Academiejaar 2007-2008

SPEAKE THAT I MAY SEE THEE

STYLISTIC CLUES FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF OVID IN BEN JONSON’S POETASTER

Promotor: Prof. Dr. Stef Slembrouck Co-promotor: Prof. Dr. Wim Verbaal

Verhandeling voorgelegd aan de Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte voor het verkrijgen van de graad van Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde, door Jolien De Vriendt Preface

In autumn 2006, I took Prof. Tom Cain’s course “Shakespeare and Jonson: comedies” at the Newcastle University. In an introduction to Ben Jonson, professor Cain mentioned his play Poetaster, a satiric comedy set in Augustan Rome. From further reading I learned that the play addresses highly interesting issues as the role of poetry within a community and the representation of classical figures and the ideologies associated with them. My personal interest in such matters induced me to write a bachelor paper with Poetaster as its subject, concluding my bachelor program in Latin and English language and literature. The paper consisted of a status quaestionis on the role of Ovid Junior in the play since much debate had been ongoing about this. From the reading I did on the subject, I learned that rarely critics had, in a structural way, used linguistic evidence to support their statements. This constitutes the purpose of the present work, focusing on the role of Ovid Junior. I would wish to thank the promotor and co-promotor of this thesis, Prof. Dr. Stefaan Slembrouck and Prof. Dr. Wilhelmus Verbaal, for their scholarly support and advice. I also wish to thank my family and friends for unremitting support.

i Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Jonson and Language 4

3 Ovid’s Influence in Renaissance England 9

4 The Ovid of Poetaster 15 4.1 Ovid’s role ...... 15 4.2 Literature review on the meaning and function of Ovid’s character . . . . . 17 4.2.1 The Stage Quarrel: envy and detraction ...... 17 4.2.2 Licence, sensuality and blasphemy ...... 22 4.2.3 Ovid versus the other poets ...... 34

5 The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 39 5.1 Scene I.i-ii: Two Odes ...... 39 5.2 Scene I.iii: Ovid, the Poet ...... 52 5.3 Scenes II.ii and IV.v: Ovid, the courtier poet ...... 56 5.4 Scenes IV.ix-x: Ovid, the Lover ...... 60

6 Conclusion and Further Perspectives 64

Bibliography: Primary Sources 69

Bibliography: Secondary Sources 70

Appendices 73 A Ovid, Amores I.xv ...... 74 B Marlowe, Ovid’s Elegies I.xv ...... 76 C Jonson, Poetaster I.i.43-84 ...... 78

ii Contents iii

D Jonson, Poetaster I.ii.232-257 ...... 80 E Jonson, Poetaster IV.ix.1-30 ...... 81 F Ovid versus the other courtier poets: a fragment from Horace’s role . . . . 82 Chapter 1

Introduction

The body of research on Ben Jonson is almost as big as that on Shakespeare, but the linguistic research covers a fairly small number of titles. This is quite surprising for an author who, for instance, deliberately removed the ‘h’ from his name whereas Shakespeare’s name has been found in at least five different spellings. Jonson was indeed highly conscious of the impact of any aspect of language on social life. Not only did he have clear views on language in general, he also designed a coherent linguistic program that he applied in his literary works. Bearing all this in mind, it is not at all a far-fetched supposition that Jonson paid particular attention to language use when designing the characters of his plays. Moreover, his notorious classicism induces one to think that this is specifically the case for his Roman characters and even more so for the Roman artist characters, i. c. poets. My interest in studies on the verge of the Latin and English disciplines and the linguistic and literary fields, brought about that I decided to make this the subject of my master thesis. I would investigate the language use of one Roman poet character in Jonson’s comical satire Poetaster, namely the character of Ovid Junior. This primarily in order to contribute to the debate that has evolved around the interpretation of Poetaster, specifically of the character of Ovid and, consequentially, in order to find answers to questions like these: of what nature was Jonson’s regard of the historical Ovid, in how far did Jonson link up linguistic, artistic and social accomplishments and what can we learn from Poetaster concerning Jonson’s artistic ideology and practice?

At first, it was my objective to compare Jonson’s handling of his character of Ovid with the facts about the Latin poet Ovid1, both on the historical and on the artistic level.

1Throughout this work, I will apply the name ‘Ovid’ for both the dramatic character and the historical Latin poet. However, if ambiguity arises, I will use ‘Ovidius’ to indicate the Roman poet.

1 Chapter 1. Introduction 2

Jonson’s character does indeed adopt many aspects of the historical Ovid on both levels, such as the fact of his banishment by Augustus and the recitation of some poetic works. I even planned, as a student of Latin, to take the historical Ovid and his literary works as a starting point for my discussion. However, it soon became clear that it was not Jonson’s aim to set down a historical document, nor to offer, in a literary form, his opinions on the Latin poet. Jonson was too selfishly concerned with his own artistic program and with the age he lives in, for which evidence is vast, also in his other works. Therefore, I decided to focus on Jonson’s construction of Ovid within his play.

From the reading of secondary literature on Jonson, one learns that two principles pervade Jonson’s career, namely his theoretical way of thinking, that is, his interest in literary and linguistic theory, and his commitment to the social and literary world around him. Consequently, I will investigate for both principles how they apply to the present subject. In the second chapter of this work Jonson’s ideas about language will be sketched out. This chapter ultimately focuses on what is relevant for a linguistic approach to the character of Ovid in Poetaster. Since Jonson’s linguistic commitment is significant as a condition for this research, this chapter can be considered an elaborated motivation for this thesis. It will show that stylistic research on a dramatic character, in Jonson’s case more than in the case of the average dramatist, may help to provide additional material for the interpretation of that character. A third chapter will be devoted to the literary landscape of the decades surrounding the edition of Poetaster, as far as the reception of the Roman Ovid as an artist is concerned. Again, this information will prove vital for the results of this work. Chapter four, at last, will focus on the character of Ovid. It contains of a discussion of the actual role of Ovid in the play and a literature review on the interpretation of this character. All references to Jonson’s text of will be to Tom Cain’s edition of Poetaster (1995).2 Chapter five will be the central one, namely the actual study of the language style that Jonson used for his dramatic construction of Ovid. As an objective theory for the description of language styles, I will apply the aesthetic categories as defined in ‘Latijnse taalkunde: bijzondere vraagstukken’, taught by professor W. Verbaal in the first semester of 2007-2008. This will only be done in an implicit way, since a complete account of the theory and a translation of its jargon into English would lead me too far from the present purpose. Arthur King’s work ‘The Language of Satirized Characters in Po¨etaster’ (1941), which especially gives an overview of various contemporary registers, will also serve as a reference work. The last chapter of this dissertation will sum up conclusions on different

2There is also an e-book of the play available on the Internet, provided by Project Gutenberg, see bibliography for details. Chapter 1. Introduction 3 levels. Firstly, the most direct findings of the study will be presented, namely the answer to the question how Ovid is stylistically represented. Secondly, these results will be put against the background of the debate on the aims and construction of Poetaster. Chapter 2

Jonson and Language

Jonson’s age, on the verge of the transition from Renaissance to neoclassicism, was a cru- cial period for the English language. It was the time in which classical sources were (in many cases for the first time) investigated for linguistic characteristics. Modern languages were compared and enriched with them. Especially in the case of English, this was a time of profligate borrowing from Latin. Moreover, this period is characterized by a conscious movement toward standardization and modernity, toward uniformity in grammar, pronun- ciation and spelling. Jonson was highly concerned with his language and so regarded by his contemporaries. Dryden and Pope both mention him as one of the “perfecters” of the language and in 1638 Henry King, in To the Memory of My Friend, Ben Jonson says:

Among those soaring wits that did dilate Our English, and advance it to the rate And Value it now holds, thyself was one Help’d it lift it up to such proportion, That thus refin’d and rob’d, it shall not spare With the full Greek or Latin to compare.1

Jonson was an autodidact student of linguistics and understood the mechanisms of lan- guage, for instance, that language was in constant change. He tried to explain evolutions in the language especially through tracing them back to earlier forms. Jonson also produced an English grammar. Concerning vocabulary, it is often Shakespeare who is mentioned as having enriched the language with his words and phrases, but Jonson’s impact was hardly

1Henry King, as cited in Neumann, p. 737

4 Chapter 2. Jonson and Language 5 less manifest. He was a valuable contributor to the English vocabulary. As a literary critic he furnished the language with qualifiers such as ill-turned or dabbling for verse, abrupt or dry for styles; he could talk about his colleagues as having a choiceness of phrase or excelling in the genre of parody. Other words appearing first in Jonson fall into the slang or humorous register and the language of invective and abuse. A grip out of his coinages is presented in Notes on Ben Jonson’s English, by Joshua H. Neumann. A full discussion of Jonson’s variety in vocabulary is Pennanen’s thesis ‘Chapters on the Language in Ben Jonson’s Dramatic Works’. Scattered through his poems, plays and prose works, Jonson expresses ideas on language in general and on the English language specifically. Collecting those opinions, a true language of philosophy emerges. In the next paragraph, some of the major strings of this philosophy are exposed. The discussion evolves particularly to the consequences of Jonson’s ideas on language for the design of his dramatic works. The latter discussion may serve as a motivation for the subject of the present work.

Jonson’s language philosophy and practice

Jonson’s is a coherent and consistent language philosophy, even if it lacks the aggressiveness and certainty which characterize his other philosophies. His point of view stays distinctly liberal, as Neumann explains (p. 747). Jonson’s basic principles, he adopted from the classics, especially from Horace’s Ars Poetica and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. Also his fondness of satire and criticism is a classical heritage. With the ancients Jonson believed in the supreme importance of language in human affairs. It is “the only benefit, man hath to expresse his excellencie of mind above other creatures,” and the “Instrument of Society.”2 Language could also serve as a mirror of life and its ruling principle is custom:

Wheresoever, manners, and fashions are corrupted; Language is. It imitates the publicke riot. The excesse of Feasts, and apparell, are the notes of a sick State; and the wantonnesse of language, of a sick mind. (Discoveries, 39) Custome is the most certaine Mistresse of language ... Yet when I name Cus- tome, I understand not the vulgar Custome: For that were a precept no lesse dangerous to Language, then life, if wee should speake or live after the manners of the vulgar: But that I call Custome of speech, which is the consent of the

2Discoveries 1641 (1923), p. 72. All subsequent references are to this edition. Chapter 2. Jonson and Language 6

Learned; as Custome of life, which is the consent of the good. (Discoveries, 74)

So custom is the supreme authority, even if it’s reign can give rise to anomalies of spelling and grammar. Jonson used to mock, for instance, popular etymologizing. Neumann gives an example from The Magnetic Lady, a mask, in which Jonson satirizes the attempt to connect the word magnetic with the Latin magnus. But still, every phenomenon in language has to be referred to common speech. In Elizabethan English, latinism was all around, especially for the sake of enriching the vocabulary. Pennanen notes that even purists were attributed a degree of latinism (Pennanen, 17). In spite of his classicism, Jonson held a moderate view that was linked to his belief in the predominance of custom. His point of view was that one should always aim at communicative efficiency and he was especially opposed to those who perplex others with nonsense. In Poetaster specifically, Jonson inveighed against authors who would baffle their readers or audience with long words, overseas words or malapropisms. The words that Crispinus is made to throw up in the final scene, with the help of a ‘physic’ of Hoarce, are indeed to be characterized as such. There is, for instance retrogade, incubus, lubrical, ventositous and obstupefact. After the vomiting, Virgil proscribes a remedy of classical poets for Crispinus and Demetrius and gives them some guidelines for future writing:

You must not hunt for wild, outlandish terms To stuff out a peculiar dialect, But let your matter run before your words. And if at any time you chance to meet Some Gallo-Belgic phrase, you shall not straight Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment, But let it pass, and do not think yourself Much damnified if you do leave it out, When nor your understanding nor the sense Could well receive it. (Poetaster, V.iii.537-546a)

A question which much occupied Jonson and his contemporaries was the question of stan- dard. If common speech serves as a ruling principle for language in general, the language of the London court, according to Jonson, was the best. Because learned men from all the world frequented the court with their knowledge and judgement, courtiers and gentlemen Chapter 2. Jonson and Language 7 spoke the language in its purest form. For young boys, the court was considered a nursery of nobility. Yet Jonson was also conscious of serious faults, such as the courtier’s love of affectation and craze for novelty, and was ready to condemn and ridicule.

Next to these general ideas on language, Jonson was also very much interested in the living language of his time. He was acquainted with many dialects, regional (especially the northern and the southwestern dialects) as well as occupational (for instance thieves’ slang) and used them in his dramatic works. This was not an altogether unusual practice in Elizabethan times, but Jonson stands out for the thoroughness and scholarly accuracy (Neumann, 742). This is obvious also from his own dramatic style, which is characterized by realism. Not only is Jonson the keen observer of society, representing a wide variety of people from all social levels with all kinds of occupations, for which he has more than once been compared to Charles Dickens, but his realism includes all social particulars of each character, such as its language register. Jonson laid down the principle that a true dramatist should employ language as it is actually used by people and defends the repre- sentation of realistic style in the induction to his comedy Bartholomew Fair (Neumann, 758). Jonson’s realism is also supported by his use of the ‘curt style’. This style may be viewed as an adaptation of living speech, including quick shifts in feeling, afterthoughts, self-corrections, unexpected interpolations or dislocations of attention (Barish, 185). In Poetaster, a prototypical specimen of this practice is Tucca, the braggart-soldier.3 Thus, it is Jonson’s aim to represent the language as natural as possible. It may sound contra- dictory then that one of Jonson’s principles as a writer was that a good work is always the result of careful study and hard labour of composition. Barish states that probably he worked as hard to roughen and irregularize his prose as others did to polish and regularize (Barish, 191). But in Jonson’s case, the labour did not serve to give the impression of learning and sophistication, but of unartificial realism, presented as accurately as possible. Next to realism, Jonson always aspires to moral judgement and language was also in this case one of his most important tools. There is always a distinction between good and bad speakers in his plays, namely according to their use or abuse of the standard, i.e. the lan- guage of the courtiers. Moreover, this distinction corresponds, for Jonson, to that between good and bad persons:

3Jonas A. Barish notes that this stylistic principle was used frequently by dramatists of the 1590’s, but emphasizes Jonson’s importance in its perfection: “... what in earlier writers is a mere incidental twitch Jonson transmutes into a stylistic principle. Jonson’s solution to the problem of a stage prose which would be at once idiomatic and of sufficient rhetorical formality to permit a wide range of effects was to take the sprawling, ramshackle popular language and shape it in accordance with rhetorical principles naturally congenial to it, those of the baroque style” (Barish, 187). Chapter 2. Jonson and Language 8

Language most shewes a man: speake, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired, and inmost parts of us, and is the Image of the Parent of it, the mind. No glasse renders a mans forme, or likenesse, so true as his speech. (Discoveries, 78)

Thus, when a character is represented with suspicious speech habits, there is reason to sup- pose that Jonson condemned this person also on moral grounds. In general the distinction between good and bad language is very clear and consistent, but there are a few borderline cases such as Prospero and Lorenzo in Every Man In His Humour. Another borderline case, is the character of Ovid in Poetaster. His moral identity is not made clear through the course of the play and a quick look at his language use does not help to demystify. But because of the fact that Jonson’s linguistic and moral condemnation seem to coincide, a closer look at Ovid’s language use may shed a brighter light on the moral interpretation. This, exactly, is the purpose of the present work. This chapter has shown that Jonson is generally interested in language, which could provide reason enough to carry out a study as the present one, but next to that, Jonson also linked linguistic to moral peculiarities. The latter fact contributes to the hope for some material results. Chapter 3

Ovid’s Influence in Renaissance England

This chapter gives an overview of the main tendencies in literary England during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that characterized the reception of the Latin poet Ovid. It is based on the chapter ‘Ovid In the Sixteenth Century’ by Caroline Jameson (1973) and on the article by James D. Mulvihill called Jonson’s Poetaster and the Ovidian Debate (1982).1 The latter addresses particular rival attitudes on the literary reception of Ovid in the decades surrounding the first staging of Ben Jonson’s Poetaster in 1602. The debate was specifically around one form of Ovidian imitation, namely that of the Elizabethan epyllion.

During the Middle Ages, Ovid had generally been associated with the mythological subject- matter of his Metamorphoses. The latter was most often explained as a collection of religious allegories and exempla. Some even perceived Ovid as divinely inspired, like Virgil for his Messianic Eclogue. However, at the end of the fifteenth century, there was a tendency away from this practice and towards higher concern for style and a renewed interest in the actual art of the author in his chronological context. Editions of the Metamorphoses without any attempt at allegorizing started to appear, for instance Raphael Regius’ in 1492, with the emphasis on philological questions rather than on moral appropriation. Thus Ovid’s mythological works became primarily a dictionary of classical mythology. But the stories from the Metamorphoses had already become widely known through adaptations by storytellers such as Chaucer and Gower. The latter also drew from the Fasti, Heroides and Tristia for his stories. As pointed out before, what distinguishes this age from the

1Mulvihill’s specific interpretation of Ovid in Poetaster is dealt with in the literature review, 4.2.2.

9 Chapter 3. Ovid’s Influence in Renaissance England 10

previous one is the rise of interest in the artistic achievements of the poet. Ovid became especially renown for his elegant and fluent verse style. Shakespeare declares, through his character Holofernes:

For the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy... Ovidius Naso was the man ... for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention.2

Ovid’s works became the handbooks of versification at grammar schools throughout Eng- land, such as Ipswitch, Winchester and Eton. The methods for the students of learning the rules of versification were through translation and imitation. As Jameson puts it, the specific influence of Ovid resulting from these facts was permeating England’s literary culture:

Much of these exercises in imitation, encouraging scholars to translate and compose as closely as possible to the Ovidian model must have resulted in the style, tone and habits of thought of Ovid’s poetry becoming assimilated into the English writers’ and readers’ minds and must have formed the taste as well as the literary productions of subsequent years. (Jameson, 213)

After a few decades, translations began to appear. The first was Thomas Howell’s transla- tion of The fable of Ovid treting of Narcissus from the Metamorphoses (1560). These trans- lations were not completely free from moral comments, but those became less prominent. The first instalment of Arthur Golding’s influential translation of the Metamorphoses ap- peared in 1565. George Turberville produced a complete translation of the Heroides, which were also imitated by Michael Drayton in Englands’s Heroicall Epistles (1597). Thomas Churchyard translated the first three books of the Tristia. In 1599, Brown produced the Remedia Amoris. Various metres were chosen to represent the Latin hexameters and ele- giac couplets, among which lines of six and seven feet alternately, rhymed “fourteeners” and blank verse. But never was Ovid’s terseness aptly imitated. Turberville’s verses often included colloquialisms and Golding all too often filled his “fourteeners” with repetitions and tags which usually give a grotesque and unintelligible effect. However, the latter was acknowledged as a good readable source of narrative and many references to him are found in Shakespeare, although there is plenty of evidence that Shakespeare also read the orig- inal Ovid. If Golding was the most influential in matter, it was Christopher Marlowe

2Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, 1953), IV.ii as cited in Jameson, p. 211. Chapter 3. Ovid’s Influence in Renaissance England 11 who first assimilated Ovid’s style; he was first to use the iambic pentameter organized in heroic couplets in his translation of the Amores, namely Ovid’s Elegies. This metre became the standard and is still considered the most apt and natural manner of rendering Latin verse, especially elegiacs. Marlowe best managed to represent Ovid’s balance and elegance, his terseness, humour and lightness of touch. Moreover, he was one of the few who also transmitted Ovid’s specific tone of playful cynicism and lighthearted enjoyment.

The Elizabethan Epyllion

Next to the before-mentioned stylistic elements, Marlowe also introduced the sensual ap- preciation of beauty, that became the trademark of Ovid’s influence, into English literature, especially in his Hero and Leander. Indeed, Hero and Leander became one of the proto- typic instances of that special genre that was the most peculiar manifestation of Ovid’s influence, namely the Elizabethan epyllion or minor epic. This relatively short poem, be- tween 100 and 600 lines, as Mulvihill describes it, follows Ovid in its erotic treatment of mythological subjects, in its emphasis on heavily sensual and pictorial elements and the use of elaborate rhetorical figures. Occasionally, all these qualities may be subject to a burlesquing treatment. Even if it tells a myth, narrative is not a strong point of the Eliz- abethan epyllion. Often the story conflates several myths and is complicated by intricate intrigues and interrupted by long and frequent digressions that are seldom related to the poem’s main theme. One more element that looks back to the Ovidian sources, is the mocking reduction of the gods. They are transformed into foolish voluptuaries and their conduct is governed by pure sensuality and passion; their divine natures are “necessarily subordinate to the epyllion’s encompassing erotic vision” (Mulvihill, 246). Mulvihill cites C. S. Lewis who revealed this characteristic in Marlowe’s work:

“In this form his sole business was to make holiday from all facts and morals in a world of imagined delicousness where all beauty was sensuous and all sensu- ality was beauty.” Hence the curious transmutation, effected in the epyllion’s luxuriant verbal surface, of intellection into sense, of spirit into flesh. (Mulvihill, 246)

Jameson similarly quotes C. S. Lewis, agreeing that Hero and Leander has been called “the most shameless celebration of sensuality which we can find in English literature” (as cited in Jameson, p. 224). She adds herself that Chapter 3. Ovid’s Influence in Renaissance England 12

it is probably the light, tongue-in-cheek eroticism which he acquired from the Amores - professing love as an uncontrollable fire, showing it as an art and affectation, switching from romantic declaration to shrewd calculation: the tone which he had caught so well in his translations of the Amores - which makes Hero and Leander so great and so Ovidian. (Jameson, 224)

Another example of the Elizabethan epyllion in its most Ovidian sense is probably Francis Beaumont’s Salamacis and Hermaphroditus. Also minor poets such as Heywood and Lodge left mythological poems. John Marston, in his poem The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image (1598), drives the eroticism to an extreme level. The poem becomes half exaltation of lust and half satire. However, the Ovid of the Ars Amatoria or the Metamorphoses is present especially in the cynical asides. But Marston dwells too long on details and knows no measure in obscenity and this results in “Ovid’s sensuality becoming stripped of its elegance and grace” (Jameson, 235).

The Ovidian verse also developed in another direction, away from gay amorality and to- wards a Neoplatonic, almost mystical way of moralizing. For instance, Drayton’s Endymion and Phoebe is a hymn to Chastity, glorifying heavenly love as partaking in a system of di- vine harmony. Also Golding looks back to the moralized Ovid of the Middle Ages. Edmund Spenser, in spite of his serious and religious intentions, forms an interesting example of mystical yet Ovidian writing. Spenser drew on the Metamorphoses for subjects for alle- gorical description, but especially Ovidian are the passages of wry, sophisticated humour and those of great poetical beauty in the Faerie Queene. A special case is Chapman’s strange poem Ovid’s Banquet of Sense. Chapman shows Ovid at his most licentious, striving to the exquisite satisfaction of all his senses. Yet “the phys- ical reality of the situation seems to dissolve totally into words and abstruse metaphysical thought” (Jameson, 232). The catalogue of feminine beauty is described in such cosmic proportions that all physicality seems to fade into a Neoplatonic vision of ideal beauty. It seems the poem is designed as a receptacle of higher wisdom. This debate surrounding the interpretation of Chapman’s poem can be extended to the Ovidian temperament in general. The lascivious Muse and the Neoplatonic spiritualising are both manifestations of the legacy of Ovid and, even if there are works that, often when set against the author’s professional background, clearly tend to one or the other interpretation, it is not always all that obvious what interpretation to ascribe to an Ovidian epyllion; there is no clear division between Ovid the sensualist and Ovid the spiritual lover. This is what Mulvihill calls the Renaissance enigma around the figure of Ovid. Moreover, the satiric verse of the Chapter 3. Ovid’s Influence in Renaissance England 13

period often took the form of an epyllion in order to condemn the lasciviousness of the genre. Elizabethan satirists, such as Arthur Hall and John Marston made erotic poetry the subject of their satire. Most notably, Marston’s Pygmalion’s Image, one of the most palpable instances of sheer sensuality, professes this ethical motive. It must be said that such morally inconsistent attacks were often based on personal grounds. Satire was used as a convenient vehicle for an ambitious writer to make name for himself. The schismatic Ovidian influence was also attacked from another corner. The puritan Elizabethans ac- cused the erotic stories as well as the Neoplatonic writings of idolatry. Not only did they oppose to idealizing descriptions of the satisfaction of the senses, but also to the mocking reduction of the gods mentioned above. They denounce the profane use to which poetry is put by Ovidian writers. There is one last aspect that Mulvihill identifies as an issue of the Ovidian epyllion. He calls it a danger inherent to the Ovidian poetic. Namely, the tendency towards pure sen- suality, devoid of matter, raises the question as to where lies the border between the Latin Ovid’s intentions and the subversions arousing from being carried away by a wanton muse. The question of original intent was central to the controversy surrounding Ovid and his imitators. The self-deluded idealist Ovid who shows up from time to time in the Amores and in the Tristia seems inconsistent with the frequent illusion of conscious immorality. The Elizabethan imitations were similarly charged of calculated eroticism. For instance, in the anonymous Willobie His Avisa as well as in Pygmalion’s Image, the poet “maintains the pretence of a higher purpose, while openly catering to lower tastes” (Mulvihill, 250). Mulvihill also cites Frank Kermode who claims that in fact the typical mythological poem “has a moral scheme cast into a fiction which is erotic in tone; but it betrays its ‘matter’ by playing up the comic and erotic elements for their own sakes” (Kermode, as cited in Mulvihill, p. 251). Kermode identifies this issue also in Ovid’s Banquet of Sense as a subtle subversion of morality which conveys a fatal split between form and ‘matter.’ Mulvihill explains that “Chapman’s Ovid condemns himself rather through his susceptibility to the suggestiveness of his own eloquence than through conscious erotic designs. ... [Ovid’s] intentions, never really explicit, although they seems so, are betrayed by the prodigality of his expression” (Mulvihill, 251). This predicament, says Mulvihill, is inherent to the Ovidian poetic. Ovid’s idle conceits, his graceful pictorial style and his obvious enjoyment in sensuality, arrange for his intentions to be misrepresented by the very medium of their expression.

Whatever the moral assessment of Ovid and his influence, the several directions and the debate of rival interpretations surrounding Ovid are symptoms of a renewed attention Chapter 3. Ovid’s Influence in Renaissance England 14 for the Latin poet. Stripped of medieval allegorizing, Ovid’s works were available for the appreciation of their real qualities, that is, their fertility of invention and refinement of expression. The Elizabethans were instigated by Ovid’s confidence in language and furnished themselves with his images and liberty in style in order to give a new language to Renaissance imagination and thought. Chapter 4

The Ovid of Poetaster

Ovid’s role in Poetaster, as has been announced in the introduction and at the end of the first chapter, is subject to a large controversy. It is the aim of this chapter to give an idea as to how the character of Ovid can be understood after several centuries of literary criticism. A first part accounts the actual role of Ovid in the play. A second part sketches out the various approaches of critics through the twentieth century up until the present day to the several aspects of the interpretation of the character.

4.1 Ovid’s role

Ovid is the very first character to appear on stage in the first act. He is alone, composing the fifteenth chapter of the first book of his Ars Amatoria. Luscus, a companion of Ovid’s father, comes to announce the approach of the latter and to warn Ovid to hide his “songs and sonnets” (I.i.5) and take his student law books. When Luscus is gone, Ovid takes advantage of being alone again to recite a longer fragment of the Ars Amatoria I.xv. This is the longest recitation we will have Ovid read to the audience, an ode on the transcendence of poetry versus the transience of envy. In chronological order he sums up the great poets from Homer to himself. Jonson took the English translation, though slightly adapted, from a translation of Ovid’s Elegies by Marlowe. Soon, however, Ovid’s father is shown on stage. Ovid Senior wants his son, who is a younger brother, to study law in order to earn more money. Eventually, Ovid has to defend his poetic vocation against his father’s clique of ‘libertines’: Ovid Senior himself, Luscus, Captain Tucca, and Tribune Lupus. At the end of the scene, in a short speech in defence of poetry, Ovid, left alone by the intruders, blames their ignorance and their inability to distinguish between ‘jaded wits’ (I.ii.242) and the ‘high raptures of a happy Muse’ (I.ii.244). If they could do the latter,

15 Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 16

they would dread far more To be thought ignorant, than be known poor. (I.ii.252b-3)

Ovid is still working on his poetry when Tibullus visits him in Scene iii, catching him red-handed writing law in verses. ‘They run from my pen / Unwittingly, if they be verse,’ Ovid throws in (I.iii.8-9). Tibullus brings Ovid an invitation letter from the Emperor’s daughter Julia. Tibullus checks on Ovid’s subsequent praise of his beloved Julia by telling him ‘Publius, thou’lt lose thyself!’ (I.ii.47). Later on in the conversation between the two friends, Ovid defends Propertius who is mad with grief for the death of his mistress Cynthia. In II.ii, Ovid, together with his fellow poets Gallus, Tibullus and Propertius, arrive at Julia’s place where other friends are gathered. Ovid expresses his pity for Propertius again and witnesses a song-contest between the poetaster Crispinus and the singer Hermogenes. Act III is dominated by the appearance of Horace. Ovid is absent. In IV.v, Ovid and Julia are the hosts of a banquet in which the guests are disguised as gods and goddesses. As Jupiter, Ovid sees to it that the guests amuse themselves. Gallus proclaims that ‘he gives them all free licence’ and Tibullus observes that ‘now we may play the fools by authority.’ Ovid plays his role as Jupiter handsomely, but does not bring up his artistic self. The next scene brings a furious Emperor on stage, who has been informed by the tribune Lupus about the banquet as incorporating a ‘conspiracy’. In his angry speeches, he exiles Ovid from the court and decides to lock his daughter Julia away. Each in one line, Maecenas and Horace, who accompany Caesar, beg his mercy: maecenas: Oh good my lord, forgive, be like the gods. horace: Let royal bounty, Caesar, mediate. (IV.vi.59-60)

But in vain. Ovid is absent in Scenes vii and viii but reappears in Scene ix, all by himself, lamenting his banishment. He especially complains about being denied henceforward the ‘good gifts’ of the court and praises it as an exclusive circle that comprises all pleasures and virtues in life: ‘Banished the court? Let me be banished life, / ... / Within the court is all the kingdom bounded’ (IV.ix.1-3). Scene x is Julia’s and Ovid’s parting scene. Julia exclaims she wants to commit suicide, but Ovid protests, saying that

in the soul are no affections. We pour out our affections with our blood, And with our blood’s affections fade our loves. (IV.x.33-5) Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 17

After Julia’s farewell speech, a sequence of going and returning occurs until Ovid falsely cries out that he hears Julia’s father approaching. Ovid leaves the scene and the play with the words: ‘She’s in thy heart: rise then, and worship there! / The truest wisdom silly men can have / Is dotage on the follies of their flesh’ (IV.x.107-9). The last act of the play features the Emperor and all the poets except Ovid. He is not mentioned by any of the other characters either; for Ovid, the play ends with the fourth act. The most prominent scenes for the establishment of the character of Ovid are undoubtedly the ones from the first act. They determine the nature of his character and his art. In Chapter 4, they will also prove to be the most weighty for our present purpose.

4.2 Literature review on the meaning and function of Ovid’s character

It has been the conviction of many critics that Poetaster can entirely be considered within the contextual frame of the Stage Quarrel. Especially in the nineteenth century, the study of the Stage Quarrel was the exclusive inducement to describe the characters, aims and indeed the whole construction of the play. After the nineteenth century, studies were carried out on various other aspects of Poetaster. Yet most critics still agree that Poetaster was primarily designed as a weapon in the War of Theatres, fought between Jonson, Marston and Dekker. Even if this is true, critics have tried to appreciate the construction and scope of Poetaster apart from this issue. Their main interest has been directed to the undeniably present theoretical remarks on poets and poetry. They have seen in it, for instance, a general defence of poetry as the moral reference system of a society, a dramatically designed theory on poetical genres or a satire on the baseness and licentiousness of Elizabethan love poets. From the above paragraph, it has become clear that most of the main events in the play involve Ovid and critics’ opinions on the intention and design of the play as a whole are always closely interlaced with the way in which to interpret this character. Indeed, the two are interdependent. This chapter will sum up the most various views on the meaning of Poetaster and the consequences for the interpretation of the character of Ovid as have been expressed by critics from around the 1920s onwards.

4.2.1 The Stage Quarrel: envy and detraction

Historical circumstances for the Stage Quarrel, a poetomachia also referred to as the War of Theatres, remain vague and will probably never become any more clear. It seems to have Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 18

started with a satire, in the regular form by a fellow playwright of Jonson, John Marston, called The Scourge of Villainy, which contained satirical references to Jonson. According to Jonson himself, Marston had also represented him on the stage in his Histriomastix, exposing his arrogance, self-righteousness and proud contempt. The Quarrel covers Jon- son’s three so-called comical satires of which Poetaster is the last one, first on stage in 1601. The nature of those consists in various proportioning of personal lampooning on the one hand and general satire on the other. In these plays, Jonson charged John Marston and the other playwright Thomas Dekker with scurrility, cowardice, plagiarism, envy and detraction. It is generally acknowledged that in Poetaster, Crispinus represents Marston and Demetrius represents Dekker while Horace is a personification of Jonson himself (as is the case in Satiromastix, the subsequent play written by Dekker). One scene involves a dramatic rendering of Horace’s Satires I.ix in which Crispinus acts as the bore. When he finds, however, that he cannot get into Horace’s favour, he turns against him and further in the play enviously accuses him of treachery against the state. Caesar is wise enough not to believe the charges and Horace gets to purge the poetaster Crispinus from his Marstonian vocabulary. Crispinus literally vomits the words (this vomiting scene refers to a similar event in Lucian’s Lexiphanes 21). Subsequently Demetrius, a poetaster of less consequence and several small offences, is also treated and both get a sermon from Virgil who describes them a diet of poetry. Apart from Crispinus, Demetrius and Horace, there are no other characters that clearly refer to specific persons, except for some shallow, inconsequential references that have been discussed by one or two critics. However, personal lampooning is not the first concern of recent critics. They uncover a more general approach to the theme of envy and detraction. Moreover, the character of Ovid does not seem to appear in the Horace-Crispinus-Demetrius plot (or sub-plot); many critics have given the plot around Ovid a place in the broader concern with this theme.

An attack on contemporary professionals

Ralph Nash (‘The Parting Scene in Jonson’s Poetaster’, 1952) finds that Jonson with this play meant to show how detractors had plagued other great poets than himself, namely Ovid and Horace. However, true poetry, such as Virgil’s and Horace’s, can rise above its detractors. Still, envy does harm good poets. Ovid is the solution to the problem since he shows that, although being a talented and very good poet indeed, he suffers from detractors because of his personal disposition. His licentious love for Julia shows his true character and that is where he errs. This aspect, namely the plot of the licentious lovers will be Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 19 discussed under part 2.2 of this chapter. C.R. Baskervill devoted a chapter to Poetaster in his book ‘English Elements in Jonson’s Early Comedy’ (1911). He considers the play at the same time an expression of Jonson’s theory of poetry (which will be handled later on) and a satire on the typical professional man: the soldier, the lawyer and the player. The soldier is satirized primarily through Tucca, an interesting variation on the braggart-soldier type and yet, according to Baskervill the most English of all the play’s characters, because of his use of low register everyday speech English. For the satire on players (and Baskervill adds playwrights but does not specify this supposition) we also turn to Tucca. He talks into people like the player Histrio, who is, however, also inherently despisable. The main reason for this attack is linked by Baskervill to Jonsons’s own failure as an actor and his difficulties with the player folk. This is a highly debatable question since actors were considered of the worst sort and it seems improbable that proud Jonson had ever meant to associate himself with them. As a playwright, of course, he is still closely connected with them, but through his classicism, Jonson had come to adopt a much higher social status to poets, as was the case with the classical poets, who generally enjoyed a much better social reputation as well. When it comes to lawyers, Baskervill points out that attacking them was customary in the sixteenth century and calls the attack “merely incidental.” Also the attack on informers, even if undoubtedly central to the plot, has its background in Elizabethan age playhouse practice.

Detraction as sub-plot

The others of the critics included in this literature review, who do at all describe the theme of detraction, consider this subordinated to another goal in Jonson’s design of the play. Norbert Platz, in an article tellingly named ‘Ben Jonson’s Ars Poetica: an interpretation of Poetaster in its historical context’ (1973) still does attribute a considerable role to this theme since, according to him, Jonson’s main concern was to expose the conditions for poets and poetry in his age. First, he points out that the prologue to the play is significantly spoken by Envy. She is surprised that the play in which she is to feature is set in Rome which contrast with her idealistic view of the Golden Age of Latin literature:

The scene is - ha! ‘Rome?’ ‘Rome?’ and ‘Rome?’ Crack eye-strings, and your balls Drop into earth! Let me be ever blind! I am prevented; all my hopes are crossed, Checked and abated; fie, a freezing sweat Flows forth at all my pores, my entrails burn! Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 20

What should I do? ‘Rome’! ‘Rome’! O my vexed soul, How might I force this to the present state? Are there no players here? No poet-apes, That come with basilisks’ eyes, whose forkd tongues Are steeped in venom, as their hearts in gall? Either of these would help me; they could wrest, Pervert, and poison all they hear or see With senseless glosses and allusions. (Induction, 27b-40)

A major complaint of Jonson was directed towards censure of the government and the spies and informers involved, those being, according to Jonson as the prologue suggests, players and poets. The exposure in a satirical plot of the current spy-system and of the dangers inherent in it originate from Jonson’s desire to contribute to the ordering of the Commonwealth, remarks Platz (p. 19). Concerning the banquet, for Platz it leaves no doubt that Ovid is not guilty and has only fallen victim to the informer Lupus. The latter suspects the banquet of inspiring a ‘a conjuration! A conspiracy!’ (IV.iv.14). It is this assumption, supported by the sceptre and crown for Jove and the caduceus for Mercury that were borrowed by Ovid and his friends, that leads him to reporting it all to Caesar, whose suspicion is aroused and who consequently interrupts the banquet. Here Jonson also shows the malicious effect of informers on the court and the state. Caesar’s very radical reaction is distorted by their bad influence. Platz argues that the Elizabethan public will have uncovered the irony of Caesar’s cry ‘Have we our senses? Do we hear and see? / Or are these but imaginary objects / Drawn by our fantasy?’ (IV.vi.2-4): he does not make proper use of his senses, because his sense-impressions are not controlled by reason, but influenced by the informers (Platz, 18). William Blissett (‘Roman Ben Jonson’, 1991) makes exactly the same analysis: spies, informers and jacks-in-the-office are inherent to the Roman setting. Moreover, he states that Jonson makes an important statement about the relationship between poets and rulers: “Even the best of rulers cannot, ex officio, understand the arts, and there are inequities in even the best policies having to do with morals and with art as reflecting or improving morals” (Blissett, 96). Blissett agrees with Horace’s defence but remarks that it is not effective: “the artist, even that most social of private men, Horace, must be brought to see the stringent limits of his own political effectiveness” (Blissett, 96). Platz finally concludes that “Ovid is not banished because he is a bad man, as some critics have led us to believe, but because he has fallen victim to an informant who seeks advancement at Court” (Platz, 17). He backs up this statement also referring to the intrigues the informer Lupus and his friends Tucca, Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 21

Demetrius and Crispinus are involved in against Horace (V.iii), which turn out to be only aimed at monetary gain. Earlier, E.W. Talbert, in ‘The Purpose and Technique of Jonson’s Poetaster’ (1945), had similarly pointed at the fact that the nature of the informer Lupus as well as Horace’s defence that directs the audience’s attention to Lupus, guide towards antipathy for the latter. Moreover, he has proved, by quoting from Tibullus, Gallus and the antiphonal song, sung by Crispinus and Hermogenes in the same scene, that the banquet is indeed harmless and witty. Talbert sets up a unifying theory of the play. He sees in Poetaster Jonson’s peroration of Sidney’s Defence of Poesie, an effectively written ars poetica. Two major themes are worked out in the play: firstly, the conventional humanistic theme of poetry fighting the battle with barbarism towards literature and secondly, the business of distinguishing between true, virtuous poets and malicious pseudo-poets. He even uncovers in the Emperor’s speeches a defence for poetry and an attack on poetasters. Caesar’s words are those with which Sidney defended poetry against Plato’s charges. He argues that Ovid has a quantitatively minor role in the play and moreover, that, by the contemporary audience, he was not conventionally related to lust, villainy or ambition. He is used by Jonson to attack poetasters on the one hand and informers on the other, not the laxness of his age. Staging Ovid, Jonson produces a theatrical about-face that would accord both with poetic justice and justice to poetry.

The poet-state relationship

Ovid’s role is not minor at all for Joan Carr, who tries to upgrade the role of Ovid in ‘The Ovid-plot in Poetaster’ (1978). Jonson meant to picture Augustus’ Rome as the scene for Golden Age Latin poetry. She puts Ovid at the same level as Horace and Virgil and ar- gues that they represent specific concepts: she shows that Ovid’s banishment was needless and only included by Jonson to show what grave effect detractors have on poets in any age; while Horace and Virgil represent Jonson’s ideals, Ovid represents his fears. In her edition of Poetaster (2000), Margaret Kidnie, addresses the problematic judgement of the banishment of Ovid by the separate characters. Caesar, as the personification of ultimate authority, follows the informer Lupus’s judgement, but Horace, the reliable commentator, subsequently defends the banquet and accuses Lupus. Therefore, Kidnie suggests an al- ternative reading of the poet-state relationship exposed: Ovid must be seen as the victim of application, the latter to be defined as the “determination to interpret an essentially harmless event or text through reference to unrelated contemporary circumstances and personalities” (p. xv), the latter, in this case, being spiteful attention seekers. This state- ment implies that the judgement of Ovid as a poet should be considered separately from Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 22 the informing act of Lupus. Kidnie concludes that Poetaster is primarily a play about the function and power of spies within a tyranny and thus grasps back to the interpretation that envy and detraction are undisputably central to the plot.

4.2.2 Licence, sensuality and blasphemy

Next to what can directly be derived from Ovid’s function in the general plot, there is the design of Ovid as a single character and that is in the first place a poet. Ovid is clearly represented as such. He is shown on stage composing poetry (Scenes I.i and I.iii) as well as reciting it (Scenes I.i and I.ii). About his character as a poet, a complex debate has been going on, especially during the last century of literary criticism. Opinions vary greatly. On the one hand there are big debates about either or not Ovid is at all to be perceived (a) as an intrinsically good or bad character and (b) as a proper poet, a poetaster or something in between. On the other hand, critics quarrel violently about subtleties such as where precisely lies his guilt, if it at all exists, for the banishment imposed on him by Caesar. Some critics have framed Ovid’s character as a poet within a general theory about poetry and poetics they see exposed in the play. Each of those will be focused on in the next paragraph; the present one is only concerned with individual remarks about the character of Ovid, specifically as a love poet.

A generation conflict

It is generally agreed that Ovid should be identified as the representation of another con- temporary figure, namely that of the Elizabethan young man, oppressed by his father. For Leggatt (‘Ben Jonson His Vision and His Art’, 1981) the situation in which Ovid finds himself at the beginning of the play frames in one of the basic contemporary motives: a young man suffering pressure about choosing his way of life. For Ovid, the options are lawyer or poet. The law-in-verse that results from this inner conflict is resolutely termed as ‘doggerels’ by Leggatt. Similarly, Levin’s attitude towards Ovid is kind. He sees the young poet as the marked man of later Romanticism, first condemned by his father to the law, then by the Emperor to banishment. Blissett distinguishes between the Ovid-plot and the Horace-plot in Poetaster and sees the clash between generations as a major theme. But he also observes that there are two important differences with the historical counterparts of the poets: the historical Ovid was over his fifties and an established poet by that time. Moreover, Horace had long been dead. This radical telescoping of time is one indication that Jonson may have known about the etymology of satire, namely as deriving from the Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 23

Latin satura.1 But of course, a simple identification of Ovid with either his historical coun- terpart, either the contemporary motive of the young oppressed Elizabethan, will not do for most critics. As will be shown in the following, critics believe that moral judgement is implied.

Campbell: Ovid as the fountainhead of the libertine tradition

A critic much referred to, and reacted upon, by later critics is Oscar James Campbell. In 1936 he wrote ‘The Dramatic Construction of Poetaster’ (1936) and echoes many of his statements later on in ‘Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida’ (1938). Campbell starts his discussion by pointing out that however natural it is to regard the play primarily as a document in the history of the poetomachia, the importance of the personal representations has been exaggerated. The characters, including Horace/Jonson, are first of all citizens of the Roman world and Jonson meant to recreate the manners, temper and taste of Augustan Rome.2 Thus he aimed to emancipate his comical satire, said Camp- bell, and, specifically, the satire would handle the contemporary libertine society (within literary practice), represented by Ovid. Thus, Jonson used the concept of representing Roman history as a repository of practical moral wisdom (as could be done with any stage of history), in order to correct dangerous tendencies in his own society and in the literature written for it (Campbell, 62). Indeed, Ovid was seen then as the “source and fountainhead of that libertine tradition of the Renaissance which as a final triumph spawned the gallants and witty women of the court of Charles II and their near-relatives in Restoration drama” (Campbell, 40). Ovid is without blemish as an artistic or social virtuoso, Campbell says, but he is a libertine in that he devotes everything to Julia. Jonson meant to show his indignation for Ovid and the contemporary Ovidian love poetry. In this, Kermode, who sees Ovid as a talented poet but dangerously immoral (‘The Banquet of Sense’, 1971), sides with Campbell: “Poetaster as a whole is concerned to establish that Ovid (and Jonson’s contemporary ‘Ovidians’) desecrates poetry and truth” (Kermode, 102). Campbell ob- serves that from the encounter with his father in the first act, Ovid is directly established as a slave of passion. On the whole, Campbell sees Ovid presented, in the first few scenes as the exponent of an entire society at once cultivated and libertine. He is without blemish as an artistic or social virtuoso but becomes libertine because he devotes everything to his love for Julia. The analysis Campbell makes is that “Ovid the romantic figure becomes

1This, however, is only one hypothesis and, as Blissett points out himself (p. 94), was not fully established until the great scholar Isaac Casaubon did so in 1605. 2Baskervill similarly subordinated personal portraiture as secondary to symbolism; Jonson was too unselfishly devoted to his art for writing a whole play with the sole design of personal lampooning Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 24

Ovid the libertine and so a vehicle of ethical warning” (Campbell, 45). Thus, he considers Ovid afflicted with both an artistic and ethical form of hybris. Concerning the latter, Norbert Platz has argued later on that at the banquet, Ovid sees through the vices of the lower society and mocks them. It is clear that Ovid means to remain faithful to Julia while for instance Chloe is obviously bored with and ashamed of her husband and looking for some amusement. So Ovid’s moral may not be all that one-sided and bad. Campbell describes the party gathered at the banquet in another way. He calls Ovid and his friends the ‘initiated’ who “season their amorous talk with banter” (Campbell, 54) while Tucca and his likes are crudely direct. About the parting scene, he remarks that Jonson shows sympathy with Ovid and Julia but does not specify how, which gives the impression of inconsistency with his former statement that Jonson meant to show his indignation for Ovid. Campbell uncovers a similarity with Shakespeare’s balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet but remarks that there are considerable differences. While Romeo and Juliet are easily identified as Cupid’s saints, Ovid and Julia are victims of passion (Campbell does not specify). Furthermore, he sees Ovid leave the stage, and the with it play, without any diminution of his amorous hybris: as a lascivious and not a romantic young man. Thus, in the course of the play Ovid has been reduced to the status of a doomed sensualist. Campbell is the most radical in his denunciation of Ovid as licentious poet and sentimental lover. Later critics have much reacted on this outspokenness and, if they at all agreed with Campbell somehow, they were careful to mould their point of view into a more differen- tiated approach. One could state that Campbell focused very much on Jonson’s ethical concern but seemed to forget that literary and linguistic issues also and maybe more promi- nently so belonged to Jonson’s concerns. At least, the latter is what later critics have tried to show.

Mulvihill: the Ovidian Debate

Two critics who stay close to Campbell’s interpretation that Ovid is used by Jonson as a vehicle for ethical warning, are James D. Mulvihill, ‘Jonson’s Poetaster and the Ovidian Debate’ (1982) and Tom Cain in the introduction to his 1995 edition of the play. They link up the ethical concern with a meta-literary one. At the same time, these two critics are the only ones, with Campbell, who seemed to realize that Ovid as a character in Poetaster was first and foremost subject to the interpretation of the Elizabethan public who were familiar with his person to a certain well determined extent. Mulvihill finds the image of the licentious Ovid in Poetaster embedded in the contemporary receptional history on Ovid, as dealt with in the previous chapter, and finds a sufficient explanation there for Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 25

Jonson’s picturing of the poet. From the early scenes Mulvihill concludes that “the fit labor of his pen lies rather in immortalizing the ‘sweet law’ of his mistress’s love than in scourging the follies of his contemporaries or extolling Caesar” (Mulvihill, 243). In these same scenes, however, Mul- vihill finds some shortcomings of Ovid displayed. His versifying the contents of law books is evidence for the ‘fatal ease’3 with which he (and also the historical Ovid) writes poetry. The use of poetic figures and pleasing words and Ovid’s rhapsodizing over Julia show a preoccupation with aestheticism that may conflict with the ethical conception of poetry. As King already pointed out before Mulvihill (‘The language of Satirized Characters in Po¨etaster’,1941), Tibullus, significantly, warns Ovid: ‘thou’lt lose thyself’ (I.iii.47). About the banquet, Mulvihill argues that it is ‘poeticall’ (termed as such by Gallus in the play, IV.ii.31) in the sense that it is based on the poetical power to deify earthly beings. The theme of the banquet is the infidelity among gods. The conflation of the myths and the applied sensuous picture making are taken from the fashionable contemporary inter- pretation of Ovid’s mythological poetry. The mocking reduction of the gods is part of a similar attitude towards classical mythology as adopted in the contemporary epyllion. The gods indeed become foolish voluptuaries as in the Elizabethan erotic poetry. Ovid, as Jupiter, imposes the only law: licence. Mulvihill derives that Caesar’s ire is provoked by this “seeming appearance of scandal” (Mulvihill, 247), though, it has been fed by the appli- cator Lupus. Mulvihill links Lupus with the contemporary ‘Ovidian debate’ as well: Lupus represents the puritan enemies of Ovid. Caesar consequently denounces the profane func- tions that Ovid and his friends attribute to poetry. Jonson’s view on the Ovidian debate however is different from the Ovidian enemies’ views. Jonson had a much subtler satiric intention with the banquet scene, as derivable from Horace’s defence of it. Caesar merely points at some Ovidian dangers that can arise from “pure sensuality in poetry, devoid of matter” (Mulvihill, 250) but nonetheless concludes on consciously immoral intentions. This view of Caesar contradicts the view presented in Act I, of “Ovid as a self-deluded idealist” (Mulvihill, 250). Mulvihill links this inconsistency again with a contemporary controversy, i.c. the one about the question of original intent. However, Mulvihill quotes Kermode who points out that there is a moral scheme in these works “but it betrays its matter by playing up the comic and erotic elements for their own sakes.”4 Operating along similar lines, is Poetaster’s treatment of the Ovidian poetic, says Mulvihill5.

3E. K. Rand, Ovid and his Influence (London: George G. Harrap, 1928), as quoted in Mulvihill, p. 243 4Kermode, ‘Ovid’s Banquet of Sense’, as quoted in Mulvihill, p. 251 5Mulvihill remarks, however, that Kermode is too radical in his placing Jonson uncompromisingly in opposition to Ovid, e.g. in his terming Ovid the ‘master of lascivious arts’ (Mulvihill, 251) Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 26

The contradictions about Ovid linked with the contemporary Ovidian temper are consid- ered by Mulvihill the most effective in the parting scene. There, Ovid faces the contem- porary sides of his historical counterpart. His soliloquy preceding this scene is concerned with the merits of the sensual versus the spiritual life, the former illustrated in the banquet scene, the latter in Act I. It is Caesar who partly explains this contradiction in his condem- nation speech in IV.vi. He has perceived the “basic flaw in the Ovidian poetic which results in the subversion of intention through what Kermode has noted as a betrayal of matter by external form” (Mulvihill, 253). In the parting scene the true nature of the courtier poets and in particular Ovid’s unfortunate predicament are revealed. Significantly, again, Ovid finds himself forced to accept the senses as the sole reality but feels the need to justify this in spiritual terms. Rather than as a conscious hypocrisy, we have to understand this as a link in the chain of the shifting pattern of meanings and idioms that characterizes the lovers’ exchange. Mulvihill points out that Jonson here shows the treachery but also the vulnerability of the poetic expression. Mulvihill adds an interesting observation to the discussion about the parting scene, namely that the lovers are clear illustrations and at the same time victims of the contemporary contradictions about Ovid to whose character they are inherent. Ovid is left “helpless in the face of absurd improbabilities which have been created by him through a prodigal abuse of the poetic conceit” (Mulvihill, 254). Mulvihill’s conclusion serves sufficiently well to give his study a crucial place in the critical tradition on Ovid’s character in Poetaster. Ovid is not the master of lascivious arts that Campbell and Kermode along with the Elizabethan satirists believed him to be. He is un- deniably a gifted poet whose intentions have been unfortunately profaned and who indeed fell victim to unscrupulous detractors and imitators. Yet, the deeper causes lie within the poet himself. It is his deluded idealism and shallow sensuality that constitute a flawed poetic, additionally misrepresented by the very medium of its expression.

Cain: a reserved view

A similar conclusion is found by Cain, in the introduction to his edition (1995): Ovid is a gifted poet, but misguided by philistinism and ignorance. Cain starts with a couple of interesting remarks. Firstly, reacts on critics such as Campbell who consider the introduc- tion, in the beginning of the play, of the poet that is to be rejected as a flaw. Cain argues that for a contemporary audience, Jonson’s play was presented not as Poetaster but as The Arraignment. As a consequence, and, according to Cain, in any case, Ovid was not initially profiled as a poetaster. Cain characterizes Ovid as the one from the ‘banquet of sense’-tradition, which is discussed in the previous chapter. Secondly, he points out that Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 27

the first lines Ovid is reading of his own Ars Amatoria are from a banned translation by Christopher Marlowe. This sympathetic tribute to Marlowe he sees remaining with the character of Ovid throughout the play. Concerning the banquet scene, Cain takes into account an aspect that no other critic bore in mind so far, namely the succession of the surrounding scenes. A prelude of three short scenes at the beginning of act four, damns the banquet as misguided levity, acceding the dubiousness of its fiction and of the social situation and, by the short appearance of Ho- race, “recalling a world of more securely-based values” (Cain, 20). Yet, the fourth scene before the banquet actually starts in IV.v, complicates judgement by showing the bad guy Lupus’s condemnation of it. The latter has two objections. The first one is the profaning of the gods, the second one the suspicion of rebellion against the authorities. Cain states that the first argument, since it is also Augustus’ observation, must be taken seriously. However, Augustus only appears in IV.vi. So, following Cain’s own reasoning, the public will probably dismiss this argument because of the character’s formerly established unre- liability. Confidently, Cain dismisses the latter point as absurd and only perceived by the “malicious and paranoid, the Lupuses of 1601” (Cain, 20) themselves. Platz, however, as we have seen above, reckons this very argument the reason for Augustus’ suspicion and rage. Since Cain can impossibly assume Augustus to think the same way as the Lupuses, he must see other reasons for Augustus’ fury. Cain returns on this later and first concludes that the banquet appears more innocent after Lupus’s intervention. Cain links the banquet to the Temple Christmas Revels6 and concludes that the emphasis is on licentiousness and that Ovid is the ‘Lord of Misrule.’ Also, he assumes that Ovid, Julia and the courtier poets were actually wittily acting out the banquet of the gods from the Iliad, Book I. He acknowledges, however, that accepting the banquet as a ‘feast of sense / As free from scandal as offence’ (IV.v.192-3) is still problematical; he is reserved towards Horace’s defence as well. One should take the whole story into account: the sensual licence at the banquet clashes with Caesar’s recent policies of upgrading of the traditional values concerning marriage. Moreover, Cain argues that Jonson cannot have considered ‘feigning bawdy fables’ as is the business on these banquets, the conduct of the poet. Cain points out that both Augustus’ reaction, resulting in Ovid’s banishment, and his over- reaction (termed as such by numerous critics) should be traced to historical backgrounds.

6Christmas traditions at the Inns of Court, of which the Middle Temple is one of the four, were an occasion for misrule and licence. The Temple Christmas Revels were a series of plays written for that occasion, focusing on licensed misrule, subversion, appetite etc. (as explained in the hand-out ‘Introduction 1’ accompanying the course ‘Shakespeare and Jonson: Comedies’ by Tom Cain, Newcastle University, 2006/07). Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 28

The latter generates from his bitterness at his family’s licentiousness, as he finds attested in Suetonius. Maecenas and Horace are there to save Augustus from the consequences of this weakness. Cain sees the treatment of Ovid justified in the two speeches by Augustus in IV.vi. Unlike Horace and Virgil, Ovid lacks knowledge of his civil and moral obligations and is thus a betrayer of poetry. Like Mulvihill, Cain believes Jonson here alludes to the fashionable poetry and drama of the years immediately preceding Poetaster, which, how- ever, he does not specify except by mentioning Marlowe, Shakespeare, Marston and Donne as writers of Ovidian romance exploiting the erotic freedom sanctioned by the form. In the same year as Cain wrote this, the critic W. David Kay (‘Ben Jonson, A Literary Life’, 1995) links this scene more specifically with Jonson’s protest against the Inns of Court amateurs “whose libertine wit is recognized as inventive, but directed toward unworthy ends” (Kay, 59). Ovid and Julia’s farewell scene is regarded by Cain as a rejection of ro- mantic comedy and tragic-comedy. More than a decade before Cain, Maus had expressed a similar view, describing the scene as parodic. Cain carefully states that the parting scene has “something in common with recusatio: serious parody exploits the emotion of Ovidian romance with considerable sympathy even as it implicitly criticizes them” (Cain, 22). Before, Riggs (‘Ben Jonson: A Life’, 1989) had better motivated this identification. Jonson describes Ovid and Julia’s story in the lovers’ own words. Moreover, through the resemblance with the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet II.i, Jonson “lays claim to the very model he is repudiating” (Riggs, 78). Riggs similarly interprets the recitation by Virgil of his own work as staged recusatio and concludes that Jonson demonstrates he can write in Ovid’s, Shakespeare’s and Virgil’s style, but does not want to do so. Alongside with Barton (‘Ben Jonson, Dramatist’, 1984), Cain considers Ovid’s arguments against Julia’s suicide as “dubious.” Cain repeatedly remarks that, despite all the parodying, Jonson’s sympathy for the lovers is obvious especially from the language. Cain’s conclusion at the end of his discussion of the character of Ovid is two-fold. The Ovid reproduced here is as much the historical Ovid as the Ovid of the 1590’s in England (this is basically the same as one of Mulvihill’s statements). The rejection of Ovid reflects Jonson’s rejection of the contemporary Ovidian writings and symbolizes the rejection on the whole of Ovid as one of the great classical Roman poets to be imitated in order to establish a new Augustanism. The latter is reminiscent of Campbell: Ovid is “neither one of Horace’s detractors nor is he, in the playwright’s opinion, one of the great master spirits who made the [Augustan] age golden” (Campbell, 43). Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 29

The profaning of the poet

That Ovid neglects the poet’s duties is a popular interpretation. It is agreed on by Ker- mode, Savage, Leggatt, Mulvihill, Barton, Cave and others. They all feel that Jonson wanted to communicate his ideas on how a good poet should be and act: what is his artis- tic concern? What should be his subject matter? What is his duty towards society? And, finally, in what way should he be of help to the ruler of a state? Baskervill, for instance, considers that Ovid and Tibullus give themselves up to banalities as courtship and love poetry while neglecting their duty as a poet, which is to convey wisdom with their poetry. Moreover, it is their bad influence, namely that of the erotic poet, that produces poetasters such as Crispinus and Demetrius. Consequently, their doom is justified. Two remarks are at place here. Firstly, Baskervill seems to ignore that only Ovid, and not Tibullus or any of the other love poets, is punished by Caesar and secondly that Crispinus never gives the impression that he sees Ovid as his idol, but reserves all his idolatry for Horace. Margaret Kidnie thinks an even worse verdict is proper for Ovid. First, she interprets the banquet scene. She states that - and this has been proved by the numerous differ- ent interpretations - the masquerade banquet “provides the most apparent complexity of audience response to Ovid” (Kidnie, xiv). As Cain has more elaborately explained, the unease was already established beforehand, when Gallus and Tibullus describe the upcom- ing banquet. Their speeches suggest imminent pride and arrogance. For Kidnie it leaves no doubt that Caesar’s anger derives from the poets’ act of profaning true divinity. This implies a moral distinction between performed identity and inner truth which Kidnie finds referred to throughout Caesar’s outburst. The fact that Ovid has upset the hierarchy of order concerning mortals and immortals, proves a threat to the social order on which Cae- sar’s political power depends. However, Kidnie does not link this with Lupus’ charges of treachery. Secondly, she considers that an important issue to the understanding of Ovid’s character is the extent to which his banishment is justified. The banquet scene has shown Ovid’s poor judgement. Kidnie consents to the fact that Ovid neglects his responsibilities as a poet by indulging his poetic imagination for his blinding love for Julia. He therefore must be abandoned by the judicious state. For Caesar, Virgil’s merit is to balance the competing pressure within the political system. But Kidnie points out that it is not clear “to what extent Jonson presents these limitations on the poetic imagination as proper” (Kidnie, xiv). Alexander Leggatt, also referred to above agrees with the interpretation that the civil authority ought to take over. Although from what is explained above (4.2.2), the impression arises that Leggatt’s interpretation of the young Ovid as portrayed in Poetaster implies sympathy, he does argue that Ovid is still very different from what Jonson’s hero Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 30 would be. His preoccupation with his passionate love for Julia and the fact that his love is his source of inspiration associates him with Shakespearian lovers while Jonson rather hails preserving the integrity. Secondly, Ovid is associated with Chloe’s clique which raises doubts about his soundness as a man and a poet. Moreover, the banquet of gods is a display of licentiousness (as is Ovid’s love poetry) and it shows that Ovid has a dangerous and irresponsible view of the poet’s function. There is blasphemy in reversing the roles of the gods which were made by the poets. Caesar’s subsequent punishment of Ovid is designed to abdicate him from his moral role as a poet, which is now to be taken over by civil authority, the actual residence of virtue when poets abandon it. Later on will be shown that Koslow as well honours a similar approach. Cave (‘Ben Jonson’, 1984) sees it slightly different and says, quite radically, that Ovid only betrays the gift of imagination at the banquet, even if his opinion on the latter may seem moderate at first. On the one hand, Cave calls the banquet delightful and its gaiety infectious, having an engrossing effect on the audience. On the other hand, he admits that it is used by the participants to throw all moral and sexual restraints aside. It even becomes an orgy. The whole leaves a sinister tone. Ovid’s guilt lies in being the author of outrage and blasphemy. In the first scenes he had been established as a fine poet. But, by merely pursuing his desires and showing off his vanity, he betrays the poet’s sublime gift of imagination. He uses his art only to indulge in romantic excess. Barton (‘Ben Jonson, Dramatist’, 1984) believes that Ovid is initially a good man and a good poet, but is annihilated by his clandestine passion. It defiles his poetic calling. At the banquet, Ovid irrefutably distorts the proper function of art, the latter being to make men virtuous and raise them to near gods, as Virgil does in the Aeneid. He blasphemously pulls the immortals down to trivial men of the level of Tucca, Chloe and the others. He also “falsifies divine names by imposing a division between them and their grotesque in- carnations which true poets ought to resist” (Barton, 183). Thus, Ovid dissociates himself from poetic monuments such as Homer and Virgil and even achieves to resemble Tucca, who regularly invests people with high-sounding but wholly unsuitable, fictitious names. More kindly disposed towards Ovid is Ralph Nash (‘The Parting Scene in Jonson’s Poet- aster’, 1952). He identifies Ovid’s love as a madness. Ovid does not wish to becalm his love and prefers ignorance to Caesar’s wisdom. Caesar, on the contrary, hails “reason’s marble trident” (Nash, 58) and reason is exactly what Ovid refuses to take up. This contrast is the inducement for Caesar’s furious reaction and severe punishment. Nash attributes two functions to the parting scene. Firstly, it is a logical consequence of the respective punishments of Ovid and Julia since it is not blasphemy at the banquet that they are sentenced for, nor the nature of Ovid’s poetry, it is their love. Secondly, it is important Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 31 that Jonson exhibits his acceptance of the love affair. On the one hand, it shows Jonson’s opinion on the question of the reason for the banishment of the historical Ovid. On the other hand, Jonson has Ovid banished as a licentious and seductive poet but not because this is the nature of his poetry but that of his love for Julia. Nash consequently argues that the parting scene is not merely comical as some critics have concluded. Barton agrees with this. First, she admits that the parting scene is difficult to judge. The effect of the similarities it shows with Shakespeare’s balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, is not easy to pin down. Obviously, Jonson did not aim at an equally romantic scene, yet the imita- tion is not at all farcical, nor does it present wholly unsympathetic judgement. The ‘to- and fro-ing’ does not have the comic effect as it usually has in Jonson. Cain later points at Ovid’s own Tristia, where he alludes to his indecisiveness on leaving his wife (Tristia, I.iii.55-6). Still, Albius’ coming and going in II.i which clearly generates the comic effect, must have coloured the audience’s response to the parting scene, Barton considers. Nash very observantly describes how Ovid’s praise of the court in the parting scene is similar to Jonson’s own and how his praise of Julia is similar to Jonson’s praise of Queen Elizabeth. Moreover, at the moment, Ovid is in danger for his own life and seriously counsels against Julia’s suicide. In fact, Ovid is now forced to worship only Julia’s “unseen being and her excellence” because “the worldly tyranny disapproves of his social rank.” Nash, here, sup- poses a parallel with Caesar’s attitude towards virtue. Because of Virgil’s virtue, apparent from his identity as a poet, Caesar raises him above his normal social status. But Ovid and Julia’s love does not transcend the order of society. Ovid is sentenced as a man, while Virgil would later be sentenced, and approved of, as a poet. However, what Nash neglects here, is Jonson’s well-known assimilation of good poets and good men (see 2).

Carr: the defence

In the complete critical tradition on the character of Ovid in Poetaster, there is one critic who most exhaustively engages in defending Ovid of any blame. This is Joan Carr (see also above, 4.2.1). Also concerning the issue of Ovid’s love, she is very confident in her defence. Ovid praises his mistress in a perfectly traditional way, observes Carr. His love for Julia is even the source for his poetry - a conclusion that Carr regards as a reason why Jonson might approve of the love affair. Carr acknowledges the difference with Horace and Virgil, who consider virtue only as worthy of such devotional love. But her solution could also serve as an answer to Nash’s distinction between Caesar’s attitude to virtue and Ovid’s similar attitude to Julia: all poets, be it a human or a Platonic being that they love, “all aspire to constancy in a world of flux” (Carr, 304). Carr acknowledges that Ovid Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 32 is a sensualist to be sure. But that is regarded as a philosophical position rather than a moral aberration. She has more to say in defence of Ovid. About the scenes in which Ovid is confronted with his father’s clique, Carr considers these barbarists’ “comic diatribe ... so narrow-minded and obstreperous that it in effect vindicates Ovid” (Carr, 300). The humour is intensified by Ovid’s responding in measured blank verse to the pretenders’s prosaic ranting away and by his writing out law-cases in pentameter couplets. Later on, Carr remarks that “this insistence on humble acceptance of the poetic impulse” (Carr, 301) is also found in the character of Horace, Jonson’s favourite. That “‘automatic’ writing suggests genius and even divine destiny” (Carr, 301), will later be strongly contradicted by critics such as Mulvihill and Cain (see above). Ovid’s frequent references to and praise of various Greek and Latin writers must be linked with Jonson’s view that a poet must be a man of universal learning. Next to intellectually superior, Carr finds Ovid also morally superior to the social pretenders of his father’s clique: they try to tempt Ovid into dishonest law practice. Concerning the banquet, Carr agrees with the poets’s indulging in license and sensuality but interprets these facts in a positive way. The banquet is a display of wit: “these artists are not merely tickling an appetite for the ridiculous but are fascinated by their own manipulative powers, as is evident in their role playing. Their disguise as gods is an assertion of their own brilliance, yet at the same time a mock-heroic, self-conscious undercutting of their assertiveness” (Carr, 307). She observes and illustrates a “comic- satiric sense of decorum” in Ovid and his friends’ division of the roles. There is certainly no blasphemy in the banquet, since “it has nothing to do with the serious concerns of either classical or Christian religion” (Carr, 307) - a perceptive defence of Carr. She also reinterprets Horace’s pleas for mercy to Caesar. Some scholars have argued that Horace simplifies the implications of the banquet (for instance Leggatt) or that he could not appropriately judge the event because he had not witnessed it himself (for instance Barton). The latter is true, Carr says, but Caesar had not witnessed it either. Jonson was just aiming at giving opposing reactions to the same event. It is Maecenas who eventually shows what we should prefer: ‘be like the gods’ (IV, vi, 59). Platz already mentions the fact that Lupus uses the borrowing of some stage props by Ovid and his friends as evidence for their conspiracy. It is Carr, however, who sufficiently responds to this argument. The actor Histrio, who lent the objects, must already have used them himself. This leaves Lupus as a “most stupid and venomous kind of allusion-hunter” (Carr, 309). Horace’s attack on Lupus in IV.viii is also very telling. Carr even states that Jonson wanted to show that “not every crowned head in the theater is a mocking effigy of a god ... and Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 33

good plays are more than topical allusions” (Carr, 309). Jonson pleas for artistic freedom. Together with Nash, he had been himself the victim of misunderstandings of his comedy. Another aspect never before considered essential by critics, is the nature of Ovid and Julia’s (alias Jupiter and Juno’s) statements about themselves and their relationship at the end of the banquet. Julia warns Ovid that she will make him a ‘poore poet,’ by Carr uncovered as “actually an attack on Roman society for not having better provided for the great poet” (Carr, 308). Carr regards this as part of the evidence that Jonson indirectly wants “to shame his contemporary London into better treatment of its own poets” (Carr, 297). She subsequently argues that Julia “recognizes the aesthetic hedonism of herself, her lover, and friends” (Carr, 308). They both hint at the imprudence and social impropriety of their love affair. The punishments they ironically suggest are clearly out of all proportion to the crime. Carr agrees with Nash that Ovid’s banishment is also a punishment for their love affair. However, she argues that “sensual indulgence was then considered no irredeemable wrong” (Carr, 310). Consequently, the love affair is no sufficient reason for the banishment. As an alternative, she refers to Tacitus, who had described Augustus’ severe and puritanical legislation on sexual morality, a link also identified by Cain (see above). Carr here omits to consider the extent to which 17th-century audiences were familiar with Tacitus. The pardoning of Crispinus and Demetrius and of Gallus and Tibullus is not intensifying the contrast with Ovid’s punishment, on the contrary, they amplify Jonson’s regret about Ovid’s loss. This is also obvious from Virgil’s recitation of the Aeneid in Act V. The fragment laments maligned lovers and reflects on the harmful effects of rumour. The needless banishment is Jonson’s ultimate illustration of the effect of detractors.

Koslow: the body and the soul

Finally, the most recent view comes from Koslow. He again agrees that Ovid misses somehow to fulfill the poet’s true function. He frames it, however, within a completely different context, namely the dualism between body and soul. The language of the body is transitory, grotesque and materialistic; that of the soul implies enduring value and transcendent. Koslow argues that “in the relation between his humanist classicism and his participation in the world of the theatre we will find some of Jonson’s most interesting and important thinking and writing on the question of how bodies and words react upon and inform each other” (Koslow, 123). Poetaster is concerned with “how the life of poetry operates on a higher ontological plane than other forms of social existence enabling poets to dispense with bodily limitations and giving them means for shaping the ethical life” Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 34

(Koslow, 131). Koslow points out many references to the body and soul dichotomy in Ovid’s speeches. Barton had also noted Ovid’s preoccupation with the body and assumed that Jonson had reservations about the erotic subject matter of Ovid’s poetry. Carr, however, defended Ovid’s love of the physical arguing that it is too close to our own love to be despised. She daringly states that Ovid understood that “only the physical is ultimately real” (Carr, 305). This point of view is an interesting one to compare with Koslow’s. Koslow links the Ovid-story to the theme of barbarism or the “true nobility topos” (Koslow, 143). Ovid evokes the struggle of the lettered humanists to advance their pedagogy opposing the traditional, martial and ceremonial nobility. The risk of getting involved in this nobility for a poet’s renewed social presence, is to be diminished through local materializations, namely re-enacting the poet as a person. Central to the interpretation of Ovid’s role is the relation between the life of the body and the life afforded by poetry. Koslow finds that Ovid’s recitation in the first scene highlights the use of theatrical embodiment as a way to reinforce what it means to revivify an ancient text. Ovid’s attitude demonstrates irresponsibility indeed. His conception of poetry is right, but Ovid is not sufficiently convinced of the power of abstraction. He does not take seriously the meaning of linguistic idealism as it pertains to the realities of his actual life. This is clear from his distinction between flesh and blood in the parting scene. Ovid becomes merely a body. The banquet of the gods, a pretext for sexual assignations, is a perversion of the power of poetry. Augustus’ rage is not at all disproportionate. According to Koslow, Ovid brought down the transcendent powers of poetry to the service of the body that even goes so far as to corrupt poetry and the poet. Augustus will have to interfere and punish Ovid with his material power. This conclusion, yet on a meta-literary rather than a moral level, is similar to Leggatt’s that civil authority takes over when a poet abandons virtue. Ovid’s erotic overinvestment in the physical, proves that the idealizing power of poetry as operating through the body has yielded to the risk of coming to serve the body. Koslow’s highly theoretical interpretation is the most recent one available.

4.2.3 Ovid versus the other poets

In 1925, Herford and Simpson’s Poetaster appeared, within an edition of the ‘Complete Works’. This edition would be considered as the authority for some time, used by critics throughout the twentieth century as a source and reference. In their introduction they stig- matize the play as having a “hurried and disorderly composition” (Herford and Simpson, 441). This has lead many critics to give up on unity in the play. Cave, for instance, defines the plot as “a sequence of telling incidents in which one by one all but a handful of ‘select’ Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 35

characters are exposed as gods, asses, dolts and zanies” (Cave, 15). But still more critics have dared the challenge to find unifying aspects or indeed to uncover a unifying theory for Poetaster. An often used method was to see Jonson’s ideas about the good poet gathered in it. Subsequently, many saw specific aspects of that ideal linked to the three prominent Roman poets in the play: Virgil, Horace and Ovid. Virgil only appears in the last act, reciting a fragment of his own Aeneid. In the following scenes he plays the role of rightful judge in the arraignment of Crispinus and Demetrius. He is often seen as representing the epic poet or the most fulfilled, ideal poet. Horace first appears on stage in a dramatic rendering of his own Satires I.ix. It is generally considered that Horace represents the satiric genre and/or the socially responsible poet. Ovid’s case is a more ambiguous one, as will be obvious from the different approaches of the critics as explained in this paragraph. Most often, however, he has been seen as the elegiac poet type.

A ranking of genres

Critics who have attributed this categorizing to the Roman poet characters include Mul- vihill, Barton, Riggs, Cain, Cave, Kidnie, Savage, Kay and Baskervill. However, each of them focuses on different aspects or adds subtle modifications. Those will be briefly ex- posed next. A first group of some four critics regards the poets merely as representative of genres as specified above. Tom Cain distinguishes three types of poets represented in Poetaster. Horace is the socially and morally committed poet while Virgil is the one praising heroic morality. Ovid is different from these two in that his poetry is erotic and “focusing on individual gratification” (Cain, 19). Moreover, the young inspired poet is assailed by philis- tinism and ignorance. His father imposes the study of law on his inoffensive son. At the end of I.iii, after Tibullus’ warning and Ovid’s condoning of Propertius’ grief, Cain considers Ovid’s character that of a “gifted but misguided young poet, lost in a sensual labyrinth” (Cain, 20). In the same year, Kay similarly observes an ordering of the poets according to their conception of poetry’s function. He finds Jonson suggesting that satire and poetry of praise are necessarily superior to Ovidian eroticism and amorous songs. Riggs has a more refined viewpoint. Ovid is the embodiment of an alteration of cultural values on three levels. Firstly, Ovid himself is, concerning his purely literary identity, a representation of the contemporary elegiac poets and the Petrarchan sonneteers of the 1590s. Secondly, as to his social identity, Ovid refers to courtly contemporary libertines such as the Earls of Essex and Southampton. The third level concerns Jonson’s own artistic development: “Ovid bore out his inclination to cultivate satire, comedy, epigram, and epistle (the classi- Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 36 cal genres of the plain style) and to put the mellifluous verse forms of the great Elizabethan poets behind him” (Riggs, 75). As defensive as ever against the assumption that the three poets are ranked according to the genre they represent, is Carr’s theory. Ovid’s love-poetry (as that of the courtier poets) is individualistic and subjective indeed, while the epic and the satiric genre are con- cerned with public, societal ideals. But rather than contradictory, these are complementary values. Carr believes she speaks Jonson when declaring that poetry should concern the private man within society. Augustus’ outburst and the last act establish that “Horace’s and Maecenas’ community of mutual love is more truly ideal than Augustus’ community of public and political power” (Carr, 307): the individual is subject to love, not to law. Carr observes that Horace is proved “moved by the Elegiac poets’ private values of friendship and mutual appreciation” (Carr, 307) as displayed in the banquet scene when he notes its ‘innocent mirth’ and ‘harmless pleasure.’

An artistic ranking of poets

A group of three critics focuses on the general function of and appreciation for poetry as criterion for the ranking of the poets. Ann Barton frames Poetaster in the three Jonsonian satirical comedies (the others are Every Man Out Of His Humour and Cynthia’s Revels) investigating the matter of good versus bad art. Specifically, this play is concerned with poetry and the qualifications of the poet. Its business is to put eight poets in order of merit: Virgil at the top with Horace right beneath him and Crispinus and Demetrius at the bottom. Virgil best fulfills the proper function of art, namely to teach virtue and lift the virtuous to near gods. Ovid has openly distorted this function of poetry at the banquet and therefore his banishment is justified. Virgil is also Jonson’s ideal poet for Baskervill, because of his spirit of humanism, his newly arising art, the purity of his diction, the reflection of life inherent to his poetry and the creation of beauty through it. Moreover, he rises above envy and malice, unlike Horace, who is therefore necessarily subordinate. Crispinus stands for the abuse of word-mongery (his name was also in Juvenal and in the historical Horace related to this concept). Jonson was against the stilted, affected and crabbed vocabularies of the day (Baskervill, 303). The poetasters in general are condemned for their ignorance, the baseness of their ideals, their lack of originality and much more. And ignorance is the soil for envy and detraction. Ovid is thus a victim of his ignorance. For James E. Savage (‘Ben Jonson’s Basic Comic Characters and Other Essays’, 1973), the scheme of the play is the glorification of poetry, “rendered more effective by the contrast between true poets and poetasters” (Savage, 101). Virgil is indisputably the “ideal Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 37 practitioner of the art of poetry.” Horace is a “near perfect exponent.” Crispinus is the poetaster. Savage allows the courtier poets, including Ovid, to be acceptable examples. Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid are four courtier poets but only Propertius and Ovid go so far as to find the final purpose of poetry in service to their mistresses. That is the very reason for their respective punishment: Propertius is disapproved of by Horace, Ovid banished.

A moral ranking of poets

Finally, three or so more critics attribute great importance the the poet’s social respon- sibility. Richard Cave considers Ovid and Horace as antagonists. He contrasts them as the romantic poet versus the socially responsible poet and even considers them separated within the play. He refers to Horace accompanying Caesar when the latter convicts Ovid (the single line of plea for clemency is a mere futility) and to the fact that only once they appear on the stage together. In that scene (IV.vi), no space is accorded them to debate about their different claims for the art of poetry. Leggatt better explains the way in which Ovid and Horace can be seen as antagonists. The banquet shows that Ovid has a dan- gerous and irresponsible view of the poet’s function. There is blasphemy in reversing the roles of the gods which were made by the poets. Caesar’s subsequent punishment of Ovid is designed to abdicate him from his moral role as a poet, which is now to be taken over by civil authority, the actual residence of virtue when poets abandon her. On the poetic level, it is Horace who takes over. Horace’s social circle is a worthy literary circle where everyone knows his own level: Horace himself acknowledges that the satiric and not the more worthy epic literary form fits him best. As Ovid, Horace has a friend-lawyer: the distinguished Trebatius proves that law and poetry are perfectly combinable. The urbane subject-matter is regarded more meritorious than the romantic one. While Ovid was lofty but irrespon- sible, Horace takes up his social responsibility but lacks loftiness. Virgil, as portrayed in the last act, personifies both qualities and adds modesty. His subject-matter raises above the earth, yet contains aspects ordinary enough. Moreover, instead of describing private passions, it serves the community.

Kidnie: a political ranking of poets

The last critic of relevance in this discussion, Margaret Kidnie, first agrees that the signifi- cance of the first few scenes is not apparent. The appearance of Ovid as the first character may be misleading, but Jonson may have had a reason for postponing the emergence of the actual poetaster. Kidnie plausibly suggests that he may aim “to broaden the scope Chapter 4. The Ovid of Poetaster 38 of inquiry beyond mere denunciation of artistic incompetence to include an exploration of the cultural and political significance of poetry within the state” (Kidnie, xiii). This issue is central to the interpretation of the character of Ovid: he is contrasted with Crispinus. The latter uses poetry to seduce Chloe and to attack Horace out of professional jealousy. Ovid at least shows avowed commitment, for instance in his silent rebellion against his father. Kidnie slightly differs from the other critics by closely linking the criterion for the ranking of the poets to the their political environment. Ovid is too indiscrete as a poet to be of considerable importance to the establishment. Virgil, on the other hand, is the ideal counsellor of the state. Horace occupies a crucial position within Caesar’s court. He is prepared to comment on policy and events and thus, conveys beneficial guiding impact on the mechanisms of the state. Nevertheless, he is “limited by the perils of pursuing the ideal of free speech within a tyranny.” His vulnerability is evident from the last act, when he has to defend one of his own emblems from Lupus’s treasonous interpretation. Chapter 5

The Language of Ovid in Poetaster

This chapter will give an account of the research done on the language of Ovid, as described in the introduction. The account follows the succession of the scenes in which Ovid occurs in Poetaster. Not all the text that is actually commented on is cited here, but examples are always provided. For the sake of clarity, the interpretation of the findings is kept short and preliminary. More attention will be paid to elaborate interpretation of the research in the chapter ‘Conclusion and Further Perspectives’.

5.1 Scene I.i-ii: Two Odes

Ovid, the poet

These are the scenes that introduce Ovid on the stage. A personification of Envy, having left after doing the Induction, already reappears as his antagonist, now impersonated by Ovid Senior and his club of friends and servants. The latter’s arrival is announced by Luscus, a servant epitaphed ‘good ignorance’ by Ovid. Luscus does not directly scorn Ovid because of the poetry writing he is engaged with at that moment, but warns him to hide it for his approaching father. His aim of mere warning dismisses him from the charge of envy and has him only claimed as ‘ignorant.’ ‘Good’ because he does take sides with Ovid in warning him and is goodheartedly trying to shield Ovid from his father’s scorn, ‘ignorant’ because he is not, in Ovid’s opinion, confident enough (or idealistic enough) about the value of poetry to know that no person should ever be uneasy with anyone else about writing poetry. Ovid Senior and his likes are directly announced as being envious. At the end of Scene I.ii Ovid refers to the same difference between ignorance and envy (that is, envy for material reasons), claiming that if they would be able to appreciate the

39 Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 40

virtues of poetry, they would ‘dread far more / To be thought ignorant than to be known poor.’ When Ovid is left alone, he addresses Envy in a representation of Amores I.xv (see Appendix A). Jonson used Marlowe’s translation from Ovid’s Elegies (see Appendix B) and adapted it slightly (see Appendix C), partly to ameliorate, in his opinion, the translation, partly, as we will see, to fit it better to his purposes. Ovid’s first lines are a translation of the final dystich of Amores I.xv, a couplet of iambic pentameters - the metre of sonneteers and elegists, - that return at the end of this scene. Directly after this couplet, however, Ovid starts talking in prose, none else than what the spectators would expect. The contrast between the two verse lines and the prose speech that follows is comprehensive.

Then, when this body falls in funeral fire, My name shall live and my best part aspire. It shall go so. (I.i.1-3)

The opening couplet is of high, poetic diction. There is an opposition between the body of the poet and his ‘best part;’ the latter is said to aspire,’ which suggests an identification of it with the spirit and thus completes the opposition. Such an opposition may be classical but is mystified by ‘best part’ and by the fact that this denotes the poetic oeuvre and not just the ‘spirit’. The alliteration of /f/ in the first line is echoed by the alliteration of bilabial occlusives in the three respective stressed syllables of the second line. The short sentence with which the second verse starts creates a pause before the ‘and’ which enhances the effect of the alliteration. The dual subject, closely linked up by the ellipsis of the verb in the second member, emphasizes the fact that this part shall indeed live. Let us compare with Jonson’s source translation, the translation by Marlowe.

Then though death rakes my bones in funeral fire, I’ll live, and as he pulls me down, mount higher.

The idea expressed here is more complicated and more metaphysical. There is no clear distinction between the body and the spirit, or, the soul. ‘[B]ones’ is a pars pro toto and the paradox in the second line is beautiful, but Jonson was writing for a stage public as wide as possible. So he made the complicated idea more accessible. Yet he maintains the stylistic refinement by extending the alliteration and makes the verses run more smoothly through reducing the two pauses in the second line to one. Even after these simplifications, the couplet remains highly poetic and more so for the contrast with the prose dialogue that Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 41

follows. ‘It shall go so’ is a short, basic, speaking language sentence. The same goes for ‘Give me; how near is my father?’ and the rest of Ovid’s prose speeches in this scene. Ovid comments on Luscus’ language using the expression “to have buskins on.” Cain notes that “buskins” refer to the high shoes worn in classical tragedy (I.i.19n). So we may infer that Ovid is mocking a diction close to the one that he is aspiring to in his elegy. He also would not associate this style with the servant Luscus. All this again highlights the present contrast between styles. As soon as Luscus is off, Ovid switches to poetry again and fixes attention on this fact by saying

I’m glad th’art gone; For thus alone our ear shall better judge The hasty errors of our morning Muse. (I.i.40b-2)

At this, the spectators are directly aware of the transition. The first line is still casual (simple words, short sentence, direct expression of the sense). The next couplet efficiently conveys the transition to the poetic work that follows directly, especially by putting ‘Muse’ at the very end. But also by the use of abstract terms (‘our morning Muse’), poetic plural (‘our ear’), obscured relationships between grammatically united words (‘hasty’ is only attributive in a causal sense to ‘errors’; ‘morning Muse’ refers to poetry written in the early morning, implying that one’s concentration is distracted in the early hour), longer periods (the third verse is one period) and inversion (‘better judge’).

The Ode to Eternity Through Poetry

For the representation of one of Ovid’s elegies about poetry in general, Amores I.xv, Jon- son chose to copy, as mentioned above, Marlowe’s translation. The iambic pentameter and, more specifically, the heroic couplet is not more than what the public would expect for an elegy, it is the basic unit of many common verse forms such as sonnets, elegies and drama. However, to use it for a translation of the Latin elegiac couplet, was innovative. It was Marlowe who established that tradition (Jameson, 222). He found the iambic pentame- ter, with the addition of rhyme, the most apt to reproduce Ovid’s balance and elegance. Apparently he was joined in this opinion by Jonson, who took over this metre. The elegy is asymmetrically divided, according to the content, into three parts, of respectively four, eleven and six couplets. The first starts with three couplets which each express one of the charges laid against Ovid by Envy: (a) his poetry writing springs from nothing but idleness, (b) he should become a soldier instead and, if not, (c) he should study the law.1

1Note that soldier and lawyer are two professions that are mocked throughout the play. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 42

The last couplet of the first part is the answer that Ovid serves Envy with: if I would be a soldier or a lawyer my achievements would be momentary and my fame would die with me but a poet’s work assures eternal fame. It is interesting to note that Marlowe had ‘works’ in the second line where Jonson has ‘verse’. The Latin original has ‘ingeniique vocas carmen inertis opus,’ literally, ‘and you call my song the work of idle genius.’ It could be that Jonson meant to exclude all interpretations except that Ovid’s poetry is referred to and not any other of his occupations. But it is more probable that Jonson just considered ‘verse’ a better translation since, as we will see, most of his changes between to Marlowe’s translation are meant to give a closer representation of the Latin. Jonson also changed ‘brawling laws’ into ‘tedious laws’ and ‘to set to sale’ into ‘prostitute.’ Both changes more outspokenly express (the nature of) Ovid’s aversion for the study of law. In the case of the former, Jonson did not agree with Ovid’s ‘verbosas’ (or the word was not fit for his present purpose), whereas in the case of the latter, he returned to ‘prostituisse’. Jonson’s eighth verse is modified from Marlowe’s ‘That all the world may ever chant my name;’ he changed the wish into a future affirmative clause in order to support better the claim of poetry against Envy. The Latin has a purpose clause: ‘in toto semper ut orbe canar’ (‘so that through the whole world I will always be sung’), which leans closer to the affirmative sense as well. So far the style is not yet highly poetic. However, it is elegant enough. The poetic diction is restricted to some paraphrases (‘war’s dusty honours;’ ‘fruits of an idle quill;’ ‘line from whence I sprung;’ ‘prostitute my voice’) but a compelling sentence completes the introduc- tion of the poem. It is especially the presence of some strong ideas and the elegant way in which they are expressed that convey the beauty of this part. The metre and especially the addition of rhyme efficiently represent the cadance and the division into couplets of the Latin. Yet Ovidius managed to put much more stylistic refinement in his poem. For instance, the three subsequent embraces in lines 5 to 7 - each of them grammatically dif- ferent for the sake of cunning variation - work up to the climax of the opposition between mortal and eternal:

nec me verbosas leges ediscere nec me ingrato vocem prostituisse foro?

[embraces by ‘nec me’ and ‘ingrato foro’ with parallelism ‘verbosas leges ediscere’ and ‘vocem prostituisse’]

Mortale est, quod quaeris, opus. mihi fama perennis quaeritur, in toto semper ut orbe canar. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 43

[embrace ‘Mortale’ - ‘perennis’ and centralisation of dimensions of time and space between two passive verbs]

We can conclude that in the first part of this ode, Jonson’s changes from Marlowe’s trans- lation are bringing the text closer to the Latin original. However, Jonson did not manage to represent all of Ovid’s refinement in style.

The body of the elegy contains a list of 13 poets: 6 Greek ones, in 12 lines, and 7 Latin ones, in 10 lines, that live on until the present day, that is, Ovid’s day. The list starts with the “father” of classical literature, Homer, and ends with Gallus, Ovid’s colleague and friend. It is interesting to note that the reason that is given for most of them as to why their names still live, is the perpetuity of their subject matter: sun and moon, mountains and rivers, fierce fathers and deceitful slaves ... . Do we have to consider this as an exponent of Ovid’s irony or are we expected to suspend our disbelief and understand that these elements are intrinsically linked up with poetry? The latter is acceptable as far as sun and moon and other specimens of Nature are concerned, but raises doubts in the case of deceitful slaves and flattery whores. Moreover, in the case of Vergil, the argument implies the eternity of Rome’s dominion over the world. Dealing with no other than Ovid, there can be no doubt that this is supposed to ring a bell. Coming to Gallus, Ovid mentions his love for Lycoris. At least three directly preceding poets are given their subject matter as preserving them for eternity, so this is the connotation to Gallus’ love for Lycoris as well - again a doubtful argument. Moreover, the Latin repeats Gallus’ name in threefold which has a rather comical effect. Thus, Ovid undermines the point he is making, namely that poetry intrinsically conveys eternal fame. While being very clear in his point, Ovid is ready to put the supposed idealism into perspective. The same ambiguity is to be found in Jonson’s translation. However, one modification springs out, namely in ll. 13-4, when he talks about Callimachus. The Latin states that ‘though his originality was nothing out of the common, his art (in the sense of artistic skill) was valuable’ - a neutral assumption that leaves open whether it is to be interpreted as affirmative or as causal, as Jonson did. Jonson’s restructuring, namely of putting the appeal to eternal fame in the second line, and the ‘since’ directly following it (‘Shall still be sung, since he in art doth flow’), identify the fact that Callimachus’ artfulness was impeccable as the reason for his fame. Note that Marlowe, in this case, sticks to an almost literal translation: ‘The world shall of Callimachus ever speak, / His art excell’d, although his wit was weak.’ Even if this single modification is slight evidence for the fact that Jonson wanted to rid the text of ambiguity, the idea is tempting. After all, the point of the Ovid of the play and the very reason why Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 44

it is represented in this scene, directly preceding the encounter of Ovid and his father, is that poetry does intrinsically convey eternal renown. As in the previous part, Jonson realizes that reproducing the well-designed Latin style of Ovid is impossible. Ovid manages, with a few stylistic features, to separate the list of Greek authors clearly from that of Latin authors and convey for each a unified component (my emphases):

vivet Maeonides, Tenedos dum stabit et Ide, dum rapidas Simois in mare volvet aquas; vivet et Ascraeus, dum mustis uva tumebit, dum cadet incurva falce resecta Ceres. Battiades semper toto cantabitur orbe; quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet. nulla Sophocleo veniet iactura cothurno; cum sole et luna semper Aratus erit; dum fallax servus, durus pater, inproba lena vivent et meretrix blanda, Menandros erit;

Words as vive(n)t, dum and erit are used as flags to structure the unity; they embrace the fragment. ‘[S]emper tot cantabitur orbe’ echoes the ‘in toto semper ut orbe canar’ of l. 8. This embrace identifies the following comment on Callimachus, mentioned above, as an afterthought. It is, moreover, directly followed by a golden verse. The final couplet is embraced by flags and filled with parallelisms and a chiasm (‘meretrix blanda’) that exclude ‘Menandros’ and thus signal the last poet in the list of Greeks. If Jonson did not manage to convey this elevated style, he did add some stylistic tours de force which can be termed as ameliorations. More specifically, Jonson polished the text with the help of alliteration, a stylistic tool slightly better appreciated in English than in Latin. Three beautiful instances collide with the places where Jonson’s translation differs from Marlowe’s (my emphases):

l. 10 Or, to the sea, fleet Simois doth slide l. 24 When earth and seas in f ire and f lames shall f ry l. 25 T ityrus, T illage, AEnee shall be read

In l. 10, Marlowe has ‘swift’ instead of ‘fleet’ which elaborates the alliteration. Especially ll. 24 and 25 convey highly poetic language. If Ovid’s suggestive allusion to Vergil (‘Tityrus Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 45 et segetes Aeneiaque arma legentur’) was already marked with skilful magnificence, Jon- son’s is of exquisite beauty. As Ovid, Vergil’s three major works, the Eclogues, the Geor- gics and the Aeneid, are referred to in a cryptic way. But Jonson’s /t/-alliteration evokes Vergil’s opening line of the Eclogues:‘T ityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi.’ The conclusion must be that, in this part, Jonson stays very close to the Latin again, noticing, however, that this does not suffice to imitate its poetic refinement. The few ameliorations he adds, manage to elevate the text to a certain poetic level.

It seems that, in the final part of the elegy, Ovid attempted to convey a stylistic climax. It starts with ‘Ergo,’ repeated in the final couplet. The double ‘cum’ echoes and contrasts the earlier ‘dum.’ Line 32 is again a golden line, stating the essential idea of the elegy: poetry is void of from death. The following couplet contains polyptoton of cedere and one of rex and a chiasm in the second line (‘auriferi ripa’ >< ’benigna Tagi’). Line 35 interchanges the /v/- and the /mi/-alliterations and has ‘Apollo’ in postposition, for emphasis. Each one of the next half-lines starts with /p/. Line 37 has a sixfold /m/-alliteration. The second last couplet is expected to finish the elegy, because it returns to ‘Livor’ and gives a general truth. However, the two last lines are still to come. This delay gives them all the more emphasis. As pointed out before, it starts with ‘ergo’ which signals that it will contain the final clue. The ‘vivam’ opening the second line and the ‘erit’ closing it, are reminiscent of the list of poets and definitively add Ovid to it. Also the ‘cum’ helps with this. Jonson makes up for the loss of many of the stylistic features with a polyptoton in l. 33 (‘Kings’ and ‘kingly’), central verse position for ‘me’ in l. 35 (Latin: ‘mihi’) and several alliterations (‘cups full flowing from the Muses’ well;’ ‘[f]rost-fearing myrtle’). The second last couplet, though paraphrasing the Latin, has very much the same effect as Ovid’s. The anteposition of ‘Envy’ in l. 39 is reminiscent of the opening line of the poem. As said above, the final couplet distinguishes the part of the poet, his body, that will decease from that other part, his spirit, that will keep on living. So will his name. But the latter should not be considered a third part. It is emphasized through its very expressing just for the sake of making clear that the poet will have fame as long as his work remains to be read. If we compare it with the Latin original,

ergo etiam cum me supremus adederit ignis, vivam, parsque mei multa superstes erit. and with the verse translation by Marlowe cited above, we find that Jonson added the idea of the name that shall live. This does, of course, fit in with the earlier mentionings of Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 46

‘fame’ by Ovid himself: ‘Mortale est, quod quaeris, opus. Mihi fama perennis / quaeritur’ (my emphasis), but it also captures the very issue behind the plot that involves Ovid and his father, namely the pursuit of honour and material gain, and prepares for it to rise for the first time in the next scene.

Ovid, the son

Ovid has been presented to the public and is now to be confronted with some antagonists. As announced in the first scene, the antagonist is to be Ovid’s father. Accompanying him are his servant Luscus, the tribune Lupus and Captain Tucca, the soldier. Ovid Senior starts accusing Ovid of wasting his time with poetry while he should be studying law. This echoes the issue discussed in Ovid’s previous elegy. There are even literal echoes on the level of the words (my emphases):

Your name shall live indeed, sir, you say true! But how infamously, how scorned and contemned in the eyes and ears of the best and gravest Romans, that you think not on; you never so much as dream of that. Are these the fruits of all my travail and expenses? Is this the scope and aim of thy studies? Are these the hopeful courses wherewith I have so long flattered my expectation from thee? Verses! Poetry! Ovid, whom I thought to see the pleader, become Ovid the playmaker? (I.ii.1-9) I will set thee on the funeral pile first. (I.ii.17-8) ... abandon these idle fruitless studies that so bewitch thee. (I.ii.136-7)

The ‘best and gravest Romans’ must remind one of the list that Ovid gave in his elegy and one becomes ever so conscious of the contrast between Ovid and his father, their different scope and priorities. One would expect Ovid to stand up for himself and defend the claims of poetry as he did it so well in his elegy, preferably also repeating his words. Instead, at the end of Ovid Senior’s first furious speech, Ovid simply answers ‘No, sir.’ His answer is directed to the charge of being a playwright instead of a poet. Yet, it is elementary to the image Ovid gives of himself. At no single point in the scene will Ovid even attempt to start a concrete defence. His speeches are restricted to pointing out, in a polite way, that he is not a playwright but has written a poem and that he can study law but will automatically transfer its sentences into poetry. Moreover, the image we get is of a silent - Ovid is present in the complete dialogue but has only 18 of the 229 lines, before he is left alone for his Ode to Poetry - and obedient son, who is left miserable after a new wallop Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 47

of his father. It remains open if he has oppressed his free and confident self in front of his father and does not actually care much for his ramblings or if he was faking his poetic genius from the first scene.

This scene also gives an excellent opportunity to compare Ovid with other characters, of different social levels. From such a comparison, it appears that not all is yet reversed. Ovid Senior and his associate Lupus are decent, well-off people, while Tucca is a vainglorious and greedy pretender. Their language is telling. Ovid Senior’s introductory speech reflects the potential of greatly cultivated, even elevated style: the seriation of three slightly pleonastic doublets (‘how scorned and contemned in the eyes and ears of the best and gravest Romans’ - my emphases) and of three retorical questions starting respectively with ‘Are these,’ ‘Is this’ and again ‘Are these’, the pleonastic exclamation of ‘Verses! Poetry!’ and the repetition of ‘Ovid’ at the end. These stylistic tools are repeated in his further speeches. There are also beautiful instances of full sentences with para- and hypotaxis at the same time, for instance ‘Me thinks if nothing else, yet this alone, the very reading of the public edicts should fright thee from commerce with them, and give thee distaste enough of their actions’ (I.ii.57-60) and ‘Thou art a younger brother, and hast nothing but thy bare exhibition; which I protest shall be bare indeed, if thou forsake not these unprofitable by- courses, and that timely too’ (I.ii.75-78; ellipsis, repetition, elaborated paraphrasing: ‘and that timely too’). Mentioning Homer, he produces a sentence swollen with indignation:2

Ay, your god of poets there (whom all of you admire and reverence so much), Homer, he whose worm-eaten statue must not be spewed against but with hallowed lips and grovelling adoration, what was he, what was he? (I.ii.79-83)

[pleonastic doublets ‘admire’ and ‘reverence’ and ‘hallowed lips’ and ‘grovelling adoration’, ‘Homer’ in central position, climax towards repetition of essential question ‘what was he?’]

The tribune Lupus’s language is comparable to that of Ovid Senior except for the absence of fury. Against his father’s rage-interspersed speeches, Ovid’s minimal role gives a quiet and

2As Tom Cain points out in his edition, it is an elaboration of Ovid’s vv.21-2 of Tristia IV.x:

saepe pater dixit ’studium quid inutile temptas? Maeonides nullas ipse reliquit opes.’

In its dramatic rendering, Jonson efficiently provided the suspected rage and indignation. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 48 maybe somewhat flabbergasted impression. His answers are controlled and thoughtfully composed. The biggest difference with all the other characters is that Ovid’s score is set in verse, at least, every speech that is longer than one line is set in verse. The metre is the iambic pentameter; there is no rhyme. His first full answer betrays his timidity:

They wrong me sir and do abuse you more That blow your ears with these untrue reports. I am not known unto the open stage, Nor do I traffic in their theatres. Indeed I do acknowledge, at request Of some near friends and honourable Romans, I have begun a poem of that nature. (I.ii.62-8)

First, two couplets (termed such because of the fact that two sentences each stretch over two lines) decline the charge of Ovid being a playwright. What he does acknowledge is efficiently delayed in several ways. There is a caesura between ‘acknowledge’ and ‘at re- quest’ and very likely also between ‘friends’ and ‘and honourable Romans.’ The addition of the second last line, which could be considered redundant to some extent, also delays the clue. With ‘honourable Romans’, Ovid unmistakably tries to soothe his father’s prejudice. Especially the paraphrase ‘a poem of that nature’ gives away Ovid’s precaution. For the rest, no exquisite stylistic refinement is displayed except for a few poetical phrases such as ‘the unfashioned body of the law’ (I.ii.103). However, the contrast is clear with, for instance, Tucca’s language. Tucca is on the extreme of the other end of the scale. His language is not refined and controlled; it is vivid, copious and free of any inhibitions. The register is definitely low. His sentences are rarely longer than five or six words and his words rarely have more than three syllables. His overwhelm- ing copiousness arises from repetitions and, at the same time, vastness in vocabulary. The latter comprises elements of the most varied registers. Indeed, Tucca’s language is worth a chapter of its own for its diversity and originality. For instance, the variety in names he calls people, neutral, kind or scornful, only in this scene, is extensive: roly poly, ras- cal, you perpetual stinkard, my venerable cropshin, ragamuffin rascal, old swagg’rer, old stump... The key concept to Tucca’s language is socio-linguistic anarchy (King, 166): he is a vainglorious opportunist who swiftly switches registers according to his instant needs. Even in this single scene, his diction varies from the vulgar (e.g. whoreson) and slang (e.g. ragamuffin) to the courtly (e.g. neophyte, element). The following quote, in which Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 49

Tucca sides with Ovid Senior against Ovid and engages into reproof, may give an idea of his ramblings:

He tells thee true, my noble neophyte, my little grammaticaster, he does: it shall never put thee to thy mathematics, metaphysics, philosophy, and I know not what supposed sufficiencies. If thou canst but have the patience to plod enough, talk, and make noise enough, be impudent enough, and ’tis enough. (I.ii.121-6)

The Ode to Poetry

As soon as his father and all his clique have departed, Ovid recovers himself and exclaims what seems to have been suppressed indignation in an Ode to Poetry (see Appendix D). This ode does not have a historical precursor. There are, however, one or two ideas that can be traced, to the historical Ovid’s as well as Horace’s poetry. The main idea of the ode is that poetry is no longer, in modern times, appreciated because it gives proof of virtue and greatness of mind, but is rejected because it is not materially profitable, a retaking of the argument between Ovid and his father. Secondly, a new issue is raised, namely that of the difference between true poetry, which incorporates virtue, and poetry written by hired poets, that is, poetasters. The metre is the iambic pentameter, in blank verse. There are three asymmetrical parts. The first part is a nine-line apostrophe to poetry. In the first two lines, poetry gets three epithets: ‘spirit of arts,’ ‘soul of science’ and ‘queen of souls’, or, artistic inspiration, intellectual wisdom and emotional wisdom; three principles which, as one may assume, would be hailed by Jonson. The public directly perceives that material gain has no place in this list. Thanks to the caesurae, the lines are divided into half-lines, which makes them more expressive:

O sacred poesy, thou spirit of arts, The soul of science, and the queen of souls (I.ii.232-3)

The semi-chiastic polyptoton on ‘soul’ adds emphasis to the emotional, also through its pleonastic use with ‘spirit.’ The next line is likewise divided by a caesura and thus carries on the expression of indignation and even anger. The fifth and sixth line, on the other hand, run on without a pause and so provide a climax with ‘guiltless poverty’ and ‘[p]rodigious ignorance,’ in parallelistic construction, presented as the key-concepts. What follows is a triplet to finish the apostrophe, split by a caesura at the semicolon in the middle line Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 50 and finished by the addition of the new idea in the last line. This new idea is strongly conveyed by its end-position and by the parallelism in the opposition of ‘great powers’ and ‘adulterate brains.’ The new notion is elaborated in the second part, which consists of one long seven-line rhetoric question:

When, would men learn but to distinguish spirits, And set true difference ’twixt those jaded wits That run a broken pace for common hire And the high raptures of a happy Muse, Born on the wings of her immortal thought, That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel And beats at heaven gates with her bright hooves. (I.ii.241-247)

There is no division into couplets, but there is an opposition between the ‘jaded wits’ and the ‘high raptures of a happy Muse’ and the preference of the speaker is clear from the fact that the one member gets one line of elaboration while the other gets three such lines. Moreover, the opposition is conveyed through a difference in vocabulary register. While in the case of the ‘jaded wits,’ there is nothing to remark about the language, the second member is described with words such as raptures, Muse, wings, immortal thought, disdainful, earth and heaven, bright hooves. The slightly cryptic quality of ‘run a broken pace for common hire,’ gives only a shallow gloss in comparison with the metaphor of the horse, symbol of natural strength and nobility. The major difference between the ‘spirits’ is that the latter springs from artistic talent and has much higher aspirations, leading, even, to heaven - a stern contrast with the material scope of the former. The third part starts with three potentialities with the before-mentioned distinction as a condition. All three start with ‘They would’ and run freely over the lines. The last one, however, starts after a caesura in the fifth line of the segment and runs to the end of the next line, linking up the lines with rhyme:

they would dread far more To be thought ignorant, than be known poor. (I.ii.252b-3)

The strength of the last line lies in the parallelism ‘be thought ignorant’ - ‘be known poor.’ What follows is a conclusive sententia, twofold expressed in two couplets:

The time was once when wit drowned wealth: but now Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 51

Your only barbarism is t’have wit, and want. No matter now in virtue who excels, He that hath coin hath all perfection else. (I.ii.254-7)

Stylistically, one can note the alliteration of /w/ in the first couplet and then end-position of ‘but now’ which emphasizes the the contrast with ‘once.’ Moreover, the second couplet rhymes and the slight caesura in each of its lines fixes attention on ‘virtue’ versus ‘coin.’ The last line has also a parallel construction with repetition of ‘hath.’ As Cain notes, both couplets are based on a few Latin verses by Ovid and Horace. The first is a near translation of Ovid’s Amores III.viii.3-4:

ingenium quondam fuerat pretiosius auro; at nunc barbaria est grandis, habere nihil.

(once wit was dearer than gold but now it is a great barbarism to have nothing.)

Horace has the final couplet expressed in a more elaborate way in his Satires and Ovid expresses a similar idea in Fasti:

‘omnis enim res, virtus, fama, decus, divina humanaque pulchris divitiis parent; quas qui construxerit, ille clarus erit, fortis, iustus.’ (Sat. II.iii.94b-7a)

in pretio pretium nunc est: dat census honores, census amicitias; pauper ubique iacet. (Fasti I.217)

However, apart from the level of the contents, there is no link with the Latin verse.

It takes no elaborate stylistic scrutinizing to observe that the style of the present ode differs greatly from that of the Ode to Eternity. This fact may be connected to the fact that in the latter, Jonson was translating an elegy, and an Ovidian one, while in the former, he is obviously concerned with expressing his very own opinions. The result is a mainly polemic piece with certain poetic refinement. This is especially apparent in the third part, when Jonson talks about ‘desp’rate censures,’ ‘gold’ and ‘titles.’ These concerns, censure from Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 52 above, financial issues and social reputation are three main obstacles for poets in Jonson’s time that feature in the subplots of Poetaster.

Thus, some of the themes in the play are introduced. However, none of these can be considered as major issues in Poetaster. The poetaster himself has not been introduced yet and the allusion to poetasters in the last ode, even if quite prominent within the ode, was only shallow and transient. The only element that had a decent share of introduction is the character of Ovid. Yet, after two scenes with the representations of two of his poetical works, our impression of Ovid remains in doubt. As an elegiac poet, in the first scene, he seems talented and spirited. Though the scene is only short, Ovid is shown as a likable enough character. These impressions are, however, countered in the second scene, where Ovid is challenged to live up to the views he just advocated in his Ode and does not manage to. Here he is given the identity of the oppressed son. Then, in the very last segment, the second ode, the character seems swallowed in the appearance of Jonson himself, through the contents of the ode: the public perceives that it is Jonson who is speaking. If not for the weakness of Ovid’s character in the preceding confrontation with his father, the fact that the famous Latin poet is used as a mouthpiece might have added some authority to the declarations. But as yet, this effect is refused to operate. On the social scale, through his language use, Ovid has proved above the average and, indeed, the most cultivated character so far presented. He is capable of measured language use and poetic refinement. Also in the second scene he lives up to this image, even if his speeches are only few. In the case of the last ode, however, one might have expected more stylistic elegance. On the other hand, we have not encountered Ovid among his peers or among other poets yet, so a solemn judgement remains to be determined on. The coming scenes will have to provide more decisive material.

5.2 Scene I.iii: Ovid, the Poet

Ovid is still on the stage after the first two scenes. This third scene will finish the act. Ovid is still working, but not on his poetry anymore, he is studying law, as he promised his father. So, as was the case with the first one, he does not live up to the views he advocates in the second ode. Now it is his friend Tibullus who visits him. Ovid welcomes him very warmly; they are obviously friends, intimate friends who share a passion for poetry. Tibullus mockingly calls Ovid ‘lawyer’ and behaves in a rather intrusive manner. His language style is, though neat enough, very colloquial, but not vulgar. He talks using short sentences and simple, common words and expresses everything in a clear and logical Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 53

way. Greeting Ovid, for instance just happens by calling out his name. He starts almost every utterance with some exclamation, such as ‘How,’ ‘’Slight’ or ‘The hell thou wilt.’ And yet, the sentences he utters can be read as verse, again iambic pentametres. Ovid, from his side, also talks in a colloquial way and in verse, yet he utters some more complicated expressions as well. He also addresses Tibullus with ‘sweet’ or ‘good,’ which is slightly more formal, or at least polite. For instance:

ovid: No, good Tibullus, I’m not now in case, Pray’ let me alone. tibullus: How, not in case? ’Slight, thou’rt in too much case, by all this law. ovid: Troth, if I live, I will new dress the law In sprightly poesy’s habiliments. (I.iii.11-15)

That Ovid is talking in a more controlled way is not surprising, for what he was actually into at the moment was transmitting laws and law cases into verse. This fact was based, as Cain notes, on an anecdote told by the elder Seneca and on some lines from Ovid’s own Tristia. However, there is no stylistic link whatsoever. Tibullus hands Ovid a letter from Julia, the emperor’s daughter and Ovid’s mistress. At once, all Ovid’s attention shifts to the thought of her. He goes into raptures over her image with praise. Presently, it is Ovid the lover who is speaking. He uses metaphors of heaven and of music:

Music of wit! Note for th’harmonious spheres! Celestial accents, how you ravish me! (I.iii.22-3)

Just before, Ovid has called Julia ‘my heaven,’ so it may well be that while the metaphor of heaven (‘spheres,’ ‘celestial’) is still referring to Julia, the metaphor of music (‘Note,’ ‘harmonious,’ ‘accents’ (Cain, I.iii.23n)) is referring to poetry, most obviously so in the phrase ‘[m]usic of wit,’ thus establishing an intricate relationship between the two. A little later in the scene, as is further explained, this connection is referred to again. The same connection as well as the phrase ‘my passion so transports me’ (I.iii. 27-8) will prove essential for the interpretation of Ovid as a character. This is also clear from the previous chapter and will later be discussed as well. The friends are both invited to a meeting at the house of Albius, the jeweller, Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 54 tibullus: where the fair Lycoris lies. ovid: Who? Cytheris, Cornelius Gallus’ love? tibullus: Ay, he’ll be there too, and my Plautia. ovid: And why not your Delia? tibullus: Yes, and your Corinna. ovid: True—but my sweet Tibullus, keep that secret. I would not, for all Rome, it should be thought I veil bright Julia underneath that name. (I.iii.30b-37)

It cannot be denied that the list of the mistresses, especially the sequence of three single lines closed by the name of a woman, has a comical effect. This effect overshadows the praise of Julia that follows. Again, Ovid uses many words that relate to heaven (‘golden sky,’ ‘elysian,’ ‘Heaven,’ ‘orbs,’ ‘zenith’). But we will go deeper into Ovid’s amatory diction in the paragraph on the farewell scene (Scene IV.x). Ovid’s ‘passion so transports’ him that his friend needs to check him with ‘Publius, thou’lt lose thyself.’ But Ovid turns down this warning and declares his renewed devotion to poetry, namely for the sake of praising Julia. His speech opens with a heroic couplet playing on the idea just expressed by Tibullus: ‘O, in no labyrinth can I safelier err, / Than when I lose myself in praising her.’ A parallel construction (‘lose myself’ - ‘praising her’) refines the couplet. The actual address to poetry, i.c. to the Muses, starts in a rather disorderly way with short phrases splitting the lines into half-lines, but by the fourth line, a solemn promise closes the address with a fluent phrase. Then Ovid goes on praising poetry, once more in terms of music, but quickly his mind will drift to the thought of Julia again:

With you, whose music striketh on my heart, And with bewitching tones steals forth my spirit In Julia’s name. Fair Julia! Julia’s love Shall be a law, and that sweet law I’ll study, The law and art of sacred Julia’s love. All other objects will but abjects prove. (I.iii.53-8)

The three-fold repetition of Julia’s name and the repetition of ‘Julia’s love’ and the word ‘law’ may have a comical effect. The same goes for the use of the simple and common wordplay on ‘objects’ - ‘abjects’ in the last line (Cain, I.iii.58n). Moreover, the final couplet is not well integrated in the unity since none of the so often repeated words occurs. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 55

Therefore, the rhyme sounds artificial. This hyperbolic style can hardly be meant to convey a sincere and honourable message. The smooth transit from praising poetry to praising Julia suggests the association of the two concepts, at least in Ovid’s perception. Tibullus again comes up with a dry remark: ‘Come, we shall have thee as passionate as Propertius anon.’ Their friend the elegiac poet Propertius has been grieving for the loss of his mistress Cynthia. Tibullus approaches the matter in a rational way, suggesting that Propertius is exaggerating his grief and should accept the ‘common work of fate.’ Ovid, on the other hand, sides with Propertius. His speech talks about ‘virtue,’ ‘constancy’ and ‘fortitude.’ He calls the death of Cynthia ‘injurious’ and greatly sympathizes with Propertius’ woes. The speech is neatly organized, finishing with a tricolon in a parallel construction with a larger third element (‘cracked our sinews, shrunk our veins, / And made our very heart strings jar’). The latter brings about a caesura that emphasizes the ‘like his,’ which conveys Ovid’s ultimate mark of sympathy. Ovid and Tibullus decide to visit Propetius together and the scene ends with their joint exit.

At the end of Scene I.ii, the public was left with an ambiguous introduction of Ovid. He had been presented initially as a talented and self-confident poet and subsequently this image had been countered by the attack of his father. He had, in spite of his two odes for the glorification of poetry, turned his back on his artistic passion, proving himself faint-hearted and immature. In the present scene, Ovid is visited by his friend and associate. But it is not the latter’s friendship that revives his spirit, but the mentioning of his mistress Julia. For the dubious reason of praising her, Ovid recovers his poetic devotion. No allusion, also not on a stylistic level, is made to his former appreciation of poetry. Any poetry he writes now will take the form of a glorification of Julia. This scene pictures a poet devoted to the genre of love elegies. Also Ovid’s support for Propertius provides an extra symptom of this change. In this scene, Jonson is not using Ovid as a mouthpiece for his own opinions as in the previous scene, but rather mocking him through a less refined and rather hyperbolical style. The style is also very different from Ovidius’ style, contrary to the case of the first scene. Ovidius would never advocate naive views as Ovid’s on Propertius and even less is it very like him to praise a woman in such terms, if not with a clear touch of irony. This Ovid is miles away from both Jonson and the historical Ovid. In one single act - and what is more, the first act of the play - this character has shown to fulfill several very different functions. It is probably preliminary to state that the likable and dignified poet from the first scene is ultimately exposed for sheer ridicule, but it is true that a good deal of his sincerity has floored. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 56

5.3 Scenes II.ii and IV.v: Ovid, the courtier poet

The visit at Albius and Chloe’s

The scene for the second act is Albius’ house. We witness the jeweller and his wife Chloe get ready for the visit of the courtiers Tibullus, Gallus, Ovid and their respective mistresses and Propertius. Both are extremely nervous, being far below in social status to their visitors and anxious to make a good impression. Jonson made the first scene one of the most hilarious in the play. One of the main tools for the comic effect is the language use of both characters. They are soon joined by a third character on the stage, Crispinus, the actual poetaster (yet not identified as such so far), a pedant and lofty poet-gallant who undertakes to advise Chloe on how to entertain her approaching noble guests. The latter as well is mocked through his language use. The comic effect is of course intended to parody. Jonson was parodying the city commoners who managed to get a certain material comfort and aspire to a better social reputation as well. Their scope is the courtly society. However, their situation in life as tradespeople and, so is believed, lack of birth (Crispinus as well as Chloe, however, do claim to be ‘a gentleman/gentlewoman born’), reveal their incompetence in behaving ‘most courtly’. What is more, among the courtiers, the poets are ‘the finest kind of men’ (II.ii.68), especially because of their language. Scene I.i provides the stylistic characterization of Albius, Chloe and Crispinus.3 Together, they use neologisms (strenuously), silly puns (city-sin for citizen), words and expressions from the courtly language (excellent, vouchsafe, ’sprecious, a pox on) - sometimes wrong expressions, for instance for fault of a better - from vulgar or slang language (’pinion, forsooth, quotha) and from city-language (in sincerety, bumps, mum), all in a wrong or mocking context or sense (King, passim and Cain II.in passim). Their language is also affected by repetition (often epizeuxis: ‘An excellent air, an excellent air!’), tautology (‘in truth, forsooth’) and hyperbole: albius: I am mum, my dear mummia, my balsamum, my spermaceti, and my very city of — She has the most best, true, feminine wit in Rome! crispinus: I have heard so, sir, and do most vehemently desire to participate the knowledge of her fair features. (II.i.67-72)

3In his book The Language of Satirized Characters in Po¨etaster(1941), Arthur H. King has looked in detail into the language used by, what he calls, Julia’s clique. He has especially listed all the words that are used in an affected sense and typified that sense. All statements in this paragraph, as far as vocabulary is concerned, are drawn from his work. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 57

When the guests arrive, they are aware of what kind of people their hosts are and of the fact all their moves and speeches will be minutely observed. For the sake of having a little “sport” at them they will affect their own language with courtly sounding but obsolete or mannered words. Their speech bursts with mannerism and irony. At the greeting, Chloe, who is especially putting herself forward, is praised with magniloquent, hyperbolical and expletive terms: ‘fair’, ‘sweet’, ‘gentlewoman’ and ‘lady’. Ovid concludes the praise in the same ironic way and he is backed up directly by Tibullus, who lifts the exaggeration to a climax: ovid: I see, even in her looks, gentry and general worthiness. tibullus: I have not seen a more certain character of an excellent disposition. (II.ii.27-30)

After this short hilarious encounter between the two groups, the courtiers are left alone when Chloe and her husband go off to prepare for the banquet. Now their true disposition arises. Gallus presents the poets to their mistresses, as if the first greeting had not been a proper one. Ovid and Tibullus both answer in a gallant way. Then attention shifts to Propertius. The latter starts speaking in verse, which is adopted by the other poets immediately. No more ironic praise or ridiculous words are heard; the friends converse in their natural, refined language: neat and affectionate. They use abstract language (‘sick minds are like sick men’, ‘taste his misery’) and non-linear constructions (‘they ... that know to sigh and grieve’). The four last lines before Chloe re-enters are given to each of the courtiers who has not given their opinion so far on Propertius’ attitude. The sequence of the four lines suggests harmony and affection within the group. All four express awe at the ideal of disinterested love (true love, everlasting love, virtuous love and constancy). The contrast is big with the conversation of gossip Chloe has with Crispinus on her return. When Albius also reappears, the rest of the scene consists of a singing contest between the musician Hermogenes and Crispinus. The courtiers return to their game of mock and irony.

In this scene, Ovid is to be considered within his group of friends that visit Albius and Chloe. Indeed, in social and moral behaviour they act as one. Since Julia is the daughter of the Emperor, she is socially superior, and her group of courtiers with her. Thus, Ovid gets still another identity, yet only in function of the mock that is carried out on the city pretenders and Crispinus. Also when they are left alone, the group switches as one to a register of refined diction, the women included. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 58

Ovid and Julia’s Banquet

The banquet of Scene IV.v is hosted by Ovid and Julia and attended by the same group of characters as at the visit in Scene II.ii. Propertius is not attending. The only addition, and a significant one, is Captain Tucca (with a page). It is supposed to be a meeting among friends; the group around Ovid and Julia is related to Albius and Chloe through Cytheris, Gallus’ mistress, who stayed at Albius’ house. Crispinus is Cytheris’ cousin and Chloe just met Tucca on the street and bade Tibullus to invite him to the banquet as well. This heterogeneous group is therefore not one of intimate friends but of people who met occasionally and want to have some entertainment together. The concept of the banquet is that all the guests are disguised as Olympian gods and goddesses. They get some attributes (borrowed from a company of players) and adopt the particulars of the several gods (e.g. Apollo, or Phoebus, is to set up the rules of the banquet and Mercurius is to proclaim them). Since Ovid and Julia host the banquet, they are Jupiter and Juno. The most evident feature of Ovid’s language in the present scene is his frequent use of imperatives. As Jupiter, Ovid almost exclusively only speaks to the others in a commanding sense. But even if Ovid has, within the fiction of the banquet, a special role, this is a group happening and all the characters are striving to have fun together. Therefore, their language use is fairly homogeneous. In order to suit everyone, the language is characterized by simple diction. There are no complicated words, there is no poetic refinement whatsoever. Ovid is using lower register words such as cuckold and cotquean. The former is repeated after Tucca by Ovid, which gives a comic effect: Ovid is addressing Tucca in his own, i.e. Tucca’s, language, being very inconsistent with his own, i.e. Ovid’s, linguistic habits. For the sake of comic effect, there are also silly puns such as the polyptoton cotquean - contqueanity (Ovid, IV.v.122-3) and the use of the homophones Styx/sticks in ‘We will cudgel thee, Juno, by Styx, we will’ (IV.v.111). In general, all speeches are characterized by dashing livelihood: imperatives follow each other at a quick pace, sentences are short, clear and logical and vocabulary is direct and unrefined. The speech in which Gallus/Apollo conveys the rules of the banquet, consists of short phrases full of repetitions (e.g. ‘gods or goddesses’, ‘Jupiter save Jupiter’) and parallel constructions (e.g. ‘... no god— / Shall need to keep himself more strictly / to his goddess— / Than any man does to his wife— / Nor any goddess— / Shall need to keep herself more strictly to her god— / Than any woman does to her husband—’) and a few slightly poetical, yet straightforward, phrases (e.g. ‘the heat of everyone’s blood’, ‘the spirit of our nectar’). This diction is reminiscent of the law register and therefore, it is nothing more than the expected register, which again supports the fiction. Towards the end of the scene, the conversation focuses on a (playful) Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 59

dispute between Jupiter and Juno and, probably under the influence of too much nectar, Ovid starts repeating the things he says, using too many words and creating an impression of comical exaggeration. The following dialogue may be exemplary for some of the features summed up above:

julia: [To Ovid] Wilt thou be ranging, Jupiter, before my face? ovid: Why not, Juno? Why should Jupiter stand in awe of thy face, Juno? julia: Because it is thy wife’s face, Jupiter. ovid: What, shall a husband be afraid of his wife’s face? Will she paint it so horribly? We are a king, cotquean, and we will reign in our pleasures: and we will cudgel thee to death if thou find fault with us. julia: I will find fault with thee, King Cuckold-Maker! ... (IV.v.88-96)

[very simple words in logical and straightforward constructions, frequent repetition of several words, frequent repetition of the names ‘Juno’ and ‘Jupiter’, zeugmatic use of ‘face’ for comic effect, two absurd rhetorical questions, use of vulgar word ‘cotquean’ and ironic juxtaposition with ‘king’, rhetoric hyperbole ‘cudgel thee to death’, inherently ironic, comic and insolent nonce-word ‘King Cuckold-Maker’]

This scene is comparable with the previous one in that Ovid is acting as a specimen of a group of people again. He is, however, the leader of the group, namely Jupiter. His speeches are characterized by authoritativeness; they consist of little else but imperative constructions. For the rest, his language does not differ from the register used by the rest of the group (although Tucca, as always the outcast, remains consequent in his very own style). The register is rather low in order to suit the guests from all social levels: sentences are short, expressions are straightforward and vocabulary is characterized by common, sometimes vulgar words. The characters who are associated with a higher social level (Tibullus, Gallus, Julia etc.), do not care to preserve their dignity in this scene. But the action consists of a fiction. The courtiers lower their register artificially, in order to enhance the fiction. Even in the case of Ovid, for whom no monolithic linguistic identity has been established so far, the spectators do notice the inconsistency of this scene. Words like cuckold and cotquean reveal the artificial tone of his language. The constant repetition of the adopted names, Jupiter, Juno, Momus etc., can only serve to emphasize the fictional Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 60 setting as well. In this scene, Ovid is still himself, preserved through facts such as his relationship with Julia, but consciously acting another person. The fictional nature is stressed again in the next scene by the words used by Caesar, whose role in the play is that of the unquestioned authority: ‘What sight is this? Maecenas, Horace, say, / Have we our senses? Do we hear and see?’ (IV.vi.1-2). The perfect fiction is based only on what is to heard and seen, but Caesar fails to see through the fiction, he does not have all his senses but is influenced by Lupus, the tribune-informer. A little further, in the following dialogue, the dichotomy between ‘what you play’ and ‘what you are’ is significantly emphasized by the repetition of the same short words over and over: caesar: [To Albius] Say, sir, what are you? albius: I play Vulcan, sir. caesar: But what are you, sir? albius: Your citizen and jeweller, sir. caesar: [To Chloe] And what are you, dame? chloe: I play Venus, forsooth. caesar: I ask not what you play, but what you are! chloe: Your citizen and jeweller’s wife, sir. (IV.vi.19-26)

Of course there are many other, non-linguistic, indications that the banquet scene is nothing but ‘innocent mirth / And harmless pleasures, bred of noble wit’, as Horace (alias Jonson) terms it in IV.viii.12-3. But as far as the language is concerned, there can be no other conclusion than that all the particulars are there to support the impression of a fiction. The strongest argument is the language of the courtiers which is totally inconsistent, not only in Ovid’s case, but even more in the case of Tibullus and Gallus, with the linguistic identity that had been sketched out for them before.

5.4 Scenes IV.ix-x: Ovid, the Lover

Ovid has been banished from the court by the Emperor and Julia has been locked behind closed doors. In the two lasts scenes of Act IV, Ovid goes to visit Julia at her balcony. Scene IV.ix consists of a monologue by Ovid (see Appendix E), who is alone on the stage. Scene IV.x is the lovers’ parting scene, where only both of them are present. Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 61

Ovid’s monologue of Scene IV.ix consists of a part in which Ovid laments his banishment from the court and a part in which he announces that he is visiting Julia. The monologue is set in verse. But, contrary to the recitation from the Amores in I.i, the iambic pentameters are not organized in heroic couplets, but in blank verse. Neither does the monologue, as most of Ovid’s preceding speeches in verse but no heroic couplets, end with one single heroic couplet. The speech opens with Ovid’s exclamation:

Banished the court? Let me be banished life, Since the chief end of life is there concluded: Within the court is all the kingdom bounded. (IV.ix.1-3)

The first line starts with a trochee instead of an iamb. This inversion emphasizes the parallelism ‘banished the court/life’ and the for Ovid intricate relationship between the two concepts. To this is added a tautology in the second line (‘end’ - ‘concluded’) and an absurdity in the third line (the kingdom being comprehended within the court). All this conveys a rather hyperbolic expression. The rest of the first part of the monologue can be divided in three components. Firstly, Ovid describes the court through a metaphor with an astronomic sphere. The hyperbole is continued with the use of terms such as ‘Ten thousand times’ (IV.ix.5), ‘in any place of all the empire’ (IV.ix.6). Line five brings a climax to it: ‘Ten thousand times so much, as so much place’ (repetition of ‘so much’ and chiasm on the concepts of time and place). ‘Ten thousand’ is also repeated in line 8. The astronomical imagery continues to line 9. Secondly, Ovid compares the court with a magician’s “circle of safety”, in the next four lines. Then attention shifts to Ovid himself; he expresses his loss. In contrast with Scene I.iii, when Ovid was conversing on Julia and poetry with Tibullus, he only mentions Julia’s name once and, although the praise he bestows on her excels all his praise of the court, it is only expressed in one single couplet:

The court’s the abstract of all Rome’s desert And my dear Julia th’ abstract of the court. (IV.ix.18-9)

Apart from the fine repetition of ‘the abstract of’, there is nothing stylistically remarkable about this couplet. Now starts the second part of Ovid’s monologue. There may be some imagery of the air as containing the presence of Julia in the use of a set of words such as ‘respire’, ‘spirits’ and ‘breath’ but this imagery is not well worked out. For the rest, only the last line is worth mentioning since it will return in Julia’s speech of the next scene: Ovid proclaims Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 62 that Julia must come out of her room ‘And cheer my fainting spirits with her breath’. The most noteworthy thing about this moderately poetical monologue is the prodigality, without any polish, of Ovid’s expression. As will become clear, this feature also applies to Scene IV.x.

Also the parting scene does not many stylistic particulars noteworthy for the present pur- pose. There are only two characters on the scene, who are so intimately related to each other that they are represented with the same speech style. Therefore, no linguistic pro- filing amongst the characters is involved. The scene is completely set in verse. But there are no features of elevated poetic style. Ovid and Julia both frequently use certain images to express their love for each other. The image of the virtues of the soul versus the grati- fications of the senses (‘flesh and blood’) refers back to the issue of the banquet. Another image, namely of the differences between their respective conditions, is that of Julia being ‘high’ in every sense and Ovid being ‘low’. The fact that this image also works literally (to which fact the lovers also refer), gives a rather comic touch. Comical as well is Julia’s toing and froing. The lovers are scared that she will be discovered by her father, but Ovid as well as Julia alternately urge each other to ‘stay a little longer’ (Julia in IV.x.80-1, repeated in a chiastic construction by Ovid in l. 89a: ‘A little longer stay’). It is the inconsistency, undermining their sincerity, emphasized by the simple repetition of words, which gives the mocking impression. Next to the frequent repetition of the motifs of soul versus body and high versus low, the lovers use a set of words that are typical of the register of amatory diction. Words such as ‘heavenly,’ ‘sacred,’ ‘silken,’ ‘goddess’ and ‘life-blood’ are common in love-poetry, especially Petrarchan sonneteering (King, 90). They remind the public of poets such as Shakespeare and Spenser. Many of the words also have hyperbolical senses, enhanced by their frequent repetition and accumulation. Arthur King has found evidence that several words, such as sacred and honour, are used parodically by contemporaries, such as Shakespeare and Dekker. King concludes that Jonson is parodying the Elizabethan rhapsodic love-writing and its sentimental lovers. It has been suggested that this scene is particularly a parody on the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet (see 4.2.2. However, as far as the style is concerned, no convincing parallels can be found. Some features of Jonson’s scene are indeed reminiscent of Shakespeare. For instance, the use of certain words and images in which the lovers express their devotion and admiration for each other, such as the night as a lover’s protector, stars shining in Juliet’s/Julia’s eyes and the identification of the lovers with each other’s soul. But these have been identified by Arthur King as amatory diction and thus nothing out of the common expectation of the public in a love scene. Also the setting of Julia standing on a balcony and the fact that she goes into her Chapter 5. The Language of Ovid in Poetaster 63 room and comes back for several times find parallels in Shakespeare. But the former is too faint a similarity to proclaim that the whole scene would be a parody of Shakespeare and in the case of the latter, Shakespeare veiled the toing and froing with beautiful and high-sounding poetical phrases and thus managed to turn the comic touch into a tragic motif.

The speaking style of the Ovid displayed here is, again, clearly different from that of the “Ovidius” from the first scene, the lascivious Ovid from the banquet scene or the Ovid as mouthpiece of Jonson from I.iii. The parting scene is a poetical scene, for its verse and its concern with love, but the Ovid here does not display any skill in artistic refinement, nor does he garnish himself with a unique style. The register applied here is nothing different from what Elizabethan spectators would expect. The lack of originality may be linked not to Ovid’s but to Jonson’s incapability for romantic writing. Addressing the question why he does at all include this scene in his play, Tom Cain suggests that it has to be understood as a recusatio. But evidence is slight, especially when one considers that many more stylistic tools could have been applied in order to support this purpose (Jonson could have aimed for more originality and refinement instead of harsh accumulation of clich´es). The importance of this scene for the play, lies primarily on the level of the contents. The dichotomy on which Ovid and Julia constantly play between the soul and the body or spirit and sense or platonic love and physical love, is what constitutes the point of this scene, as many critics, especially Mulvihill, have argued. But in no way is this supported by stylistic characteristics, except for occasional repetitions that are rather signs of prodigality and hyperbole than of poetic refinement. Chapter 6

Conclusion and Further Perspectives

As announced in the Introduction to this work, the conclusions will be drawn on several levels. Firstly, the preliminary conclusions that were already pointed out in the previous chapter itself, will again be summed up and slightly further elaborated and compared to each other. Secondly, turning back to the chapter on Jonson’s language philosophy, we will try to refine those principles with the help of the evidence gathered from Ovid in Poetaster. Thirdly, we will be considered how the results of the study can help to uncover Jonson’s attitude towards the Ovidian controversy that he clearly addresses in his play. At last, some further perspectives will be presented.

Conclusions per scene

Even if in the first two scenes of the play, the public is confronted with a slight incon- sistency in the character of Ovid (namely the spirited and self-confident poet of the first scene and the oppressed son of the second scene), consistency is not far away and sup- ported by Ovid’s supposable coherence of language use - supposable because in the case of the second scene, evidence is slight because of the minimal role of Ovid. His register is that of a talented and witty artist. The numerous style figures point at an elevated poetic style. After all, the spectator gets the impression that Ovid’s representation is meant to be sincere and respectable, on the one hand portrayed as the historical Ovid, on the other hand as a mouthpiece for Jonson. In Scene I.iii, the overall impression the spectator gets from Ovid is still one that includes sympathy and appreciation. Ovid is shown as being on intimate terms with the equally respectable Tibullus. Their language style is, again, elevated and poetical. Yet, we already get a glimpse of Ovid the lover, namely when Julia, Ovid’s mistress, or Propertius, Ovid’s love-sick friend, become the subject of their conversation. Next to this implicit foreshadow-

64 Chapter 6. Conclusion and Further Perspectives 65 ing, there is the explicit warning of Tibullus, ‘thou’lt lose thyself,’ which remains pending. In the scenes where Ovid appears in the company of the city-people (Albius and Chloe etc.), he is always accompanied by Gallus and Tibullus and once also by Propertius. The style register of the four friends is significantly similar: it is that of the courtiers. As pointed out in ‘Jonson and Language’, this register is the standard one, according to Jonson. In a short fragment in which the poets are left alone on the stage, the public is reminded of their identity as poets; then, they use a poetically refined style. The courtiers’ style is presented in opposition to the speech style of the city-folk, a simple and vulgar style. Thus, Ovid is shown here as a member of a specific social group and prototypical for that group. Although there is a big difference between the two styles, their occurrence together, their tendency to slightly assimilate to each other and the friendly terms on which the members of the two groups communicate (especially at the banquet), even if there is, from one side, a moderately satirical approach, undeniably associate the respective social groups with each other. In the parting scenes, Ovid appears as an a love poet, not as an original love poet, but as an average one. The warnings from Scene I.iii have shown their relevance. The Ovid here has gone astray through the loss of his love and gets lost in the dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual. Since there is no significant degree of poetic refinement, there is not much to say about these scenes. This does not mean, however, that they are less significant since there significance exists in representing a coherent register that serves categorization, namely of Ovid as an Elizabethan love poet.

Jonson’s artistic ideology and practice

As could be expected, from Jonson’s well-known conscious handling of language, no single word of Ovid’s role is gratuitous. Even if there are inconsistencies on the level of the complete role, every inconsistency holds enough evidence for serving a purpose of its own. When Ovid’s language register changes, it remains coherent in the course of a specific scene. This coherence provides sufficient evidence for a single interpretation. As was pointed out in ‘Jonson and Language’, every language register is used by Jonson as the representation of a specific social group and, with it, a certain moral assessment. Through the various lan- guage registers ascribed to Ovid, Jonson conveys a character representing multiple social groups and multiple moral assessments. This multiplicity is exclusively made clear through the language, namely through the use of specific registers. But what moral assessment is conveyed through each register? This question is answered by considering the particular balancing of the registers. Chapter 6. Conclusion and Further Perspectives 66

During the first act, the public is not yet made conscious of the imminent complication of Ovid’s role. It is in Scene II.ii that the first clear cut inconsistency arises. As explained in the previous paragraph, Ovid is here presented within the group of courtiers. This group ends up being associated with the lower social group of the city people. It is made possible for the two groups to have some common entertainment together. Therefore, we must consider that the effect is that of degradation of the courtier register. Indeed, it does not display much poetic refinement anymore. The entertainment is not altogether a base degradation of the higher social group, since the courtier poets are still presented as respectable to some degree. In this sense, we have to consider Tibullus’ and Gallus’ acquittal and Horace’s defence of the banquet (as so variously interpreted by literary crit- ics, see throughout 4.2): the banquet is nothing worse than ‘harmless pleasures, bred of noble wit’ but nevertheless incorporates a degradation of the higher aspirations of poetry, as expressed by Ovid in his Ode to Poetry. The banquet is not morally wrong, but cannot uphold the pretence of poetical design. The courtiers do not err in having this entertain- ment, but in attributing poetical aspirations to it, because those, at least in the language, are absent. In the case of the social (or rather professional) group of love poets, of which Ovid is the representation in the parting scenes, there is also a condemnation involved since, again, the expectations concerning the language register are negatively denied. The language portrays a prodigality of expression and a confusion of principles (physical and spiritual, the heavenly mistress and the sanctifying court). The condemnation is, indeed, of an un- differentiated devotion to individualistic love. So, if Ovid is a borderline case of the clear distinction Jonson usually makes between good and bad people, coinciding with good and bad speakers, his intrinsic differentiation is not all that obscure. Every inconsistency is designed for the sake of representing a new social group. Significantly, the interpretation of Jonson’s linguistic characterization here is each time concerned with literature. We may conclude that, in Poetaster, or at least in the case of Ovid, Jonson applies his particular linguistic practice as servient to his literary ideals.

Jonson’s judgement of the Ovidian tradition

For the last level on which we can draw a conclusion from the study carried out in this thesis, we refer back to the chapter on the literary reception of Ovid in the Renaissance. For this conclusion, let’s start from the following question: what can be derived from the study as to Jonson’s regard for the historical Ovid? In the first few scenes, the interpretation remains possible that Ovid actually represents Chapter 6. Conclusion and Further Perspectives 67 the historical Ovid. This appears from the recitation of Ovid’s own Amores I.xv and the elegant poetic style therewith displayed. Also the biographical fact of Ovid as scorned by his father for not studying law, supports this interpretation. The historical references provide due respect to and sympathy for Ovid. Sympathy is also generated by the fact that the translation largely echoes Marlowe’s banned translation and thus should be considered a tribute to Marlowe, also a highly respected poet. Moreover, in the second scene, Ovid is used as a mouthpiece for Jonson, so there can be no other interpretation than one of sincere appreciation for the Latin poet. It is in the third scene that the first complications arise. The amatory diction Ovid displays in his praise for Julia is no longer Ovidian, but Elizabethan. The banquet scene is, clearly enough, a dramatization of one aspect of the Renaissance “Ovidian” tradition, namely the epyllion (see the discussion of the epyllion in Chapter 3). The difference between the present language use and that of the first scenes is manifest and should be extended: this scene is not of Ovid, but only incorporates Ovidian aspects, such as the degradation of the gods. Thus, Jonson implies that the epyllion is very different from the poetry of the historical Ovid, but does inherit some of its characteristics. As is shown in the banquet scene, these characteristics are accumulated, isolated and magnified. It is this manipulation that turns the epyllion into a controversial genre. In the last two scenes, IV.ix-x, another aspect of the Ovidian tradition is exposed, namely that of the idealized love poetry. There is no poetic refinement or differentiation, but the representation of a clear register, namely that of Elizabethan sonneteers and other love poets. This register is, again, very different from the one presented in the early scenes. Moreover, the repeated allusion to and confusion of the dichotomies of body and soul, of physical and spiritual or Platonic love and of the real and the ideal, refer to the inconsistency between form and matter and between expression and intention as explained by Mulvihill (see 4.2.2). The latter identified this discrepancy as a basic flaw of the Ovidian poetic. Thus, we find the Ovidian receptional history in a nutshell. The multiple social assessment within the single character of Ovid, as exposed in the previous paragraph, is justified. Namely, all moral assessments apply to the literary Ovidian reception which is, in itself, differentiated and ambivalent. The fact that these differentiations are all concentrated in the character of Ovid, Jonson implies that they are all linked to the historical Ovid, since this Ovid is presented in the first scenes. It is certain that the detractors, such as Lupus, Histrio and Crispinus do play a role in the fall of Ovid, but the deeper causes lie within the poet himself, namely in the faults displayed in the first scenes: the individualism of Ovid’s poetical occupation and the fatal ease of his artistic expression. Chapter 6. Conclusion and Further Perspectives 68

Further perspectives

The valuable conclusions presented above prove the relevance of the research carried out in this thesis. Thanks to a stylistic analysis of Ovid’s role, we have been furnished with new and surprisingly straightforward material for the interpretation of Ovid’s character. It has been possible to construct a more or less unifying theory, linked up with Jonson’s prior concerns, namely that of linguistic and literary theory and that of moral judgement of his the literary practice of his age. Yet, as was announced in the introductory chapter, this study has been restricted to the role of Ovid. Linguistic analysis of the roles of the other characters, especially the other Roman poet characters, Horace and Virgil in partic- ular, could convey more supportive results. From a quick glance at the roles of the latter characters, it appears that their registers are much more consistent. Nevertheless, even then, a comparison with the complications within Ovid’s role would be interesting. Not only the interpretation of other characters through the linguistic analysis of their respec- tive scores, but also supportive material for the interpretation of the character of Ovid from other characters’ roles, have been neglected in this study, although it is certain that such fragments are available. Appendix F may show an example. These two possibilities constitute further perspectives for a stylistic analysis of Poetaster. Bibliography: Primary Sources

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Jonson, B. (2004). Poetaster, or The Arraignment. Number 8 in ser. Ben Jonson. Project Gutenberg. E-book, printed 19 March 2008.

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Boehrer, B. T. (1993). The Poet of Labor: Authorship and Property in the Work of Ben Jonson. Philological Quarterly, 72(3):289–312.

Cain, T. (1995). Introduction. In Poetaster, pp. 1–60. Manchester University Press, Manch- ester.

Campbell, O. J. (1936). The Dramatic Construction of Poetaster. The Huntington Library Bulletin, 9:37–62.

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Carr, J. (1978). Jonson and the Classics: The Ovid-Plot in Poetaster. English Literary Renaissance, 8:296–311.

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73 74

A Ovid, Amores I.xv

Ad invidos, quod fama poetarum sit perennis.

Quid mihi Livor edax, ignavos obicis annos, ingeniique vocas carmen inertis opus; non me more patrum, dum strenua sustinet aetas, praemia militiae pulverulenta sequi, nec me verbosas leges ediscere nec me 5 ingrato vocem prostituisse foro? Mortale est, quod quaeris, opus. mihi fama perennis quaeritur, in toto semper ut orbe canar. vivet Maeonides, Tenedos dum stabit et Ide, dum rapidas Simois in mare volvet aquas; 10 vivet et Ascraeus, dum mustis uva tumebit, dum cadet incurva falce resecta Ceres. Battiades semper toto cantabitur orbe; quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet. nulla Sophocleo veniet iactura cothurno; 15 cum sole et luna semper Aratus erit; dum fallax servus, durus pater, inproba lena vivent et meretrix blanda, Menandros erit; Ennius arte carens animosique Accius oris casurum nullo tempore nomen habent. 20 Varronem primamque ratem quae nesciet aetas, aureaque Aesonio terga petita duci? carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti, exitio terras cum dabit una dies; Tityrus et segetes Aeneiaque arma legentur, 25 Roma triumphati dum caput orbis erit; donec erunt ignes arcusque Cupidinis arma, discentur numeri, culte Tibulle, tui; Gallus et Hesperiis et Gallus notus Eois, et sua cum Gallo nota Lycoris erit. 30 Ergo, cum silices, cum dens patientis aratri depereant aevo, carmina morte carent. 75 cedant carminibus reges regumque triumphi, cedat et auriferi ripa benigna Tagi! vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo 35 pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua, sustineamque coma metuentem frigora myrtum, atque a sollicito multus amante legar! pascitur in vivis Livor; post fata quiescit, cum suus ex merito quemque tuetur honos. 40 ergo etiam cum me supremus adederit ignis, vivam, parsque mei multa superstes erit. 76

B Marlowe, Ovid’s Elegies I.xv

To the envious, that the fame of poets lasts forever

Envy, why carp’st thou my time’s spent so ill, And term’st my works fruits of an idle quill? Or that unlike the line from whence I sprung War’s dusty honours are refused being young, Nor that I study not the brawling laws, 5 Nor set my voice to sale in every cause? Thy scope is mortal; mine eternal fame. That all the world may ever chant my name. Homer shall live while Tenedos stands and Ide, Or to sea swift Simois shall slide. 10 Ascræus lives, while grapes with new wine swell, Or men with crookd sickles corn down fell. The world shall of Callimachus ever speak; His art excelled, although his wit was weak. For ever lasts high Sophocles’ proud vain, 12 With sun and moon Aratus shall remain. While bondmen cheat, fathers be hard, bawds be whorish, And strumpets flatter, shall Menander flourish. Rude Ennius, and Plautus full of wit, Are both in Fame’s eternal legend writ. 20 What age of Varro’s name shall not be told, And Jason’s Argo, and the fleece of gold? Lofty Lucretius shall live that hour, That nature shall dissolve this earthly bower. Æneas war and Tityrus shall be read, 25 While Rome of all the conquered world is head. Till Cupid’s bow, and fiery shafts be broken, Thy verses, sweet Tibullus, shall be spoken. And Gallus shall be known from East to West, So shall Lycoris whom he lovd best. 30 Therefore when flint and iron wear away, Verse is immortal and shall ne’er decay. 77

To verse let kings give place and kingly shows, And banks o’er which gold-bearing Tagus flows. Let base-conceited wits admire vild things; 35 Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses’ springs. About my head be quivering myrtle wound, And in sad lovers’ heads let me be found. The living, not the dead, can envy bite, For after death all men receive their right. 40 Then though death racks my bones in funeral fire, I’ll live, and as he pulls me down mount higher. 78

C Jonson, Poetaster I.i.43-84

Envy, why twit’st thou me my time’s spent ill, And call’st my verse, fruits of an idle quill? Or that (unlike the line from whence I sprung) 45 War’s dusty honours I pursue not young? Or that I study not the tedious laws And prostitute my voice in every cause? Thy scope is mortal; mine, eternal fame, Which through the world shall ever chant my name. 50 Homer will live whilst Tenedos stands, and Ide, Or to the sea fleet Simois doth slide: And so shall Hesiod too, while vines do bear, Or crooked sickles crop the ripened ear. Callimachus, though in invention low, 55 Shall still be sung, since he in art doth flow. No loss shall come to Sophocles’ proud vein. With sun and moon Aratus shall remain. Whilst slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be whorish, Whilst harlots flatter, shall Menander flourish. 60 Ennius though rude, and Accius’ high-reared strain A fresh applause in every age shall gain. Of Varro’s name, what ear shall not be told? Of Jason’s Argo, and the fleece of gold? Then shall Lucretius’ lofty numbers die 65 When earth and seas in fire and flame shall fry. Tityrus, Tillage, Aenee, shall be read Whilst Rome of all the conquered world is head. Till Cupid’s fires be out, and his bow broken, Thy verses (neat Tibullus) shall be spoken. 70 Our Gallus shall be known from east to west: So shall Lycoris, whom he now loves best. The suffering ploughshare or the flint may wear, But heavenly poesy no death can fear. Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows, 75 The banks o’er which gold-bearing Tagus flows. 79

Kneel hinds to trash: me let bright Phoebus swell, With cups full-flowing from the Muses’ well. Frost-fearing myrtle shall impale my head, And of sad lovers I’ll be often read. 80 Envy the living not the dead doth bite: For after death all men receive their right. Then, when this body falls in funeral fire, My name shall live, and my best part aspire. 80

D Jonson, Poetaster I.ii.232-257

O sacred poesy, thou spirit of arts, The soul of science, and the queen of souls, What profane violence, almost sacrilege, Hath here been offered thy divinities! 235 That thine own guiltless poverty should arm Prodigious ignorance to wound thee thus! For thence is all their force of argument Drawn forth against thee; or from the abuse Of thy great powers in adulterate brains. 240 When, would men learn but to distinguish spirits, And set true difference ’twixt those jaded wits That run a broken pace for common hire, And the high raptures of a happy Muse, Born on the wings of her immortal thought, 245 That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel And beats at heaven gates with her bright hoofs, They would not then with such distorted faces And desp’rate censures, stab at poesy. They would admire bright knowledge and their mind 250 Should ne’er descend on so unworthy objects As gold or titles: they would dread far more To be thought ignorant, than be known poor. The time was once when wit drowned wealth: but now Your only barbarism is t’ have wit, and want. 255 No matter now in virtue who excels, He that hath coin hath all perfection else. 81

E Jonson, Poetaster IV.ix.1-30

Banished the court? Let me be banished life, Since the chief end of life is there concluded: Within the court is all the kingdom bounded, And as her sacred sphere doth comprehend Ten thousand times so much, as so much place 5 In any part of all the empire else; So every body moving in her sphere, Contains ten thousand times as much in him As any other her choice orb excludes. As in a circle a magician then 10 Is safe against the spirit he excites, But out of it is subject to his rage And loseth all the virtue of his art, So I exiled the circle of the court Lose all the good gifts that in it I ’joyed. 15 No virtue current is, but with her stamp, And no vice vicious, blanched with her white hand. The court’s the abstract of all Rome’s desert, And my dear Julia th’abstract of the court. Methinks now I come near her I respire 20 Some air of that late comfort I received; And while the evening with her modest veil Gives leave to such poor shadows as myself To steal abroad, I, like a heartless ghost Without the living body of my love, 25 Will here walk and attend her. For I know Not far from hence she is imprison`ed, And hopes of her strict guardian to bribe So much admittance as to speak to me, And cheer my fainting spirits with her breath. 30 82

F Ovid versus the other courtier poets: a fragment from Horace’s role

A short fragment at the beginning of Scene iii of Act IV pointingly illustrates the rela- tionship between Horace/Jonson and the courtier poets, Tibullus, Gallus, Propertius and, so may be supposed, Ovid. It appears from this fragment that Horace considers Tibullus and Gallus as well as Propertius as friends. No mentioning of Ovid is made. Horace is shown addressing Gallus and Tibullus, who are at this moment on the scene, and mention- ing Propertius. He addresses all by their proper names. In return, the former two both address Horace twice. The dialogue is built up in a symmetrical way. gallus: Horace! Welcome. horace: Gentlemen, hear you the news? tibullus: What news, my Quintus? horace: Our melacholic friend Propertius Hath closed himself up in his Cynthia’s tomb, And will by no entreaties be drawn thence. (Enter Albius and Crispinus, followed by Tucca and Demetrius) ... Crispinus? Hide me, good Gallus, Tibullus, shelter me. ... tibullus: What means this, Horace? horace: I am surprised again! Farewell. gallus: Stay, Horace horace: What, and be tired on by yond vulture! No, Phaebus defend me. (IV.iii.1-14) Gallus first speaks Horace’s name, Horace answers by addressing them both and Tibul- lus names Horace (the only of around 62 references or allusions to Horace that he is addressed with his first name) in chiasmus with Gallus’ mentioning of him: (a) “Horace! (b) Welcome” (b) “What news, (a) my Quintus?” In the middle, Horace devotes 2 lines to Propertius after which he mentions Gallus and Tibullus each, again in a chiastic construc- tion: (a) “Hide me, (b) good Gallus, (b) Tibullus, (a) shelter me.” Tibullus and Gallus each give one comment, in reversed order than at the beginning of the dialogue. The symmatry displayed in the dialogue suggests harmony in the relationships of these poets, in which context Ovid is not even mentioned. This may be an indication that Ovid (and the moral he stands for) should be differentiated from the other courtier poets.