Chapter IV (2)

The dramatic representation here is meagre; but we shall find upon inquiry it is already the Globe Theatre, with all its new solidarities, new in philosophy, new in poetry, that the leaves of this park hide--this park that the doors and windows of the New Academe open into--these new grounds that it lets out its students to play and study in, and collect their specimens from--'still and contemplative in living art.' It was all the world that was going through that park that day haply, we shall find. It is all the world that we get in this narrow representation here, as we get it in a more limited representation still, in another place. 'All the world knows _me_ in my book and my book in _me_,' cries the Egotist of the Mountain. It is the first Canto of that great Epic, whose argument runs through so many books, that is chanted here. It is the war, the unsuccessful war of lore and nature, whose lost fields have made man's life, that is getting reviewed at last and reduced to speech and writing. It is the school itself that makes the centre of the plot in this case; these gay young philosophers with 'the ribands' yet floating in their 'cap of youth,' who oppose lore to love, who 'war against _their own affections_ and THE HUGE ARMY OF THE WORLD'S DESIRES,' ere they know what they are; who think to conquer nature's potencies, her universal powers and causes, with wordy ignorance, with resolutions that ignore them simply, and make a virtue of ignoring them, these are the chief actors here, who come out of that classic tiring house where they have been shut up with the ancients so long, to celebrate on this green plot, which is life, their own defeat, and propose a better wisdom, the wisdom of the moderns. And Holofernes, the schoolmaster, who cultivates minds, and Sir Nathaniel, the curate, who cures them, and Don Armado or Don A_drama_dio, from the flowery heights of the new Belles Lettres, with the last refinement of Euphuism on his lips, and Antony Dull, and the country damsel and her swain, and the princess and her attendants, are all there to eke out and complete the philosophic design,--to exhibit the extant learning in its airy flights and gross descents, in its ludicrous attempt to escape from those particulars or to grapple, without loss of grandeur, those particulars of which man's life consisteth. It is the vain pretension and assumption of those faulty wordy abstractions, whose falseness and failure in practice this school is going to expose elsewhere; it is the defect of those abstractions and idealisms that the Novum Organum was invented to remedy, which is exhibited so grossly and palpably here. It is the height of those great swelling words of rhetoric and logic, in rude contrast with those actualities which the history of man is always exhibiting, which the universal nature in man is always imposing on the learned and unlearned, the profane and the reverend, the courtier and the clown, the 'king and the beggar,' the actualities which the natural history of man continues perseveringly to exhibit, in the face of those logical abstractions and those ideal schemes of man as he should be, which had been till this time the fruit of learning;--those actualities, those particulars, whose lowness the new philosophy would begin with, which the new philosophy would erect into an art or science.

The foundation of this ascent is natural history. There must be nothing omitted here, or the stairs would be unsafe. The rule in this School, as stated by the Interpreter in Chief, is, 'that there be _nothing in the globe of matter_, which should not be likewise in the globe of _crystal_ or _form_;' that is, he explains, 'that there should not be anything in _being_ and _action_, which should not be _drawn_ and _collected_ into _contemplation_ and _doctrine_.' The lowness of matter, all the capabilities and actualities of speech and action, not of the refined only, but of the vulgar and profane, are included in the science which contemplates an historical result, and which proposes the _reform_ of these actualities, the cure of these maladies,--which comprehends man as man in its intention,--which makes the _Common Weal_ its end.

Science is the word that unlocks the books of this School, its gravest and its lightest, its books of loquacious prose and stately allegory, and its Book of Sports and Riddles. Science is the clue that still threads them, that never breaks, in all their departures from the decorums of literature, in their lowest descents from the refinements of society. The vulgarity is not _the_ vulgarity of the vulgar--the inelegancy is not the spontaneous rudeness of the ill-bred--any more than its doctrine of nature is the doctrine of the unlearned. The loftiest refinements of letters, the courtliest breeding, the most exquisite conventionalities, the most regal dignities of nature, are always present in _these_ works, to measure these abysses, flowering to their brink. Man as he is, booked, surveyed,--surveyed from the continent of nature, put down as he is in her book of kinds, not as he is from his own interior isolated conceptions only,--the universal powers and causes as they are developed in him, in his untaught affections, in his utmost sensuous darkness,--the universal principle instanced whereit is most buried, the cause in nature found;--man as he is, in his heights and in his depths, 'from his lowest note to the top of his key,'--man in his possibilities, in his actualities, in his thought, in his speech, in his book language, and in his every-day words, in his loftiest lyric tongue, in his lowest pit of play-house degradation, searched out, explained, interpreted. That is the key to the books of this Academe, who carry always on their armour, visible to those who have learned their secret, but hid under the symbol of their double worship, the device of the Hunters,--the symbol of the twin-gods,--the silver bow, or the bow that finds all. 'Seeing that she beareth two persons ... I do also otherwise _shadow_ her.'

It is man's life, and the culture of it, erected into an art or science, that these books contain. In the lowness of the lowest, and in the aspiration of the noblest, the powers whose entire history must make the basis of a successful morality and policy are found. It is all abstracted or drawn into contemplation, 'that the precepts of cure and culture may be more rightly concluded.' 'For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

It is not necessary to illustrate this criticism in this case, because in this case the design looks through the execution everywhere. The criticism of the Novum Organum, the criticism of the Advancement of Learning, and the criticism of Raleigh's History of the World, than which there is none finer, when once you penetrate its crust of profound erudition, is here on the surface. And the scholasticism is not more obtrusive here, the learned sock is not more ostentatiously paraded, than in some critical places in those performances; while the humour that underlies the erudition issues from a depth of learning not less profound.

As, for instance, in this burlesque of the descent of _Euphuism_ to the prosaic detail of the human conditions, not then accommodated with a style in literature, a defect in learning which this Academy proposed to remedy. A new department in literature which began with a series of papers issued from this establishment, has since undertaken to cover the ground here indicated, the _every-day_ human life, and reduce it to written inquiry, notwithstanding 'the lowness of the matter.'

LETTER FROM DON ARMADO TO THE KING.

_King_ [_reads_], 'Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god, and body's fostering patron.... So it is,--besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black, oppressing humour to the most wholesome physick of thy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour: when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper.'

[No one who is much acquainted with the style of the author of this letter ought to have any difficulty in identifying him here. There was a method of dramatic composition in use then, and not in _this_ dramatic company only, which produced an amalgamation of styles. 'On a forgotten matter,' these associated authors themselves, perhaps, could not always 'make distinction of their hands.' But there are places where Raleigh's share in this 'cry of players' shows through very palpably.]

'So much for the time _when_. Now for the ground _which_; which I mean I walked upon: it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where I mean I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou beholdest, surveyest, or seest, etc....

'Thine in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty.

'DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.'

And in another letter from the same source, the dramatic criticism on that style of literature which it was the intention of this School 'to reform altogether' is thus continued.

... 'The magnanimous and most illustrate King _Cophetua_, set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar _Zenelophon_. And it was he that might rightly say, _Veni, vidi, vici_; which to _anatomise_ in the vulgar, (_O base and obscure vulgar_!) _Videlicet_, he came, saw, and overcame... Who came? the king. Why did he come? to see. Why did he see? to overcome. To whom came he? to the beggar. What saw he? the beggar. Who overcame he? the beggar. The conclusion is victory. On whose side? etc.

'Thine in the dearest design of industry.'

[_Dramatic comment_.]

_Boyet. I am much deceived but I remember the style.

_Princess_. Else your memory is bad going o'er it erewhile._

_Jaquenetta_. Good Master Parson, be so good as to read me this letter--it was sent me from Don _Armatho_: I beseech you to read it.

_Holofernes_. [Speaking here, however, not in character but for 'the _Academe_.'] _Fauste precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat_, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice

--Vinegia, Vinegia,
Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia.

Old Mantuan! Old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, _loves thee not.--Ut re sol la mi fa.--Under pardon_, Sir, what are THE CONTENTS? or, rather, as Horace says in his--What, my soul, _verses_?

_Nath_. Ay, Sir, and _very learned_ [one would say so _upon examination_].

_Hol_. Let me have a _staff_, a stanza, a verse; _Lege Domine_.

_Nath_. [Reads the 'verses.']--'If love make me forsworn,' etc.

_Hol_. You _find not the apostrophe_, and _so--miss_ the _accent_--[criticising the reading. It is necessary to find the _apostrophe_ in the verses of this Academy, before you can give the accent correctly; there are other points which require to be noted also, in this refined courtier's writings, as this criticism will inform us]. Let me _supervise_ the canzonet. Here _are only numbers_ ratified, but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadency of poesy, _caret_. _Ovidius Naso_ was the man. And _why_, indeed, Naso; but for _smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy_, the _jerks of invention_. _Imitari_ is nothing; so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. [It was no such reading and writing as _that_ which this Academy was going to countenance, or teach.] But, Damosella, was this directed to you?

_Jaq_. Ay, Sir, from one Monsieur Biron, one of the strange queen's lords.

_Hol_. I will _over-glance_ the _super-script_. 'To the snow white hand of the most beauteous lady _Rosaline_.' I will look again _on the intellect_ of the letter for the _nomination_ of the party writing, _to the person written unto_ (_Rosaline_).--[_Look again_.--That is the rule for the reading of letters issued from this Academy, whether they come in Don Armado's name or another's, when the point is _not_ to 'miss the _accent_.'] 'Your ladyship's, in all desired employment, BIRON.' Sir Nathaniel, this Biron is one of the votaries with the king, and here he hath framed a _letter_ to a _sequent_ of the stranger queen's, which, _accidentally or by way of progression_, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet; deliver this paper into the _royal hand of the king. It may concern much_. Stay not thy compliment, I forgive thy duty. _Adieu_.

_Nath_. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously; and as a certain father saith--

_Hol_. Sir, tell me not of _the father_, I do fear colorable colors. But to return to _the verses_. Did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?

_Nath_. Marvellous well _for the pen_.

_Hol_. I _dine_ to-day at the _father's _of a certain pupil of _mine_, where, if before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parent of the foresaid child, or pupil, undertake your _ben venuto, where I will prove_ those _verses to be very unlearned_, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech _your society_.

_Nath_. And thank you, too; for _society_ (saith the text) is _the happiness of_ LIFE.

_Hol_. And, _certes_, the text _most infallibly concludes it_.--Sir, [to Dull] I do _invite you too_, [to hear the verses ex-criticised] you _shall not_ say me _nay: pauca verba. Away_; the _gentles are at their games_, and we will _to our recreation_.

Another part of the _same_. After dinner.

_Re-enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, and Dull_.

_Hol. Satis quod sufficit_.

_Nath_. I praise God for you, Sir: your _reasons_ at dinner have been _sharp and sententious_; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this _quondam_ day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called Don Adriano de Armado.

_Hol_. _Novi hominem tanquam te_. His manner is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, and his general behaviour, vain, ridiculous and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, and, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

_Nath_. A most singular and choice epithet! [Takes out his table-book.]

_Hol_. _He draweth out the thread of his verbosity_ finer than the _staple of his argument_, ['More matter with less art,' says the queen in Hamlet], I abhor such _fantastical phantasms_, such insociable and _point device_ companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak doubt _fine_ when _he should say doubt_, etc. This is abhominable which he would call abominable; it insinuateth me of insanie; _Ne intelligis, domine_? to make frantic, lunatic.

_Nath_. _Lans deo bone intelligo_.

_Hol_. _Bone--bone for bene_: _Priscian, a little scratched 'twill serve_. [This was never meant to be printed of course; all this is understood to have been prepared only for a performance in 'a booth.']

_Enter_ Armado, etc.

_Nath. Videsne quis venit?_

_Ho. Video et gaudeo._

_Arm._ Chirra!

_Hol. Quare_ Chirra not Sirrah!

But the first appearance of these two _book-men_, as _Dull_ takes leave them to call them in this scene, is not less to the purpose. They come in with Antony Dull, who serves as a foil to their learning; from the moment that they open their lips they speak 'in character,' and they do not proceed far before they give us some hints of the author's purpose.

_Nath_. Very _reverent sport_ truly, and done _in the testimony of a good conscience_.

_Hol_. The deer was, as you know, in _sanguis_, ripe as a pomewater, who _now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of Coelo_, the sky, the welkin, the heaven, and _anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra_--the soil, the land, the earth. [A-side glance at the heights and depths of the incongruities which are the subject here.]

_Nath_. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least, but, etc.....

_Hol_. Most _barbarous_ intimation! [referring to Antony Dull, who has been trying to understand this learned language, and apply it to the subject of conversation, but who fails in the attempt, very much to the amusement and self-congratulation of these scholars]. Yet a _kind_ of _insinuation_, as it were, _in via, in way of explication_ [a style much in use in this school], _facere_, as it were, replication, or rather _ostentare_, to show, as it were, _his inclination_, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed fashion,--to insert again my _haud credo_ for a deer.... Twice sod simplicity, _bis coctus!_ Oh _thou monster ignorance_, how deformed dost thou look!

_Nath._ [explaining] Sir, _he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a book_; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; _his intellect_ is not replenished; he is only an animal--only sensible in the duller parts;

And such _barren_ plants are set before us that we thankful should be, (Which we of taste and feeling are) for those parts that do fructify in us more than he.

For _as it would ill become me_ to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So were there _a patch set on learning_ to see HIM in a _school_. [That would be a new 'school,' a new 'learning,' patching the 'defect' (as it would be called elsewhere) in the old.]

_Dull_. You two are book-men. Can you tell me by your wit, etc.

_Nath_. A rare talent.

_Dull_. If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.

_Hol_. This is a gift that I have; simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

_Nath_. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you; you are a good member of the COMMON-WEALTH.

He is in earnest of course. Is the Poet so too?
'What is the end of study?'--let me know.

'O they have lived long in the alms-basket of WORDS,' is the criticism on this learning with which this showman, whoever he may he, explains his exhibition of it. And surely he must be, indeed, of the school of Antony Dull, and never fed with the dainties bred in a book, who does not see what it is that is criticised here;--that it is the learning of an unlearned time, of a barbarous time, of a vain, frivolous debased, wretched time, that has been fed long--always from "the alms-basket of words." And one who is acquainted already with the style of this school, who knows already its secret signs and stamp, would not need to be told to look again on the intellect of the letter for the nomination of the party writing, to the person written to, in order to see what source this pastime comes from,--what player it is that is behind the scene here. 'Whoe'er he be, he bears a mounting mind,' and beginning in the lowness of the actual, and collecting the principles that are in all actualities, the true forms that are forms in nature, and not in man's speech only, the new IDEAS of the New Academy, the ideas that are powers, with these 'simples' that are causes, he will reconstruct fortuitous conjunctions, he will make his poems in facts; he will find his Fairy Land in her kingdom whose iron chain he wears.

'The gentles were at their games,' and the soul of new ages was beginning its re-creations.

For this is but the beginning of that 'Armada' that this Don Armado--who fights with sword and pen, in ambush and in the open field--will sweep his old enemy from the seas with yet.

O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er,
But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.

Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shake-spear's mind and _manners_ brightly _shines_
In his _well turn'd_ and _true filed lines_,
In each of which he seems to _shake_ a _lance_,
As _brandished_ in the eyes of--[what?--]_Ignorance!_

BEN JONSON.

_Ignorance!_--yes, that was the word.

It is the Prince of that little Academe that sits in the Tower here now. It is in the Tower that that little Academe holds its 'conferences' now. There is a little knot of men of science who contrive to meet there. The associate of Raleigh's studies, the partner of his plans and toils for so many years, _Hariot_, too scientific for his age, is one of these. It is in the Tower that Raleigh's school is kept now. The English youth, the hope of England, follow this teacher still. 'Many young gentlemen still resort to him.' Gilbert Harvey is one of this school. 'None but _my father_ would keep such a bird in such a cage,' cries _one_ of them--that Prince of Wales through whom the bloodless revolution was to have been accomplished; and a Queen seeks his aid and counsel there still.

It is in the Tower now that we must look for the sequel of that holiday performance of the school. It is the genius that had made its game of that old _love's_ labour's lost that is at work here still, still bent on making a lore of life and love, still ready to spend its rhetoric on things, and composing its metres with them.

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to _time_ thou growest.

He is building and manning new ships in his triumphant fleet. But they are more warlike than they were. The papers that this Academe issues now have the stamp of the Tower on them. 'The golden shower,' that 'flowed from his fruitful head of his love's praise' flows no more. Fierce bitter things are flung forth from that retreat of learning, while the kingly nature has not yet fully mastered its great wrongs. The 'martial hand' is much used in the compositions of this school indeed for a long time afterwards.

Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stower
When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise,

said the partner of his verse long before.

With _rage_
Or _influence chide_ or _cheer_ the drooping stage,

says _his_ protegé.

It was while this arrested soldier of the human emancipation sat amid his books and papers, in old Julius Caesar's Tower, or in the Tower of that Conqueror, 'commonly so called,' that the 'readers of the wiser sort' found, 'thrown in at their _study windows_,' writings, _as if_ they came 'from _several citizens_, wherein _Caesar's ambition was obscurely glanced at_' and thus the whisper of the Roman Brutus 'pieced them out.'

Brutus _thou sleep'st_; awake, and _see thyself_.
Shall _Rome_ [soft--'_thus must I piece it out_.']
Shall _Rome_ stand under _one man's awe_? _What_ Rome?
* * * * *
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings.
* * * * *
Age, _thou_ art shamed.

It was while he sat there, that the audiences of that player who was bringing forth, on 'the banks of Thames,' such wondrous things out of his treasury then, first heard the Roman foot upon their stage, and the long-stifled, and pent-up speech of English freedom, bursting from the old Roman patriot's lips.

_Cassius_. And let us swear our resolution.

_Brutus_. _No_, not an oath: If not the face of men,
The sufferance of our soul's, the time's abuse,
If these be motives weak, break off betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed;
_So_ let high-sighted tyranny range on,
Till _each man drop by lottery_.

It was while he sat there, that the player who did not _write_ his speeches, said--

_Nor stony tower_, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
If I know this, know _all the world beside_,
That part of tyranny that _I_ do bear,
_I_ can shake off at pleasure.

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
_Poor Man_! I know he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the _Romans_ are but sheep:
_He_ were no lion, were not _Romans_ hinds.

But I, perhaps, speak _this_
Before a willing bondman.

_Hamlet_. My lord,--you played once in the university, you say?

_Polonius_. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

_Hamlet_. And what did you enact?

_Polonius_. I did enact _Julius Caesar_. I was killed i'the Capitol;
Brutus killed me.

_Hamlet_. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
there.--Be the players ready?

Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty. _These_ are the only _men_.

_Hamlet_. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you
would drive me into a toil?

_Guild_. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too
unmannerly.

_Hamlet_. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this
pipe?

_Guild_. My lord, I cannot.

_Hamlet_. I pray you.

_Guild_. Believe me, I cannot.

_Hamlet_. I do beseech you.

_Guild_. I know no touch of it, my lord.

_Hamlet_. 'Tis as _easy as lying. Govern_ these ventages with your
fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, _and it will
discourse most eloquent music_. Look you, _these are the stops_.

_Guild_. But _these_ cannot _I_ command to any _utterance of
harmony: I have not the_ SKILL.

_Hamlet. Why, look you now_, how _unworthy a thing_ you make of ME?
You would _play upon_ ME; _you would seem_ to know _my stops_; you
would pluck out the heart of MY MYSTERY; you would sound me from
my lowest note to the top of my key; and there is much _music_,
excellent voice in _this little organ, yet_ cannot you make it
speak. 'Sblood! do you think I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A
PIPE? Call me what _instrument_ you will, though you can _fret_
me, you cannot PLAY upon me.

_Hamlet_. Why did you laugh when I said, _Man_ delights not me?

_Guild_. To think, my lord, if you delight not in _man_, what
lenten entertainment THE PLAYERS shall receive from you. We
coted them on the way, and thither are they coming to offer
you--SERVICE.