No More Learning

'

Again in a dissertation on _Henry VI. _: 'The malignant Ben, does
indeed, in his _Devil's an Ass_, 1616, sneer at our author's
historical pieces, which for twenty years preceding had been in high
reputation, and probably were _then_ the only historical dramas that
had possession of the theatre; but from the list above given, it is
clear that Shakespeare was not the _first_ who dramatized our old
chronicles; and that the principal events of English History were
familiar to the ears of his audience, before he commenced a writer
for the stage. ' Malone here refers to quotations taken from Gosson
and Lodge. Both these essays were reprinted in Steevens' edition, and
Malone's statements were repeated in the edition by Dr. Chalmers.

In 1808 appeared Gilchrist's essay, _An Examination of the
Charges . . . of Ben Jonson's enmity,_ etc. _towards Shakespeare_.
This refutation, strengthened by Gifford's _Proofs of Ben
Jonson's Malignity_, has generally been deemed conclusive.
Gifford's note on the present passage is written with much
asperity. He was not content, however, with an accurate
restatement of Malone's arguments. He changes the italics in
order to produce an erroneous impression, printing thus: 'which
were probably then the _only historical dramas on the stage_:
He adds: 'And this is advanced in the very face of his own
arguments, to prove that there were scores, perhaps hundreds, of
others on it at the time. ' This is direct falsification. There
is no contradiction in Malone's arguments. What he attempted
to prove was that Shakespeare had had predecessors in this
field, but that in 1616 his plays held undisputed possession
of the stage. Gifford adds a passage from Heywood's _Apology
for Actors_, 1612, which is more to the point: 'Plays have
taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous _histories_,
instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of our _English
Chronicles_: and what man have you now of that weake capacity
that being possest of their true use, cannot discourse of any
notable thing recorded even from _William the Conqueror_, until
this day? '

This passage seems to point to the existence of other historical plays
_contemporary_ with those of Shakespeare. Besides, Jonson's words
seem sufficiently harmless. Nevertheless, although I am not inclined
to accept Malone's charge of 'malignity', I cannot agree with Gifford
that the reference is merely a general one. I have no doubt that the
'Chronicle,' of which Merecraft speaks, is Hall's, and the passage
the following: 'It semeth to many men, that the name and title of
Gloucester, hath been vnfortunate and vnluckie to diuerse, whiche
for their honor, haue been erected by creacion of princes, to that
stile and dignitie, as Hugh Spencer, Thomas of Woodstocke, sonne to
kyng Edward the third, and this duke Humfrey, which thre persones,
by miserable death finished their daies, and after them kyng Richard
the iii. also, duke of Gloucester, in ciuill warre was slaine and
confounded: so y^t this name of Gloucester, is take for an vnhappie
and vnfortunate stile, as the prouerbe speaketh of Seianes horse,
whose rider was euer unhorsed, and whose possessor was euer brought to
miserie. ' Hall's _Chronicle_, ed. 1809, pp. 209-10. The passage in 'the
Play-bookes' which Jonson satirizes is at the close of _3 Henry VI. _ 2.
6:

_Edw. _ Richard, I will create thee Duke of Gloucester,
And George, of Clarence: Warwick, as ourself,
Shall do and undo as him pleaseth best.
_Rich. _ Let me be Duke of Clarence, George of Gloucester;
For Gloucester's dukedom is too ominous.

The last line, of course, corresponds to the _'Tis fatal_ of
Fitzdottrel. Furthermore it may be observed that Thomas of
Woodstock's death at Calais is referred to in Shakespeare's _K.
Rich. II. _; Duke Humphrey appears in _2 Henry IV. _; _Henry V. _;
and _1_ and _2 Henry VI. _; and Richard III. in _2_ and _3 Henry
VI. _ and _K. Rich. III. _ _3 Henry VI. _ is probably, however, not
of Shakespearean authorship.

=2. 4. 15 a noble house. = See Introduction, p. lxxiv.

=2. 4. 23 Groen-land. = The interest in Greenland must have been
at its height in 1616. Between 1576 and 1622 English explorers
discovered various portions of its coast; the voyages of Frobisher,
Davis, Hudson and Baffin all taking place during that period.
Hakluyt's _Principall Navigations_ appeared in 1589, Davis's _Worldes
Hydrographical Description_ in 1594, and descriptions of Hudson's
voyages in 1612-3. The usual spelling of the name seems to have
been _Groenland_, as here. I find the word spelled also _Groineland_,
_Groenlandia_, _Gronland_, and _Greneland_ (see Publications of the
Hakluyt Society). Jonson's reference has in it a touch of sarcasm.

=2. 4. 27 f. Yes, when you=, etc. The source of this passage is
Hor. , _Sat. _ 2. 2. 129 f. :

Nam propriae telluris erum natura neque illum
Nec me nec quemquam statuit; nos expulit ille,
Ilium aut nequities, aut vafri inscitia juris
Postremo expellet certe vivacior haeres.
Nunc ager Umbreni sub nomine, nuper Ofelli
Dictus, erit nulli proprius, sed cadet in usum
Nunc mihi, nunc alii.

Gifford quotes a part of the passage and adds: 'What follows is
admirably turned by Pope:

Shades that to Bacon might retreat afford,
Become the portion of a booby lord;
And Helmsley, once proud Buckingham's delight,
Slides to a scrivener, or city knight. '

A much closer imitation is found in Webster, _Devil's Law Case_,
_Wks. _ 2. 37:

Those lands that were the clients art now become
The lawyer's: and those tenements that were
The country gentleman's, are now grown
To be his tailor's.

=2. 4. 32 not do'it first. = Cf. 1. 6. 14 and note.

=2. 5. 10 And garters which are lost, if shee can shew 'hem. =
Gifford thinks the line should read: 'can not shew'. Cunningham gives
a satisfactory explanation: 'As I understand this it means that if a
gallant once saw the garters he would never rest until he obtained
possession of them, and they would thus be _lost_ to the family.
Garters thus begged from the ladies were used by the gallants as
_hangers_ for their swords and poniards. See _Every Man out of his
Humour_, _Wks. _ 2. 81: "O, I have been graced by them beyond all aim
of affection: this is her garter my dagger hangs in;" and again p.
194. We read also in _Cynthia's Revels_, _Wks. _ 2. 266, of a gallant
whose devotion to a lady in such that he

Salutes her pumps,
Adores her hems, her skirts, her knots, her curls,
_Will spend his patrimony for a garter_,
Or the least feather in her bounteous fan. '

Gifford's theory that ladies had some mode of displaying their
garters is contradicted by the following:

_Mary. _ These roses will shew rare: would 'twere in fashion
That the garters might be seen too!
--Massinger, _City Madam_, _Wks. _, p. 317.

Cf. also _Cynthia's Revels_, _Wks. _ 2. 296.

=2. 5. 14 her owne deare reflection, in her glasse. = 'They must haue
their looking glasses caryed with them wheresoeuer they go, . . . no
doubt they are the deuils spectacles to allure vs to pride, and
consequently to distruction for euer. '--Stubbes, _Anat. _, Part 1, P. 79.

=2. 6. 21 and done the worst defeate vpon my selfe. = _Defeat_ is often
used by Shakespeare in this sense. See Schmidt, and compare _Hamlet_ 2.
2. 598:

--A king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made.

=2. 6. 32 a body intire. = Cf. 5. 6. 48.

=2. 6. 35 You make me paint. = Gifford quotes from the _Two Noble
Kinsmen_:

How modestly she blows and paints the sun
With her chaste blushes.

=2. 6. 37 SN. = 'Whoever has noticed the narrow streets or
rather lanes of our ancestors, and observed how story projected
beyond story, till the windows of the upper rooms almost touched
on different sides, will easily conceive the feasibility of
everything which takes place between Wittipol and his mistress,
though they make their appearance in different houses. '--G.

I cannot believe that Jonson wished to represent the two houses
as on opposite sides of the street. He speaks of them as
'contiguous', which would naturally mean side by side. Further
than this, one can hardly imagine even in the 'narrow lanes of
our ancestors' so close a meeting that the liberties mentioned
in 2. 6. 76 SN. could be taken.

=2. 6. 53 A strange woman. = In _Bart. Fair_, _Wks. _ 4. 395,
Justice Overdo says: 'Rescue this youth here out of the hands
of the lewd man and _the strange woman_. ' Gifford explains in a
note: 'The scripture phrase for an immodest woman, a prostitute.
Indeed this acceptation of the word is familiar to many
languages. It is found in the Greek; and we have in Terence--pro
_uxore habere hanc_ peregrinam: upon which Donatus remarks, _hoc
nomine etiam_ meretrices _nominabantur_. '

=2. 6. 57-113 WIT. No, my tune-full Mistresse? = etc.
This very important passage is the basis of Fleay's theory of
identification discussed in section D. IV. of the Introduction.
The chief passages necessary for comparison are quoted below.


A CELEBRATION OF CHARIS:

In Ten Lyric Pieces.

V.

His Discourse with Cupid.

Noblest Charis, you that are
Both my fortune and my star,
And do govern more my blood,
Than the various moon the flood,
Hear, what late discourse of you, 5
Love and I have had; and true.
'Mongst my Muses finding me,
Where he chanced your name to see
Set, and to this softer strain;
Sure, said he, if I have brain, 10
This, here sung, can be no other,
By description, but my Mother!
So hath Homer praised her hair;
So Anacreon drawn the air
Of her face, and made to rise 15
Just about her sparkling eyes,
Both her brows bent like my bow.
By her looks I do her know,
Which you call my shafts. And see!
Such my Mother's blushes be, 20
As the bath your verse discloses
In her cheeks, of milk and roses;
Such as oft I wanton in:
And, above her even chin,
Have you placed the bank of kisses, 25
Where, you say, men gather blisses,
Ripen'd with a breath more sweet,
Than when flowers and west-winds meet.
Nay, her white and polish'd neck,
With the lace that doth it deck, 30
Is my mother's: hearts of slain
Lovers, made into a chain!
And between each rising breast,
Lies the valley call'd my nest,
Where I sit and proyne my wings 35
After flight; and put new stings
To my shafts: her very name
With my mother's is the same.
I confess all, I replied,
And the glass hangs by her side, 40
And the girdle 'bout her waist,
All is Venus, save unchaste.
But alas, thou seest the least
Of her good, who is the best
Of her sex: but couldst thou, Love, 45
Call to mind the forms that strove
For the apple, and those three
Make in one, the same were she.
For this beauty yet doth hide
Something more than thou hast spied. 50
Outward grace weak love beguiles:
She is Venus when she smiles:
But she's Juno when she walks,
And Minerva when she talks.


UNDERWOODS XXXVI.

_AN ELEGY_.

By those bright eyes, at whose immortal fires
Love lights his torches to inflame desires;
By that fair stand, your forehead, whence he bends
His double bow, and round his arrows sends;
By that tan grove, your hair, whose globy rings 5
He flying curls, and crispeth with his wings;
By those pure baths your either cheek discloses,
Where he doth steep himself in milk and roses;
And lastly, by your lips, the bank of kisses,
Where men at once may plant and gather blisses: 10
Ten me, my lov'd friend, do you love or no?
So well as I may tell in verse, 'tis so?
You blush, but do not:--friends are either none,
Though they may number bodies, or but one.
I'll therefore ask no more, but bid you love, 15
And so that either may example prove
Unto the other; and live patterns, how
Others, in time, may love as we do now.
Slip no occasion; as time stands not still,
I know no beauty, nor no youth that will. 20
To use the present, then, is not abuse,
You have a husband is the just excuse
Of all that can be done him; such a one
As would make shift to make himself alone
That which we can; who both in you, his wife, 25
His issue, and all circumstance of life,
As in his place, because he would not vary,
Is constant to be extraordinary.


THE GIPSIES METAMORPHOSED

_The Lady Purbeck's Fortune, by the_

_Gip. _ Help me, wonder, here's a book, 2
Where I would for ever look:
Never yet did gipsy trace
Smoother lines in hands or face:
Venus here doth Saturn move 5
That you should be Queen of Love;
And the other stars consent;
Only Cupid's not content;
For though you the theft disguise,
You have robb'd him of his eyes. 10
And to shew his envy further:
Here he chargeth you with murther:
Says, although that at your sight,
He must all his torches light;
Though your either cheek discloses 15
Mingled baths of milk and roses;
Though your lips be banks of blisses,
Where he plants, and gathers kisses;
And yourself the reason why,
Wisest men for love may die; 20
You will turn all hearts to tinder,
And shall make the world one cinder.


_From_

A CHALLENGE AT TILT,

AT A MARRIAGE.

_2 Cup. _ What can I turn other than a Fury itself to see thy
impudence? If I be a shadow, what is substance? was it not I that
yesternight waited on the bride into the nuptial chamber, and,
against the bridegroom came, made her the throne of love? had I
not lighted my torches in her eyes, planted my mother's roses in 5
her cheeks; were not her eye-brows bent to the fashion of my bow,
and her looks ready to be loosed thence, like my shafts? had I not
ripened kisses on her lips, fit for a Mercury to gather, and made
her language sweeter than his upon her tongue? was not the girdle
about her, he was to untie, my mother's, wherein all the joys and 10
delights of love were woven?

_1 Cup. _ And did not I bring on the blushing bridegroom to taste
those joys? and made him think all stay a torment? did I not
shoot myself into him like a flame, and made his desires and his
graces equal?
were not his looks of power to have kept the night 15
alive in contention with day, and made the morning never wished
for? Was there a curl in his hair, that I did not sport in, or a
ring of it crisped, that might not have become Juno's fingers? his
very undressing, was it not Love's arming? did not all his kisses
charge? and every touch attempt? but his words, were they not 20
feathered from my wings, and flew in singing at her ears, like
arrows tipt with gold?

In the above passages the chief correspondences to be noted are
as follows:

1. _Ch. _ 5. 17; _U. _ 36. 3-4; _Challenge_ 6. Cf.
also _Ch. _ 9. 17:

Eyebrows bent, like Cupid's bow.

2. _Ch. _ 5. 25-6; _U. _ 36. 9-10; _DA. _ 2. 6. 86-7;
_Gipsies_ 17-8; _Challenge_ 8.

3. _Ch. _ 5. 21-2; _U. _ 36. 7-8; _DA. _ 2. 6. 82-3;
_Gipsies_ 15-6; _Challenge_ 5-6.

4. _Ch. _ 5. 41; _Challenge_ 9-10.

5. _U. _ 36. 5-6; _DA. _ 2. 6. 77-82; _Challenge_ 17-8. Cf.
also _Ch. _ 9. 9-12:

Young I'd have him too, and fair,
Yet a man; with crisped hair,
Cast in thousand snares and rings,
For love's fingers, and his wings.

6. _U. _ 36. 21; _DA. _ 1. 6. 132.

7? _U. _ 36. 1-2; _Gipsies_ 13-4; _Challenge_ 5.

8. _U. _ 36. 22-3; _DA. _ 2. 6. 64-5

9. _DA. _ 2. 6. 84-5; _Ch. _ 9. 19-20:

Even nose, and cheek withal,
Smooth as is the billiard-ball.

10. _Gipsies_ 19-20; _Ch. _ 1. 23-4:

Till she be the reason, why,
All the world for love may die.

=2. 6. 72 These sister-swelling brests. = 'This is an
elegant and poetical rendering of the _sororiantes mammae_ of
the Latins, which Festus thus explains: _Sororiare puellarum
mammae dicuntur, cum primum tumescunt_. '--G.

=2. 6. 76 SN. = 'Liberties very similar to these were, in the poet's
time, permitted by ladies, who would have started at being told that
they had foregone all pretensions to delicacy. '--G.

The same sort of familiarity is hinted at in Stubbes, _Anatomy
of Abuses_ (Part 1, p. 78). Furnivall quotes _Histriomastix_
(Simpson's _School of Shak. _ 2. 50) and _Vindication of Top
Knots_, Bagford Collection, 1. 124, in illustration of the
subject. Gosson's _Pleasant Quippes_ (1595) speaks of 'these
naked paps, the Devils ginnes. ' Cf. also _Cyn. Rev. _, _Wks. _
2. 266, and _Case is A. _, _Wks. _ 6. 330. It seems to have been
a favorite subject of attack at the hands of both Puritans and
dramatists.

=2. 6. 76 Downe to this valley. = Jonson uses a similar
figure in _Cyn. Rev. _, _Wks. _ 2. 240 and in _Charis_
(see note 2. 6. 57).

=2. 6. 78 these crisped groues. = So Milton, _Comus_, 984:
'Along the crisped shades and bowers. ' Herrick, _Hesper. , Cerem.
Candlemas-Eve_: 'The crisped yew. '

=2. 6. 85 well torn'd. = Jonson's usual spelling. See
_Timber_, ed. Schelling, 64. 33; 76. 22. etc.

=2. 6. 85 Billyard ball. = Billiards appears to have been an
out-of-door game until the sixteenth century. It was probably
introduced into England from France. See J. A. Picton, _N. &
Q. _. 5. 5. 283. Jonson uses this figure again in _Celeb. Charis_
9. 19-20.

=2. 6. 92 when I said, a glasse could speake=, etc. Cf.
1. 6. 80 f.

=2. 6. 100 And from her arched browes=, etc. Swinburne
says of this line: 'The wheeziest of barrel-organs, the most
broken-winded of bagpipes, grinds or snorts out sweeter music
than that. '--_Study of Ben Jonson_, p. 104.

=2. 6. 104 Have you seene. = Sir John Suckling (ed. 1874, p.
79) imitates this stanza:

Hast thou seen the down in the air
When wanton blasts have tossed it?
Or the ship on the sea,
When ruder winds have crossed it?
Hast thou marked the crocodile's weeping,
Or the fox's sleeping?
Or hast viewed the peacock in his pride,
Or the dove by his bride
When he courts for his lechery?
O, so fickle, O, so vain, O, so false, so false is she!

=2. 6. 104 a bright Lilly grow. = The figures of the lily, the snow,
and the swan's down have already been used in _The Fox_, _Wks. _ 3.
195. The source of that passage is evidently Martial, _Epig. _ 1. 115:

Loto candidior puella cygno,
Argento, nive, lilio, ligustro.

In this place Jonson seems to have more particularly in mind _Epig. _
5. 37:

Puella senibus dulcior mibi cygnis . . .
Cui nec lapillos praeferas Erythraeos, . . .
Nivesque primas liliumque non tactum.

=2. 7. 2, 3 that Wit of man will doe't. = There is evidently
an ellipsis of some sort before _that_ (cf. Abbott, ? 284).
Perhaps 'provided' is to be understood.

=2. 7. 4 She shall no more be buz'd at. = The metaphor is
carried out in the words that follow, _sweet meates_ 5, _hum_
6, _flye-blowne_ 7. 'Fly-blown' was a rather common term of
opprobrium. Cf. Dekker, _Satiromastix_, _Wks.