The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against Fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre a
The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against Fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
I’ve loved this little dirge ever since I first encountered it—adorned with the title of “Death the Leveller”—in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury over fifty years ago. Since the dramatist James Shirley was listed as its author, I assumed that it served a funereal function in one of his many plays, but I failed to encounter it in my reading of Shirley’s works. (And—trust me—I have read more than my share of Shirley). Finally, I decided to seek out its origins, and found that I was right …. well, almost right. And behind the need for that “almost” lies a tale.
James Shirley was the premier poet of the Caroline drama, a term used to designate British theatre in the reign of King Charles I. He was at the height of his powers—in his forty-sixth year—when Parliament, under the control of Oliver Cromwell, closed the theaters in 1642. But he lived long enough not only to see the son of his king return to England in 1660, but also to see his old plays revived on the Restoration stage.
During the Puritan years, since a public performance of his dramatic works was denied him, Shirley supported himself by teaching, probably in the White Friars section of London where he lived at the time. Ver and drama, however, were never far away. He continued to published poetry and plays in verse, and even used his facility in verse composition to assist his students in the memorization of Latin grammar.
One of the works he published during this period was The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the Armour of Achilles (1649), which is described as being performed by “young gentlemen of quality, at a private entertainment.” Best guess: Shirley directed his White Friars students in a performance of The Contention as a school play. It was here that “Death the Leveller” first appeared, as a funeral dirge for the unfortunate Ajax. Although the play remained obscure, the dirge became a favorite of King Charles II, and was eventually heavily anthologized, becoming James Shirley’s most famous work.
So how is The Contention as a work of art? Polished, professional, but slight. It is an interlude, after all, not a finished play. Still, the individual voices of Ajax the blunt bombastic soldier and Ulysses the subtle thinker are effectively delineated. Here’s a sample of each:
AJAX:
Great Jove, immure my heart, or girt it with Some ribs of steel, lest it break through this flesh, And with a flame contracted from just fury, Set fire on all the world: How am I fallen? How shrunk to nothing? my fame ravish'd from me? That this sly talking Prince is made my Rival In great Achilles Armour: Is it day? And can a Cloud darker than night, so muffle Your eyes, they cannot reach the Promontory, Beneath which now the Grecian fleet rides safe, Which I so late rescued from Trojan flames, When Hector frightful, like a Globe of fire, By his example taught the enraged youth To brandish lightning; but I cannot talk, Nor knows he how to fight, unless in the dark With shadows. I confess, his eloquence And tongue are mighty, but Pelides sword And armour were not made things to be talk'd on, But worn and us'd, and when you shall deter∣mine My juster claim, it will be fame enough For him, to boast, he strove with Ajax Telamon. And lost the prize, due onely to my merit.
ULYSSES:
Wisemen joyn policy with force, the Lyon Thus with the Fox, makes up the Souldiers emblem. And now I look on Ajax Telamon, I may compare him to some specious building, His body holds vast rooms of entertainment, And lower parts maintain the Offices, Onely the Garret, his exalted head, Useless for wise receipt, is fill'd with lumber, A Mastiff dares attempt to combate Lyons, And I'll finde men among your Mercenaries Shall fly on Hydra's, if you name that valour: But he, that we call valiant indeed, Knows how, and when to fight, as well as bleed.
While writing my first novel Big Sleep Boogie—available through Amazon now—I decided that an old book with a quincunx on the cover would be a perfect While writing my first novel Big Sleep Boogie—available through Amazon now—I decided that an old book with a quincunx on the cover would be a perfect McGuffin for the plot. The quincunx is the five-point pattern found on the five-point die, and, in the course of doing what I thought would be just a wee bit of research, I found quincunx concept—from its use in renaissance gardening to its ancient mystical implications—to be a fascinating one. It was a search that inevitably brought me to Sir Thomas Browne—17th century author of the essays “Religio Medici” and “Urne Burial The Garden of Cyrus.
Browne is a considerable prose stylist, an undeniable influence on that master of Romantic prose, Thomas De Quincey. Browne’s prose is periodic, ornate and difficult, and every passage typically has to be read more than once. I have to admit, though, that in The Garden of Cyrus Browne undoes himself. Even though it is only fifty pages long, it took me quite awhile to finish it. I still don’t think I understand it. But, like the few dozen pages of Finnegan’s Wake I completed, I enjoyed it more than almost anything else I’ve read that I barely understood at all.
I’m not sure the blame is Browne’s. After all, he was trying to something extraordinarily ambitious. In a small dense treatise of only five chapters—of course it would have five chapters—he strives to trace this five point patterns through the works of nature and the designs of man, catalogue its decussations (the crossings—like those of never fibres—that the pattern implies), and.suggest some of its mystical implications to its continual appearance in the universal order.
I can’t really recommend this book whole-heartedly, for its difficulties are considerable, but I would strongly advice you to dip into it, here and there, just to sample the wonders of its prose. Here’s just a little sample. I believe Browne’s purpose is to indicate to us that the same pattern of quincunx and decussation that can be found above us in the stars is also revealed below us in the stones of the earth:
Could we satisfie ourselves in the position of the lights above, or discover the wisedom of that order so invariably maintained in the fixed Stars of heaven; Could we have any light, why the stellary part of the first masse, separated into this order, that the Girdle of Orion should ever maintain its line, and the two Starres in Charles’s Wain never leave pointing at the Pole-Starre, we might abate the Pythagoricall Musick of the Spheres, the sevenfold Pipe of Pan; and the strange Cryptography of Gaffarell in his Starrie Booke of Heaven.
But not to look so high as Heaven or the single Quincunx of the Hyades upon the head of Taurus, the Triangle, and remarkable Crusero about the foot of the Centaur; observable rudiments there are hereof in subterraneous concretions, and bodies in the Earth; in the Gypsum or Talcum Rhomboides, in the Favaginites or honey-comb-stone, in the Asteria and Astroites, and in the crucigerous stone of S. Iago of Gallicia.
I recommend this unfairly neglected work to all lovers of memoir and fans of confessional poetry. Sure, it is a biblically-themed work in classical fo I recommend this unfairly neglected work to all lovers of memoir and fans of confessional poetry. Sure, it is a biblically-themed work in classical form, but it is also an intense experiment in personal expression, for here John Milton explores the fate of a hero much like himself: the blind Samson, a defeated warrior for righteousness, surrounded by victorious enemies, looking for one last deed to justify himself before the Lord.
Although there is some dispute about when Samson Agonistes was written, there is little doubt about its reputation as one of the finest “closet dramas” in English. (Closet drama: a play never intended to be performed upon a stage.) Sophoclean in form, Aristotelian in aesthetics, and biblical in narrative, it is nevertheless a profoundly personal expression of John Milton—not only as poet, but as theologian, philosopher, and man.
Milton contemplated a tragedy based on the story of Samson as early as the 1640’s, and, although some of the passages of the chorus could have easily been written this early (they remind me in form and music of “Il Penseroso”), it is more reasonable—and pleasing—to see the body of the work as a product of the late 1660’s, after Paradise Lost, when Milton himself began to resemble his biblical hero. Blind for more than ten years, having worn out his eyes in the service of the Puritan Commonwealth, he was now—in the first decade after the Restoration—a stranger in his own land; his political pamphlets were burnt, he was forced into hiding, and briefly—even after a general amnesty—he was thrown into prison, only to be released because of the pleas of a few influential friends. During this period of spiritual isolation, out of the despair of a Commonwealth destroyed, he completed his life-affirming masterpiece, Paradise Lost.
The hero of Samson Agonistes has much in common with the aging Milton: blind, estranged from his people, a slave and prisoner in the Philistine city of Gaza. Milton is interested in exploring—it seems to me—all the ways in which this biblical hero is both like and unlike himself: in suffering, in anger, in hubris, in his response to divine inspiration, in courage and self-sacrifice. One of the tell-tale signs of his identification with Samson is the change he makes in the biblical narrative: Delilah, who is identified in Judges merely as “a woman in the valley of Sorek”, has become in Samson Agonistes Samson’s lawful wife. (The thrice-married Milton had wife troubles of his own, and had written, in 1643, “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.")
This play is far from a being a dry exercise in biblical homage and Attic imitation. Not only is there much to argue about in reference to Milton’s creation Delilah (who, however chauvinist in conception she may be, certainly gives as good as she gets), but Samson’s final act is problematic too, making him look—in these days of ISIS—less like a hero and more like a suicide bomber.
Still, there is much here to delight and interest the reader, not the least of which is the glimpse it gives us into the heart of Milton—blind, besieged, yet moving toward nobility.
Here are a few representative passages. First, Samson on blindness:
Since light so necessary is to life, And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the Soul, She all in every part; why was the sight To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd? So obvious and so easie to be quench't, And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd, That she might look at will through every pore? Then had I not been thus exil'd from light; As in the land of darkness yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death, And buried...
Delilah defends herself:
And what if Love, which thou interpret'st hate, The jealousie of Love, powerful of sway In human hearts, nor less in mine towards thee, Caus'd what I did? I saw thee mutable Of fancy, fear'd lest one day thou wouldst leave me... ...sought by all means therefore How to endear, and hold thee to me firmest: No better way I saw then by importuning To learn thy secrets, get into my power Thy key of strength and safety... ...I knew that liberty Would draw thee forth to perilous enterprises, While I at home sate full of cares and fears Wailing thy absence in my widow'd bed; Here I should still enjoy thee day and night Mine and Loves prisoner...
The blind Samson challenges the giant Harapha of Gath to a fair fight:
Therefore without feign'd shifts let be assign'd Some narrow place enclos'd, where sight may give thee, Or rather flight, no great advantage on me; Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy Helmet And Brigandine of brass, thy broad Habergeon Vant-brass and Greves, and Gauntlet, add thy Spear A Weavers beam, and seven-times-folded shield, I only with an Oak'n staff will meet thee, And raise such out-cries on thy clatter'd Iron, Which long shall not with-hold mee from thy head, That in a little time while breath remains thee, Thou oft shalt wish thy self at Gath to boast Again in safety what thou wouldst have done To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more.
Okay, I guess I should just come right out and say it: I have been putting off reviewing this play because it is just plain weird. True, its "prequel, Okay, I guess I should just come right out and say it: I have been putting off reviewing this play because it is just plain weird. True, its "prequel," Antonio and Mellida, was pretty weird too, but it least that play was a comic romance, with a happy ending of sorts, and it was easier to see its farce, extreme gestures, and its (perhaps deliberately) inept rhetorical excesses—all in a play designed to be acted in an indoor theatre, entirely by boys, for a sophisticated audience—as part of a somewhat rarefied, allusive form of satirical entertainment. Somehow, though, when you pile onto this a half-dozen extreme tableaux, gouts of blood, a ghost-of-Hamlet’s-father dude, an improbably-evil-villain dude, a diabolical revenge plot (including the whole Thyestes/child murder/ cannibalism schtick) and then imply this plot is something your audience should approve of), well...let’s just say it leaves me breathless. If, in addition,you—as Marston does--turn the rhetoric-knob up to ten and the craziness-knob up to Spinal Tap eleven...well, then you reduce this poor simple lover of Shakespeare to something approaching a swoon.
Is it good? Well, not “good” exactly, but it sure as hell is unforgettable. Here are a few excerpts to give you a taste.
From the prologue:
If any spirit breathes within this round, Uncapable of weighty passion, (As from his birth being huggèd in the arms, And nuzzled ’twixt the breasts of happiness) Who winks, and shuts his apprehension up From common sense of what men were and are, Who would not know what men must be—let such Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows: We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast Nail’d to the earth with grief; if any heart Pierc’d through with anguish pant within this ring; If there be any blood whose heat is choked And stifled with true sense of misery; If ought of these strains fill this consort up— Th’ arrive most welcome.
The play’s dramatic beginning:
Scene: A corridor in the palace of Piero.
[Enter Piero, unbraced, his arms bare, smeared in blood, a poniard in one hand bloody, and a torch in the other; Strotzo following him with a cord.]
Piero: Ho, Gasper Strotzo, bind Feliche’s trunk Unto the panting side of Mellida!
[Exit Strotzo.]
’Tis yet dead night, yet all the earth is clutch’d In the dull leaden hand of snoring sleep; No breath disturbs the quiet of the air, No spirit moves upon the breast of earth, Save howling dogs, night-crows, and screeching owls, Save meagre ghosts, Piero, and black thoughts. One, two!
[Clock strikes.]
Lord, in two hours what a topless mount Of unpeer’d mischief have these hands cast up!
The disillusioned voice of Antonio the Revenger:
O, you departed souls, That lodge in coffin’d trunks, which my feet press, (If Pythagorean Axioms be true, Of spirits’ transmigration) fleet no more To human bodies, rather live in swine, Inhabit wolves’ flesh, scorpions, dogs, and toads, Rather than man. The curse of Heaven rains In plagues unlimited through all his days: His mature age grows only mature vice, And ripens only to corrupt and rot The budding hopes of infant modesty. Still striving to be more than man, he proves More than a devil. Devilish cruelty, All hell-strain'd juice is pourèd to his veins, Making him drunk with fuming surquedries; Contempt of Heaven, untam’d arrogance, Lust, state, pride, murder.
I should have realized something was wrong with John Marston from the start, when I discovered he dedicated his first creative effort (The Metamorphos I should have realized something was wrong with John Marston from the start, when I discovered he dedicated his first creative effort (The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s Image) to “Oblivion.”
During the period when Shakespeare was producing his mature works (Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like it) at the Globe, the twenty-three year old Marston was mounting this absurd concoction (which I will call a “comic romance” for lack of a better term) for the boy’s troupe at St. Paul’s. On top of the unreality of an all-boy cast, Marston piles up further unrealities, past the point of absurdity: 1) an induction in which the boys discuss their own characters, 2) passages of deliberately amateurish “heroic” verse, 2) farcical scenes filled with comic repetition, 3) characters who continually throw themselves upon the ground in despair, 4) eighteen lines of dialogue in Italian (for no apparent reason), 4) a brief commentary by a minor character (“a page”) who questions the author’s wisdom in including an extended passage in Italian, 5) more cross dressings and faked deaths than the Elizabethan norm, 6) a character by the name of "Dildo," and 7) more puns based on the word “prick” than I have found in all other Elizabethan plays combined. (And, believe me, I have found more than a few.)
So what is the result? Is Antonio and Mellida a brilliant post-modernist foreshadowing? A very early work of Monty Python's? A satire on society’s masks and pretensions? Or just, as they say, a “hot mess”?
I don’t know for sure, but I do know this: I’m gonna go on and read “part II”: Antonio’s Revenge!
Here, for just a taste, is a passage that reminds me of Abbott and Costello's vaudeville routine "Who's on First?" Old Andrugio is mourning the loss of his son Antonio, whom he believes to be dead, when his voice rouses Antonio, who is hiding beneath a nearby bush:
And. Ay, Lucio, having lost a son, a son, A country, house, crown, son. O lares, miseri lares! Which shall I first deplore? My son, my son, My dear sweet boy, my dear Antonio!
Ant. Antonio?
And. Ay, echo, ay; I mean Antonio.
Ant. Antonio, who means Antonio?
And. Where art? what art? know’st thou Antonio?
Ant. Yes.
And. Lives he?
Ant. No.
And. Where lies he dead?
Ant. Here.
And. Where?
Ant. Here.
And. Art thou Antonio?
Ant. I think I am.
And. Dost thou but think? What, dost not know thyself?
Ant. He is a fool that thinks he knows himself.
And. Upon thy faith to heaven, give thy name.
Ant. I were not worthy of Andrugio’s blood, If I denied my name’s Antonio.
And. I were not worthy to be call’d thy father, If I denied my name Andrugio. And dost thou live? O, let me kiss thy cheek, And dew thy brow with trickling drops of joy. Now heaven’s will be done: for I have lived To see my joy, my son Antonio.
This play is the redheaded stepchild of the Marlowe canon, and with good reason. For one thing, it is the runt of the litter, only half as long as its This play is the redheaded stepchild of the Marlowe canon, and with good reason. For one thing, it is the runt of the litter, only half as long as its big brothers Tamburlaine I and II, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II. It is not nearly as eloquent as its siblings either, for it only sports one bang-up villainous speech (by the Duke de Guise), and even this speech lacks the rhetorical finish of the grand speeches of the other plays.
All this leads the critics to suspect, in addition to being abridged, that Massacre is a “reported text” or “memorial reconstruction,” that is, a copy generated by an opportunistic publisher who, lacking an official text, hires a number of actors who have performed in the play to recall its words from memory. Since the star actors rarely participated in such a venture, the principal speeches were more likely than others to be mangled and truncated. (This is the process by which the beginning of Hamlet's soliloquy “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” was transformed, in the “bad quarto” of 1603, into “Oh what a dunghill idiot slave am I!” I could give you the complete text of “To be or not to be” too, but I don't want to make you sad.)
So if the only text we have is half its original length, deprived of almost all of its best lines, why read it? Because, in its cynical, amoral, Machiavellian attitude, it is distinctively Marlowe, and it is based on a characteristically Marlovian event: the self-righteously motivated slaughter of the French Huguenots by the French Catholics during “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.” The prospect of all these hypocritical Christians espousing their sincere belief in Jesus Christ and the saints and then hacking and shooting and poisoning their fellow Christians to death obviously fills the free-thinker Marlowe with wicked delight, giving him many opportunities, great and small, for death's head humor.
In addition, I believe that the lack of big showy speeches in Massacre may be intentional, that Marlowe may have restrained his great gift for rhetorical effect in a calculated search for a spare, realistic style, suitable to historical subjects. Massacre is a small station along the road to the spacious, densely populated but sparsely furnished inn that is Marlowe's Edward II.
(Also, consider this tantalizing possibility. The play deals with nearly contemporary events, concluding with the murder of Henry III in 1589. At the very end of the play, the new French monarch summons an "English Agent" and gives him a message to deliver to the English King. Marlowe is rumored to have been a member of Francis Walsingham's secret service, and is known to have traveled the continent during this period. Could it be that sly Kit Marlowe included himself as a character in his own play?)...more
No Englishman has deserved to be called a “Renaissance Man” more than Sir Thomas Browne. He was a practicing physician, but also a voluminous reader, No Englishman has deserved to be called a “Renaissance Man” more than Sir Thomas Browne. He was a practicing physician, but also a voluminous reader, fascinated by theology, philosophy, and natural history. In his late thirties, he published his first book Religio Medici (“A Doctor's Religion,” (1643), where--in an intimate, periodic style that gives the illusion of reproducing the very process of thought—he explores the variegated and unorthodox paths that led him to his orthodox Anglicanism. Above all, the book impresses the reader with Browne's erudition, discernment amiability, and tolerance; the book's greatest gift is our knowledge of Thomas Browne himself.
Religio Medici, however, has given English literature another great gift: the influence of its rambling, personable style, each formidable sentence flowing like a river until it reaches a welcome cove—or confluence—of thought. Charles Lamb loved Browne's prose, and introduced him to Coleridge. Thomas de Quincey loved him too; every paragraph of de Quincey—at least every one that I have read—bears the unmistakable mark of Thomas Browne.
Here is a representative sentence—yes, one sentence!—in which Browne discourses upon time, eternity, and predestination, ending appropriately in a metaphor for paradise:
Time we may comprehend, 'tis but five days elder then our selves, and hath the same Horoscope with the world; but to retire so farre backe as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start forward, as to conceive an end in an essence that wee affirme hath neither the one nor the other; it puts my reason to Saint Pauls Sanctuary; my Philosophy dares not say the Angells can doe it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him, 'tis the priviledge of his owne nature; I am that I am, was his owne definition unto Moses; and 'twas a short one, to confound mortalitie, that durst question God, or aske him what hee was; indeed he only is, all others have and shall be, but in eternity there is no distinction of Tenses; and therefore that terrible terme Predestination, which hath troubled so many weake heads to conceive, and the wisest to explaine, is in respect to God no prescious determination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first decreed it; for to his eternitie which is indivisible, and altogether, the last Trumpe is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abrahams bosome.
Just as Tamburlaine Part I is technically a comedy, ending with the conqueror's marriage to Zenobia, so Tamburlaine Part II—in addition to being a com Just as Tamburlaine Part I is technically a comedy, ending with the conqueror's marriage to Zenobia, so Tamburlaine Part II—in addition to being a complicated commentary on the Moslem and the Christian faith—is a simple tragedy which shows us how a destroyer of cities, who has never for a moment contemplated his own mortality, faces a certain death.
In this second part of his story, Tamburlaine becomes absolute master of the East, his triumphal chariot (literally) drawn by kings. But his triumphs—and their increasing violence—cannot forestall the death of his wife Zenobia, the cowardly behavior of his son Calyphas, or his own inevitable death by disease.
The “mighty line” of Marlowe's verse remains unchanged: it is a magnificent though limited vehicle, only appropriate to the utterances of the great. The ironic richness of Marlowe's perspective, however, has increased. He shows us how monarchs may proclaim their Faith while breaking their solemn promises, and how a man who can wield death fiercely may still tremble violently at its approach.
This is an early Elizabethan play and, like a young genius, crude and rash though it may be, it is extraordinarily gifted and promises of great things to come. With it, the English stage enters its first great period of achievement.
Here, in a passage from the final act, Tamburlaine speaks to his generals, certain his illness is fatal but determined to fight his fate:
What daring god torments my body thus, And seeks to conquer mighty Tamburlaine? Shall sickness prove me now to be a man, That have been term'd the terror of the world? Techelles and the rest, come, take your swords, And threaten him whose hand afflicts my soul: Come, let us march against the powers of heaven, And set black streamers in the firmament, To signify the slaughter of the gods. Ah, friends, what shall I do? I cannot stand. Come, carry me to war against the gods, That thus envy the health of Tamburlaine... Why, shall I sit and languish in this pain? No, strike the drums, and, in revenge of this, Come, let us charge our spears, and pierce his breast Whose shoulders bear the axis of the world, That, if I perish, heaven and earth may fade... See, where my slave, the ugly monster Death, Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear, Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart, Who flies away at every glance I give, And, when I look away, comes stealing on!— Villain, away, and hie thee to the field! I and mine army come to load thy back With souls of thousand mangled carcasses.— Look, where he goes! but, see, he comes again, Because I stay! Techelles, let us march, And weary Death with bearing souls to hell.
In 1587, about the time the twenty-four year old Shakespeare came to London, dreaming of success in the theatre, Christopher Marlowe—Cambridge educate In 1587, about the time the twenty-four year old Shakespeare came to London, dreaming of success in the theatre, Christopher Marlowe—Cambridge educated, only six weeks his senior—lit up the Elizabethan stage with the first great play of the era,the first part of Tamburlaine the Great.
At this time when the English heart was full of thoughts of conquest and of empire--the Spanish Armada nearly complete, the first English child recently born on American soil--Marlowe offered the English a magnificent and exotic image of a Conqueror: Timur the Lame, whose 14th century empire stretched from Turkey, the Levant, and India into Russia and Central Asia.
Less episodic than the Elizabethan plays that preceded it, Tamburlaine Part I is still more pageant than plot, an unabashed celebration of ruthless ambition and the will to power. Structurally, it is as comedy, for it concludes with the marriage of Tamberlaine and the Princess Zenocrate, but it is a comedy filled with martial slaughter, the murder of innocent maidens (their corpses displayed upon a wall), and the torture and death of many kings, the last of whom—Bejazeth, whom Tamburlaine uses as a footstool—dashes out his brains in desperate suicide against the bars of his cage.
But what proud poetry! What a suberb use of language! True, Marlowe's verse is limited in range, for it is always magniloquent, fit only for imperial purposes. But where such language is required, the results are magnificent.
Here are three excerpts. First, Tamburlaine and his generals exult in the conquest of Persia
TAMBURLAINE: Is it not passing brave to be a king, And ride in triumph through Persepolis?
TECHELLES. O, my lord, it is sweet and full of pomp!
USUMCASANE. To be a king is half to be a god.
THERIDAMAS. A god is not so glorious as a king: I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven, Cannot compare with kingly joys in earth;-- To wear a crown enchas'd with pearl and gold, Whose virtues carry with it life and death; To ask and have, command and be obey'd; When looks breed love, with looks to gain the prize,-- Such power attractive shines in princes' eyes.
Here Tamburlaine speaks to his dying rival Chosroes of the sweetness of a crown (and, I think, reveals something about Marlowe's own "aspiring mind). This also sounds much like Shakespeare's Richard of Gloucester, but Richard would not be created for three or four years:
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
Here a messenger explains to the Soldan of Egypt the significance of the changing colors of Tamburlaine's tents when he besieges a city:
The first day when he pitcheth down his tents, White is their hue, and on his silver crest A snowy feather spangled-white he bears, To signify the mildness of his mind, That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood: But, when Aurora mounts the second time, As red as scarlet is his furniture; Then must his kindled wrath be quench'd with blood, Not sparing any that can manage arms: But, if these threats move not submission, Black are his colours, black pavilion; His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumes, And jetty feathers, menace death and hell; Without respect of sex, degree, or age, He razeth all his foes with fire and sword.
This, probably the first dramatic work by the Elizabethan age's second best playwright, reveals Marlowe's inexperience in various clumsy, half-hearted This, probably the first dramatic work by the Elizabethan age's second best playwright, reveals Marlowe's inexperience in various clumsy, half-hearted passages of verse, and—perhaps more damning—in an accumulation of unnecessary suicides toward the end, which—unlike the black humor of his later work—does not seem ironic and cynical, but instead merely ludicrous and excessive. The play does indeed get worse and worse as it progresses (perhaps Marlowe began to revise it but soon lost interest), which makes it even more disappointing.
The first scene, though, is exceptionally fine, and everyone who admires Doctor Faustus and Edward II should read it. The atheist playwright who is reported to have said “all who love not tobacco and boys are fools” here presents a distinctively fallible image of the godhead, as we see Jupiter fawning over his young cup bearer Ganymede, vowing to protect him from the attacks of his wife the goddess Juno. And yet this Jupiter is magnificent too, threatening to hang Juno “meteor like, 'twixt heaven and earth,” and telling his beloved boy that through him he may “controul proud fate, and cut the thread of time." The pride of the Marlovian hero is already here in miniature. If you listen closely, it is not hard to hear the voices of Tamburlaine and Faust:
Come, gentle Ganymede, and play with me ; I love thee well, say Juno what she will... What! dares she strike the darling of my thoughts ? By Saturn's soul, and this earth threatening air, That, shaken thrice, makes nature's buildings quake, I vow, if she but once frown on thee more, To hang her, meteor-like, 'twixt heaven and earth, And bind her hand and foot with golden cords, As once I did for harming Hercules !... What is't, sweet wag, I should deny thy youth ? Whose face reflects such pleasure to mine eyes, As I, exhal'd with thy fire-darting beams, Have oft driven back the horses of the night, When as they would have hal'd thee from my sight. Sit on my knee, and call for thy content, Controul proud fate, and cut the thread of time : Why, are not all the gods at thy command, And heaven and earth the bounds of thy delight ? Vulcan shall dance to make thee laughing sport, And my nine daughters sing when thou art sad ; From Juno's bird I'll pluck her spotted pride, To make thee fans wherewith to cool thy face ; And Venus' swans shall shed their silver down, To sweeten out the slumbers of thy bed : Hermes no more shall shew the world his wings, If that thy fancy in his feathers dwell, But as this one I'll tear them all from him, Do thou but say, " their colour pleaseth me." Hold here, my little love, these linked gems, My Juno wore upon her marriage day, Put thou about thy neck, my own sweet heart, And trick thy arms and shoulders with my theft.
The essays of William Hazlitt offer us a characteristic example of English Romantic style. Coleridge, De Quincey, and Lamb are equally excellent, but The essays of William Hazlitt offer us a characteristic example of English Romantic style. Coleridge, De Quincey, and Lamb are equally excellent, but the power of their personae (the fragmentary genius, the languid eccentric, the sentimental bachelor) tend to overshadow our appreciation of the prose. But Hazlitt is not so calculating in his creation of a self; he merely speaks for his enthusiasms in literature and art in some of best prose of the period. (It is a shame most of his works are out of print today, and lucky for me that this one is easily available on line.)
His views on Shakespeare are thoroughly Romantic, inspired by the German critic Schlegel and dismissive of the classical, common sense opinions of Dr. Johnson. If it be a play in which the analytical and ironic predominate--Julius Caesar, for example, or Troilus and Cressida--Hazlitt sympathies remain unengaged and his insights limited. But if the play features a brooding hero with lightning moods, tumultuous crimes, or a self-sacrificing heroine, Hazlittt's sympathy produces portraits of its characters that—particularly in regard to the realm of emotion—contain some of the best criticism of any age.
If you acquire this book—or download it, as I did—you should be warned that, although the book may seems larger than you had anticipated, much of it consists of extensive excerpts from the plays themselves. Some people may find this irritating, just a way of padding a book, but I enjoyed the long Shakespeare passages, for it was gratifying having the best Shakespeare critic of England's Romantic Age take me on a guided tour of the works of The Bard.
Here follow a few excerpts.
HAMLET
We confess, we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The want of punctilious exactness in his behaviour either partakes of the "license of the time," or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him! Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship.
MACBETH
Macbeth himself appears driven along by the violence of his fate like a vessel drifting before a storm: he reels to and fro like a drunken man; he staggers under the weight of his own purposes and the suggestions of others; he stands at bay with his situation; and from the superstitious awe and breathless suspense into which the communications of the Weird Sisters throw him, is hurried on with daring impatience to verify their predictions, and with impious and bloody hand to tear aside the veil which hides the uncertainty of the future...His speeches and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life, baffling solution, and entangling him in their labyrinths. In thought he is absent and perplexed, sudden and desperate in act, from a distrust of his own resolution. His energy springs from the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His blindly rushing forward on the objects of his ambition and revenge, or his recoiling from them, equally betrays the harassed state of his feelings.
DESDEMONA
The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her resolutions, the pertinacity of her affections, may be said to arise out of the gentleness of her nature. They imply an unreserved reliance on the purity of her own intentions, an entire surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another...[H]er whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to the wars, she would gladly have "remained at home a moth of peace," if her husband could have staid with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last.
A tolerable but undistinguished Caroline tragicomedy in which the proper people marry the proper people and everyone lives happily ever after. The her A tolerable but undistinguished Caroline tragicomedy in which the proper people marry the proper people and everyone lives happily ever after. The hero Hortensio is an unusually virtuous character--to the point of being slightly ridiculous--but he is also very likable, and it is a pleasure to see him triumph at the end.
This is Massinger's last extant drama, and it is not nearly as good as some of his earlier works. Perhaps he was tired of writing his plays. I know I am tired of reading them.
No more Renaissance drama for me--at least for awhile. (I think I'll concentrate on 20th poetry instead.)...more
This is a mediocre Jacobean play, little read and principally remembered for the contribution of Nathan Field--an actor-dramatist with a very small ou This is a mediocre Jacobean play, little read and principally remembered for the contribution of Nathan Field--an actor-dramatist with a very small output--whom experts tell us composed about two-fifths of the play. (The experts say Massinger wrote the tragic scenes, Field the humorous and courtly ones.)
Perhaps I'm just getting burned-out on Jacobean and Caroline plays--after all, I've been reading one every month for about two years now--but I found little in this play to recommend it. The "honor-killing" theme--in which Rochmont, in a mock-trial, condemns his daughter Beaumelle to death for adultery, and then her husband Charalois "executes" her--is something I find particularly repellent. (At any rate, John Webster, in Appius and Virginia, treated a somewhat similar situation more effectively. But his characters were ancient Romans, not 15th century Burgundians, and I think that helped.)
My advice: if you're in the mood for an old play about jealousy and murder, do not read this. Read Shakespeare's Othello instead. If you've already read Othello, then read it again....more
There are many big egos in this play, and it is in the portrayal of egoists—their flaws and rhetorical flights—that the dramatist Massinger excels. Th There are many big egos in this play, and it is in the portrayal of egoists—their flaws and rhetorical flights—that the dramatist Massinger excels. The eponymous hero of this tragicomedy is the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius, an inexperienced young man under the guardianship of his sister Pulcheria, who takes upon himself the reins of empire, choosing as empress the newly-converted “stranger” Athenais. But each of these three characters, in their pride and amour propre, rival each other for the claim to be the de facto “Emperor of the East.”
This is a play about jealousy, and it is filled with echoes of Othello (only here an apple is substituted for the handkerchief). It involves, however, an interesting reversal: Othello is insecure principally because of his advanced age and racial and cultural isolation, whereas Theodosius is insecure because of his youth and the newly acquire burden of imperial isolation.
This is an entertaining play, probably best known for its plot device of a layman's abuse of the Catholic confessional to gain evidence of a supposed crime. Some see this—along with his sympathetic treatment of a Jesuit in The Renegado—as proof of Massinger's Catholicism. I'm not sure I agree with the theory, but the confessional definitely helps bring all of our characters—and their play--to a satisfying and happy conclusion....more
Shakespeare's Prospero is an extraordinary figure, for it is rare to find a real wizard in a Renaissance play. In Massinger's The Picture, however, a Shakespeare's Prospero is an extraordinary figure, for it is rare to find a real wizard in a Renaissance play. In Massinger's The Picture, however, a wizard sets the entire plot into motion. The play's premise, derived from William Painter's Palace of Pleasure--a collection of tales that is also the source for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, All's Well that Ends Well, Timon of Athens and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi--is this: a magician gives jealous but loving young husband Matthias (about to go off to war to seek his fortune) an enchanted miniature of his wife Sophia which will remain clear so long as Sophia is faithful, but will turn yellow if she is tempted, and blacken the moment she is unfaithful to him. Needless to say, complications ensue.
I won't relate the plot in detail, but only remark that once again Massinger creates for our enjoyment a marvelously complicated egotist, the beautiful Honoria, Queen of Hungary. She is doted on by her husband, but that is not enough, and, like Snow White's evil queen, she insists that each man who sees her must deem her “the fairest of them all." The rash actions prompted by her egotism bring the young husband and his wife close to disaster. The beautiful Sophia--no slouch in the pride department herself—is virtuous and noble (although by no means a saint) and refuses to be wronged or shamed without retaliation.
These two women are particularly interesting characters, and the plot--as is typical in a Massinger play--is well articulated and ably resolved. If you like Renaissance drama with a hint of fantasy, I think you will enjoy it....more
The Bondman, one of Massinger's richer works, was also one of his most respected. Popular both in the early Stuart era and during the Restoration, it The Bondman, one of Massinger's richer works, was also one of his most respected. Popular both in the early Stuart era and during the Restoration, it was revived, as late as the reign of George III, in 1769.
As usual, Massinger shows us noble people of strong will, striving through both good and evil means to achieve their objectives, but here he puts it in an unusual context: the Syracusan army is commanded by an outsider, the Corinthian Timoleon, because the Syracusans realize they are too corrupted by wealth and leisure effectively to lead themselves. They have one urgent problem they know about, an imminent sea attack from Carthage, and one they will soon discover, a slave revolt precipitated by their corrupt, lazy society.
The play's principal interest is in the way Massinger treats of masters and slaves. His sympathies—and criticisms--are for both. When he is questioned early in the play about his suitability for command, Timoleon observes that "he that would govern others, first should be the master of himself," and Massinger endeavors to show us that when men refuse to master themselves, they are mastered by their own vices, like luxury and sloth, choosing rather “to be made bondmen, than to part with that to which already you are slaves.” Indeed, men may persist in folly to the point where they will, “to perfect their entertainment, offer up your sons, and able men, for slaves.”
The play suffers from a few Jacobean conventions (an absurd vow, two characters in disguise), but its moral seriousness and exciting plot keep the reader's interest. Give it a try....more
This entertaining late Jacobean play holds a special interest for the post 9/11 reader, broadly because of the clash between Islamic civilization and This entertaining late Jacobean play holds a special interest for the post 9/11 reader, broadly because of the clash between Islamic civilization and Christian culture, but more precisely because of the play's exploration of the theme of the renegade: what does it mean to renounce your religion and--perhaps of greater concern for Massinger--to deny your very self, with all the representations and assumptions that come with that denial?
In addition to the secondary character "the Renegado" (Grimaldi, a pirate converted to Islam), the play features as hero and heroine the Venetian gentleman Vitelli and Donusa, the Turkish princess who loves him. At some time in the play, each of these three characters is called upon to convert, and since each of them is a proud, imperious Massinger egoist, the question of what they will do becomes even more interesting.
Also noteworthy about The Renegado is its sympathetic portrayal of the Jesuit Francisco. Given the English Renaissance stereotype of the false "equivocating" Jesuit, this positive portrait by Massinger is seen by some critics as evidence that he was a professing Catholic, or at the least a Protestant not unsympathetic to Rome.(Or--perhaps--could Massinger himself have been a "renegado"?)...more
As hard-boiled writer Jonathan Latimer would say, this is "a wild one," containing everything but "an abortion and a tornado." What this Jacobean play As hard-boiled writer Jonathan Latimer would say, this is "a wild one," containing everything but "an abortion and a tornado." What this Jacobean play does contain is mistress-stealing, uxoricide, pirates, a father-son death-duel (the "unnatural combat"), post-mortem mutilation, incestuous desires (plus stratagems to satisfy them), rape (not incestuous), vengeful ghosts, and (at last!) divine retribution in the form of (I'm not kidding) a lightning bolt.
The main character Malefort Senior (rumored to be a portrait of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham), the man responsible for most of the above-listed crimes against humanity, is a magnificently sociopathic version of the egoistic protagonist, a Massinger specialty. The vile Malefort thrives for as long as he does because he lives in a milieu--the city of Marseilles--which is almost as corrupt as he is.
I found this play exciting and entertaining, although--as you may guess from the litany of horrors above--a reader with more good taste than I possess might find it just a little bit over the top.
Then again, T.S. Eliot sort of liked it. So there!...more
Camiola, the heroine of this early tragicomedy, is a typical Massinger protagonist: intelligent and haughty, she willfully follows her principles--and Camiola, the heroine of this early tragicomedy, is a typical Massinger protagonist: intelligent and haughty, she willfully follows her principles--and her whims--as a proclamation and presentation of the self. The occasions may vary (a flawed suitor's repudiation, a lover's rescue, the lure of a religious vocation), but whether the incidental motive be admirable or arbitrary, the assertion of the self remains her central motivation. She is a Massinger heroine; she does not defy her fate, she becomes it.
The plot has enough twists and turns, political, military and domestic, to engage the audience without wearying it, the comic characters—particularly Lord Sylli—are genuinely amusing, and Camiola's love (the King's natural brother Bertoldo) is worthy of his mistress, being almost as haughty and willful as “the Maid of Honor” herself. I won't give the ending away, but the play concludes with a marvelous bit of theatricality which leaves Camiola completely in control of everyone's undivided attention. What more, after all, could a Massinger heroine desire?...more
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