DE PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University Series Practica, 19 Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM ENGLISH FORMAL SATIRE Elizabethan to Augustan by DORIS C. POWERS Arizona State University 1971 MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM © Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N. V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers. L I B R A R Y OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD N U M B E R : 77 - 134344 Printed in Hungary Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM To D.B.P. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM PREFACE As is well known, in the 1590's still another classical form joined those already being imitated in English, when verses modelled on the Latin formal satires mainly of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal started to appear in numbers. The Elizabethan satire quickly took on its characteristic general appearance as a medium-length poem in decasyllabic couplets, whose burden was entirely or mainly destructive criticism. It found a ready audience: Donne's five works in the genre were popular in manuscript, Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum (1597-8) and John Marston's The Scourge of Villanie (1598) soon saw several printed editions; well before the end of the Jacobean period, the number of such poems that had been published was very high. And it is to this Elizabethan and early Jacobean era of the genre that most of the studies that deal with formal satire before the Augustan Age confine themselves. The effort of this study has been to find what links might connect those early poems with formal satires that appeared, again in large numbers, after the Restoration — and, to ask if in fact the genre might not have had a continuous history through the seventeenth century, particularly through the gener- ally neglected years between about 1610 and the beginning of the Restoration period. Accordingly, my first procedure was to deter- mine from the satires of the first period - including those of Wyatt as well - what, exactly, the formal characteristics of the English 'kind' were considered by their writers to be. Using a definition gained this way, it becomes possible to demonstrate that poems fitting it were published (and republished) in every decade from the 1590's to that of the Restoration - and in increasing numbers from then well into the eighteenth century. The persistence of their ap- peal, in fact, is suggested in one way by such a detail as that Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613) was still being re-printed in the Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM 8 PREFACE 1660's, and in another way by the circumstance t h a t a succession of well-known writers tried their hand at them. Jonson was one of those, with Middleton, Chapman, Cleveland, Marvell, and Lovelace, in the period before the Restoration - and after it, Butler, Rochester, Oldham, Prior, Shadwell, and Dryden himself. I n short, there was a continuous flow of poems through the seventeenth century t h a t exhibit formal characteristics of the 'kind'. My second procedure was to ask what the contours of the history of this 'kind' might be, for it seemed possible to re-examine the usual assumption about English formal satire t h a t it flourished briefly at the turn of the seventeenth century, not to re-appear until well into the second half of t h a t century and then mainly as translations or 'imitations' of particular Latin poems. An answer to t h a t question makes up the contents of this volume: it is, in essence, t h a t a history of seventeenth-century English formal satire can indeed be described, in terms of an early-established set of basic formal elements from which each writer in turn made his selections and which he handled in accordance with the gradually shifting emphases of his times. I n a demonstrable sense, Augustan formal satire is a direct descendent of Elizabethan formal satire. I wish to acknowledge, with real appreciation, the generosity to me of the Arizona State University Grants Committee during the preparation of this study. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM CONTENTS Preface 7 PART ONE I. Introduction 13 PART TWO II. Verisimilitude as Evidence: Elizabethan and Jacobean . . 33 I I I . The Satirist as Authenticating Device: Elizabethan and Jacobean 72 A. The Moralist 72 B. The Stylist 90 IV. Verisimilitude as Evidence: Caroline and Restoration . . . 125 V. The Satirist: Caroline and Restoration 141 PART THREE VI. Some Typical English Formal Satires 175 Bibliography 203 Index 209 Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM I INTRODUCTION I n demonstrating the continuity of English formal satire, one might begin with two passages of dialogue, from poems by Marston and by Rochester. I n each of these, the writer is trying to duplicate realistically the effect of thought verbalized as it is forming. Here is the Elizabethan Satirist speaking with his Companion: A Man, a man, a kingdome for a man. W h y how now currish m a d Athenian? Thou Cynicke dogge, see'st not streets do swarme W i t h troupes of m e n ? No, no, for Oirces charme H a t h t u r n ' d t h e m all to Swine; I neuer shall Thinke those same Samian sawes authentieall, B u t r a t h e r I dare sweare, t h e soules of swine Doe liue in men, for t h a t same r a d i a n t shine, T h a t lustre wherewith natures Nature decked Our intellectual p a r t , t h a t glosse is soyled W i t h stayning spots of vile impietie, And m u d d y d u r t of sensualitie, These are no men, b u t Apparitions, Ignes fatui, Olowormes, Fictions, Meteors, Ratts of Nilus, Fantasies, Colosses, Pictures, Shades, Resemblances. 1 The Satirist, challenged, presents his thought t h a t men have taken on an animal-like nature. He implies t h a t this is not physical metempsychosis - he does not believe, as he puts it, in the "Samian sawes" - then, turning the idea over, he rephrases it to say t h a t it is rather t h a t the souls of swine abide in men. Proceeding to his elaboration, he moves through a continuing pattern of revision, introducing the expression "radiant shine" and 1 J o h n Marston, The Scourge of Villanie, " S a t y r e V I I " , ("A Cynicke Satyre"), 1-16. I n The Poems of John Marston, ed. Arnold D a v e n p o r t (Liver- pool, 1961), p . 140. Hereafter cited as Scourge. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM 14 PART ONE reexpressing it as "lustre", before finishing the thought in a relative clause - then in a final effort at getting just the right word, adding "glosse" with the apparent intent that it be understood as a substi- tute for "lustre" and, of course, to function in its place in the clause. He is thinking on his feet, turning his private reflections into discourse. That this is not intended to appear the polished state- ment of leisured thought is further suggested by the Satirist's clos- ing remarks about what men are. In this succession of epithets, random acts of association loosely bind the first three ("Apparitions, Ignes fatui, Glowormes")- and these in turn suggest the fourth. "Meteors" appears then to rise from a subliminal image of fire in "Ignes fatui" and "Gloworme"; similarly, "Ratts of Nilus" evolves from the implicit suggestion of the swamp in "Ignes fatui", and "Fantasies" from "Fictions", and back further, from "Apparitions". "Colosses" may connect here, as large or grotesque "Fantasies". The series then dwindles to three terms ("Pictures, Shades, Resem- blances") that are variations upon themselves — and this close points up the character of the whole succession: there has been no real forward movement, but rather a kind of circling motion, a verbaliz- ing of near-synonyms, in search for the right expressions. There is also a typically Elizabethan cumulative effect in the piling-up of words, which adds to the impression of extempore, familiar speech. And now hear Rochester's Satirist speaking some 80 years later: Were I (who to my cost already am One of those strange prodigious creatureB Man) A Spirit free, to choose for my own share, What Case of Flesh and Blood I pleas'd to weare, I'd be a Dog, a Monkey or a Bear, Or any thing but that vain Animal, W h o is so proud of being rational. The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive A Sixth, to contradict the other Five: And before certain Instinct, will preferr Reason, which Fifty times for one does err. Reason, an Ignis fatuus, in the Mind, Which leaving Light of Nature, Sense behind; Pathless, and dang'rous, wandring ways, it takes, Through errors Fenny-Boggs, and Thorny Brakes; Whilst the misguided follower, climbs with pain, Mountains of Whimseys, heap'd in his own Brain: Stumbling from thought to thought, falls head-long down, Into doubts boundless Sea, where like to drown, Books bear him up awhile, and make him try, Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM INTRODUCTION 15 To swim with Bladders of Philosophy; In hopes still t'oretake th'escaping light, The Vapour dances in his dazl['d] sight, Till spent, it leaves him to eternal Night. 2 As extempore discourse, this seems very far from Marston's modes. Here a mind is seen as able to project quite complex gram- matical structures in the act of speaking and to handle the parts in turn (as well as to vary effects within them) without breaking down. The Satirist opens his subject with the conditional (and 'rhetorical') "Were I . . . ", then suspends the thought while he establishes the basis for a comparison with his actual state. Taking up the main strand again, he supplies the complement and proceeds smoothly to the main clause: a statement of what he would be. This is offered in three parallel forms - just three, to reveal to his audience (by the use of the conventional number) that it is the class he is stressing and not any individual member. The term "Animal" which he applies to man, derives logically (rather than aasociatively) from the animal figures just presented; it pivots on their class-designation, and with its pejorative implications further diminishes "Man". The development of the idea of man's choice between instinct and reason proceeds in two compact antitheses, which are united in sound and sense by the expansion of "Five" in the first to "Fifty" in the second. Then, the effects of his choice of Reason are developed by means of an extended metaphor which controls the presentation for some thirteen lines. Reason is an "Ignis fatuus", and leads the follower in an action located with geographical realism and choreo- graphed as it were to a climax and then to a conclusive end. The fallacies and false beliefs about natural reason are related to speci- fic features of the topography: Error is keyed to Fenny-Boggs and Thorny Brakes, Whimseys to Mountains, Doubt to Sea. Exploiting the physical senses (the Follower climbs, stumbles, falls headlong, and so on), the Satirist draws the figurative and literal meanings together just halfway through the thought, and at the climax of the action. There he points out that the "mountains of Whimseys" a r e " h e a p ' d in [the Follower's] own Brain". Returning to the physical setting again, the Satirist renews his excitation of sensory reactions 2 "A Satyr against Mankind", 1-24. In Poems by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto (London, 1953), pp. 118-9. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM 16 P A R T O N E by picturing Man in the sea, struggling still to overtake the "escap- ing light", which dances as a Vapour before him. The Satirist ends the scene here, with the expertise of a showman, darkening it as the light (the "Vapour") is extinguished which he turned upon it in the opening. There is little sense here of the mind straining at its work; what emerges in language is the rounded thought. There is no pulse of creative activity as it is occurring, no pouring out of raw material, no urgent search for the best term (and heaping-up for the bludgeon- effect of them all). Those phenomena of verbalizing we saw in Marston's Satirist. Yet Rochester's poem is intended to represent realistically the speech practices of ordinary conversation, too; and it is even occasionally homely, as in the expression, "like to drown". Rochester tried in another way to manage the effect of living dia- logue, by giving the Satirist's Companion a somewhat contrasted manner of talking. Here is the Companion: What Rage ferments in your degen'rate Mind, To make you rail at Reason, and Mankind? Blest glorious Man! to whom alone kind Heav'n, An everlasting Soul hath freely giv'n; Whom his great Maker took such care to make, That from himself he did the Image take, And this fair Frame in shining Season drest, To dignifie his Nature above Beast. 3 I n his occasionally elevated language and in his several inversions (here, of object and verb), the Companion sounds different from the Satirist, who has used a simpler diction and a word order t h a t is almost uniformly normal. On the other hand, as it was with the Satirist, the Companion utters completed thoughts, and in sophisti- cated structures and a diction t h a t is right in its first version. Marston's and Rochester's modes come together - as represent- ations of realistic speech - when we see them as varieties of a single style. I t is the style Croll has called baroque, 4 in distinguishing its planned effect of "natural" speech from the "unnatural" effects of the neatly rounded Ciceronian coherence t h a t is gained through often abundant logical and grammatical symmetries and the careful 3 Ibid., 58-65, p. 120. 4 See Morris Croll, " 'Attic Prose' in the Seventeenth Century", SP, X V I I I (1921). Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM INTRODUCTION 1 7 use of connectives. Marston's Satirist speaks in ways related more to the 'curt' than to the 'loose' varieties of baroque. I t is 'curt' in the elliptical beginning of his answer to the Companion. This is cast as a dependent clause, following the Satirist's "No, no", and elaborating those negatives - b u t the clause on which it is dependent is not supplied. And in his next statement, the emphasis is wrong; he p u t s the matter of the "Samian sawes" as something he disbe- lieves ("I neuer shall. . . "), whereas the requirement of his point is t h a t it be stated otherwise — as not meant literally by him, for instance. He blurts out the general idea, t h a t is, before he has thought out its best form, and characteristically omits a connective t h a t might help relate it to the preceding idea even in the form he has given it. I t is further 'curt' in the unplanned, extempore effect of its re- phrasings and in the string of appositives t h a t the Satirist ends with - as well as in the relative brevity of the grammatical construc- tions. The clause beginning "for t h a t same radiant shine" is after all developed by rephrasings of the same ideas rather than by, say, division and discussion of the parts thus produced; and the re- phrasings themselves are in relatively brief constructions. The same thing should be said about the Satirist's final period; considered as a vehicle simply for appositives, it is brief indeed. Finally, the constructions throughout (the exception is "stayning spots . . . , and muddy d u r t . . . ") avoid obvious parallelisms in form — generally a mark of the baroque style. Rochester's Satirist, then, speaks more in the patterns of the 'loose' style. Still avoiding measured parallelisms, his constructions are relatively extended, although the individual members may be brief (and, in this, more 'curt'). Ellipses are almost entirely missing; the full sense is almost always given in complete constructions. Many connectives are supplied — although, characteristically, in the loose style, they may make only a loose connection. I n the state- ment, "Senses are too gross, and he'll contrive . . . ", the coordinate 'and' is an example - where one would expect a logically subordinat- ing conjunction. B u t these are marks of the extemporizing speaker, rather than of the man with a prepared and polished speech in his hand. Another mark is the parenthetical expression, which accom- modates something the speaker forgot to say earlier - or cannot conveniently structure otherwise then and there. Rochester's Sati- rist almost immediately interrupts himself with one: "Were I (who Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM 18 PART ONE t o m y c o s t . . . )". H e also r u n s down, a f t e r making his p o i n t t h a t men t r u s t Reason over their senses (line 11) — t h e n gains a new impetus on t h e word " R e a s o n " . H e repeats i t and is off again, omitting t h e verb of the new construction, t o develop t h e geogra- phical m e t a p h o r of t h e thirteen lines t h a t conclude t h e passage. The development of t h a t last section shows other evidences of an extempore style. T h e first two actions of t h e "misguided follower" (he climbs, he falls) are simply juxtaposed; no conjunction is used. And whereas his movements are f i r s t expressed in active verbs with 'follower' the agent-subject, t h e Satirist suddenly makes him t h e object of t h e remaining clauses, with some grammatical awk- wardness as one result. I n the final lines, t h e "follower" falls " I n t o d o u b t s boundless Sea", where like to drown, Books bear him up awhile, and make him try, To swim with Bladders of Philosophy; In hopes still t'oretake th'escaping light, The Vapour dances in his dazl['d] sight. . . H e r e the Satirist's g r a m m a r again shows t h e effect of a speaker shifting constructions unconsciously as he extemporizes. The expres- sion "like to d r o w n " modifies "follower" - until it becomes ambigu- ously connected t o the " b o o k s " of the n e x t line, because the Satirist has m a d e " b o o k s " the subject now of the n e x t clause. F u r t h e r mild confusion appears in the final lines when another dangling modifier is created because of t h e Satirist's failure t o keep his e x t e n d e d grammatical structures coherent. This is t h e scene t h a t has the " V a p o u r " in hopes - whereas, of course, it is the "follower" who should be grammatically so described. The p a t h f r o m Marston t o Rochester clearly is continuous in the handling of a t least one aspect of formal satire - t h a t is, of speech as realistic extempore discourse. A similar continuity can also be d e m o n s t r a t e d in other rhetorical aspects. This can be done best, perhaps, when t h e passages f r o m t h e two poems (so far discussed only with respect t o linguistic matters) are seen in their contexts - t h a t is, the actions a n d the arguments of the whole poem of which each is a p a r t . Then it will be possible to p o i n t o u t other features which, because Rochester when he wrote in c. 1669 was drawing on a set of conventions t h a t h a d been in s t e a d y use since their lively adoption in the 1590s, t h e two poems share. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM INTRODUCTION 19 A realistic setting in Marston's poem is lightly indicated when the Companion says to the Satirist, . . . see'st not streets do swarme With troupes of men? The two stand there, discussing the passers-by. The Satirist had come on the scene calling, "A man, a man, a kingdome for a man". The Companion points out t h a t there are men all around them, b u t the Satirist sees the flaws t h a t make them less than men. H e calls the Companion's attention to one of them. " H o Linceus", he says, "Seest thou yon gallant in the sumptuous clothes . . . ?" and tells him t h a t underneath the clothes is an incarnate deuill, That struts in vice, and glorieth in euil. 6 The Companion tries to modify his misanthropic mood: . . .peace Cynick, yon is one, A compleat soule, of all perfection. B u t the Satirist breaks out indignantly: What? mean'st thou him that walks al open brested? Drawne through the eare with Ribands, plumy crested? He that doth snort in fat-fed luxury. . , 6 and again it would seem t h a t the Companion has been naive in accepting someone uncritically. B u t he himself sees the Satirist as hypercritical, and retains a faith in his own judgment; and when the Satirist points out still another offending figure: Loe yonder I espie The shade of Nestor in sad gravitie; Since old Sylenus brake his Asses back, He now is forc'd his paunch, and gutts to pack In a fayre Tumbrell, 5 Scourge, 17-8, 26-7, pp. 140-1. 6 Ibid., 28-32. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM 20 P A R T ONE the Companion urges an alternate point of view: Why sower Satirist Canst thou vnman him? Here I dare insist And soothly say, he is a perfect soule, Eates Nectar, drinks Ambrosia, saunce controle. A n invndation of felicitie Fats him with honor, and huge treasurie, 7 - and so on. This satire, in short, is a dialogue, with a setting and a dramatis personae of two. A n d in this particular poem, the Companion is not only an on-the-scene auditor, a dramatic device to give the effect of a dialogue taking place; he functions as well in a more basic capacity. I t is he who stimulates the Satirist to express himself about the several individuals who pass before them. The Satirist has simply come on the scene like Diogenes looking for a 'man'; the Companion points out individual men, and the Satirist reacts to each with a critical evaluation stimulated solely b y the Companion's volunteering single 'men' to him. The Companion, that is, is parti- ally responsible for moving the action along. The Companion serves also as an opposing point of view; the matters that he and the Satirist discuss are thus talked out, argued from at least two critical positions. The Companion is a straw man, to be sure; one is to understand his remarks as naive and idealistic. B u t because of his opposing point of view, the dialogue becomes argument, and a point seemingly at issue is debated and then settled - right before the reader's eyes. A 'truth', that is, is recorded in the act of being established. Clearly, the intended effect is that of 'real' life, going on as it is being recorded. Here, ideas occur in the mind of the Satirist, and, verbalized b y him they stimulate ideas in the mind of the Compa- nion as both stand there in the midst of the particulars of 'real' life that they are evaluating. In the give-and-take of their contrasting opinions, they expose various angles from which the offenders themselves may be viewed - and often describe in realistic concrete detail the specifics of appearance and action which violate the code of values from which the Satirist and Companion speak. Then, in one final move - again, occurring there - the point at issue is settled; ' Ibid., 46-55, p. 141. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM INTRODUCTION 21 here, the Satirist tests his impression against the 'real' people there before him and has the impression corroborated again as true, through the same kind of direct, personal observation on which, presumably, he formed it in the first place. Rochester's poem uses the same dramatic devices and is concerned with the same object: the probing, through the direct observation of life, and the discussion of t h a t experience for significant truths. The action in Rochester's poem is managed as follows: as the Satirist is telling to an unspecified audience his objections to the general esteem for Reason, he pauses to recognize the approach of t h e Companion, who evidently intends to challenge the points he has made: But now methinks some formal Band, and Beard, Takes me to task, and addresses him directly when he has drawn close enough: come on Sir I'm prepar'd. 8 The Companion then takes the effective role seen in Marston's poem; his remarks stimulate the Satirist to make further comments. The Companion here agrees with what the Satirist has to say against Wit, b u t objects to his general denigration of Mankind. The Satirist thus is motivated further to clarify, refine, and elaborate his re- marks; in fact, he is so stimulated by his Companion's interruption t h a t he stops the latter from further speech — Hold mighty Man- so he himself may start his rebuttal immediately — and begins, all this we know. . ., 9 and proceeds with his opinions, which by now are more developed than they were before the Companion challenged them. The Companion had spoken for the spiritual in "Blest glorious Man", while also seeing man "in shining Reason drest". He is for the proper use of Reason 8 Lines 46-7, p. 119. 9 Ibid., 72, p. 120. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM 22 P A R T O N E by whose aspiring influence, We take a flight beyond material sense, Dive into Mysteries, then soaring pierce, The flaming limits of the Universe. Search Heav'n and Hell, find out what's acted there, And give the World true grounds of hope and fear. 10 He, like earlier Satirists, holds an ideal of man as capable of a kind of perfection - 'perfection' connoting here a full intellectual grasp of the mysteries of God and the universe (which leads to a correct knowledge of moral values), rather than the simpler moral goodness (sought through faithful obedience to traditional moral precepts) which the Elizabethan Satirist often proposed. Given his particular stand, however, the Companion's role is still basically to be a sounding board for the Satirist. In this poem he is more than this, of course; he has a profound philosophy of his own, which represents the thinking of those of Rochester's contemporaries who did see Man optimistically as a "blest, glorious" creature who with his mind would penetrate all the "Mysteries" of the cosmos. B u t in the strategy of this satire, he becomes the straw man whom the Satirist as moral center will talk down. To the Satirist, Man has neither used his reason well for intellec- tual purposes nor developed a moral system that ranks him above the animals. He elaborates each of these two points in turn, demon- strating first that Man is given to speculative thought —which acti- vity is not only pointless (because it does not lead to action) but also pretentiously gullible in its expectation that it can "pierce" "The limits of the boundless Universe." 11 The Satirist's summary of the ideas expressed in this section is cast in a neat couplet: Our Sphere of Action, is lifes happiness, And he who thinks Beyond, thinks like an Ass. 12 His second point - that Man is, morally, a base creature - is devel- oped with currently-held pessimistic ideas in complete disagreement with the idealistic views of the Companion. Man is cruel and faith- less, "Not through necessity, but wantonness". 13 The virtues he 10 Ibid., 66-71, p. 120. 11 Ibid., 85, p. 120. 12 Ibid., 96-7, p. 121. 13 Ibid., 138, p. 122. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/4/19 5:53 AM