system underlines his interest in lan-
guage as sounds as well as semantics. We are dealing here with an
early modern writer who not only wrote musical melodies but for
whom words themselves were melodic.
Indeed, underlying Whythorne’s defense of music is its link with
poetry and other expressive uses of language. In his extended explo-
ration of the nature and function of music, he reminds his reader
that ‘‘the Muses were ladies and governors of Poetry, music and elo-
quence’’ (225). Citing classical and contemporary authorities, Why-
thorne asserts that music is in ‘‘the middle’’ of the list of the seven
liberal sciences: ‘‘grammar, logic, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Ge-
ometry and Astronomy.’’10 Music is thus at the very heart of learning,
poised between verbal and numerical systems of knowledge; being
at the center, music can, Whythorne boasts, ‘‘accord her’’ to every

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 293

8. A sample of Whythorne’s ‘‘orthografye’’ and handwriting fol. 7 of the Bodleian

MS Eng. Misc. c. 330. This is provided in Osborn’s edition of The Autobiography of
Thomas Whythorne.

other form of wisdom (238). This feminized phenomenon of music,

which (or who) combines art and science, expression and measure-
ment in ‘‘her’’ own single nature, appears to Whythorne to be the
ultimate analogue of the soul itself. Just as the soul is ‘‘dispersed’’
throughout an individual and expressed in the complex workings of
the mind and body together, so is music, he suggests, given form ‘‘in
singing or playing on musical instruments [together] which is called
harmony’’ (235). As Thomas Browne would later also claim, Whyth-
orne asserts that musical harmony reflects the concord of opposites
in the creation and the human individual. Further, he asserts that
only music can fully represent the threefold nature of the soul,
whether these three aspects are regarded as ‘‘Vegitative, Sensitive, and
Intellective’’ as suggested by Xenocrates, or in accordance with Aris-
totle’s division of the soul into ‘‘lively, understandingly, and heav-
enly’’ aspects (235–36). For Whythorne, the plenitude of human
life as defined by the ancients is epitomized in his own vocation.
Music combines ‘‘into one concordance’’ (236) the animated life
of rhythm, the sensual proportion of melody, and the metaphysical
perfection of harmony.
In Whythorne’s praise of music, his own practice as a musician
is firmly entwined with reference to classical and other authorities.
Passages which apparently savor genuinely of the musician’s daily
experience turn out to be quotations from pseudo-Aristotelian trea-
tises.11 This disarming mixture of tradition and individual talent is

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294 HELEN WILCOX

typical of Whythorne’s Book, and of early modern autobiographical

writing in general, in which shared history and personal anecdote
merge and generate a kind of double authority. Whythorne bases all
his subsequent claims for the perfection of music on biblical evi-
dence, showing that the art was approved by God and indeed, ac-
cording to the Book of Revelation, heard in heaven from ‘‘before
the world began’’ (222), though he calmly refers to the scriptural
authority as ‘‘my opinion’’ (222). As he proceeds to describe the
powerful effects of music, he echoes Erasmus in honoring music as
‘‘the reviver and nourisher of the spirits’’ in the same way that ‘‘meat
and drink’’ are ‘‘necessary to the sustenance and preservation of the
body.’’12 However, when he goes into further detail of the varied im-
pact of music on warriors, lovers, the melancholic, and many other
human types, he cites not only written sources but also his own accu-
mulated anecdotes. These include ‘‘how music affecteth infants’’
and how the ‘‘sounding of some musical instrument’’ can be a suc-
cessful mechanism for soothing crying children (242–43). He even
tells the story of the bagpiper who survived the ‘‘peril and danger’’
of being lost in a forest filled with ‘‘wild beasts’’ by playing his pipes
to calm the wolves (242). This strikes me as a worthy forerunner of
the urban myth, but it serves to illustrate the lively mix of authori-
ties—folk tale and domestic anecdote as well as classical, biblical and
contemporary learning—with which Whythorne supports his de-
fense of music. True to his calling as both poet and musician, Why-
thorne concludes his praise of music with a (rather expansive)
summary in verse form, concluding his six pages of poetry with a
more concise coda, advertising the benefits of music in a mere six
lines:
The music tunes of voice or sound
Doth help the ears and doth expell
All sorrows that the heart doth wound
Also the wits it cherish’th well
It suppleth sinews of each wight
And eek the faint it fills with might.
(254)

The poem promotes a harmonious tonic which seems to be the cure

of all ills—of heart, mind, body, or spirit—though it is noticeable
that Whythorne does not claim that enjoying music will necessarily
make one a skilled poet. Nevertheless, this ‘‘sonnet,’’ as he calls it,
was set to music as a five-part madrigal and included in his Songs of
1571—and, despite its weaknesses as spoken verse, the poem’s direct
language, active metaphors, and interwoven syntax make it particu-

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 295

larly well suited to musical setting for multiple voices. As Whythorne

wisely observes with reference to his performance of his own songs,
when music was ‘‘joined’’ with the poem there was indeed a gain: ‘‘I
might tell my tale with my voice as well as by word and writing’’ (51).
A Book of Songs and Sonetts tells Whythorne’s ‘‘tale’’ in considerable
detail and provides an unusually private account of the musician’s
world and its intrigues of art, love, and power. Although Whythorne
claims in his defense of music that musicians have been greatly ‘‘es-
teemed’’ by monarchs (254), his own career was, unfortunately, not
without its difficulties and certainly did not lead him to a position at
court. Indeed, his employment was generally closer to that of Hor-
tensio in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew: a performer and music
teacher in the homes of the gentry and occasionally the aristoc-
racy,13 but one who was always vulnerable to losing his job, and fre-
quently the prey of the scheming and wayward affections of
employers and pupils alike. In his early years, Whythorne was very
fortunate to work as amanuensis to the musician and poet John Hey-
wood, from whom he ‘‘learned to play on the virginals, the lute, and
to make English verses’’ (13). After his apprenticeship in Heywood’s
household, he proceeded to London:
I took a chamber in London, and so determined to live of my self by
teaching in such sort as I had learned of him. That is to say by teaching
of Music, and to play on those instruments . . . that I had learned to play
on. The which changing of mine estate, brought me other cares than I
was troubled withall before. For whereas I was before but troubled with
the fear of tutors and masters, I was afterward brought to have a care of
mine own credit, and estimation, with the maintenance thereof as of a
master and not as either servant or scholar, and also to keep myself with-
out penury or need. (18)

The uncertainty and anxiety expressed with great honesty in this

passage will be familiar to many a musician both then and now, but
also indicate the ambition of a young man moving from the status
of dependant or scholar to ‘‘master’’ through his own skill. He goes
on to describe his transition toward being ‘‘mine own man’’ (18), a
phrase which suggests financial independence but also a burgeon-
ing individual identity typical of one who would choose to write his
own autobiography.
Whythorne’s consciousness of his own identity as a musician living
independently is vividly expressed in the detailed account he gives
of the decoration of his new residence in London:
I caused a table to be made to hang in my chamber whereon was painted
(in oil colours) the figure and image of a young woman playing on the

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296 HELEN WILCOX

lute, who I gave to name Terpsicore, which is the name of one of the nine
muses, whom the poets do fain to be the goddess of all soft melody . . .
Since I knew that this Terpsicore was goddess of that sort of Music which
I then professed to be a master and teacher of, I caused to be painted
. . . in the same table . . . not only the counterfeit of a virginal but also
of the gittern,14 and sittern. and also a book wherein there is both prick-
song,15 and tablature for the lute, and also this sonnet following.16

There is something almost endearing about the blatant self-promotion

in this commissioned work of art: not only did it feature Whythorne’s
own poetry, but it also deliberately included all the instruments that
he himself could play and the forms of musical notation that he
could write and teach. The name given to the female player is factu-
ally inaccurate (Terpsichore was the muse associated with dancing),
but the knowing classicism is revealing of his desire for respectabil-
ity; the painting is a visual equivalent of the verbal citation of Greek
and Latin authors in his text. His desire to be identified with the
melodic muse and her tradition—or even to supersede her—is fur-
ther confirmed in the Book when Whythorne confesses that he also
had his own ‘‘counterfeit or picture’’ painted inside the lid of a vir-
ginal, ‘‘likewise playing upon the lute’’ (20). However, the verse that
he caused to be inscribed with his portrait warns darkly of the youth-
ful pleasures which will ‘‘forsake’’ him when ‘‘hoary age appears.’’
As Whythorne is anxious to point out, although he took ‘‘some plea-
sure in the painter’s art,’’ the verses demonstrate the musician’s
early awareness that worldly pleasures are ‘‘but vain and not perma-
nent or abiding’’ (20).
I hardly dare speculate on what psychoanalysis would make of
Whythorne’s substitution of himself in the place of the female muse
in this second picture, but it is certainly clear that he continues to
personify music as feminine. He speaks of ‘‘the delightful conceit’’
of ‘‘dame music’’ (20), though while he is apparently in thrall to
her throughout his life, he spends much of his text attacking ‘‘the
feminine sex, and their loves,’’ as well as their ‘‘allurements, entice-
ments and snares’’ (30). While his idealized muse symbolizes har-
mony and inspiration, the less metaphoric women whom he
encounters cause him unease and are perceived as simultaneously
attractive and threatening. As is the case with Shakespeare’s Horten-
sio, Whythorne finds himself courted by his female pupils, working
in households with ‘‘diverse young women’’ (30) and in close physi-
cal proximity to them as they finger a lute or gittern. In an almost
novelistic episode, Whythorne recounts how one young woman
wrote some loving verses to him and

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 297

did put them between the strings of a gittern, the which instrument as a
sitting mate, lying mate, and walking mate, I then used to play on very
often, yea and almost every hour of the day . . . When I came according
to my accustomed wont to take the gittern to play on it, and finding the
paper . . . I asked myself the question who it should be that made it and
did put it there. (30–31)17

Whythorne’s account makes clear (whether consciously or not) the

intimate link between the musician and his instrument, the ‘‘mate’’
with whom he walks, sits, and lies. It also reveals that, while he was
certain of his bond with the gittern, he was fundamentally uncertain
of his social position as music teacher in a household. In the case of
the love poem slipped between the strings, he wonders openly
whether the source of the verses is a woman who genuinely loves
him or a man in the household who wishes to mock him out of envy
or disrespect. (In fact, it turns out to be a combination of them
both.) In another of his working environments, he is wooed by the
mistress of the house who wants him as ‘‘both her servant and also
her schoolmaster’’ (37), an ambivalent social and emotional posi-
tion which he spends many pages negotiating. He subsequently falls
victim—according to his own version of events—to eager widows,
lascivious serving maids, love-lorn pupils, and society ladies. But
when he once tries to woo for himself, using (of course) his own
‘‘pretty ditties made of love’’ sung ‘‘oftentimes to her on the virgin-
als or lute’’ (77), the suit is rejected and comes to nothing.
While Whythorne’s narrative is shot through with affairs of the
heart, it also resounds with music throughout. We glimpse the ten-
sion as he is ‘‘perfecting and writing out’’ his music for publication
but then begins to doubt the wisdom of allowing his own words and
harmonies to be ‘‘made a common gaze unto all the world,’’ vulner-
able to ‘‘the blasts of all folks’ mouths, and upon the middle-finger
pointings of the unskillful’’ (174). In addition to witnessing the vul-
nerability of the artist faced with public scrutiny and interpretation
by others, we also see into the social web of the Elizabethan house-
hold both above and below stairs, particularly as the musician was
poised somewhere between those two worlds of the masters (or mis-
tresses) and the servants. When that uncertain environment be-
comes too much of a strain for Whythorne, he explores other ways
of earning a living. The fact that the two alternative ways of life in
which he dabbles are commerce and travel tells us a lot about this
increasingly mercantile period of the late sixteenth century. He
finds himself (briefly) at the ‘‘top of Fortune’s wheel’’ when his
‘‘credit and estimation’’ are equally high (138), and keeps the com-

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298 HELEN WILCOX

pany of men such as William Bromfield who has ‘‘ventures’’ in ‘‘Mus-

covia, in Russia, but also in Tartaria, and Persia . . . Guinnea, in Ethiopia,
and also, to Magrobumba, and Noua Spania and also to Terra florida, in
America’’ (138). He soon returns to music teaching, however, where
he seems to feel more at home even if under the too close scrutiny
of his female pupils. His travels have meanwhile supplied him with
plenty of musical anecdotes, such as the story of the ‘‘drunken
Dutchman’’ who joined a company of singers in a church and at first
sang temperately but gradually ‘‘brayed out louder, and then follow-
ingly he roared and yelled out so loud, as no beast living being no
greater than he could have made greater and louder noise than he’’
(106). Whythorne’s moral is not so much directed against Dutch-
men (though he does seem to consider drunkenness their chief
characteristic) as toward illustrating how one ‘‘discordant noise’’
can destroy an otherwise ‘‘concordant harmony’’ (106). It is inter-
esting that, when abroad, Whythorne concentrates less on trade
than on trying to learn the ‘‘speech and languages’’ of ‘‘people
where I came’’ (60). His attention is consistently attracted to media
of expression, whether musical or linguistic. When, for example, he
has devoted himself to ‘‘the study and obtaining of the Italian
tongue’’ (62), he proceeds to share with the reader the fascination
of the rhythm, meter, and lyric voice of some verses ‘‘written upon a
wall’’ in ‘‘a house on the hither part of Italy’’ (63).
One might say that for Whythorne the writing was often on the
wall, whether on his Italian travels, in his own verses inscribed into
the paintings he commissioned, or metaphorically in his restless
movement from one position of employment to another; behind it
all was his abiding sense of death awaiting him. He wrote his auto-
biographical Book of Songs and Sonetts when he was less than fifty years
old, and saw his life in three main phases: the child, the young man,
and ‘‘entering into the old man’s life’’ (1). When he commissions a
new portrait of himself in middle age, Whythorne compares it mer-
cilessly with the earlier portrait inside the virginal, and notes

that I was much changed from that I was at that time, as by the long and
fullness of my beard, the wrinkles on my face, and the hollowness of
mine eyes, and also that as my face was altered so were the delights of
my mind changed, I caused to be written in the table where my counter-
feit was, these two lines following—

As time doth alter every wight

So ev’ry age hath his delight.
(135)

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 299

Once more Whythorne writes on the wall and continues to contain

his life’s experiences, even the consuming power of time, in rhythm
and harmony. This process of self-inscription is embodied not only
in his music and verse but also in the decision to write the autobio-
graphical memoir itself. The text is an unusually introspective self-
contemplation for its period and it is offered by Whythorne, like the
series of portraits, as a record of ‘‘what manner of favour’’ he had
(134). In a notably meditative passage, he points out that a text or a
set of portraits provides something more permanent than the re-
flection in a ‘‘looking glass’’ which only remains briefly ‘‘in the
memory of the beholder’’ and shows ‘‘but the disposition of the face
for the time present, and not as it was in time past’’ (134). His writ-
ing, by contrast, can record how he has ‘‘been changed from time
to time, by time’’ (4) and builds up a very human face of the poet,
performer, composer, music teacher, defender of music, traveler,
linguist, orthographer, and would-be lover called Thomas Why-
thorne.18

II
While the focus of Whythorne’s Book of Songs and Sonetts is so obvi-
ously his own life story that his modern editor can safely entitle the
volume The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne, it would be mislead-
ing to suggest that Rose Tremain’s 1999 novel Music and Silence cen-
ters similarly on the equivalent musician figure, Peter Claire. With
its postmodern structure of playful pastiche and multiple narratives,
the novel constructs the stories of at least four other main charac-
ters: the Danish king Christian IV at whose court Claire is employed
as lutenist; the king’s scheming second wife, Kirsten; her lady in wait-
ing, Emilia, who falls in love with Claire; and Claire’s former lover,
Francesca, an Irish countess of Italian origin. The novel’s settings
range from Ireland and East Anglia to the Danish royal palace of
Rosenborg and the icy valleys of the Numedal. One reviewer de-
scribed Tremain’s novel, which won the Whitbread Prize for the best
English novel of 1999, as a ‘‘treasure house of delights, as haunting
as it is pleasurable’’ with ‘‘intrigues, searches, betrayals, in vivid
scene after scene which loop in and out, back and forth, like over-
lapping and repeated chords.’’19 This final simile is apt, since music
plays a vital role not only in the novel’s plot structure but also as
one of the fundamental ideas explored in its pages. As John Bayley
pointed out in his review of Music and Silence, the reader who hopes
for technical information about lutecraft will be disappointed, but

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300 HELEN WILCOX

music is a ‘‘spirit and a suggestion’’ throughout the ‘‘seductive para-

graphs’’ of this novel.20
The events are set in 1629–30, and Tremain’s characters are ap-
propriately steeped in the humanist and neo-Platonic traditions of
music shared by Thomas Whythorne. King Christian longs to ‘‘reim-
pose order upon chaos,’’ not only in his kingdom but also in ‘‘our
innermost souls,’’ and music is his means of achieving this; human
beings are prone, he says, to lose the ‘‘thread of things’’ and what
he ‘‘asks of music’’ is ‘‘to restore the thread to me.’’21 Just as Why-
thorne saw music as an emblem of the soul, so Christian regards
music itself as ‘‘the human soul, speaking without words’’ (6). He
requires his musicians to perform in a cold, dark cellar underneath
the Vinterstue, the room in which he receives visitors to Rosenborg.
As the Music Master explains, by means of a series of air ducts

the sounds we make here are transmitted without distortion into the
space above and all the King’s visitors marvel when they hear it, not
knowing whence the music can possibly come and wondering perhaps
whether Rosenborg is haunted by the ghostly music makers of some
other age. (16)

This association of music with ‘‘ghostly’’ origins and a mysterious,

disembodied sound evoking ‘‘a sense of wonder’’ in the listeners
(223) intensifies the connection between music and spiritual or oth-
erworldly forces. The musicians ‘‘seem to create a rich and faultless
harmony’’ from the cellar, ‘‘huddled together in their dark do-
main’’ (28), a description inevitably conjuring up links with death
and an Orpheian music sounding from beyond the grave. Those
who cannot respond to music in the novel are the least sympathetic
characters; Kirsten, Christian’s outrageously selfish consort, for ex-
ample, is known to ‘‘loathe and detest Musical Performances’’
(179). The echo of Lorenzo’s comment in The Merchant of Venice,
that those who have no music in them and are not ‘‘moved with con-
cord of sweet sounds’’ are ‘‘fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,’’22
consciously roots the novel’s musical idealism in the humanist era.
Both Music and Silence and Whythorne’s Book provide lively ac-
counts of the experience of making music. Whythorne sums up the
way in which he passes his time ‘‘pleasantly, as sometime in singing,
sometime in playing on musical instruments, sometime in dancing,
and sometime in writing of English verse’’ (44), and later analyzes
the way in which he can give fuller expression to his ‘‘Cupidian’’ af-
fections through music (77). Peter Claire, too, perceives the effect
of music-making on his own nature. Contemplating the ‘‘intense

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 301

harmony’’ of the royal orchestra which sounds ‘‘as one’’ but is ‘‘in
reality composed of all our parts,’’ he becomes ‘‘no longer this ha-
bitual resemblance of myself that walks about and eats and sleeps
and is idle, but myself entirely’’ (224). In both cases the musician is
not just a conduit of beautiful sounds but is transformed by the proc-
ess of creating them. The impact of music on those who simply listen
is also referred to by Tremain’s characters in ways similar to the ar-
guments and anecdotes of Whythorne’s defense of music. His story
of the bagpiper and the wolves springs to mind when, in the novel,
a ‘‘whole company of men and mules’’ is entranced by Claire’s play-
ing of an ayre on his lute (84). And, having kept the company of
chickens in their dark cellar, the royal orchestra then find that they
are to play out of doors alongside a flock of sheep. ‘‘Wherever we
go, we are plagued by livestock!,’’ the flautist complains, but from
the moment that the musicians begin to play, ‘‘the sheep raise their
heads and listen, forgetting to graze for long periods of time’’ (118).
Christian’s belief that ‘‘certain pieces of music aid digestion’’ (14)
also recalls Whythorne’s faith in the power of music to soothe in-
fants and ease melancholic spirits (239). Indeed, the most sympa-
thetic characters in Music and Silence find comfort and inspiration in
music and musicians. Peter Claire’s sister is taken by the power of
melody to ‘‘somewhere that transcends time and space’’ (300) and
his beloved Emilia describes her only hope, ‘‘the impossible,’’ as
‘‘the arrival out of the white landscape of a man carrying a lute’’
(407). As the novel draws to a close and Claire prepares to leave the
Danish court, the king reminds him of the transforming power of
music by which the lutenist has worked ‘‘a magnificent alteration’’
in the hearts and lives of those for whom he played (421).
Tremain’s own rich language regularly draws on music as a source
of metaphoric transformation in the novel. The effects of music are
closely associated with memory, as when Christian, having heard
Peter Claire performing a pavan by Ferrabosco, declares that it ‘‘re-
minded him of a voyage to Spain, where the evening light was the
colour of jade and the women smelled of cloves’’ (308). But it is not
just specific memories that are awakened by music; the very nature
of music, the novel suggests, is bound up with memory and anticipa-
tion:

They say that Music, to reach into a Human Soul, depends upon Expec-
tation born of Memory—that certain notes will follow in sequence after
certain others—and so we hear the thing we call Melody flowing through
Time. And if Memory be faulty—as I do think mine must certainly be—
then we shall remain all our lives indifferent to Music. (453)

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302 HELEN WILCOX

At times in the novel, memories become more vivid than the pres-
ent, and then music becomes a yardstick against which to measure
their force: ‘‘he sees that she is almost laughing and this remem-
bered sound of her laughter is as potent as music’’ (321). But music
is, however potent, always ‘‘an abstraction’’ (301), and it can there-
fore lead listeners into contemplation of the future as well as the
past. When Claire and the viol player entertain the passengers on
the ship bound for the silver mines of the Numedal, ‘‘the captain
leans against some rigging and fixes his eyes on the moon and stars,
but the geniuses of the mine gaze intently at Peter Claire and
Krenze, as if the sounds they make contained some precious metal
as yet unknown to them’’ (62). Tremain’s metaphors, whether of
music or from music, repeatedly touch on the mystery hinted at in
its harmonies.
At the heart of the novel is a sense that the ‘‘unknown,’’ the pre-
cious secret of perfection intimated by music, is ultimately unattain-
able, giving added poignancy to music’s ‘‘aching sweetness’’ (245).
We hear of compositions ‘‘begun and never finished’’ (424) and of
performances that are never quite perfected. Christian comments to
his orchestra one night that ‘‘if he is not mistaken, they are ap-
proaching some kind of perfection’’ (245), a statement in which the
uncertainty (perhaps he is mistaken), the ‘‘approaching’’ rather
than achieving, and the qualifying phrase ‘‘some kind of perfection,’’
remind us uncomfortably of their imperfections. The most disturb-
ing example of this yearning in the novel is the experience of Fran-
cesca’s Irish husband, Johnnie O’Fingal, who dreams that he has
composed a particularly beautiful song, but when he wakes up, he
cannot recapture its melodies. In agony, he protests that ‘‘some-
thing as significant as that cannot be lost’’ (40), turning the music
into an emblem of every paradisal quality for which fallen humans
search. He goes mad in that search and dies. As one of his children
whispers, ‘‘perhaps Papa’s lost music is of the kind that no one can
hear?’’23
The novel’s title rightly suggests that it is as much concerned with
silence, or not hearing, as with hearing. When Christian leads his
expedition to the ‘‘far-away hillside under a Norwegian sky,’’ he in-
cludes musicians in his party because ‘‘he considers that a life with-
out music . . . is a life where the cold indifference of the universe
may hold absolute sway. And he is in no mood to hear its uncaring
silence’’ (59). The absence of music—one definition of silence—is
taken as a sign of the absence of love, both human and divine. Thus
the sudden onset of deafness is accompanied by an existential ter-
ror, whether the loss of hearing is psychological, as in the case of

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 303

Johnnie O’Fingal’s lost dream music, or physical, as with Peter

Claire who is afflicted by desperate pain in his ear and a consequent
silence which is ‘‘absolute’’ (422). Tremain’s interest in silence takes
many forms: she refers to ‘‘the silence of lost years,’’ the ‘‘slow tor-
ture’’ of Peter Claire’s lonely silence in the absence of Emilia, and
the still darkness of a windless night ‘‘silent as the tomb’’ (232, 262,
410). Silence signifies the past, loss, absence, death—but also the
unspoken and the unheard. When spring comes to the frozen
Numedal, where the search for silver has only brought poverty and
death, the afflicted people remaining in the valley are not affected
by the thawing of the cataract: ‘‘it is as if no one hears the sound of
the waterfall’’ (203). The love which Peter Claire feels for his Irish
countess, and later for Emilia, is oppressed by the silence of inex-
pressibility, and, even in his permitted conversations with the king,
the lutenist is aware of ‘‘what so often exists in the silences between
words,’’ a knowledge which ‘‘both haunts them and makes them
marvel at the teasing complexity of all human discourse’’ (395).
Music, silence and language, then, are all closely interconnected
in Tremain’s novel. In Whythorne’s Book, too, we observed how his
fascination for music goes hand in hand with an obsession with dis-
course of all kinds—poetry, song, foreign tongues, orthography.
Music and Silence may not be written in a phonetic code, but it cer-
tainly betrays a profound interest in words as art and mystery. Chris-
tian delights in calligraphy from an early age, enjoying the ‘‘absolute
majesty’’ of ‘‘knowing his hand to be in perfect control of every
stroke or loop of the pen’’ as he practices signing his name ‘‘in cal-
ligraphy of exceptional sophistication and beauty’’ (45). The En-
glish ambassador, visiting the Danish court and conversing in
German with Christian’s consort, finds another pleasure in lan-
guage—not the visual beauty of writing but the suggestive structures
of sentences. He appreciates the way that, in German, ‘‘the verb
withholds itself from its own completion until the last moment in
almost every sentence, thus imparting to all linguistic constructions
a hanging thread of mystery’’ (121). This fine characterization of
Germanic syntax implies that language communicates but at the
same time can tantalize and even withhold communication. Just as
music is seen in the novel as the expression of the soul, so words,
too, can express ‘‘innermost being’’ (46). However, both music and
speech can be overwhelmed by silence; at a crucial moment, Peter
and Emilia share experiences ‘‘which neither can put into words’’
(119). Earlier in the novel, Christian comes across a splendid Ara-
bian stallion which has no name because, according to its owner,
‘‘no word in our language presents itself to me as fine enough’’

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304 HELEN WILCOX

(98). As Emilia’s youngest brother realizes, language is also vulnera-

ble; ‘‘names can break,’’ the child advises, so ‘‘you have to hold
them carefully’’ (146).
In the imaginative world of Tremain’s novel, the expressive sys-
tems of words and notes interweave their threads among memories
and desires. It is revealing that Peter Claire, when trying to recall
and understand a conversation with Emilia, is said to play and replay
it in his mind ‘‘as though it might be a piece of music’’ (156). When
the king’s childhood friend sees Christian’s ‘‘exquisite’’ calligraphy,
he gives it the highest praise by declaring it to be ‘‘like music’’ (79).
And yet, for all the praise and power accorded to music in the tex-
ture of the narrative, those who make music are shown to be
‘‘pawns’’ (363) in the early modern world of political schemes and
personal manipulation, as well as in the novel’s own plot. The lute-
nist is, like Whythorne, dependent upon the whims of his employ-
ers, vulnerable to their love and admiration but ultimately a
possession to be exchanged, if need be, for money or other more
valuable commodities. As King Christian explains to Claire, the or-
chestra is deliberately confined to the cellar so that they will be ‘‘for-
gotten’’ and ‘‘invisible’’—and then those who hear their music will
be filled with ‘‘a sense of wonder’’ at the music (223), but never at
the musicians. High ideals of almost heavenly music coexist with a
much lower regard for the earthly music-makers in this harsh world.

III
These two works bring to life in very different ways the same
world: the environment of early modern musicians, in which under-
lying humanist principles of discourse, harmony and potentiality are
juxtaposed with the practicalities of their professional and emo-
tional lives. Considering the distance between the two works in pe-
riod, genre and function, it is indeed striking just how many
parallels there are between them. Both texts, as we have seen, give a
vivid insight into the writing, teaching, and performing of music in
early modern Europe, and offer a spirited defense of music, suggest-
ing that it induces ‘‘appetite of celestial things’’ (Whythorne 1961,
239) and expresses ‘‘a reaching out, in the soul of man . . . towards
God’’ (Tremain 1999, 93). In both we see the detail of several court-
ships pursued simultaneously by the musicians as they attempt to
win their ladies through their own combination of poetry and music.
Whythorne woos by singing his recently written verses set to his own
melodies, and Peter Claire attempts this, too, although he does won-

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 305

der whether he might do better composing music for some of

Shakespeare’s lines instead:
This is the first time in his life that he has attempted to write a love-song
and he suspects that the writing of love-songs is never the easy, effortless
task that others such as Shakespeare contrive to make it seem. Indeed,
not being Shakespeare appears to him, at this moment, as a not inconsider-
able burden all Englishmen are forced to bear. (123)

Tremain’s lightly ironic touch here reminds us of the postmodernist

benefit of hindsight also to be enjoyed in recent works such as the
film Shakespeare in Love.24 However, the self-conscious features that
we might expect to find in a 1990s novel are, surprisingly, to some
extent present in Whythorne’s 1570s Book. The failed relationship
with one of his widowed mistresses is wittily described as the mitiga-
tion of the ‘‘rage of our tragedy’’ in the achievement of ‘‘a comical
end’’ (59). As we have seen, Whythorne is not averse to self-contem-
plation in the looking-glass or the mirror of his own portraits, and
he anxiously controls his ‘‘diet and government of the order of my
body’’ with the desired result that ‘‘I was judged of many which did
not know my years, to be always younger than I was in deed’’ (136).
Peter Claire, too, is shown by Tremain considering his image in a
mirror, ‘‘trying to see what others see there, to objectify his own fea-
tures,’’ but ‘‘the light on them is cold and hard’’ and he cannot dis-
cern ‘‘the truth about himself ’’ (301).
The relationship of The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne and
Music and Silence to images and portraiture not only highlights some
of the similarities linking the two works but also affords a glimpse of
significant differences between them. When Whythorne stares into
a looking glass, he sees what he knows to be a false image: ‘‘it sho-
weth the face the contrary way, that is to say, that which seemeth to
be the right side of the face is the left side in deed. . . .’’ He is also
conscious that the reflection is fleeting, and ‘‘the disposition and
grace of his face’’ is forgotten as soon as he moves away from the
glass. His concern is with accuracy of representation, knowing that
all human beings should carefully ‘‘consider with them selves’’ in
order to ‘‘be the more ready to die’’ (134). When Peter Claire is also
depicted turning to the mirror for an objective view, his aim is to
facilitate a true understanding of himself alone. The context of Why-
thorne’s self-knowledge is a more generalized Christian morality in
which human life is seen as a fleeting appearance on an immortal
stage, whereas Peter Claire is infused with the modern sense of self-
understanding as an end in itself. As Sylvia Plath wrote in the voice
of a ‘‘Mirror,’’

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306 HELEN WILCOX

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.25

The search for what we really are underlies Rose Tremain’s novel,
and the playful illustration on the back cover of Music and Silence
would suggest that the search is ultimately futile. A genuine portrait
of Kirsten Munk,26 Christian IV’s consort who so disliked music, has
been adapted by the addition of a lute which she holds upside-down
so that it obscures her entire face. This postmodern collage, while
hinting that historical individuality can be imagined but not really
known, also troublingly implies that music replaces and perhaps
even denies self-expression. There is an element of hide-and-seek in
the new picture, allowing the character to remain silent while dis-
guised behind music. By contrast, Whythorne saw his portrait and
his compositions working together. In 1571, he had a woodcut made
from his portrait (illustration 9) for his 1571 Songes, and in his auto-
biography he comments that he has added his coat of arms to the
frame and assumed the title ‘‘gentleman,’’ as he intends

to show myself to be [a gentleman] as well in the outward marks, as in

the inward man, of the which inward man the music and the ditties and
songs & sonnets therewith joined shall show to be sufficient judge in that
respect. (211)

Whythorne’s text breathes supreme confidence in the unity of this

Renaissance man, whose ‘‘inward’’ and ‘‘outward’’ natures are in
union, and whose portrait and titles, songs and poems all work in
harmony.
One area in which Whythorne betrays a lack of self-confidence is
in his relationships with women, at whose mercy he seems to remain
despite (or perhaps because of ?) his misogynist opinions. Oddly
enough, this leads to another striking parallel with Rose Tremain’s
novel, in the course of which we see almost all the leading male char-
acters being manipulated by women. The sharp difference between
the two texts in this respect is one of perspective: whereas Why-
thorne’s Book is a straightforwardly autobiographical account from a
single male point of view, Music and Silence follows several narratives,
among which the men’s are largely narrated in the third person
while the women’s frequently take the form of journal entries. If
there is a trend to be observed here, it is the extension of autobio-
graphical and fictional forms to embrace the woman’s perspective.
The writers and philosophers of the early modern period, with hon-

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9. Woodcut of Whythorne made for his Songes, 1571. From the Osborn edition of
The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne

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308 HELEN WILCOX

orable exceptions,27 stressed the man in humanism; our contempo-

rary heritage from humanism is a good deal more emancipated.
However, the expansion of humanism has tended to force the di-
vine aspects of the human into the background. This can be seen in
the attitude of the music lovers in Music and Silence who, although
they hold that music is the ‘‘human soul, speaking without words’’
(6), are not at all sure to whom that soul is speaking. Whythorne
takes for granted that the context for music is spiritual, and the pri-
mary purpose he outlines in his defense of music is ‘‘openly and pri-
vately to serve God’’ (230). Peter Claire’s sense of music’s function
is much less certain. He knows that it is ‘‘a reaching out . . . towards
God’’ (93), but there is no confidence that it will find God, or that
there is indeed a God to be found. Later in the novel, the musician
reduces the scale of his belief in music, trusting that his playing will
simply express his own self—yet even that hope is perhaps a delu-
sion:

What does the lute player believe he is expressing? He struggles for pre-
cision, but is convinced that through that precision something of his
heart can be heard.
How deluded is he on this matter? The heart of John Dowland was
black. He was judged to be the greatest musician in England, but what
filled his soul, by all accounts, was bitterness and loathing. (301)

This passage reminds us of the melancholic modern perception, al-

though expressed in an early modern setting, of the gap between
the art and the artist, as well as between that artist and the divine.
But what, finally, should we make of the idea of ‘‘silence’’ which
so pervades Tremain’s novel? Is there an equivalent silence in Why-
thorne’s text or the ideas of his contemporaries? The prevailing ide-
alism of the early modern era reveals itself in the notion that even
in silence there is a Platonic idea of music, known as the music of
the spheres. As Thomas Browne—returned from his tavern—wrote
of the created universe in 1643, ‘‘those well ordered motions, and
regular paces, though they give no sound unto the eare, yet to the
understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.’’28 Physical
silence, Browne suggests, is not the absence of sound but an oppor-
tunity to hear the celestial music of creation. Whythorne also refers
to this idea, recalling that ‘‘our ancient poet’’ Chaucer described the
spheres as ‘‘the walls of music’’ (236).29 Whythorne thus suggests
that, though he may be preoccupied on a small scale with writing
songs and teaching lute-playing techniques, the scope of music as a
whole is enormous, sounding and resounding in the entire universe.

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OF MUSIC AND SILENCE 309

The unheard music filling the creation is the only sense in which
silence is understood in Whythorne’s text and in the principles of
his contemporaries; it is not an emptiness but a metaphysical full-
ness. This positive understanding of silence is only rarely glimpsed
in Tremain’s work—for example, when the English King, Charles I,
retreats from the ‘‘swirling, chaotic world of London’s streets and
wharves, a world from which silence and stillness are almost entirely
absent,’’ in order to ‘‘marvel’’ in silence at the works of art in his
state rooms (360). For the most part, however, as we have seen, si-
lence is experienced as deprivation: the opposite of music, loss of
sound, the failure of communication, despair at the absence of God.
It is here that we see the limits of our acceptance of the humanist
inheritance. While for Whythorne music and silence are not oppo-
sites but aspects of the same greater harmony, in Tremain’s novel,
silence is what ‘‘fell on Johnnie O’Fingal’’ (384) when he lost the
exquisite music of his dream. Silence is a threat or, at the very least,
an unknown: a mystery to be explored. As the twentieth-century
Welsh poet R. S. Thomas put it, our contemporary understanding of
the world—physical, musical, spiritual—consists in our attempts

To analyse the quality

Of its silences.30

Notes
1. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643), 2:9, The Major Works, ed. C.A. Pa-
trides (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1977), 149–50.
2. George Herbert, ‘‘Easter’’ (1633), The Complete English Poems, ed. John Tobin
(London: Penguin, 1991), 37.
3. Whythorne’s manuscript is Eng. Misc. c. 330.
4. The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1961), 1. All further quotations are taken from this edition and referred
to by page number.
5. A Book of Songs and Sonetts, Bodleian Eng. Misc. c. 330, ff. 64–75.
6. For an exploration of the varied and oblique modes of autobiographical writ-
ing in this period, see Betraying Our Selves: Forms of Self-Representation in Early Modern
English Texts, ed. Henk Dragstra et al. (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 2000).
7. Songes (1571) and Duos, or Songs for two voices (1590).
8. First published in 1557, Richard Tottel’s collection of manuscript verse in-
cluded the work of Wyatt and Surrey—and was also entitled Songs and Sonnets, like
Whythorne’s book (which, oddly enough in view of this title, contains more prose
than poetry).
9. For the ease of readers of this article, quotations from Wythorne’s text have
been converted into modern English—unless the quotations are intended to illus-
trate the orthographic system itself.

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310 HELEN WILCOX

10. Autobiography, 237–38. Whythorne took this sequence from ‘‘A brief declara-
tion in Metre, of the seuen liberal Artes,’’ in Thomas Wilson’s The Rule of Reason,
conteinynge the Arte of Logique (1553), f. 2v.
11. For example, an account of ‘‘sharp and flat sounds’’ (236) is taken from De
Mundo Aristotelis (Basle, 1533), 18.
12. Autobiography, 230. The quotation is from Erasmus’s Apophthegmata (1550),
2:182. As Whythorne’s meticulous editor, James M. Osborn, points out (230 n. 4),
Whythorne must have used the Latin edition since this passage is omitted from
Nicholas Udall’s English translation.
13. Although Whythorne does not name the ‘‘nobleman’’ who employed him
briefly as a music tutor (83), it is evident that it was Lord Ambrose Dudley, later the
Earl of Warwick (xxviii–xxix).
14. An early wire-strung guitar.
15. Counterpoint.
16. Autobiography, 20. The lines which featured in the painting were his six-line
coda on the effects of music, ‘‘The music tunes of voice or string,’’ quoted above.
17. The first set of three dots in this extract signifies a gap where the verses them-
selves are quoted, but the second set is in Whythorne’s text itself.
18. It seems that Whythorne married within a year or two of completing his Book
of Songs and Sonetts, and there is evidence of the burial of a ‘‘Thomas Whitehorne
gentleman’’ on August 2, 1696 (Autobiography, li–lii).
19. Ruth Petrie, cited at [Link]/exec/obidos/ts/book-reviews.
20. John Bayley, the New York Review of Books, June 29, 2000, 54.
21. Rose Tremain, Music and Silence (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999), 4, 29.
All further quotations will be identified by page number.
22. 5.1.83–85; in the novel the lines are partially quoted by Peter Claire and dis-
cussed by Christian with reference to his wife (294).
23. Music and Silence, 94. Ironically, the music turns out, in keeping with the post-
modern nightmare, to have already been written by Ferrabosco (145).
24. The burden of ‘‘not being Shakespeare’’ was one difficulty from which Why-
thorne was spared, living as he did one-and-a-half generations before Shakespeare.
25. Sylvia Plath, ‘‘Mirror,’’ ll 10–11, Collected Poems, ed. Ted Hughes (London:
Faber and Faber, 1981), 174.
26. The painting is by Jacob van Doordt and hangs in the Rosenborg Palace, Co-
penhagen.
27. See, for instance, the famously educated daughters of Sir Thomas More. The
paradoxes of humanism for women in the English context are discussed by Hilda
Smith in Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700, ed. Helen Wilcox, 9–29 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
28. Browne, Religio Medici, 2:9, Major Works, 149.
29. Whythorne actually misquotes Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls; 1.62 refers to
spheres as the ‘‘welle of musik.’’
30. R. S. Thomas, Selected Poems (London: Dent, 1993), 104.

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Dominic Baker-Smith
A Bibliography

1963
Review of Leland Miles, John Colet and the Platonic Tradition (London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1962). In Dialogue 2 (1963): 235–36.
‘‘Cause and Catastrophe in Shakespearean Tragedy.’’ Chelsea Annual 3 (1963):
35–44.

1965
‘‘More, Buchanan and Florens Wilson.’’ Moreana 7 (1965): 106–8.
Review of D. C. Allen, Doubt’s Boundless Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964). In Blackfriars: A Monthly Re-
view 46 (1964): 371.

1966
Review of Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964). In Canadian Journal of History 1 (1966): 82–84.
‘‘Florens Wilson: Two Early Works.’’ The Bibliotheck 4 (1966): 228–29.

1968
‘‘John Donne and the Mysterium Crucis.’’ English Miscellany (Rome) 19 (1968):
65–82.
Review of The Poems of John Cleveland. Edited by Brian Morris and Eleanor Withing-
ton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). In Renaissance Quarterly 21 (1968): 496–97.

1970
‘‘Religion and John Webster.’’ In John Webster, edited by Brian Morris, 207–28. Lon-
don: Benn, 1970.

1972
‘‘John Donne’s Critique of True Religion.’’ In John Donne: Essays in Celebration, ed-
ited by A. J. Smith, 404–32. London: Methuen / New York: Barnes & Noble, 1972.
Review of W. H. Hazelwood, The Poetry of Grace: Reformation Themes and Structures in
English Seventeenth-Century Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972);
and Annabel M. Patterson, Hermogenes and the Renaissance: Seven Ideas of Style
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). In University of Toronto Quarterly
61 (1972): 367–72.

311

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312 DOMINIC BAKER-SMITH: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

1973
Review of J. IJsewijn (ed), Studia et Textus Neolatini in Humanistica Lovaniensia XVII
(1968). In Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 35, no. 1 (1973): 176–78.
Review of Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1969). In European Studies Review 3 (1973): 97–98.

1975
‘‘T. E. Hulme: Reflections on the Classical Temper.’’ Poetica 3 (1975): 45–61.
‘‘John Donne’s ‘A Litanie’: A Note.’’ Review of English Studies n.s. 26 (1975): 171–73.
‘‘Erasmus Research in Great Britain.’’ Erasmus in English 7 (1975): 33–34.

1976
Review of Raoul Granqvist, The Reputation of John Donne, 1779–1873 (Uppsala: Uni-
versitetet Stockholm, 1975). In Studia Neophilologica 48 (1976): 362–63.
‘‘Juan Vives and the Somnium Scipionis.’’ In Classical Influences on European Literature,
A.D. 1500–1700, edited by R. R. Bolgar, 239–44. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1976.

1978
Thomas More and Plato’s Voyage. Inaugural lecture at University College, Cardiff.
Cardiff: Cardiff University Press, 1978.

1979
‘‘Engagement and the Engaged Reader: Approaches to Renaissance Epic.’’ Review
article on Patrick Cullen, Infernal Triad: The Flesh, the World and the Devil in Spenser
and Milton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974). In Studia Neophilo-
logica 51 (1979): 151–57.
Review of Reeve Parker, Coleridge’s Meditative Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1975). In Studia Neophiloligica 51 (1979): 339–41.
Review of Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, Vol. II: The Marriage of Philology
and Mercury. Translated by W. H. Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press,
1977). In The Heythrop Journal 20 (1979): 212–13.

1980
Review of M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Lon-
don: Edward Arnold, 1979). In History Today 30 (February 1980): 51.

1981
Review of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 9: The Apology, edited by J. B. Trapp
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980). In The Catholic Historical Review 67
(1981): 116–18.
Review of J. A. Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More (Brighton, UK: Harvester
Press, 1980). In History Today 31 (May 1981): 57.

1982
‘‘Thomas More and the Court of Henry VIII.’’ In The New Pelican Guide to English
Literature, edited by Boris Ford. 7 vols. 1: 371–83. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin
Books, 1982.

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DOMINIC BAKER-SMITH: A BIBLIOGRAPHY 313

Review of M. A. Screech, Erasmus, Ecstasy and ‘‘The Praise of Folly’’ (London: Duck-
worth, 1980). In The Catholic Historical Review 68 (1982): 329–31.
Review of M. M. Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance. Revised and illus-
trated edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1981). In Erasmus of Rotterdam
Society Yearbook 2 (1982): 128–31.

1983
Review of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 6: A Dialogue Concerning Heresies,
edited by T. M. C. Lawler, G. Marc’hadour, and R. C. Marius (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1981). In The Catholic Historical Review 69 (1983): 611–12.
‘‘A Fool among Knaves: The Humanist Dilemma of Counsel.’’ Bulletin of the Society
for Renaissance Studies 1 (1983): 1–9.
The Use of History. Inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam. Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 1983.

1984
‘‘Exegesis, Literary and Divine.’’ In Images of Belief, edited by David Jasper and F. W.
Dillistone, 169–78. London: Macmillan / New York: St. Martin’s, 1984.
‘‘Florens Wilson and his Circle: Emigrés in Lyons, 1539–1543.’’ In Neo-Latin and the
Vernacular in Renaissance France, edited by Terence Cave and Graham Castor, 83–
97. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

1985
‘‘The Escape from the Cave: Thomas More and the Vision of Utopia.’’ Dutch Quar-
terly Review 15, no. 3 (1985): 148–61. [Reprinted in Between Dream and Nature:
Essays on Utopia and Dystopia, edited by Dominic Baker-Smith and C. C. Barfoot,
5–19. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987.]

1986
Review article of Studies in Seventeenth-Century English Literature, History and Bibliogra-
phy, edited by G. A. M. Janssens and F. G. A. M. Aarts. In Neophilologus 70, no. 3
(1985): 462–68.
‘‘Great Expectation: Sidney’s Death and the Poets.’’ In Sir Philip Sidney: 1586 and
the Creation of a Legend, edited by Dominic Baker-Smith, Jan van Dorsten, and Ar-
thur F. Kinney, 83–103. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1986.
Sir Philip Sidney: 1586 and the Creation of a Legend. Edited by Dominic Baker-Smith,
Jan van Dorsten, and Arthur F. Kinney. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1986.
‘‘Reading History: The English Renaissance.’’ History Today (August 1986): 50–53.
Review of M. Alexander, Old English Literature (London: Macmillan, 1983). In The
Downside Review 354 (1986): 57–60.

1987
Review of Maria Dowling, Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII (London: Croom Helm,
1986). In Renaissance Studies 1 (1987): 296–98.
Review of J. K. McConica, The History of the University of Oxford III: The Collegiate
University (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). In Renaissance Studies 1
(1987): 298–302.

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314 DOMINIC BAKER-SMITH: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

Between Dream and Nature: Essays on Utopia and Dystopia, edited by Dominic Baker-
Smith and C. C. Barfoot. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987.
‘‘The Escape from the Cave: Thomas More and the Vision of Utopia.’’ In Between
Dream and Nature: Essays on Utopia and Dystopia, edited by Dominic Baker-Smith
and C. C. Barfoot, 5–19. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987. [Reprinted from Dutch Quar-
terly Review 15:3 (1985): 148–61].
Obituary of Jan van Dorsten. In Renaissance Studies 2 (1987).

1988
‘‘Spenser’s Triumph of Marriage.’’ Word and Image 18, no. 4 (1988): 310–16.
‘‘A Renaissance Perspective.’’ Dutch Quarterly Review 18 (1988): 309–18. Reprinted
in Something Understood: Studies in Anglo-Dutch Literary Translation, edited by Bart
Westerweel and Theo D’haen, 5–14. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1990.
‘‘The Ghost in the Machine: Ideology and European Unity.’’ Yearbook of European
Studies 1 (1988): 13–25.
‘‘Der Kreis von Tew.’’ In Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: die Philoso-
phie des 17. Jahrhunderts, edited by J. P. Schobinger (Basel: Schwabe, 1988), 3 (En-
gland), 1: 37–54.

1989
‘‘The Cultural and Social Setting.’’ In Cambridge Guide to the Arts, edited by Boris
Ford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3 (Renaissance and Reforma-
tion): 2–43; [Reprinted as The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain, 3, Sixteenth-
Century Britain (1992).]
Review of The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Edited by C. B. Schmitt et
al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). In The Bulletin of the Society for
Renaissance Studies 6 (1989): 21–26.
Obituary of Margaret Mann Phillips. In Renaissance Studies 3 (1989).

1990
‘‘ ‘The old broad way in applying’: John Donne and his ‘Litanie.’ ’’ In A Day Estivall:
Essays in Honour of Helena Minnie Shire, edited by Alisoun Gardner-Medwin and
Janet Hadley Williams, 48–58. Aberdeen, UK: Aberdeen University Press, 1990.
‘‘Parnassus’’ and ‘‘Winds,’’ entries in The Spenser Encyclopaedia, edited by A. C. Ham-
ilton et al. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1990.
‘‘A Renaissance Perspective.’’ In Something Understood: Studies in Anglo-Dutch Literary
Translation, edited by Bart Westerweel and Theo D’haen, 5–14. Amsterdam: Ro-
dopi, 1990. [Reprinted from Dutch Quarterly Review 18 (1988): 309–18.]
‘‘ ‘Inglorious Glory’: 1513 and the Humanist Attack on Chivalry.’’ In Chivalry in the
Renaissance, edited by S. Anglo, 129–44. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1990.
‘‘Literature and the Visual Arts.’’ In Encyclopaedia of Literature and Criticism, edited
by M. Coyle et al., 991–1003. London: Routledge, 1990.
Sir Philip Sidney’s Achievements. Edited by M. J. B. Allen, Dominic Baker-Smith,
Arthur F. Kinney, and Margaret Sullivan. New York: AMS, 1990.
‘‘Ends and Means.’’ Review of Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). In History Today 40, no. 7 (1990): 50–51.

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DOMINIC BAKER-SMITH: A BIBLIOGRAPHY 315

1991
‘‘Original Sin: T. S. Eliot and T. E. Hulme.’’ In Centennial Hauntings: Pope, Byron and
Eliot in the Year 88, edited by C. C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen, 271–82. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1991.
‘‘Florens Wilson and the Politics of Irenicism,’’ In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Toronto-
nensis, edited by Alexander Dalzell, Charles Fantazzi, and Richard J. Schoeck,
189–98. Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991.
‘‘The Location of Utopia: Narrative Devices in a Renaissance Fiction.’’ In Addressing
Frank Kermode: Essays in Criticism and Interpretation, edited by M. Tudeau-Clayton
and Martin Warner, 109–23. London: Macmillan / Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1991.
Review of James A. Parente, Jr. Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition: Christian
Theater in Germany and in the Netherlands, 1500–1680 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill,
1987). In The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991): 126–27.
More’s ‘‘Utopia’’. London: Harper Collins, 1991.

1992
Review of Greg Walker, John Skelton and the Politics of the 1520s (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988). In Renaissance Studies 6 (1992): 93–96.
Review of Louis L. Martz, Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1990). In Renaissance Studies 6 (1992): 224–26.
Review of Elizabeth Biemann, Plato Baptiz’d: Towards the Interpretation of Spenser’s Mi-
metic Fictions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), and Sean Kane, Spens-
er’s Moral Allegory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989). In Literature and
Theology 6 (1992): 99–101.
‘‘Introduction’’ and annotation to Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. London: Every-
man’s Library, 1992.
Review of W. M. Gordon, Humanist Play and Belief: The Serio-Comic Art of Desiderius
Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), and R. J. Schoeck, Erasmus
of Europe: The Making of a Humanist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1991). In The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43 (1992): 481–82.

1993
‘‘Living in Two Cities: The Status of Fiction in More’s Utopia.’’ In Thomas Morus
Jahrbuch 1992, edited by Hermann Boventer, 62–80. Düsseldorf: Triltsch Verlag,
1993.

1994
Review of L.-E. Halkin, Erasmus: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). In
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994): 506–7.
‘‘De schoolmeester van Europa.’’ Review of Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The
Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
In NRC/Handelsblad, 14 May (1994): Boeken, 5.
‘‘Uses of Plato by Erasmus and More.’’ In Platonism and the English Imagination, ed-
ited by Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton, 86–99. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1994.

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316 DOMINIC BAKER-SMITH: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

1995
‘‘Thomas More and the Franciscans.’’ In More’s Utopia and the Utopian Inheritance,
edited by A. D. Cousins and Damian Grace, 37–52. Lanham, NY: University Press
of America, 1995.

1996
‘‘John Donne as Medievalist.’’ In Sacred and Profane: Secular and Devotional Interplay
in Early Modern British Literature, edited by Helen Wilcox, Richard Todd, and Alas-
dair MacDonald, 185–93. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1996.
‘‘The Serpent and the Dove: Political Counsel in Machiavelli and Erasmus.’’ In
Machiavelli: Figure-Reputation, edited by Joep Leerssen and Menno Spiering. Year-
book of European Studies, 8. 1–25. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996.
‘‘The Crisis of Religious Humanism in the Face of the Reformation.’’ In Thomas
Morus Jahrbuch 1995, edited by H. Boventer, 37–43. Düsseldorf: Triltsch Verlag,
1996.
‘‘Florens Wilson: A Distant Prospect.’’ In Stuart Style 1513–1542: Essays on the Court
of James V, edited by J. Hadley Williams, 1–14. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell Press,
1996.

1997
Review of R. J. Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe: The Prince of Humanists, 1501–1536 (Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993). In The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48
(1997): 170–72.
‘‘The Crisis of Religious Humanism in the Face of the Reformation.’’ In Europa:
Wiege des Humanismus und der Reformation, edited by H. Boventer and U. Bau-
mann, 97–110. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997 [Reprint of ‘‘The Crisis of Religious
Humanism in the Face of the Reformation.’’ In Thomas Morus Jahrbuch 1995, ed-
ited by H. Boventer, 37–43. Düsseldorf: Triltsch Verlag, 1996.]
Expositions of the Psalms. Edited by Dominic Baker-Smith. Collected Works of Eras-
mus 63. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
‘‘Thomas More and Plato’s Voyage.’’ In Great Political Thinkers, edited by J. M. Dunn
and Ian Harris, 21 vols. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1997): More, 2:
39–45. [Reprint of Thomas More and Plato’s Voyage. Cardiff: Cardiff University
Press, 1978.]

1998
Counsel and Caprice: Seneca at the Tudor Court. Valedictory lecture given in the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, September, 9, 1998. Amsterdam: Vossius Press / Amsterdam
University Press, 1998.
‘‘Utopie, leidraad of valkuil.’’ In Utopie—leidraad of valkuil? 97–123. Amsterdam:
Boom, 1998.

1999
Review of Colloquies, edited by C. R. Thompson, Collected Works of Erasmus, vols.
39 and 40 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); and Spiritualia and Pasto-
ralia, edited by J. O’Malley, Collected Works of Erasmus, 70 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1998). In The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 50 (1999): 582–84.

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DOMINIC BAKER-SMITH: A BIBLIOGRAPHY 317

2000
Review of Ben Lowe, Imagining Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Ideas (Univer-
sity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). In Canadian Journal of History
35 (2000): 137–38.
More’s ‘‘Utopia.’’ Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts, 11 (Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 2000). [Reprint of More’s ‘‘Utopia’’ (London: Harper Col-
lins, 1991).]
‘‘Erasmus as Reader of the Psalms.’’ In Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 20
(2000): 1–18.
Review of J.V. Andreae, Christianopolis, translated by E. H. Thompson (Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), in Seventeenth-Century News 58
(2000), 164–67.

2001
‘‘Shakespeare and the Court.’’ The Court Historian 6 (2001): 93–122.
‘‘The World to Come: Aldous Huxley and the Utopian Fable.’’ In Aldous Huxley:
Between East and West, edited by C. C. Barfoot, 101–12. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.

2002
Review of Robert Coogan, Erasmus, Lee and the Correction of the Vulgate: The Shaking
of the Foundations (Geneva: Droz, 1992). In Moreana 39, no. 149 (2002): 147–56.

2004
Review of Bruce Mansfield, Erasmus in the Twentieth Century. Interpretations c. 1920–
2000. In Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004): 808–9.
‘‘ ‘The Honour of the Garter’: George Peele’s Antiquarian Poetics.’’ In Living in
Posterity: Essays in Honour of Bart Westerweel, edited by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen,
Paul Hoftijzer, Juliette Roding, and Paul Smith, 11–17. Hilversum: Uitgeverij
Verloren, 2004.

2005
Expositions of the Psalms, edited by Dominic Baker-Smith, Collected Works of Eras-
mus 64 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).
Review of Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003). In Renaissance Studies 19 (2005): 119–23.

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Contributors

Ton Hoenselaars is Senior Lecturer in the English Department of

Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is the author of Images of
Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contempo-
raries (1992). He has edited, alone or with others, Shakespeare’s Italy
(1993), The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama (1997), English
Literature and the Other Languages (1999), The Author as Character
(1999), Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe (2003), Shakespeare
and the Language of Translation (2004), and Shakespeare’s History Plays:
Performance, Translation and Adaptation in Britain and Abroad (2004).
He is also the founding chair of the Shakespeare Society of the Low
Countries, and managing editor of its journal Folio. He is currently
writing a monograph on Shakespeare and Richard Wagner.

Arthur F. Kinney is Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Literary His-

tory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is Director of
the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies. His studies of Hu-
manist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century England
(l986) and Contintental Humanist Poetics (l989) followed a mono-
graph on Thomas More’s Utopia published by the Center for Renais-
sance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has
lectured and written frequently on humanism, most recently at a
plenary session of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics in
the fall of 2004. The founding editor of English Literary Renaissance
and president of the Renaissance English Text Society, he co-
chaired a conference with Dominic Baker-Smith on Sidney in
Leiden, the Netherlands in l986 and co-edited the proceedings with
him (1987).

R.J. Lyall is Professor of Literatures in English at the Vrije Universi-

teit Amsterdam, having previously taught English at Massey Univer-
sity, New Zealand and Scottish Literature at the University of
Glasgow. He has edited several early modern Scottish texts, and pub-
lished numerous articles in the field. His critical study of Alexander
Montgomerie will shortly appear in the Arizona Medieval and Re-

318

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 319

naissance Texts and Studies series. He is currently editing John Ire-

land’s Meroure of Wysdome for the Scottish Text Society and working
on a study of Henryson’s Morall Fabillis.

Elizabeth McCutcheon is Professor Emerita, the University of

Hawaii, where she taught in the Department of English. Her fields
of research include Thomas More, Erasmus, Margaret Roper and
other women writers, humanism, rhetoric, utopias in early modern
England, the letter, genre theory, and, more generally, prose and
poetry from 1500–1660. Publications include an edition of Sir Nicho-
las Bacon’s Great House Sententiae and a monograph, My Dear Peter: The
Ars Poetica and Hermeneutics for More’s ‘‘Utopia.’’ She co-edited ‘‘Uto-
pia’’ Revisited (Moreana nos. 118–19), was the North American editor
for the Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Abulensis, and co-edited Moreana
nos. 151–52. Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in nu-
merous essay collections and major journals, including Biography,
English Literary Renaissance, Erasmus of Rotterdam Yearbook, Moreana,
Studies in English Literature, Studies in Philology, and Utopian Studies.
She is currently editing William Bullein’s Dialogue against the Fever
Pestilence (1564), which contains the first quasi-utopia written in En-
glish.

Kees Meerhoff is Professor of French Literature and Civilization at

the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Rhétorique et poétique
au XVIe siècle en France: Du Bellay, Ramus et les autres (1986) and of
Entre logique et littérature. Autour de Philippe Melanchthon (2001). He
has published widely on French poetical theory and practice, hu-
manist rhetoric, dialectic, and ethics.

John Neubauer is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at

the University of Amsterdam, at present a Fellow at the Collegium
Budapest. He has also taught at various universities in the United
States, including Princeton, Pittsburgh, and Harvard, and is a corre-
sponding Fellow of the British Academy. His publications include
Symbolismus und symbolische Logik (1978), The Emancipation of Music
from Language (1986), and The Fin-de-siècle Culture of Adolescence (1992).
He is currently editing with Marcel Cornis-Pope a four-volume His-
tory of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, of which the first vol-
ume appeared in May 2004.

Victor Skretkowicz is Senior Lecturer in English in the University

of Dundee, Scotland. He has produced definitive editions of Sir
Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia)

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320 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

(1987) and of Florence Nightingale’s Notes On Nursing (1992). In

1992 he was elected convener of the Joint Council for the Dictionary
of the Older Scottish Tongue, and directed completion of the final four
volumes of that twelve-volume work (1931–2002). He has recently
directed the Dictionary of the Scots Language project, creating a
free, fully searchable Internet edition of the Dictionary of the Older
Scottish Tongue and the Scottish National Dictionary, representing the
Scots language from 1200 to 1967 (⬍[Link] He is
in the process of completing a monograph on Renaissance erotic
romance in relation to Sidney, Shakespeare, and Mary Sidney
Wroth.

Marijke Spies is Professor Emerita of Dutch Literature until 1770 at

the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and of the History of Rhetoric at
the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Arctic Routes to Fa-
bled Lands (1997) and Rhetoric, Rhetoricians and Poets: Studies in Renais-
sance Poetry and Poetics (1999). With Willem Frijhoff she wrote 1650:
Hard-Won Unity (2004).

Donald Stump is Professor of English at St. Louis University and

author of numerous articles on Sidney, Spenser, and Renaissance
drama. His research has concentrated on the court literature of Eliz-
abeth I and on the reception of biblical and classical texts in six-
teenth-century England, particularly those influenced by Greek and
Roman tragedy. He served as primary editor of ‘‘Hamartia’’: The Con-
cept of Error in the Western Tradition and as principal author and Proj-
ect Director for Sir Philip Sidney: An Annotated Bibliography of Texts and
Criticism (1554–1984). He is also editor of the websites Sir Philip Sid-
ney, On Line and Edmund Spenser, On Line. He and Carole Levin
founded the Queen Elizabeth I Society, of which he is currently
President.

Richard Todd is a graduate of University College London, and has

published widely on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lyric verse,
with emphasis on Anglo-Dutch cultural relations in the period ca.
1540–1672. He is an assistant textual editor to the ongoing Variorum
Edition of the poetry of John Donne (Bloomington: Indiana UP,
1995–), concentrating in particular on editing from scribal manu-
script the Donne poems translated into Dutch by Constantijn Huy-
gens in 1630 and 1633. His contribution to the present collection
stems from his work on that project. He has also written Consuming
Fictions: The Booker Prize and Fiction in Britain Today (1996), Iris Mur-
doch (1984), and Iris Murdoch: The Shakespearian Interest (1979), and

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 321

has published a short monograph on A.S. Byatt (1997). He is Profes-

sor of British Literature after 1500 at the University of Leiden, the
Netherlands, having previously taught at the Vrije Universiteit Am-
sterdam. In 1988–89 he was Visiting Netherlands Professor at the
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

Germaine Warkentin was born in Toronto, Canada. She has a BA

in Philosophy (Toronto), MA in English (Manitoba), and PhD in
English (Toronto). She taught (1959–60) at United College, now
the University of Winnipeg, at the same time doing film criticism on
radio and television, and also at the University of Toronto (1970–
99). She was director of the Centre for Reformation and Renais-
sance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto
(1985–90). Her central interests are later medieval, early modern
and early Canadian book history, and she has published widely in
those fields. Major project is an edition of the Sidney family library
catalogue (ca. 1665). Her current activities include editing the writ-
ings of the explorer Pierre-Esprit Radisson for the Champlain Soci-
ety and a volume of Northrop Frye’s early writings on critical theory
for the Collected Works of Northrop Frye. Her most recent publica-
tion is The Queen’s Majesty’s Passage and Related Documents (2004).

Andrew D. Weiner did his undergraduate work at the City College

of the City University of New York from 1961 to 1966 and his PhD at
Princeton University from 1966 to 1969. He joined the University of
Wisconsin-Madison faculty in 1969 and taught there until his retire-
ment in May 2003. He was also an Affiliated Professor of Law at the
University of Wisconsin Law School. Weiner is the author of Sir
Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism (1978) and over twenty ar-
ticles on Erasmus, More, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Fulke Gre-
ville, Giordano Bruno, and Milton. He was one of the founding
editors (with Leonard V. Kaplan, University of Wisconsin Law
School) of the monograph series, Graven Images: Studies in Culture,
Law, and the Sacred and co-editor of five volumes in that series. He is
currently working on books on Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.

Helen Wilcox is Professor of English at the University of Gron-

ingen, the Netherlands, and the author and editor of many books
and articles on early modern authors including Shakespeare,
Donne, Herbert, Milton and their female contemporaries. She is (as
Dominic Baker-Smith was until his retirement to Thomas Browne’s
East Anglia) an English academic working in the Dutch university
system—where, it must be pointed out in all fairness, there are not

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322 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

too many drunken singers nowadays. She also shares with Dominic
a love of music, which influenced the choice of topic for her contri-
bution to this volume in his honor. She is married to a jazz bass
player, thereby writing with some personal experience of the attrac-
tions and pitfalls of a (modern) musician’s life.

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Index

Abyngdon, Henry, 81–82 Apophthegmata (Erasmus), 128, 310 n. 12

Actes and Monuments (Foxe), 214–15 Appel au soldat, L’ (Barrès), 260
Action Française, 260 Appel des armes, L’ (Psichari), 16, 254–61
Aczel, Amir D., 44 Appolonius of Rhodes, 115
Adagia (Desiderius Erasmus), 67–68 Aquinas, Thomas, 120, 125 n. 24, 281
Advancement of Learning, The (Bacon) Arc, Jeanne d’, 258–59
222 Arcadia (Philip Sidney), 15, 154–78,
Aeneid (Virgil), 175, 177 n. 20, 216, 220, 181, 182, 185, 193
222 Archibald Douglas, sixth Earl of Angus,
Aeropagitica (Milton), 216 186
Aesop, 77, 275 Archimedes, 244, 250 n. 20
Africanus, Leo, 244 Ariosto, Ludovico, 23, 42
Agricola, Rudolph, 14, 27, 91–93, 102, Aristotle, 70, 77, 92, 95, 96, 100, 101,
105–6 nn. 25–28, 32, and 36 106 n. 32, 155, 157, 172, 217, 224, 239,
Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, von Net- 250 n. 19, 293
telsheim, 128, 131 Arnaud, Cardinal d’Ossat, 242, 243,
Ainsworth, Henry, 246 252 n. 50
Alain-Fournier, 260–61 Arte of English Poesie (Puttenham), 41
Alardus of Amsterdam, 91, 94, 98, 105 n. Arte of Rhetorique (Wilson), 27, 53 n. 7
25 Ascham, Roger, 27–28, 41, 154, 215
Alessandro di Imola, 122 Athenæus, 115
All is True [or Henry VIII] (Shakespeare) Augustine, St. [⳱ Aurelius Augustine],
203, 205 124 n. 11, 238, 246
All Quiet on the Western Front (Remar- Augustus, Emperor, 216
que), 256
Averroes [⳱ Ibn Roesjd], 70
Alton, R. E., 152 n. 8
Ayrault, Pierre, 241–42, 246, 253 n. 57
Amadis de Gaule, 276
and 58
Ambrose, Saint, 125 n. 24, 132
Amye de Court, L’ (La Borderie), 123
Amyot, Jacques, 191, 192 Babbling (Visscher), 133
Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton), 84 Bacon, Anne, Lady, 215
André, Bernard, 81 Bacon, Francis, 7, 15–16, 48, 51, 52,
Annals (Tacitus), 238–39 209–28, 215, 231
Anne of Denmark, Queen of Scotland Badalić, Hugo, 264
and England, 186 Baker-Smith, Dominic, 13, 17–22, 35,
Annotations upon the five bookes of Moses 49, 52, 90, 311–17
(Ainsworth), 246 Bale, John 210–12, 220
Antimorus (Brixius), 82 Bánk Bán (Erkel), 265
Antiprobale (Maudit), 250 n. 18 Barbour, John, 123–24 n. 1
Aphtonius, 91 Barbusse, Henri, 256
‘‘Apologie of Raymond Sebond’’ (Mon- Barker, Nicolas, 152 n. 8
taigne), 49 Barker, Pat, 256

323

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324 INDEX

Barrès, Maurice, 260 Bradner, Leicester, 88 n. 16

Barrymore, Lionel, 275 Bredero, Gerbrand Adriaensz., 127,
Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste du, 174, 128, 133
186 Brittannia (Camden), 243
Bartered Bride, The (Smetana), 265 Brixius, Germanus, 77, 78, 82, 87 n. 14
Basil, Saint, 132 Bromfield, William, 298
Basilicon Doron (King James I), 196 Brouwsma, William, 231
Bayley, John, 299 Browne, Thomas, 290, 293, 308
Beal, Peter, 138, 140, 150, 152 n. 2 and Bruno, Giordano 218–19
8, 23 Brus (Barbour), 123–24 n. 1
Beauchamp, Gorman, 279 Buchanan, George, 230, 239
Bede [⳱ Baeda Vereabilis], 241 Budé, Guillaume, 13, 25, 33–34, 101
Beecher, William, 252–53 n. 51 Bugenhagen, John, 90
Beerbohm-Tree, Herbert, 272 Burckhardt, Jacob, 273, 274
Bellenden, John, 109–11, 113, 117 Burgtheater (Vienna), 262
Bennett, Josephine 215 Burton, Robert, 84, 248
Bentley, Eric, 281 Busleyden, Jerome, 34
Bernard Shaw among the Innocents (E. W. Buyk, Jacob, 126
and M. M. Robson), 269, 278
Bible: Authorized Version (1611), 246, Calepinus, Ambrosius, 116, 124 n. 15
274, 276; Corinthians, 118; Ecclesias- Cal Tech, 225
ticus, 118, 119; Ephesians 209; Epistle Calvin, Johannes, 174, 229–30
to the Colossians (St. Paul), 106 n. 31; Calvisius. See Kallwitz, Seth
Exodus, 90, 99, 118, 118; Genesis Camden, William, 230, 241, 243
118–20; Jerome, 120, 121; John, 118; Campion, Edmund, 155
Kings, 120; Letter to the Romans (St. ‘‘Candidus,’’ 78
Paul), 99; Luke, 125 n. 24; Matthew, Captains Courageous (Fleming), 276
90, 118, 120; New Testament (Eras- Cardano, Girolamo, 232–33, 250 n. 20
mus), 60–62, 210–11; Proverbs (Salo- Carion, Johann, 242, 245
mon), 100, 106 n. 35, 118; Psalms, Carlson, David R., 76, 81–84
174, 253 n. 64; Revelation, 294; Sam- ‘‘Carmen Gratulatorium’’ (More), 83
uel, 182; Song of Songs, 118, 119, Carolus Magnvs Redivivus (Stuck
263; St. John, 78; St. Paul (Letters), [⳱ Stuchius]), 7, 187–90, 195
90, 99, 100, 106 n. 31 Carroll, John, 85
Bibliotheca sancta (Siena), 233 Casaubon, Isaac, 230
Bibliothèque historiale (Vignier the Elder), Casserius, Julius, 250 n. 20
242 Catena, Giovanni, 242
Birch, Thomas, 239, 245, 248, 250 n. 22 Caravajal, Luis de Mármol, 242
Blandy, William, 35 Carter, Huntly, 272
Bloch, Ernst, 214 Casimir, John, 189
Blundeville, Thomas, 42–44 Castiglione, Baldasare, 12, 39–43
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 112, 115, 116, Catherine de Médicis, 179, 185, 192,
124 n. 11 194
Bodin, Jean, 239 Catherine of Navarre, 186
Boethius, Hector [⳱ Boece], 109 Cecil, Robert, 189, 221
Bögels, Theo, 153 n. 16 Cecil, William, Lord Burlegh, 221
Bolgar, R. R. 209–10 Centre for Reformation and Renais-
Book of Songs and Sonetts (Whythorne), 7, sance Studies (Toronto), 22
16–17, 291–300, 303, 304–6 Chapel Royal, 81
Bosboom-Toussaint, A. L. G., 92 Chaplin, Charles, 271
Bouchel, Laurent, 242 Charles I, King of England, 233–34, 309

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INDEX 325

Charles IX, King of France, 186, 189 Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, The
Charteris, Henry, 123–244 n. 1 (Wroth), 185
Chartier, Roger, 52 Couronne margaritique (Belges), 112
Chateaubriand, François-René de, 260 Court of Venus (Rolland), 14, 108–25
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 214, 308, 310 n. 29 Cowley, Abraham, 225
Cheke, John, 27, 116, 154 Crane, Mary Thomas, 79–80, 86 n. 6
Chettle, Henry, 11 Croft, P. J., 152 n. 8
Chmielowski, Piotr, 256 Cromwell, Oliver, 212
Christian IV, King of Denmark, 16–17, Crowther, Bosley, 279, 280, 288 n. 23
291, 299–304, 306, 310 n. 22 Cujas, Jacques, 241
Chronicle (Johann Carion), 245, Cusanus [⳱ Nicholas of Cusa], 219
Chronicle at Large (Grafton), 243 Cymbeline (William Shakespeare), 15,
Chronicon Carionis (Carion), 242 203–7
Chronicon Chronicorum Politicum (Gualt-
erius), 230
Chronicon Chronicorum Ecclesiastico- Daily Express, 284
Politicum (Gualterius), 230 Dakin(s), Margaret, 180
Chronologia, ex autoritate potissimum sacrae Danaeus, Lambertus, 128, 131, 132
scripturae (Kallwitz), 242 Daniel, Samuel, 195, 197–98
Chrysostom, St. John, 132 Dante Alighieri, 26, 272
Churchill, Winston, 270 Daphnis and Chloe (Longus), 191
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 14, 19, 20, 26, Darwin, Charles, 270, 279, 282
28, 30–31, 77, 90, 93–96, 98–101, Daudet, Léon, 260
105 n. 23, 106 n. 35, 107 n. 40, 127, Davila, Enrico Caterino, 243
191, 195, 197, 199–200, 239, 241 Dawbeny, Oliver, 47
Civil War, English, 210–11, 226 n. 8 ‘‘Death Unassisted Kills Tyrants’’
Civil Wars, The (Daniel), 195 (More), 89
Clarendon, Edward Hyde, first Earl of, De civitate Dei (St. Augustine), 246
232, 234, 240, 248 De constantia (Lipsius), 231
Claude, Duke of Guise, 185 De Copia (Erasmus), 31
Clement, John, 27 Decretorum Ecclesiae Gallicanae (Bouchel),
Clement VIII, Pope, 185, 189, 197 242
Cleopatra (Daniel), 195 Defence of Poetry (Philip Sidney), 16, 20,
Coiro, Ann Baynes, 79–80, 82–83 41, 49, 59–60, 192, 216, 218, 272–77
Coke, Edward, 239, 241, 243–44 Defense of the English Church (Jewel),
Collick, John, 280 215–16
Commentarius solutus (Bacon) 222 De Finibus (Cicero), 30–31
Compendio Historial di las Chronicas (Gari-
De formando studio (Agricola), 98
bay y Zamalloa), 242
De genealogia deorum (Boccaccio), 112,
Conduct of Understanding, The (Locke),
248 115, 116
Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Hogg), De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarium et
181 artium (von Nettelsheim), 128, 131
Constable, John, 79 De inventione dialectica (Agricola), 91, 93,
Contra novam academiam Petri Rami oratio 94, 98
(Gallandius), 107 n. 41 Deipnosophistoi (Athenæus), 115
Cooper, Gary, 276 De iure belli ac pacis (Grotius), 243
Coornhert, Dirk Volkertsz., 126–28 De Iustitia (Luis de Molina), 243
Cottrell, John, 271 Dekker, Thomas, 11
Council of Trent, 182, 196, 204 De ponderibus et mensuris liber (Juan de
‘‘Counsel and Caprice’’ (Baker-Smith), Mariana), 252–53 n.
22 De Sensibus Hieronymi Provenzalis . . . tract-

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atus (Hieronymus Provenzalis), 250 n. Diuers Voyages Touching the Discouerie of

33 America (Hakluyt), 44–48
Dekker, Thomas, 11 Diverse et artificioise machine, Le (Rameli),
Del Giudice, Filippo, 289 n. 33 50
Delle guerre civili in Francia (Davila), 243 Divinarum Institutionem (Lactantius),
Delle istorie memorabili de suoi tempi (Zili- 113
olo), 242 Divorce of Lady X, The, 271
Denny, Robert, 154, 176 n. 2 Donne, John, 14–15, 135–53, 229
De officiis (Cicero), 100 Donne Variorum project, 136, 138, 148,
De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani 150, 152–53 n. 13, 153 n. 14
(Sanders), 233 Doordt, Jacob van, 310 n. 26
De ponderibus et mensuris liber (de Mari- Dorp, Martin (van), 24, 60–63, 70, 72,
ana), 252–53 n. 51 91
‘‘De Principe Bono Et Malo’’ (More), Dorsten, Jan van, 21, 230
78 Douglas, Gavin, 117
De principiis atque originibus (Bacon), 222 Douglas, James, Earl of Morton, 110
De rerum varietate libri xvii (Cardano), Dousa, Janus, 230
232–33 Dowland, John, 308
De rhetorica libri tres (Agricola), 96 Doyle, Charles Clay, 87 n. 21
Dering, Edward, 236–37 Drake, William, 232, 237, 248
De Sanctis, Francesco, 256 Du Chesne, André, 243
De Saltatione (Lucian), 131 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 154,
De sapientia veterum (Bacon), 222 174, 180, 192, 215
Descartes, René, 224 Duffy, Eamon 210, 225–26 n. 4
Descripcion general de Africa (Mármol Car- Duncan-Jones, Katherine, 173
avajal), 242 Durie, Andrew, 109–10
De Sensibus Hieronymi Provenzalis . . . Durkan, John, 110
(Provenzalis), 250 n. 20
De Thou, Jacques Auguste, 230, 243 Ecloga Theoduli, 114, 124 n. 13
De utilitate ex aduersis capienda libri IIII Edict of Nantes, 179, 196
(Cardano), 232–33 Edward VI, King of England, 180
Deutsches Museum, 255 Eglantine, the, 126, 127
Deux dialogues du nouveau langage fran- Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 28
çois (Estienne), 192 Elegies (Donne), 149
Devereux, Penelope, 179 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 15, 35,
Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 179– 45, 46, 48, 154, 155, 161, 167, 170,
81, 185, 190, 194–95, 197–201, 221 177–78 n. 22, 179, 186–87, 189–96,
Dialecticæ Partitiones (Ramus), 105 n. 21 198, 200, 204, 210, 213–15, 274, 276,
‘‘Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribula- 277
tion’’ (More), 55 Elizabeth of York (wife to Henry VII),
Dictionarium (Calepinus), 116, 124 n. 15, 185, 198
125 n. 18 Elizabeth Stuart (daughter of James I),
Dictionarium proprium nominum (Es- 189, 222
tienne), 113–15, 124 n. 14 Elucidarius carminum et historiarum (Tor-
Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, rentinus), 115
125 n. 20 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 116
Discourse of Life and Death (Plessis-Mor- Encomium Moriae. See In Praise of Folly
nay), 195 (Erasmus)
Disney, Walt, 275 Epictetus, 19
‘‘Distresses of the Comon Welt, The’’ Epigrammata (More), 14, 75–89. For sepa-
(Wade), 35 rate items (epigram number followed by

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INDEX 327

page number) see: no. 19 (83, 88–89 n. Fonseca, Pedro, 233, 250 n. 20
49); no. 21 (83); no. 40 (83); nos. Foucault, Michel, 214
45–46 (83); nos. 49–50 (89 n. 55); no. Foundations of Modern Political Thought
115 (78); no. 80 (80, 83, 89 n. 60); no. (Skinner), 58
106 (84); no. 107 (83); no. 108 (83); Fox, Alistair, 81
no. 110 (83); no. 119 (89 n. 60); no. Foxe, John, 210–12, 214, 217
143 (88–89 n. 49); no. 159 (81) no. François I, King of France 91, 102, 111,
160 (81); no. 161 (81); no. 162 (89 n. 185, 187
59); no. 180–81 (89 n. 59); no. 198 François II, King of France, 186
(84, 85, 89 n. 55); no. 201 (83); no. François, duc d’Alençon (later duc
258 (80); no. 262 (85); no. 263 (80) d’Anjou), 170, 186, 191–92
Epigrams (Thomas More). See Epigram- Frederick IV, Elector Palatine, 187–88,
mata (Thomas More) 196
Epistle to the Colossians (St. Paul), 106 n. Frederick V, Elector Palatine, 189, 233
31 Froben, Johann (or John), 37, 76
Epitome (B. Latomus), 94, 101 Fussell, Paul, 256
Erasmus, Desiderius, 11–13, 14, 19, 22,
24, 31–32, 43, 55, 60–68, 70, 72, 73,
76, 81, 84, 91, 92, 94, 101, 128, 129, Gable, Clark, 275
210–13, 215, 220, 226 n. 7, 226–27 n. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 20
14, 229–30, 310 n. 12 Galilei, Galileo, 218, 224
Erkel, Ferenc, 265 Galland, Pierre [⳱ Gllandius], 96,
Essais (Michel de Montaigne), 48–49 101–2, 107 n. 41
Essays (Francis Bacon), 216–18, 221 da Gama, Vasco, 44–45
Estienne, Henri 181, 191–92 Gardner, Helen, 153 n. 15
Estienne, Robert, 113–15, 124 n. 14 Garibay y Zamalloa, Esteban de, 242
Ethics (Aristotle), 101, 155 Garnier, Robert, 194–95
Ethics, that is the art of living well (Dirk Gascoigne, George, 23, 25
Volkertsz. Coornhert), 129 Geduld, Harry, 277–78
Ethiopian Story, An (Heliodorus), 191 Geldenhouwer, Gerard, 90–92, 94, 99
Euphues (Lyly), 41 Gellius, Aulus, 113, 241–42
Expositio Euangelii Secundum Lucam (St. Georgics (Virgil), 216, 222
Ambrose), 125 n. 23 Geraerts [or Gheeraerts], Marcus, 230
Eye in the Door, The (Barker), 256 Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur
(Schlegel), 255, 257
Faerie Queene, The (Spenser), 193, 216, Ghost Road, The (Barker), 256
218–19, 222 Giles, Peter, 13, 25, 27, 28, 34, 35, 42,
Farber, Manny, 278 45–47, 60, 63, 64
Fasti (Ovid), 112 Giraudoux, Jean, 256
Ferrabosco, Alfonso, 301, 310 n. 23 Goede Vrijdagh Rijdende Westwaert (trl.
Feu, Le (Henri Barbusse), 256 Constantijn Huygens), 139
Film Answers Back, The (E. W. and M. M. ‘‘Goodfriday 1613. Riding Westward’’
Robson), 269, 270, 272, 274, 286 (Donne), 14–15, 135–53
Filmer, Robert, 236–37 Good Soldier Schweik, The (Hasek), 256
Fire over England, 277, 288 n. 16 Goulart, Simon, 191
Fish, Stanley, 52 Grace, Damian, 79–80, 82–83
Flaubert, Gustave, 260 Grafton, Anthony, 52, 231, 238, 245
Flavius, Josephus, 241 Grafton, Richard, 243
Fleming, Victor, 275 Grand Meaulnes, Le (Alain-Fournier),
Florio, John, 48 261
Flynn, Dennis, 151–52 n. 1 Great Dictator, The, 271

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Great War and Modern Memory, The (Fus- Henry the Navigator, 44
sell), 256 Herbert, Henry, second Earl of Pem-
Greenblatt, Stephen, 13, 54–56, 58, broke, 180
177 n. 15, 225–26 n. 4 Herbert, Philip, 198
Gregor, Walter, 113 Herbert, George, 290
Greville, Fulke, 269, 273 Herbert, William, 198
Grierson, H. J. C., 135, 136, 148, 151– Hermanssschlacht (von Kleist), 264
52 n. 1 Héroët, Antoine, 123
Griffith, Richard, 280 Heroides (Ovid), 114
Grotius, Hugo, 231, 233, 239, 242–43, Hesiod, 116
253 n. 59 Heyden, Gaspar van der, 128
Grüninger, Johann, 125 n. 18 Heywood, John, 295
Gruterus, Janus, 230–32 Heywood, Thomas, 111
Gualterius, Joannes. See Gruterus, Janus Higden, Ranulf, 243
Gunpowder Plot, 197, 204 Hirsch, Foster, 279
Histoire généalogique de la Maison de Mon-
Hakluyt, Richard, 13, 44, 52 tmorency et de Laval (Du Chesne), 243
Halka (Stanislaw Moniuszko), 265 Historia Belgica (van Meteren), 233
Hamlet (William Shakespeare), 12, 203 Historiae (Bacon), 216
Hammerstein, Notker, 229–30 Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem
Hammond, Henry, 236 (Twysden), 237
Hargreaves, Alec G., 258 History of Richard III (More), 77
Harington, John, 42, 189 Hitler, Adolph, 270, 271, 273, 274
Har(r)iot, Thomas, 47, 240–41 Hobbes, Thomas, 231, 248
Hart, John, 292 Hoby, Thomas, 39
Hartung, Philip, 278 Hoenselaars, Ton, 11–17, 269–89
Harvey, Gabriel, 238, 245, 246 Hogg, James, 181
Hasek, Jaroslav, 256 Holbein, Ambrosius, 37
Hatton, Christopher, 35 Holbein, Hans, 37
Hay, James, 235 Holden, Anthony, 280
Hays, William Harrison, 284 Holderness, Graham, 287
Hays code, 284–85 Holinshed, Raphael, 243
Heliodorus, 191, 193 Hollywood, 271, 274, 275, 284
Henri II, King of France, 179, 185–86 Homer, 131, 177 n. 19
Henri III, King of France, 179, 181, Hooker, Thomas, 239, 241
186–87, 191–95, 204, 205 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, 11–12,
Henri IV, King of France [orig. Henry 210, 309
III of Navarre], 15, 179–80, 186, 189, Howard, Jean, 173
191, 194–96, 198, 204, 205 Hugo, Victor, 254, 259–60, 265–66 n. 1
Henri, duc d’Anjou, 186 Hull, Felix, 234
Henry V, 16, 269, 277–87 Hulse, Clark, 224
Henry V (Shakespeare), 16, 269, 277–87 Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture
Henry VI, parts 1, 2, and 3 (Shakespeare), (Carroll), 75
198 Hundred Sundrie Flowers (trans. Gas-
Henry VII, King of England, 44, 80, 82, coigne), 23
185, 198–99 Hunyadi László (Erkel), 265
Henry VIII, King of England, 11, 47, 78, Hutten, Ulrich von, 24
79, 81, 83, 180, 185, 210–11 Hutton, C. Clayton, 278
Henry VIII (Shakespeare), 203, 205, 277 Huygens, Constantijn, 14, 135, 136,
Henry, Lord Darnley, 186 139–41, 145–46, 147
Henryson, Robert, 123–24 Hymni Christiani (André), 81

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Ill May Day, 11 Kleist, Heinrich von, 263–64

Imperial College of Science and Tech- Korda, Alexander, 277, 288 n. 16
nology (London), 225 Körner, Theodor, 256–57, 261–65,
In Defense of Moovie (E. W. and M. M. 268 n. 27
Robson), 269–89 Kraye, Jill, 92
In Praise of Dancing (Hendrik Laurensz.
Spiegel), 14, 126–34 La Borderie, Bertrand de, 123
In Praise of Folly (Erasmus), 24, 25, 27, Lactantius, 113
29, 31, 60–61, 63, 84 Laertius, Diogenes, 77
In Praise of Philosophy (Agricola), 98 Lamb, Mary Ellen, 171
Inscriptiones antiquae (Gruterus and Scal- Languet, Hubert, 154, 160, 181, 189
iger), 230 Laslett, Peter, 237
Instauration Magna (Bacon), 51, 52, 209, Latomus, B., 14, 90–107
217–18, 220 Laud, William, 232, 234
Institutes (Coke), 242 Laus Stultitiae. See In Praise of Folly
Institutes (Justinian), 241 Laws (Plato), 132
Institutionum dialecticarum libri octo (Fon- Laqueur, Thomas, 173
seca), 233 Lee, Edward, 60, 72
Institutio scholae christianae (Gelden- Lee, Henry, 177–78 n. 22
houwer), 91 Lee, Sidney, 276
Inventaire general del’Histoire de France (de Leerintveld, Ad, 151–52 n. 1
Serres), 242 Lemaire, Jean, de Belges, 111, 112
Itinerarium totius orbis (Reusnerus), 243 Leo X, Pope, 210
Letter to Queen Elizabeth (Sidney), 192
James IV, King of Scotland, 185 Letter to the Romans (St. Paul), 99
James V, King of Scotland, 109, 110, Lettres de l’illustrissime . . . (Cardinal
113, 185 d’Ossat), 242
James VI and I, King of Scotland and Leviathan (Hobbes), 248
England, 15, 48, 110–11, 179, 182, Levine, Laura, 173
186–87, 189, 191, 193, 196–99, Lewis, C. S., 215
201–7, 222, 229 Libro del Cortegiano, Il (Castiglione),
Jameson, Frederic, 221 39–41
Jardine, Lisa, 238, 245 Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The, 270,
Jeunes gens d’aujourd’hui (Massis and de 279
Tarde), 260 Life of Lycurgus (Plutarch), 29–30, 49
Jewel, John, 214–15 Lily, William, 79
Jonas, Justus, 90 Limburg brothers, 284
Joyce, James, 219 Lindgren, Ernest, 280
Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), 201 Lindheim, Nancy, 155
Junius, Franciscus, 230, 246 Lindsay, Sir David, 109–11, 113, 117,
Justinian I [⳱ Petrus Sabbatius], 241 123–24 n. 1
Juvenal [⳱ Decimus Junius Juvernalis], Lion Has Wings, The, 288 n. 16
241 Lipsius, Justus, 230–31, 250 n. 11, 252 n.
48
Kallwitz, Seth [⳱ Calvisius], 242, 243, Littleton, Thomas, 239
246 Lives (Plutarch), 191, 233
Kincaid, John, 109 Livy, Titus, 230, 238–39, 241–42, 245,
King Lear (Shakespeare), 168, 202 253 n. 53
King’s Men, 202 Loci Communes (Melanchton), 99, 106 n.
Kinney, Arthur F., 13, 18–22, 23–53 30
Kintgen, Eugene R., 32 Locke, John, 231, 248

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Longus, 191, 193 Massacre at Paris, The (Marlowe), 93

Lorich, Reinhard, 91 Massis, Henri, 260
Louis XIII, King of France, 204, 233 Matthias II, Emperor, 229
Love, Harold, 136 Maudit, John, 232, 250 n. 18
Love’s Labour’s Lost (Shakespeare), 180, Maurras, Charles, 260
186, 190–91, 206 Maximilian I of Bavaria, 232
Loy, Myrna, 275 Maximilian, Emperor of Austria and
Lucian, 28, 31, 77, 131 Hungary, 264
Lucubrationes aliquot (Agricola), 105 n. Maximillien de Béthune, 204
25 McCutcheon, Elizabeth, 14, 75–89
Lupset, Thomas, 25, 33, 35, 39 McFarlane, I. D., 123
Luther, Martin, 90, 99, 100–101, 210– McKitterick, David, 152 n. 8
11, 226–27 n. 14 Measure for Measure (Shakespeare), 112
Lyall, Roderick J., 14, 108–25 Medici, Giulio de, 185
Lycurgus, 29–30 Medici, Lorenzo de, 185
Lyly, John, 41 Meerhoff, Kees, 14, 90–107
Melanchton, Philip, 14, 90–107, 229–
Macbeth (Shakespeare), 196, 202–3 30, 242, 245
Macdonald, A. A., 109 Melissus, Paulus [⳱ Paul Schede], 230
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 12, 25–27 Merchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare),
Mack, Peter, 102 300
Madeleine de Valois, 185 Mercure François, 239
Magister, Karl-Heinz, 155 Mersenne, Marin, 231
Maino, Jason del, 122 Metamorphoses (Ovid), 112, 113
Mair, John, 121 Meteren, Emanuel van, 230, 233, 250 n.
Major, John, 110 20
Malmesbury, William of, 241 Metternich, Klemens, 255, 264, 268 n.
Marlowe, Christopher, 93 33
Manutius, Aldus, 115 Miller, Clarence, 84
Manvell, Roger, 280 Miller, Peter, 231
Marc Antoine (Garnier), 194–95 Milton, John, 175–76, 209–13, 216, 220–
Maret, Philip, 229, 232, 248–49 21, 224
Margaret of Navarre, 187 Misérables, Les (Hugo), 265–66 n. 1
Molina, Luis de, 243
Marguerite de Valois, 185–86, 189, 204
Monau, Jacob, 39
Mariana, Juan de, 252–53 n. 51
Moniuszko, Stanislaw, 265
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 261
Montaigne, Michel de, 48–49, 52
Marot, Clément, 111
Morall Fabillis (Henryson), 123–24 n. 1
Marotti, Arthur, 226 More, Thomas, 11–14, 19, 20, 22, 89, 91,
Marriot, John, 137–39, 141, 144, 148, 215, 274, 310 n. 27
151–52 n. 1 Moss, Ann, 92, 239–40, 245, 253 n. 52
Marsden, John, 80 Mousnier, Roland, 181
Marten, Thierry, 35 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 276
Martial [⳱ Marcus Valerius Valerius], Munday, Anthony, 11
77 Mundus Novus (Vespucci), 18
Mary of Guise, 110–11, 185 Munk, Kirsten, 306
Mary, Queen of Scots, 185–86 Music and Silence (Tremain), 16–17,
Mary, Queen of England, 185, 213–14, 290–91, 299–309
226 n. 11 Myrick, Kenneth, 155
Mason, H. A., 81, 82
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nabucco (Verdi), 265
225 Napoleon, 254, 257–59, 263–64

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Naucratis (Appolonius of Rhodes), 115 Organon (Aristotle), 95

Nero, Emperor, 67 Orlando Furioso (Ludovico Ariosto), 42
Neubauer, John, 16 Ortelius, Abraham, 7, 39, 40, 230
New Atlantis (Bacon), 211, 219–21, 222, Orthographie (John Hart), 292
224–25 Out of Africa, 21
‘‘New Golden Age, A’’ (Rundle), 83 Ovid [⳱ Publius Ovidius Naso], 26,
New Spirit in the Cinema, The (Carter), 112, 113, 115, 241
272 Owen, Wilfred, 256
Nicholas of Lyra, 121
Nicholaus de Tedeschis (Panormita- Palatine Library, 229–30, 232
nus), 122 Palice of Honoure (Gavin Douglas), 117,
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 214 123–24 n. 1
Niklas Zrini oder (Werthes), 268
Papillon, Almanque, 123
Nikola Šubić Zrinski (Zajc and Badalić),
Paradoxa Stoicorum (Cicero), 14, 127
265
Paraclesis (Erasmus), 62, 70–71, 226 n. 7
Noctes Atticæ (Aulus Gellius), 113
Paradise Lost (Milton), 175–76
North, Roger, 191
Paradise Regained (Milton), 175–76
North, Thomas, 191
Northbrooke, John, 269, 285, 287 Pareus, David, 231
Norton, Glyn P., 86 Parfaicte Amye, La (Héroët), 123
Nouvel amour, Le (Papillon), 123 Parius, Matthew, 241
Novum instrumentum (Erasmus), 226 n. 7 Parliament of Fowls (Chaucer), 310 n. 29
Novum Organon (Bacon), 216 Pascal, Blaise, 260
Patriarcha (Filmer), 237
Patterson, Lee, 71
Octavia (Seneca, the Younger), 67
Paul V, Pope, 204–206
Odo of Picardy, 114
Péguy, Charles, 260
Odo [⳱ Eudes] de Fouilloy, 124 n. 13
Pentaestheseion, (Casserius), 250 n. 20
‘‘Of Experience’’ (Montaigne), 48–49
‘‘Of the Force of the Imagination’’ Perelman, Chaı̈m, 98
(Montaigne), 48 Peril of Szigetvár, The (Zriny), 262
‘‘Of the Inconstancie of Our Actions’’ Petrarch (Franceso Petrarca), 19, 26,
(Montaigne), 48 61–62, 93, 231
‘‘Of the Uncertaintie of Our Judge- Peucer, Caspar, 242
ment’’ (Montaigne), 49 Phaedrus (Plato), 49
Olivier, Laurence, 16, 269, 271, 277–87 Philip II, King of Spain, 126, 185, 187,
‘‘On a Cat and a Mouse’’ (More), 85 193, 194
‘‘On a Fool’’ (More), 84 Philip, Earl of Arundel, 210
‘‘On His Own Ignorance and that of Philomorus (Marsden), 80
Many Others’’ (Petrarch), 61–62 Philopseudes (Lucian), 31
‘‘On the King and the Peasant’’ (More), Phrissemius, J., 98, 105 n. 25
83 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 63
‘‘On the Use of History’’ (Baker-Smith), Pigeon, Renée, 251 n. 35
19 Pike, Lorna, 125 n. 20
‘‘On the Vanity of this Life’’ (More), Pirckheimer, Willibald, 76, 87 n. 17
89 n. 60 Plantin, Christopher, 252 n. 48
Opera Moralia (Plutarch), 191 Planudean Anthology, 77, 84
Opinion, L’, 261 Plath, Sylvia, 305
Oratio de studiis humanitatis (B. Lato- Plato (of Athens), 18, 19, 24, 28–29, 40,
mus), 94, 106–7 n. 38 45, 52, 60, 77, 98, 102–3, 131, 132
Oration on the Dignity of Man (Miran- Plautus, 67, 77
dola), 63 Pleningen, John von, 93

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332 INDEX

Plessis-Mornay, Philippe du, 174, 181, Redford, Robert, 21

195 Regeneration (Barker), 256
Plutarch, 19, 28–30, 77, 191, 193, 195, Remarque, Erich Maria, 256
197, 238, 241–42 Remonstrance for the Right of Kings (King
Poet’s Corner (Westminster Abbey), James I), 205
214 Remedia Amoris (Ovid), 114
Pole, Reginald, 214 Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Stephen
Politics (Aristotle), 101, 155 Greenblatt), 13, 54–56
Poliziano, Il [⳱ Agnolo degli Abrog- Renan, Ernst, 256, 257, 266 n. 9
ini], 231 Reports (Coke), 242
Polychronicon (Ranulf Higden]), 243 Republic (Plato), 19, 102, 28, 30, 49
Pomponius Mela, 242 Rerum ab omni antiquitate (Ayrault), 241
Powel, Michael, 270, 279 Reuchlin, John, 93
Practises of the Earl of Leycester, The (Mau- Reusnerus, Nicolaus, 243
dit), 250 n. 18 Rhenanus, Beatus, 76, 77, 87 n. 9
Praise of Eloquence (Melanchton), 98–99 Rhetorica ad Herrenium, 241
Praise of Prison (Dirk Volkertsz. Coorn- Rich, Nathaniel, 138, 140, 143
hert), 127 Richard II (Shakespeare), 195, 199–201
Premonition to all Most Mightie Monarches Richard III (Shakespeare), 198–99
(King James I), 204–5, 207 Rivi1ere, Jacques, 261
Pressburger, Emeric, 270, 279 Robinson, Ralph, 65
Preston, Thomas, 238 Robson, E. W. and M. M., 16, 269–89
Principall Navigations (Hakluyt), 44 Rogers, Daniel, 230
Principe, Il (Machiavelli), 26–27 Rolland, John, 14, 108–25
Private Life of Henry VIII, 277 Roper, William, 24
Pro archia poeta (Cicero), 100 Rose, Mary Beth, 175
Progymnasmata (Aphtonius), 79, 91 Ross, John, 108
Projet de l’oeuvre (Estienne), 192 Rossi, Paolo, 222
Projet d’éloquence royale (Amyot), 191, 192 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 257
Prolege Manilia (Cicero), 105 n. 27 Royal Society, 225
Pro Milone (Cicero), 100, 106 n. 36 Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 154,
Protestant League, 155, 161, 167 155, 204
Provenzalis, Hieronymus, 250 n. 20 Rule of Reason (Wilson), 310 n. 10
Proverbs (Solomon), 100, 106 n. 118 Rundle, David, 83
Prynne, William, 241, 243 Russell, Conrad, 232
Psichari, Ernest, 16, 254–61
Puttenham, George, 41, 42, 52 St. Bartholomew’s Day, 93, 186, 189
Sainte-Beuve, Charles A., 260
Querelle des Amyes, 123 Salk Institute for Biological Studies
‘‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’’ (Renan), (San Diego), 225
256 Samson Agonistes (Milton), 175
Quintillian, 91, 93–95 ‘‘Sandarus.’’ See Sanders, Nicholas
Sanders, Nicholas, 233, 250 n. 20
Radbertus, Paschasius, 120 Sassoon, Siegfried, 256
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 47, 209, 214, 216, Savonarola, Girolamo, 226–277 n. 14
221 Scaliger, Josephus Justus, 230
Rameli, Agostino, 50 Schlegel, Friedrich, 255, 262, 268 n. 27
Ramus, Peter, 14, 90–107 School for Maidens (Dirk Volkertsz.
Rape of Lucrece, The (Shakespeare), 15, Coornhert), 128
181–85, 190, 195 Schoolmaster, The (Ascham), 27–28
Rauf Coilyear (Anon.), 123–24 n. 1 Schwert und Leier (Körner), 268 n. 29

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INDEX 333

Scotorum historiae (Hector Boethius Sir Thomas More (Munday et al.), 11–13,
[⳱ Boece]), 109 17
Scott, Jonathan, 239 Sisto da Siena, 233, 250 n. 20
Seauin Seages, The (John Rolland), Siuqila (Lupset), 35, 39
108–9, 110, 123–24 n. 1 Sixtius V, Pope, 187
Selden, John, 239 Skretkowicz, Victor, 15, 179–208
Semaine, La (Guillaume de Salluste du Skinner, Quentin, 13, 33, 56–58, 60, 71
Bartas), 174 Smetana, Bedrich, 265
Sempill, Robert, 110 Smith, Thomas, Jr., 238
Seneca (the Younger), 19, 22, 28, 67, Socrates, 19, 28–29, 131
77, 195 Society for Renaissance Studies, 22
Serres, Jean de, 242 ‘‘Sola Mors Tyrannicida Est’’ (More), 80
Servitude et grandeur militaires (de Vigny), Sophocles, 275
259 Speed, John, 243
Sessions, W. A., 15–16, 209–28 Spencer, Gilbert, 236
Sextus Empiricus, 49 Spenser, Edmund, 15–16, 192–93,
Shakespeare, William, 11, 15, 122, 179– 209–28
86, 190, 191, 193, 195, 197–207, 209, Spiegel, Hendrik Laurensz., 14, 126–34
215, 222, 225–26 n. 4, 269, 272, 274, Spies, Marijke, 14, 126–34
276–87, 295, 305, 310 n. 24. See also in- Spoto, Donald, 289 n. 34
dividual plays Statius, 112
Shakespeare in Love, 305 Stewart, William, 109, 110, 117
Shame and Disgrace of Colonel Blimp, The Storia della letteratura italiana (De Sanc-
(E. W. and M. M. Robson), 269, 270 tis), 256
Sharpe, Kevin, 232 Streekstra, Nanne, 151–52 n. 1
Shawcross, John, 136, 148 Stringer, Gary, 151–52 n. 1, 152 n. 2,
Shephard, Robert, 238 153 n. 14
Shepheardes Calendar (Edmund Stuck [⳱ Stuchius], Johan Guilielmo,
Spenser), 191–93 187–90, 196, 197
Sherman, William, 35, 39 Stump, Donald, 15, 154–78
Sidney, Henry, 154, 180, 234 Sturm, Johannes, 27, 92, 95, 101, 230
Sidney, Philip, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 41, 49, Suarez, Francisco de, 239
59–60, 154–82, 184–85, 189, 190, Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquil-
192–93, 195, 197, 209, 214, 216, 269, lus), 239
272–89, 194, 22–30, 233, 235, 237–38, Sulleman II, 262–63
240 Sullivan, Ernest W, II, 151–52 n. 1,
Sidney, Robert (father), 154–55, 153 n. 14
176 n.3, 180, 181, 189, 195, 197–98, Sullivan, Margaret, 173
229–30, 233, 235, 237–38, 250 n. 21 Summa Theologica, 281
Sidney, Robert (son), 2nd Earl of Leice- Suppositi, I (Ariosto), 23
ster, Viscount Lisle, 16, 229–53 Surtz, Edward, 28
Sidney Herbert, Mary, 180, 194–95, Sydnean Society, 285
197–98 Symonds, John Addington, 274
Sigoniu, Carlo, 243
‘‘Sileni Alcibiades’’ (Erasmus), 67–68 Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, 230–31,
Silvæ (Statius), 112 238–39, 241–42, 252 n. 48
Simon le pathétique (Giraudoux), 256 Talon, Omer, 95, 96, 107 n. 41
Sint-Aldegonde, Philip van Marnix van, Taming of the Shrew, The (Shakespeare),
128, 129, 131, 132, 134 n. 13 295–96
Sir Thomas Browne Institute (Leiden), Tannenbaum, Dorothy and Samuel,
21 272–73

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334 INDEX

Tarde, Alfred de, 260 Utopia (More), 13, 18, 19, 23–53, 55–56,
Tasso, Torquato, 215 58, 63–73, 77, 79–82, 84–85, 91
Tatius, Achilles, 193
Taylor, John Russell, 270, 286 Valla, Lorenzo da, 220, 231
Tempest, The (Shakespeare) 205, 222 Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare ), 180–
Testament of Cresseid (Henryson), 123 81, 182, 190, 195
Test Pilot, 275 Verdi, Giuseppe, 265
Theatre of the empire of Great Britaine Vespucci, Amerigo, 18, 45
(Speed), 243 Vettori, Francesco, 25–26
Theophania (anon.), 236, 251 n. 35 Victoria the Great, 277
Thomas, R. S., 309 Victory of Samothrace, 261
‘‘Thomas More’s Epigrammata’’ (Grace), Vignier, Nicolas, the Elder, 242
80 Vigny, Alfred de, 259–60
Thomson, R. S., 152 n. 8 Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (Plessis-
Thornton, Dora, 235 Mornay, Estienne, and Languet), 181,
Tibullus, Albius, 26 191–92, 198
Tilly, Johann Tzerclas, Count, 232 Virgil (Maro), 59, 114, 177 n. 19, 209–
Tillyard, E. M. W., 286 13, 215–16, 219–22, 224–25
Timaeus (Plato), 29, 49 Visscher, Roemer, 127, 128, 129, 131,
Times Literary Supplement, 138 133
Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare), 199 Vita del gloriosissimo Papa Pio Quinto (Ca-
‘‘To Candidus’’ (More), 88–89 n. 49 tena), 242
Todd, Richard, 14, 135–53 Vives, Juan Luis, 246
Topica (Cicero), 241 Vossius, Gerard, 19–20
Torrentinus, Hermannus, 115, 124 n. 15
Tottel, Richard, 292 Wackher a Wackenfels, J. M., 39
Tottel’s Miscellany (ed. Tottel), 292, Wade, Armigail, 35
309 n. 8 Walsingham, Frances, 180
Trakl, Georg, 256 Walsingham, Francis, 45, 174, 180
Tracy, Spencer, 275, 276 Walter, J. H., 286
Traité des danses, 128 Warkentin, Germaine, 16, 229–53
Treatise against Idleness (Northbrooke), Warkes (Lindsay), 123–24 n. 1
285 Washington, Mary, 272–73
Trebizond, George of, 90, 94
Waterloo, battle of, 265–66 n. 1
Tremain, Rose, 16–17, 290–91, 299–309
Weiner, Andrew, 13, 54–74, 176 n. 9
Tremellius, Immanuel, 246
Werfel, Franz, 256
Trew Law of Free Monarchies, The, 182
Werthes, Friedrich August Clemens,
Trinkaus, Charles, 246–47
Triplici Nodo (King James I) 204–5 268
Trueness of the Christian Religion (Plessis- ‘‘What is the Best Form of Govern-
Mornay), 174 ment’’ (More), 84
True Order (Blundeville), 42–44 Whitbread Prize, 299
Tuck, Richard, 232 White, Hayden, 71
Tucker, Margaret, 185–86 Whythorne, Thomas, 7, 16–17, 290–
Tullius, Marcus, 40 300, 303, 304–9
Turnèbe, Adrien [⳱ Adrianus Tur- Wilcox, Helen, 16–17, 290–310
nebus], 96, 107 n. 41 Wilcox, Herbert, 277
Tusculan Disputations (Cicero), 94 William of Orange, 126, 128, 155, 180,
Twysden, Roger, 236–37 189
Wilson, Florens, 108, 124 n. 2
Udall, Nicholas, 310 n. 12 Wilson, Thomas, 27, 53 n. 7, 116, 310 n.
Urbino, 39 10

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INDEX 335

Wilson Knight, G., 286 Xenocrates, 293

Winter’s Tale, The (Shakespeare), 179, Xenophon, 40, 59
195, 202, 205
Wolphius, Joannes, 187
Zajc, Ivan, 264
Wolsey, Thomas, 55
World is My Cinema, The (E. W. and Ziliolo, Alessandro, 242
M. M. Robson), 269, 278, 280 Zriny (Körner), 262–65, 268 nn. 28 and
Wriothesley, Henry, Earl of Southamp- 32
ton, 181, 190, 197–98 Zrinyi, Miklós (hero), 262
Wroth, Mary, 185 Zrinyi, Miklós (poet), 262, 268 n. 27
Wyatt, Thomas, 309 n. 8 Zrinyi, Petar, 262

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