o .s ~ .
a w .2: . :5. . .. .H
‘ . .M .. f. . . .
u O .l A‘ I u
: u . 3 . . win— ofw
. . . a .. .
‘ o— .0 O .— a o o
a. ‘ n. ‘.u o h o O a. .
o. .V o.\ I. I. \
. W .. f w 1.1.
. . . . . .
. u . ”#1— fa V . a;
z x a: . \
.. n x I ‘
9.. ~‘ 4. . 0.7:
. I \ .o . ~ . .
r \us. .\ J a .9 r a .- Pv .~ I...—
r.\a,.~ r \ .35“ p 5“. “a.“ .
. a \ 4 - no.‘ 9
\ ..\. ‘ I. p 3—8» — a.»
3:... o. . . w— . u .m J.
.o I 3 “\3 o x s f. 3‘
n .3.” r‘ U. do a
. 1 H . .
.. .
a). .3. .. . . a m. w
o. E n a. u a - ' .or. C v «N-
\. .c. .... . 5
». -. — ‘ ’ .y
. N u ”v. u «a. t u
. . . 3 «a . . r .m
o I. “ ... .\ nu. . .
4a.. ‘|.. ..a u, .. »
c. \. h’b . . ..- a
. v... ..|_. . .. . .
h. H ; ~ .. O a ..D a I O
. h— u

(‘2; '

 

 

 

 

.+ #3:: _ if : A

 

‘twfixfi:

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

CHAPL'IAN'S "BUSSY D'AMBOIS "
AND THE BAROQUE STYLE

presented bg

VJILLI ANDREAS US CHALD

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ldegree in The Department of
English

{WM

Major professor

DateM gé/ifl
/ / '

 

 

 

 

w, ... .. . . . . ..Irv . ...)?I
.. a ....wiwhs...
.. 2m. ...IMMI. .... _ .
.lwmgs .-..»Asm.
3.1.. I1! \ . .
.I..l,\.. I

.r
I Kn..- J...
o I. .. . \

'
Q

.... .. ... .. . ..., . h3g6” n. .f..

.79 .
I‘VW

_ I'II . J

, atf . “.....H.
7‘ s..t...v‘WtI ....
v . . xiv—7.}

.I I.-.u.h.../I..

-.. I9 ...... t...

. . . mm. . 2.43.3.6. .. U.
.- ., . ..56 ..s... so...

. . .. . , .3131... .....an

I o .
I . n I . .
. I . I. . t . . , . . I I . .
I .. . u . . . O I V A I . . I I I . . . . . . .
o I . o . . . .o J I I I I
_ .. I. . . I . .0 . I Q . .
I I , u I .
I a I . . t . . . II . .
I I . . . . I ... I I . a _
a \. . _ . I ,l . \a. o I ... .d .l I . I . I o I
I. I . - . . . I . . . I . . . . I .A .. . . . . . .... u
I 1.I I I . . . , 1 _ . . I . .. . . . I I I . . ... x . I I v I . . . II. .x I . u. .
Q ~. . 4 I . . . . . I... . t
a.

.
r. «mu. .
l
. . r I .II 0 1.. I V .I I I . .I o i. V e I I . a f
I l y I I. . . I II I
A I”? wiIflc \. . vd LI . Io . I ... . . .. . .. ... . .. . .. . ... tau _ . In, I
I III. \ .. I \. ‘ 0 I l ..I . Id I . . . v .I .. a. .. .. d _ I A I I . . . |.. o%
. ... n‘- .'.r r , I I. I .. I .I .. .. I \ . . . I. I q .I. II . I I . . I . I .vV I. I
-' ... D 7 I If! \ b . .... a .I I. . . .. .0. ..II .. «I. . . v a. .I .I .II a . .... I . I... 1 I. . 01 .\ ....4’IJ. 1
I I t I | I. I I II II

.t v in? wn INK-HG...” -..I

. .-Imt.

.. I .
I' .
J\. Q.
.~ I.
a I .... t. u
. I I . , r C
. -... -. .. . - - . . . . . 1 .. . ... . ., . . p ..wt o‘, A.
I C I i . I I . . . ... .I . I 4 I. . I . . .. I I I .I . . . . I I . I .. . I . .
u .I . . . I I . . . . I .II. I .I. ... .. I I. I I . . . .7... VJ... Io\
o N I . Ia. . h . . I .. I I s . A . .I .. \< N I . c . I . I . . . .. I o I . h. I
b . 0 . .I I I . I. . I . . I .
A I I . I . . I I .. . . . I r . I . v .
4.1 I(.. . .I. ... . . . . . . . . .. .... . u. .. ... , I . .
.I I I . u . . I . . I I I I.. f. I . _ I I . L I
. .. I .A . ..tI . . . . .. 4.. I . a . . . v.1 ...... . -. .I _ s . I I . . I n .. . .. .I .. AI
. II . .N, . . . v I ..s. I A.1 . I ..A I .. .. . I. o I. .o .v I .o(. . a. .IIv I .I. . I I .HA. . I I u L
. . . .. . .. . . .... I . . . I I I. . I . . . I. . I 4. .. I . T. o , .... .. . .
. II . I . . . . , I o . I
v I .I a I o
. I . .
. ’ In I
I... I ..I. ... .u .
I 5‘...v V I I I I 0.. .. I. ... .. .. . ,4 ‘4 I . I . I I . 9. n I . I .
.. I I. I: I . ... . . .. I... . 0 fi . o . n . I. .. I . I I I
.."S I I . I I o .. . . . 1 ( . . . . .. \ II
n n I o . . I. I. . . . . a . . I u l . . I . I . > . . .
. . I . ... . . . c . . . o. . I .. & or I I I
I Q . I . . ... . I . .

if . v I I I a . .I
.~ v.‘(.o ‘I WI- . ¢.a| . .
3...?le airing? ..

 

CHAPMAN'S "BUSSY D'AMBOIS" AND THE BAROQUE STYLE

BY

VILLI ANDREAS USCHALD
W

A THESIS
Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of hichigan
State College of Agriculture and Applied Science

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1952

/'J ‘lF'Sz'

We.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I

Page
Euphuism, Gongorism, Marinism. _ 8
CHAPTER II
The Quantitative and Qualitative Urge in the Baroque Style. 23
CHAPTER III
Chapman's Theory of Drama and its Relation to his Style. 25
CHAPTER IV

The Quantitative and Qualitative Urge in Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois 32

 

l. The Quantitative Urge.

a. Parallelism or repetition 32
b. Bombast 37
c. Mythological allusions. bl
d. Comparisons and hyperbole b2

2. The Qualitative Urge.

a. Dissection h6

b. Opaque abundance h8

c. Abstraction 57

3. Summary 59
CONCLUSION 60
BIBLIOGRAPHY _ 62

Sing} '1‘ (your
‘ . s " .
' ‘ A " 5 -’ 1. I: L! I. ‘

INTRODUCTION

In the last decades of the sixteenth century a change declared

itself in the purposes and ferms of the arts of'Western EurOpe for

which it is hard to find a satisfactory name.

C'est un lieu commun qu'a la fin du XVe1 siecle et au
debut du XVIe1 il exists une Europe precieuse, comme au
XVIIIe siecle 11 y a une Europe classique, at an XIXe une
Europe romantique. Euphuisme, cultisme, marinisme,
gongorisme, plus tard l'epanouissement de la preciosité
francaise, appartiennent a un phenomene europeen ...

we find some variations of Thibaudet's words in many authors who

somehow or other deal with any European literature about 1600. The

term that most conveniently describes the change in question is

'baroque'.

This term, which was at first used only in architecture,
has lately been extended to cover the facts that present
themselves at the same time in sculpture and in painting;
and it may now properly be used to describe, or at least
to name, the characteristic modes of expression in all
the arts during a certain period-the period, that is,
between the high Renaissance and the eighteenth century,
a period that begins in the last quarter of the sixteenth
century, reaches a culmination at about 1630, and thence-
forward gradually'modifies its character under new influ-
ences.;

 

l.

2.

Obvious misprints. It should, of course, be: XVIe and XVIIe.

Thibaudet, "Le phenomEne gongorin," Nouvelles Litteraires, 28 Mai
1927. -

Morris W} Croll, "The Baroque Style in Prose," Studies ... in
Honor of Frederick Klaeber (Minneapolis, 1929), p. E27.

 

In his most stimulating and germinal book, the Kunstgeschichtliche

 

Grundbegriffeh Heinrich'Wolfflin reevaluates those tendencies which

 

had been formerly damned without qualification as 'baroque'. 'Baroque'
‘was originally a general condemnatory appellation, implying a fantastic
and irregular use of architectural forms without any reference to the
organic unity of the work, and it was frequently applied to post-
Renaissance architecture, which apparently possessed these character-
istics to a great extent. Wolfflin differentiates on principle between
the terms 'Renaissance' and 'Baroque'. He defines 'Baroque' as a
tendency in style. He shows that it occurs at various periods in the
history of art, and that it is a peculiar kind of style, to which the
criteria of Classical and Renaissance art do not apply. In support of
this claim W'o'lfflin advances a fivefold scheme of polarities, different
aspects of the absolute contrasts between 'Renaissance' and 'Baroque'.
Baroque art is 'das Malerische','Tiefe', 'offene Form', 'Einheit' and
'Unklarheit', as compared with 'das Lineare', 'Flgche', 'geschlossene
Form', 'Vielheit' and 'klarheit' of the Renaissance art.

Since Oskar walzel's application of ngfflin's categories of art
history to poetry in his lecture "Wechselseitige Erhellung der Kunste"5
and since Fritz Strich's general interpretation of these categories,6
terms like Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism

have received a new meaning. They were at first dissociated from any

 

h. Munich, 1915, 7th ed., 1929.

S. Philosophische Vortrage der Kantgesellschaft, Nr. 15, (Berlin, l9l7).

O.
1'

6. Fritz Strich, Deutsche Klassik und Romantik {munchen, 1922).

specific period and then each was used to denote the group of charac-
teristics assigned to it by'W3lfflin. Once the terms were defined,
the tendencies which they designated were once more connected with
certain periods. We can now speak of style-epochs with a much
greater assurance than formerly, although there is still a considerable
diversity among scholars in the meanings which they give the terms.7
Helene Richter considers a lack of the identity of form and idea

and the parabolical indication of the idea through the form the es-
sential difference between the Renaissance and Baroque:

"Klassisch" ist vollkommene fibereinstimmung zwischen der

Form der Darstellung und der Idea des Darzustellenden.

'Romantisch' hingegen ist der Mangel dieser Identitat

von Form und Idea und die parabolische Andeutung der Idea

durch die Form. In dieselbe Formal lassen sich die

Resensunterschiede zwischen Renaissance und Barock

bringen.
This definition is very useful for the study of composition, but it is
inadequate for our purposes. We have to make an antithetical enlarge-
ment of this statement about a baroque work of art, zig., in composition
the idea is more than the form, in diction, however, the form is more
than the idea. we thus apply to literature what halzel says in his
interpretation of Welfflin's scheme of polarities of the 'absolute'

and 'relative Klarheit':

 

7. Cf. Paul Meissner, Die Gaistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen des
englischen Literatufbarocks §Munchen,’I93hI, pp.II€87

 

 

8. Helena Richter, Shakespeare der Mensch (Ieipzig, 1923), p. 77.

 

Beim Ubergang von absoluter Klarheit zu relativer

verliert die Klarheit des Motive die Bedeutung eines

Selbstgweckes der Darstellung. Die Gestalt eines Dinges

war fruher in ihrer Vollstandigkeit vor dem Auge ausgebreitet

worden. Jetzt warden nur noch wesentliche Anhaltspunkte

gegaben. gomposition, Licht und Farbe beginnen ihr Eigen-

leben zu fuhren.9
Out of the exaggeration of means used by the Renaissance something
quite new and different developed. Besides content form became very
important. Lodge in his preface to W. Iongbeard (1593) says: "In
old times manna studied to illustrate matter with wordes; now we
strive for wordes besides matter."10

This study will not concern itself with the composition of Chapman's
tragedies or the characterization of his heroes,11 but with his diction
only, Without directly applying Wolfflin‘s or walzel's categories, this
study is nevertheless based on their works. It is an attempt to trace
the most important creative urges underlying all baroque style in the
diction of Chapman's tragedies.
To do this, we had to take a very decisive step that Walzel has

not taken: the tracing back of all manifestations to the fewest
possible psychical basic motivations, which, however, may not have been

operative in any other period exhibiting baroque tendencies than that

around 1600. The showing of some of these creative urges, illustrated

 

9. Oskar Welzel, Gahalt und Gestalt im Kunstwerk des Dichters (Handbuch
der Literaturwissenschaft),(WildpafkePotsdam:_l929), p. 301.

 

10. Quoted from Schwan, "Rezension von landman: Der Euphuismus,"
Engl. Studien, V.

 

.11. Cf. Levin L. Schucking, Shakespeare und der Tragedienstil seiner
Zeit (Bern, 19h7)5also
Schucking, "The baroque character of the Elizabethan Tragic Hero,"
Pr. Brit. Acad; XXIV (1935), 65-112.

 

by the poets' writings, is, to my mind, a valid approach to the essential
mentality of a period.

By analyzing the contested stylistic phenomena that are known as
euphuism, marinism and gongorism, this 'phenomene europeen,12 we
discover the most elementary psychical motivations which urge the poet
of the Baroque to use this very form of expression, this kind of diction
and no other. From there we can then proceed to a new and more fruitful

discussion of the problem of style in Chapman's tragedies.

 

12. Thibaudet, loc.cit.

CHAPTER I
EUPhUISliI, GONGORIS‘M, MARINISM.
a.

Euphuism

"Euphuisme, cultisme, marinisme, gongorisme, plus tard

1'epanouissement de la preciosite francaise, appartiennent a un

phenomena europeen ..."1 Don Luis de Gdngora yArgote2 and

Giambattista Marind3 being doubtless the most typical poets of the

baroquey a certain concensus omnium has thus stated with this common

 

parallel that euphuism is the literary form in which the baroque

appears in England.

For a long time euphuism was generally used in the sense of

"exaggerated mode of expression" (Ulrici, Morley, Hense).S The

first really valuable scientific.discussion of euphuism was Iandmann's

treatise in 1681,6 in which he attempted to prove that Lyly's style

 

Thibaudat, loc. cit.
= gongorism, cultismo or culteranismo.

= marinism, secentismo.

Cf. Hellmuth Petriconi, "Gongora", Literarische welt 22,

Jahrgang 2?. Cf. also Victor Klemperer, Romanische Literaturen
von der Renaissance bis zur Franzosischen Revolution (Handbuch’
der Literaturwissenschaft), (Wildpark:Botsdam, 1926), pp. llh-llB.

 

 

 

Cf. Hanse, "John Lilly and Shakespeare," Shakespeare-Jahrbuch,
VII and VIII.

 

Landmann, Der Euphuismus,Asein Wesen, seine Quelle, seine
Geschichte (Giessen, 1881). The results were summarized and
clarified in a paper read before the New Shakespeare Society,
and also published in its Transactions, 1880-5, Part II.

 

 

 

is an imitation of the Spaniard A. Guevara.7 He also gives the first
valuable definition of euphuism. The euphuistic style was also
carefully analyzed by C. 0. Child in his valuable essay "John Lyly
and Euphuism".8 All later discussions of the euphuistic style in
the works of Bond, Feuillerat and Croll are more or less based on
these studies.
What can be-said about euphuism as a style phenomenon? With
the help of an example, we shall first have to explain the character-
istic features of euphuism. This will then lead us to a definition
of euphuism. A discussion in the succeeding chapter will demonstrate
the relationship of these characteristics to the problem of my study.
It is not difficult to find an example, because Lyly's style
remains always substantially the same. I merely quote the beginning

of Euphues: The Anatomy of wyt:

 

 

7. The old theories of Landmann and Feuillerat, who suggested,
respectively, that the style was the result of the imitation
of Guevara, and the imitation of the classics, have now been
abandoned. In their place the theory now generally accepted
is the one put forward by Professor Croll, who said that e
euphuism'was merely one manifestation of the general medieval
tradition, continued into the sixteenth century, of writing
patterned prose. Cf. William Ringler, "The Immediate Source
of Euphuism", mm, LIII (1938), 678-686; also M. W. Croll,
"The Sources of the Euphuistic Rhetoric", Lyly's Euphues, ed.
by Croll and Clemens (London, 1916).

 

8. Bublished in'Manhener Beitrage at Erlangen and Leipzig, l89h.

10

There dwelt in Athens a young gentleman of great
patrimonie, & of so comely a personage, that it was
doubted whether he were more bound to Nature for the
liniaments of his person, or to fortune for the encrease
of his possessions. But Nature impatient of comparisons,
and as it were disdaining a companion, or copartner in
hir working, added to this comlinesse of his body suche
a sharps capacitie of minds, that not onely shes proued
Fortune counterfaite, but was halfe of that opinion that
she hir selfe was onely currant. This younge gallant,
of more wit then wealth, and yet of more wealth then
wisdome, seeing himselfe inferiour to none in pleasant
conceipts, thought himselfe superiour to al in honest
conditions, insomuch yt he deemed himselfe so apt to
all things, that he gaue himselfe almost to nothing,
but practising of those things cSmonly which are incident
to these sharp wits, fine phrases, smoth quippin, merry
taunting, vsing iesting without means, & abusing mirth
without measure. As therefore the sweetest Rose hath
his prickel, the finest veluet his brack, the fairest
flowre his bran, so the sharpest witte hath his wanton
will, and the holiest heads his wicked ways. And true
it is that some men write and most men beleeue, that in
all perfects shapes, a blemmish bringsth rather a liking
euery way to the eyes, then a loathing any ways to the
minds. Venus had hir hole in hir cheeks which made hir
more amiEEIET' Helen hir scarre on hir chinne which Paris
called Cos amoris, the Whetstone of loue. Aristippus
his wart,‘Lycurgus his wenne: So likewise in the dis-
position of 56 minds, either vertus is ousrshadowed with
some vice, or vice ousrcast with some vertus. Alexander
valiaunt in warrs, yet gyuen to wine. Tullis eloquent
in his gloses, yet vayneglorious: Salomon wyse, yet to
too wanton: David holye but yet an Homicide: none more
wittis than Euphues, yet at the first none more wicked.
The freshest coIours soonest fade, the teenest Rasor
soonest tourneth his edge, the finest cloathe is soonest
eaten wyth Moathes, and the Cambricke sooner stained then
the course Canuas: whiche appeared well in this Euphues,

 

 

9. R. Warwick Bond, The Complete werks of John Lyly
(Oxford, 1902), I, 18b f.

11

The first impression is doubtless that of an immense abundance,
of excessiveness. In trying to define more exactly the cause of this
impression, we find that the author is only seldom content with
stating something just once. The same idea is repeated again and
again. Everybody knows that excellence has its imperfections, yet
this same idea is expressed three times: "As therefore the sweetest
Rose hath his prickel, the finest veluet his brack, the fairest
flowre his bran".10 And the eventual application of it to the case
in question again results in two parallel clauses: "so the sharpest
witte hath his wanton will, and the holiest heads his wicked ways." 10
The whole sentence could be cut down from five to three parts without
any detriment to the meaning. 'we have a similar case in: "The freshest
colours-etc. ..."10
This represents the sentence structure when one idea is to be
expressed. If Ivly‘wants to express different ideas, then he makes
use of-a continual parallelism or antithesis. In the first sentence
we have: "to Nature ... to fortune";"for the liniaments ... for the
encrease"; "of his person ... of his possessions". We have the sane
correspondence in "more wit than wealth ... of more wealth then wisdome".
There is also an intended parallelism in the composition of substantives
plus synonymous adjectives as, for instance, "sharp wits ... fine
phrases"; "smoth quipping ... merry taunting". We also discern an

elaborate alliteration. Parallelism or antithesis is cunningly

lO. Ibidc, p. 18110

l2

accentuated by the alliteration of the corresponding words: "the
finest veluet his brack, the fairest flowre his bran; or: "wanton
will and‘wicked'wayel"ll

If we look more closely at the parallel statements, we can
distinguish a continual linking of the clauses by words like 'whether
... or'; 'more ... then' and we readily perceive what seems to be a
corresponding antithesis in significant words as, for instance,
'superiour ... inferiour'; 'freshest, keenest, finest ... soonest'll
This looks like antithesis, and, indeed, antithesis is continually
pointed out as being one of the most important features of the
euphuistic style. Kane12 talks about "Lyly's excessive use of
parisonic antithesis". If we look closer at these euphuistic an-
titheses, we find that in almost all of them.the antithesis is only a
pretended one. In the first sentence Euphues is said to be "bound to
Nature for the liniaments of his person" and "bound to Fortune for the
encrease of his possessions."11 Both statements can very well be
linked together by 'and' and stand side by side. That the writer is
not sure whether Euphues is "more bound to Nature" or "to Fortune" is
a highly superfluous reflection which brings an antithesis into the
sentence that is not at all implied in its sense.

This analysis of the beginning of the novel, "Euphues, The

Anatomy of hyt", has already demonstrated the most important features

 

11. Ibid., p. 18h.

l2. Elisha K. Kane, Gongorism and the Golden Age (Chapel Hill, 1928),
p0 1118.

 

13

of euphuism that concerns the methods of ornament and illustration,

the material of ornamental devices, viz., the abundance of allusions

to the antiquity, especially to classical mythology.13

All definitions of euphuism by the different scholars being very

similar to Landmann's, I should like to end my discussion of this

stylistic phenomenon by quoting his excellent definition:

Wenn wir nun noch einmal die charakteristischen Merkmale
des Euphuismus kurz zusammenfassen, so finden wir dieselben
in der eigentumlichen Kombination der Antithese mit der
Alliteration, der .Assonanz, dam Reim und dem'WOrtspiels,
in der Vorliebe fur die Konformitat und Korraspondenz
paralleler Satze, der Haufung rhetorischer Figuren, wie
Klimax, rhetorischer Fragen, Einwanden, welche er selbst
beantwortet, Wiederholung desselben Gedankens in anderer
Form, ferner in den uberladenen Anspielungen aus dem
Altertum und Vergleichen aus dem taglichen Leben, nebst
der Vorlisbe fur Gleichnisse aus der Naturgeschichte
durch Heranziehung seltener Objekte mit wundarbaren
Eigenschaften. Dagegen finden wir keine Ubertreibung
der Diktion an phantastischen Bildern, allzu kuhnen
poetischen Hyperbeln und Personification; mit anderen
Worten, der Euphuismus ist sine geschmacklose Ubertre bung
im Gebrauche von rhetorischen Figuren, nicht Tropen.

 

13.
114.

Cf. Bond, 0pc Cite, pp. 130-1310

Landmann, op. cit., p. 23.

b.
Gongorism.

For more than three centuries Gongora had a bad reputation.
'Obscure', 'incomprehensible' were among the favorite epithets used
for describing his style. Gongorism was simply considered 'bad
taste' and often dismissed without further analysis. Even such an
excellent critic as Fr. v. Schack in his standard work "Geschichte
der dramatischen Literatur und Kunst in Spanien" considers the
typical gongoristic poems 'Polifemo' and 'Soledades' extremes of
"einer hohlen und aufgedunsenen, pedantischen und afficierten
Schreibart," though, on the other hand, he points out that Gongora
remains "selbst in seinen Verirrungen noch immer sin geistreicher
Mann und echter Dichter."15

E. Churton16 is the earliest and almost the only critic who is
sympathetic in his approach towards Gdngora. He regrets Ticknor'sl7
sharp censure immensely18 and attempts to do more justice to the poet.

Even Thomas still has the feeling that he should find an excuse
for gongorism, especially for its 'obscurite'. He tries to explain

it, first, as an influence of Gdngora's native town Cdrdoba:

 

15. A. Fr. v. Schack, Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur und
,Kunst in Spanien (Frankfurt, IUSh), II, hZ.

 

 

16. E. Churton, Gongora,(London 1862).

17. Ticknor, Geschichte der schc'nen Literatur in Spanien, (Leipzig 1667).

 

18. Cf. Churton, op. cit., p. 200.

15

La passion sxaltee gui se degageait de ce milieu brulant
dut influer profondement sur la genie poetique de Don
Luis, at les modeles si parfaits,. mais si fastueux de
l'architecture arabe, les details incomparables, mais
infiniment compliques des salles de la mosques ne furent
certainement point de nature a la lBousser dans la vois
des solutions simples et droites.l

and,second, as a result of the fever from which G6ngora was suffering

before he wrote his gongoristic poems:

Male 36 crois que la fievre de son cerveau l'a aide a
embrasser avec enthousiasme effrene les theories de'ses
predecesseurs, an les portant a leur plus haut degre

d' extravagance et d'eclat.2O

For Artigas, Gdngora is a real poet whose pen is fettered by

tradition.

La pluma del poeta estaba atada a1 prejuicio del estilo
cultivado. Habia querido romper, habia roto ... notable
triunfo ... con la imitacion del fondo, habia concebido

5 una estupenda creation, se habia lanzado a la naturaleza,
pero sus ojos estaban llenos ds metaforas, de espresiones
y'de fabulas clasicas. Thetis y Almicedon y Clicie y
Ascalepho se interponen entre 103 0303 y'la realidad.21

Damaso Alonso22 overshoots the target and completely denies any

'oscuridad' in gongorism. For him it is not 'oscuridad' but only

'dificuldad'. His hundred-page translation of the eighty-page

'Soledades' text, however, is in grotesque contrast to his statement:

"No oscuridad; claridad radiante".23

 

19.
20.
21.

22.

23.

Thomas, Gongora et la Gongorisme (Paris, 1911), p. 3b.

 

Ibid., p. 27.
M. Artigas, Gdngora (Madrid, 1925), p. 278f.

Soledades da Gdngora, editadas por Damaso Alonso, Jubilee edition
of the ReVista de Occidente, Madrid, 1927.

 

Ibid., p. 35.

. 16

As in the preceding section we showed the most important features
of euphuism that will be of significance to our specific study, we
shall now by a short analysis of gongorism.try to find the most important
constituents of this stylistic phenomenon.

Kane says about gongorism: "Gongorism, like Janus, may be regarded
as always possessing a single head with two faces, the cultist and
conceptist".2h

Cultism has a "predilection for an obscure language, latinized
in vocabulary and syntax, and surcharged with extravagant figures of
speech,"25‘whereas conceptism is marked by "an abuse of metaphysical
conceits and in addition, philosophic paradoxes and obscure references".26
we need not enter into the abtruse hair-splitting discussions for
preserving a theoretical distinction between these two elements of
gongorism, because it is of minor importance for our study.

In order to find the most important characteristics of gongorism
we shall this time analyze a very typical gongoristic text, 112., the
beginning of the poem 'Soledades'. This poem is "de todas 1as obras

ds Gongora nada mas tipicamente gongorino".27

 

2h. Kane, op. cit., p. 28.
25. Ibid., p. 25.
26. Ibid., p. 25.

27. Soledades, Ed. Alonso, p. 7

17
Era del afio 1a estacidn florida
en que el mentido robador de Europa
-media luna las armas de su frent,
y el Sol todos los rayos de su pelo-,
luciente honor del cielo,

en caipos de zafiro pace estrallas;
c‘zando el que ministrar podia la copa
a Jupiter major que el garzon de Ida,
-naufrago y desdenado, sobre ausente-
lagrimosas de amor dulces querellas

da’al mar; condolido,

fue a las ondas, fue al viento

e1 misero gemido,
Segundo de Arion dulce instrumento.28

How difficult to make sense out of it: And yet if we once conceive
the meaning of it, what a simple.meaning behind such an elaborate and
complicated garb:

The stanza simply says: In spring a shipwrecked youth stands
onihe shore and complains; as a result the sea calms down. By what
means do we get this complication? Through the indirect mode of
expression. The post does not say: in spring. The time is hinted at
by the astronomical position of the sun. But even that is not directly
stated. Instead of the word Taurus, we have a mythological allusion.
And the whole device is again clothed in a metaphor: the pasturing
of the stars. There are, so to speak, different layers around the real
meaning. The 'robador' of the outer layer must be translated into
Tarus, Tarus is on the same level as 'estacidn florida' and behind
that we at last find the covered keyaword: spring. Alonso notes about

q ~ 0 o ’ o ’ o
the metaphors: "... los de51gnat1vos metaforicos estan ponlendo

constantemente una barrera irreal entre la mente y el objeto mismo."29

 

28. Ibid., p. b3.

29. Ibid., p. 16.

18

As a further illustration of this tendency toward obscurity we
might also discuss the treatment of the story of Angelica and Medor
borrowed by Gdngora from Ariosto's Orlando.

In order to indicate that the wounded Medor is lying in a
peaceful countryside, enlivened by herds and shepherds, Gdngora says
that Peace has wrapped itself in a shepherd's coat and is driving
sheep down from the mountains to the valley and goats from the dale
to the hills:

Do la paz vista pellico

Y conduce entre pastores

Ovejas del monts a1 llano

Y cabras del llano a1 monte.3o
In this countryside Medor is found by Angelica. And the latter, as
deathebringing fighter and loving woman, is simultaneously called
'Life and Death of men'. The name Angelica is not even mentioned,

so that it sounds almost oracle-like when Gdngora says:

Lo hallo en el campo aquella
Vida y muerts de los hombres.31

When Angelica wants to bandage Medor's wounds, Amor offers her his
bandage ("Amer 1e ofrece su benda"). She, however, prefers to make
the bandages out of her own veil ("Mas ella sus velos rompe para ligar
sus heridas"). Eventually both are taken to the shepherd's cottage,
not however before having fallen in love with each other. In spite of
Medor's being almost lifeless, he has two souls, one for him and one

for Angelica, and in spite of Angelica's being lovablind, she possesses

 

30. Las Cisn Mejores Poesias de la Lengua Castellana, ed. by'M.
Menendez y Pelayo, Madrid,—I9l9, p.“119.

 

31. Ibid., p. 119.

19

two eye-suns. Thus Medoro is "un mal vivo con dos almas" and
Angelica "una ciega con dos soles". After this the description of
the love-idyl in the cottage is bombastically continued.

In gongorism we can also discern many rhetorical devices as we
could in euphuism. In our first example quoted from the 'Soledad
primera' we have, for instance, a most violent hyperbaton or trans-
grassion32 consisting of a chaotic arrangement justified by no
language.

Lagrimosas de amor dulces querellas
Da a1 mar; qua condolido,
Fue a las ondas, fue al viento
E1 misero gemido
Segundo de Arion, dulce instrumento. 33
We detect in gongorism the same urge for abundance, excessiveness,
especially in the mythological allusions. But this excessiveness is
something else than the euphuistic bulkiness. Here the filling material
is not intertwined with the red thread, so that both can appear side
by side. Here we have another motivation: the urge to play, so to
speak, at hide-and-seek. The idea is hidden behind an opaque abundance.
The form goes its own way. The poet wants to remove 'the idea' from

the form on purpose. This is the reason why he continually employs

absolute metaphors without even mentioning the object which they

 

323 Cf. Joannes Susenbrotus, Epitome Troporum ac Schematum, Tiguri
(Zurich, 1563), p. 33.

 

33. Gongora, op. cit., p. b3. For a better understanding I shall give
a prose th‘EIEtion of th: s abstruse passage: "(He) gives to the
sea sweet and tearful complaints of love in such a manner that,
the sea condoling with him, his miserable lamenting served to
pacify waves and wind, just as if it had been uttered by the sweet
instrument of Arion."

20

represent. At times the obscure allusions, frequently couched in
periphrases, are really so insomprehensible as to be veritable enigmas.
Poetry, to the gongorists, was by no means a simple art; the excellence
of a composition was rated directly according to the difficulty the
reader experienced in understanding it.

Man machte sich sin besonderes Vergnugen daraus, den

Ieser durch die Gesuchtheit der Vergleiche und Anspielungen,
durch poetisch verschleierts Kenntniflse in der Gotterlehre
und alten Geschichte zu verblfiffen.3

We shall not discuss other characteristics of gongorism, such as
neologisms, for instance, because they are only of minor or no
importance to our study.

We should like to end our discussion with Kane's definition of

t

gongorism:

... it may be said that this flamboyant style is made up
of a number of elements which may roughly be grouped under
two heads: affectation in language, or cultism3 and
affectation in thought, or conceptism ... with the under-
standing, of course, that the two classes are not distinct
but blended. As to separate elements, those which seem
most definitely cultist are neologisms, hyperpates,
bombast, and involved sentences. Other components which
may be either cultist, conceptist or both, are the
architectonic devices of rhetoric and the use of bizarre
figures of speech, expecially metaphors, puns, paradoxes,
personification, and allegory. Finally there are traits
which incline usually, though not invariably, to con-
ceptism.and these are the pedantic ornamentations of
thought secured by obscure references and mythological
allusions.35

 

3h. H. Hatzfeld, Romanische Literaturen von der Renaissance bis zur

franzosischgn‘REVquron (HandBucH Her Literaturwissenscfiaft),
WIIdparE-Petsdam, I925, . 191.

35. Kane, op. cit., p. hOf.

21

Co

Marinism or Secentismo.

For a long time 'marinismo' was the symbol for false taste just
as we have seen 'gongorismfl was for 'obscurity'. "... il 'Marinismo'
fatto simbolo di ogni falso gusto e sinonimo di secentismo e di
decadenza ..."36

Giambattista Marina's fantastic style does not reveal any new
and very important aspects for our study of the baroque style and we
can safely dispense with a detailed discussion of it.

Generally speaking we find the same characteristics as in euphuism
and gongorism. We might however point out that in the use of antithesis
and other architectonic sentence devices, oxymoron,37 pun, paradox,
allegory, and personification, Merino surpasses the stylistic phenomena
discussed in the preceding paragraphs. For him poetry must be new and a
'surpriss'. The literary aim of the secentisti was 'to dazzle and
astonish the reader' ("far stupir"). Klemperer says about Marino's
style:

Der gsistreiche Ausdruck die Antithese, das Unvorhergesehene,

das uberraschend Neue pragen.Marinos Stil. Hispanisierung,
die dem Napolitaner besonders liegt, ubersteigert dies

 

36. Giovanni Piazzi, Novella Fronda (Manuals storico della letteratura
e dell'arte italiana), Milano,“l918, II, 511-12.

 

3?. Cf. John Smith, The hysteria of Rhetorique Unvail'd (london, 1657),
pp. 121-22 0

22

alles. Mythologische Stoffe, hendungen, Drapéerungen
gebraucht er dabei in schwelgerischer Fulle.

Metaphors, together with tedious circumlocutions, obscure

mythological, astrological, classical, and astronomical allusions

give to Marina's verses a character at times very similar to that of

Gc’mgora ' 3.

Era ne 1a stagion ch'l Can celeste

Fianna esala latrando e 1'aria bolls,
Ond'arde e langue in quelle parts s'n quests
In fiore e l'erba e la campagne e'l colls:
E'l Pastor per spelonche e per forests
Riffugi a 1'ombra fresca, a 1'onda molla.
Mantra che Febo a 1'animal feroce

Che fu spoglia d'Alcide il tergo coce.39

we see that the urge for playing 'hide-and-seek' is also present in the

marini stic style . L10

we should like to end our short discussion of marinism or secentismo

with Vsnturi's definition of secentismo:

... consists principalmente nella ricsrcatezza e turgidezza
della forma che vuol celare il difetto e la vacuita del
pensiere, nell'enfasi che pretends simulare i1 calore del
sentimento, nella sottigliszza dei concetti, nel l'abuso

della metafore, della antitesi e in genera del palar figuratoJ‘l

 

38.
39.

ho.

hl.

Victor Klemperer, op. cit., p. 116.

Adonis, III:7, 'Twas in that season when the heavenly hound

While barking breathes out flame, when boils the air,
When still or raging, e'er he circles round

'Mid flower and field and peak and country fair:

Then in the woodland caves the shepherd found

A resting place with springs and shadows there,

Where scathless he might dwell while Phoebus broils
The wild beast's back that was Alcides' spoils.

Translation from Elisha K. Kane, op. cit., p. 272.

Cf. Francesco de Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura Italiana
(Milano, l92h), II, 172.

 

Giovanni Antonio Venturi, Storia della letteratura Italiana
(Firenze, 1922), p. 1&6.

 

0141me II
THE QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVR URGES IN THE BAROQUE S‘l’YLE ,

Every work that is at allvvorth mention in a history of literature
carries within itself the motivating force that it leaves as an impres-
sion in the reader. This is true without regard to the consciousness
or unconsciousness of the creator of the work.

'The first impression we get in reading Lyly, Marina, and Gdngora
is that of an enormous abundance. This impression must correspond to
an urge for abundance in the posts, and urge for an immensely colourful
exhibition of all kinds of things, the more the better. Lyly is obvious-
ly very proud of the opulence he produces, as is clearly demonstrated
by the formal parallelism of the details. These parallelisms are the
definite sign of his intended impression of abundance. And when Lyly,
for instance, cannot enumerate many things, then he advances variations
on one theme, repeats the same thing again and again in a varied form.

We shall call this urge quantitative, because it exhibits either

 

a real quantity of matter or a merely pretended one. It manifests
itself especially in parallelism, a parallelism often involving words
and sentences which serve no logical purpose and consequently merely
constitute a bombastic abundance. As substance of this abundance we
find mythological allusions, metaphor, and hyperbole.

we discern this quantitative urge in all three stylistic phenomena,
discussed in the preceding chapter, but it is more conspicuous in

euphuism than it is, for instance, in gongorism.

21:

In gongorism and to a lesser degree in marinism.another urge
predominates, an urge to remove the form of expression from the 'idaa'.
We shall call this, in contrast to the quantitative urge for abundance,

the qualitative urge, because the quality of what is to be expressed is

 

altered. This qualitative urge manifests itself in two ways. It can
disguise the 'idsa' to the extent of unrecognizability, as we have seen
in the instance of Gdngora and Marino, or it may dissect it into atoms
so that we can no longer recognize the molecules. The latter, for
instance, is the case with the euphuistic antithesis.

The quantitative and qualitative urges give us a co-ordinative
system into which all essential forms of the baroque style must fit,

0 ’ ' 0
because, accordlng to the consensus omnium, Gongora, Marlno and also

 

Lyly, as we have demonstrated before, are the most typical representatives

of the baroque style.

CHAPTER III

CHAPMAN'S THEORY OF DRAKA AND ITS RELATION TO HIS STYLE.

Many critics have consistently maintained that Chapman's writings
are neither interesting nor intrinsically important and that whatever
value they may possess is historical. This condemnation of Chapman

apparently begins with Dryden's onslaught on BussyD'Ambois in his

 

Dedication to The Spanish Friar (1681):

 

I have sometimes wondered, in the reading, what has become
of those glaring colours which annoyed me in Bussy D'Ambois
upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what—I supposed‘“
a fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly;
nothing but a cold dull mass, which glittered no longer
than it was shooting; a dwarfish thought, dressed up in
gigantic words, repetition in abundance, loosensss of
expression, and gross hyperboles; the sense of one line
expanded prodigiously into ten; and to sum up all, uncor-
rect English, and a hideous mingle of false poetry and
true nonsense; or, at best, a scantling of wit, which lay
ggsping for life, and’groaning beneath a heap of rubbish.

A famous modern post used to sacrifice every year a
Statius to Virgil's nanes; and I have indignation enough
to burn a D'Ambois annually to the memory of Jonson.

 

Not all the criticism, however, has proceeded according to the
Dryden formula. Those critics who pay more attention to the poetic
than the dramatic have made more laudatory statements concerning
Chapman. Professors Neilson and Thorndike write about his verse that,
although often quite inartistic, it is "at its best ... closest of all

in its resemblance to Shakespeare's".2

 

1. Dedication to "The Spanish Friar", Scott-Saintsbury edition of
The‘Works of John Dryden (Edinburgh, 1883), VI, h0h-h05.
RBprfifitedin W. P. KerTs Essays of John Dryden (Oxford, 1900),

we I, 2 -500-

2. Neilsen and Thorndike, The Facts about Shakespeare, Revised ed.
(New York, 1931), p. 108.

26

But as to the drama, critics generally agree with Professor
Schelling, who believes that altogether too often Chapman's tendency
to moralize interferes with the progress of the drama, which must wait
until the poetic outburst is over, but that Chapman had the ability
to write so eloquently in the gnomic vein that among his contemporaries
only Jonson and Greville could compare with him.3

Chapman has enjoyed something of a renascence in the past two
decades, most probably because our taste has turned more to the dif-
ficult poetry, to a poetry that requires an unusually high degree of
intellectual concentration. In reading Chapman we have to keep in
mind that he wrote for a limited audience. In the dedication of
"Ovid's Banquet of Sense" he says:

The profane multitude I hate, and only consecrate my
strange poems to those searching spirits, wh m learning
has made noble, and nobility sacred. (p. 21)
This explains to a great extent the freedom with which Chapman
sacrifices, for instance, the dramatic and introduces so much of
philosophy and other learning. He goes on and says:
But that poasy should be as psrvial as oratory, and
plainness her special ornament, were the plain way to

barbarism, and to make the ass run proud of his ears, to
take away strength from lions, and give camels horns. (p. 21)

 

3. Felix E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama 1558-l6h2 (Boston and New
York, 1908), I, h20.

 

h. All quotations in this chapter are taken from The WOrks of George
Chapman, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd (London, 1889).

 

27

These two statements also partly explain his obscurity of style..

By reading Ficino's Epitomae of Plato's I32? Chapman was let to
the Platonic doctrine that poetry is divinely inspired. He states his
fundamental belief succinctly in his epistle dedicatory to the "Hymns
of Homer".

And though our mere-lsarn'd men, and modern wise,
Taste not poor Poesy's ingenuities,

Being crusted with their covetous leprosies,

But hold her pains worse than the spider's work,
And lighter than the shadow of a cork,

Yet th'ancient learn'd, heat with celestial fire,
Affirms her flames so sacred and entire,

That not without God's greatest grace she can
Fall in the widest capacity of man. (p. 252)

It is interesting to see that Chapman considers the ignorance of
his contemporaries more as the result of a spiritual incapacity than a
failure to study. Learning is not an illuminating process unless it
has made a man "noble". This nobility,however, is of the spirit and
is very seldom attained; it is the nearest man can reach to the divine
and Chapman therefore calls it "sacred".6 In the allegorical poem
"Euthymiae Raptus or the Tears of Peace" the poet is inspired by an
"inner light":

When suddenly, a comfortable light

Brake through the shade; and, after it, the sight

Of a most grave and goodly person shined,

With eyes turn'd upwards, and was outward, blind;

But inward, past and future things he saw,
And was to both, and present times, their law.

 

5. Cf. The Poems of George Chapman, ed. by Phyllis Brooks Bartlett
(london, l9hl), p. l.

6. Epistle to Roydon prefixed to "Ovid's Banquet of Sense", (p. 21).

28

His sacred bosom was so full of fire

That 'twas transparent, and made him expire

His breath in flames, that did instruct, methought,

And (as my soul were then at full) they wrought. (p. 111)

He also expects his reader to have attained this sacred nobility
of spirit, this "inner light". Poetry being the medium for the expres-
sion of divinity, and the post being inspired by'a supernatural
"inflatus", the reader must also experience a similar inspiration to
be able to understand the import of poetry. Chapman expects him to
supply omissions and see through his ambiguity and "palpable night".
In the dedication to "Ovid's Banquet of Sense" he writes:

I know that empty and dark spirits will complain of
palpable night; but those that beforehand have a radiant
and light—bearing intellect, will say they can pass
through Corinna's garden without the help of a lantern.
(p- 22)

In writing drama, Chapman seems to expect the same intelligent

responsiveness from playgoers that he expects from the reader of

his lyrics. In the dedication to the Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois

 

Chapman gives us his idea of tragedy:
Poor envious souls they are that cavil at truth's want in
these fictions; material instruction, elegant and senten-
tious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her
contrary, being the soul, limbs, and limits of an
authentical tragedy. (p. 178)

Tragedy should teach and, in order to do this, he advocated

making use of every means. The action of the play should always

present a lesson, as Clermont in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois

 

suggests:

29

and stages too
Have a respect due to them, if but only,
For what the good Greek moralist says of them:
Is a man proud of greatness, or of riches?
Give me an expert actor, I'll show all
That can within his greatest glory fall.
Is a man fray'd with poverty and lowness?
Give me an actor, I'll show every eye
That he laments so, and so much doth fly,
The best and worst of both. (p. 18h)

Character portrayal is used as a means of teaching. Bussy
D'Ambois represents nobleness, Clermont virtue and wisdom, Montsurry
cowardice, Monsieur ambition, etc.

Both action and character should be presented with the stroke of
an artist who intensifies essential characteristics:

It serves not a skillful painter's turn to draw the

figure of a face only to make known who it represents;

but he must limn, give lustre, shadow and heightening;
which though ignorants will esteem spiced, and too curious,
yet such as have the judicial perspective will see it has
motion, spirit and life. (p. 21)

Chapman endeavors to celebrate his heros as "great spirits"
in every respect. The heroic qualities of Bussy D'Ambois are
exalted to the utmost. His action in combat so impresses the
Nuntius that the latter exclaims:

What Atlas or Olympus lifts his head

So far past covert, that with air enough

My words may be informed and from their heights
I may be seen and heard throughout the world?

A tale so worthy, and so fraught with wonder

Sticks in my jaws, and labours with event. (p. lh7a)

In Byron's Conspiracy it is the elaboration of an unruly ambition

 

that serves for the heightening of the character. As in Bussy

D'Ambois ambition is again shown to be the passion of great men.

30

The "great spirit" of Byron is revealed by his pompous words about
himself. Here we see quite clearly the hyperbolical trait in the
characterization which very often even has a touch of the groteSque

in it. Sometimes it is mere megalomania. hhen the Duke of Savoy wants
to flatter Byron, he has Byron's picture painted, but the latter
contemptuously snatches it away from the painter and sxclaims:

And I will have my image promised you,

Cut in such matter as shall ever last;

Where it shall stand, fix'd with eternal roots,
And.with a most unmoved gravity;

For I will have the famous mountain Oros,

That looks out of the duchy where I govern
Into your highness' dukedom, first made yours,
And then with such inimitable art

Expressed and handled; chiefly from the place
Where most conspicuous he shows his face,

That though it keep the true form of that hill
In all his longitudes and latitudes,

His height, his distances, and full proportion,
Yet shall it clearly bear my counterfeit,

Both in my face and all my lineaments;

And every man shall say, This is Byron.

Within my left hand, I will hold a city,

Which is the city Amiens; at whose siege

I served so memorably; from my right,

I'll pour an endless flood into a sea

Raging beneath me; which shall intimate

My ceaseless service, drunk up by the King

As th'ocean drinks up rivers, and makes all
Bear his proud title; ivory, brass, and gold,
That thieves may purchase, and be bought and sold,
Shall not be used about me; lasting worth
Shall only set the Duke of Byron forth. (p. 230a)

Chapman's persons characteristically speak in exalted language. He
uses various devices of poetry to achieve the "elevated tone" even in

his tragedies. In the dedication to The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois

 

Chapman says that the "excitation to vertus" should be'elegant and

sententious". Through Montsurry's mouth he suggests the idea that

31

worthiest poets
Shun common and plebeian forms of speech;
Every illiberal and affected phrase
To clothe their matter; and together tie
Matter and form, with art and decency. (p. 185a)

The abundance of figures also illustrates his attempt to
heighten by poetry. Chapman, moreover holds the opinion that obscurity
in the illustration is an aid in elevating, for he says:
that which being with a little indeavor searched, adds a

kind of majesty to Poesy, is better than that which every
Cebbler may sing to his patch.7

 

7; Dedication to "Ovid's Banquet of Sense"; p. 21.

CHAPTER IV

THE QUANTITATIVE AID QUALITATIVE URGE IN CHAPHAN'S 'BUSSY D'ALBCIS'

l.

The Quantitative Urge.

a. Parallelism or repetition.

 

we have to point out from the beginning that our categories will
sometimes of necessity appear to be somewhat vague in praxi. Here we
are not always dealing with clearly defined rhetorical figures, with
tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, etc., or with schemes, such as
anaphora, ploce, prOSOpopoeia, antithesis, etc.1 Our categories will
very often overlap in the text we have to analyze. But in spite of
this or for this very reason they state much more essential things
about this text, because they represent what we have actually found as
we approach the play without preconceptions.

Parallelism is the most simple expression of the euphuistic urge
for abundance. It is not enough for the post to express his 'idea'
once and precisely. He repeats it in a varied form, often several times.

We find many patterns of parallel repetition in Bussy D'Ambois as, for

 

instance, the anaphora:

 

l. "The rhetorical figures are often divided into tropes and schemes.
a trOpe employs words in another than their literal meaning; a
scheme arranges or repeats words and longer units according to a
definite pattern, or amplifies the subject in a particular manner.
Some rhetoricians, however, e.g., Quintilian, use the term 'figure'
itself as equivalent to 'scheme'; thus the phrase 'tropes and figures'
means 'tropes and schemes'." Herbert David Rix, "Rhetoric in Spenser's
Poetry", The Pennsylvania State College Studies, No. 7 (l9h0), p. 19.

 

or

01‘

Chapman

33

If Themistocles
Had liv'd obsEEr'd thus in th'Athenian State,
Xerxes had made both him and it his slaves.
If brave Camillus had lurckt so in Rome,
He had not five times beene Dictator there,
Nor fours times triumpht. If Epaminodas
(Tho liv'd twice twenty yeeFE obscur'd in Thebs)
Had liv'd so still, he had beene still unnam'd,

(1.1.6542)2

Shew me a great man (by the peoples voice,
Which is the voice of God) that by his greatnesse
Bumbasts his private roofes with publique riches
That affects royaltie, rising from a clapdish;
That rules so much more than his suffering King,
That he makes kings of his subordinate slaves.
(III, ii, 25-30)

Shew me a lawyer that turnes sacred law
Into a Harpy, that sates all but's owns,
Into the damned sinnes it punisheth,

Into the synagogue of theeves and atheists;

very frequently employs epizeuxis:
They come, alas, they come! Fears, Fears and hOpe

OT one thing, at one instant, fight in me:
(II, ii, 169-170)

 

See, see, a vault is opening that was never.
(II, ii, 176)

Wake, wake, the drowsie and enchanted night.
(V, iii. AS)

 

2. All

quotations are taken from Chapman, Bussy D'Ambois and The

Revenge of Bussy’D'Ambois, The-B5II§E=I§T€F§§-S§FI§§:—§HT_FF§Oerick
S. Boas (Boston andMLondon, 1905).

3h

 

Tam. He was, he was, kind worthy man, he was.
Mont. trite, write, a word or two.

Tam. I W1Il, I will.

 

(V) ii: 173-175)
He especially uses triple repetition:

Haffe: Monsieur Haffe.
Bussy: Monsieur kaffe? Then, good Monsieur Haffe,

(I, 1, 160-61)
Raffe: Some pamphlet?
Bussy: Pamphlet:
Maffe: Pamphlet, sir, I say.
(I. 1, 165-167)
Mons. Farewell, riddle.
Gui. Farewell, medlar.
Hons. Farewell, winter plum.
we also find the repetition of the same sentence by different persons

which often gives a rather unrealistic impression.

Henry: All slain outright but he?
Nuntius: All slain outright but he,

(11, 1. 133-l3h)
The repetition of or playing upon sounds is a favorite device. horde
only slightly different are thrown together intentionally:

Saucie! Companion! tie the Guise, but yet those
termes might have beene spar'd of the guiserd.3

or

Dames maritorious ne're were meritorioussh

 

 

 

3. I, ii, 121-123.

h. II, ii, 8h; cf. 'truss' and trust' (III, ii, 2h).

35

Alliteration is also used consciously as is shown by such lines as:
"loathe leans darknesse like death",5 or by passages like, for instance,
III, ii, h60-73, where out of thirteen lines, nine begin with "T" or

"Th" or V, i, 75-93, where out of eighteen lines, thirteen begin with

the same letter.

At times, balance and contrast are combined effectively, as in

the following passage:

Before I was secure against death and hell;

But now am.subject to the heartlesse fears

Of every shadow, and of svery'breath,

And would change firmnesse with an aspen leafe;
So confident a spotlesss conscience is,

So weake a guilty.
(III, 1, 6-11)

The most effective form of parallelism in Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois,
however, is a series of parallel ideas in which is repeated at intervals

a thought of special weight and importance.

Mons. I will, I swears. I think thee, than, a man
That dares as much as a wilds horse or tyger,

As headstrong and as bloody; and to feed

The ravenous wolfe of thy most caniball valour
(Rather than not employ it) thou would'st turn
Hackster to any whore, slave to a Jew,

Or English usurer, tofbrcs possessions

(And cut msns throats) of morgaged estates;

Or thou would'st tire thee like a tinksrs strumpet,
And murther market folks; quarrell with sheeps,

And runne as mad as Ajax; serve a butcher;

Doe any thing but killing of the King.

TRZt in thy valour th'art like other naturalls
That have strange gifts in nature, but no souls
Diffus'd quits through, to make them of a peace,

 

S. I, i, 63. Of. II, 1, 8h; II, 1, 89; II, 1, 70; I, i, 30; I, i, 9;
II, ii, 70 and many other lines.

36

But stop at humours, that are more absurd,
Childish and villanous thant that hackster, whore,
Slave, cut—throat, tinkers bitch, compar'd before;
And in those humors would'st envie, betray,
Slander, blaspheme, change each hours a religion,
Doe any thing, but killing of the King:

That thy vanur (which is Still the dunghill,

To which hath reference all filth in thy house)
Th'art more ridiculous and veins-glorious

Than any mountibank,snd impudsnt

Than any painted bawd; which not to sooth,

And glorifie thee like a Jupiter Hammon,

Thou eat'st thy heart in vinegar, and thy gall
Turns all thy blood to poyson, which is cause

Of that toad-pools that stands in thy complexion,
And makes thee with a cold and earthy moisture,
(Hhich is the damme of putrifaction)

As plague to thy damn'd pride, rot as thou liv'st:
To study calumnies and treacheries;

To thy friends slaughtered like a scrich-owle sing,
And to all mischiefes - but to kill the King.

(III, ii, h39-t73)

 

 

The powerful effect of this criticism by Monsieur is due to the
skilful way in which Chapman uses this form, making the thought
"anything but killing of the King", expressed twentyheight lines before
by Bussy, stronger each time by a heaping up of parallel ideas, each
more severe than the preceding, until at last the phrase "anything but
killing of the King" thunders from the speaker.

Another good example of this parallelism we have in the address
of Bussy to Henry (III, ii, 21-59), in which every sentence begins with
"Shew me a ..." and ends with the chief idea "let me but hawk at him,

...He shall confesse all, and you then may hang him".

37

b. Bombast

 

As long as we can still discover a trace of parallelism, it is
not difficult to show the urge for abundance, because this parallelism
demonstrates that the urge is aware of itself and that it arranges
the produced opulence and forms it more or less into an ornament.

But when it merely bubbles with new words and when there is no repetition
of words or structure, then we can no longer speak about an ornament.

We shall call this bombast. Bombast here stands for simple abundance,
however, for a real and not a pretended one. The word, as used here,

has no derogatory meaning.

Events of only normal importance calling merely for a naked
description, are puffed up by a gorgeous depiction of all details,
which again are enlarged by comparisons or at least by epithets. In
this way the progress of an action of the description of anything is
given in a broad and elaborate manner instead of being rendered in a
feW'words.

It is very typical that the Nuntius, reporting to Henry about the
duellihg, only after a long and elaborate description of the fight
tells us in conclusion:

And now, (of all the six) sole D'Ambois stood

Untouch'd, save only with the others' blood.

(II, i, 25-132)
The passage is full of hyperboles, similes, metaphors, and it also

contains mythological and historical allusions.

38

Bussy uses a most inflated and exagerated language, especially
in his threats, in which he again and again heaps Pelion upon Ossa.

Buss. here your King brother in you; all your powers
(Stretcht in the armes of great men and their bawds)
Set close downs by you; all your stormy lawes

Spouted with lawyers mouthes, and gushing bloud,

like to so many torrents; all your glories

Making you terrible, like enchanted flames,

bed with bare cockscombs and with crooked hammes,

All your prerogatives, your shames, and tortures,

All daring heaven and Opening hell about you —

here I the man ye wrong'd so and provok'd,

(Though ne're so much beneath you) like a box tree

I would out of the roughnesse of my root

Ramme hardnesse in my lownesse, and, like death
Mounted on earthquakes, I would trot through all
Honors and horrors, thorow foule and fairs,

And from your whole strength tosse you into the sire.6

Here we might point out that this inflated baroque self-appraisal
is not supposed to state anything unreal or derogatory about Bussy's
character, as is demonstrated by the theatrical death-scene. Bussy,
lured into an ambush and fatally wounded, does not show any despair or
repentance or the feeling of Mercutio who dies with the exclamation:
"A plague o'both your houses",7 he is concerned only with maintaining
his dignity. ("And if Vespian thought in majestie An Emperour might
die standing, why not 1?")8

But not Bussy alone moves in this wildly exaggerated pathos;
his adversary hontsurry also piles hyperbole upon hyperbole in his

bombastic and often bizarre exclamations:

 

6. IV, 1, 81-96. or. III, ii, 7rr; Iv, ii, 3orr; Iv, ii, 17srr.

70 RJ 111,1,30

8. V, iv, 99-91. Cf. L. L. Schucking, Shakespeare und der Tragodienstil
seiner Zeit_(Bern ljh7), p. 82.

 

39

Mont. Who shall remove the mountains from my brest,
Stand in the opening furnace of my thoughts,
And set fit out-cries for a souls in hell?
Montsurry turnss a key.

For now it nothing fits my woes to speak,
But thunder, or to take into my throat
The trump of Heaven, with whose determinate blasts
The windes shall burst and the devouring seas
Es drunk up in his sounds, that my hot woes
(Vented enough) I might convert to vapour
Ascending from my infamie unseene;
Shorten the world, preventing the last breath
That kils the living, and regenerates death.

(V, 1. its-56)
Hont. Hersafterl tie a suppos'd infinite
That from this point will rise eternally.
Fame growss in going; in the scapes of vertus
Excuses damne her: they be fires in cities
Enrag'd with those winds that lesse lights extinguish.
Come syren, sing, and dash against my rocks
Thy ruffin gally rig'd with quench for lust;
Sing, and put all the nets into thy voice
With which thou drew‘st into thy strumpets lap
The spawns of Venus, and in which ye danc'd;
That, in thy laps steed, I may digge his tombs,
And quit his manhood with a womans sleight,
hho never is deceiv'd in her deceit.
Sing (that is, write); and then take from mine eyes
The mists that hide the most inscrutable pander
That ever lapt up an adulterous vomit,
That I may see the devill, and survive
To be a devill, and then learns to wivel
That I may hang him, and then cut him downs,
Then cut him up, and with my soules beams search
The cranks and cavernes of his brains, and study
The errant wildernesss of a womans face,
Where men cannot get out, for allthe comets
That have been lighted at it. Thought they know
That adders lie a sunning in their smiles,
That basilisks drink their poyson from their eyes,
And no way there to coast out to their hearts,
Yet still they wander there, and are not stay'd
Till they be fettered, nor secure before
All cares devours them, nor in humans consort
Till they embrace within their wives two breasts
All Pelion and Cythaeron with their breasts.-

(V, 1, 62-92)

 

no

When Tamyra breaks down and consents to write the treacherous
letter, Montsurry inflates as if his cause were that of the whole
universe and the world were really 'out of its fugues':

Mont. Author of prodigiesl
What new flame breakes out of the firmament
That turns up counsels never knowne before?
Now is it true, earth moves, and heaven stands still;
Even heaven it selfe must see and suffer ill.
The too hugs bias of the world hath sway'd
Her back-part upwards, and with that she braves
This hemisphere that long her mouth hath mockt:
The gravity of her religious face
(Now growne too waighty with her sacriledge,
And here discsrn'd SOphisticate enough)
Turnes to th'Antipodes; and all the formes
That her illusions have imprest in her
Have eaten through her back; and now all see
How she is riveted with hypocrisis.
(V, 1, 158-172)

These examples would not be significant if they stood alone or occurred
infrequently. The fact, however, that we could pile up instances

justifies us in calling the style of this play baroque.

bl
c. Mythol ogical allusions.

From where does the poet obtain the substance for his bombast?

We have to mention first: mythology, the favorite reservoir for
all baroque posts. All critics writing about the baroque style refer
to the mythological allusions and comparisons of the baroque post.

In Bussy D'Ambois alone I counted twenty—six mythological com-

 

parisons.9 Not only does Chapman use mythology to show his profound
erudition -- as the critics often point out, baroque poets tend to do
this -- but for him it has become a reservoir of vital substance, with

which his gorgeously constructed fugues are filled.

‘ __

9. I, i, 21 (Neptune); I, i, 36-37 (Jove); II, 1, 129 (Fates); III, ii,
SO-Sh(Harpy); II, ii, 67 (Cupid); III, ii, 7h (Hydra); III, ii, 10h-
1OS (Saturn); III, ii, 108 (Hermsan rod); III, ii, Jim-11:7 (Juno);
III, ii, 316 (Scylla and Charybdis); III, ii, 321(Cerberus); III,
ii, 39h (Titan); III, ii, h65 (Jupiter Hammon); III, i, 118 (Atlas);
III, ii, 503 (Lernean fenne); III, ii, 506-510 (Fates); IV, 1, 188
(Egsan Stable); IV, ii, 32 (Epimetheus); IV, ii, 3&936 (Pandora's
Box); V, iv, 103 (Hsccate); V, iv, 1&8 (Hercules); II, i, 7h
(Fates); V, 1, 126-127 (Gorgan); V, ii, h8 (Bootes); V, iii, 65
Fates); V, i, 71 (Venus).

h2
d. Comparison and hyperbole.

Mythology occupies only a relatively small space in baroque
dramas. Where else do the poets then obtain the substance for the
abundance they are striving for? They make opulent use of metaphor
and simile. We need not differentiate between simile and metaphor
in this study. They both belong to the oldest kind of all rhetorical
ornaments. It would,howevsr, be an idle and inane statement merely to
say that the use of metaphors is a characteristic of the baroque,
for they are used in any style. But in the baroque style we can
discern peculiarities that are not common in others, 213., an exces-
sive use of metaphors and a tendency to employ hyperbolical metaphors.

Chapman's tragedies are crowded with metaphor and simile, es-

pecially, however, Bussy'D'Ambois. There is scarcely a sentence that

 

does not contain at least one of them. His profuse use of them
warrants Thorndyke's statement that "Every person, deed, or sentiment
calls for illustration and lets loose a flood of similies."10 In his
introduction Swinburne sums up the general manner of Chapman's imagery:

Few poets ... have been more unsparing in the use of il-
lustration than Chapman; he flings about similes by the
handful, many of them diffuse and elaborate in expression,
most of them curiously thoughtful and ingenious, not a few
of them eloquent and impressive; but in many cases they
tend rather to distract the attention of the reader than
to elucidate the matter of his study.11

 

10. A. H. Thorndyke, Tragedy (Boston and New York, 1908), p. 116.

ll. The Works of Chapman, ed. Richard H. Shepherd, Introduction to
Poems and Minor Translations, p. xix.

 

h3

Chapman's is very wide and miscellaneous, but he has also a certain
stock of favorite metaphors which are often repeated with only slight
variations. His comparisons are mostly his own. Occasionally there is
a purely poetical touch about them, as for instance:

Henry: Here's nought but whispering with us; like a calm
Before a tempest, when the silent ayre
Layes her soft eare close'to'the earth to hearken
For that she feares steales on to ravish her;
(IV, 1, 109-112)

His metaphors and similes are seldom used for any other purpose than
that of elevation and embellishment. This opulence is a clear manifes-
tation of the quantitative urge of the baroque.

Chapman's comparisons are usually of a superlative nature. If
he wishes to vivify an idea, he makes it very vivid:

Guise: D'Ambois is pardondl wher's a King? where law?
See how it runnss, much like a turbulent sea;

Here high and glorious, as it did contend

To wash the heavens, and make the stars more pure.12

If he wants to debase an idea, he cannot go too low:

She feeds on outcast entrailes like a kite:

In which fouls heaps, if any ill lies hid,

She sticks her beak into it, shakes it up,

And hurl's it all abroad, that all may view it.
Corruption is her nutrimsnt; but touch her

With any precious oyntment, and you kill her.
Where she finds any filth in men, she feasts,
And with her black throat bruits it through the world
Being sound and healthfull; but if she but taste
The slenderest pittance of commended vertus,

She surfets of it, and is like a flie

That passes all the bodies soundest parts,

and dwels upon the sores.13

 

12. II, ii, 2’4-28; Cf. IV‘, 11, 116.

13. II, i, 5-17; or. II, i, 183; Iv, ii, 27-28; III, ii, h3; III, ii, 16h.

If he intends to elevate, he ascends as high as possible:
Joins flames with Hercules, and when thou set'st
Thy radiant forehead in the firmament,
Make the vast chrystall crack with thy receipt;
Spread to a world of fire, and the aged skis
Cheers with new sparks of old humanity.1h
And if he is intense, he is so in the extreme:
When he shall open them, shrink up his curst eyes
With torturous darknesse, such as stands in hell,
Stuck full of inward horrors, never lighted.15
There is not much left to be said about hyperbole after this
discussion. We discern that the post is no longer satisfied with a
simple reality. He wants more than that and feels continually a
compulsion to give the idea unbelievable dimensions through hyperbole.
Now is it true, earth moves, and heaven stands still;
Even heaven it selfe must see and suffer ill.
(V, 1, 161—162)
The abundant use of simils, metaphor, hyperbole and classical

allusions demonstrates clearly the presence of the quantitative urge

in Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois.

 

 

1h. V, iv, lh9-lS3; Cf. III, 1, 118; III, ii, 1&7; IV, 1, 163-16h.

15. IV, ii, 22-2h; Cf. IV, ii, 196, v, i, 51.

145

2.

The Qualitative Urge.

The analysis of passages by G6ngora and Marina has shown that
Gongora and to a lesser degree Narino do not use their turgid opulence
to fill large fugues in the construction of their works as, for instance,
Lyly does, but they make use of the abundance to obscure the whole
work so that we can detect the basic form of architecture only with
great difficulty. We have called this urge for disguising, which
sometimes goes to the point of unrecognizability, qualitative, in
contrast to the quantitative urge for ornateness only.

In the qualitative urge the expression is, so to speak, in flight
from simplicity as if it were ashamed of its nakedness. The simple
idea is hidden and a monstrous abundance is pretended. he could
compare this with the baroque woman's clothing. we can no longer
recognize much of the real stature or form of the human body. The
garments do violence to the natural proportions and transform them
into something pretentious conforming to new principles.

Chapman has adopted certain mannerisms in his style that clearly
manifest the qualitative urge, such as personification, especially of

16

abstract qualities, similitudo, plays on words and puns, paradoxes,

conceits, etc.

 

16. Cf. Susenbrotus, op. cit., p. 10h.

to

a. Dissection.

 

As we have pointed out in the preceding chapter, one of the
forms in which the qualitative urge appears is the poet's predilection
to dissect what he wants to express into atoms and molecules. The
poet endeavors to achieve abundance by cutting everything into the
smallest pieces. Given facts are depicted with a surprising exactness,
with all their possible effects, relations to other facts, etc. Almost
everything is regarded from new, exceptional and amazing viewpoints.

An example of this is the description of the duel by the Nuntius.l7

Tamyra's monologue is a simpler instance of this dissecting trend:

If I right my friend,
I wrong my husband; if his wrong I shunne,
The duty of my friend I leave undone.
Ill playes on both sides; here and there it riseth
No place, no good, so good, but ill comprissth.
0 had I never married but for forms;
Never vow'd faith but purpo'd to deceive;
Never made conscience of any sinne,
But clok't it privately and made it common;
Nor never honour'd beene in bloud or mind;
Happy had I beene then, as others are
Of the like licence; I had then beene honour'd,
Liv'd without envie; customs had bsnum'd
All sense of scruple and all note of frailty;
My fame had beene untouch'd, my heart unbroken;
> (V, iv, 169-178)

The subtle effect of the dissecting can further be intensified by
antithesis as we see in the example just quoted and in the following
which we have taken from the description of the duel by the Nuntius:

That you could see nor fears of death, for life,
Nor love of life, for death:
(11: 1: h9‘50)

 

170 II, 1, ZSffo

h?

The urge for dissection is no longer content with merely enumerating
the individual part; it weighs the various parts and measures them with
each other. This weighing and measuring leads to antithesis, for which
the baroque poets frequently strive. The baroque writer wants to drag
the verbal rendering of the 'meaning' away from the straight line to
the extreme points of the pendulum. The simultaneous mentioning of
these points makes the span felt and gives dimensions to what is said
that are not implied in the 'meaning'. Personification is one form
of the dissecting element we have found in gongorism and marinism. It
is an instrument used especially in dissection of the human soul. In
the baroque drama the persons dissect all their actions to the point
where they encounter certain complexes which they no longer want to
dissect or which cannot be dissected further and which then represent
for them the atoms of psychical life. Here we see something like a
psychology develop.

... die psyche des einzelnen menschen wurde gegenstand

eifrigster forschung. Das studium des menschen, seiner

gesten, seiner gebarden, seiner sprache, war sine liebling-

statigkeit des 16. jahrhunderts. Aber ebenso suchts man

in dis geheimnisse der inneren psychischen drafts einzudringsn,

man suchts die bewsggrunde des handelns, den verlauf

sselischer vorgange moglichst genau zu analysieren.

Diese tatikeit nahm oft einen fast wissenschaftlichen

character an; die renaissance erwarb sich so sine praktische

psychologie, die namentlich in Macchiavellis weken und in

Bacons essays sine literarische form fand; ja sine ganze

reihe von schriftstellern wie Vives, Cardano, Telesio

haben gsradszu sine wissenschaft vom menschen, sine

anthopologie geschaffsn. Die genaue, wir .konnen fast

sagen exakte, menschenbeobachtung ist naturlich auch
fUr das drama von unschatznarem wert gewesen.l8

 

18. Max Deutschbein, "Shakespeare und die Renaissance", Neuere Sprachen,
XXIII (1916), ll.

 

h8

The Spanish critic Menendez y Pelayo makes a similar statement in his

book on the baroque poet Calder6n:
Este amor desordenado a lo intelectual’y abstracto, esta
aficion a dar cuerpo a los conceptos mas sutiles de la!
mente, dependia del influjo nredominante de la filosofla
escolastica en el siglo XVI.

Love, envy, virtue, sin are some of those undivided complexes. then

Chapman refersto them he usually personifies them. Chapman abounds in

personifications. There are too many in Bussy D'Ambois to list them

all here. I counted 115. The play is crowded with personifications

of abstract qualities:

Fortune, not Reason, rule the state of things,
Reward goes backwards, Honor on his head,
“So is not poore is monstrous; only Need
Gives forms and worth to every humane seed.20

b. The ppaque element.

 

Small concetti are often the beginning of obscurity:

Nor lookt upon it with those cheerful rayes
That lately turn'd your breaths to flouds of gold.

LIV: 5-: 2‘3)

 

l9. Menendez y Pelayo, Caler8n y’su teatro (Madrid, 1885), p. 138.

20. I, i, 1-h. To mention a few more: I, i, 3h (Virtue); I, i, 62
(Fortune); I, ii, 6h (Virtue); II, 1, 130 (Honour); II, 1, h—Zh
(Envy); II, 1, lhl-lhB (Nature); II, ii, 67 (Cupid); III, ii, 52
(Virtue); III, ii, 65 (Velour); III, ii, 98-101 (Fortune); III, ii,
th—lOS (Envy); III, i, 12 (Sinne); III, ii, 502 (Horror); III, ii,
502 (Death); II, ii, 165-166 (Time and Fortune); II, ii, 172
(Existence); IV, 1, 35-39 (Nature); IV, 1, 103 (Nature); IV, 1, 176-
17? (love); V, iv, 38 (Fate); V, iv, 73 (Fate); V, i, lhh (Fortune);
V, ii, i-20 (Nature); V, i, 22 (Nature); II, i, 110-113 (Sorrow,
Fury, Revenge).

h9

OI":

Thou eat'st thy heart in vinegar.
(III, ii, too)

If we read linesliks

If you enter him in our graces, my lord, me thinkes by his
blunt behaviour he should come out of himselfe,

(I, ii, 77-79)
then we stop to think for a moment before we conceive the real meaning
the poet wants to convey. This example also shows the peculiar nature
of a great number of Chapman's conceits, in which the sense is, so to

speak, "turned upon itself, leaving the metaphorical emphasis upon the

pronoun, preposition or adverb."21

This tendency towards opaqueness may be intensified to such an
extent that the meaning is almost completely smothered inlhe involved
expression, as, for instance, inntne uncouth and repellent figure of
Nonburry's speech when he hears of TamyrA's breach of faith:

The too huge bias of the world hath sway'd
Her back-part upwards, and with that she braves
This hemisphere that long her mouth has mockt:
The gravity of her religious face
(Now growne too weighty with her sacriledge,
And her discern'd sophisticate enough)
Turnes to th'Antipodes; and all the formes
That her illusions have imprest in her
Have eaten through her back; and now all see
How she is riveted with hypocrasie.

(V, i, 161-172)

Or in the very obscure and abstruse conceit where Tamyra, the light
of D'Ambois' life, with her reddened bosom and hands, is likened to a

sun whose beams have turned to blood.

 

21. Frederic Ives Carpenter, Metaphor and Simile in the Minor
Elizabethan Drama (Chicago, 1895), p. 301.

 

 

50

My sunne is turn'd to blood, in whose red beams
Pindus and Ossa (hid in drifts of snow
Laid on my heart and liver), from their veines
Melt, like two hungry torrents eating rocks,
Into the ocean of all humans life,
And make it bitter, only with my bloud.

(V, iv, 135-1h0)

In Bussy D'Ambois we often find the typical seventeenth century

 

manner of pushing a figure and,if possible, exhausting it:

And as this taper, though it upwards look,
Downwards must needs consume, so let our love!
As, having lost his hony, the sweet taste
Runnes into savour, and will needs retains
A spice of his first partents, till(like life)
It sees and dies, so let our love! and, lastly,
As when the flame is suffer'd to look up
It keepes his luster, but being thus turned downs
(His naturall cones of usefull light inverted)
His owns stuffs puts it out, so let our love!

(V, iv, 209-218)

This type of figure normally has nothing obscure about it and is
relatively easy to understand. The use of figure within figure,
however, which is very common with Chapman adds to the obscurity.
Another example includes a figure concerning "the power of

rhetoric" within one concerning "Times restlesse wheels".

There is a deepe nicks in Times restlesse wheels

For each mans good, when which nicks comes, it strikes;

As rhetorick yet workes not perswasion,

But only is a means to make it works:

So no man riseth by his reall merit,

But when it cries "clincke" in his raisers spirit.22

Extended similes also present diffucluties as, for instance, that of

D'Ambois' heart likened to the sea, which once swollen into billows,

 

22. I, 1’ 1311-1390 Cf. II, 1, h-Zho

51

will not sink back into its original calm till it is covered by the
sheet of foam which the waves leave behind as they subside.

His great heart will not down, tis like the sea,

That partly by his owns internall heat,

Partly the starrs daily and nightly motion,

Their heat and light, aid partly of the place

The divers frames, but chiefly by the moons,

Bristlsd with surges, never will wonne,

(No, not when th'hearts of all tiose powers are burst)
To make retreat into his setled home,

Till he be crowned with his owns quiet rome.23

The opaqueness in a similitudo may be further intensified by
using the same word again and again as a disguising device.

Vhat will be send? some crowns? It is to sow them
Upon my spirit, and make them spring a crowns
werth millions of the seed crownes he will send.
Like to disparking noble husbandmen,
Hee'll put his plow into me, plow me up;
But his unsweating thrift of policie,
And learning-hating policie is ignorant
To fit his seed-land soyl; a smooth plain ground
Will never nourish any politick seed.
I am for honest actions, not for great:
If I may bring up a new fashion,
And rise in Court for vertus, speed his plow!

(I, 1, 119-130)

The reappearance of the word 'crown' rings in a roguish, teasing and
also disturbing manner into the pretended complication. Here the

complication is increased through rhetorical devices, an allegoriagzh

 

23. I, ii, 175-183. or. I, 1, 119-130; II, 1, 5-15; II, 1, 3h-u6.

2h. "Allegoria (Inuersio, Permutatio) est cum aliud uerbis, aliud
sensu proponitur, uel cum ex uerbis propositis longs alius
sensus, interim etiam contrarius colligitur. Continet illa
plures translationes et continues, ob idque perpetua etiam
Metaphors dicta."
Susenbrotus, op. cit., p. 13.

52

combinedeith paranomasia or agnominatio.25 The play on words is a
very common device with baroque poets. Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois

contains a great number of puns and plays onwords.26 The baroque

poets snatched at these ostentatious devices that so suited their
purpose. The taste of the period encourages this:

Epochen siner Sprachrevolution eines Volkes, in denen
entweder der Lautbestand der Sprache sine einschneidende
Veranderung erfahrt, oder in denen infolge des Eindringens
zahlrsicher Fremdworter sich in der Sprache sine
durchgreifende Verschiebung der Hortbedeutungen bemerkbar
macht, sind megst auch Zeiten, in denen das Wortspiel
uppig gedeiht. 7

Ploce or conduplicatio28 often contributes to the difficulty:

That I may so make good what Law and Nature
Have given me for my good: slhEe I am free,
(Offending no just law) Iet no law make,
By any wrong it doe§:_my life her—slave;
When I am wrong'd and that Law failes to right me,
let me be King my selfe (as-man was made)
And doe a justice that exceeds that Law:
If my wrong passe the power of single—velour
To right—53d expiate, then be you my King,
And doe a right, exceeding law and Nature.
Who to himselfe is law, no law doth need,
Offends no law, and—IE—a Kifig_indeed.

—" (II, 1, 93-208)

 

 

25. "Agnominatio ... est iucunda quaedam uocum collusio, significatu
tamen diverso. Vel est quum uox repetitur non prorsus eadsm,
sed aliqua exparte immutata. Fitque haec immutatio uel adiectione,
detractioneque literae aut syllabae." Ibid., p. 59.

26. Cf. V, iv, 98; III, ii, 2h; I, ii, bh ("travell" and "travail");
II, ii, 71 (’lose' and 'loose'), etc.

27. Leopold hurth, "Das Wortspiel bei Shakespeare", Wiener Beitrage,
I, (1895), h-

28. Cf. Puttenham, George (?), The Arts of English Poesis, edited by
E. Arber (London, 1869), p. 211.

 

53

Often we have a combination of ploce and antithesis as in the

quoted example and then these again are very often accentuated by

alliteration:

I love what most I loath, and cannot live,
Unlesse I compasse that which holds my death;
For life's meere death, loving one that loathes me,
And he I love will loathe me, ...
(II, 11, 171-17h)

Most of the rhetorical devices that we found in gongorism can

also be discerned in Chapman as, for instance, the obscuring hyperbaton

or transgressio:29

His great heart will not down, tis like the sea,
That partly by his owns internall heat,
Partly the starrs daily and nightly motion,
Their heat and light, and partly of the place
The divers frames, but chiefly by the moons,
Bristled with surges, never will be wonne,
(No, notfiwhsn thfhearts of all those powers are burst)
To make retreat into his setled home,
Till he be crowned with his own quiet foms.
(I: 11: 175‘183)

 

"Bristled with surges" hers is placed as if it modified 'moon' whereas

it really limits sea.

Chapman also very often uses synecdoche (intellectio),3O as for

instance, "A tale so worthy, and so fraught with wonder/ Sticks in my

jaws, and labours with event", 31 or metalepsis (transumptio):32 "Who

 

29.

30.

31.
32.

Cf. Susenbrotus, op. cit. p. 33.

"Synecdoche, Intellectio, est quoties aliud ex alio quocunque
modo intelligitur. Vel cum ex uno plura intelliguntur ... Vel
ex parte totum ..." Susenbrotus, op. cit., p. 8.

"Metalepsis, Transumptio, est ubi gradatim itur ad id quod
ostenditur. Vel est cum a (1) iqua uox aliud a proprietate
significationis suae ex/his quae praecesserunt, denotat."
Susenbrotus, op. cit., pp. 11-12.

5h

kneeling in the warms life of his friends",33 which increases the

 

difficulties we have in comprehending the meaning.

We have noted that oxymoron, or acutifatuum, is one of the curious
figures of speech which are responsible for the striking grotesqueness
of the gongoristic and marinistic styles, which have won for them
enduring notoriety, and which reveal best the affectation underlying
these stylistic phenomena. This figure is also employed by Chapman:

To come to the direct, which must be used:

For the direct is crooked;
(II, ii, 223-22h)

or:

They will make a sheepe valiant,
a lion fearfull.
Mons. And an asse confident.3b

we also find an excessive use of interpositio or parenthesis,35
very often throwing in extraneous matter and explanation and multiplying

the labyrinthine mazes:

If ever Nature held her selfe her owns,
When the great triall of a King and subject
Met in one bloud, both from one belly springing,
Now prove her vertus and her greatnesse one, or
Or make the t'one the greater with the t'other
(As true Kings should) and for your brothers love
(Which is a speciall species of true vertus)
Doe that you could not doe, not being a King.

(II, 1, lhl-lh8)

 

33- II. 1. 13h.
38. III, ii, 306-308; or. v, iv, 209-10.

35. "Parenthesis ... est ordinis dissolutio per interpositam sententiam:
Vel est dum continuationi sermonis medius sensus aliquis interuenit."
Susenbrotus, op. cit., p. 35.

SS

Shew me a lawyer that turnes sacred law
(The squall rendrer of each man his owne,
The scourge of rapine and extortion,

The sanctuary and impregnable defence

Of retir'd learning and besieged vertue)
Into a Harpy, that sates al but's owne,
Into the damned sinnes ...3

An accumulation of pronouns referring to different persons often
contributes to the obscurity of Chapman's style:

But D'Ambois sword (that lighteed as it flew)

Shot like a pointed comet at the face

Of manly Barrisor, and there is stucke:

Thrice pluckt he at it, and thrice drew of thrusts
From him that BT'himselfe was free as fire,

Who tEFESt still 53—He—pIuckt; yet (past beliefel)
HEIWith his subtile aye, hand, body, scap't.

"' (II, 1, 81-87)

he (8h), 'he' (87), referring to D'Ambois, and 'him' and 'himselfe'
(85), 'who' (86), referring to Barrisor.

In Chapman's verse, as in Gongora's and to a lesser degree
Marino's, one Simile begets another and very often with little regard
for logical sequence:

Sin is a coward, madam, and insults

But on our weaknesse, in his truest valour:
And so our ignorance tames us, that we let

His shadowes fright us: and like empty clouds
In which our faulty apprehensions forge

The formes of dragons, lions, elephants,

When they hold no proportion, the slie charmes
Of the witch policy makes him like a monster
Kept onely to shew men for servile money:

That false hagge often paints him in her cloth
Ten times more monstrous than he is in troth.37

 

36. III, 11, h9-Sh; or. III, 11, 25~26; Iv, 1, 100; v, 11, h9—50; etc.

37. III, i, 20-30; Cf. I, 1, 1—33.

56

The 'shadowes' with which sin frightens us are first compared to the
imaginary creatures into which fancy shapes the clouds. Then sin
itself (transferred from'the active to the passive voice) is likened
to an exaggerated picture of a real 'monster' exhibited by 'policy',
that craft which tries to debar men from their desires. We have
another good example of this tendency in I, 1, 1—33, where Chapman
shifts from the paradoxical character of human affairs to the transi-
toriness of life and the need of Virtue as a guide to the desired port.
An excessive use of figures at times produces quite an entanglement
of ideas, as, for instance, when Tamyra's fame is first a jewel and
immediately after some fabulous creature:
I sweare,

Sooner shall torture be the sire to pleasure,

And health be grievous to one long time sick,

Than the deare jewell of your fame in me

Be made an out-cast to your infamy;

Nor shall my value (sacred to your vertues)

Onely give free course to it from my selfe,

But make it flie out of the mouths of Kings
In golden vapours, and with awfull wings.

(III. 1, 35-13)
All this reminds us of the secentisti and especially of the
gongorists, for whom poetry was by no means a simple art and who rated
the excellence of a composition directly according to the difficulty

the reader experienced in understanding it.

57

c. Abstraction.

 

The third and last manifestation of the qualitative urge can be
dealt withwvery briefly.

Persons of the baroque drama frequently indicate merely the '
general when discussing the individual. They have a tendency to
classify everything according to genus and species and thus elevate the
singular, and casual (accidental), to something universally valid.

De ahi que toda clase de acciones aparezcan como rodeadas
de una aureola ideal y heroics, que, por decirlo asi, las
saca de los limites de la realidad, y las sublime sobre
las miseries y escorias de la vida presente.3
From here there is only a short step to a concise formulation and
the introduction of proverbs and pithy sayings. Chapman's Egssy;
VD'Ambois is crowded with epigrams. Hazlitt was very much impressed

by this when he said: "His Bussy'D'Ambois, though not without

 

interest or some fancy, is rather a collection of apothegms of
pointed sayings in the form of dialogue, than a poem or tragedy".39
We shall quote only a few of them:

Pure innovation is more grosse than error. (I, ii, 38)

..., valour stands not in number: (I, ii, 2&9)

Vice never doth her just hate so provoke .
As when she rageth under vertues cloaks. (II, 1, 101-102)

Who to himself is a law, no law doth need,
Offends no law, and is a King indeed. (II, 1, 203-20h

38. Menéndez y Pelayo, Calderon y'su teotro (Madrid, 1885), p. 3&0.

 

39. William.Hazlitt, Miscellaneous Works, vol. III, Lecture II,
(Philadelphia, 1861;) .

58

Frailty is fruitful, one sin gets another. (II, ii, 150)

A princes love is like a lightening fume
Which no man can embrace, but must consume. (III, 1, 131-132)

The height of love is still wonne with denying. (III, ii, 225)

Since all earths pleasures are so short and small,
The way t'enjoy it is t'abjure it all. (V, iy 187—188)

No place, no good, so good, but ill compriseth. (V, iv, 173)

S9

3.

Summary

In Chapman the quantitative urge manifests itself in the
employment of parallelism, or repetition and bombast. As filling
substance of this abundance we have found mythological allusions,
comparison and hyperbole.

The qualitative urge is very strong in Chapman. It manifests
itself in the dissecting element, which has led on the one hand to the
baroque psychology (personification) and on the other hand to the
antithesis; in the opaque abundance, the extreme manifestation of which
is the plays upon words; and in the abstraction, the indentification
of the singular with the general, which has led us to proverbs and

pithy sayings.

Conclusion.

An analysis of euphuism, gongorism and marinism has demonstrated
that there are two basic motivations operative in the baroque style
and that these two urges form a co-ordinative system into which all
essential forms of the baroque style fit.

This study could not be an exhaustive one. It had to limit
itself to the showing of the quantitative and qualitative urge in

Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois. We could not make the comparisons with

 

other writers which would be necessary to shOW'when both these basic
motivations appeared in English literature and how long they were
operative. An examination of Thomas Sackville's contributions to

i.e. the "Induction" and
Gorboduc and to A Mirror for Magistrates ("The Complaint of Henry

 

Duke of Buckingham") indicates that they were not yet operative in his
period. we find, of course, slight traces of the quantitative urge
which some years later, as we have seen, became very conspicuous in
Lyly's Euphues. We cannot, however, discern anything of Gongora's

or Marino's "hide-and-seek play" in his verses. When Sackville, for
instance, follows the familiar medieval convention and commences his
poem with the description of a season, he does not employ any disguising
elements as we have seen in Gongora, but mentions "winter" in the first
line:

The wrathfull winter prochinge on a pace
With blustering blasts had all ybared the treen,1

 

l. The Mirror for Magistrates, edited from original texts in the
Huntingtonilibraryfifiy_fyly B. Campbell (Cambridge, 1938), "The
Induction", p. 298, 1-2.

 

61

By Chapman's day, however, the baroque was a significant stylistic
tendency in England, and as this study indicates, Chapman was among its
principal exponents. He seems to have yielded to the trend of his
time much more than, for instance, Shakespeare, who employs the
Zeitstil with the skill and restraint of an artist. Shakespeare also
employs hyperbole, but he characterizes the courtier with them. He
employs abstractions, epigrams, but they are spoken by the father
Polonius to his son Laertes when the latter goes abroad. In contrast
to Chapman, Shakespeare succeeded in finding a relative congruity

within the proportions of the baroque style.

62
BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Primary Sources:

Chapman, George. The works; ed. Richard Herne Shepherd, London,
1889.

Chapman, George. Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois;
The Belles-Lettres Series; ed. Frederick S. Boas. Boston and
London , 190 S c

Lyly, John. The Complete Works of; ed. R. Warwick Bond. Oxford, 1902.

 

Gongora.y Argote, Don Luis de. Soledades de; ed. Damaso Alonso.
Jubilee edition of the Revista'de Occidente. Madrid, 1927.

 

Las Cien Mejores Poesias de la Lengua Castellana; ed. M. Memendez y
Pelayo. Hadrid, 1919.

 

The Mirror for Magistrates; edited from origiral texts in the Huntington
library by Ii y‘B. Campbell. Cambridge (Engl.), 1938

 

Sachville, Thomas. The Complaint of Henry Duke of Buckingham; ed. by
Marguerite Hearsley, YaleIStudies in English, Vol. LXXXVI (1936).

 

 

Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas; ed. by Joseph Quincy Adams. Cambridge
(Kass. ) fl9—2Ho

 

63

B. Secondary sources:

 

1. General.

Carpenter, Frederic Ives. Metaphor and Simile in the minor Elizabethan
Drama, Chicago, 1895.

Croce, B. Der Begriff Barock, Zurich, 1925.

 

Croll, Morris W. "The Baroque Style in Prose", Studies ... in Honor
of Frederic Klaeber, Minneapolis, 1929.

 

Deutschbein, Max. "Shakespeare und die Renaissance", Neuere Sprachen 23,
1916.

 

Hausenstein, W. Vom Geist des Barock, MHnChen, 1921.

 

Holmes, Elizabeth. Aspects of Elizabethan Imagery, Oxford, 1929.

 

Hoskins, John. Directions for Speech and Style, edited by Hoyt H.
Hudson, Princeton,_1935.

 

Hubscher, A. "Barock als Gestaetung antithetischen Iebensgefuhls",
Euphorion, Bd. 2h, 1922

Klemperer, Victor and Hatzfeld, H: Romanische Literaturen von der
Renaissance bis zur Franzosiscfien‘Revqution (HandbuCh der
LiteraturWissenschaft), Wildpark-POESdam,‘l926.

 

 

Meissner, Paul. Die Geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen des englischen
Literaturbarocks, Munchen, 193D.

 

 

Henendez y Pelayo. Calderon y su teatro, Madrid, 1885.

 

Neilsen and Thorndike. The Facts about Shakespeare, revised ed., New
York, 1931.

 

Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, London, 1939, vol. I.

 

 

Puttenham, George (?), The Arte of English Poesie, edited by E. Arber,
London, 1869. -

Richter, Helene,. Shakespeare der Mensch, Leipzig, 1923.

 

Ringler,'W. Introduction to John Rainolds, Oratio in Laudem Artie
Poeticae. Princeton, l9h0.

 

 

Rix, Herbert David. "Rhetoric in Spenser's Poetry", The Pennsylvania
State College Studies, no. 7, l9h0. ‘——

 

Schelling, Felix E. Elizabethan Drama, 1558-16h2, Boston and New York,
1908.

Schirmer, W. F. "Die geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen der englischen
Barockliteratur", Germ.-Rom. Monatsschrift, XIX, 1931.

 

 

Schucking, Levin L. "The baroque character of the Elizabethan Tragic
Hero", Pr. Brit. Acad., XXIV (1938), 85-112.

 

Schucking, Levin L. Shakespeare und der Tragedienstil seiner Zeit,
Bern,l9h7.

Smith, John. The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvail'd, London, 1657.

Susenbrotus, Joannes. Epitome Troporum ac Schematum, Tiguri (Zurich),
1563.

Strich, Fritz. Deutsche Klassik und Romantik, Munchen, 1922.

 

 

Tuve, Rosemund. Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery, Chicago, 19h7.

 

‘Walzel, Oskar. "Wechselseitige Erhellung der Kunste", Philosophische
Vortrage der Kantgesellschaft, Nr. 15, Berlin, 1917.

 

 

walzel, Oskar. Gehalt und Gestalt im Kunstwerk des Dichters (Handbuch
der Literaturwissenschaft), Wildpafk-Potsdam,’l929.

 

Wilson, Thomas. The Arte of Rhetorique (1560), edited by G. H. Mair,
word , 1969 o '

 

Wolfflin, Heinrich. Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Miinchen, 1915.

 

wurth, Leopold. "Das wortspiel bei Shakespeare", Wiener BGitragfi I:
Wien and Leipzig, 1895.

65

2. Euphuism

Bond, R. warwick.. "Essay on Euphues and Euphuism", The Complete Works
of John Lyly, Oxford, 1902, Vol, I, pp. 119 ff.

 

 

Breymann, "Rezension von Landmann: Der Euphuismus", Engl. Studien V.

 

Child, C. C. "John Lyly and Euphuism", Munchener Beitrage, Erlangen and
IBipZig, 189110

 

Croll, M. W. "The Sources of the Euphuistic Rhetoric", Lyly's Euphues,
ed. Croll and Clemens, London, 1916.

 

Feuillerat, A. John Lyly: Contribution a l'histoire de la renaissance
en Angleterre. Cambridge, 1910.

 

 

Hense. "John Lilly and Shakespeare", Shakespeare-Jahrbuch VII and VIII.

 

Landmann. Der Euphuismus, sein Wesen, seine Quelle,_seine Geschichte,
Giessen;~1881$

 

Lauchert. "Der Einfluss des Physiologus auf den Euphuismus", Engl.
Studien XIV.

Parks, George B. "Before Euphues", Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies,
‘Washington D. 0., Folger Shak:”Iib., 19h8, pp.fih754h93.

Ringler, W. "The Immediate Source of Euphuism", PMLA, LIII (1938), 678-86.

Schwan. "Rezensoin von Landmann: Der Euphuismus", Engl. Studien V.

 

3. Gongorism

Anonymous. "Gongorism and Gorgonism", Times Literary Supplement,

 

Artigas, M. Gongora, iadrid, 1925.
Churton,.E. Gongora, London, 1862.

Grismer, Raymond L. "Classical Allusions in the Poetic W0rks of
Gongora", Hisp., XXX (19h7), h96-50b.

Kane, Elisha K. Gongorism and the Golden Age, Chapel Hill, 1928.

 

Krauss W. "Das neue Gon orabild" Bibl. f. Romanische Forschunven I
3 ’ t: 3

(1937). 71—82.

 

Navarro, M. Romera. "Quevedo y algunos literatos mas en el critic6n",
Revista de Filologia Espanola, XXI (1935), 2h8-73.

 

Petriconi, Hellmuth. "Gongora", Literarische Welt 22, Jahrgang 27.

 

Thibaudet. "Le phénoméne gongorin," Nouvelles Litteraires, 28 Mai, 1927.

 

Thomas. Gongora et le Gongorisme, Paris, 1911.

 

67

h. Marinism, secentismo.

 

Belloni, Antonio. 11 Seicento, Milano, 1929.

 

Croce, B. Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Seicento, Bari, 1911.

 

Graf, Arturo. "Il fenomeno del secentismo", Nuova Antologia, 10 ottobre,

1905.

 

Klemperer, Victor. Die Romanischen Leteraturen von der Renaissance
bis zur FranEosisEhen‘RevolutIon (Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft),
Wildpark~PotSdam, 1926, pp. 11h ff. .

 

 

Lopez-Rey, Jose. "Idea de la imitacion barroca", Hisp. Rev., XI, 253-257.

Momigliano, Attilio. Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Messinaémilano,
1937 3 PP. 27 1'3010

 

Piazzi, Giovanni. Novella Fronda (Manuals storica della letteratura
e dell'arte itaIIana),“HIlano, 1918, pp. h13 ff.

 

Praz, Mario. Secentismo e Marinsimo in Inghilterra, Firenze, 1925, passim.

 

Venturi, Giovanni Antonio. Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Firenze,
1922 2 pp. “45-16140

Sanctis, Francesco de. Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Milano, 192k,
vol. II.

 

 

mi . f . .
I . I
1 \1 . >. I _ ,

x I I.‘ . Lynn MW?“ liWk-y.‘. . LHNL. Ln“ ' '7' by? . f ,
l’l .

a- -_ - J
t

.

VI4
I..-
N
0
E
S
H
M
Au
U

‘Q

SEP 2 6' 1950

.14 '53
.‘MA

 

 

 

 

m1’i'ifi(fi(lfl((l\fiflflfiflfiflififlfififlifilfifl