sows usss m pmsrmwcmv IN THE puws OF
SHAKESPEARE, Jamaal, MARLQWE AND MKKER

Thesis far the: Degree of Ph. D.
MICHSGAN STATE UNWERSITY
John D. Wéison
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thesis entitled
Some Uses of Physiognomy In The Plays

Of Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe and Dekker.

presented by

John D. Wilson

has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for

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ABSTRACT

SOME USES OF PHYSIOGNOMY IN THE
PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE, JONSON,
MARLOWE AND DEKKER

by John D. Wilson

The purpose of this study is to examine the status of
the pseudo-science of physiognomy in Elizabethan England and
to determine how extensively and in what specific ways it
was used by four of the leading dramatists of the period.

Physiognomy represented, in Renaissance Europe as in
the ancient world, a most useful body of knowledge. Its
basic pretension. . .to reveal the secrets of a man's
temperament, intelligence and character’ (and occasionally
his future), merelyby consulting his outward features--
attracted all manner of men, physicians, schoolmasters,
businessmen, Jurists, even slave-buyers in the bazaars of
the Arab East. Its most exalted use was, of course, in the
Presence Chamber of the prince, for upon his assessment of
the men who came before him, both his own counsellors and
envoys from abroad, rested the security and comfort of the
realm.

Such a useful science could not but be popular. While
its claims were enormous, its Justifications were large

enough to continue to attract devotees for over two thousand

 

JOHN D. WILSON

years. But by the sixteenth century, in England as on the
continent, physiognomy was no longer unequivocally accepted
by all learned men. While Montaigne and Francis Bacon were
still able to recommend its study, others were offended by
the outrageous character it was given by wandering bands of
gypsies and vagabonds. Physiognomy's drift toward outright
prophecy, which it could scarcely resist, continued through—
out the sixteenth century to embroil it in controversy. It
was a body of knowledge which was, at once, practised in the
court of James I and outlawed by the Statutes of the Realm.
If physiognomy occupied an ambivalent position in the
larger society of Elizabethan England, eliciting the endorse—
ment of some educated men and ridiculed by others, so too
was it admitted on shifting ground to the great public and
private stages of the period. Ben Jonson may openly mock its
pretensions, but in so doing he demonstrates how useful those
pretensions are to a dramatic examination of hyprocrisy and
outward seeming. Shakespeare, too, may appear to smile at
the pseudo-science in Antony and Cleopatra, or openly question

its truth in Macbeth, but in Richard III and in Hamlet he

 

does not hesitate to invoke its language and its point of

view to explore the relationship of appearance and reality.
Marlowe and Dekker also find inventive ways to place physiog_
nomy in the service of dramatic ends, from Marlowe's straight-
forward portrait of Tamburlaine to Dekker's satiric untrussing

Of Horace-Jonson in Satiromastix. This pseudo—science was,

 

0,-1'
I

 

...b A

nun-v

 

 

 

 

JOHN D. WILSON

in brief, very much a part of the dramatists' world and in
their preoccupation with the character and conduct of men
they could not but be interested in the science which pur-
ported to reveal that very secret.

It is not the argument of this study that physiognomy
deserves a central place in the intellectual history of
Elizabethan England or that its elaborate mode of thought
is to be found pervasively or even consistently employed by
the dramatists of the period. However, it does occupy a
small and interesting place in that intellectual history and
does warrant the attention of‘the student of dramatic
literature, if only because of the imaginative uses which
were found for it by Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe and

Dekker.

 

SOME USES OF PHYSIOGNOMY IN THE PLAYS
0P SHAKESPEARE, JONSON,
MARLOWE AND DEKKER
By

\

John Di Wilson

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English

1965

 

 

Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION
II. PHYSIOGNOMY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
III. ELIZABETHAN ATTITUDES TOWARD PHYSIOGNOMY
IV. SHAKESPEARE'S USE OF PHYSIOGNOMY
V. DEFORMITY AND DECEPTION: PHYSIOGNOMY AS
PROPHECY . . . . . . .
VI. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: PHYSIOGNOMIC POR—
TRAITURE IN TAMBURLAINE . . .
VII. BEN JONSON: PHYSIOGNOMY AND THE COURTIER.
VIII. PHYSIOGNOMY IN THE PLAYS OF THOMAS DEKKER.
IX. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

ii

Page

42
66

102

134
I65
194
225

236

. o

 

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The pseudo-science of physiognomy—~the occult art by
which men purport to read the secrets of other men's souls
in the curve and color of their bodies—-has a very long if
not especially honorable history. It is, in fact, as old
as western civilization and, in not a few corners of the
nmdern world, continues to attract devotees to this very
day. This study is about that curious science and, more
particularly, about its place and purpose in the dramatic
literature of Elizabethan England.

That the science of outward appearance should have
proven interesting to poets and dramatists is not altogether
surprising. Physiognomy, after all, represented for hundreds
of years an esteemed and highly codified index to the charac—
ter and motivation and inclinations of the human personality.
And it is in an attempt to understand the human personality
that poets invariably invest their lives and their art. So
long as the pseudo-science earned some respect in the world
and continued to hold a curious if skeptical audience, so
long too did its certainty and its economy of method attract
the men who in plays and poems were bound to explore the

complexities of human character.

The literary utility of physiognomy has, of course,
received scholarly attention. Professor Walter Clyde
Curry's admirable study of Chaucer's use of the pseudo—
science is only one of the more well-known investigations
devoted to this subject.1 Geneva Misener's study of
iconistic portraiture and Elizabeth Evan's thorough exami—
nation of physiognomy's employment in Roman biographical
and historical writing have done much to call attention to
the literary possibilities of the pseudo-science realized
in the ancient world.2 Similarly thorough treatment has
been given to physiognomy's place in modern fiction from
the novels of Henry Fielding to those of Herman Melville.3

In the light of these studies and the fact of physiognomy's

 

lChaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences, (Oxford, 1926).

2G. Misener, ”Iconistic Portraits," Classical Philology,
XIX (April, 192A) 97—123. E. C. Evans, ”Roman Descriptions——
of Personal Appearance in History and Biography," Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology, XLVI (1935), 43-84.

3For a lengthy study of physiognomy in Fielding and
George Eliot see the unpublished doctoral dissertation of
John Graham, "The DevelOpment of the Use of Physiognomy in
the Novel" (Johns HOpkins, 1960). Charlotte Bronte's use
Of physiognomy has been examined by W. M. Senseman,
"Charlotte Bronte's Use of Physiognomy and Phrenology,"
Eapers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters,
XXXVIII (1953), 475-86: and in the same author’s unpublished
doctoral dissertation, "Demi—Science and Fiction" (University
Of Michigan, 1950). For a study of Melville's use of phren-
Ology and physiognomy see Tyrus Hillway, ”Melville's Use of
Two Pseudo—Sciences," MEN, LXIV (March, 1949), 145-50, ZOla's
fondness for physiognomical portraiture, based upon animal
analogy, is discussed by E. P. Gauthier's ”New Light on Zola
and Physiognomy," PMLA, LXXXV (June, 1960), 297-308.

prominence in medieval and Renaissance England, it is
surprising to discover how comparatively little attention
has been given to its place and function in Elizabethan
dramatic literature. Certain students of the old physi—
ology and the theory of the passions have, of course,
noted physiognomy's relationship to these "disciplines"
and to the Renaissance's characteristic desire to uncover
all of the secrets of the microcosm.; Professor Carroll
Camden has also contributed more directly to our subject by
examining the currency the pseudo—science seems to have en—
Joyed in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres.2 But
neither Professor Camden or anyone else known to me has
considered the range and flexibility of the uses to which

physiognomy was put, sometimes ignobly, by some of the

greatest of English dramatists.3 And this, it seems to me,

 

lLily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes (New
York, 1959), discusses the problem cf "Nosce Teipsu'm11 and
physiognomy's supposed contribution to its solution. Also
Of interest is Ruth L. Anderson's study, Elizabethan Psy-

 

 

 

ggology and Shakespeare's Plays (Universit; cf Iowa Humanis-
tic Studies, 1927), III, No. A.

2"The Mind's Construction In the Pace,” Pg, XX (July,
IQAI), Ado-A12.

‘ur understanding of the
meaning of the pseudo-science in individual scenes and plays,
I am indebted to the work of Professor Johnston Parr, notably
his ”Non-Alchemical Pseudo—Sciences in The Alchemist,” PQ,

XXIV (October, 1945). See also Camden's Study of TambuF:
laine's choleric temperament, ”Tamburlaine: The Choleric Man,"
MLN, XLIV (November, 1929), A30—35 and for a much briefer and
ere general account, Hardin Craig's ”Shakespeare's Depiction
Of Passions,” Pg, IV (October, 1925), 289-301-

 

is the chief Justification for examining this old and now
hopelessly discredited science- For however dead and dust-
ridden it may be in the history of science, or how curious

in the history of ideas, it does come marvelously alive in
the plays of Jonson and Marlowe and Dekker, and preeminently,
in the plays of ShakeSpeare. And it comes alive in the play-
houses of Elizabeth's time, not only when it is taken seri-
ously, but when its pretensions are irreverently invoked

and its claims upon our intelligence are satirized and
scorned. It comes alive, in Short, because, more than the
ludicrous left-over of a once flourishing science, it is
looked upon as a useful dramatic €=nice and made to serve

a variety of eXplicit dramatic purposes. And it is to an
examination of physiognomy first as science but subsequently
and primarily as dramatic device that the following chapters

of this study are devoted.

CHAPTER II

PHYSIOGNOMY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

In 1778 the Swiss divine, John Caspar Lavater,
finished the fourth and final volume of what was to be
considered by much of Europe and America one of the truly

great intellectual achievements of all time. The Essays on

 

Physiognomy created a sensation wherever it appeared and it

 

appeared virtually everywhere. By 1810 there had been six-
teen German, fifteen French, twc American, one Dutch, one
Italian and no less than twenty Env-:sh versionS--fifty—five
editions in less than forty years.1 The perceptions which
so excited the western world are epitomized by this incisive

Judgment on the eyebrow:

A clear, thick, roof—shaped, over-shadowing eyebrow,
which has no wild luxuriant bushiness, is always a
certain Sign of a sound, manly, mature understanding;
seldom of original genius; never of volatile, aerial,
amorous tenderness, and spirituality. Such eyebrows
may indicate statesmen, counsellors, framers of plans,
experimentalists, but very seldom bola,2aspiring ad-
venturous minds of the first magnitude.

Lavater, of course, comes t:o late to enter our story

directly. But it may be ins::uctive to pay him the briefest

~

le. John Graham, "Lavater's Physiognomy in England,”
Jill. XXII (1961), 561-572.

2Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, trans. Thomas Holcroft,
(London, 1853), p. A70.

 

 

O‘\

attention at this point for he unquestionably represents
the final flowering of physiognomic SOphistication. While

by no means the last of its devotees, Lavater is by far the

U)

most comprehensive. In hi own view, and it was one shared
by most men of his time, he had succeeded finally in
rescuing a venerable truth from the distcrting hands of
incompetent quacks. Physicgnomy had at last been supplied
with the certain scientifc foundation it had sought in vain
since its first codification in ancient Greece.

This superbly detailed example of the science of
physiognomy did not just happen in the latter part of the
eighteenth century. While Lavatcr is at pains to dissociate
himself from his predecessors,1 ancient and modern, and
while he was widely acknowledged by his contemporaries
as having succeeded, the fact is that he is merely the most
confident and precise of a long line of practitioners.
Indeed, I am unable to discover any truly significant dif-
ference in either his methods or his findings from those

which we shall discover in the works of hi; predecessors.

_—

,
L"This sublime science has been debased with the most

puerile of follies. It has been confounded with divination

by the countenance, and the quackery of chiromancy. Nothing

nmre trivial can be imagined, more insulting to common sense,

than what has been written on this subject, from the time

of Aristotle to the present." 2;:ays on Physiognomy, p. 20.

 

 

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cos ’

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-
sovu

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c..

 

 

At the best, then, the science of physiognomy has
undergone an evolutionary development.1 While it was
largely articulated in ancient Greece, refinements were
worked out over time, and new, and usually more occult,
elements were added. However, as shall be seen, these
elements are all very closely related one to the other.
If-they are separated in the following pages it is only
because it is easier, this way, to talk about them. They
are all reflections of a single, consistent view of man and
the created world he shared with all other living and inami-
nate things.

Animal Analogy: The Zoological
School of Physiognomy

While its origin is buried in the unrecorded past, it
is not unlikely that the pseudo-science of physiognomy owes
its beginning to the first time man told a story about him-
self and employed animals as personae. This pre-Aesopian
fable, whenever it might have been told, called upon two
habits of mind, both of which are essential to physiognomy.
The first of these is the capacity to see the world and its
living creatures in a broad and inclusive way so as to make

analogical thought natural and effortless. It is this

 

___

1While a fuller account of my indebtedness to modern
Students of physiognomy's development will be found in the
bibliography, special mention must here be made of two ad-
mirable works of scholarship upon which I have heavily de-
Pended. These are Lynn Thorndike's History of Magic and
Egperimental Science. 8 volumes (New York, 1929) and

"‘o.

 

 

 

imaginative capacity which first suggested the frame of our

ur-fable. The second is the ability to narrow one's view to

a.Quintessential quality to the exclusion of everything else.

While the first creates metaphors which undo the distinctions

between humankind and the animal world, the second seizes

upon a single characteristic of a given creature as the domi- “
nant and telling one and rejects all other contrary charac- l
teristics as irrelevant.1 Thus the lion is equated with

courage, the fox with cunning, the deer with cowardice.

The gentleness of the deer, his beauty of form, his Speed,

his acute hearing--all these are neglected. He is made to

symbolize cowardice. We can see that this particular anthro-

pomorphic conclusion had long since been drawn by Homer's

time. Achilles insults Agamemnon in the first book of the

_I_l_i_ag_ by calling him a "wine sack, with a dog's eyes, with

a deer's heart."2

In any event, once man gave the deer or
the lion a single defining trait and permitted him to play
alummn role, the distance to Lavater and the esteemed

sophistication of his science had been markedly shortened.

George Sarton's Introduction to the Histogy of Science.
3 volumes (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1927-A7).

1For a discussion of the antiquity of this habit of
Hand cf. P. A. Robin, Animal Lore in English Literature
(London, 1932) .

2Richard Lattimore, trans. (University of Chicago
Press, 1962), BK. I, l. 288.

 

A

.e.

There is, however, an important intervening step,
and it is by no means clear how it might have been taken.
The lion's "character" must be directly related to the
details of his physical appearance. Leonine soul must be
related to leonine body, interior to exterior, before the
physiognomist can, with any confidence at all, predict
courage in a man with a broad, Spacious forehead or an
equally broad and leonine set of shoulders. And in the
dawn of recorded time we can only guess that man's budding
gift of analogy served him here as well. The sweetness of
a fruit, its intrinsic quality, can, after all, be guessed
at if not discovered by the sheen and wholeness of its
outer skin. And lest this be thought a peculiarity of
vegetable life, is it not true that very large men are
commonly very bold and very small men less inclined to
fight? From this line of reasoning we can suppose the
develOpment of a simple syllogism, a syllogism, incidentally,
Which will contine to do service through the sixteenth cen-
tury: all lions are courageous; all lions have big shoulders
and broad chests; therefore, all creatures with big shoulders
and broad chests are courageous. It is only later that Plato
will provide a philosophical foundation for the belief in a
fundamental correspondence between the soul and the body

Which houses it.l

—_

fi‘

l"Tima8US," Dialogues of Plato, B. Jowett, trans. (New
York, 1937), II, pI'EA: ”Everything that is good is fair,
and the fair is not without prOportion, and the animal which

L...

 

 

...‘

 

 

10

It would be unwise to try to insist upon this patently
crude reconstruction of physiognomy's origins, for it is
neither very certain nor very profound. All we know is that
comparative zoology became linked with comparative psy-
chology at a very early point in time and that the ultimate
fruit of this union was the pseudo-science of physiognomy.l
And it was at this point that the defense of physiognomy
and its methods began the long and involved process of
refinement and elaboration which ultimately led to the pom-
pous certainties of Lavater.

In the introductory paragraphs of the Physiognomics,

 

the author, whether Aristotle or one of his immediate

 

is to be fair must have due proportion. Now we perceive
lesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them, but
cfi‘the highest and greatest we take no heed, for there is no
proportion or disproportion more productive of health and
disease, and virtue and vice, than that between soul and
bOdy Aristotle' s conception of the interrelatedness of
.oul and body was equally influential in the development of
physiognomy. As Herschel Baker so succinctly points out
"Organic matter signalizes the emergence of soul, and soul
to Aristotle, is merely the function or form of the body.
It is form working on matter. . . ." The Image of Man,
(Harper Torchbooks, 1961), p. 58. Aristotle's notion of
the hierarchical gradation of soul, nutritive, sensitive
and rational, is of critical importance, of course, to the
concept of microcosmic man and thus Joined his zoological
Sincepts in giving support to physiognomy' 3 basic assump-
on.

1The uncertainty of this view must be emphasized.
Geneva Misener quite properly points out that the earliest
recorded branch of physiognomy may be supposed to be the
ethnological, for Hippocrates in the treatise "de aere,
311418, locis, " emphasizes the influence of geography and
(flimate on both temperament and physique "Loxus, Physi-
cian and Physiognomist." Classical Philology, XVII
(January, 1923), p. l. I discuss the ethnological school

ll

successors in the Peripatetic school, has a great deal to

say about the zoological school of physiognomy.l He does

not at all question its validity; in fact, he Speaks of it
as the traditional branch of the science, but he does warn

against the errors which careless application of its tenets

will foster:

But those who base this science of physiognomics

on wild beasts do not make their selections of

Signs correctly. For it is impossible to go through

the forms of each of the beasts and say that, whoso-

ever resembles this beast in body, will also be Simi—
lar in soul. For first of all, no one would find it

possible to say simply that a man was really like a

beast, but only that he resembled it to a certain
extent. (p. 89)

A very strong light of commonsense is here shining, almost

brightly enough to expose the improbable character of the

below, see p. 18. Aristotle, in Physipgnomics, discusses
both schools of thought. The primitive anthropomorphism of
animal analogy strikes me as the more likely point of origin
lAristotle: Minor Works, W. S. Hett, trans., Loeb
Classical Library (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963). Pro-
fessor Hett believes the author to have been a member of
Aristotle's school and to have written it within fifty
years of Aristotle's death in 322 B.C. It is interesting
to note, however, that there is nothing in the Physiognomics
inconsistent with the views of Aristotle as expressed in the
physiognomic passages of Historia Animalium: ”Straight eye-
brows are a Sign of softness of disposition; such as curve
in towards the nose, of harshness; such as curve out towards
the temples, of humor and dissimulation; such as are drawn
in towards one another, of jealousy” The Works of Aristotle
(Encyclopedia Britannica, 1953), II, 13.

1

Whether AristotIe
wrote it or not, either date makes the Physiognomics our

earliest extant treatise devoted to the science.

 

l2

enterprise before it truly gets under way. But "Aristotle"
continues his criticism by pointing out how the zoological
physiognomist can avoid these faulty conclusions. Princi—
pally, he tells us, one must distinguish between the common
and peculiar characteristics of animals and to insure this,
should select Signs from the largest possible sample. He
sagely concludes that the lion is not the only courageous
beast and that a more broadly based examination would have
made this evident. While on the whole his approach is
shrewd and cautious, ”Aristotle's” basic quarrel is with
his colleagues' and predecessors' failure to take pains
with their collection of data.1
But not many paragraphs later we encounter this un-

abashed litany, which may be the result of extensive zoologi-
cal investigations but sounds suspiciously like something
less empirical:

Those whose forehead is small are ignorant;

witness the pig. Those whose face is too large

are sluggish; witness cattle. Those whose face

is round are insensitive; witness asses.

Those with small ears are ape-like, and with

large ones asinine; one can observe that all the
best dogs have moderate—sized ears (p. 125)

 

lLavater says almost the same thing in 1778: ”. . .the
old authors say generally: high foreheads, and large fore-
heads betoken a feeble and slttnful man. We certainly find
feeble and slothful men with large and high foreheads; but
all large and high foreheads are not signs of feebleness and
Sloth-—such erroneous judgments can only be avoided by the

most accurate predictions." (p. lxxxiii)

And this crude catalogue of virtues and vices, noses and
ears, cats and dogs, continues down the torso and beyond
that to the equally revealing signs of the voice timbre,
speed of pace, hair quality and color, each related to
the appropriate animal and the controlling characteristic
assigned to that animal. The golden mean has never been
more ringingly espoused than by the statement, "one can
observe that all the best dogs have moderate-sized ears."
Unquestionably it is animal analogy which remains
at the center of our science from the very beginning, even
though more modern students of the face prefer to forget
this. Lavater makes comparativeiy little of it, acknow—
leging that he consulted animals primarily in an attempt
to arrive at distinctions between common and peculiar humag
characteristics, almost exactly, let it be noted, as ad-
vised by pseudo—Aristotle. But from the classical period
through the 17th century it is the lion or the ape or the
donkey which we meet with in the pages of our treatises.
Giambatista della Porta's study De Humane Physiognomonial
is not least well known for the extensiveness of its illustra-

tions which feature men, and the animals they most closely

k

lThe edition I have consu fed was published in 1650,
"Rothomagi, Sumptibus Ioannis Berthelin Bibliopolae." It
was first published in 1586. While it was never translated
into English, De Humana Physiognomonia was widely acknow—
ledged as the definitive work on the subject and was trans—
lated into most European tongues, Dryden in the Preface to
his Egbles, Ancient and Modern acknowledges Porta's mastery
Of the pseudo-science.

 

..‘t

 

 

1U

resemble, side by side on page after page. And these, of
course, are amply supported by the text, as this passage
on the lion (with its primitive syllogism enshrined)
clearly indicates:
Uni leonum generi, robustissimum esse & animossimum,
largiuntur; aiuntque necesse esse aliquod signium
inesse ei, quo animositas, & fortitudo ea pernoscatur,
idque esse latum pectus, amplos humeros, & magnas
extremitates habere, & ex his syllogismum desumunt:
omne habens latum pectus humerosque, ad magnas
extremitates: forte est & animosum (p. 9)

This search throughout the animal kingdom for clues to
the behavior of men does not abate in the new world of
seventeenth-century science. Richard Saunders' thesis is
studded with animal tokens and John Evelyn, writing at the
very close of the century, gives this remarkable testimony
to the persuasive, and metaphor—producing power of this
mode of analogical reasoning:

Thus some [men] are conspicuous for their Aguiline
noses; and look like Hawks and Eagles, are of sub—
lime and towering Spirits; others are Sheepish,

Hogejaw'd, Rabbit-mouth'd; some Bird—fac'd, as well
as witted, whom my Lord Verulam would have fixed by

studying Mathematics; and there are who resemble
Owls, Buzzards, Storks, Wood-Cocks etc. . . .

 

 

 

 

The passage goes on and on including, of course, the ubiqui-
tous lion whose features were discovered, Evelyn tells us,

indelibly imprinted on the countenance of an English sea

h;

lNumismata, A Discourse of Medals. . .to which is added
a_Qigression concerning Physiognogy (London, 1697), p- 292:‘_
Richard Saunders' treatise is entitled Phygiognomie and
Chiromancie, MetOpOSCOpie. . .with the Subject of Dreams
moon, 1671).

 

15

captain calling in at Venice and who was subsequently
known by the Venetians as "Capitano Lione." It is so ob—
vious a compliment that Evelyn does not even trouble to
tell us what a brave, bold, magnanimous man the Captain
was.

The exceedingly popular and influential Secreta

Secretorum records the distinctive signs of the forehead

 

when accounting for the leonine type: ”Tho that have the
forhedes Vprerid, bene 1ybera11 and likenyd to lyones."l
Not so Thomas Hill, who would have his readers consult the
gradations of color in the eye: ”The eyes not very black,

to a yellownesse tending, like to the Lyons doth declare an

honest and friendly person."2 That Hill, in all probability,

 

1The Secret of Secrets or Pryvete of Pryveteis trans.
by James Yonge (1322) edited by Robert Steele for The Early
English Text Society, ES LXXIV (London, 1898). For an
account of this extraordinary pseudo-Aristotelian document,
parts of which are traceable to the third century B. C.,
the reader should see Professor Steele's Introduction to
the poetic translation by Lydgate and Burgh: Secrees of old
Philisoffres, EETS, ES LXVI (London, 1894). The physiognomic
section probably owes its origin to the work of Polemon of
Laodicea whose treatise on physiognomy dates from the second
century. Its extant form was presumably shaped in a Syriac
work of the 8th century from which it was translated into
Arabic by Abu Yahya ibn Batriq and then into Latin first by
Johannes Hispalensis in the 12th century then separately by
Philip Tripolitanus one hundred years later. Once translated
into Latin its influence was enormous. There are over 200
manuscripts extant of the Latin version besides numerous
translations. Hoccleve's De Regimine Principium (1412) was
directly influenced by it as was, of course, Wm. Forest's
poetic account, The Poesye of Princely Practise (15A8).
Michael Scot, Roger,Bacon Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas,
John Gower and many others have been shown to have been
directly influenced by the Secreta.

2Thomas Hill, or Hyll, The Contemplation of Mankind
(London, 1571) Chap. xii. Hill, a Londoner, was an

16

never saw a lion in his life, let alone the iris of his
eye, is quite beside the point. Indeed he may never have
seen a man with the peculiar yellowing eye he so carefully
chooses as a leonine token. Bacon might, at this very
moment, be insisting upon the necessity of observation to
sustain scientific hypotheses, but he cannot for yet a

good many years hope to have an appreciab;e effect upon

the principal Elizabethan criterion of truth, authority.

 

And who in the sixteenth century, could ask for a greater

7
authority than Aristotle?‘

But this is clearly the wrong question. It would be
more revealing to ask who in Elizabeth's time knew more
about the natural world than Aristotle, or saw that world
from a substantially different angle of vision? The
willingness to believe a man honest and friendly because
his dark eyes show a yellowing tendency strikes the modern
reader as so ludicrous as to be beyond even Aristotle's

power to enforce.

k

exceptionally successful popularizer of the science of his
time. In addition to his treatise on phySiognomy he pro—
dUCEd popular accounts of gardening, astrology, bee culture,
ChemiStPY, Hippocratic medicine, animal husbandry and count—
less other esoteric subjects. Louis B. Wright, referring to
Hill'S importance, says, "For the Elizabethan, such works on
physiognomy took the place of popular treatmentsjof psycho}
analysis written to appeal to middle—class intelligences o
the present time. . . .His books are typical of an enormous
literature supplying middle-class readers w1th informationin
similar to that purveyed by modern magazines thatltr§1'-C—
SCience and pseudo—science” Middle—Class Culture n iza

bethan England (Cornell Univ. Press, 1958), P- 570-

lProfessor Lawrence Babb's account of Aristotleés iggéu-
ence on the affeotation of melancholy in Renaissance ng

l7

Microcosmic Man

 

But it was not ludicrous when the book in which it is
found was first sold under the sign of William Seres at the
"west ende of Pauls Church." And it most certainly was not
ludicrous in the eyes of pseudo-Aristotle's predecessors,
the zoological school of physiognomists, who recorded simi—
larly blunt equations. If it were smiled over, as it might
have been in the Inns of Court, or in the Mermaid, it was
primarily because of its extravagance and not for a moment
because it was ludicrous to suppose that man was a totality,
body, mind and soul, or that he was so intimately a part of
nature, rock and rill, bird, fish and creeping things, as to
be beyond the thought of separation. It did not require a
Darwin to postulate man's relationship with the rest of
creation. That relationship, if not precisely the same one,
was well known to both Aristotle and Shakespeare, and in
approximately the same terms. A Darwinian hierarchy based
upon morphological complexity is a small and simple thing
compared to thepfar—ranging cosmological hierarchy of the
Pr8~Copernican world.

It is unnecessary for me to rehearse the details of

this view of the universe, for they have been noted by a

——___
*-

is an interesting measure of the enormous respect his every
work commanded: Elizabethan Malady (Michigan State College,
1951). See also Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born Under

Saturn (London, 1963) especially chapter V.

 

..-

 

 

18

great many modern students of the Renaissance.1 Our purposes
will be served by recalling its principal features: geocen-
trism, the concentric spheres of the fixed stars and the
planets, each presided over by the appropriate angelic order,
a parallel hierarchy of all terrestrial matter from the in-
animate metals and liquids of the earth, through the various
plants and animals, ascending finally to man who, of course,
occupied the highest rung on the ladder of terrestrial
things. Man saw himself as lord of an animate earth, the
fruit of the sixth day, the copy of God, the map of the
world and the epitome of the universe.

And what led him to such a generous conclusion? Both
his metaphysics and his natural science. On the one hand
he knew from Aristotle that his soul encompassed the nutri-
tive soul of the plants, and the sensitive soul of the
animals and was, in addition, crowned by the unique and
divine gift of a rational soul. And he knew too that his
body, like all matter in the terrestrial Sphere, was made
up Of the four basic elements: fire, earth, air and water,
and that these in turn conferred upon him, as upon all

living things, the four basic qualities (hot and dry, cold

 

 

t“

1I am especially indebted to Professor M. H. Nicholson's
The Breaking of the Circle (Northwestern, 1950), Prof. Arthur
Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being (New York, 1960), and
E- M. W. Tillyard's Elizabethan World Picture (London, 1943).
And these are but a few of the best known accounts of the cos-
mOlOBical view of our period.

 

 

l9

and moist), with their several possible combinations.
Thus it was not fancy that led him to suppose that he was

the epitome of the universe, that he contained all of

 

creation, all of the macrocosm, within himself. He liter-
ally did--matter and spirit, body and soul, he was the
crystalline pool in which was reflected, however darkly,
every crevice and corner of the universe.

Now this teeming universe was the making of a Creator
who, to be sure, was infinite Goodness but who was, in
addition, infinitetCraftsman too. The hierarchy of things
was marked by innumerable distinctions of the most subtle
and significant kind. As Professor Nicolson reminds us,
man’s intimate connection with the rest of nature was such
as to suggest his resemblance even to plant life, but of
course he differed from plants too, even as he differed
from every other created thing. The point worth making is
that these differences were anything but haphazard and any-
thing but obvious. In Sir Thomas Browne's phrase, "the
Finger of God. . .hath left an inscription upon all his
works. . .which doth express their natures."l He is
referring, of course, to the doctrine of "signatures,"

which is fundamental to physiognomy, and an intricate part

u

lReligio Medici, Part II, section ii, cited by
M. H. Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle, p. 25.

 

20

of the overarching vision of man as a perfect model of the
universe. These "signatures" are located, in Browne's view,
in the "several forms, constitutions, parts and operations"
of the creature, indeed in the externals which fall under
the scrutiny of the physiognomist. Richard Saunders is
expressing a perfectly orthodox view when he suggests that
"God adorned all things created with signatures, so that

the ingenious might solace itself by a disquisite search
into the natural qualifications thereof.”1 It was beyond
question, in other words, that these subtle distinctions
which mark everything touched by the hand of God, the curve
of your nose and the sharp bend of mine, were made for a
purpose--and that purpose to reveal, if only to the ingeni-
ous, the wholeness of the natures they adorned.

That this view of man as containing all of the uni-
verse, writ small, within himself provided the ease with
which he found meaningful analogies in the animal world
has already been implied. But let us listen to a voice
from the 16th century which discusses this notion within
the precise context of "the little world of man." I am
Quoting from the Kalendar and Compost of Shepherds:

. .for there is no condition nor manner in a

beast but that it is found comprehended in a man.

Naturally, a man is hardy as the lion, worthy as
the ox, large and liberal as the cook, avaricious

 

lSaunders, Physiognomie, "Epistle Dedicatory."

 

21

as the dog. . .malicious as the leOpard.
dolorous and guileful as the fox, simple and
debonair as the lamb, shrewd as the ape.
dissolute and vagabond as the goat. . .lech—
erous as the boar, strong and puissant as the
camel, traitorous as the mule, cunning as the
mouse, and reasonable as an angel. And there-
fore he is called the little world for he par-
ticipeth of all, or he is called all creatures
for as said he particlpeth and hath condition
of all creatures.

In the Secreta Secretorum James Yonge devotes chapter forty—

nine to precisely the same microcosmic lesson in animal

psychology, which in addition to the creatures contained in

the Kalendar extols the bee and the bull and comes down un—

compromisingly on the swyne (”lecherus") and the toode

("malicious"). It closes its account with a repetition of

what must have been a commonplace in medieval and Renais-

sance England:

And sortely [sic] to say ther nys noone creature
in the worlde, of wych a man nath sum prOpirte:
And therfor a man is callit the lytill worlde.
(p. 212)

A final instance, this time from John Evelyn and the Restor-

ation, may be worth the risk of quoting at too great length.

At virtually the very beginning of his "Digression

 

1

Ed. G. C. Heseltine (London, 1930). The basis of

Heseltine' 3 text is the translation of R. Copland (London,
1518). The Kalendar was also extraordinarily pepular in
the sixteenth century. John Graham records English editions

appearing in 1503, 06, 08, 18, 28, 56, 59, 60, 70,

96,1600 ON 11,12, 31 and 1656. "Dev. Use Phy.,

H

80, 81,
Appendix B.

..’

22

concerning Physiognomy" Evelyn seeks to assure his reader
of the soundness of the analogies which are to follow—-and
he does it, not by an appeal to physiology or authority or
comparative anthropology. He does it, after Copernicus
and Harvey and Galileo and Newton, by appealing to the
"little world of man:"

There are some [physiognomists] of no small
Reputations; who have undertaken to discover,
and make out by the different Countenances of
Men, not only the Resemblances they carry to

the several species of brute Animals; but to
their very Natures and Dispositions also: Man
being not only all the Creatures in Synopsi and
Compendium (for what is singular in them, is

in him united) but in whom all the Imperfections,
as well as the Perfections, centre:

 

I have troubled to quote these various sources not
because any one of them represents a sound source book for
the zoological physiognomist (they are all rather curious
and uncertain in this respect) but because they admirably
illustrate the angle of vision from which for most of the
last 2500 years the physiognomist and his fellow mortals
looked upon the universe and upon man's place in it. As
a.consequence of this cosmological view it was not in the
least fanciful to suppose that a man exhibiting leonine
features likely partook of the Spirit of that substantial
beast and it most certainly was not ludicrous to conclude

that, however one might analyze the "signatures" of the

—h

lNumismata, p. 292.

.

1.1

 

23

body, they were put there by God to permit the skilled
amongst men to discover the secrets of the soul-—and
thus, the very secrets of the universe.

But animal analogy supplied by no means the sole
method by which facial and the other external tokens
nught be made to yield their meaning. There were other
ways and these, too, were supported directly or at some

remove, by the concept of the little world of man.

Geography and Anthropology

In the Hippocratic writings there is a small but
interesting treatise dealing with the effect of environ—
ment on the health, habits, character and appearance of
human beings. Entitled Airs Waters Places,l it is as
nmch an ethnographical essay as a medical one, citing as
it does several neighboring peoples and accounting for
their behavioral peculiarities by reference to the climate
and topography of their lands. Clearly Airs Waters Places
demonstrates that ethnography represents a second justifi-
cation for physiognomy. In fact, it had become so
closely identified with physiognomy by the third century,
8.0., that the author of the Physiognomics cites it, along

With the zoological, as a distinct school.2

—__

 

1Hippocrates, trans. w. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical
library (London, 1923), I, 67-137-

 

gghysiognomics, p. 85. The author does not, however,
comment extensively on it or suggest methodological errors
as he does with the zoologists.

 

24

That it, in turn, was supported by the notion of man

as microcosm is implicit in these sentences by Hippocrates:

Some physiques resemble wooded, well—watered

mountains, others light, dry land, others

marshy meadows, others a plain of bare parched

earth. For the seasons which modify a physical

frame differ; if the differences be great, the

more too are the differences in the shapes.
Once again we might illustrate the tenacity of this View,
this time in its geographic context, by turning to John
Evelyn who records the learned Italian physiognomist and
astrologer of the 16th century, Jerome Cardan:

As to climate and other Accidents, Cardan ob-

serving that where Trees take but slender, and

shallow Roots, or the Country is subject to

furious and tempestuous winds; the people are

unconstant and unstable also. . . .(p. 317)
So the trees, so too must men be for they are part of
nature too and are subject to the same forces and contain
the same elements.

To return to Hippocrates, the burden of the argument

of his little treatise rests primarily on changes wrought
by climate and topography, although these in turn are
sometimes related to physiological, or ”humoral” altera-
tions. Those who live in rugged, mountainous country,
with sharp changes of seasons are hardy, courageous and
bold, i.e., all the things they would have to be to remain
and thrive in such a climate. By contrast those who live

in the "hollow regions," with more hot than cold winds,

Will not be well-made physically but, on the contrary,

25

will incline toward fleshiness and dark hair, the latter
accounted for because they "are less subject to phlegm
than bile" (p. 135). They are, most significantly,
neither brave nor hardy like their cousins in the mountains.
There is an admirable unwillingness on the part of
Hippocrates to indulge in the grosser kinds of character
assassination which are usually associated with efforts to
describe "barbarians." He sticks very tightly to his
hypothesis and assigns few character traits which do not
seem closely allied with the conditions of the environment.
Tribalism, however, soon supplements ”environmental
medicine" (actually there is very little medicine in Airs

Waters Places) as the principal rationale for ethnological

 

Judgments of this kind. And inevitably it shows up in

later physiognomical treatses. The Secreta Secretorum is

 

content with the common north-south distinction:

For thay that dwellyth towarde the northe bene

stronge and couragious, and have harde here.

And tho whyche dwellyth towards the sowthe, bene

gastefall and have nesshe here, as thay of

Ethiopy.(p. 221)
As we will see later, this geographic commonplace is
underscored by a fundamental sexual distinction, masculine
hard hair versus feminine soft hair with the "Ethiops"
unknowingly suffering, not only from their proximity to
the equator, but by assignment to the feminine sex which,

of course, houses all the weaknesses capable of display

by living things.

Thomas Hill does not mention the Ethiopians, but
fastens his judgment of the darker pigmentations of the
south upon the Indians:

. .the black colour, very soft, doth declare
a weake fearfull, and craftie man applied unto
them which dwel farre South, like as the Indian:
that because such are Melancholick whose property
is to be feareful. Againe, the Moores and the
Egyptians and [sic] through the inordinate heate,
under which they be borne, are thereby but weake.
(chap. xii)

There is an obvious relationship suggested here between

 

climate, racial characteristics and the physiological
theory of the four humours. In fact, this relationship
is an intimate one in most of the treatises which

attempt to deal seriously with the distinctions among
men conferred by place; there is no more obvious way for
climate to work its way upon the body and the soul than
through the mediating "cauldron" of the humours.

In his Examination of Men's Hits,1 the Spaniard

 

Juan Huarte cites Galen who, in turn, invokes the over-
powering triumvirate, Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle,
as his authority for stating that "the difference of
nations, as well in composition of body, as in conditions
of the soule, Springeth from the variety of. . .tempera-

ture" (p. 22). Huarte does not limit his discussion to

—__*

fi

1Translated by Richard Carew in 159A. Carmen Rogers,
ed., Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints (Gainesville, Flori-
da, 1959).

n.-
a

.1.-
OI -
n. -

 

 

Isod

f‘u-

 

 

27

the gross division separating the north from the equator,
or Europe from Asia. Indeed, he maintains that so subtle
are these differences of environment that every region or
province of Spain puts its mark upon the character and
appearance of the people born and raised there.

One of the very well known physiognomists of the
15th century, Michael Savonarola of Padua also indulged
in ethnological observations even though he depended
chiefly upon animal analogy for his Mirror of Physiognomy.
The reliance upon the theory of the humours as the
rationale for these environmental observations is demon-
strated by his pronouncements on his fellow citizens:

Other things being equal, the natives of
Ferrara have better intellects than the
Paduans because they are tinged--or rather
singed—~with the burning of melancholic
choler. . . .They are therefore more ready

of speech but the Paduans have better judg- l
ment because their spirits are not so mobile.

The testimony of John Evelyn must be called upon
to Close our account of "ethnographic physiognomy," for
in this, as in other matters, he fastens upon every con-
ceivable theory which has come down to him and tries
desperately to hold them all together. His paragraphs
on ethnology are extensive in scope and character and

invoke topography, air, water, wind, cloud cover, the

humours, wildlife characteristics and dendrology, all

__
fl

1Cited by Thorndike, History of Magic, IV, p. 183 ff.
I have not seen Savonarola's book.

 

. a

28

as bearing upon and helping to reveal the dispositions and
physical appearance of the indigenous people. Huarte's
analysis of Spanish provincial variations is crudely con-
servative compared with Evelyn's precision:

There are Togical inclinations likewise, idio-
syncritical and peculiar. Hence the Genoeze
are of all others reputed the most Crafty and
Subtle—pated. The Venetians Grave, Deliberate,
extreamly Circumspect, Jealous, Sedate, and
Moderate, Friendly, Constant to their Maxims.
Those of Florence (where the air is very pure
and dry) have sharp, defecate and polite

Wits. . . .(p. 318)

 

These judgments and the far-ranging ones which precede them
(Evelyn covers the globe from the Chinese to the North
American Indians) are supported, for the most part, by
Hippocratic notions of how climate affects the human con-
stitution, i.e., the humours and the resultant complexion
produced by their balance or imbalance. In fact, the old
physiology is everywhere apparent. The inhabitants of

hot countries are "commonly foolish" and for the very

obvious reason that heat dissipates the vital and animal
Spirits even as excessive cold is likely to "hinder them

from due motion" (p. 312)-

The Four Complexions
Physiognomy's debt to the theory of the four elements,
their qualities and their related humours and complexions
in man, will have been made amply clear by now and I shall
not trouble to discuss it at any length. Clearly the old

PhySiology is of the greatest significance to the

29

pseudo—science, for above all the other "proofs" it
evidenced, the physiological explanation must have been
considered, from the time of Hippocrates forward, the
most firmly grounded. It can readily be understood
that the skeptical Elizabethan who balks at having his
character judged by the amount of grizzle in his ear lobe
might be more receptive to the same judgment if it is
supported by an analysis of his complexion-~an analysis
surely sanctioned by the Royal College of Physicians.
Shakespeare's countryman kngn that the humours
flowing through his body were exceedingly important, not
only to his physical well—being but to his mental and
emotional states as well. He nnnn that his sanguine com-
plexion was a function of a slight imbalance obtaining in
his humOral constitution and that this in turn affected
every organ and member of his body and his very capacity
to respond to experience. And he kngn that he was inclined
to behave in certain ways-—that he was physiologically
bound to covet the "company of women and moche slepe and
Syngynge"l——and that he had therefore a defined problem,
though as a sanguine man, not an especially trying one,
for the reasonable soul to cope with if his conduct were
to be regulated. And it goes without saying that he 522!

these things, not simply because indeed he did covet the

 

 

lYonge, Sec. Sec. chap. 58, p. 219.

'v ~
,.-¢
,
-.-a
..-
.-
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u
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30

company of women and enjoyed a late sleep, not merely
because his physician, or his own medical manual had told
him so, but because he could look in a mirror and see that
he was sanguine——that he was ruddy of cheeks, that his
hair was pale yellow or dark brown, his forehead large,
his nose straight, his skin texture soft, his lips full
and becomingly red.l
In addition to this he may also have learned, from
a physician—physiognomist, that the size of his body could
be a critical index to his general intelligence. While
there were clearly other factors to be taken into account,
the small man presents a less formidable communications
problem for the vital spirits-—the distance between the
heart and the brain being considerably shortened. As a
consequence, in the small trunk the vital spirits are not
only compacted but ascend, according to Saunders with
"facile celerity" (p. 266). Thus nature "supplies in wit
What is wanting in body." And thus, too, does the size
0f the body reveal, on the most uncompromisingly materialist
ground, an important secret about the mind of man.
That physiognomy and the health sciences were closely
related is shown, in a curious way, by the De_proprietatibus

rerum of Batholomeus. Stephen Batman's translation of this

k

lSee Saunders' chart of the sanguine signs, Pnysiognongg,
p.201.

-o
9
u .
n
r
-
0'14
I-o.
..-
‘ ‘-
'o
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..
a
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I.
,_ .
'-
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31

popular medieval compendium of useful knowledge1 shows, in

its medical sections, a remarkable austerity. The members

and organs of the body are taken up one at a time and each
is soberly discussed. Function is defined first, as a rule,

then the anatomy and physiology of the organ is described.

Physiognomy is given no place in this straightforward
account at all, and there is no special section or chapter
reserved for it before or after. Then, suddenly, at the
close, usually ending the anatomical paragraph, a sentence
will invoke Aristotle and the physiognomical tokens of the
appendage will be duly noted. Thus the chapter on the ear
(chap. l2), remarkably conservative throughout, closes with
the note that great ear size "is a token of dulnesse and of

"2 It is as

slow wit and understanding, as Aristotle saith.
if the author recognized that no account of the human body
could be considered complete without some reference to its
physiognomical significance. And so it is tacked on the end.

But to return to the point, the doctrine of the four
complexions is central to Bartholomew's diagnostic system:

And if they [the cheeks] bee browne in colour,
either citrine or yeolow, and thinne and leane
in substance, they betoken mastery of too great
drought and heate, as it fareth in oholaricke
folkes.(chap. 1A)

$§atman Uppon Bartholome his booke. . .De_proprietatibus
£3222 (London, 1582).

2If Bartholomeus recognized that this judgment was
based on the simplest animal analogy—-donkey's ears--he
does not trouble to say so.

32

The key to the complexion of course, is commonly
found in outward appearance, the special province of the
physiognomist but one he was glad to share with his more

respected brethren, the physicians.1

Pathognomy

 

While the distinction between pathognomy-—the scien-
tific study of expressions—~and physiognomy, its mother
discipline, was long recognized it was not truly insisted
upon before Lavater. In his desire to achieve the utmost
precision Lavater separates them, defining pathognomy as
"the knowledge of the signs of the passions." Thus it

teaches us truths about character in motion, what a man

 

1It may be of some interest to note what sequence of
procedures was followed by a thorough-going prophetic
physiognomist, Camillo Baldi (1547—163A) who begins with an
examination of complexions. Thorndike quotes from Baldi's
commentaries as follows: "First we seek to discover the
'complexion'. . .of the human body concerned. Then from
signs with which sense will supply us we learn the nature
of the blood in the veins; this known, the spirits are made
known to us; and when we know of what sort the spirits are,
then the propensities made up from soul and body are
revealed. . . they induce thoughts, appetites, dispositions
and inclinations; these are followed by acts which form
habits and character from which may be predicted to some
extent one's probable fortune, disease, health and length
Of life. This is not to deny free will or to affirm neces-
sity or assert anything certain as to future contingents,
Or to call the soul corporeal and educed from matter." (Hist,
Magic,VIII,p. 451) But of course, it was to come very __—“
close to doing all these things——and it was precisely this
tendency to pass beyond the point of predicting character
or inclination that was responsible for physiognomy's diffi-
culties with both church and state.

 

o..‘

33

becomes at particular moments, not what he is in general.
For Lavater, then, pathognomy is of secondary importance.
Unlike physiognomy, it is short—lived and, because it is
based upon the moveable parts of the face, is capable of
conscious manipulation and deception.

But this dismissal of the lesser science is expensive,
for with it must go one of the more obvious defenses of
physiognomy itself. It is not especially difficult to
prove that a man under emotional stress will alter his
facial expression and in more or less predictable ways.
Thus the angry man will wrinkle his brows and curve his
lips downward at the corners. In the most elementary exer-
cise of pathognomic transfer, this simple fact may confer
upon the tables of physiognomy two signs--furrowed brows
and downward-curving lips—-which in turn reveal a veritable
catalogue of traits. Such a man, permanently so marked,
will be irascible, bold, arrogant, cruel and so on down
the list of characteristics suggested by the fleeting
evidence of momentary anger.

The use of pathognomic observations was the last of
the three schools of physiognomy mentioned by pseudo-
Aristotle and, while he says very little about it, it is
clear that it was a sanctioned and venerable method and
Cme which, with least possible strain, demonstrated the
cmeness of body and soul. James Yonge, our translator of

the §ggreta Secretorum, makes much of this proof in terms

 

34

which could not but have elicited agreement from the great
majority of his fellows who also lived in the world and
knew about the effects of wine:

And Kynde is so grete a fellows betwen body and

sowle, that the Passyons of body chaungeth the

sowle; and the Passions of Sowle, chaungyth the

body. (chap. 57)
This reciprocity is shown by (a) drunkeness——which induces
forgetfulness in the soul ”by reyson that the grete smokkes
gone up to the brayn, and troubelyth the yamgynacion, whych
servyth to the understandynge. . . .” an example of the
body's effect upon the soul, and (b) love, anger, fear
and the like which "makyth grete chaungynge to the body,
as knowyth every man that ham hath irowid."

This commonplace of simple observation will not, 275
years later, be quite sophisticated enough for the members
of the Royal Society of London. The Philosophical Trans-

. 1 ' ical
anions for the year 1694 records a phy51ognom
'Discourse” by a certain Dr. Gwither which puts the matter
hlits proper scientific context and in acceptably abstruse
language:
The animal spirits, moved in the sensory by an
Object, continue their motion to tne brain, h t
Whence the motion is propagated to Unis orig Sle
particular part of the body, as is most sut a de
to the design of its creation, nav1ng firs maiall
an alteration in the face by its nerves, :speits y
the Pathetic and oculorum motorii, actuattngtu en—
numerous muscles as the dial—plate to that is :0
dous piece of clock—work, which shows wha now
be expected next from the striking part. ' ’

if by repeated acts or by frequent entertaénégg
the ideas of a favourite passion or vice w

p
n
o
o
O
u
.. .
- ,
'l -
‘ -
‘--.
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35

natural temperment or custom has hurried one into,
the face is so often put into that posture which
attends such acts, that the animal spirits find
such passages into its nerves, that it is sometimes
unalterably set. . .but most commonly such habit

is contracted, that the face falls insensibly into
that posture, when some present object does not
obliterate that more natural impression by a new one,
or dissimulation hide it; hence it is, that we see
great drinkers with eyes generally set towards the
nose, the adducent muscles being often employed to
let them see their beloved liquor in the glass, in
the time of drinking. . . .

And so we have the flexible or "dynamic" characteristic
becoming fixed or "static" and thereafter shouting to the
world, or at least to those few members of the Royal
Society who heard Gwither'to the end, the truth of a

nusspent youth.2

Sexual Distinctions
While physiognomy never, to my knowledge, harbored a
'echool" of practitioners devoted exclusively to the study
Cd’sexual differences, it might easily have done so. The
science of outward appearance simply could not remain ob-
livious to the ready-made indices provided by sex, or resist
‘Hm temptation to codify the anti-feminine prejudices which

were so much a part of the earlier periods of our history.

¥

lPhilos0phical Transactions, XVIII, p. 120.

 

2Indeed, Lavater maintains that this process is so
Mfltain as to affect even the "bony parts" if the vice or
habit is sufficiently exercised in the earliest years of
childhood.

b .'.

36

Begun as a small but rewarding adjunct to the zoological
school, the study of sexual differences came to be one of
the major buttressing elements of the science as a whole.
I do not know a physiognomical treatise which fails to
take into account the weaknesses of Eve and her sisters.
Indeed, both della Porta and Thomas Hill devote separate
chapters to feminine nature and the revealing signs its
understanding will provide.1 Pseudo-Aristotle does not
isolate his sexual judgments in this way, but rather,
scatters them throughout the text. It is in the Physiog-
nomics that we encounter the strange notion of the panther
as the epitome of feminine traits. The panther, selected
as a reputedly "brave" animal--as if to give women every
break in the inevitable comparison, has the small face,
longish neck, and ”imperfectly" proportioned body that
suggest feminity. The panther's character, in contrast to
the lion, of course (the lion seems to have the most

M

perfect share of the male type) is petty, thieving, and

generally speaking, deceitful" (p. 111).
But the deceit of the panther cannot begin to exhaust

the variety of flaws displayed by the typical female. The

x

fl

lPorta, Book I, chap. xiii. "Quod ex distinctione
habituuum & passionum masculini & feminini generis de mori-
bus multa coniectentur;" Hill, chap. 12, "The devyding of
nmnkinde into two formes or natures; and a perfite descrip~
tion or distinction of the man from the woman, after
Hnwiognomy; uttered by the Singular Conciliator."

37

catalogue recorded by Hill, with Avicenna cited as the
primary authority, begins in an unusually low key but
rises quickly to the heights of lecherousness and stu-
pidity and then subsides, almost to the point of ad~
nutting feminine virtues:

women are more pittiful, and gentle than men:

more convertible, lighter perswaded, sooner

seduced, enviouser, fearefuller. . .more

foolish, lyars, more fraudulent, more receive

fraude [sic], more esteeming trifles, slower,

tenderer, weaker. . . .(chap. xii)
The physical signs that are certain indicators of these
particular vices are equally precise. One must be on
the look-out for small feet, big buttocks, flat-lying
shoulder points, flat heels, small and "febrille" voice,
indeed, even a perceptible lean to the right while
walking. The least damaging conclusion that any one of
these signs will support is that its unhappy owner is in

James Yonge's phrase, "neshe [soft] after the Propyrte of

women."

Astrological Associations
We must close this account of physiognomy's evolving
rationalizations with the briefest mention of astrology,
the queen of the pseudo-sciences, which clearly r€igned
over one branch of physiognomy as it did over alchemy,
nmtoposc0py, chiromancy and many others. I refer, of
course, to celestial physiognomy which was little more

than astrology dressed in the more modest-appearing garb

38

of a "natural” science. The celestial physiognomist used
physiognomical signs primarily as aids in his prophetic
work. Richard Saunders makes this clear when he suggests
the obligation of physiognomy to help in the discovery of
important data needed for the casting of a horoscope.
After linking physiognomy with astrology and chromancyl
as those sciences "which hold forth the cognition of
futures" he states:

It is a certain thing that every Humane Creature

when it is born hath in some part of the body the

mark of the Sign or Planet that governed at the
hour and minute of their Conception and Nativity.

(p. 167)
Clearly this astro-physiognomical information is of the
first importance, for the exact time of conception is
needed to determine the ascendant sign and dominant star
which are supposed to rule the subject's fortune. And,
patently, this data cannot be discovered in any other way
than by analyzing the "marks" which are found on the body.
Thus the ability to read planetary marks is required of
the celestial physiognomist, but chiefly to serve the

main business of horosc0pe casting.

h
~—

lGeorge Sarton, Introduction (III, pp. 270-1), points
mn;that physiognomy‘s connection with astrology was forged,
rum in the ancient world, but in the hands of the Arab
practitioners of the middle ages.

28cc Professor Curry's essay on the Wife of Bath and
lmr "prente of Seynt Venus seel," Chaucer and the Mediaeval
Sciences, p. 91. 4——

 

 

 

 

C.,...

 

39

This is not, of course, the only relationship between
the two sciences. Far more important is the connection
which permits the influence of the planets to preside over
the vast train of significance for health of body and mind
which follows in its wake. We must recall again that the
judicial astrologer, or the celestial physiognomist, was
not discredited for believing in astral influences. He
was interdicted because he displayed a sacriligious pre—
sumption of omniscience which carried with it a willingness
to question the doctrine of free will. That the celestial
bodies had some influence over man and the earth was not
seriously questioned. The tides told that truth well enough.

We have already seen that the effects of environment,
of geography and climate, were most logically brought to
bear upon man through the mediating fluid of the four
humours. It is not surprising therefore to discover that
the natal stars also shape the body and mind of man in this
way, conferring their dominant qualities upon his complexion.
If Mars is hot and dry, then so will the complexion be of
the man born or conceived under his influence, and from
Hus fundamental humoral constituency follows a prescribed

set of physical features.1 Here, clearly, the celestial

k

1This account of the matter is woefully simplified.
Fbr a full account the reader is advised to,consult Curry
gfimger and the Mediaeval Scienggs, ppo 7-36. Also Richard
Shunders’ treatise is as clear as any primary source I have
seen on this complex subject.

 

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bodies are the primary cause and the old physiology
the secondary cause of our physical and mental states.

It seems obvious that the distinction drawn between
celestial and natural physiognomy is more apparent than
real. To be sure, the celestial practitioner was really
an astrologer, complete with an elaborate metoposcopical
amp which rendered the most exacting clues to the future.
The lines of one's forehead were assigned to the planets
(as was every limb of the body) and these crossed and con—
voluted their ways across the path of the life yet to be
lived. But the fact is that both the natural and the
celestial physiognomist shared the same manual, as they
shared the same view of the universe, up to a certain
point——up to the point of analyzing "secondary" causes.
WMs was far enough for the natural physiognomist and
any the beginning for his colleague.

And so it was that physiognomy gathered up adherents,
indeed made a commodious place for itself in the life and
thought of men over many centuries. Invoking now animal
analogy, now a crude ethno~psychology, and calling upon
astrology, pathognomy, sexual prejudice and Galenic medi-
Cine as necessary, it survived the fall of Rome and came
safely into 12th century Europe, chiefly by gift of the
lHeserving civilization of the medieval Arab world. To

be sure, other and more fanciful justifications were

 

“.I—a-ww-v v IF—I1 —v --- _, _

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b1

occasionally expounded.l But these were ordinarily the
fruit of a latter day anxiety to overcome sceptics who,
although they are to be found throughout the long history
of our pseudo—science, became more outspoken in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And as the sceptics
became more outspoken, so too did the justifications. But
the fundamental "proofs" were those touched upon in this
chapter. They were all intimately related, one with the
other, and with the reigning cosmology. And they maintained
their currency long enough to insure that the science they
defended entered into the life and literature of the

Renaissance.

 

1I am thinking of Lavater's tripartite division, first
of the nature of man into animal, moral and intellectual
"lives," then of his body, then by transfer and extension of
his face. Lavater postulated that while all three "lives"
coexist in all parts of the body, it is still true that each
has its "peculiar station." Obviously animal life is to be
found in the belly and genitals, the lower third of the body;
the moral life resides principally in the region of the
heart, the chest or middle third; and intellectual life is
stationed in the head. The acute physiognomist, according
to Lavater, will recognize that the countenance is a mirror
for the entire body and that therefore it is proper to
impose this tripartite division on the face. The lower
third—-chin and lips-~thus reveals signs of the animal life
in man, the middle third presents tokens of moral character,
muithe upper third is to be searched for signs of in-
tellectual ability.

 

CHAPTER III
ELIZABETHAN ATTITUDES TOWARD PHYSIOGNOMY

Fond Physiognomer, complexion

Guides not the inward disposition,

Inclines I yeeld. Thous saist Law lulia,

Or Catoes often curst Scatinia

Can take no hold on simpring Lesbia,

True, not on her eye, yet Allom oft doth blast
The sprouting bud that faine would longer last.

 

John Marston, The Scourge of Villainy.

 

In these concise lines John Marston cryptically phrases the
argument which throughout the sixteenth century raged about
the pseudo-science of physiognomy. The legitimacy of the
science was tried, in fact, almost entirely on this point
alone. Does one's physical constitution, one's complexion,
determine character entirely or, with Marston, can we be
content to grant that it merely ”inclines" the character
in one way or another? No less powerful an intellect than
Montaigne's hesitated before this puzzling question. In
his essay on physiognomy Montaigne readily concedes that
there is "nothing more likely than the conformity and
Itlation of the body to the Spirit." And then he edges
Closer to the question of neCeesity:

It seems as if some faces are lucky, other unlucky.

And I think there is some art to distinguishing the

kindly faces from the simple, the severe from the

rough, the malicious from the gloomy, the disdainful
from the melancholy, and other such adjacent qualities.

A2

“3

There are beauties not only proud but bitter;
others are sweet, and even beyond that, insipid.
As for prognosticating future events fromlthem,
those are matters that I leave undecided.
But while Montaigne hesitated, the publication of
physiognomical treatises in England and on the continent
continued unabated. We have already seen how frequently

reprinted were those two main bastions of the popular

scientific imagination, The Secret of Secrets and The

 

Kalendar of Shepheards. And these, exceedingly important

 

as they were, by no means represented the only sources
for the dissemination of the pseudo—science. Continental
practitioners, such as Giambattista della Porta, John de
Indagine, and the renowned Bartolommeo Cocles, saw their
physiognomical treatises printed over and over again in
Ictin and in most of the modern European languages.

Porta's De Humana Physiognomonia, while never translated

 

into English, went through twenty-one editions in Italy
alone between 1586 and 1655.2 Indagine's ”Introductiones
apotelesmatical," a series of tractates covering astrologi-
cal and physiognomical notions, was published in Strassburg
in 1522 and, after several editions on the continent, was

translated by Fabian Withers in 1558 and was reprinted,

 

 

1The Complete Works of Montaigne, Trans., D. M. Frame
(Stanford, 1948), Bk. III, p. 811.

2Thorndike, Hist. Magic, VIII, p. 448.

 

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no. .

 

 

 

 

AA

in Withers' English, in 1598.1 Again, "the most excellent,
profitable and pleasant books of the famous doctour and

expert astrologien Arcandam. . ." was translated from the

French by William Warde and successively printed in 1562,

1592, and 163“.2 These, along with Thomas Hill's success—

3 served

ful translations of Cocles' works on physiognomy,
a wide audience as the most modern works devoted exclusively
to the science of outward appearance. They were joined, of
course, by the medieval encyclopaedists, still very much

in fashion, and by certain anonymous treatises on the
subject.“ They could not, for all of that, compete with

the authority of Aristotle which invested the Secreta

§enretorum and the Kalendar of Shepheards with their claim—-

 

seldom refused—~upon the attention of the period. The
learned might consult Baptista della Porta or Bartholommeo

Cocles; but the Londoner of ShakeSpeare's time who wished

 

lThorndike, v, p. 65.

2See John Graham, "Dev. Use of Phy.," Appendix B

3The Contemplation of Mannynde (1571) was the SECOHd Of
three separate editions of Hill's physiognomical treatise.
The first, "A brief and most pleasant epitomye of the whole
artcfl‘Physiognomie" appeared twenty years earlier and the
third "A pleasant history declaring the whole art of physiog-
nomie" was printed in 1613.

Two anonymous treatises which have come to my attention
are (a) "On the Art of Foretelling Future Events by Inspec-
tion of the Hand," printed in 1504 and (b) "A Pleasant Intro—
mkmion to the Art of Chiromancie and Physiognomie,” printed
in 1588. Michael Scot's translation into Latin of Aristotle's
iflilory of Animals, while made in the early 13th century, was
run printed until 1A77. It went through eighteen editions
before 1660.

45

to come into quick and not—too-painful contact with the
venerable names of "antiquity"-—Aristotle, Plato, Hippoc-
Ietes, Melampus, Galen, Polemon, Avicenna,--was more than
content with a prose version of the Secreta or, better

still, with Thomas Hill's Contemplation of Mankynde which

 

thoughtfully supplied the ancient authority for very
nearly every judgment it rendered.l

Professor Carroll Camden, in his interesting essay
on physiognomy in the Renaissance,2 suggests that the
science's chief appeal lay in the promise of power and
wisdom which it invariably claimed would be realized by
the "gentle reader." There is clearly a good deal of
truth in this conclusion, for only an extraordinary desire
to know everything could account for the proliferation of
titles in Elizabethan England which center upon a "secret"
about to be shared. But physiognomy's attraction never
depended entirely upon the urge to master the deepest

secrets of the universe; it could promise as little (or as

Hmch) as the ability to master the undisclosed nature of

M

 

1It goes without saying that such citations were ex-
ceedingly important. In the seventeenth century Richard
Saunders' thesis contains a "Catalogue of Authors Consulted,"
in which appear Albertus Magnus, Aristotle, Avicenna, Bona-
ventura, Cicero, Demosthenes, Bmpedocles, Galen, Herodotus,
Hippocrates, Homer, Horace, Loxus, Michael Scot, Moses,
Palemon, Philemon, Polemon (these three, of course, were all
cwm man, Polemon of Laodicea), Plato, Pythagoras, Rhases,
Suetonius, and many, many others.

2"The Mind's Construction in the Face," 29- XX (JUlY:
1941), p. 400.

.orv

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.~

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46

one's neighbor or one's potential customer. Physiognomy,
the science which traditionally claimed for itself the
very key to human character and conduct, was, in every age,
looked upon as an eminently useful art. The ability to
recognize, instantaneously, the corrupt and the honest,
the stupid and the wise, the virtuous and the secretly
licentious amongst men is a talent which can be employed
in all but the most solitary walks of life. It is, then,
a social art with as many uses as people on the street, in
the drawing room or, indeed, in the great Presence Chamber
at Court. And it was because of its supposed utility,
above all else, that it was able to attract devotees from
virtually every corner and station to be found in sixteenth

century England.

Regimine Principum

It is not surprising to find that its cultivation was
nmst frequently recommended, and this in every age, to the
prince for his was the task of selecting ministers and
counselors whose wisdom, honesty and integrity are beyond
question--that is, ministers who do not hide in their
souls a hidden lust for power or a fatal inclination toward
one of the more serious weaknesses of the flesh. The ubiqui-

tous Secreta Secretorum may well lie near the beginning of

 

this tradition, for it is cast as an epistle from Aristotle
to Alexander and amongst the secrets of successful rule it

Supplies is the long concluding section on the principles

...¢.

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no...

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q

I

ll. 1.

47

and uses of physiognomy. Professor George Sarton, in fact,
credits the famous medieval Arab cosmographer, al—Dimashqi,
with first associating physiognomy with the possibility of
wise government.1 The expert physiognomist "might help the
sultan to select his wuzara (ministers) and the members of
his dawawin (councils)."

James Yonge's translation of the Secreta emphasizes
the immediate results the science provides, a characteristic
of special importance to the prince. There is no need to
wait several months until the minister or ambassador has
been thoroughly tested:

But for-als—moche as stronge is to fynde and know
condycones and good vertues and maneris of Pepil
wythout long Prewe, hit is a ful convenabille and
profitabill thynge to every Prynce, that he cane
the scyence of Physnomy, by wyche he may know by
syght every man of wych maneris and thewis he
sholde be by kynde. (p. 216)

Thomas Blundeville's sixteenth century contribution to
the genre, Of Councils and Counselors,2 does not slight
physiognomy, but it is by no means as confident about its
invaluable service as was James Yonge. Still he cannot leave
out the usual judgments of the "vysage" and, in fact, strongly
SUggests that the prince maintain someone close at hand who

can help him read the "complexions" of those who come before

him:
lIntroduction, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 800.

2Karl L. Selig, ed., Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints
Gainesville, Florida, 1963). This is a translation of
Federico Ceriol's El consejo: consejeros del princinn (1559).

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48

. .so mine Author would have the Prince also to
consult with his learned Physitians touching that
matter. For to judge well of complextions is a
thing chiefly appertaining to their Arte.

(pp. 99-100)
Blundeville's apology for closing his treatise with an
account of physiognomy is indicative of the uncertain
reputation which the pseudo—science, at least in its
nmst outrageously prOphetic forms, had achieved by 1570.
He bases his inclusion of physiognomy upon the notion
that everything of conceivable relevance ought to be
entered. After all, while the analysis of the face and
body may appear a small and trifling matter to some, the
prince can take absolutely no chances on the men into
whose hands "hee must commit both his goodes, his 1yfe, and
the honor," not to mention the goods and lives of his sub-
jects. He clinches his argument by suggesting that if the
prince would peer into the opened mouth of a horse before
buying and would analyze the shape and prOportion of the
beast, how much more important it is that he choose his
counselors with equal, if slightly different, care. And
so Blundeville, presumably, quieted the cynical few.

Sir Thomas Hoby's translation of Castiglione's Eng

Egg.of the Courtier must also be counted amongst those

cmnmly advice books which include references to the utility

ofphysiognomy.l There is, of course, no specific section

 

 

lEveryman's Library, No. 807. Hoby's translation
aDpeared in 1561.

 

 

v
.o.
. .

.....,.

'.

49

or chapter devoted to the pseudo—science, still less any
detailed account of its methods or its rationale. But in
several places Castiglione emphasizes its importance,

notably in Book IX where there is to be found an extended

discussion of the relationship of outward beauty of person

and inward harmony of spirit. The qualities of the ideal

ccurtier are summarized in this fashion:

To come therefore to the qualitie of the person,
I say he is well, if he bee neither of the least,
nor the greatest size. For both the one and the
other hath with it a certaine spiteful woonder,
and such men are marvelled at, almost as much as
men marvel to behold monstrous things. Yet if
there must needes be a default in one of the two
extremities, it shall be lesse hurtfull to bee
somewhat of the least, than to exceede the common

stature of height. (Bk. 1, p. 3;

The reason for the preference, we are later told, is based
Lmon the notion of large men being dull witted, not to

mention clumsy, both of which qualities must be avoided

hithe ideal ccurtier.

If we can believe the testimony of John Evelyn,

initing one hundred years later, the uses of physiognomy

tmre not unknown in the court of James 1. Evelyn, in the

those who must govern

v.1v

cmnee of recommending physiognomy to
o were either themselves

u

nmn, cites several ancient princes wh
amxmmlished in the art or employed others who were. The

Lmofficial physiognomist of James 1, according to Evelyn,

Iwm Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who had

.so wonderful a sagaoity in diving into, and

discovering the intentions of men by their

D‘II.

 

5O

countenances, that he could shrewdly guess at the

very secret of their Negotiation; so as King James
the First made no small use of that his extraordinar

Talent on the first arrival of Ambassadors at Court.
So far as I know we have no evidence of a similar kind indi-

cating that James' great predecessor trusted to physiognomy

in quite this way. But Professor J. E. Neale records, in

his biography of the Queen, an extraordinarily suggestive
conversation which supposedly took place between Elizabeth
and Sir James Melville, the envoy of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Melville was the adroit young ccurtier that Castiglione
nught have been writing about and he had to be precisely

that to survive the clash of personalities with which his

nflssion in 1564 involved him. I ha , not myself had an

Opportunity to examine Melville's account of his exchange

with the Queen in his Memoirs, but Neale records it this

way:
She wanted to know what coloured hair was considered
best, and how hers compared with Mary's. Then fol-
lowed a whole series of comparisons. Who, she asked,
was the fairer, Mary or she? a question Melville
tried to dodge by declaring that she was the fairest
queen in England and theirs the fairest Queen in
Scotland. As Elizabeth was not to be put off, he
replied that they were both the fairest ladies of
their courts, but the Queen of England was whiter,
their Queen ”very lusome." Next sne wanted to know
answered Melville.

who was the higher. Mary was,
Then is She over. high, ret-‘gr‘tEBd Elizabeth; She hir—

self being neither over high nor over low.

lNumismata, Op. cit., p. 302.

2Queen Elizabeth I, Doubleday Anchor Books (Garden

City, 1957), pp. 128-9.

.I‘-.

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51

Now clearly this conversation need not have had any physiog—
nomic significance at all; it could as easily have been
solely devoted to a feminine inquisition prompted by pride
and Jealousy. But this was the same queen who demanded

the most detailed accounts of her would—be continental
suitors and who received them complete with physiognomic
interpretations attached.l And it was the Queen who enter—
tained the astrologer-scientist Dr. John Dee and held his
work in apparent respect. But the most interesting side of
this interrogation about her rival Mary is the amazing
parallel it will later be given by Shakespeare in CleOpatra's
scene with the messenger who has just returned from Home

with news of Octavia.2 And it could as easily have had the
same physiognomical significance.

In any event, if the prince were first in employing
physiognomy to serve his ends it was mainly because of the
primacy of those ends; if he could wisely choose his
counselors through its use, then his middle-class subject
Could as easily employ it to choose his household servants.

And, apparently, he did.3

—_

lSee Neale, pp. lMZ-lQS.
2
See below, pp. 57-65.

3See Dekker's poetic prologue to The Wonderful Year
chscussed below, pp. 166—8.

-

...-,

 

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O

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'v._

 

52

Aptitude For Learning

 

And so, too, could the schoolmaster choose his pupils
scientifically, avoiding, if only he would consult physiog-
nomy's lessons, the dull and untoward. The physiognomical
aptitude test, in fact, seems to have been something of a
convention in the literature of the pseudo—science. R. A.
Pack calls our attention to Robert Burton's Latin play

Philosophaster, in which Polupragmaticus, the professor in

 

the piece, is asked how long it will take to educate a

ymnm;man presented to him (I, vi).l

His response is
amusingly filled with high foreheads, hair color, Mercurial
lines and the like, all of which together argue for a good
Hand and an excellent memory. Pack concludes that Burton
borrowed the idea from Aulus Gellius, who reports in 52239
fl§§§§_that Pythagorus used to subject would-be students to
wiexamination of this kind.2 Professor Pack may well be
right, given Burton's eclectic reading habits, but he need
rum have gone all the way back to the second century.

Enwon was interested in physiognomy, we know, and he might
Easily have come upon a COpy of Thomas Hill’s The Contempla—

Omenkind, which recommends the pseudo—science for its

DEdagogical utility:

k

1R, A. Pack, "Physiognomical Entrance Examinations,"
PILLXXXI (1935), pp. 42—143.

2Attic NightS, John C. Rolfe trans. (Loeb Classical
library, 1927?, Vol. I, chap. IX: ”It is said that the
tuner and method followed by Pythagorus and afterwards by

 

 

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53

Further this art procureth no small commoditie and
profite to Scholemasters in searching out and
knowing the aptnesse and pregnancie of their scholars
unto learning. . . .(Epistle)

And a very great deal more of the same can be found in

Juan Huarte's Examen De Ingenios which, while not a physiog—

 

nomical treatise in the purest sense, nonetheless devotes
necessary attention to its signs and tokens. Indeed,
Huarte's study in many ways represents the culmination of

"pedagogical physiognomy."

Diagnostic Uses

 

And so physiognomy's obvious utility carried it to

the attention of all manner of men in the England of

Elizabeth's time.1 If it could help select the grammar

school student, so, too, could Thomas Vicary suggest that
it be consulted by those who are to train surgeons:

There must also be chosen a man apt and mete to
minister surgerie, or to be a chirurgion. And in
this poynt al Authors doo agree, that a Chirurgion
should be chosen by his members wel proportioned.
For Basis sayth, whose face is not seemely, itZis
vnpossible for him to have good manners. .

*

ids school and his successors, in admitting and training
their pupils were as follows: At the very outset he
'physiognomized' the young men who presented themselves
fbr instruction. ."

lEvelyn suggests inadvertently that it would be useful
to those assigned to policing the stews: "Tis storied of
the Famous Hippocrates that one day passing by a brisk young
lkud, he saluted her by the name of Fair Virgin, whom meeting
agahlthe morning after, he bid good—morrow Woman, discover-
1P8 by her looks she had play'd the Wanton, and been vitiated
UmzNight before." (Numismata, p. 3OA).

 

2Anatomie of the Bodie of Man (1548), F. J. and Percy
Furnivall, eds., EETS, as. LIII (1888), p. 13.

[I.V\livr||l'\r;el i,’l.§|"lint.’”

 

5A

And in this orthodox counsel Vicary was merely reccgnizing
the intimate relationship of complexion to character which
made physiognomy such an indiSpensable aid to the medical
practitioner. Richard Saunders does not hesitate to
recommend the science to the physician confronted with a
sick patient for he may
.by their face and hands. . . iscover their

condition; for the symptomes quickly appear in

the face; the heart (by reason of the tenuity and

subtility of the skin in that place) painting forth

(as it were) the notes of its affections.
Professor Thorndike records an interesting and not unamusing
story told by Bartolommeo della Rocca (Cocles) which sheds
some light upon the sometimes bizarre relationship which
nught obtain between the physiognomist and the physician.
The patient in this instance was suffering from head wounds,
but he was also complaining severely to his wife of them.
The medical men apparently found this strange and were
baffled as to how to proceed in the case:

Cocles pointed out to the surgeons and physicians

present that the patient had a small pointed head

and was exceedingly choleric and that his left

shoulder was humped, and that therefore his charac-

ter could not be otherwise. They agreed and con-

fessed to their inadventure. The patiegt recovered
from his wounds but not from his folly.

fi

lPhysiognomie and Chiromancie. . . .gp;_£it., ”preface
m>the readers." The obvious advantage to the physician of
huming the patient's complexion is too commonplace to need
nmch documentation. Sir Thomas Elyot's The Castle of Helthe
(1541) and Batman uppon Bartholome his bocke (1582) both d55—
Cuss the mattern

2Thorndike, Op. cit., Vol. V, p. 59.

 

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55

The point to be made is a simple one: physiognomy, based
as in part it was upon the physiology of the humours and
complexions, and informed as it came to be with astrologi-
cal significance, could not but be employed by the physician
in Elizabethan England. It was, in fact, an indispensable
tool of the diagnostic art and it appeared, in discussions
of the complexions and their signs, in many of the popular
medical treatises of the time.1 This association with
nwdicine, then, both helped to disseminate the pseudo-
science throughout the society and conferred upon its
practice whatever prestige the medical profession could

command.

"Commercial" and Other Uses
It is not hard to imagine other uses to which such
a versatile science could be put by an inventive peOple.
The world of commerce, always receptive to profit-insuring
ideas, may have embraced physiognomy in the market places

3
of England2 even as it did in the bazaars of the Arab East.

‘

lSee Sir Thomas Elyot's The Castel of Helthe (lSAl)
fin~a typical account, including physical signs, of the four
complexions.

2 i n of Jonson's

See below p. 160 for a discuss o
satiric use of physiognomy to predict commercial success for
AbEl Drugger in The Alchemist.

3 -Akfani a famous

Ge n identifies Ibn al ,

cmultist Eggghgalfigh century, as the physiognomist-physician
‘WDWhom we are indebted for this recommended use of phys og-
“mm“ It was especially valuable in choosing Eégves, es—
Pecially female slaves, Introduction, III, P- -

56

The same is true of ts use before the criminal bar. Not
only paternity cases, but questions of criminal culpability
were decided on these grounds--which is not surprising,
given the physiognomist's propensity to describe composite
pictures of villainous types. That this was not merely an
Arab practice might be inferred from the fact that in Italy
in the early sixteenth century Cocles calmly suggests "that
Judges might apply torture more intelligently by examining

the palms of the person in question first."l

While clearly
he is referring to the art of chiromancy——palm-reading was
only one of the several intimately related occult sciences
practiced by this-rogue—-this art :as considered, especially
when used to determine character, a branch of natural
physiognomy.

But we must not suppose from this that physiognomy was
of interest to the Englishman of Elizabeth's reign only be—
cause it could help him in his prolession or in discovering
the integrity, or the lack of it, in his neighbor—-whether
that neighbor be a foreign ambassador or the man living next
door. he lived, we must remember, in an age which believed
profoundly in a universe governed by Divine Providence.

And he never questioned that he was involved, too, in a

drama of sin and salvation which to close in his favor would

__

 

lThorndike, op. cit , Vol. V, p. 62. Chiromancy was
also used, of course, by the celestial physiognomist who
merely assigned planetary significance to the several lines
in the palm, thus permitting him to prophecy future events
Uuough astrological analysis.

,.. - a.

run...

n,. .-

r... L.‘

 

 

.
V-

 

 

57

require, beyond the grace of God, the assiduous use of his
reason and his will. Thus physiognomy, which could discover
the most subtle inclinations toward sin, in himself as in
others, and which, when bent to prophetic or astrological
uses, could arm him against future danger and temptation,
was the welcome fruit of his study of the way God's universe
was made—~and could, therefore, be legitimately employed to
save him from himself. The lesson is recorded by James
Yonge:

The Thyrde Partie of Prudencia is Purveyaunce, by

the whyche a man hym avysyth of thyngis that byth

to come. Thegh a man haue never so good fortune

hym nedyth of Purveyance. (p. 155)
This is clearly a defense of astrology and celestial physiog-
nomy, and in the name of virtue. In another chapter, indeed,
Yonge puts the matter in coldly practical terms. You must
acquaint yourself with the movement of the stars and the
planets and what these were meant to tell us so that you will
be able to anticipate "dyvers adventuris. . .and enchu [sic]
harmys by witte and Purveyance" (p. 196). This is, of course,
a commonplace of astrological Justification.

Richard Saunders is a bit more subtle and infinitely

nmre pious with his account of the matter, even though he
is far more interested in the prophetic dimensions of

Physiognomy. He would have us Judge the utility of his

volume

. lvtlvl .LI!

....| bh|pl I...’ |'..I, «Phil‘-

58

.as being such whereby wise men may know them-
selves, and approach nearer to God; I mean in the
Knowledge of his most excellent Works. . . .For in
the beginning God adorned all things created with
signatures, that so the Ingenious might solace it
self, by a disquisite search into the natural
qualifications thereof. . . .(Epistle Dedicatory)

The point of course is precisely the same: salvation will
be the more easily assured for the student of physiognomy
for an acquaintance with His works will constrain us by a
"Holy Violence" to the love of God. While it is pointless
to question his sincerity, one has the suspicion that
Saunders is trying his best to ward off clerical disap-

proval before it has a chance to spoil the sale of his

3

book. Whatever his motive, there 'an be no doubt cast

(

upon the conclusion that to know oneself, in the Renaissance
and in earlier times, was considered the surest way to an
understanding of and a reverence for the handiwork of the
Creator.

It would be misleading, however, to suggest that
physiognomy was widely recognized in Elizabethan England
as one of the certain ways to this laudable end. So far
as I have been able to discover, the pseudo—science was not
then, or at any other time, considered the handmaiden of
theology. On the contrary, its inevitable tendency to
entangle itself with astrology and the prophetic sciences
was forever calling down upon its practitioners the charge
Of quackery, if not, indeed, heresy. The uneasiness of

the physiognomist in offering his wares to the public seems to

\fi
\0

grow throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
from Blundeville's half-hearted apology in 15701 to
Saunder's disarming announcement that his work "hath not
been conceived, nor composed of the vile seed of Imaginary
Sciences and foolish Controversies of these times: but

of the purity of the Ancient Sciences, which have been
revealed to Men who have surpassed others in Honest, Esteem,
Reputation, and in the knowledge of what was past, present

."2 And this unmistakable defensiveness

and to come.
was not without cause, for there were charlatans and gypsy
fortune tellers who, roaming the countryside, happily
attached the venerable science to ‘heir prophetic baggage.
If we are accurately to assess the status of physiognomy
in the society of Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists
it will be necessary to examine, not merely the record of
Proliferations of popular treatises, nor even the appro-
bation of men like Sir Francis Bacon; we must also see the
science as it was practiced by the Subtles and Faces of the
time.

And, clearly, charlatans seized upon it with as much
avidity as the Earl of Pembroke. That it was but another

string to their bow is made clear in an extraordinary series

of statutues which, beginning in the reign of Henry VIII,

k

lOr Hill's in 1571; "The Arts of divination by the
Starres, the face and hands, is a percell of Philosophie and
groundEd upon long experience and reason: and therefore not
SO wicked and detestable as some men do take and repute
these." (Preface to the Reader)-

2The Epistle Dedicatory.

I I; Infill. ll 0"... )ifi'.--"i

 

continue through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to
the thirteenth year of the reign of Queen Anne. I refer,

of course, to the statutes concerning vagabonds and sturdy
beggars, a class of helpless drifters ard anything but help-
less cony—catchers which, aided by the dramatic changes in
agriculture and the dissolution of the morasteries, increased

a

tremendously during the 16th century.‘ Of course there were

'3

vagabond statutes prior to 1530 (a; Hen y VIII, c. 12), but

none before that date, so far as I can discover, cites
physiognomy as one of the "arts” practices by these wayfarers.
The class of persons and actiVities prescribed by law is an
ever widening one and includes by the end of the sixteenth
century2 begging scholars from the universities, sailors
pretending loss at sea, idle players and minstrels, hospital
beggars or alms collectors, jugglers, tinkers, peddlars,
petty chapmen, and all wandering persons who seem to be
unemployed and, mo.eover, uninterested in employment. We
are especially interested in the stipulation concerning,

avy Cuntry. . .

in Physiognomye,

.1.
once, or pretending
"es or such other

1 idle persons going abou
.4 themselves to have knowl
S

_.1

“a1 forces at work

‘For a full discussion of the soc;
see F. Aydelotte, Elizabethan n:g.qs and Vagabonds (Oxford,

 

1913).

2Statutes of the Realm, 39 Elizabeth, c. 4; 159—8.

-r—"

-.—4

III! II IND|E.!. J'I .

OX
F!

This phrase, in approximately the same language, ppears in
all of the many re—enactments of the statute for nearly two

hundred years and in most of them phy nomy is clearly

(I)
H
O

0Q

curse, entered

U)
\o
0
"’3
C)

linked with fortune—telling_ Gypsie'
England in significant numbers at the beginning of the six—
teenth century-~and not long after they also entered the
statute books of their adopted home. Iney are commonly in-
cluded in the proscriptions against sturdy beggars and way-
farers, usually in apposition to the references to the
"crafty scyences." The inference is unmistakable that
physiognomy‘s manuals had Joined tea leaves and crystal
balls in the carts of roaming gypsy bands.

The shadow which was cast upon the pseudo—science by
the law was paralleled by the difficulty it was forever
encountering with ecclesiastical authorities on the con—
tinent. And here again it suffered mainly by association
with Judicial astrology.2 The tulg of Pope Sixtus V,
issued on 5 January, 1586, was directed against those who
practiced the art of judicial astrology, and other formg

Givinafiign, the last phrase bringing celestial physiog~

(o)

!

 

nomy into the net, as indeed it should have.3 However, as

*

 

a
Hmntions ”EEYPtians” and scoff: a; on s who have come to
question physiognomy because of its unfortunate association
With such idle trash.

2In addition to Judicial astrology, the usual and dis-
credited prophetic arts—-geomancy, hydromancy, pyromancy,
necromancy, aeromancy, etc.-—were commonly associated with
Physiognomy, metcposcopy and chiromancy.

lfi {1 i. L o
Saunders, op. cit , (Prat te .- Readers) specifically
‘ e

3Thorndike, op, cit., VI, p. 156.

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Professor Thorndike points out, even here one must be ex-
ceedingly careful not to misconstrue the position of the
Church. The bull, for example, affirms that each soul has
a guardian angel to aid it against the malevolent influence
of the stars and it excepts from censure the prediction

of future events which occur necessarily or from natural
causes. No physiognomist, no matter how unsophisticated,
could fail to prove that, indeed, his exercise of the
science conformed to the laws of natule and that in no way
did it presume to pry into or question the workings of
Divine Providence.l Baptista della Purta, whose physiog—
nomical writings were by no means :onfined to De Humana

EQySiognomonia, gives us an excellent example of the effect

 

Of the bull on the practice of physiognomy. Professor
Ihorndike's account is instructive:

In 1603 he published at Naples six books of (his)
leestial Physiognomy, in which the future could

be easily conjectured from inspection of the human
countenance, but in which also astrology was re-
futed and shown to be inane and imaginary. In the
proemium Porta stated that among all peoples in all
ages the arts of divination had received much atten-
tion. He from boyhood had been devoted to astrology,
until by order of the supreme pontif: it had been
forbidden to Catholics. Thereafter he aohorred it

x

lThorndike cites the publication of a physiognomical
tPeatise in Italy by Giorgio Rizza Casa in 1588, soon after
the FUblication of the bull of Sixtus V. Casa states, 37
terestingly enough, that he had had difficulty in pizsia 1ng
the inquisitor to allow him to publish the work 1n . a y.
Thorndike explains that "this seems to have been ow1ng o
the fact that he had not merely dedicated his volumebto
Queen Elizabeth of England but wished to make favora fes in H
proghostications as to her emprise against the King 0 pa .

ThOr‘ndike, Hist. Magic, VI, p. 150-

 

 

 

pt;D

r723.

 

»

63

as much as he had earlier pursuied it, and upon
further examination found it to be a pretended

and imaginary science, in which the basis of truth
was physiognomy rather than the influence of the
stars. In short, he now contends that what the
astrologers state as the effect of the planets,
signs and constellations are rather to be attributed
to the qualities, humours and other peculiarities

of the human body.

And so with an appropriately pious recollection of the errors
of one's youth, even a work with the unpromising title of
Celestial Physiognomquas able to skip past the papal inter-
diction of Sixtus V.

Clearly, then, physiognomy had its bad moments, not
only in the sixteenth century but before and increasingly,
after that time. No one, of course, would have seriously
questioned Spenser's evocation of the correspondence between
beauty and virtue in Belphoebe's ”yvorie forhead" wherein
all ”good and honour might. . .be red/ For there their
dwelling was."2 Nor would his perfectly orthodox descrip—
tion of the melancholy humour of Phantastes have prompted
doubts or disbelief:

A man of yeares yet fresh, as mote appere,

Of swarth complexion, and of crabbed hew,

That him full of melancholy did shew;

Bent hollow beetle browes, sharpe staring eyes,
That mad or foolish seemed: one by his vew

Mote deeme him borne with ill-disposed skyes, 3
When oblique Saturne sate in th' house of agonyes.

 

 

lThorndike, VI, p. 163.
2Fairy Queen, II, iii, 24.

 

3E§iry Queen, I, ix, 52.

 

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This is precisely what one should be able to detect in
the "vew" of another man and so long as physiognomy confined
its "truths" to diagnosis of this modest sort, avoiding the
excesses of determinist prophecy, so long too was it to be
seriously regarded as a way of knowing. But the attraction
of prophecy was irresistible and physiognomy continually
drifted from the small center of truth which recognized
the importance of the mind-body relationship to the enormi-
ties of the most occult arts. And when it did it was sub-
Ject not only to the penalties of the law but to the severer
strokes of the satirist's pen. Rabelais' unhesitating ridi—
cule of the versatile Herr Trippa may be said to be the
satiric counterpart to Montaigne's measured confidence in
the pseudo-science in Renaissance France.l Similarly,
Francis.Bacon's support of the pseudo-science in England was
nwre than compensated for by the SCOPn with which Thomas
Nashe dealt with its pretensions in Terrors of the Night:

Lives there anie such slowe yce—brained beefe-

witted gull, who by the riveld barke or outward

rynde of a tree will take upon him to forespeak

how long it shall stand, what mischances of wormes,

caterpillers, boughs breaking, frost bitings,

cattells rubbing against, it shall have? As ab-
surd is it, by external branches seames or furrowed
wrinkles in a mans face or hand, in particular or
generall to coniecture and foredoome of his fate.

My owne experience is but small, yet thus much I can

lThe Complete Works of Rabelais, trans. by Jacques Le
(Hercq, The Modern Library (New York, 1936), BOOK 111,
Chapter 25.

 

~ . r . ...
.- on

o . . n.
- . . o .o y

. x c I u

:p.J

 

Ill‘l' IV. Ire-Fab. p...‘ E’:.

65

say by his warrantize, that those fatall brands

of phisiognomie which condemn men for fooles and

for idiots, and on the side for trecherous cir—

cumuenters and false brothers, have in a h ndred

men I know been verified in the contrarie.
And so physiognomy was regarded in ShakeSpeare's London,
sometimes with respect, even at times with awe, but also
with amusement and occasionally, with the same scorn that
was reserved for the worst sort of wandering highwayman.
If, as we shall see, the Elizabethan dramatist did not
consistently use it to delineate character, it is still
true that Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson and Dekker were
openly curious about its claims and pretensions and ever
watchful for ways in which it might be employed to achieve
dramatic ends. It was very much a part of their world and
in their preoccupation with the human condition--with the
conduct and character of men--they could not but be inter-

ested in the science which purported to reveal that very

secret.

 

1The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed., R. B. McKerrow (Oxford
1958), I, pp. 370-71. For a similar sentiment see Simion

3

 

Grahame, The Anatomie of Humors (1609): ”Who is a more selfe-
deceiving foole in wisedome? or who is a greater Asse? then a
PI‘Ognostication-maker who saiet‘ that the Conjectures, which

they have is founded upon probabylities, and not upon absolut
necessities & so consequently, the most perfite Prognostica-
Epgg sometimes must erre. . . .I think such Fortun—tellers or
such Aegiptian-palmisters when they set downe such physicall
rules to a man or womans bodie, should be prejuditiall to the
iflse Physitian because he leives him nothing to say seeing

e. ~ .so audatiouslie intrudes himselfe in the secretes of

ghe2gmnipotent GOD.” edited by R. Jameson (Edinburgh, 1830),

 

. Ll| -I'» ‘. .llt'h rP‘R’r

CHAPTER I‘
SHAKESPEARE'S USE OF PHYSICGNOMY

Shakespeare's intense interest in the human face
has never, I think, been adequately noticed: its
frowns and wrinkles, smiles and tears, the tint
and shape of the nose, the tension of the nostrils,
the eye, its colour and character, 'in flood with
laughter,'sparkling, sun-bright, quick, merry,
fiery, mistful, dim, lack—lustre, heavy, hollow,
modest, sober, sunken or scornful; the peculiar
beauty of the eyelid, the betrayal of the gnawing
of a nether lip, the dimples on a child's chin,
and, above all, the way in which he conti ually
makes us Egg the emotions of his characters by

the chasing changes of colour in their cheeks.

Caroline Spurgeon

Shakespeare was preeminently an Englishman of Eliza—
beth's time and the ideas and customs and manners we have
come to characterize as ”Elizabethan" are everywhere found
in his plays. It is, therefore, in no way surprising to
iscover that he shared his society's interest in the
pseudo-science of physiognomy and freely adapted its language
and its peculiar mode of thought to suit his dramatic pur—
poses. I am not here raising the question of personal belief.
lflth an artist so consummately detach d from his recreated
World as was Shakespeare, such questions are not fruitfully
asked. Ample evidence both of sympathetic belief in physicg_

nomy and waspish scorn for its pretensions may easily be

 

l .
Sh s on ' r ”er n Wh t it Tells "S c, i
1958) p agngire s Iiag y a d a u (Cambr dge,
J , a a

66

 

-.n.

Iaik 'Vf-I. IalP‘

7.0.Io .I’EB

 

67

discovered not simply within the wide limits of the canon
but, indeed, within the narrow compass of a single act in
a.single play. The assumptions of the pseudo-science are
granted, and the audience is tacitly asked t0 share them
for the moment, or they are harshly discredited, as the

exigencies of his dramatic material require. Upon hearing

of Cawdor's defection, Duncan is forced to conclude:

There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.

But it is that very art about which Lady Macbeth, in the
next scene, is most frightened. Speaking to Macbeth she
warns:

Your face, my Thane, is as a bock where men

May read strange matters.

(I, v, 63-64)
That, in fact, they have been unable to do so is one of the
chief ironies of the play; it sounds a theme to which
Shakespeare is to return time and time again. And insofar
as physiognomy lends itself to the development of that
theme, so far too is Shakespeare willing to exploit its
Point of view and employ its Special dictitn.
But we can form no sharply defined judgment of what

Shakespeare himself believed to be true of our pseudo-

science. That he shared the commonly held belief that man's

 

 

lI, iv, 12-13, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed.
G. L. Kittredge (Boston, l936). Unless otherwise noted, all
Quotations from Shakespeare are cited from this edition.

 

.ovv

'vv.

.. It '..III.F...l-lhr..|r.. 7,.

 

68

ome measure by his physical

y
.H

(I)

interior life is determined in
constitution is beyond reasonable question. We can also
safely conclude that he consented to the modest claims of
pathognomy, that branch of physiognomy which purported to
"read" the emotions as they are made manifest by predictable,
if temporary, changes in one's countenance. Beyond this,
however, we cannot go with any confidence, except, I think,

to rule out the furthest extremes of Wthh physiognomy, as
prophetic science, was so capable. Shakespeare would have
laughed, or perhaps wept, at the elaborate certainties of

a Thomas Hill or Richard Saunders. According to their
assumptions, and those shared by their fellow physiognomists,
deceit and guile are virtually impossible; men may try to

mask the inmost secrets of their personality, but they can—
not. An evil nature, or a good, is written in the unalterable
features of the body and can be read, given the proper sophis-
tication, in the face as in a book.

It is abundantly safe to say that the dramatist who
created Hamlet could not have so EPOSSlY miSCOHStTued the
matter. The fact of tragedy itself testifies to the success
With which men may mask their true natures. If Shakespeare
had been prepared to subscribe to what I shall call "hard"
PhySiognomy--the predictive science shorn of its tradi—
tional caveats and confident it can discover indelible
tokens of the heart's affections——he could never have Written
.flflggt or Othello or £233 or Macbeth. Tragedy is impossible

in a world deprived of the uncertainty of human character.

I Ell I .P ill: .- DIFF‘II Lriu :hlcl uzll k5

69

When we have said this, however, we have not advanced
very far toward an examination of how Shakespeare actually
used physiognomy in his plays, We might profitably turn
first to a remarkable scene in Antony and Cleopatra, in
which physiognomy's assumptions are shared by everyone. I
have in mind the queenly interrogation of the messenger
who has Just returned from Home with news of Octavia (III,
iii). The episode is, of course, essentially comic; it
cleverly reveals the will—to—malign and the need for purpose-
ful self-deception which reside in the soul of a Jealous
woman. Charmian and the dutiful messenger play their parts
in the fugue to perfection, Charmian because she has long
and faithfully served her tempestuous mistress; the messenger
because his service has only recently been severely punc-
tuated by a beating administered by Cleopatra when he had
the audacity to tell the truth about Antony's marriage to
Octavia (II, v). It was, in fact, at the close of this
earlier scene that Cleopatra issued the orders to her
chastened messenger calling for a physiognomical report on
Octavia. Distraught though she was at the time, she still
had wit enough to send him off to collect precise and

meaningful detail:

Bid him
Report the feature of Octavia, her years,
Her inclination; let him not leave out

The colour of her hair. . ,
Bring me word how tall she is. . . .(II, v, lll~ll7)

O'-

Feature, inclination, hair colour, height——these are all
useful indices, not only to a beautiful woman anxious to
assess the beauty of another, but to a physiognomist
anxious to assess character and intelligence as well.

And so the messenger has returned and joins with
Charmian to make certain that Cleopatra is given no
second cause for violence. They know what must be said
and they know that their mistress knows that they know and
yet all three pipe in turn the inevitable tune. The secret
is to offend the truth only as often as majestic vanity
demands. Cleopatra must be told what she so desperately
wants to hear about her rival but her capacity to believe
nmst not be stretched too far. It is wondrously delicate
from beginning to end.

And the pseudo—science of physiognomy is at the
heart of the exchange.1 To be sure, not all of Cleopatra's
questions require learnedly physiognomic answers; she is
as much interested in Octavia's feminine charms and no
scientific manual need be consulted for a report on that
critical matter. But she is afraid to put the question
that directly. It would not do at all to have the messen-
ger, under pressure, declare bluntly that her rival was
ugly as a toad; this would hOpelcssly violate the fragile

web of self—deception which Cleopatra must spin to protect

 

 

 

lThat physiognomic Judgments are involved has been
noticed by Carroll Camden in his interesting essay, "The
Mind's Construction In The Face,” 3g, XXIII (July, l9Ul).

F ll'rb IL r--. DIP-'Erht‘l b

Ir..-»

71

her vanity. And so she anatomizes Cztavia, directing her
questions to certain key features and, taking absolutely
no chances with the messenger, accompanying the questions
whenever possible with a clue to the desired answer As
we shall see, there is room to doubt who is the more
practised physiognomist, the messenger or his jealous
queen.

The exchange opens in an apprOpriately professional
manner; the messenger's credentials as first—hand witness
nmst be established. In answer to Cleopatra's question

senger's reply

(I)

about where he beheld Octavia, the me
amusingly reveals his frightened willingness to be helpful.
Every conceivable angle is covered:

Madam, in Rome.

I look'd her in the face, and saw her led

Between her brother and Mark Antony. (III, iii, 11—13)
lbving carefully established this much, she gives the poor
man trial by asking for the first detail--but with great
care. Cleopatra does not ask how tall her rival is but
Whether she is "as tall as me.” The clue is obvious enough
and with a sigh we cannot hear he gives comfort with an

unequivocally negative reply. With the next question she

takes no chances whatsoever:

Cleo.; Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongu'd
or low?

Mess: Madam, I heard her speak. She is low voic'd.

Cleo: That's not so good! he cannot like her long.

The trick of the question is to limit the responses to two

equally unattractive alternatives. Anyone familiar With

72

physiognomical literature will immediately recognize the
significance of Cleopatra's having rule out the possibility
of a clear, full, evenly modulated voice, that is, a voice
neither shrill nor low. As John Metham has it, ”a mene
voyse ys most commendabyl."l Pseudo—Aristotle most
succinctly denotes the damaging character of the extremes;

Those who have a deep, braying voice are insolent;

witness the asses. . . .those who have a shrill,
raucous voice are gluttonous; witness the goats.
(p. 133)

We should acknowledge, however, that the messenger could have
been a little more helpful in his reply. It would have been
wiser to elaborate on the excessive lowness of Octavia's
voice if only to save Cleopatra a moment's concern, for she
betrays an uneasiness about his straightforward answer

which Charmian rushes in to dispel.2 In reply to the tenta-
tive plaint, "he cannot like her long” Charmian provides

the wanted assurance: "Like her? 0 Isis! 'tis impossible."
and Cleopatra is immediately restored: "I think so, Char—

mian. Dull of tongue, and dwarfish!"

¥

1The Works of John Methan, ed. Hardin Craig, EETS, 132
(London, 1916), p. 143.

2Later critics have also been made uneasy by the
messenger's stark reply. In the Variorum edition of the
play Malone is reported as convinced that "low" is worse
than "shrill," while Irving supposes the reverse, thus
reading CleOpatra's "That's not so good" as directed at
her own situation, rather than Octavia's low voice. Quite
apart from the physiognomy of low and shrill voices, Irving,
I think, must be wrong. It is unbelievable that the meSsenger
who is no fool, would immediately invite a second beating by
praising Octavia's voice. He could have as easily denied
having heard her speak-—and would have.

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At this point the questioning picks up in tempo and
the messenger, having witnessed the lightning—quick but
revealing Charade with Charmian, quietly vows to make his
remaining answers more responsive. Indeed, in reply to
the question about OctaVia's grace in moving, the wanted
reply is so explicitly indicated that the messenger very
nearly outreaches himself:

Cleo: What majesty is in her gait? Remember,

If e'er thou look'dst on majesty.

Mess: She creeps!

Her motion and her station are as one.

She shows a body rather than a life,

A statue than a breather. (Ill, iii, 20-2A)
The natural synCOpation of this exchange should be understood
to fall first with a long pause at the end of Cleopatra's
question, during which the messenger is looking about for
any clue at all to determine how far he should trespass
upon the truth in his reply; then Cleopatra's boldly enunci-
ated warning, accompanied by a pronouncedly arrogant tilt
of her chin; finally, freed of any need of restraint, his
absurdly improbably reply rushes out in relief-—"She creeps!."
This is, of course, orthodox physiognomical doctrine, made
outrageous only by its application to the attractive sister

Of Octavious Caesar.l There is a moment, in fact, when we

k

lLavater sums up his predecessors' views on a woman's
gait with this telling judgment: ”If the manner of walking
of a woman be disgusting, decidedly disgusting, not only dis-
agreeable, but impetuous, without dignity, contemptible,
Verging sideways--let neither her beauty allure thee to her,
nor her understanding deceive thee, nor the confidence she
may seem to repose in thee, betray thee. . . .Her mouth will
be like her gait; and her conduct harsh and false like her

nmst wonder if he has not gone too far——1f even CleOpatra's

towering jealousy will accept this slander at face value:

Cleo: Is this certain?
Mess: Or I have no observance
Charm: Three in Egypt

Cannot make better note.
As usual, Charmian senses when her assurance is needed to
keep her mistress on an even keel. The situation is
restored when she confirms that the messenger is amongst
the tOp three physiognomists in all of Egypt; Cleopatra
can trust his analysis implicitly. And this is all
Cleopatra needs to hear:

He's very knowing;

I do perceive't. There's nothing in her yet.

The fellow has good judgment.

Indeed he has, for in the double—meaning of this line Shakes-
peare comically records the messenger's plight--simultane-
ously to "read” the features of the distant Octavia and to
assess the temper of his jealous mistress.

Emboldened by this bit of encouragement the messenger—
Physiognomist confidently works hi way through the rest of
the interview to the gold which rewards so pleasantly per-
CEptive a report. In reply to Cleopatra's request that he
guess Octavia's age he deftly reminds everyone that she was,

after all, a widow when Antony was forced to marry her.

 

 

*—

mouth. . . .Compare her gait with the lines of the Forehead,
and the wrinkles about the mouth, and an astonishing con-
formity will be discovered between them." p. 482.

 

 

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75

Having taken comfort from this, Cleopatra returns to Octa-
via's features and in the process reveals her own not in—
considerable knowledge of physiognomy:

Cleo: Bear'st thou her face in mind? Is't long or

round?

Mess: Round even to faultiness.

Cleo: For the most part, too, they are foolish that

are so. (32-34)

She is on perfectly sound ground for reaching this con-
clusion. Thomas Hill, in his Contemplation of Mankynd,
explains why this is so:

The head spericall or throughly rounde, doth denote

a quicke mooving, unstableness, forgetfulnesse,

small discretion, and little witte in that person;

for thislmotion of the Spirits never ceaseth nor

resteth:
The middle ventricle which approaches a perfect sphere can—
not but be a kind of wild merry-go—round for the vital
Spirits and thus is bound to be the mark of an unstable,
foolish, envious and importunate human being. Nothing
could have given Cleopatra more pleasure.

It is interesting to note that in her question about
the shape of Octavia's face, Cleopatra repeats her earlier
performance by supplying her "very knowing” messenger with
two possible answers, each of which, it is to be understood,

will be equally damning. The "Is't long or round?" exactly

parallels her phrasing of the question about the voice

‘—

 

lChap. XIII. This passage from Hill is cited in the
Arden edition of the plaY-

 

 

76

("hashe shrill-tongu'd or low?"). With regard to long
faces Thomas Hill points out that they invariably reveal
a personality "forward and injurious” (Chap. XXI).
Cleopatra is still unprepared to take many chances with
her messenger.

And yet the next question shows how far we have
come from the careful sparring with which the interview
opened. Her confidence, bolstered no doubt by the vision
of a "dull-tongu'd" dwarf with a foolishly Spherical head,
has been wholly restored. It is the first question she
has ventured to ask without an explicit hint as to the
desired response. In every other instance, save the re-
quest that he guess Octavia's age, Cleopatra either poses
equally unacceptable alternatives in putting the question
or, as in the comparative question about height, in some
other obvious way predicts the answer. But now she gambles,
asking him flatly what colour Octavia's hair is:

Brown, madam; and her forehead
As low as she would wish it.

Confidence was never more adequately rewarded. Not only
does the messenger avoid the idealized extreme, golden
blond, but to cinch the matter gratuitously adds the damning
detail about her low forehead. Thomas Hill's physiognomic
commentcnithis feature is typical. The person blessed with
a.low forehead must be "foolish and [has] small likelihood

in him to be taught, or to conceyve any learning to purpose”

(Chap. XV). Thus Octavia's low forehead nicely corroborates

 

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77

the "round face" of a few lines earlier: both over—
whelmingly suggest stupidity—~not to mention ugliness.
And all this, one must keep in mind, of a lady described
by Plutarch, in North's translation, as ”having an ex-
cellent grace, wisdom, and honestie, joined unto so rare
a beautie." In this brilliantly imagined scene Octavia
has been metamorphosed by a physiognomically subtle
nessenger and a jealous but no less learned queen into

an ignorant, dwarfish, brown-haired block whose spherical
head and low forehead are only less reprehensible than her
creeping gait.

I have troubled to analyze this brief exchange in
some detail because it demonstrates to perfection the
satiric versatility of our pseudo—science. In Chaucer,
physiognomy is employed literally and directly; its
satiric possibilities are realized at the expense of the
character being described. In this light-as-air scene in

figtony and Cleqpatra.Shakespeare reverses this; the object

 

of the satire is not the person upon whom physiognomic
description is lavished but the avid quasi-physiognomist
herself. It is not Octavia's character which is revealed
by reference to her supposedly spherical face but
Cleopatra's, for it is she who puts the question to her
willing conSpirator in physiognomical terms and in such a

way as to reveal her own jealousy and uncertainty.

78

The scene also tells us somethirg about Shakespeare's
knowledge of the pseudo-science and what he assumed his
audience to know about it. Surely his own reading must
have been fairly extensive, for he goes beyond its general
assumptions to the specific tokens with which it deals.

But we can see that he, unlike Chaucer, did not suppose

his audience to be similarly equipped. Chaucer tells us

of the wart on the Miller's nose; he does not explain

what it means. Shakespeare supplies us with both the
physical detail and its supposed significance.1 The success
of the scene is not made to depend at all upon the special
scientific knowledge of the audience.

It is accurate to say, then, that amongst her many
talents Cleopatra could rightfully number an ability to
ready character and intelligence in the physical features
of others. And she is by no means Shakespeare's only
amateur physiognomist. Constable Dogberry has recourse

to the science to reassure Leonato of the honesty and trust-

worthiness of Verges:

 

¥

lCuriously enough there can be cited a brief passage
from The Merry Wives of Windsor in which a wart figures in
a most provocative but undisclosed way. It is Mistress
Quickly who discovers significance in Fenton's wart (I, iv,
156-172).
Quick: . . .I'll be sworn on a book, she loves you.
Have not your worship a wart above your eye?
Fent: Yes, marry, have I. What of that?
Quick: Well, thereby hangs a tale. Good faith, it is such
another Nan! but, I detest, an honest maid as ever
broke bread. We had an hour's talk of that wart. I
shall never laugh but in that maid's company! But,
indeed, she is given too much to allicholy and musing:

but for you--well-—go to.

   

. I

all

 

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79

Leon: What is it m ood friends?
Const. Dog: Goodman Verges? sir, speaks a little off

the matter--an old man, sir, and his wits
are not so blunt as, God help, I would
desire they were; but, in faith, honest
as the skin between his brows. (Much Ado,

III, v, 10—14)
This peculiar testimony has not, I think, been altogether

understood by earlier readers of the play. Professor

Furness, in the Variorum edition, cites a similarly phrased

 

judgment by Dame Chat in Gammer Gurton's Needle, "I am as
true, I wold thou knew, as skin betweene thy browes.” He
Speculates that the phrase might have arisen from the fact
that it was on the forehead that "the brand of shameful
conduct was set." Surely, however, the point made in both
instances is that a good and honest man can be measured

by the distance between the eyebrows. This is made even
clearer by still another example of the phrase's currency,
this time from Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour, in
which magnanimity is the chief virtue found to repose in
that blank Space. Puntarvolo is enjoying his usual vain
Charade with his lady love (II, i) when, in an obvious

Physiognomic context, this exchange takes place:

Punt: What complexion, or what stature bears he?

G.W.: Of your stature and very near upon your
complexion.

Punt: Mine is melancholy.

 

Fent: Well, I shall see her today. Hold, there's money for
thee. Let me have thy voice in my behalf. If thou

sees't her before me, commend me.
Quick: Will I? I'faith, that we will! and I will tell your
worship more of the wart the next time we have confi-

dence, and of other wooers:

80

Carlo: (So is the dog's Just)

Punt: And doth argue constancy, chiefly in love.
What are his endowments? is he courteous?

G.W.: O, the most courteous knight in Christian
land, sir.

Punt: Is he magnanimous? ,

G.W.: As the skin between your brows, sir.‘

The answer, though by no means clear, may well be supplied
by physiognomy. That the eyebrows are considered singularly
important indices is obvious by the attention they invari—
ably receive. Indeed, Thomas Hill devotes an entire chapter
(XIX) to "The Judgment of the Spaces between the Eyebrows
After the Minde of Michaell Scotus "

Especially important, apparently, are eyebrows which
extend to the nose. Hill points :at that when they are
uniformly thick and also come together in this fashion,
the direst predictions are warranted. Possessors of this
imposing feature are bound to be "of an evil nature, yea
wicked persons. . .theeves, ravishers of maydens, murderers,
but deceyvers always. . .all vices and wickedness are
comprehended and knowne in these persons" (Chap. XIX).
Therefore by the argument of opposites—-a favorite and
flexible method of physiognomic analysis——a modest but

noticeable Space between the brows would seem to be welcome.

 

__

lIn Bartholomew Fair Jonson amusingly rephrases this
commonplace in the scene (IV, v) in which Captain Whit tries
to convince Mrs. Littlewit that she can lie with twenty
Players at no personal cost:
Mrs. Lit: What, and be honest still! that were fine Sport.
Whit: Tish common, shweet—heart, tou may'st do it by my
hand: it shall be justified to thy husband's
faish, now: tou shalt be as honesht as the skin
between his hornsh, la.

 

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81

Straight black brows divided with a discrete space are
most commendable, for as Hill points out ”such overbrows
hadde our Saviour Jesus Christ and the chaste virgin,

his mother" (Chap. XIX). Ambiguity is admitted only when

excess is involved. If the '

’spaces between the eye—
brows. . .be large this doe denote such a person to be of
a dull capacitie." One can assume that poor Verges has
nmre than enough whiteness peeping through to prove his
honesty.

One can also safely assume that Leonato, if not
everyone in the audience, unde stands Dogberry's assurances.
For he too is one of Shakespeare's physiognomists. In
Act V he is still suffering from the illusion that Hero
is dead:

Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes,
That, when I note another man like him,

I may avoid him. (Much Ado, V, 1, 268-70)1

The Duke in Measure for Measure is equally adept and invokes

 

the ”ancient skill” as an instrument of flattery. The
Provost must be made to execute Bernadine in Claudio's

place, and the disguised Duke's first effort to win the

 

 

Mrs. Littlewit's "honesty" is to be measured not on her own
forehead but on her husband's and between the horns she her~
Self placed there.

1This is a most accurate reflection of precisely how
thSiognomists went about collecting tokens. Thomas Hill
Cites an example of a physiognomist who carefully notes a
man afraid to pick a louse from his hose. All of the details,
Slender neck, narrow shoulder points, evil fashioned "Marses
line in the forehead". . .indicated a man ”not only fearefull
but light of beleefe and brutish in conditions" (Chap. XIII).

 

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82

confidence of his man is devoted to an analysis of his

forehead:
.There is written in your brow, provost,

honesty and constancy. If I read it not truly,

my ancient skill beguiles me; but in the bold—

ness of my cunning I will lay myself in hazard.
The Duke, of course, "hazards" nothing at all by the
boldness of his physiognomic cunning, for he can reveal
himself at any time. As it is the provost pays not the
slightest attention to the metOposcopic compliment and
remains steadfast. It would have been more helpful to
the Duke if the provost were able to read foreheads,
assuming that in the ”monk's” an auspicious configuration
were discernible.

One of the interesting aspects of this brief encounter
is the Duke's reference to physiognomy as an "ancient skill."
Certainly this does not necessarily suggest that Shakespeare
meant, with the phrase, to cast any discredit upon the
science; quite the contrary could as easily be true. But
it does show that he knew something of the origins of
physiognomy and in part it explains, too, the frequency of

_—

1This is very like Proteus' remark to Julia (Sebastian)
in IE9 Gentlemen of Verona (IV, iv, 72):

But chiefly for thy face and thy behavior,
Which (if my augury deceive me not)
Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth.

 

..-

. 0

I'm.

 

83

physiognomic reference and imagery in the plays set in the
ancient world. I do not mean to suggest by this that
anything like a consistent dramatic principle can be dis—
covered at work in Shakespeare's plays and poems. But
it is worth noting that in the Roman plays characters
are permitted to employ physiognomy positively, i.e.,
everyone grants the pseudo-science's assumptions and
credits the observations flowing from them. This is less
often true in the "later" plays. For almost every positive
invocation of the science there is someone or some action
which throws all in doubt.

But in his recreated world Srakespeare gives physiog—

nomy, if not always as prominent a place as in Antony and

 

Cleopatra, at least an unquestioned one. Aaron's coldness
to the advances of Tamora in Titus Andronicus is phrased
in the language of celestial physiognomy:

Madam, though Venus govern our desires,

Saturn is dominator over mine.

What signifies my deadly-standing eye,

My silence and my cloudy melancholy,

My fleece of wooly hair that now uncurls

Even as an adder when she doth unroll

To do some fatal execution?

No, madam, these are no Venereal signs. (II, iii, 30-37)
And indeed they are not. The dominant physical sign selected
by Aaron to pin—point his "uh—venereal” allegiance is the
uncurling of his "fleece of wooly hair.” It is precisely
this hair characteristic which is normally associated with

Venus. Richard Saunders refers to "the hair, thick, hand-

50m91y curling or crisping" (p. 172) as one of the signs by

which Venus' disciples are discoverable. The deadly—standing
eye and cloudy melancholy simply reinforce the identification
with Saturn and, once again, in terms which do not call upon
exceptional audience sophistication. The rhetorical ques-
tion--"what signifies, etc."-—was answered in the first two
lines of Aaron's reply.

In Coriolanus physiognomy again enters freely and

 

unchallenged into the vocabulary of character assessment.
The Opportunistic tribunes Sicinius and Brutus, in sounding
the first adverse comment on the pride of Coriolanus, do so

in terms of physiognomic analysis:

Sicin: Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius?
Brutus: He has no equal. _ ‘
Sicin: When we were chosen tribunes for the peOple--
Brutus: Mark'd you his lip and eyes?

Sicin: Nay, but his taunts! (I, 1, 256-60)

Here, of course, we have only the notion of physiognomy,
injected by Brutus but turned aside as quickly by Sicinius
who, it seems, needs no corroboration of a scientific
kind. Poor Brutus is even denied the chance to show us
how cleverly he has "read” the mouth and eyes of

Coriolanus.

In Act IV, after his banishment, Coriolanus is

Hw4n . ,. ° ,' made
again subjected to a physiogncalc analySis, this time

necessary by his disguised and ragged appearance. The

Servingmen of Tullus Aufidius treat Coriolanus as the

DOOP creature he appears to be. Having been beaten off,

they return with their master. His eye is better trained:

 

 

85

Say, what's thy name?

Thou hast a grim appearance and thy face

Bears a command in't. Though thy tackle's torn

Thou show'st a noble vessel. What's thy name?

(IV: V) 65-67)

After Coriolanus and Aufidius exchange lengthy explanations
and go off together to plan revenge upon Home, the baffled
servingmen are left to do a comic turn. And they launch
their conversation by recalling how they greeted Coriolanus
before the recognition scene. They knew the man had some-
thing distinctive about him but their training in physiog—
nomy was simply not advanced enough to give the judgment
with any confidence:

2 Serv: By my hand, I had thought to have stroken
him with a cudgel--and yet my mind gave
me his clothes made a false report of him.

1 Serv: What an arm he has! He turn'd me about
with his finger and his thumb as one
would set up a top.

2 Serv: Nay, I knew by his face that there was
something in him. He had, sir, a kind of
face methought-—I cannot tell how to term
it.

1 Serv: He had so, looking as i were—~Would I were
hang'd but I thought was more in him than I
could think. (IV, v, 154-166)

And so they stumble on, substituting "I thought there was
more in him than I could think" for the precise vocabulary
Of signs and tokens which someone learned in our science
Could provide.

Earlier in the play there accurs a more sharply
focused use of physiognomy in the scene in which Menenius

confronts the two tribunes, Scinius and Brutus, and tells

them exactly what knaves they truly are:

 

 

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86

.and though I must be content to bear with
those that say you are reverend grave men, yet
they lie deadly that tell you have good faces.
If you see this in the map of my microcosm fol—
lows it that I am known well enough too? What
harm can your beesom conspectuities glean out
of this character if I be known well enough too?
(II, 1, 61 ff)
The reference to "good faces" does not, of course, have
anything to do with handsomeness. Rather it refers to the
"maps of their microcosms"-—the detailed outlines of their
vicious characters which they cannot hide. Understood as
a physiognomic reference, it gives point to the irony of
"reverend grave men." Menenius "bears" with those who
have so Judged the two tribunes only so long as it takes
him to enter the incontrovertible evidence of their own
damning features. And as he invites them to search his
own countenance for whatever, in their blindness, they
can hope to discover there, they are checked by his scorn
and rest content with "Come sir, come, we know you well
enough."
A review of the ancient plays for references to
thSiognomy would not be complete without recalling the
practised eye of Julius Caesar. His suspicion of lean

and hungry men is straight out of Plutarch's Life ("these

pale-visaged and carrion-lean people I fear them most")1

k

 

1Cited in the appendix of the Arden Edition, ed.

T. S. Dorsch, Sixth Edition (Cambridge: 1965).

 

 

1“

III

II

87

but unquestionably invokes the traditional antithesis
between the portly, ruddy and reliable sanguine type and
the lean and leaden, treacherous man of choleric tempera-
ment. Thomas Hill cites the "leane and pale" countenance
as the mark of a coward and a betrayer.l In contrast

the sanguine complexion, while not necessarily fat, is,

in the words of the Kalendar of Shepherds, "large, plente—

 

ous attempered, amiable, abundant in nature, merry,

singing, laughing, liking, ruddy, and gracious" (p. 151).

Caesar's "would he were fatter," which really means

"would his complexion were put more closely into balance"

is, as it turns out, followed too closely by his overcon-

fident "but I fear him not." He might have trusted more

to his generalized but accurate initial assessment.
Before leaving Shakespeare's ancient world it may

be worth noticing, and in some detail, the elaborate

use of physiognomy in his "ancient" poem, Lucrece. As

we shall discover, the pseudo-science is not here employed

merely to embellish a scene or give added point to a

brief satiric exchange. Rather, it is used to advance and

enrich the central theme of the poem. Physiognomy's

pretensions provide a metaphorical frame within which the

poet is free to explore the problem of human trust and

human treachery.

h

lChap. XXI, "What notes to be learned, in judging of
the face and countinaunce."

 

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88

The 93rd sonnet, though in an altogether different

context, gives a concise statement of the problem which
is explored at greater length in Lucrece:

In many's looks the false heart's history

Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange;

But heaven in thy creation did decree

That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;

Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be,

Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.
The difficulty of course is to anticipate who is, like the
dark lady, capable of masking deceit and who, on the con-
trary, reflects the harmony which ought to prevail between
the appearance of the body and the condition of the soul.

In Lucrece Shakespeare's exposition is remarkably

brief. Aided by the prose Argument, he moves Tarquin and
Lucrece to center stage in seven stanzas. And at their
first meeting (line 50) he sounds the note which is to
toll throughout the poem. It is muffled, however, when we
first hear it and, as a consequence, we give it less
attention than it deserves. The moment Tarquin arrives
our gaze is directed to Lucrece's face. Shakespeare does
not, however, supply us with the traditional Petrarchan
catalogue of charms. Rather, he develops an elaborate
heraldic image of Virtue struggling with Beauty for
mastery in "her fair face's field." This silent war is
Permitted to rage for almost four stanzas (50-77) with

each changing colors, red to white and back again, until

it is finally conceded that they have equal claims to

 

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sovereignty. Beauty and Virtue are wedded in the coun—
tenance of our heroine.

That this represents no unusual combination should
not lead us to suppose that it is merely decorative. In
fact it serves two functions: it gives appropriate
emphasis to the beauty which enflames Tarquin and the
virtue which, in a sense, measures the depth of his out-
rage and the validity of her grief--and it focuses atten—
tion upon the ideal relationship which ought to obtain
between outward appearance and inner reality. Lucrece
is, in the correspondence obtaining between her beauty
and her virtue, an example of physiognomical perfection.

But her unexpected guest is not. If she is an
"earthly saint," he is a "devil,” if there is perfect
correspondence between her face and her heart, there is
to be discovered no correspondence at all in Tarquin. He
is a master of deception

Whose inward ill no outward harm express'd:

For that he colour'd with his high estate,

Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty; (91—93)
And yet even Tarquin cannot totally mask the lust which
consumes him:

That nothing in him seem'd inordinate,

Save sometime too much wonder of his eye,

Which, having all, all could not satisfy; (94-96)

This fleeting pathognomic sign would not reveal itself

1:0 an inexpert child of the world, we are told:

 

 

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90

But she, that never cop'd with stranger eyes,
Could pick no meaning from their parling looks,
Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies

Writ in the glassy margents of such books:

She touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks;
Nor could she moralize his wanton sight,

More than his eyes were cpen'd to the light."

(99-105)

While the figure is too common to warrant the suggestion
of direct attribution,l the "baits" and "hooks" of line
103, made almost inevitable by the rhyme scheme, are more
than echoed in the fourth book of Hoby's translation of
Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier in which Sir
Frederick interrupts the interesting discussion of
beauty's relationship to virtue to say something about the
possibility of wickedness lurking beneath a fair surface:

There be also many wicked men that have the
comelinesse of a beautiful countenance, and

it seemeth nature hath so shaped them, because
they may bee the readier to deceive and that
this amiable looke were like a baite that
covereth the hooke. (p. 308)

And so it is with Tarquin.

On his way to Lucrece's room in the dead of night,

Tarquin has a flicker of conscience about what he is to

do. Interestingly enough Shakespeare converts his

sense of shame quickly to a concern for his reputation~—

and in so doing adds to the poem's growing conception of

‘

1In BQmQQV(I, iii, 85 ff) Lady Capulet praises County

Paris in similar if more elaborate terms:

Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face;

And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;

Examine every married lineament,

And see how one another lends content;

And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies

Find written in the margent of his eyes.

 

 

 

 

91

physiognomic correspondence. The sin he is about to commit

is "so vile, so base / That it will live engraven in my

face." (11 202-203).

We are, of course, used to the notion of a dissolute

life making itself visible in the premature wrinkles of

a man's face. And it may be something like this which

King Richard, to turn to another play, has in mind when,

confronted by Bolingbroke and the demand to read his indict—

ment, he says:

.I'll read enough,
When I do see the very book indeed

Where all my sins are writ, and that's myself
Give me the glass, and therein will I read.

(Richard II, IV, 1, 270-73)
But this is clearly not what Shakespeare has in mind for

Tarquin or his heroine. One sinful act, one act of shame,

can permanently engrave the face—-or so Lucrece believes.
It is this belief, in fact, which is reflected in virtually

everything she says about the rape. She longs for the cloak

of darkness to stay, for her "true eyes have never practis'd
hOW/ To cloak offenses with a cunning brow" (748-49). Again,
her eyes will reveal her shame, not directly but by ad-
mitting a stream of tears to grave, ”like water that doth

eat in steel,/ Upon my cheeks what helpless shame I feel."

(755-56). Most conclusive is the stanza in which the

familiar book image reappears:

 

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92

The light will show, character'd in my brow,

The story of sweet chastity's decay,

The impious breach of holy wedlock vow.

Yea, the illiterate, that know not how

to cipher what is writ in learned books,

Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks. (809-12)

There should be no question of the nature of her concern:

it is based upon physiognomy's primary assumption--that

nothing in one's interior life can long escape imprinting

its character upon the "mirror of the soul." And yet when

Lucrece earlier laments that she must suffer her shame

alone1 and that there is no one,

To cross their arms, and hang their heads with mine,
To mask their brows, and hide their infamy (793-4),

the editor of the Arden edition, F. T. Prince, adds the

misleading note, "to pull one's hat down over one's face

was another sign of grief." While this is true, it has

little to do with Lucrece's lament. It is infamy, imprinted

clearly on the brow, which must be masked.

The notion of shame and sin made visible on the
countenance is reinforced consistently throughout the poem.
Lucrece frantically demands of Tarquin whether he proposes
to make himself the "glass wherein lust shall discern
authority for sin,"--that is, where lust can "in thee

read lectures of such shame” (618). While, obviously,

fl

This sense of loneliness and isolation is an important
link to the long digression on the Troy tapestry. She must

share her grief and her shame with someone who might under-
stand it.

 

....

.,.

93

Collatinus has no secret shame to worry about, Lucrece's
imagination conceives of the damage done to him as
visible, at least to Tarquin's eye, "unseen" and "invisi-
ble" though it be to others. Thus,

Reproach is stamp'd in Collatinus' face,
And Tarquin's eye may read the mot afar. (829—30)

The verb "stamp'd" is worth noting as but one more indica—
tion of the consistency with which the indelible nature
of this visible blot is insisted upon. The permanence of
the sin—mark and the violence with which it was engraven
or stamp'd upon her forehead literally infects Lucrece's
imagination. She cowers before the thought of it and
when, in its innocence, the sun reaches her she must, in
a weeping apostrophe, resort to still another synonym:
Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light
For day hath naught to do what's done by night
(1091-92)

It is a sign, a token, which figuratively, at least, will
be beyond removing——"The blemish that will never be forgot"
(536), worse, even, than the hideousness of a birth defect.

The image of sin made visible is really designed to
reinforce and comment upon the central problem of the poem.
We must remember that while on one occasion Tarquin worries
about its effect upon himself, it is Lucrece who is con-
sumed by it and sees it as disfiguring, not only herself
and her ravisher and his family, but indeed her husband
as well. Tarquin worries in vain, for if lust were power—

less to reflect itself in his face (his eyes did show

 

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94

something but she couldn't comprehend it), then the rape
which follows is unlikely to. Why this should be so is
never really answered, although Lucrece at one point
supposes that it must be related to sex:

Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks,

Poor women‘s faces are their own faults' books.

(1252-53)

But for whatever reason, the burden of the poem is that
we are not always what we seem to be.1 Lucrece reflects
the appropriate bewilderment when confronted by this truth:

Thou art not what thou seems't; and if the same,

Thou seem'st not what thou art, a god, a king;

(600-601)

Hypocrisy and show, flattery and deceit can, in a con-
summate actor, undo the most worldly and perceptive of men.
And lest we think that it is the innocence of Lucrece
which was solely responsible for the success of Tarquin's
mask, we are invited to look upon the Troy tapestry and
to see, not an innocent woman but a wise and venerable
King Priam fall victim in precisely the same way.

That Shakespeare meant us to understand the physiog-

nomical character of the painting is everywhere apparent.

_*

lJuliet is moved to a passionate antiphonal outburst

when she suspects Romeo of 3 similar deception. After
Tybalt's death is reported she exclaims: (III, ii, 73-78)

0 serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face!

Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!

Dove-feather'd raven! wolfish—ravening lamb!

Despised substance of divinest show!

Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st.

 

”‘-

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95

"Grace and majesty” are readily perceived ”triumphing" in
the faces of great commanders; "pale cowards" are skill—
fully interlaced "here and there” along with the "dexterity”
and "quick bearing" of younger men:

In Ajax and Ulysses, O, what art

0f physiognomy might one behold!

The face of either cipher'd either's heart;

. Their face their manners most expressly told:

In Ajax' eyes blunt rage and rigour roll'd;

But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent

Show'd deep regard and smiling government. (139A-1400)
That a painter should have become thoroughly versed in the
pseudo-science of physiognomy and should have used that
science to depict the hidden passions and character of

his subjects is not surprising.1 We find contemporary

testimony to this effect in Nicholas Hilliard's Treatise

 

99 the Art of Limninge,2 though to be sure, Hilliard's
interest is chiefly pathognomic. He is especially anxious
to underline the importance, in portraiture, of what he
calls "grace in countenance, by which the afections

apeare, which can neither be well ussed nor juged of but

of the wisser sort and this principall part of the beauty

a good painter hath skill of and should diligently

noet. . . .(p. 207). He develops this notion at greater

length a little later when he discusses how to alter each

E

For an interesting discussion of Durer's use of the
thSical manifestations of the complexions see Panofsky's

§he Life and Art of Albrech Durer. (Princeton, 1955), pp. 156-
71.
2

Cited and discussed by Erna Auerbach, Nicholas Hilliard,
London 1961, chapter VII, p. 198 ff. The treatise was appar_
ently written between 1597 and 1603.

 

 

 

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96

of the several features, eyes, nose, forehead, etc., to

accommodate laughter, and then continues:
. . .in like sort countenances of wroth, of feare,
or of sorowe, have their severall alterance of the
face, and fare according to the mind is affected,
maybe many faces, some lovly, some loathsom, some
grave and wisse, some foolish and wanton, some
proude and audatious, some poore and couvardly,

wherfor it would be longe to handel every severall
countenance. (p. 208)

It is not necessary to suppose that this Elizabethan pre-
cursor of Charles Le Brun avidly read physiognomical
manuals to prove that he was vitally interested in the
portraiture of the passions.1

Testimony of a more amusing but no less compelling
kind is offered by John Eliot in his Parlement of Pratlers
(1593),2 the fruit of an age so full of life that even
its textbooks were, and are, worth reading. In any event

one of the lighter episodes recorded by Eliot is entitled

(D

Eh, Painter (p. 63 ff), in which Nicholas and John enter
the painter's shOp, ostensibly to buy but really to amuse
themselves with the proprietor's eagerness to sell them
something. It is interesting to note that they all three
share an awareness of physiognomy's place in the art of

portraiture. The painter has only just welcomed the

-__

__

lSee Brewster Rogerson, "The Art of Painting the Pas-
sions," JHI, XIV, 68-94). For a more extensive treatment
of 'E£_pfctura poesis' see Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts
(Chicago, 1958).

2"A series of Elizabethan Dialogues and Monologues
illustrating Daily Life and the Conduct of a Gentleman on
the Grand Tour extracted from ORTHO-EPIA GALLICA, a book on

 

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97

young rakes when their eyes light upon the physiognomical
defects of his work:

John: What portraiture is that thou paintest there?
Painter: Of Esope the sage.

Micholas: O what lips and nosethrils of an Ape he hath!
John: He is eared like an Asse.

The painter having despaired of selling Aesop that day
shifts to a second canvas:

Paint: What say you of this figure?

Nich: I say that if it be Venus, she hath not her
face well painted.

John: It is an Italian Harlekin.

Nich: He is beleeve me, verie well counterfeited
for a foole.

John: He is not verie well shadowed for a wise man.

Paint: What wanteth there?

John: He is crump—ihouldered and crokked and hath a

Hawkes nose.
The painter, at this point, is growing weary of his customers
and tells them to be gone for they appear more interested in
making fun of his efforts than honestly seeking a painting
for themselves. Nicholas, however, assures him of their
worthy intentions and the trip through his shOp proceeds
past the Virgin Mary, Tiberius Caesar (Chiromancy is invoked
at this point to explicate the wrinkles in his palm) and on
to the tapestries, first Philomela and Tereus, then "the

Idees of Plato. . . .the Atomes of Epicurus. . .an Eccho

—‘

the correct Pronunciation of the French language written by

John Eliot (1593)." Reissued by the Fanfrolico Press
(London, 1928).

1Hill reports that a long nose, sharp at the end in
the manner of a bird's beak indicates a bird-like character--
that is "hastie, foolish, and like stirring to and fro,"
Chap. XXII.

98

after her nature represented” (p. 65). But the truly elab—

oratecwmathe painter reveals is not unlike the tapestry to

which Lucrece repairs in the poem:

Paint:

Nich:
Paint:
Nich:
John:

Nich:

John:
Paint:

.Behold there the life and gests of
Achilles in seventie and eight peeces of
tapistrie beginneth at the marraje of
Peleus and Thetis, going on with the nativi-
tie of Achilles, his youth written by
Stacius Papinius, his gests and feats of
armes celebrated by Homer; his death and
buriall pend by Ovid and Quint Calabrian,
ending in the apparition of his shadow and
the sacrifice of Polixena written by
Euripides.

How much? What is the price I pray you?
Ten thousand crownes.

Tis too deare for me that.

What's this?

Tis the shape of a man that lacks a maister.
He hath his face lively painted.

He is drawne truly just in all qualities,
fit in all gesture, behaviour, lookes, gate,
phisiognomie and affections.

Unfortunately, Nicholas and John can neither afford the

seventy—eight sections of the Achilles tapestry nor do they

really care for the physiognomical justness of the portrait

of a "man that lacks a maister." They have, nonetheless,

afforded themselves an amusing half-hour and they have

served us by bringing contemporary evidence to bear upon

Shakespeare's "skillful painting" in Lucrece. I am inclined

to agree with Professor Prince that the painting passage is

"very literary, both in conception and execution."1 But we

_

1
See the Arden Edition, p. 128.

 

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99

should not on this count conclude that Shakespeare was
naive in making so much of the artist's fidelity to
physiognomical detail. It was expected of him—~in
Hilliard's words the "principall part of the beauty a
good painter hath skill of" (p. 207).

Having certified the painter's skill by citing
the physiognomical detail to be found in Ajax, Ulysses
and others, Shakespeare moves to the critical portrait
in the Trojan panorama. It is of Sinon, of course, for

In him the painter labour'd with his skill

To hide deceit and give the harmless show

An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,

A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe,

Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so

That blushing red no guilty instance gave,

Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts gave.

(1506 ff)

We are immediately reminded of the elaborate red and white
mixture of Virtue and Beauty which introduced us to
Lucrece herself. Sinon has been given, then, a Lucrece-
1ike innocence of appearance, so much so that even
"jealousy” could not suppose "such saint-like forms"
could be ”blot with hell-born sin."

Yet Lucrece, in spite of the assault which has just
been made upon her, cannot easily give up the habit of
Judging from appearances. Indeed, she

Chid the painter for his wondrous skill,

Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abus'd;
So fair a form lodg'd not a mind so ill. (1528-30)

 

 

 

 

100

The realization of how blindly she has persisted in the
Judgment of men by what they seem to be is conveyed in a
clumsy but dramatic stanza:

"It cannot be," quoth she, "that so much guile"--

She would have said--"can lurk in such a look",

But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,

And from her tongue "can lurk” from "cannot” took.

"It cannot be" she in that sense forsook,

And turn'd it thus: "It cannot be, I find,

But such a face should bear a wicked mind." (1534—U0)
And the painter's skill is thus tragically confirmed.
Sinon and Tarquin, armed with "outward honesty but yet
defil'd with inward vice," are joined together, as are
Lucrece and Priam, her chastity and the city of Troy.

As Priam did him cherish,
So did I Tarquin,--so my Troy did perish. (1546—7)

In an important sense the poem can be said to end with this
poignant recognition scene--for that is precisely what it
is. Certainly, Collatinus must return and the story's
retelling must issue in death and vengeance; but the poem
is chiefly concerned with the death of Lucrece's innocence
and this, oddly enough, does not truly take place in the
dark night of the rape. After Tarquin leaves her room
Lucrece still believes in the appearance of things, for

all of her protestations to the contrary. Her naivete

dies only before the painting; in a way she is violated a
second time, for only then is she stripped of her illusions
about the nature of mankind—-about its potential vicious-
ness and the no less lamentable human capacity to hide

that viciousness under the guise of kindliness and courtesy.

 

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101

To register truly, her experience of evil needed the rein—
forcement of art: Tarquin had to be succeeded by Sinon.
And so the pseudo-science of physiognomy is made to
lend its imagery to comment on its own inadequacy. The
skillful painter might employ its lessons to make visible
on the countenance the "vigour" of Ajax or Ulysses' subtle
craft. But it lies helpless before a Sinon. It can give
no account of him, save a fatally wrong one, can insist
upon no unalterable correspondence between appearance and
reality. In Lucrece Shakespeare discovers how useful
physiognomy could be in helping him to explore this theme.
And he is to return to it often as the working out of that

theme deepens in Richard III, Hamlet, and Macbeth.

 

 

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CHAPTER V

DEFORMITY AND DECEPTION: PHYSIOGNOMY

AS PROPHECY

Deformed persons are commonly even with nature:
for as nature hath done ill by them, so do they
by nature; being for the most part (as the Scrip-
ture saith) void of natural affection; and so they
have their revenge of nature.

Francis Bacon "0n Deformity"

When we put aside Lucrece for Richard III we move

 

from narrative to dramatic verse, from Home to England,
from an essentially domestic tale of woe with public con-
sequences to a public tale of woe with domestic conse—
quences. The object of Tarquin's deceit is a Roman matron
of singular beauty; the object of Richard's is the very
throne of England. But the problem of the reality of evil
masquerading;as virtue, though made vastly more complicated,
remains the same and it is worked out by a similar employ-
ment of the rhetoric of physiognomy. If Lucrece tells the
Story of a man of noble seeming who is vile at heart and
SOUl--of a man in whom there exists no correspondence

between body and Spirit--then Richard III1 is the story of

 

“—

1I mean to examine the tetralogy l, g, and 3 Henry VI
muifiichard III. “

102

 

 

 

 

 

 

-,..

 

103

a man who is in essential harmony with himself and who,
in spite of the glaring obviousness of his deformity, is
able by sheer wit and daring to convince nearly everyone
in his company of his loving, open nature. It can be
said of Richard that he succeeds in masking his true
nature better than anyone in ShakeSpeare's world and yet
that no one displays his nature in a more shockingly
apparent and visible way.

The irony of the play is, I think, more pervasive
than in anything Shakespeare has left to us. It is incon-
ceivable that this crooked, humped villain should waltz
his way by the great men and women of England-—that no one,
save Old Clifford and Queen Margaret, should truly see
what he is before it is too late. He leaves in his wake
a long line of victims, each of whom failed to recognize
the deformity of character which nature had so unmistakably
signalled in a corresponding deformity of outward appear-
ance. If a gross simplification might for a moment stand,
it is as if Shakespeare decided in the Henry VI - Richard III
tetralogy to amend the "anti—physiognomy" of Lucrece. He
can be said to have reminded his audience that, while it is
true that evil can hide behind the lovely and prOportioned
lines of physical beauty, it is also true and far more
likely that it will be discovered in a mansion of its own

misshapened design.

 

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104

It is hardly necessary to call attention to the ex—
travagant care with which Shakespeare fashions in Richard
a portrait of physical ugliness. But we should pay
Special attention to the significance he attaches to his
hero's shape. Richard's very first appearance in the
tetralogy is greeted by Old Clifford's mocking, but per-
ceptive, derision:

Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump,
As crooked in thy manners as thy shape

(2 Henry VI, V, 1, 157-8)

 

To Shakespeare's audience this was not merely a rhetorical
outburst; it was a statement if not of unalterable truth,

of a very high order of probability. The relation of charac-
ter to appearance is thus suggested to have an especial
relevance in Richard's case. In the same scene Young
Clifford reinforces the notion and projects it into the
future by branding his adversary as a "foul stigmatic"--

that is, one whose physical deformity is so monstrous as to
carry nature's warning to the rest of mankind.

The prophetic nature of Richard's deformity, then, is
l

 

its central characteristic. Shakespeare relies heavily

Upon it to reinforce the sense of inevitability with which

__

lRuth Anderson has called attention to the meaning of
Richard's deformity, if not its special prophetic quality:
"Evidently the dramatist had in mind the principle that the
normal order of creation is to provide correspondence between
bOdy and soul; a principle so widely held that his audience
must have felt a relationship between Richard's foul body and
his villainy." Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's

Lists, p. 1146.

 

51

105

the action unfolds throughout the tetralogy. Margaret, in
an unusually playful mood, sounds the theme in the first

act of 3 Henry VI. Having just captured the Duke of York

 

she tauntingly asks where his "mess of sons" are, ”wanton
Edward," "lusty George" and,
. .that valiant crook-back prodigy,

Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice

Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies. (I, IV, 73 ff)
Even exulting in victory she cannot but thing of Richard's
twisted frame as prodigious--as an omen of things to come.1

Margaret returns to this prophetic theme in the next
act when she again turns upon him to make clear how singular
and improbable he really is:

But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam,

But like a foul misshapen stigmatic,

Mark'd by the Destinies to be avoided,

As venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings (II, ii, 135-38)
Later (V, v, 28) she contents herself with the thought that
Richard "was born to be a plague to men" and while the phrase
lacks her usual vituperative energy it is enough to put
Richard on guard. He would silence her tongue if he could,
for she knows what he is and what he must be. In answer to
Edward's effort to stop his hand, Richard clearly betrays
his concern about Margaret's prophetic reading of his

deformity-—"Why should she live, to fill the world with

words?" (3 Henry VI, V, V, H“)-

‘

 

11 am convinced that Margaret uses the term "prodigy" in
the meaning cited by the 0.E.D.: "l. something extraordinary
from which omens are drawn; an omen, a portent, now rare.”

 

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106

Richard is, of course, especially sensitive about

his physique--but one has the impression that this sensi-
tivity derives not from a desire to be more attractive,
but because he realizes how fundamentally revealing his
appearance really is. King Henry is permitted to tell
Richard about the unnatural and tempestuous night that
marked his birth, during which the owl shriek'd, the
night-crow cried, dogs howl'd and ”chattering pies in dis-
mal discord sung" (3 Henry VI, V, vi, 44 ff). He is even
able to speak of the child born that night as an "indigested
and deformed lump" and Richard does not raise his hand. It
is only when he begins to draw conclusions from the deformity,

Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born,

To signify thou cam 'st to bite the world;

And, if the rest be true which I have heard,

Thou can' st. . . . (V, vi, 53 ff)
that Richard cuts him off, even as he had hOped to silence
Queen Margaret. But what is the rest which Henry was un-
able to tell us? Richard does not keep us wondering. No
Sooner is Henry dead than his murderer continues the
horrible story of his nativity, and in doing 50 continues
Henry's elaboration of what his twisted body signifies:

The midwife wonder'd, and the woman cried,

"0 Jesus bless us' He is born with teeth!
And so I was; which plainly signified
That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog.
Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so,
Let hell make crook'd my mind tobagigzr it.

I am 1 e no r ,
ingatfiigowgigtgigve", which grey beards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another,
And not in me! I am myself alone. . . .(V, vi, 74 ff)

 

3;.

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107

Richard is a singular monster, incapable of human affection.
It is love that he lacks, not sex. He is clever enough to
woo and win even with an ugly body and, of course, he knows
this. But he is congenitally deprived of the capacity to
reach out in affection to another living soul and it is
this spiritual deformity that peers out from behind the
awful rise on his back. Margaret again underlines the
pre-natal casting of his body and character:

Thou elvish mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!

Thou that was seal'd in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!

(Richard III, I, 111, 228 ff)

 

The link between Richard and the devil in hell, a connection
which he himself has insisted upon—-"Let hell make crook'd
my mind"--is not lightly made. He is the devil's creation
and he carries the signs of his paternity for all to see.

Margaret reminds us of this once again in her admonition

to Buckingham:

Have not to do with him, beware of him:
Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,

And all their ministers attend on him 1
(Richard III, I, iii, 292-95)

It is obvious, then, that Shakespeare was especially

anxious to develop the theme of inevitable evil in recording

the rise of Richard and that he seized upon the King's

misshapened body to serve that dramatic end. Richard,

E

lSee also Richard 11;, IV, H, 166—7 where the Duéggis
Of York refers to the birth of Richard as unnatura —-
Cam'st on earth to make the earth my hell.

 

 

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108

consequently, is not merely "lamely prOportioned," he is
prophetically deformed and his hunched back speaks
physiognomically in every scene in which it appears.
Shakespeare may have found the suggestion for this

dramatic employment of Richard's appearance in the
chronicles. Sir Thomas More's account of the King dwells
upon his unusual physique. He was:

litle of stature, ill featured of limmes, crooke

backed, his left shoulder much higher than his

right. . .hard favoured of visage. . .; he was

malicious, wrathfull, envious, and from afore
his birth ever froward. (italics added)

 

 

 

While More does not explicitly interpret Richard's appear-
ance physiognomically, he clearly associates character and
appearance by juxtaposing his comments on both. Similarly,
while his reference to the King's having been "ever froward
.from afore his birth" is clearly meant to allude to
the breech birth, it also suggests the determined nature of
his character which Shakespeare was to emphasize time and

again in the tetralogy.

Hall's account, taken over verbatim by Holinshed, is

far more eXplicitly physiognomic:

he of
As he was small and little of stature, so was
bodie greatly deformed; the one shoulder higher than
the other; his face was small, but his countenance

t a man
cruell and such that at the first aspec
would iudge it t8 savour and smell of malice, fraud

and deceit. When he stood musing, he would bite and

lBoswell-Stone, W. G., Shakespeare's Holinshed
(London, 1896), p. A22.

 

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109

chaw bisilie his neither lip as who said, that

his fierce nature in his cruell bodie alwaies
chafed, stirred, and was ever onquiet. . .he

was of a readie, pregnant and quicke wit, wilie

to feine, and apt to dissemble: h? had a proud
mind, and an arrogant stomach. . . (italics added)

 

That Hall, like Plutarch, employed physiognomic interpreta-
tion of his principal character cannot be doubted from the
evidence of the passage just quoted. But it is worth nothing
that Hall emphasizes, not the grossness of Richard's

body, but his countenance. The body at one point is

called "cruell" but it is the face that savours and

smells "of malice, fraud and deceit." Shakespeare pays
only the most general attention to Richard's countenance.
He fastens most of his attention upon the outstanding
single feature of the man, his humped back, and burdens
that feature with the entire weight of evil. Indeed, as

we shall see, it is Richard's marvelously controlled

facial expressions that permit his massive deception.

At any event, in emphasizing the humped back
Shakespeare was on perfectly sound professional ground.
Thomas Hill deals with this deformity in his chapter on
"The shoulder pointes seene neare joyning tOEither- -"

He cites Cocles as the expert on hunch backs, for he

is recorded as seldom having seen

E

1Cited by Boswell-Stone, p. 423.

.5:

110

. . .any person being crooke backed which were of
a good nature: but that these having the like
bearing out, or bunch on the shoulders were rather
trayterous and very wicked in their actions. And
such (sayth the Physiognomer) were known in his
time to be the founders of all wicked deceites,
yea wylie undermyners and gropers of the people
and had a deepe retching wyt and wylie fetches in
wicked actions. So that it seemth impossible after
nature that such deformed persons should possess

in them laudable actions. . .out of an evil shaped
bodie can no laudable actions proceed or be caused,
as afore uttered.

It is as if Hill (or Cocles) had Richard in mind when he

drew his vivid picture of the hunch-backed "undermyner"

with a "deepe retching wit."2

A more popular, and therefore more generalized,

3

account of the significance of birth defects can be

found in Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier. Lord
Octavian speaks, albeit softly, to the point in Book
Four:

Therefore doth each man seeke to cover the defaultes
of nature, as well in the mind, as also in the bodie:
the which is to bee seene in the blinde, lame,
crooked and other maimed and deformed creatures.

lJohn Metham's essay on physiognomy is less Specific
but indicates that he is no less aware of the problem: "A
bak the quyche bowyth round, that yt bowyth in the schuldyrrys
to the brest, yt sygnyfyith enuyusnes and malyce; and this
tokyn ys most true, qwan a man goth myche stoupyng" p. 138—9.

2Savonarola also assigns great intellectual ingenuity
and astuteness to hunchbacks. See Lynn Thorndike, History

Of Magic, IV, p. 147.

3For an extended discussion of Shakespeare's use of
the concept of the "stamp of nature" see T. W. Baldwin
On the Literary Genetics of Shakespeare's Plays 1592—94.
(Illinois, l959),pp. 318 ff.

up.

....

 

 

111

For although their imperfections may be laide to
nature, yet doth it greeve each man to have them in
himself: because it seemeth by the testimonie of
the selfesame nature that a man hath that default
or blemish (as it were) for a patent and token of
his ill inclination. (p. 266)
Nature,then, imprints physical imperfection to testify to
the warped character of the man thus marked. The imper-
fection is clearly prophetic and should be observed by
prudent men. The question of responsibility in this
determinist psychology is irrelevant.

It is beyond reasonable question that Shakespeare's
contemporaries would have looked upon Richard's ugliness
in precisely this way. Lamb's innocent but not unattractive
account of the crooked King could not have occurred to an
Elizabethen audience.l Surely Richard exults in his
triumphs. But it is the exultation, not of a man who is
overcoming a physical defect, but of one who is fulfilling
the evil nature which that defect merely reflects. It is
the prOphetic defect which Oberon banishes in his closing
epithalamium in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

And the blots of Nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar
Nor mark prodigious, such as are

Despised in nativity ’
Shall upon their children be. (V, 1, 416-21 ff)

lCharles Lamb "G. F. Cooke in 'Richard the Third.'"
"When Mr. Cooke makes allusions to his own form, they seem
accompanied with unmixed distaste and pain, like some ob—
trusive and haunting idea. But surely the Richard of
Shakespeare mingles in these allusions a perpetual reference
to his own powers and capacities. . .and the joy of a defect

.».

It is the prophetic defect which in King John Constance

 

cannot discover in Arthur and which, if she could would
have totally altered her view. To Arthur's plea that
she be content she replies:

If thou that bidst me be content wert grim,

Ugly, and slandrous to thy mother's womb,

Full of unpleasing blots, and sightless stains,

Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,

Patch'd with foul moles, and eye—offending marks,

I would not care. . . .(III, 1, 43—u8).
Richard, then, is Arthur's opposite number, precisely a
slander to his mother's womb, ”crooked, swart" and, above

all else, truly prodigious in his deformity.l

We need not, however, seek in King John the intended

 

antithesis to Richard's evil nature. He is to be found
in young Henry, Earl of Richmond, the founder of the dynasty
which it was the pleasure and duty of Elizabeth's grateful
subjects to praise. And the antithesis is posed, signifi—
cantly enough, in physiognomic terms. King Henry VI quite
accidentally spots Richmond in a crowd and is so struck by
his noble appearance as to ask Somerset who he is. Once
he knows he calls young Henry to him:

Come higher, England's hOpe--If secret powers

Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts,

This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss.

His looks are full of peaceful majesty,
His head by nature fram'd to wear a crown,

‘

conquered or turned into an advantage, is one cause of these
very allusions, and of the satisfaction with which his mind

recurs to them." Works ed. T. Hutchinson (Oxford, l924), I,
p. A8.

13 Henry VI, II, ii, 135 ff; v, vi, 42 ff.

 

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His hand to wield a sceptre, and himself
Likely in time to bless a regal throne.
(3 Henry VI, IV, vi, 68-74)

 

Nature frames the wise and kindly features of a Tudor
prince—to-be as well as the distorted lineaments of a
villain-~and a practiced, albeitcmcultlytmeined eye can
predict the future from either one.

But the Henry VI - Richard III tetralogy is dis-

 

tinguished primarily by the absence of this skill. King
Henry can speak of his "divining thoughts" when looking
upon Richmond, but he was fatally late in divining the
wickedness in Richard's appearance. And with the exceptions
of Margaret and Old Clifford, and with a noticeable hesi-
tancy in the Duchess of York, everyone in the four plays
is blind to Richard's deceit. They are blind to the one
permanent and indelible mark which could and should put
them on guard: the distorted shape of the protagonist.
That Shakespeare meant us to pay some attention to

this is, I think, beyond question. The success of Richard's
deceit is attributable almost entirely to his consummate
skill in acting. He can play any role demanded of him
and can change hisfacial.expression, modulate his voice
and sharpen his wit as the occasion demands. And his skill
is never far from his mind. He speaks of it in his first
major soliloquy:

Why I can smile, and murther while I smile,

And cry ”Content” to that which grieves my heart,

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.

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114

I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could;
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.

I can add colours to the chameleon;

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murtherous Machiavel to school.

(3 Henry VI, III, ii, 182 ff)

 

Now Richard, as usual, tells the brutal truth about him-
self, in this soliloquy as in all others. But clearly
he overestimates his skill when he suggests that he can
"change shapes with Proteus for advantages." This is
the one thing he cannot do and he is painfully aware of
it. And because he cannot, the parallel with Sinon is
thrown slightly askew. Sinon's physical appearance was
one with his seeming nature; Richard's is one with his
real nature. He is "not shap'd for sportive tricks”

or for honourable action either. His ultimate achievement
is to be measured by the success with which he diverts
attention from the permanent marks of his body to the
elastic features of his face.

The Duchess of York is not, for all her suspicion
and concern, immune to Richard's diverting skill. No one
knows more painfully than she how foully blotted is the
body of this third son who was born under the most
darkly auspicious circumstances. And yet in talking to
Clarence's boy about his uncle she betrays the success
With which Richard has "hidden" his deformity. She is
deeply suspicious of course, but not because of the

lessons taught by physiognomy:

 

 

115

Duchess: Ah, that deceit should steel such gentle shape,
And with a vertuous vizor hide deep vice!
He is my son—ay, and therein my shame;
Yet from my dugs, he drew not this deceit.
Boy: Think you my uncle did dissemble grandam?

Duchess: Ay, boy.
Boy: I cannot think it.

(Richard III, II, ii, 27 ff)

 

Clearly the irony of this exchange depends in no small way
upon the assignment of, of all things, a "gentle shape" to
Richard--and by the mother who first looked with horror
upon him. No attentive member of Shakespeare's audience
could have missed this outrageous evidence of human
blindness.

Richard's physical deformity, then, is of some impor—
tance to an accurate reading of the play. To be most
effective it must be a massively deformed Protector who,
with Buckingham, greets the returning prince and heir with
these lines:

Prince: I want more vncles here to welcome me.

Richard: Sweet Prince, the untainted virtue of your years
Hath not yet div'd into the world's deceit.
No more can you distinguish of a man,
Than of his outward show; which, God he knows,

Seldome or never jumpeth with the heart.
Those vncles which you want were dangerous.

(Richard III, III, i, 6 ff)

 

The irony in this bit of deception is not lodged solely in
the Spectacle of the one truly murderous uncle suggesting
that the others are dangerous. It is enhanced by the
audacity of a crooked hunchback who will risk calling

EXplicit attention to his deformity by denying the

 

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correspondence which is so perfectly realized in himself——
the correspondence between outward show and the "heart,”
upon which the pseudo—science of physiognomy was based.
Here, clearly, the physical presence of deformity on the
stage is necessary if the scene's dramatic intention is
to be realized.

By the time Richard sends his princely nephew to
the Tower, his confidence in his own capacity to deceive
is unlimited. And justifiably so. No one speaks of his
twisted body, save, of course, Margaret; no one really
seems to notice it any longer, let alone draw prophetic
conclusions from it. He has their gaze directed solely
to the versatile mask which is his face. Indeed,
Buckingham is so completely mesmerized by his master that
he no longer sees him as he really is. How else can we
explain the utterly laughable contention which he advances
during his meeting with the Lord Mayor and the citizens
of London? Here we have the spectacle of Buckingham
trying to prove Edward's bastardy by noting how unlike
the duke, his father, he appears. This is all right, so
far as it goes, but then, as he tells Richard, he
continued:

Withal I did infer your lineaments,--

Being the right idea of your father,

Both in your form and nobleness of mind; (III, vii, 12-15)
No one in his right mind would have seriously invited the

good citizens to contemplate Richard's "lineaments" as

‘ V:
use

‘-

117

evidence of his paternity and his nobleness. The one fact
that has been consistently insisted upon throughout the
tetralogy is that Richard was in no way like either his
father or his mother. King Henry recalls that he was

An indigested and deformed lump,
Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree

(3_Henry_VI, V, vi, 50-51)
Queen Margaret had earlier alluded to precisely the same
face, "But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam" (II,
ii, l35), and if her testimony is considered prejudiced
we might recall the words of the Duchess who refers to the
dead Clarence and Edward as "two mirrors of his Princely
semblance" with Richard the "one false Glass." Even
Richard alludes to his physical uniqueness, although with
specific reference only to his mother. He likens himself

. .to a chaos, or an unlick' d bear- -whelp
That carries no impression like the dam.

(3 Henry VI, III, ii, l6l-2)
Clearly Shakespeare has given Buckingham this patently
false contention to advance before the citizens for some
dramatic purpose. And that purpose can only have been
to call attention once again to Richard's corrupted body
and the extent to which its evidence of wickedness had
been tragically overlooked.
Buckingham may have been the more easily deceived

because of his unwillingness to give any credence to

 

 

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118

1

physiognomy's claims. He is, in this respect, unusual in

the play for he is the only person to deny any correspondence
between outward appearance and inner character, save
Richard, of course, who denies it in public and for his

own purposes. But Buckingham has seeniHMJmuch of the world,

and too much of his master, to suppose that the face is an
accurate index to character. In discussing the coronation
of the prince, Buckingham asks the Bishop of Ely and the
others if any one knows how Richard feels about the matter:
Buck.: "Who knowes the Lord Protector's mind herein?
Who is most inward with the noble Duke?
Ely: Your Grace, we think, should soonest know
his mind.
Buck.: We know each other's faces; for our hearts,

He knows no more of mine, than I of yours:
Nor I of his, my lord, than you of mine."

(Richard III, 11:, iv, 7-12)

And, of course, Buckingham is painfully and prOphetically
right. Men can disguise their emotions by the exercise
Of "pathognomic control," and no one on earth, including
Tarquin and Sinon, exceeds Richard in the trying on of
virtue's many masks.

But Hastings misses the point. His gaze too has
been directed from Richard's shoulders to his face but,

unlike Buckingham, he is foolish enough to trust his

#

1This does not explain, of course, how he dared to
assert a similarity between Richard's appearance and his
father's. It is one thing to deny a relationship between
the lineaments of the body and the soul; another to see
Similarities where they do not exist.

 

119

judgment of what he sees. The Lucrece of the play,
Hastings takes everything precisely as it, on the surface,

seems to be:

Hastings: His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth
this morning; There's some conceit or
other likes him well, when that he bids
good morrow with such spirit. I thinke
there's never a man in Christendom
Can lesser hide his love, or hate, than
he, for by his face straight shall you
know his heart.

Derby: What of his heart perceive you in his face,

By any likelihood he show'd today?

Hastings: Marry, that with no man here he is offended;
For were he, he had showne it in his looks.

(Richard III, III, iv, A8—57)

 

Hastings too must be shocked out of his naive trust in the
appearance of things. No sooner has he expressed his
confidence in Richard's benign pathognomic mask, than he
finds himself condemmed to die as a traitor. Once again
the vocabulary of physiognomy creeps into the diction of
the play. Hastings laments his fate with a rather elaborate
nautical image, but the deceiving appearance of things can-
not be kept out:

0 momentary grace of mortal men,

Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!

Who builds his hOpe in air of your good looks

Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,

Ready with every nod to tumble down,
Into the fatal bowels of the deep

(Richard III, III, iv, 95—100)
(italics added)

As if to pronounce a grisly physiognomic benediction over
the scene, Richard himself piously refers to Hastings'

head upon a pole as having belonged to one who, "So smooth

 

 

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120

he daub'd his vice with shew of vertue" that he mistook
him for the "plainest harmless Creature."

Thus we have two main physiognomic currents running
throughout the tetralogy. The first is the compelling
insistence upon the prophetic nature of Richard's deformity,

voiced first by Old Clifford in 2 Henry VI ("Hence, heap

 

of wrath. . ...As crooked in thy manners as thy shape,"
V, i, 157) and consistently repeated by Margaret, King
Henry, the Duchess his mother and, most significantly, by
Richard himself. Clearly the character of Richard and the
irony which accompanies him on his deceitful path to the
throne cannot be properly understood without recognition
of the visible and unalterable quality of his corruption.
Obliquely related to this strain in the tetralogy,
is the equally compelling theme of successful deception.
And this theme, too, is developed in physiognomic terms,
for it is Richard's countenance, not his body's shape,
that men examine for proof of his virtue. Buckingham is
wise enough to forego the attempt; his loyalty to Richard
has been fashioned in other ways. But Hastings and the
royal princes, and the women in the plays (Margaret and
the Duchess excluded) are all drawn to the versatile
mask which is Richard's face and they are all deceived.
All of the features over which he exercises control are
consummately.modulatedto complement the appearance of

honesty and humility which he finds so profitable.

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121

Richard is not what he seems to be; he is what he is, a
Sinon with the mark of hell upon his twisted frame.

The magnificence of his deception and his personality
must be measured by the mountainous impediment to decep—
tion which nature visited upon his body.

In Richard III, then, Shakespeare enlarges his

 

examination of truth and falsehood and discovers not only
an awful capacity for deceit in humankind but a parallel
willingness to be deceived. And while the concept of
"outward show" is never limited to physical appearance
alone,l its potentially dissonant relationship to inner
character is commonly expressed in physiognomic terms.

In Macbeth, as earlier intimated,2 physiognomy is
unmistakably employed to underline the conscious deception
which Lady Macbeth recognizes as vital to her purposes.
She literally teaches her husband to value the lessons
of pathognomy:

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't. (I, v, 6b-68)
Macbeth does not really answer her until two scenes later

—k

when his resolution has been fixed:

lRichard's deception is aided as much by his facile
tongue as his flexible countenance.

2See Chapter III, page 1; Theodore Spencer's Shake-
speare and the Nature of Man (New York, 1961) deals with
the persistence of the appearance—reality theme in the
plays and has been invaluable.

 

 

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122

I am settled and bend up

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show: 1

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
The imperative may be instructive. Macbeth has come to
accept the inevitability of deceit. The false face must
hide what the false heart knows and so, saddened, Macbeth
adjusts his public countenance. It will stay in place
for yet awhile.

Hamlet, of course, is full of false faces. As

Theodore Spencer has suggested, the play might easily
be said to be about the tragic lack of correspondence be—
tween appearance and reality.2 Surely no man has had to
confront human deception and hypocrisy in such an over—
poweringly consecutive way as does the Danish prince.
Claudius and Gertrude inflict the most telling blow to
his trust in human goodness and Openness but it may not
be wrong to say that Hamlet is paralyzed less by this
main blow and more by the less consequential deceptions
which follow so fast and consistently after it. No one,
except Horatio, is what he seems to be in one play.
Virtually everyone, even Ophelia, must put on a mask,
must play a part, must hide interior truth of character

_¥

in the facile exercise of seem; g virtue.

‘-

lI, V11, 79 ff. Later, in 111, ii, 32 ff, he prepares

himself to enter the banquet hall and does so in these terms
Of lament: ". . .Unsafe the while, that we/ Must lave our
honours in these flattering streams/ And make our faces
Vizards to our heart/Disguising what they are."

20p. cit., p. 105.

 

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123

Claudius betrays his interest in the appearance of
things in his first speech. He tells us, invoking an
appropriately physiognomic figure, that it was fitting for
a time that King Hamlet should be mourned and

. . .our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe.

And it is to this pious hypocrisy that Hamlet truly

responds when his mother asks why he cannot accommodate

the fact of death:

Queen: Why seems it so particular with thee?
Hamlet: Seems, madam? Nay it is; I know not ”seems."

Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
No, nor the fruitful r;ver in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief
That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:

But I have that within which passeth show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

(I, ii, 75 ff)

Claudius, having tried to pawn off his ”contracted brow of
woe" must have been made uncomfortable indeed to discover
how perceptive his step-son has become in two months' time.

Hamlet, then, has not been fooled into supposing that
Claudius' grief has been as deeply real as his own or,
indeed, as real as his mock-mourning should have suggested.
But that is all he knows about the deception at this point.
When he finally speaks to the ghost of his father he
learns how vast the hypocrisy really is and how closely it

touches him. He learns that his mother is a "most seeming

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virtuous queen" and that lewdness may court virtue "in a
shape of heaven" and that lust may be "to a radiant angel
link'd," and that "one may smile, and smile, and be a
villain." In brief, he learns that the world has been
turned upside down--that appearance in no way corresponds
with the reality it purports to reflect. And he knows
that he cannot possibly survive long in this new world
unless he too puts on a mask, becomes such that neither
"th'exterior nor the inward man/resembles that it was."

From this point forward Hamlet is rarely fooled by
the look of things and never, when he is, for long.
Rosencrantz and GUildenstern are warmly and freely welcomed
as old and trusted friends but they have not moved much
beyond the opening exchange of pleasantries before Hamlet
pierces the show of innocence with which they have covered
their royal assignment:

Hamlet: . . .were you not sent for? Is it
Your own inclining? Is it a free visitation?

Come deal justly with me: come, come; nay speak,

Guild.: What should we say my lord?

Hamlet: Why anything——but to the purpose. You were
sent for; and there is a kind of confession in
your looks, which your modesties have not
craft enough to colour: I know the good King
and Queen have sent for you..(II, ii, 283 ff)

And so they are made to discover their true intentions.
But if his schoolmates disappoint in their deception,
how much more depressing must it be to discover, and almost

at once, that even Ophelia has been made to put on the

3.,

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125

costume of seeming. Polonius sounds the note we have come
to expect in readying his daughter for her charade:

. . . .Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loveliness-~We are yet to blame in this

'Tis too much prov'd, that with devotion's visage

And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself. (III, 1, AA ff)

Ophelia is patently as inept in her attempt to deceive an
awakened Hamlet as were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The courtly art of dissembling has not been, it would seem,
inherited from her father. Hamlet is led by his discovery
to overturn what we have come to know as an Elizabethan
commonplace--the physiognomic notion of correspondence
between beauty and virtue.

Ham.: Ha, ha! Are you honest?

Oph.: My lord?

Ham.: Are you fair?

Oph.: What means your lordship?
Ham.: That if you be honest and fair, your honesty

should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Oph.: Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce
than with honesty?
Ham.: Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner

transform honesty from what it is to a bawd
than the force of honesty can translate beauty
into his likeness. This was sometime a para-
dox, but now the time gives it proof. I did
love you once.

(III, i, 103 ff)
Thus Hamlet's growing experience with the bedraggled veil
Of appearance has conditioned him to cast his thoughts
in the rhetoric of physiognomy. It can be said, indeed,
that the mousetrap is set with our pseudo-science, for
it is a pathognomic reaction that he proposes to catch

and interpret in his uncle's face:

 

126

I'll observe his looks;

I'll tent him to the quick. If_he but blench

I know my course. (II, 11, 624-26)
Similarly the powerful bedroom scene with Gertrude is
heavily laden with imagery drawn from the science of
outward appearance. In_reply to his mother's attempt
to call his bluff ("What have I done, etc.”) Hamlet can
only conceive of her sin in visual terms. It is, in fact,
a disfiguring sin:

Such an act

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;

Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love,

And sets a blister there; makes marriage-vows

As false as dicers' oaths. 0 such a deed

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words! Heaven's face doth glow;

Yea this solidity and compound mass,

With tristful visage, asagainst the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act." (III, iv, 40 ff)
Less intense and concentrated, the first five lines of this

speech might as easily have been uttered by Lucrece.

In the plays examined thus far we have discovered
evidence not only of Shakespeare's interest in physiognomy
but of his versatility in shaping its assumptions and its
language to serve dramatic ends. Indeed the range of his
employment of our pseudo-science is uniquely broad: it
runs from the explicit and literal endorsement found in
the gently satiric jealousy scene in Antony and Cleopatra
to the periodic use of pathognomic imagery which illuminates

the theme of appearance versus reality in Macbeth and Hamlet.

 

 

 

 

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And it varies in intent from the savagely satiric attack

of Menenius in Coriolanus to the revelation of character

 

in Richard III.

We might then properly close our account of
Shakespeare's use of physiognomy by looking briefly at
the play in which it appears in most of its guises. I

refer to Henry IV (Parts I and II) and the most probable

 

of physiognomic specimens, Sir John Falstaff.

Given his outrageous rotundity and the additional
and significant fact of his final rejection, Falstaff
would appear to be a perfect target for physiognomical
satire. And, of course, his "increasing belly" is given
as much attention, if not the same kind, as Richard's
crooked back. But there is surprisingly little detail
about him which lends itself to specific physiognomic in-
terpretation. He is a grossly corpulent, beef-eating
and sack-drinking old man and he has all the physical
marks that other old men with these propensities traditionally
display. The Lord Chief Justice nicely oataolgues these for
us; he has, we learn, a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow CbGEK,

White beard, decreasing leg, increaSIng belly, broken voice,

shortness of breath, a double min and a single wit.l

And only the last is patently wr:ag.

k

12 Henry IV, I, 11, 18 ff.

 

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128

1

But these are not distinctive "signs." Falstaff

is, judging from his appearance, simply a comically exag-
gerated example of the sanguine type growing rapidly to
old age. He goes to great lengths to inform us of this
himself. In the mock scene in which Falstaff plays

Henry IV, to his erring son, he connects his appearance
to his character in traditional terms:

Fa1.: . . . .And yet there is a virtuous man
whom I have often noted in thy company,
but I know not his name.

Pr. Hal: What manner of man, an it like your Majesty?

Fa1.: A goodly portly man, i'faith, and a corpu—
lent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and
a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his
age some fifty, or, by'r Lady, inclinging to
three-score; and now I remember me, his name
is Falstaff: If that man should be lewdly
given, he deceiveth me; for Harry, I see vir-
tue in his looks. If, then, the tree may be
known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree,
then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue
in that Falstaff.

(1 Henry IV, II, iv, 459 ff)

 

Although he is winking the whole time, Falstaff's self-
portrait is by no means unorthodox. We are reminded of
the description of the sanguine type in the Kalendar of
§flepherds as "large, plenteous attempered, amiable, abun-
dant in nature, merry, singing, laughing, liking, ruddy
and gracious. . . ." who "hath his wine of the ape, more

he drinketh the merrier he is” (p. 151). But the point,

‘

lActually a "dry hand" is a common physiognomic sign
indicating lack of moisture i.e. lack of sexuality. See

Twelfth Night (I, iii, 66—67) and Dekker's Westward Ho
III. 1, 35 ff)-

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129

of course, is that this is one stout oak which cannot be
known by his fruits. He is "lewdly given" and hasn't the
slightest intention of becoming acquainted with virtue

in any of its forms. Hal knows it and so does Falstaff.
His "sanguine" appearance, or what there remains of it,
is a living lie and Hal immediately reverses their roles
to make this clear. Falstaff is not what he seems1 and
Hal thus refers to him as a devil in "the likeness of an
old man," a "reverend vice," "gray iniquity," "father
ruffian," . . ."white bearded Satan." Now this is all
good fun and Hal can play at it because he can still
afford good fun. But the truth of the corrected portrait,
once the glorious inventiveness of its epithets is dis-
counted, is beyond question. Falstaff may fancy that he
has "a cheerful look" and "a pleasing eye” but these mask,
and not very well any longer, a lewd and essentially
arrogant old man.

And of course Falstaff knows this better than anyone--
save Prince Hal and the Chief Justice. He tries to take
full advantage of his appearance of genial portliness but
he knows that debauchery has etched its signs upon him in
unmistakable ways. When the :neriff arrives on his investi—
Sation of the Gadshill robbery, Eel alerts everyone to put

on expressions of innocence:

—__

1While the context is quite different, Hal's remark
to Falstaff after he rises from the battlefield may be

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130
. . .Now my masters, for a true
face and good conscience"
to which Falstaff can only truthfully mumble, on his way to
the arras,

Both which I have had; but their date is
out and therefore I'll hide.

And it is this comic aside that follows almost immediately
after he has made so much of the virtue that supposedly
resides in his looks. He will fool whomever he can with
his "confident brow" but he cannot fool Hal, the Chief
Justice or, of course, himself.

Shakespeare permits Falstaff to comment upon his own
physique and its "meaning" in a much more amusing way in
the recruitment scene set in Justice Shallow's Gloucester-
shire courtyard. The burden of the humour is carried by
the bribery which animates Falstaff's choice of recruits,
but the justification of his choice is exquisitely ironic:

Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to
choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thews,
the stature, bulk and big assemblance of a man?

Give me the spirit, Master Shallow.--
0, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones.

(2 Henry IV, 111, ii, 275 ff)

 

So much for Falstaff's ”sanguine” bulk. It is cele-
brated in the play and in outrageous detail; while the
detail belongs to the lexicon of abise and not a manual of

physiognomy, it is nonetheless true that Shakespeare misses

*

instructive: "Art thou alive? or is it fantasy/that plays
upon our eyesight? I prithee, Speakz/We will not trust our
eyes without our ears:/ Thou art not what thou seems't.”
(1_Henry IV, V, iv, 137)-

131

no opportunity to underline our growing conception of
Falstaff's essential villainy. And he does this in small
but interesting measure by suggesting that the portly
frame is but a monstrous veil covering corruption within.
Physiognomy figures in other ways in the play as
well. Northumberland's Opening scene in 2 Henry IV is
quite remarkable in the extent to which it relies upon

pathognomic shorthand to increase the pathos of a

father who has lost a son. Morton no more than enters the
room than Northumberland can see that something is dread-

fully wrong:

North: Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf,
Foretells the nature ;f a tragic volume.
So looks the strond whereon the imperious
flood hath left a witness'd usurpation.
Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?

Morton: I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord;

Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask
To fright our party.

North: How doth my son and brother?
Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe—begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.

(2 Henry IV, I, i, 60 ff)

The exchange continues with Morton trying to muster the
strength to tell what he must tell and Northumberland
keeping him at arm's length by constant interruptions,
each one occasioned by the obvious pathognomic sign which
Morton carries in his countenance:

He that but fears the thing he would not know

Hath by instinct knowledge from others' eyes,
That what he fear'd is chanced.

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132

But finally the "strange confession" in Morton's eye is
corroborated by his report and Northumberland gives him—
self over to "stormy passion." Physiognomy, or pathognomy,
has not lent its special tokens to the scene but it has
humbly and successfully served to heighten the dramatic
tension which the scene requires.

Finally, in Henry IV we can observe Shakespeare's

 

dependence upon physiognomy as a source for metaphor and
simile. Mowbray, for example, is concerned that the rebel
army be advantageously arranged so as "to look with fore-
head bold and big enough/ Upon the power and puissance of
the King." (2 Henry IV, I, iii, 8) Earlier, Hotspur
angrily rehearses how Henry won the people to his support
in the first place. It was, we are told, in no small
measure due to his appearance.

.by this face

This seeming brow of justice, did he win
The hearts of all that he did angle for.

(1 Henry IV, IV, iii, 81—83)
Not to be outdone, King Henry himself reveals an extraordi-

nary perceptiveness in reading the faces that come before

him. Worcester's rebelliousness and station are etched

in both his forehead and his eyes:

Worcester, get thee gone; fggil dgyzee

Dan er and disobedience in ne .

0, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,
And majesty might never yet endure

The moody frontier of a servant brow.

ve to leave us.
You have good lea (1 Henry IV, I, iii, 15—20)

 

 

 

 

 

133

Five acts later Worcester has cause to remember this flashing
dismissal. In discussing with Vernon whether the King's
terms should be accepted, he cannot but suppose that there-
after all of the rebels would be suspect and their "faces"
searched for signs of treason:

Look how we can, or sad or merrily,

Interpretation will misquote our locks,

And we shall feed like oxen at a stall,
The better cherish'd, still the nearer death.

(1 Henry IV, V, ii, 12-15)

 

Physiognomy, then, is very much a part of Shakespeare's
world--and very much a part of the several worlds he
created on the stage. For him it represented no quasi-
magical shortcut to the truth; rather, it was an elaborate
but in many ways a flexible and highly useful resource for

a working dramatist.

 

 

 

.1

'9':

CHAPTER VI

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: PHYSIOGNOMIC

PORTRAITURE IN TAMBURLAINE

 

Certayne thyng hit is that the sowle whych is the
fourme of the body, sueth the kynde and the com—
plexcion and the prOpyrtys of the body, for ofte-
tymes we sene openly that the coragis of men ham
chaungyth aftyr the Pascionys of the bodyes, and
that apperyth in Dronknesse, in amours, in frenesy,
in-Dreddys, in Soroufulnesse, in desires, and in
delites. For in at this Passions of the body, the
Sowle and the corage ham chaungyth. And kynde is
so grete a fellowe between body and Sowle, that the
Passyons of body chaungyth the sowle; and the Pas-
sions of Sowle chaungyth the bciy.

Secreta Secretorum

 

One of the truly remarkable characteristics of
Elizabethan dramatic literature is the ease with which
scientific and occult lore is assimilated and put to the
service of dramatic purposes. The bewildering intricacies
of astrology, alchemy and the several necromantic arts,
Galenic medicine with its involved and flexible physiology
and Psychology, and of course the various and no less con-
fusing branches of physiognomic learning, Chiromancy,
metcposcopy and pathognomy, all of these and others too
are encountered in the surving literature of the period
and in unbelievable detail. Indeed, even after we make
allowance for the obsurity conferred solely by the passing

of four hundred years, the extensiveness of complex

134

 

 

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135

scientific notions in the dramatic literature of the
period is remarkable.

Christopher Marlowe, no less than his fellow
dramatists and more than most, reveals a broad range of
interest in the occult sciences and admits them freely
and imaginatively into his plays. And this is true, too,
of the pseudo-science of physiognomy. It becomes in his
hands not only a metaphorical resource, nor simply an
economical and relatively precise method by which charac—
ter traits may be revealed or passions suggested; in
addition to these traditional uses Marlowe discovers in
physiognomy's basic assumption tna key to the heightening

H

of dramatic presence. Certainly the science of outward

appearance" is, in the ten acts of Tamburlaine,l put to

 

the important task of helping to define the character of

the hero through his dominant choleric complexion. Beyond
this, however, it is made to confer upon the very physical
presence of Tamburlaine an additional and greatly magnified
dimension. The Scourge of God and ruler if men is given a

total physical bearing, and especially a countenance, which
Signals his unearthly ambition and arrogance. Tamburlaine's

face, in fact, is almost given, by the emphasis it receives,

¥

 

lAll citations from Marlowe are from the edition of
C. F. Tucker Brokke, The Works of Christopher Marlowe
(Oxford, 1910).

 

 

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136

an independent dramatic existence; it electrifies the
onlooker and with crystaline clarity shouts to the world
the unmatchable pride and pitiless ambition of the soul
of which it is but the outward sign. The countenance

is made the symbol of the god—like prowess of the
vanquishing Scythian.

Marlowe begins to focus our attention on this
novel use of physiognomy even before Tamburlaine makes
his first appearance. In the very first scene Theridamus
is selected by the vapid and soon—to-be—deposed king of
the Persians, Mycetes, to engage the upstart peasant in
battle. Theridamus, we are told, is ”the chiefest
Captaine" of the Persian army, a brave and successful
commander, "the verie legges/ Whereon our state doth leane."
He is, in fact, a character who will throughout the play
and its sequel complement the character of the hero by his
physical and Spiritual likeness. And yet his commission
from Mycetes strikes us as rather old. He is to go, not
riding forth but "frowning forth,” and it is not with his
sword and brave heart that Mycetes predicts he will
conquer Tamburlaine, but with his ”loykes” and ”words."

He will win, Mycetes implies, by revealing himself physi-
cally--by permitting this band 01 shepherds to see his
Spiritual qualities manifested in his ”lookes." It is

not until Theridamus actually encounters Tamburlaine

Or-

A v

 

V Ill

 

 

 

 

 

 

137

that we recognize the importance of this early pathognomic
reference to the meaning and power of physical appearance.
But before that meeting can take place Marlowe intro-
duces the captured Zenocrate in a scene which is designed
in part to call Special attention to Tamburlaine's sensi-
tivity to his rustic origin and to his consequent concern
with physical appearance. Zenocrate is probably the only
creature on earth who could address Tamburlaine as she

first does and live to tell of it:

Ah Shepheard, pity my distressed plight,
(As if thou seem'st, thou art so meane a man)
And seeke not to inrich thy followers

By lawlesse rapine from a silly maide. (I, ii, 203-206)

He lets the matter pass for a moment but quickly comes back
to it when Zenocrate very tactfully refers to him next as
"my lord."

I am a Lord, for so my deeds shall prooue,
And yet a shepheard by my Parentage:

But Marlowe does not leave it to Tamburlaine’s deeds alone
to prove that his hero is indeed a lord. From this point
forward the rhetoric of the play, and not only of the hero
but of virtually every man and woman who comes in contact
with him, rises in a crescendo of praise and awe before

the staggering appearance of the man. At this very point
he throws off the "weedes" of the shepherd and puts on

"this compleat armor and this curtle-axe" as "adjuncts

more beseeming Tamburlaine." But it is his countenance
Which sets off the armor and makes it appear so fitting'and

right. Techelles immediately tells the audience what it is

they should now see in the hero:

138

As princely Lions when they rouse themselves,
Stretching their pawes, and threatning heardes of Beastes.
So in his Armour looketh Tamburlaine:

Me thinks I see kings kneeling at his feet,

And he with frowning browes and fiery lookes,
Spurning their crownes from off their captive heads.

(I, ii, 2u8—53)

 

We know, then, that this is the beginning; a momentous
awakening is underway, the princely lion has roused his
true self and all traces of the "silly country swaine"
have been left behind. Zenocrate and her troop "since
they measure our deserts so meane” (he has not for a
moment forgotten her Opening sentence) will be forced to
remain to witness the metamorphosis of a seeming shepherd.
To speak of metamorphosis, however, is to do damage
to Marlowe's concept. Tamburlaine is not a shepherd boy,
however bold or poetic, masquerading as a lord. Still
less is he "changed" as he moves from his low station to
the highest, from shepherd to lord, to king, to emperor.
There is majesty in him from the beginning, partially
hidden certainly by the habiliments of the country, but

never absent from his countenance, the true mirror of his

soul.1

That this reflects Marlowe's conception of his hero

18, I think, amply demonstrated by the arrival of Theridamus

L

ccount of the relationship of this

Characteristic of Tamburlaine to Marlowe's philogophngfshis-
tory see Irving Ribner, "The Idea of History in ar 0

Tamburlaine." ELH, xx (December, 1953), pp. 251-66.

1For an interesting a

 

 

 

 

 

; {at}

139

and the exchange which follows. The scene is almost wholly
predicated upon physiognomy—~it becomes, in fact, a kind
'of recognition scene, for each recognizes and is entirely
persuaded of the nobility of character in the other solely
by appearance.

Tam.: Whom seekst thou Persean? I am Tamburlaine.
Ther: Tamburlaine? A Sythian shepheard, so imbellished
With Natures pride, and richest furniture,

His looks do menace heaven and dare the Gods,
His fierie eies are fixt upon the earth,
As if he now devis'd some Stratageme:

(I, ii, 348-53)

 

 

Miss Katherine Lever in an interesting analysis of the play,1
suggests that Theridamus in this exclamation reveals that

he "is not fooled by the change. He immediately sees what
we in the audience see"—-which is to say, a Scythian "shep-
heard" pretending by costume and brave words to appear as
something other than he truly is. I believe this is to be
wholly wrong. Theridamus does not "see what we see,“ he
sees only the majestic figure of a man before him and tells
us so, so that we will the more clearly see what Marlowe
intends us to see. Not only is this made evident by the
Sequel; it is supported by the very words Theridamus

chooses to register his shocked surprise. And it is shocked
surprise which he betrays when Tamburlaine identifies him—

self. He obviously was looking for a rude and barbarous

g

1"The Image of Man in Tamburlaine, Part I," 3Q,
(October, 1956), M21—u27.

 

 

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lAO

mountain thief and discovers instead a monument of a man.
We should not, I think, suppose that an ironic intention
informs Theridamus' diction in this speech. After all,

it is nature's "pride and richest furniture" with which

 

Tamburlaine is embellished, not the "furniture" supplied
by the armory or the tailor's shOp.

In any event, Tamburlaine is no less taken with the
striking appearance of Theridamus--and we now understand
Mycetes' earlier reference to his victorious looks. The
exchange continues:

Tam: Noble and milde this Persean seemes to be,
If outward habit iudged the inward man.
Tech: His deep affections make him passionate.
Tam: With what a maiesty he rears his looks:
In thee (thou valiant man of Persea)
I see the folly of thy Emperour:
Art thou but Captaine of a thousand horse,
That by Characters graven in thy browes,

And by thy martial face and stout aspect,
Deserv'st to have the leading of an hoste?

(I, 11, 357-355)
After this bit of metopOSCOpic flattery, Tamburlaine
unleashes the full force of his rhetoric and builds
before Theridamus' eyes the veritable throne of gold
Which he is prepared to share with him. In the process,
interestingly enough, he must refer one final time to his
humble origin but now he is prepared to recall that Jove
himself "sometime masked in a shepheard's weed” (my
italics), even as Tamburlaine's true self was partially
and only for a time hidden by the circumstances of his birth.

Theridamus cannot withstand this double assault; looks and

141

words in rare combination carry the day, even as Mycetes
had predicted they would:

Won with thy words, and conquered with thy looks,
I yeeld my selfe, my men and horse to thee:

(I, ii, 423-4)

The exchange with Theridamus, then, by its specific
physiognomic content, calls full attention to the signifi-
cance with which Marlowe wishes to endow the physical
appearance of his hero. That a man of Theridamus' integrity
and boldness could be persuaded to cut his allegiance to
Persia by Tamburlaine's sheer physical presence is ample
testimony to the perfect correspondence that obtains between
his spirit and his countenance. We now know that Techelles'
vision of Tamburlaine, "with frowning browes and fiery lookes"
receiving the obeisance of conquered kings, was not court
flattery of the kind one might expect from a subordinate
thief. His prophecy of power and splendor is written clearly
in Tamburlaine's features.

Those features are again emphasized in the scene
immediately following the confrontation with Theridamus.

At this point it is well to recall that Marlowe has had
Tamburlaine on stage for all of the first act, either
literally or, in the first scene, through the description
of his activities and his ambition given by Mycetes and

his counsellors. And while literally on stage his presence
has been "interpreted" and enlarged by the stunned descrip—

tions of both Techelles and the stranger Theridamus.

‘

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

142

Act Two, then, opens with Tamburlaine again off—stage but
Marlowe continues to add to his hero's stature through

physiognomic portraiture.

Cosroe alerts us to the significance of the descrip-
tion to follow by using metoposc0pic imagery in his
opening speech:

Thus farre are we towards Theridamus,
And valiant Tamburlaine, the man of fame

The man that in the forhead of his fortune,
Beares figures of renowne and myracle:

 

It is interesting to note that, at this point at least,
Tamburlaine has not achieved fame in any real sense. He
complains of it himself when persuading Theridamus to Join
him:

Ioine with me now in this my meane estate

(I cal it meane, because being yet obscure,

The nations far remoou'd admyre me not) (11. 397-99)
He has not conquered anyone; on the contrary his military
activity has been confined chiefly to attacking caravans.
But Cosroe can speak of him as a "man of fame," even as
Techelles and Theridamus see fame coming to him. The
"renown," not yet earned, is figured in the "forhead of
his fortune"--and his face. This is what Cosroe has
heard about him, that he is destined for success and that
this destiny is written indelibly in the lines of his

forehead. But Cosroe has not yet seen him and so he asks

Menaphon for a full description:

143

But tell me, that hast seene him, Menaphon,

What stature wields he, and what personage?
Mena: Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned,

Like his desire, lift upwards and divine,

So large of lims, his ioints so strongly knit,

Such breadth of shoulders as might mainely beare

Olde Atlas' burthen, twixt his manly pitch,

A pearle more worth, then all the world's plaste:

Wherein by curious soveraintie of Art,

Are fixt his piercing instruments of sight:

Whose fiery cyrcles beare encompassed

A heaven of heavenly bodies in their Spheares:

That guides his steps and actions to the throne,

Where honor sits invested royally:

Pale of complexion: wrought in him with passion,

Thirsting with soverainty with love of armes.

His lofty browes in foldes, do figure death,

And in their smoothnesse, amitie and life:

About them hangs a knot of Amber heire

Wrapped in curles, as fierce Achilles was,

On which the breath of heaven delights to play,

Making it daunce with wanton maiestie:

His armes and fingers long and s(i)nowy,

Betokening valour and excesse of strength:

In every part prOportioned like the man,

Should make the world subdued to Tamburlaine

(II, i, 461-84)
This is an extraordinary passage, forming, as it so clearly
does, a full-length physiognomic portrait of the hero off-
stage.1 Every detail lends itself to the delineation of
the character which subsequently will be revealed in action.
Indeed, in this description Marlowe accounts for the pride,

the wrathful anger, the strength and courage, even the

‘

lCarroll Camden discusses the choleric content of this
description in "Tamburlaine: The Choleric Man," MLN, XLIV,
pp. ”30-35. Professor Camden does not, however, discuss in
any detail the physical characteristics emphasized in the
portrait, preferring to match Tamburlaine's behavioral
characteristics with those traditionally assigned to the
man afflicted with an abundance of choler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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poetry1 and the lust for knowledge which so distinctly mark
Tamburlaine. It is an idealized portrait, to be sure, but
it is not permitted to violate the standard physiognomic
prescription for the hot and dry complexion, the prescrip-
tion for the choleric man. The lean, well-made body, the
long arms and fingers, the curly amber hair, the fiery
piercing eyes, these are signs of excessive choler and
Tamburlaine exhibits them all. The pale complexion, on

the other hand, must be considered an unusual note, not
often associated with the hot and dry type. As pointed out
in the analysis of Dekker's portrait of Jonson in
Satiromastix (see below p. 222) the choleric man is most often
accompanied by a ruddy or brown or citron coloring. As

the Secreta Secretorum puts it, "the colericke sholde have

 

yalowe coloure medelit with rede (cap 58). Richard
Saunders, however, does cite the predominance of a "white
complexion" in the choleric man who ”hath Jupiter in his
Nativity" (p. 171) and this type too can be expected to
exhibit reddish hair and exceedingly quick anger. So too

does the Kalendar of Shepherds assign choleric attributes,

 

i.e., "cruelty, spiteful, hot, disloyal, full of ire," to

the man with, amongst other signs, a "long and fair visage.”

‘—

lLily B. Campbell cites Thomas Newton's Touchstones of
99mplexion for this Judgment of the "hot and dry natured”
man: he is right well furnished and skilful in perfecte
utterance, vehemence of speech, and readines of tounge;"
Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, p. 58.

 

 

 

 

 

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In brief, Tamburlaine's pale complexion is unusual in the
choleric type but is accounted for by the experts.

The passage is equally interesting as an example of
the way in which Marlowe deftly handles "scientific"
material. No one in the audience has to know the first
thing about physiognomy or the physiology of the humours
to understand the general meaning to be discovered in
Tamburlaine's appearance. The pointers are provided for
all of the essential signs. Tamburlaine's tall, straight
stature is likened to his towering, almost superhuman
pride-~his desire lifting "upwards and divine." The meaning
of his well—knited joints, broad shoulders and large limbs
is the obvious one of strength and Marlowe makes this clear
with the allusion to Atlas. Still further, the significance
of the forehead, both wrinkled and smooth, and of the arms
and fingers is implied or explicitly stated. Only the curly
amber hair is left unexplained, and even in this instance
the allusion to Achilles leaves no doubt of its general
import. While it is probable that only some in the audience
could be expected to know that a martialist is often
endowed with Just this kind and color of hair--with "haire
red or sandy flaxen, and many times crisping or curling"l-—

most would recognize the intended parallel not only with
1

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Achilles' courage and strength but with his pride and
quick temper. While not many watching the play for the
first time could be expected to have read and remembered

the Secreta Secretorum's account of long arms,1 or the

 

significance of slender fingers as recorded in the
Kalendar of Shepherds,2 no one could mistake Marlowe's
main intentions in citing these features; he tells us
explicitly that they betoken "valour and excesse of
strength" (I. 482). And so Tamburlaine's physical presence
and the attributes of character to which his physiology has
assigned him are revealed in considerable fulness even in
his absence. Cosroe is as impressed by Menaphone's descrip-
tion as we are:

Wel hast thou pourtraid in thy tearms of life,

The face and personage of a woondrous man:

Nature doth strive with Fortune and his stars

To make him famous in accomplisht woorth: (485-88)
And of course Cosroe is right; Tamburlaine's character has
been shaped by ”Fortune and his stars" working through
Nature. But Cosroe then goes on to make a fatal error.

He assumes that a man so endowed, so prOphetically destined

to rise, can also be the master of his own fortune:

 

y

l"Whan the armys bene longe and rechynge to the kneis
whan they ben straght, tokenyth hardynesse, proesse and
fraunchise," cap 59, "Of the Shuldres."

2"Long hands and slender fingers signifieth subtlety
and a person that hath desire to know divers things,"
D- 15A.

 

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And well his merits show him to be made

His Fortunes maister, and the King of men. (489-90)
It is as if he had forgotten his own words——forgotten why
it is that Menaphon can so clearly see the future in Tam-
burlaine's physiognomy. It is this error which leads
Cosroe to suppose that there are limits to Tamburlaine's
ambition, that the Scythian can control his own overweening
pride, his lust for cruelty, that he can, in short, settle
for a cozy partnership with his Persian overlord. And this
is a fatal error. Theridamus can truthfully say that while
he praises the power of royalty, he "can live without it:
(1. 771). Tamburlaine cannot. The elements warring with-
in his breast for sovereignty have been so constituted by
Nature as to destine him

. . .to weare our selues and never rest,

Vntill we reach the ripest fruit of all,

That perfect blisse and sole felicitie,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crowne. (877-80)
Cosroe's praise of Nature for having fashioned this sup-
posed paragon of merit is turned to ashes in his mouth.

He dies uncomprehending:

The strangest men that ever nature made,
I know not how to take their tyrannies. (890-1)

The irony of this total failure to comprehend Tamburlaine's
character is obvious. The very men who so accurately
painted his picture for the audience, the men who listened
to Menaphon expressly say that the hero was "in every part
PPOportioned like the man/ Should make the world subdued to

Tamburlaine," are now reduced to wonder, in Ortygius' phrase,

 

 

 

 

 

 

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148

What God or Feend, or Spirit of the earth,
Or Monster turned to a manly shape,

Or of what mould or mettel he be made,
What star or State soever governe him.

(my italics) (826—29)
Agydas, the nobleman accompanying Zenocrate and
captured with her, is the next person in the play to take
account of the meaning of Tamburlaine's appearance. His
attempt to dissuade Zenocrate from her love of her
captor is based largely upon the obviously and overpower-
ingly martial cast to his face. Indeed, when Tamburlaine
overhears the argument of Agydas, then shows himself, no
words need be spoken. In the towering wrath of Tambur-
laine's countenance, in the "late felte frownes," the soul
of Agydas divines its overthrow. Nor is there question
about what "state” governs this ireful creature. Agydas is
. . . most astonied
To see his choller shut in secrete thoughtes,
And wrapt in silence of his angry soule
Vpon his browes was pourtraid ugly death,
And in his eies the fury of hie hart,

That shines as Comets, menacing revenge
And casts a pale complexion on his cheeks.

(1054—60)
It is worth noticing how many of the details of appearance
80 dutifully recorded by Menaphon are here repeated by
Agydas. The pale complexion, the wrinkled forehead
depicting death, the shining eyes, all are correctly
Judged by Agydas to reveal the dangerous abundance of
Choler whichCXKBthreatens his life even as it threatened,

though they were too blind to realize it, the lives of

 

 

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I49

Cosroe and his court. Techelles and Vsumcasane are per-
fectly aware that Agydas has correctly interpreted the
meaning of Tamburlaine'sfearsomecmmmlexion—-and so, too,
is Tamburlaine. He sends his henchmen in to exploit the
possibilities for cruelty:
Techelles: See you Agydas how the king salutes you.
He bids you prophesie what it imports.'
Agydas: I prophecied before and now I prooue,
The killing frownes of iealousie and love.
He needed not with words confirme my feare,
For words are vaine when working tooles
Present the naked action of my threatened
End. (1075-79)
And after Agydas kills himself, to avoid the further pain
and suffering he knows only too well can be expected from
Tamburlaine, Techelles once again emphasizes the point which
Marlowe has so consistently developed--that Tamburlaine's

character is imprinted upon the features of his body:

Vsumcasane, see how right the man
Hath hit the meaning of my Lord the king.

 

In this man's external appearance lies his meaning and his
meaning is his Chara tsr‘and his character is so firmly and
narrowly fixed as to predict his future. This is the
determined logic with which Marlowe presents Tamburlaine

on the stage. His wrinkled brow and piercing eyes, while
not the monstrous deformity of King Richard's humped back,

are no less prophetic in nature.

The meaning of Tamburlaine's appearance, and with it
the power of his physical presence, are established, then,

Very early in Part One. Marlowe's task in the remaining

150

scenes of that play and in the succeeding five acts of

Part Two is to give continuing emphasis to this important

 

aspect of his protagonist's character. This he does in
part by featuring Tamburlaine's awful and commanding
countenance in the brief descriptions of the hero given
to others to report. Thus when the Souldan of Egypt
accuses his subjects of inordinate fear before the
approaching army of Tamburlaine, the messenger seeks to
account for it by describing the "lookes" of the Scythian.
Nay (mightie Souldan) did your greatnes see
The frowning lookes of fiery Tamburlaine
That with his terrour and imperious eies

Commandes the hearts of his associates,
It might amaze your royall maiesty. (IV, i, 1383-87)

 

So too, in Part Two the chorus of awe before the face of

 

this conqueror commences with Techelles' paean to "our
earthly God,/ Whose lookes made this inferiour world to
quake" (11. 2707-8) and is echoed by Theridamus when he

urges Olympia to come with him to look upon "

a man greater
than Mahomet,/ in whose high lookes is much more maiesty/
Than from the Concave superfices/ Of Iove's vast

pallace. . . (111, iv, 2&57—601

The fierce, piercing gaze of the ireful choleric man has
almost become impossible to look upon for long.
The dramatic emphasis given to Tamburlaine's counte~

nance is continued in the comments of his enemies throughout

151

Part II.1 Indeed, Tamburlaine himself adds verbal support
to his actual presence in the confrontation with Almeda
("Seest thou not death within my wrathfull looks?"l
with his friends and followers when he promises that his
"sterne aspect" will bring them victory (1. 3665) and,
finally when this same thought is made a part of his dying
gesture:
My looks shall make them flie, and might I follow,
There should not one of all the villaines power
Live to give offer of another fight.
Vsum: I ioy my Lord, your highnesse is so strong,
That can endure so well your royall presence,
Which onely will dismay the enemy.
Tam: I know it will Casane: draw you slaves,
In spight of death I will goe show my face
(V, iii, 1500-07)
And of course his enemies fly from his very glance just as
he predicted they would.

Although the martial cast of Tamburlaine's fierce

brow and eyes are kept before us throughout Part Two,

 

Marlowe does not depend entirely upon this single rhetori-
cal device to focus attention upon his hero's physical
appearance and constitution. Early in 3&3312H2 (I, iv)
he develops what may well be considered an artful variation

on Menaphon's elaborate description of Tamburlaine in

Part One. This time our attention is ostensibly directed

g

lSee IV, 1, 8849—51, and V, 1, 4133-35.

 

 

 

 

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iv

.4.

 

 

 

152

to the three sons and yet, actually, Marlowe continues his
development, by contrast, of the portrait of their father.
That it is a portrait we are looking upon is beyond

question. Tamburlaine himself arranges the subjects with

all the self-conscious care we might expect of an artist

working with his models. Zenocrate is made to sit up "in

pompe and maiestie" and the sons are "plac‘d by her side"

and made to look up into their mother's face. It is only

when they are frozen in this artificial position that the

disturbing thought first occurs to their father that they
may not share the capacity for martial excess, for cruelty

and conquest, to which his own choleric complexion so

fixedly inclines him. We are made to suppose that Tambur-

laine is looking scientifically upon his sons for the very

first time:

But yet me thinks their looks are amorous,
Not martiall as the sons of Tamburlaine.

Water and ayre being simbolised in one

Argue their want of courage and of wit,

Their haire as white as milke and soft as Downe,
Which should be like the quilles of Porcupines,
As blacks as leat, and hard as iron or steel,
Bewraies they are too dainty for the wars.

Their fingers made to quaver on a Lute,

Their legs to dance and caper in the aire:

Would make me thinke them Bastards, not my sons,

But that I know they issued from they wombe
That never look'd on man but Tamburlaine

(I, iv, 2590-2603)

Now, certainly, this group portrait has far fewer details

than Menaphon's earlier description of Tamburlaine. The

boys are not even individually described, although we

 

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153

know that later the character of Calyphas will be most
clearly distinguished from his brothers. One line seems
to point particularly to him ("Water and ayre being simbo—
lised in one") but then reverts to the plural and includes
the brave sons Amyras and Celebinus as well. Marlowe's
primary intention, in fact, seems to be to establish the
contrast between the father on the one hand and the sons,
collectively, on the other and with the boldest possible
strokes. If Calyphas' later defection is prepared for,

it by no means serves as the only justification for the
descriptive passage.

The strokes are, indeed, bold for even Tamburlaine's
hair color, a perfectly acceptable amber in Menaphon's
description, is sacrificed for the more effectively con-
trasting jet black of this passage.1 So, too, there is
no attempt to depict the exact complexion which any one
or all of the boys might have. Marlowe seems chiefly
interested in establishing that their complexions are not
like their father's. All we are told is that the qualities
Of water (cold and moist; the phlegmatic complexion) are
mixed in some undefined way with the qualities of air
(hot and moist; the sanguine complexion) and that the

mixture scarcely suits the sons of Tamburlaine. The father's

¥

1Richard Saunders on hair color reports that "Black
Hair proceeds from an excessive adjust choler or adjust and
hot blood," p. 189.

 

 

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.an:

154

hot and dry qualities, the martial complexion of the choleric
man, are noticeably absent in all three of his sons--so
clearly so as to make him wonder if they can be his.

However imprecise its details may be, the fact
remains that so far as it goes the portrait of the boys
is interpreted accurately by their father. Soft hair is
a sure physiognomic sign for cowardice. In the Secreta

Secretorum the animal analogy which is responsible for

 

this interpretation is clearly stated:
Nesshe [soft] heere tokenyth a dredfulle, and
harde heere tokenyth hardy and strong, and that
apperyth in dyvers bestys. For an hare and a
sheepe bene ful gastefull, and have full nesshe

here. And the 1yone a d a boore bene full stronge
and have stronge here.

Thomas Hill, without identifying the analogy, confirms

soft hair as an indication of "effeminate minde and courage"
and goes on to suggest that not only does such a person
"lack bloude" but is probably "dull of sense and slow."2
Thus Tamburlaine's fear that the physical constitution of
his sons argues "their want of courage and of wit" is
justified even if in two of the three cases the boys over-

come their phlegmatic inclinations and follow their father

into battle.3 Zenocrate's reply,

 

lYonge, Sec. Sec., cap. 58.

 

2Thomas Hill, Cont. Mankind, chapter x111.

3White hair is one of the signs of the phlegmatic com—
plexion. In Saunder's view it proceeds from "want of natural

155

My gratious Lord, they have their mother's looks
But when they list, their conquering father's hart

(2604—5)
with its reassuring insistence that they are not destined
to be what their looks suggest, is perfectly orthodox
physiognomic doctrine. As Thomas Hill so carefully points
out, "the bodily notes of Physiognomating by the natural
conditions of men doe prouve and cause a great probableness,
although no necessitie" (cap. 1). And so it is with
Amyras and Celebinus if not with Calyphas and his father.
For all of their differences, Tamburlaine and Calyphas have
at least one thing in common: they are precisely what they
appear to be.

Calyphas is, as his father acknowledges in the
execution scene, an "image of sloth, and picture of a
slave" and he is so framed because his soul was

Created of the massy dregges of earth,
The scum and tartar of the Elements,

Wherein was neither corrage, strength or wit,
But follie, sloth and damned idlenesse:

(3797-3800)
His own incorporeal spirit is made of an entirely different
"mould" which makes him "valiant, proud, ambitious" and,

though he does not say so, prone to viciousness and cruelty,

 

heat, or corrupted flegm" op. cit., p. 189. The phlegmatic
man is traditionally associated with listlessness and cowar-
dice. While most accounts of the phlegmatic complexion in-
clude a reference to sexual impotence, Marlowe himself
apparently associated lechery with it. Calyphas talks about
sleeping with the captured concubines and Wager, in

2:; Faustus, amusingly refers to himself as ”by nature
(flegmaticke, slowe to wrath, and prone to leachery (to love
i would say)". . .(1. 218)

13.....- :4

 

156

as well. No less than his disappointing son's, however,

Tamburlaine's spirit has unfailingly etched its character
upon the features of the body which contains it and those
features are made to play a significant role in Marlowe's

dramatic account of his rise and fall.

After Tamburlaine Marlowe never again had occasion

 

to use physiognomy in his plays in such a pervasive way.
The character of the Scythian warrior is the only one he
created with such conscious conformity to the physiognomic
prescriptions of the humours. And yet one characteristic
of Tamburlaine—-his ferocious, death-announcing frown--
becomes in the later plays a Marlovian commonplace.
Strictly speaking, it is a pathognomic feature—-one that
changes with the passing of mood and expression. In
Tamburlaine, however, as we have seen, it is very nearly
made a permanent metoposcopic mark, for everyone recognizes
it in the wrinkles of the hero's face and everyone knows
immediately what it imports. In the later plays we find
nothing like the consistent development of this feature in
any one character and yet it appears from time to time to
heighten dramatic tension, or to enhance stature or
presence. Thus in The Massacre at Paris the Duke of Guise
faces death in a brief scene which seems to be ordered
around the facial appearance of both murderers and victim.

The Duke immediately and traditionally remarks the

157
"gastly" look of the first murderer when he enters, then
turns aside the warning not to proceed with a line which
suggests both Tamburlaine's faith in his commanding
presence and the Duchess of Malfi's simple dignity:
Let mean consaits, and baser men feare death

But they are peasants, I am Duke of Guise:
And princes with their lookes ingender feare.

(1006—8)

The brief scene closes with the Duke again observing the
countenances of his murderers and taking warning from
the paleness he discovers there. It is as if the imagery
of the scene were conceived to act like a solitary spot-
light, now focusing upon the ashy faces of the assassins,
now revealing the commanding presence of the Duke.

Earlier in the same play the Duke, in a long monologue
announcing his intentions, consciously calls for the very
facial appearance that in the death scene he so vainly
relies upon.

Give me a look, that when I bend the browes,
Pale death may walke in furrowes of my face:

(158-59)
This plea, it should be noted, is not hypocritical; the
Duke is not calling for a mask that he might seem what he
is not. The pathognomic point is that he wants inwardly
and spiritually to become so resolute, bold and ruthless
in his drive for the throne that that inward state must
be emblazoned on his countenance. He is, then, acknow-

leging the basic correspondence between the body and the

 

 

In

158

soul; calling for a change of the one assumes a like
change of the other.

In Edward II Marlowe again utilizes the notion of

 

the face as mirror of the soul in the assassination scene.
Here, of course, the dramatic intention is to heighten
suspense and elicit our sympathy for the imprisoned
King. Marlowe very carefully modulates King Edward's
intimation of his impending doom with the King's pitiful
and all-too—human willingness to believe that Lightborne
may be other than his face reveals him so clearly to be.
The moment Lightborne enters the filthy cell, Edward
sees the truth in his appearance:
Edw: Whose there, what light is that, wherefore
comes thou?
Light: To comfort you, and bring you ioyfull newes.

Edw. Small confort findes poore Edward in thy lookes,
Villaine, I know thou comst to murder me.

(2490—93)
Lightborne, of course, registers shocked surprise at this
immediate and accurate assessment and thereafter tries
to convince the King that he has genuinely come to help
him. His face is altered, as best he can alter it, and
tears are feigned. Edward wants desperately to believe
that Lighborne's face is now telling the truth ("Weepst
thou already?") and he rushes out his tale of woe to
reinforce the pity he hOpeS he sees there. But Lightborne
can no more hide the truth than the murderers of the Duke
of Guise. Edward again has to face the message he sees

beneath the tear-stained mask:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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t...

 

‘1

159

These lookes of thine can harbor nought but death.

I see my tragedie written in thy browes, (2521-22)
And yet again Lightborne is able to convince the King of
what he wishes so clearly to be convinced. Edward
apologizes for the suspicion-— (”Forgive my thought for
having such a thought")-—but he knows his man and shows
us he does by moving immediately to the attempt to bribe
him. The scene closes with Edward tremulously closing,
then opening his eyes, trying to sleep as he is urged,
yet fearful of the fate he knows awaits him and unable
to look away from the countenance on which that fate is
revealed.

Marlowe does not, of course, restrict the message

one conveys by the countenance to murder and villainy alone.
We recall that Menaphon balanced his account of Tamburlaine's
forehead, death figuring only in the folds and wrinkles
while "amitie and life" are conveyed by its smoothness.
30, too, while Marlowe has Epernoun, the physiognomist—
counsellor to King Henry in The Massacre of Paris immediately
warn against the friar,

I like not this Frier's look
Twere not amisse my Lord if he were searcht (1172—3)

he permits Edward to read trust and loyaltyih the face of
the Abbot who offers to hide him from his enemies:"Father,
thy face should harbor no deceit (l. 1875). .And both prove

to have been sound judgments.

160

It is fitting to close this account of Marlowe's use
of physiognomy by leaving the plays for a brief look at
Hero and Leander for it is in this poem, both in Marlowe's
two sestiads and, more elaborately and clinically, in~
Chapman's continuation, that we find one of the clearest
non-scientific statements of the Elizabethan belief in the
interrelationship of the body and the soul. In Marlowe's
sestiads three instances of body-soul correspondence are
to be found, each one slightly different in context from
the others.1 The most obviously sustained reference is
pathognomic in character. Upon returning home Leander's
father is able to detect in his face the "painting of the
passion" which Hero has aroused:

Therefore even as an Index to a booke,

So to his mind was yoong Leanders looke.

0 none but gods have power their love to hide,
Affection by the count'nance is descride.

The light of hidden fire itselfe discovers,

And love that is conceal'd, betraies poore lovers.
His secret flame apparently was seene,

Leanders father knew where hee had beene.

(II: 129-36)

 

Marlowe does not trouble to eXplain or account for his in—
dex image in scientifically satisfactory terms, preferring
to let us suppose, on the analogy of the sun at noon, that
beauty burns most fiercely when furthest removed. In any

event the relationship of the affections and the countenance

lFor still another reference to death-dealing glances
and a "ghastly dreadfull countenaunce" see I, 381-2.

161

is explicitly established in this passage, and it is a
passage which Chapman is to enlarge upon when dealing
with what he considers to be the sinful indiscretion of
Hero.

In the first sestiad two further references to
the correSpondence of body and soul are made. The
first is slight enough and can be found in Leander's
effort to convince Hero of his love and her cruelty in
refusing it. The plea is enveloped in the physiognomic
notion of deformity and thus permits the young lover to
compliment Hero even as he pleads for her favor. The
paradox is a traditional one:

Be not unkind and faire, mishapen stuffe
Are of behaviour boisterous and ruffe (I, 203—4)

and in this fanciful scene does not remotely resemble the
dramatically potent use to which it is put by Shakespeare
in Richard III.

The second physiognomic reference is no more weighty,
appearing as it does in Marlowe's introductory description
Of Leander. We are told that Leander's delicate, if not
effeminate, appearance is marked by a "pleasant smiling
cheeke," a "brow for love to banquet roiallye" and ”a
speaking eye," all of which together argue that he was "made
for amourous play" (I, 83-88). One can dismiss this portrait
as the imprecise description of a finely-featured, handsome
young man and that, clearly, is all that it is. But the

"Speaking eye" has interest for us, for it, along with the

162

scene in which Leander's expression is interpreted by his
father, informs Chapman's severe account of the effect of
Hero's sinful fall from chastity.
That account comes early in Chapman's continuation

(III, 235-80) and through its physiognomic content shows
how consciously the later poet sought to graft his moralis-
tic sequel to Marlowe's charmingly sensuous story. After
developing an extended parallel between Essex's assault
of Cadiz and Leander's ravishment of the "expunged fort"
of Hero's "chast bosome," Chapman introduces the problem
of dissimulation. First, of course, Hero's transgression
must be established in visual terms and this he does by
developing the "index of the mind hint" given by Marlowe
in Leander's encounter with his father:

She mus'd how she could looke Vpon,her Sire,

And not shew that without that was intire.

For as a glasse is an inanimate eie,

And outward formes imbraceth inwardlie:

So is the eye an animate glasse that showes

In-formes without vs. (III, 233-38)
The revelation of inner reality is not, of course, confined
to the "speaking eye" alone. As we have come to realize,
the eye is but one of the features, albeit one of the chief
ones, for physiognomic analysis. It acts, however, as the
portal through which the soul conveys the signs of a newly
conceived "forme," even as "Phoebus throwes/His beames

abroad, though he in clowdes be closde. . . ." Chapman

continues the parallel in this way:

163

So when our fierie soule, our bodies starre

(That ever is in motion circulars)

Conceives a forme; in seeking to display it

Through all our clowdie parts, it doth convey it
Forth at the eye, as the most pregnant place

And that reflects it round about the face.

And this event vncourtly Hero thought 1
Her inward guilt would in her lookes have wrought.

(245-52)
This is precisely the character of the concern--and it
seems more than a pathognomic one—-that we discover in
Lucrece although, perhaps more appropriately, Shakespeare's
heroine eXpresses that concern in the more permanently
disfiguring diction of branding or engraving. The sign of
Lucrece's shame is "engraven'd" upon her forehead, while
we are to suppose that Hero's disfigurement emanates from
the eye and slowly suffuses the entire countenance. In
any event the problem of the external manifestations of
spiritual defilement makes Hero, assuredly for the first
time, consider the question of dissimulation. She is
initially appalled by the difficulty:

Yet brazde not Heros brow with impudence;

And this she thought most hard to bring to pas,

To seeme in countenance other than she was,

As if she had two soules; one for the face,

One for the hart; and that they shifted place

As either list to vtter or conceale

What they conceiv'd: or as one soule did deale
With both affayres at once, keeps and elects

Both at an instant contrarie effects:

Retention and eiection in her powrs

Being acts alike: for this one vice of ours,

That forms the thought, and swaies the countenance,
Rules both our motion and our vtterance. (268-81)

1For a more extended consideration of Chapman's view of
the relation of body and soul see R. W. Battenhouse, "Chapman
and the Nature of Man," ELH, XII (June, l945), 87—107.

164

That the difficulty can be overcome and "counterfeit
faces coyned" Hero discovers later in the poem. The
nature of the difficulty is our limited concern and Chap-
man, taking up the physiognomic vignettes in the two ses-
tiads left him by Marlowe, furthered his poetic intention
by specifying;in considerable detail how and why the face
is but the mirror of the soul.

In all important ways, Chapman's continuation of
-Marlowe's hymn to sensual love is ill—conceived. The
tone of orthodox moral judgment offends the ear accustomed
to Marlowe's delighted and delightful account of young
love consummated. But in his reliance upon the notion of
correspondence between body and soul, Chapman is perfectly
consistent, merely developing at length hints discovered
in the first two sestiads. Indeed, his use of physiognomy
is consistent, not only with what he found in Marlowe's
poem but with the point of view so pervasively developed
in Tamburlaine and more spasmodically, in Edward II and
The Massacre at Paris. Conscious and manipulated deception

aside, we are truly what on the surface we show ourselves

to be.

CHAPTER VII
BEN JONSON: PHYSIOGNOMY AND THE COURTIER

So may the outward shows be least themselves;
The world is still deceiv'd with ornament.
There i no vice so simple but assumes

Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

The Merchant of Venice (III, ii, 73—82)

 

. .and he! this man! so grac'd, guilded or (to
use a more fit metaphore) so tin-foild by nature,
as not ten house—wives pewter (again' a good time)
shew's more bright to the world than he!.
to conceale such reall ornaments as these, and
shaddow their glorie, as,a Millaners wife do's her
wrought stomacher, with a smokie lawne, or a black
cypress? O coussl. . . .Come, wrong not the
qualitie of your desert, with looking downeward,
couz; but hold up your head, so: and let the Idea
of what you are be pourtray'd 1' your face, that
men may reade i' your*phySnomie,(Here within this
place is to be seene the true, rare and accom-
plish'd monster or miracle of nature, which is all
one.

 

 

Every Man in His Humour (I, iii, 113 ff)

 

Marlowe's vitriolic hero in Tamburlaine, precisely drawn

 

to conform to the physical and psychological prescriptions

of the choleric man, is the closest approximation of a

"physiognomic character" that I have discovered in Eliza-

bethan drama. Nor are Tamburlaine's features merely added

as a tidy measure of consistency in the portrait; they

are repeatedly insisted upon, artfully framed and

165

u.--

 

fl I

u.

166

dramatically relevant. Marlowe consciously invokes the
physiognomic extensions of the old physiology and as a
consequence the Scythian Scourge is "an admirable portrait
of a man in his own humour."l

In Ben Jonson's comedy of humours we find nothing
remotely resembling the "scientific" portraiture in

Tamburlaine. And this is, at first, mildly surprising

 

for not only did Jonson think of his satiric targets

in humoral terms but he brought to his plays an extra—

ordinary knowledge of scientific lore, including, of

course, a knowledge of physiognomy.2 The satiric possibili—

ties of adding a physiognomic dimension to his humoral

misfits, grossly exaggerated for the stage, must have

occurred to him and as certainly must have been rejected.
There may well have been several reasons for his,

not the least of which is the awkwardness involved in

devising characters and scenes for the specific purpose

of calling audience attention to physical details. Marlowe,

with only his hero to portray in this fashion, manages

tolerably well, but even so Menaphon's description percep-

tively slows the movement in the play. Jonson's comic

 

1Carroll Camden, "Tamburlaine: The Choleric Man," MLN,
XLIV: p. 435. John Bakeless refers to Tamburlaine as "pr5:—'
sumably an early but entirely conscious example of the 'comedy
of humours' later developed by Ben Jonson:" The Tragicall
giStOPy of Christopher Marlowe (Harvard Univ. Press, lguéY, I,
12.

2His knowledge of physiognomy is demonstrated in many
plays, notably in The Alchemist, and will be discussed below.

167

world is abundantly populated with "humorous" types; to ac-
count for the physiognomic peculiarities of each would in—
volve an artificial series of set pieces within the plays.
And even more important reason for Jonson's refusal
to add physiognomic dimensions to his characters, most
certainly resides in the tenuous connection which links
excess in his characters with actual physiological malad-
justment. The gulls and fops in his plays are not suffering
from a superfluity of bile or phlegm; rather they reveal
all too clearly a superfluity of greed of vanity or hypoc-
risy and they diSplay all the unlovely but universally
human characteristics which inevitable accompany these
vices. In this important sense, Jonson's "comedy of
humours" bears little more than a metaphorical relationship
to the physiology of the humours. There is no scientific
foundation upon which physiognomic detail might be imposed.
Finally, it may be that we discover no literal use
of physiognomy in Jonson's plays simply because he gave no
credit to the science. It is difficult, certainly, to
isolate the notes of personal conviction in a work of
dramatic art; one can never be certain that he has. And
Yet there is a much more easily discovered author in the
satiric comedies of Ben Jonson than in the plays of almost

k

Herford and Simpson (Vol. I, Appendix) do not record a spe-
cific physiognomic text in that part of Jonson's library
known to us. He did own, however the Magia Naturalis of the
eminent physiognomist Baptista della Porta and may as easily
have read that author's physiognomic works.

 

 

a.

A!
U.

168

any of his contemporaries. It is in the nature of satire,
of course, to reveal the convictions of its author and it
is a nature many times reinforced by the powerful sense

of outrage, the magnificent scorn of which Jonson is so
capable. The peOple who either believed in physiognomy

or used it to gull others are often the objects of his
satiric contempt. If, with Shakespeare and with most

in his age, he may have granted the modest claims of
pathognomy, Jonson certainly felt differently about physiog-
nomy as a prophetic science. In fact, the physiognomy of

The Alchemist is the physiognomy proscribed by the Statutes

 

of the Realm--fortune-telling and pretentious nonsense used,
along with alchemical and astrological ruses, by rogues in
search of gold.

If Jonson, then, made no attempt to construct a

' or even to add

thorough—going "physiognomical character,‘
physiognomic dimensions to his humorous types, he nonethe—
less found the assumptions of the pseudo-science to have

a certain usefulness on the stage. Principally, physiog-
nomy became in his hands a tool for the searching examination
Of what must be considered the most despised of human vices
in the England of Elizabeth's last years: hypocrisy. In
Shakespeare's tragic world hypocrisy is necessarily secondary
in importance; it accompanies and covers a more deeply

Villainous evil within. King Richard III is a splendid

hYpocrite, but we scarcely hesitate at this venial

169

way-station on our path to the mortal depths of his iniquity.
And the same is true of Iago and Edmund and Claudius. They
are all evil, each in different ways, and they all mask
their twisted natures in the hypocrisy of outward-seeming
virtue.

But in Jonson's comic world hypocrisy is no longer
an ancillary vice. And his comic world admirably mirrors
the real society of which he was a member--the society of
a capital bursting with people and with confidence, of a
court magnificently led but one seething with ambitious
courtiers anxious for preferment and for the wealth it
might bring. "It was an age," according to Marchette
Chute, "in which everything depended on knowing the right
people, and when the great Lord Burghley wrote out ten

rules of conduct for his son he acknowledged the situation

with perfect frankness. 'Be sure to keep some great man
thy friend. . . .Compliment him often. Present him with
many, yet small gifts. . . .Otherwise, in this ambitious
l
V"

age, thou shalt live in obscurity. What Cecil is really
telling his son is that he must not forget that the old
hierarchical society, closed to a strict accounting of
birth for hundreds of years, has been destroyed and that

the new aristocracy which has taken its place is anything

_1

1Ben Jonson of Westminster, E. P. Dutton and Company,
(New York, 1968), p. 58.

170

but fixed. Wealth is its chief criterion and the way to
wealth and to knighthood in the England of Elizabeth and
James is through the good offices of someone already in
power. Alongside its magnificent achievement and the
intelligence and integrity of its Queen, the courtly
circle of Elizabeth's last years must also account for
graft and string-pulling, cruelty, conniving and greed,
a fawning regard for silken young aristocrats, an inor-
dinate attention to finery and fashion—-an overpowering
urge to judge men and their worth by outward appearance
rather than genuine merit. Manners, clothes, hair-style,
accent, the surface evidence of SOphistication, in short,

appearance is everything in this dazzling court, almost

 

the sole mark of a man's worth. Or so, clearly, it seems
to the immensely learned yet poor step-son of a Westminster

brick-layer. Let Macilente make the point:

Be a man he’er so vile
In wit, in judgement, manners, or what else;
If he can purchase but a silken cover,
He shall not only passe, but passe regarded:
Whereas, let him be poore, and meanely clad,
Though he'er so richly parted; you shall have
A fellow (that knowes nothing but his beefe,
Or how to rince his clammy guts in beere)
Will take him by the shoulders, or the throat,
And kicke him downe the staires. Such is the state

Of vertue in bad clothes!
Every Man Out (III, ix, 10-20)

Of course there is no direct or necessary connection between
the Elizabethan courtier's fondness for an elaborate ruff

and his knowledge of, or belief in, the pseudo-science of

 

 

   

 

171

physiognomy. Nor have I evidence which suggests that
Queen Elizabeth made her courtiers pass a physiognomical
entrance examination.l Nonetheless it is true, I think,
that the habit of mind which is willing to grant nobility
of character to one dressed in the most current and
approved fashion is in no significant way different from
the habit of mind which subscribes to physiognomy's

basic tenets. Both share a willingness to judge compli-
cated matters in simple—minded ways--to judge inner
qualities of character or intellect by outward appearances,
whether they be physical features, language, dress or
manners. Jonson, in any event, seems to have recognized
this similarity between physiognomy (the judging of men
by outward shape) and fashion (the judging of men by out-
ward dress and manner) and discovered that by yoking them
together he could let the distinctive foolishness of each

shed satiric light upon the other. This joining together

1This is not so improbable as it might seem. As we

earlier noted, John Evelyn reports that James I used the
pseudo—science to screen foreign ambassadors and Elizabeth
was as attracted to occult learning as her successor.
Indeed, J. E. Neale's account of Elizabeth's review of the
Archduke Charles' physical prOperties is highly suggestive:
"She was the more insistent because she apparently had an
uneasy suspicion that her suitor was misshapen; which is
not surprising if she saw a letter from her German agent
to Cecil. 'Alexander the Great,’ he wrote, 'is said to
have had his neck bent towards the left side; would that
our man--the Archduke——may be his imitator in magnanimity
and bravery.'" Queen Elizabeth I, Doubleday Anchor Books
(Garden City, 1957), 143-44.

172

of "face enui clothes" represents the most significant

and novel use of physiognomy in Jonson's plays.l

An illustration of the effortless way in which
Jonson expressly brings these concepts together can be
found in an interesting exchange between Fastidius Brisk,
Fallace and Macilente:

Fast: 0, beleeve it, sir; your good face is
the witch, and your apparell the spells,
that bring all the pleasures of the world
into their circle.

Fall: Ah, the sweet grace of a ccurtier!

Mac: Well, would my father had left mee but a
good face for my portion yet; though I had
shar'd the unfortunate wit that goes with
it, I had not car'd: I might have past for
somewhat i' the world then.

(Every Man Out II, vi, 37-44)

 

The connection is extended in a direct way by Pennyboy
Junior in The Staple of News:

I wonder, Gentlemen,
And men of meanes will not maintaine themselves
Fresher in wit, I meaneixiclothes, to the highest.
For hee that's out o' clothes, is out 0' fashion,
And out of fashion, is out of countenance,
And out o' countenance, is out o' Wit.

(I, ii, 123-28)
And, once again, this time in the Macilente—like tones of

the "Prologue" to The New Inn:

 

They doe confesse a weake, sick, queasie age,
And a shrew'd grudging too of ignorance,
When clothes and faces 'bove the men advance: (16-18)

1For an exceedingly interesting account of Jonson's use
Of clothes symbolism in the later plays, see E. B. Partridge,
"Symbolism of Clothes In Jonson's Last Plays," JEGP, LVI
(1957), 396-A09.

173

From his first play to his last Jonson habitually resorts
to the images of fashion and physiognomy to emphasize the
stupidity of judging the inner by the outer man.

One of the more elaborate examples Of how this

technique is put to dramatic use occurs in Every Man Out

 

in the scene devoted to expelling Saviolina's haughty
confidence in her own wit and judgment (V, ii). In fact,
her "humour" might be characterized as an addiction to
judging men by outward signs. It will be recalled that
the rustic clown, Sogliardo, is introduced only after
Puntarvolo and Fastidius Brisk speak of him as a most
excellent gentleman, learned, widely-travelled, valiant,
witty and, above all, a consummate actor capable Of
imitating even the most outlandish types, i.e., a rustic
clown. Saviolina dutifully falls into the trap prepared
for her by claiming that she can discover signs Of the
true gentleman regardless Of how artfully they might be
disguised. In spite Of this confidence, even Saviolina

is shocked by Sogliardo's actual appearance. When she
recovers from this momentary doubt ("Beshrew me, he
clownes it prOperly indeed"), Sogliardo begins to patch
together the conversational bits and pieces which had been
given to him for the occasion. It is interesting in this
regard to notice the Galenic connection between complexion

and temperament which figures in his Opening gambit:

174

Sog: How does my sweet lady? hote and moyst?
beautifull and lustie? ha?

Sav: Beautifull, and it please you sir, but not
lustie.

Sog: 0 ho, ladie, it pleases you to say so in truth:
and how does my sweet ladie? in health? Bona

roba, quaeso, que novelles? que novelles?
Sweet creature!

Now, of course, Sogliardo has been supplied with his Opening
flourish with some care, for it contains at least two clues
to his supposed urbanity--the Galenic compliment, salted
with a touch of licentious suggestion, and the sure sign

of the gentleman, a foreign language. Saviolina triumphantly
seizes upon these, but you would never suppose so from her

next lines:

Sav: 0 excellent! why, gallants, is this hee that
cannot bee decipher'd? they were verie bleare-
witted, yfaith, that could not discerne the
gentleman in him.

Punt: But doe you, in earnest, ladie?

Sav: Doe I sir? why, if you had any true court-
judgement in the carriage Of his eye, and
that inward power that formes his counte-
nance, you might perceive his counterfeiting
as cleere as the noone-day;

The amusing note Jonson sounds in this exchange is attribu—
table partly to Saviolina's error, but partly tOO to the

way in which she compounds her error. It would have been
one thing to have her acknowledge that she detected the
gentleman in Sogliardo by his speech. But it is quite
another, and very much in character, for her to attempt

to shift her judgment from the Obvious fluff Of a foreign
tongue to the far more pretentious trappings Of physiognomy.

It is well to recall that Jonson permits her to react to

175

Sogliardo's "physiognomy" before the clown says a word
and her reaction is one of startled disbelief ("Beshrew
me,. . ." etc.). As if this were not enough, he also
makes her give away the real basis for her confidence

by following Sogliardo's "Italian" tags with a muffled

"0 excellent." But all Of this is blissfully ignored

as she masquerades the capacity to see the "inward power"
Of Sogliardo's character figured in his countenance.

From this point onward, Saviolina blindly digs her own
grave, ably assisted by her reliance upon the pseudo-
science. It is, we are told, the "natural Carriage" Of
the gentleman which mars Sogliardo's attempt to imitate
the clown. She confesses she is amazed that they would
suppose her incapable of deciphering so Obvious a case.
As Fastidious reports to Macilente, "She hath gather'd
most infallible signes Of the gentleman in him, that's
certaine." And then, at the close, Jonson brings the
scene around full circle to reveal by true "outward

sign" exactly who Sogliardo is. His hands are turned
palms upward and there, plain for all to see, are the certain
marks Of the rustic, the calluses imprinted not by any
inward power but by the handles Of a plow. They may not
reveal his character but they tell us his station. And
they send Saviolina from the stage, mortified and yet
freed, presumably, from her humour, a humour if not sustained,

at least rationalized, by the presumptions of physiognomy.

176

It is not quite accurate to suppose that in this
scene, Jonson is in any chief way aiming his satiric point
at physiognomy. Saviolina's idiocy is his target and that
idiocy resides primarily in her arrogant belief in her own
capacity to judge the worth Of other human beings. SO
far as we can tell, she is no physiognomist; she relies
exclusively upon the snatches Of "compliment" artificially
supplied to Sogliardo for the occasion. But Saviolina at
least knows enough of the pseudo-science to invoke its
major premise- And she thinks well enough of it (it is
a ”true—court judgment") to pretend that it, not language,
is the ground upon which her judgment is based. Saviolina
remains the satiric target, but the rationale she uses to
justify her foolishness shares in the general indictment.
Physiognomy is the refuge of a fool.

In Qynthia's Revels Jonson again aims his satire at

 

the courtier's fcppish reliance upon external marks Of
merit, and again physiognomy (with its explicit reliance
Upon outward signs), is used to help expose the foolishness
Of this preoccupation in all of its forms. The clue to
Jonson's intention in this regard is found early in the
play, in the scene in which Amorphus makes his first
appearance and encounters Mercury and Echo. Echo has a
moment's amusement with the vapid ccurtier, then leaves
abruptly. Amorphus is baffled by this, for he had "read"

her character in her appearance and foresaw nothing Of the

sort:

177

This is somewhat above strange! a Nymph of her
feature, and lineament, to be so preposterously
rude! . . . .I am a Rhinoceros, if I had thought
a creature of her symmetry could have dar'd so
improportionable, and abrupt a digression.

(I, iii, 12 ff)

 

 

Aside from revealing his affected diction, this interesting
reaction of Amorphus tells us in no uncertain terms that he
is temperamentally, at least, a physiognomist--seeking a
conforming spirit to the "symmetry" of outward shape. In
fact, he is a man totally accustomed to think about himself
and about all others solely in terms of external signs.
He makes this perfectly clear, after drinking from the
Fountain of Self-Love, by the recital of his virtues which
follows. We should note especially the connection of
clothes and countenance with behavior:
If my behaviours had beene of a cheape or customarie
garbe; my accent or phrase vulgar; my garments trite;
my countenance illiterate; or unpractiz'd in the
encounter of a beautiful and brave-attir'd peece;
Then I might (with some change of colour) have sys-
pected my faculties: but (knowing myselfe an essence
so sublimated, and refin'd by travell; of so studied
and well exercis'd a gesture; so alone in fashion;
able to tender the face of any states—man living;
.etc. (I, 111, 25 ff)
The linking of "Behaviours" with "garbe," the emphasis
upon countenance and what it tells the world of literacy,
the ability to "tender" faces, the studied manner of
gesture and meeting, all of these reveal a totally public
man, a show—room creature who cannot think of human worth

in other than external and wholly artificial terms. With

Amorphus, appearance is everything and he is an accomplished

178

and devoted student of its several art forms. Moreover,
he no sooner tells us what he values in himself than Jonson
presents him with an Opportunity to show us what he values
in others. The preposterous first meeting with Asotus
follows immediately with its mutual praise of ribbons,
bands, and beaver hats. In this exercise in assessing
appearance, "clothes" are given primary emphasis: "face"
and the ability to contort its lineaments to fit a pre—
tended role will concern this foppish pair in Act II. In
fact, that later scene in which Amorphus teaches Asotus
all about faces and their meaning is, I think, anticipated
artfully in this first encounter between them. Amorphus,
remember, thinks of the human countenance in precisely the
same way that he thinks of ribbons, bands, ersatz Italian
and a high foretop-—as one more external sign to impress
the Saviolinas, if not the Echoes, of the world. When he
encounters Asotus' mumbling about the value of the old
beaver hat he has so grandly given him, Amorphus speaks
of it in much the way he will later speak of the face.
It is,

the hieroglyphicke of my affection; you shall alter

to to what forms you please, it will take any blocke;

I have receiv'd it varied (on record) to the three
thousandth time, and not so few.

(I, iv, 18“ ff)
AS we shall see, the face too is an "hieroglyphicke" and its

 

most profound student, Amorphus, can make it take any block

he cares to give it.

179

Amorphus' lecture on physiognomy is, of course, cast
in an anti-physiognomic mold. He knows the pseudo—science
well enough and has followed it to the point of discovering
the "meaning" of various facial types. But he proposes
to teach Asotus how to beat physiognomy at its own game--
how to turn its lessons to advantage by shaping the face
to conform to the role one wishes to play at the moment,
i.e., to make the features mere accoutrements to the total
"costume" that one must put on to prosper in the super-
ficial world of the court. Of course the lesson-in-
physiognomy scene is essentially comic, and Mercury and
Cupid watch it with wondering laughter. But it also adds
a slightly menacing dimension to Amorphus' character and,
as a consequence, to the nature of hyprocrisy in public
and private life. Amorphus, prior to this scene, has
been content to show himself as an impossibly vain fop
entirely given over to fashion. We hardly take him
seriously, for he is seemingly empty-headed and is prepared
to play his little games with others like himself. We
laugh at his pompous language, his outrageous dress, and
his affected manner, and we do so because it seems obvious
that he is a victim of his own ignorance. He judges the
world by the appearance it puts on because, we suppose,

he can see no deeper into the matter.

180

The lesson scene shows us, in fact, that he knows
the world only too well--shows us that Amorphus is a fOp,
not because he knows no better, but because he knows too
well that this is the way to get on in the world. It is
no longer a question of his own limited vision; he sees
clearly enough and what he sees is that most men do Judge
by appearances and that the way to take them in is to
build upon this fact. But let him explain the matter
himself:

Plant your selfe there, sir: and observe me. You
shall now, as well be the ocular, as the ears-
witnesse, how cleerly I can repell that paradox,

or rather pseudodox, of those, which hold the face

to be the index of the mind, which (I assure you)

is not so, in any politique creature: for instance,
I will now give you the particular, and distinct face
of every your most noted species of persons, as your
marchant, your scholer, your souldier, your lawyer,
ccurtier, etc., and each of these so truly, as you
would sweare, but that your eye shal see the variation
of the lineament, if were my most prOper, and genuine
aspect. (II, iii, 11-21)

 

Physiognomy's basic premise is not true when applied to
the "politique creature," for he will, like Sinon or Tarquin,
succeed in masking his true nature. He is able to do this,
of course, because most people do grant the premise and are
prepared to find in the face and in other external signs
an index to the mind. This is the hard—headed lesson that
Amorphus really shares with his pupil:
. .it will not be altogether an ungrateful study.
For, let your soule be assur'd of this (in any ranke,
or profession whatever) the more generall or maior
Part of opinion goes with the face, and (simply) re-
spects nothing else. Therefore, if that can be made

exactly, curiously, exquisitely, thorowly, it is
inough: (II, iii, 52—57)

181

The rest of the scene is pure slap-stick; we are the
"ocular" and "eare-witnesse" to a series of artful grimaces,
accompanied by the appropriate physiognomic explanation.
Amorphus' countenance becomes his beaver hat, and physiog-
nomic interpretations of types become the blocks which

bend and twist the felt of his face. Artificial means

are also employed, for this is a comic game with serious

consequences and all is fair. The statesman's face, for

example, is,

. .a serious, solmne, and supercilious face, full
of formall and square gravitie, the eye (for the
most part) deeply and artifically shadow'd: there
is great Judgment required in the making of this
face. (II, iii, 32-36)

And so the scene comes to a close with the confident teacher

admonishing his nervous pupil to practice, not the more
advanced physiognomic manipulations of a courtier's face

(the "practique" and "theorique") but the more easily
mastered and perfectly functional "elementarie" courtier's
countenance: "Come, looke not pale, observe me, set your

face, and enter." It is little wonder that Mercury includes

in his verbal portrait of Amorphus a reference to his face

as "another volume of essayes." It is, in fact, a whole

library.

gynthia's Revels, then, is in an exceedingly narrow

 

sense, a comic Hamlet, for it is even more explicitly a play

about false faces. If Claudius' court is filled with men and

women masking their true intentions and feelings behind shows

Of mourning or friendship or love, then Cynthia's court is

182

infested with a similar hypocrisy made ludicrous only by
exaggeration. This exaggeration builds to a grotesque
climax in the mock-duelling scene in which Amorphus demon-
strates his virtuosity in "the choice and most cunning
weapons of court-compliment. . ." which turn out to be
absurdly mannered exercises in bowing and flourishing

and grimacing before a lady-Judge. It is with perfect
accord that we hear Crites' lament, when he wonders aloud
how

. . .these vaine ioyes, in which their wills consume
Such powers of wit, and soule as are of force

To raise their beings to aeternitie,

May be converted on workes, fitting men.

And for the practice of a forced looke,

An antique gesture, or a fustian phrase,

Studie the native frame of a true heart

An inward comelinesse of bountie, knowledge,

And spirit, that may conforme them actually,

To Gods high figures, which they have in power:

(V, iv, 637-646)
And so Jonson satirizes a world of foolish men and women
wholly given over to the "vaine ioyes" of affecting out-
ward appearance at the expense of inner character.
PhYSiognomy is allied with clothes and manner and fustian
phrase to heighten the absurdity of this shallow View of

human nature and in the cynical hands of Amorphus, suffers

the Opprobrium visited upon its "sister arts." In the

courtly world of Cynthia's Revels men are "made all of

seudo-
clothes and face" and, as a consequence, the p

Science of physiognomy is shown to be little more than a

 

 

   

 

183

foolishly superficial doctrine put to ill-use by a band

of fops and their equally unalluring ladies.l

In The Alchemist it fares no better. Indeed,

 

physiognomy becomes another weapon in the armory of
roguery available to that masterful trio of charlatans,
Subtle, Face and Doll Common. These three, especially
Face, are unquestionably the most versatile and boldly
artful scoundrels in dramatic literature. In spite of
their bickering and their ultimate falling-out, they work
over their consecutive victims with a flawless sense of
timing and a dazzling exhibition of occult learning.
Alchemical lore is, of course, most prominently displayed
but they are no less familiar with the details of astrology
and physiognomy, along with the latter's sub—disciplines,
metcposcopy and chiromancy. All are learnedly summoned

to help convince the credulous of the miracles about to

be worked.

The scientific versatility of Subtle and Face

amuses and, moreover, amazes us today. But it would not

have amazed Jonson's audience; the pseudo—sciences of the

1In Act IV, 1, the ladies each choose which of the
courtiers is "properest man amongst them" and the layish
care with which they analyze outward appearance is c Ear
evidence of how correct Amorphus is in suppOSing the mpor;ts
tance of Asotus' lessons in physiognomy.' Argurion s pimp:
on Hedon and Asotus are typical: "Hedon s a pretpy s gm
ccurtier, and he weares his clothes well and 53m: $2: no
fashion; marry his face is but indifferent, an lie te outh
such excellent body. No, th'other is a most de 'gale ye and
a sweet face, a streight body, a well proportion gg

foot, a white hand, a tender voice."

 

 

   

184

seventeenth century did not invite the specialization we
have come to expect today. Once the macrocosm-microcosm
relationship is established and the doctrine of signatures
is filtered through astrology, there is nothing to prevent
one from applying its wisdom to all parts of the human
body and, indeed, to all other animate and inanimate things
in nature. Subtle's areas of professional competence, if
he were so bold as to list them on a bill-board outside of
Lovewit's house, would read like the title page of many a
pseudo-scientific tome.1 This versatility is also demon-
strated by Subtle's successor in dramatic quackery,
Albumazar, the astrologer of Thomas Thomkis' play of the
same name.2 While chiefly given to horOSCOpic skulduggery,
Albumazar can also read faces physiognomically when the
occasion requires it. When Cricca the servant threatens
his cozening of Pandolfo, Albumazar turns to discredit him:

Alb: What ominous face, and dismall countenance

Mark't for disasters, hated by all the heavens,

Is that that followes you?

Pan: He is my servant,
A plaine and honest speaker, but no harme in him.

Cri: What see you in my face?

lSaunder's full title is typical: Physiognomie and
thromancie,,Metoposcopie, The Symmetrical Proportions and
§ignal Moles of the Body,_Fully and Accurately Explained;
Elfih their Natural-Predictive Significations both to MEN
apd WOMEN. Being Delightful And Profitable with the Subject
g£_Dreams Made Plain: Whereunto is Added the Art of Memory.
BY Richard Saunders, Student in Astrology and Physick.

2Albumazar: A Comedpy (1615). T. Tomkis, ed., by
H. G. Dick, University of California Publications in English,

XIII (194“).

185

Alb: Horror and darknesse, death and gallowses,
I'de sweare th'wert hang'd, stoods't thou
but two foote higher. But now thy starres
threaten a neerer death. Sir, send to toale
his knell. (I, v, MAO-4A7)
And so Albumazar artfully wards off danger by nimbly calling
upon the prophetic powers of celestial physiognomy.

Subtle and Face, then, are not unusual in the seeming
breadth of their scientific learning. They astound us,
nonetheless, by the brazen and Spontaneous ways in which
their erudition is used to manipulate human beings. As
the line of dupes lengthens outside of Lovewit's house and
the inner chambers begin to overflow with those waiting
their turn, the trio is driven to the heights of comic
inventiveness merely to keep ahead of the game.

Physiognomy, in fact, is used in a specific way with
but two of the victims, Able Drugger and Dame Pliant. And
yet Dapper's greed is whetted by the loudly whispered
"scientific" opinion that he must be, on the basis of his
appearance, related to the Queen of Fairies and that, as
a consequence, is destined to win at every game of chance
in which he participates. This Judgment, which Subtle
assures us is based on both art and "reason too, the ground
Of art," seems to be essentially physiognomic in character.
After all, at this stage Subtle has little else to go on

save the appearance of the dupe before him. Thus he detects

a "gaming mouth" and offers the opinion that Dapper is "of

 

 

(\‘I

186

the only best complexion/ The queen of Fairy loves." But
the main burden of deceit in Dapper's case is carried by
the Queen and her familiars.

The technique used vaguely with Dapper is employed
again and in sharper terms when the good tobacconist,
Abel Drugger, comes to see the learned doctor. Drugger's
susceptibility to "scientific" cozening is made evident
by the very purpose of his visit: he has come to obtain
necromantically sound directions for the building of his
tobacco shop so that he may prosper in his new location.
This is invitation enough for Subtle. After the usual
overheard dialogue with Face about Drugger's appearance
and its promise of success, Subtle is asked how he can
tell so much at first glance:

By a rule, Captaine,

In metoposgppie, which I doe worke by, p
A certaine starre i' the forehead, which you see not.

Your chest-nut, or your olive-colour'd face

do's never faile: and your long eare doth promise.

I knew't, by certaine spots too, in his teeth,

And on the naile of his mercurial finger. (I, iii, 42-48)
This intensely clustered response, bound by itself to dazzle
the victim standing near-by, is followed immediately by
pure astrological judgments which end in the flat prophecy
that ships are even now plying their wealthy way to Drugger's
door--which, of course, has to be opened on the south side.

The quoted passage is exceedingly interesting in the
Way it begins with a simple metoposcopic rule based,

amusingly enough, on an invisible star in the forehead~—and

 

 

”9‘
f.

.A

uh

.1

N

Is

OH

(I

 

 

 

187

works its way down through certain physiognomic tokens

to the fingernail analysis which in turn provides the
necessary information ("You were born upon a Wednesday?")
for the construction of a horOSCOpe. The intimate relation—
ship of the pseudo-sciences is concisely revealed in this
impressive display of learning.

The scientific content of Subtle's references to
Drugger's color, ear shape, teeth and nail markings, etc.,
is adequately explained by Herford and Simpson1 and, in
more detail, by Professor Johnston Parr.2 The passage is,
on the whole, remarkable for its accuracy and relevance.
In fact, it very likely had to be, for Drugger can be
supposed to have encountered some general notions of these
esoteric matters, if only enough to permit him to pose
his question in the first place. However, as Herford
and Simpson note, Subtle does alter his astrological
explanation to fit Drugger's situation the more convinc—
ingly: Mercury is substituted for Venus as lord of the
horosc0pe so that the god of business might be permitted
to preside over Subtle's prOphecy of commercial success,

We may also wonder if Subtle is not hav1ng some fun,

Shared by Face and by many in the audience, at the expense

g

lVOl. x, pp. 65-66.

2"Non—Alchemical Pseudo—sciences in The Alchemist,"
3Q, XXIV (January, 1945), 85-89. This essay may also be
{Sung in Parr's Tamburlaine's Malady (University Of Alabama,
53 .

188

of Drugger's "long ear." Our attention is drawn to the
reference in the first place because of the ambiguity of
its phrasing. Drugger's ”long ear doth promise" but we
are not told, except by the optimistic context, what in
fact it does promise. Both Herford and Simpson and Pro-
fessor Parr have satisfied themselves that the reference
is straightforward--that is, that it signifies well-being
’and is thus another bit of evidence to lure Drugger into
the net!1 But benevolent or complimentary interpretations
of long ears are exceedingly rare in physiognomic literature.
Much more common is the conclusion reached by Bartholomaeus
and supported by the donkey analogy, that ears of this kind
are tokens "of dulnesse, and of slow wit and understanding"
(cap. 12). Thomas Hill reports that they are "notes of
foolishness. . .of babblers. . .garrulitie and imprudence"
(cap. xxiii). John Metham adds "envy" to the derogatory
catalogue assigned to the man with long ears and the Secreta
Secretorum confirms the notion of foolishness (cap. 59).

As we have seen, Pseudo—Aristotle favors medium-sized ears,

castigating the owner of large ones as "asinine" (p. 127).

 

 

lHerford and Simpson cite Paracelsus' 23 Natura Rerum
for evidence of the benevolence of long ears: "Aures magnae
indicant probum auditum, bonam memorium, attentionem, dili~
gentiam, sanum cerebrum & caput, etc." Johnston Parr's cita-
tion of Arcandam's Judgment of low—hanging ears as indicating
riches is much more relevant, of course, and may well be
What Jonson had in mind.

189

Clearly all of these adjectives suit Drugger's character
perfectly and they were, I am convinced, most commonly
associated with the physical trait. And to take a chance

of this kind is precisely what we would expect Subtle

might try. He is rarely content with cozening alone; he

must amuse himself and his colleagues along the way. And

so in this instance he calls attention to Drugger's long
ear—~he could have refrained from mentioning it—-as evidence
of the garrulity of his subject, but in such an equivocal
way as to support the general notion of good fortune which
the cozening requires. It is a masterful, if minute, example
of the nimbleness of Subtle's mind.

Subtle employs physiognomy a second time, and with no
less amusement or success, when Kastril introduces his sister
into the household in hopes of arranging a financially
suitable marriage. Subtle again relies upon the technique
of overpowering his victime with an immediate prognostica-
tion of good things to come. In this instance, of course,
his own not inconsiderable lust is aroused and so he
tailors his physiognomic and chiromantic reading to accomo-

date a kiss:

Sub: I crie this lady mercy. Shee should, first,
Have been saluted. [kisses her]. I doe call you lady,
Because you are to be one, ere't be long,
My soft and buxome widdow.

Kas: Is shee, 1' faith?

Sub: Yes, or my art is an egregious lyar.

Kas: How know you?

190

Sub: By inspection, on her forehead,
And subtletie of her lip, which must be tasted
To make a Judgement. [Kisses her again].

(IV, ii, 3A—A1)
And so the kisses, together with another invisible mark on
the forehead, permit Subtle to foresee an attractive
marriage for Dame Pliant. But this is too easy. As we
have seen in Drugger's case, Subtle cannot enjoy his trade
unless it is complicated and a little dangerous. Indeed,
he appreciates the longing which gulls inevitably diSplay
for intricate explanations. And so he compromises his
prophecy, for the sheer pleasure of watching two faces fall,

then re-establishes it with a more elaborate and therefore

more convincing display of scientific learning.

. . .here is, yet, a line,
'In rivo frontis, tells me he is no knight.
Dame P.: What is he then sir?

Sub: Let me see your hand.
0, your linea Fortunae makes it plaine;

And stella here in monte Veneris:

But, most of all, iunctura annularis.

He is a souldier, or a man of art, lady; 1
But shall have some great honour shortly.

Sub:

 

And so, having been made a lady, then as quickly deprived of

her knight, Dame Pliant is at last delivered back to the

safety of a marriage with nobility. Her relieved exclamation

H I
("Brother,/ Hee's a rare man, beleeve me! ) is Subtle s best

reward.

1The Chiromancy of this passage has been fully explained

by Herford and Simpson.

 

 

   

 

191

 

In The Alchemist, then, Jonson uses physiognomy,
and its subdisciplines, metcposcopy and chiromancy, as
mere tools in the trade of exploiting greedy human beings.
The pseudo-science does not, therefore, carry anything like

the satiric weight that it is asked to bear in Cynthia's

 

Revels. In the earlier play Jonson's dramatic intention
is directly aided by the basic assumption of physiognomy,
for that assumption and the object of the satire--the courtly
reliance upon appearance——exactly coincide. In The Alchemist
greed is Jonson's principal concern and the pseudo-science
of outward appearance is necessarily relegated to a minor
role, that of supplying Subtle with still another way in
which to dazzle his gullible victims and amuse himself
and his audience. It is a useful gambit, one which lends
itself especially well to his habit of softening his victims
immediately upon their entry. By reading great good furtune
in their complexion or their teeth-markings, Subtle inspires
the larger greed which can only be served by more elaborate
hoaxes. But chiefly it is a minor source of amusement,
affording a laugh at the expense of Drugger's donkey ears
and earning, of all things, kisses from Dame Pliant.

This sardonic employment of physiognomy is character-

istic of Jonson's technique and can be found in many of

the plays. Volpone's mock—serious assessment of Mosca's

character for the benefit of the victims, Corbaccio and

Corvino, is a case in point:

192

In good faith, sir,

I'am heartily greev'd, a beard of your grave length
Should be so over-reach'd. I never brook'd

That parasites haire; me thought his nose should cozen:
There still was somewhat in his looke, did promise

The bane of a Clarissimo. (Volpone V, viii, 4—9)

 

The amusing irony of this physiognomic analysis is, of course,
sharpened when we discover that Mosca does cozen, not only
on orders from his master, but at the expense of his master
as well. While Volpone enjoys himself, rubbing in the
notion that Corbaccio and Corvino might have recognized the
rogue in Mosca's appearance, he nicely prepares for his own
undoing. There is, apparently, something in Mosca's hair,
nose and look which promises the bane of a charlatan as
well.

A similarly oblique invocation of the idea of cor-
respondence between body and soul is sounded by, of all

peOple, Joan Trash, the gingerbread woman of Bartholomew

 

Eaip. With Justice Overdo discreetly over—looking the scene,
Lanthom Leatherhead accuses Joan of making her wares
from "Stale bread, rotten eggs, musty ginger, and dead
honey"--which, we can reasonably suppose, is perfectly true.
But she must maintain that her pastry is as wholesome as
she herself is honest and is prepared to argue the matter
before Justice Overdo. In the process she reveals herself
as a ridiculously minor-keyed Richard III:

I'll meet thee face to face, afore his worhip, when

thou dar'st: and though I be a little crooked o'

my body, I'll be found as upright in my dealing, as
any woman in Smithfield, I: (II, ii, 23 ff)

 

T,

1
v u-

.f A
A\U

 

 

 

193

Joan, of course, may very well be right if by Smithfield
she is referring chiefly to the fairground. While as up-
right, no doubt, as any of her business colleagues, her
crooked body is still a reliable index to her character--
and by extension, to the quality of her pastry.

This comic correspondence between Joan's crooked
frame and her crooked dealings is about as close as Jonson
ever comes to acknowledgeing that there may be something
truthful about the pseudo-science of physiognomy. In fact,
he seldom invokes the notion of correspondence in any save

ironic contexts. In Poetaster (II, ii), to be sure, Ovid

 

praises Plautia by pretending to see "gentrie and generall
worthinesse" in her lookes." But this general metaphorical
use of physiognomy is rare in Jonson. He can draw stunning
portraits of human character but he seems purposely to avoid
linking their physical appearance to character or conduct.
The basic assumption of the pseudo—science—-that "Nature
makes the Minde/ the Body like"l—-does not enter fluently
into his thought or language. It is always consciously
summoned and then primarily to serve ridicule upon those

who entertain it seriously.

 

1John Davies of Herford, "A Select Second Husband for
Sir Thomas Overbury's Wife."

CHAPTER VIII

PHYSIOGNOMY IN THE PLAYS OF THOMAS DEKKER

It may be the forehead is not alwayes a true
heralt of affections, neither the rules of
Phisiognomie infallible principles: for they
which smiled at the Theatre in Rome, might
assoone scoffe at the rudenesse of the scaene,
as give a Plaudite at the perfections of the
action, and they which passe over my toyes with
silence, may perhaps shrowde a mislike in such
patience:

Robert Greene: Penelopes Web

 

In late March of 1603 Queen Elizabeth died and, al-
most at once, with the warmth of spring, a great seige of
plague fell again upon London. Dekker's The Wonderful Year
movingly records the impact of these two momentous events
upon the kingdom and, especially, upon the people who lived
in its capital. They were, he tells us, "transformed to
wild men," for the fear of foreign invasion from Catholic
Europe and the fear of civil war at home were more than
matched by the growing fear of death itself. London was
abandoned by those who had somewhere also to go and could
afford to leave their homes. The city was left to the poor
and the sick and to those who were prepared to risk their

lives to give whatever help they could.

194

 

 

   

195

In the poetic prologue to his account, Dekker gives
us an interesting sketch of the moment of truth which, in
that terrible year, inevitably came to the man of means.
Either he abandoned his wealth to a trusted servant or he
remained with it himself and risked the visitation of
robbers and plague. In the extremity of his situation
Dekker's wealthy man turns to physiognomy to help him
make the difficult choice:

Imagine now a mighty man of dust,

Stands in a doubt, what servant he may trust,

With plate worth thousands: jewels worth farre more,
If he prove false, then his rich Lord proves poore:
He calls forth one by one, to note theyr graces,
Whilst they make legs, he copies out theyr faces,
Examines theyr eye-browe, consters theyr beard,
Singles theyr nose out, still he rests afeard,

The first that comes, by no meanes heele allow,

Has spyed three Hares starting between his brow,
Quite turnes the word, names it Celeritie,

For Hares do run away, and so may hee,

A second shewne: him he will scarce behold,

His beard's too red, the colour of his gold,

A third may please him, but tis hard to say, 1

A rich man's pleasde, when his goods part away.

There is something unmistakably apprOpriate about this brief
account of a man who, distraught by both danger and greed,
trusts not to his own experience with his servants but to
the judgments rendered by an occult science. While each man
bows before him, he frantically searches for tell-tale signs
of faithfulness or, in red—beard's case, the certain token

of treachery.2 And yet, in the end, it is all in vaine. The

L

lThe plagpe Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker, ed. F. P. Wilson.
(Oxford, 1925), p. 16.

2Professor Curry, with regard to the Miller’s red
beard, cites the Secreta Secretorum: "Tho that bene red men,

196

third servant, whose brow is apparently free from "hares,"
seems to be the man who makes off with the goods.

Dekker's picture of the rich man in distress is,
under the extreme circumstances in which it is set, most
remarkable for its gentleness. There is a certain pathetic
helplessness in the center of the satiric portrait--the
helplessness of a man who is forced to turn to the pseudo-
science of physiognomy in the first place, then, having
done so, is destined to employ its methods in a ludicrously
inappropriate and, as it turns out, unsuccessful way. The
correspondences he invokes are, of course, hopelessly
irrelevant and comically so. The first confusion, between
the hares of the field and the hairs of one's brow, is
attributable to an age fond of punning but is in its wrong—
headed "animal analogy" monstrously unscientific. His
second judgment, involving the servant with the red-beard,
is a correct one physiognomically but it was made for the
wrong reason. In this instance animal analogy should have
been employed and, instead, the distracted man can only
see his about—to-be—abandoned gold dancing in the servant's
bright beard. And so he turns down the second servant too

and finally, for unspecified but certainly equally bad

bene Parceuynge and trechrus, and full of qveyntise, i—
likgnyd to Foxis." Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences,
p. 2.

 

197

reasons, clears the third who ultimately steals his money.
However improbable the details of this sketch, and they
make up a brilliant anti-physiognomic, satiric vignette,
the total impression of a frightened man repairing to any
aid his wits can summon is a true and not altogether un-
sympathetic one.

I have called attention to this brief passage to show
that Dekker was not only well acquainted with physiognomy
but that he realized how useful the pseudo—science could
be in developing a concise satiric sketch. In this instance,
of course, as in the messenger scene in Antony and Clegpatra
and as so frequently in Jonson, physiognomy is employed
indirectly. It is not the master's beard which is described.
Rather, Dekker reveals a good deal about the rich man's
character by having him resort to and totally confuse the
pseudo-science in a moment of great personal stress. It is
not unfair to say that we learn more about the master from
his observations of the servants' features than ever we
could learn from a description of his own.

That Dekker knew enough about physiognomy to permit
him to burlesque its analytical method is clearly shown
by the sketch in The Wonderful Year. But he also, and
quite frequently, called upon its Special tokens in a
literal way. A reading of his plays, in fact, demonstrates
how thoroughly the rhetoric and assumptions of physiognomy

permeate his way of looking upon the world. The red beard

198

of the prologue, for example, enters again in Northward Ho,

 

and here as nothing more significant than a neatly balancing
turn of phrase. I am referring to Phillip's gleeful ex-
planation of why he tricked his poet-father to come to
Doll's quarters:

Ile tell you why I sent for you, for nothing but to

shew you that your gravity may bee drawne in: white

hairs may fall into the company of drabs as well as
red beardes into the society of knaves:

(III, 1, 91-93)1
And old Bellamont, in the same play, has cause to call upon
physiognomy to reassure his friend Maybery, who has been
wrongly convinced that he has been made a cuckold. When
Maybery storms home to confront his wife, he encounters
her servant--but cannot be prevented by her absence from
reinforcing his jealous suspicion:
May: Where is your mistris, villaine? When went she
abroad?
Prent: Abroad sir, why as soone as she was up, Sir.
May: Vp Sir, down Sir, so sir: Maister Bellamont,
I will tell you a strange secret in Nature,
this boy is my wives bawd.

Bell: 0 fie, sir, fie, the boy he doe's not looke like
a Bawde, he has no double chin. (I, iii, 1—7)

 

Bellamont's impatient observation is perfectly apt even though
Maybery is not prepared to be reassured. The double chin is
a certain token of the libidinous type. As Thomas Hill

records, it is a "note of Venus," indicative of a "lascivious

 

1A11 citations from Dekker's plays are from the edition
of Professor Fredson Bowers. The Dramatic Works of Thomas
Dekker, in three volumes (Cambridge, 1953‘583-

199

' those who are so blessed are "harlot hunters"

nature;'
(chap. 32). Its absence in Maybery's servant boy is a
happy sign, if a secondary one, and Bellamont, in citing
his own "strange secret of Nature," does his best to lessen
his friend's unwarranted jealousy.

Another and quite unorthodox employment of physiog—

nomy is to be found in The Whore of Babylon, that stiffly

 

archaic morality play concerned with Rome's assault upon
Elizabeth. The play is filled with dumbshows, allegorical
figures and altogether wooden characters. Its success on

the stage clearly had more to do with the anti-Catholic
feeling of the time than to any dramatic skill Dekker brought
to it.

The primary, if not only intention of the play is to
paint Rome, The Whore of Babylon, in the grossest colors
while drawing the most flattering contrasting portrait of
Queen Elizabeth and her court. Dekker, of course, is pri—
marily indebted to the richly symbolic account of Rome he
found in the apocalyptic writings of St. John The Devine
(Revelations 14:9, 17:3-5, 19:20). Here eSpecially he
found the intriguing reference to the mysterious mark upon
Roma's forehead:

And upon her forehead was written a name of mystery,

BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHERS OF HARLOTS AND ABOMI-
NATIONS OF THE EARTH. (Rev. 17:5)

200

Now Dekker dispels at least part of the mystery in his play.
The third King in the court of the Empress is given the un-
happy task of telling her what is being said about her in

Fairyland (England):

3 King: My tongue's already blistred sounding this,
Yet must I whisper to your sacred eare:
That on your brow (they say) is writ a name
In letters misticall, which they interpret
Confusion, by great Babylon they meane
The Citie of Confusion.
Emp: View our forehead!
Where are we printed with such characters?
Point out these markes: Which of you all can lay
A finger on that Moale that markes our face?
3 King: They say you can throw mists before our eyes,
To make us thinke you faire.
Emp: Damnd blasphemies. (IV, iv, 53-64)

 

It is as if Dekker sought in this passage to convert the
mysterious letters of Revelations to the more readily under-
stood marks open to metoposcopic examination. The third
King begins by talking of the "letters misticall” but the
Empress herself quickly reinterprets his account as the
disfiguring mark of a mole. And the mole is apparently
invisible even as Abel Drugger's tell—tale mark was invisi-

ble to all save Subtle's metoposcopically trained eyes.l

 

1There may even be in this passage and in later mention
Of the mark imprinted on the Empress' forehead, a reference
to the 16th century practice of branding felons, including
prostitutes, on the forehead. That Dekker thought in these
terms is shown by Dorothy's plea to Caliste and Christeta in

ii? Virgin Martyr:

To be heereafter registered a goddesse,
Owe your chast body up to the embraces
Of boarish lust, have it writ on your forehead,
This is the common whore, the prostitute,
This mistresse in the art of wantonnesse.
(III, 1, l3A-38)

201

The whore carries the mark of her corruption on her fore-
head, in spite of the mists she is able to cast up to keep
herself fair in other men's eyes. Indeed she proves the
truth of the charge in this very same scene by marking her
followers on the forehead:

Draw neere, weele marke you for our chosen flocke,

Who buildes on heartes confirmed, buildes on a rocke:

The seale of heaven! Who on their foreheads weare it,

We choose for counsaile: (135-138)
Here, of course, the marks have become visible. The sacra—
ment of confirmation, administered by the Roman Whore, is
in reality marking a pack of traitors and assassins.l

The image of marked men, of men carrying the visible

signs of their inner corruption, is associated with Rome
throughout the play. Titania's charge to Plaine-dealing
. . ."to looke through and through that our great Citie,
and like death, to spare the lives of none, whose conscience
you find sickly and going”. . .is answered by a practised
physiognomist. Here all indications of the biblical source
of the image have disappeared. Plaine-dealing promises the
Queen thatim1giving her a "copie of the Cities countenance,
Ile not flatter the face, as painters do; but shew all the
wrinkles of it" (II, 1, 125). If one is to discover the

inner character of a man he must study his countenance and

_

1This passage too relies heavily upon Revelations

 

19:20.

202

cipher the lines and wrinkles, the moles and marks discovered
there. In this case Plaine-dealing is to discover the
"wrinkles" implanted by traitorous allegiance to Rome.

So, too, does the third King betray his interest in
the marks of infamy when he remains in Fairyland to tempt
as many as possible of the several orders of society to
allegiance to Rome. Disguised as a scholar, he first talks
of marking the throats of those who are to be murdered in
the uprising and of placing "tokens" on the doors where
"Riflings and sweet ravishments" are to enter. Thus Rome
brands her victims as well as her devotees. He then comes
upon Edmund Campeius:

Campeius! vmh: Campeius? a lucky plannet

Strikes out this houre: Campeius! Babylon,

His name hath in her tables: on his forehead,

Our Queene hath set her marke: it is a mould

Fit to cast mischiefe in: (II, ii, 46—50)
They are all disfigured and on the forehead; the safety of
the realm depends upon the metoposcopic skill of Plain-
dealing to ferret them out.

In contrast to the tokens of infamy given to the
Empress and her wicked followers, Dekker provides one
arresting glimpse of Titania's face. She too has signs to
be deciphered but they are the beneficent and hereditary
Signs of Virtue and can be discovered by anyone with eyes
to see. Her would—be assassin, Pariden, is in fact prevented

from completing his mission by a brief glimpse of her

countenance:

203

When on your face I looke,
Methinkes I see those Vertues drawne alive
Which did in Elfilyne the seaventh survive,
(Your father's father, and your grandfather)

(V, 11, 94-7)

The physiognomic tokens we have thus far examined
share a common definitive character. Red-beard and rogue,
double-chin and bawd, the peculiar stamp of the Whore of
Rome which appears on her traitorous brood, all of these
begin to suggest the utopian world of the physiognomist
where every man's inclinations, however secretly guarded,
are discoverable in his countenance. But this is not an
accurate reflection of Dekker's world. Hyprocrites walk
freely throughout the plays, successfully masking their
vices, at least for a time, under cover of outward appear-
ance—~aided by both clothes and the courtier's "starcht
faces." Even in the bifurcated world of the Whore of Babylon
villainy palms itself off as something other, and in language
closely reminiscent of Jonson's treatment of the same theme

in Cynthia's Revels. The allegorical figure, Time, looking

 

on the dumb-show speaks of one whose

Shape which earst shew'd reverend

And wore, the outward badge of sanctitie,

Is cloath'd in garments of hypocrisie. (IV, 1, 15-17)
And the same image is echoed later in the scene when Plain—
dealing, beholding the potential assassin in the dumb show,

8Peaks in tones of genuine surprise: "What good cloathes

hee weares, and yet is a villaine?"

204

The theme of deception, of false faces and shapes put
on to gull men who judge only in appearance, is one of
Dekker's central motifs in If This Be Not A Good Play.
Pluto sounds this Jonsonian note in the very first scene
when he summons his lesser lights, Rufman, Shacklesoule
and Lurchall, and orders them to disguise themselves for
a soul-gathering trip to earth:

Fly into the world:
As y'are in shapes transformde be so in name,
For men are out—sides only: be you the same.

This harsh judgment is more than confirmed by Bartervile
who in Act IV himself puts on a disguise. Lurchall has
apparently forgotten what Pluto had told him, for he is
frankly amazed to see his merchant dressed "like a Turke."

Lurch: But pray sir, what ist turnes you into a Turke?
Bart: That for which manie their Religion,
Most men their Faith, all chaunge their honestie,
Profite, (that guilded god) Commoditie.
Hee that would grow damnd-Rich, yet live secure,
Must keepe a case of Faces, sometimes demure,
Sometimes a grum-surly sir, now play the Iewe,
Then the Precisian; Not a man weele viewe,
But varies so. My selfe (of bashfull nature)
Am thus supplyed by Arte (IV, 1, 7—15)

 

Clearly Bartervile has joined the courtiers Amorphus and
Asotus in the fascinating study of the art of putting on
false faces. And the "arte" by which he is supplied is none

other than the art or science of physiognomy.

Appearances, then, can and do deceive in Dekker's
world and the rhetoric of the plays reflects this fact. The
irate father in Match Me in London accosts his unwanted son~

in~law in typical fashion:

205

thou has undone me,
Thou are a Civile Theefe with lookes demure
As is thy habit, but a villaines heart. (II, 1, 56-58)
And Mistress Justiniano is equally distressed to discover
that Birdlime is an old bawd, although one wonders why it
occurs to her so late. In any event, should would assign

Birdlime to Pluto's covey: 9

Thou art a very bawd: thou art a Divel
Cast in a reverend shape; thou stale damnation!

(Westward Ho, II, 11, 152—3)

 

A final and inelegant example of successful masquerading in

 

Dekker's plays might be cited from the Virgin Martyr, g

 

where the whoremaster Hircius and his drunken friend Spungius
decide how to make the best of their divided world. Spungius
finally concludes:

I see no remedy fellow Hircius but that thou

and I must be halfe Pagans and halfe Christians--

no, no, I am resolved to have an Infidels heart,
though in shew I carry a Christians face.

(II, 1, AO—A8)

Hypocrisy, if artfully covered by outward seeming, can con-
found the best efforts of those who would discover the index
to the mind in the conformation of the face.

And yet this too confirms the soundness of the notion
of correspondence between appearance and conduct, between
the features and the inclinations of the mind and heart.
The hypocrite, in the end, puts on the face which, he thinks,
or physiognomy tells him, bears a relationship to the

character he wishes others to suppose him to have. In doing

206

so he obviously alters the tell—tale features which belong
naturally to him. But he cannot relax for a minute. Even
such practiced villains as Hircius and Spungius cannot for-
ever prevent the imprinting of their hearts' configuration
upon the face. When Angelo questions the pair about the
alms Dorothy gave them to deliver, Hircius mockingly
acknowledges—-because Angelo already knows--that his life
as a whoremaster has marked him:

Hircius: Or me given so to the flesh, my cheekes

speake my doings.
Angelo: Avant you theeves, and hollow hypocrites.

Your hearts to me lie open like blacke bookes,
And there I reade your doings.

(The Virgin Martyr, II, 1, 189—12)

 

This same perceptive eye has been given to Iacomo Gentili,
the abundantly generous gentleman in The Wonder of a Kingdom.
It is true that he frankly states at one point that "he
regards no mans out-side, tis the lineings/Which I take care
for," but the reference is to the dishevelled victime of
shipwreck and slavery, i.e., to his rag-like clothes and un-
kempt appearance. He does in fact regard the countenance
as a legitimate index to the discovery of a man's "lineings."
As he tells the lying broker who requests a gift of 100
pounds to replace his feigned loss by fire,

Faces are speaking pictures. Thine's a booke

Which if the leafe be truly printed shews

A page of close dissembling. (IV, ii, 3l~33)

And so, in almost precisely the same image does the old

father of the queen, Valasco, encounter and pathognomically

207

"read" Don John, the King's brother in Match Me In London.
The countenance of Don John does not reveal a detailed
account, but the main burden of the message is clear:

0 my good Lord, be my good Lord. I read

Harsh lectures in your face, but meet no Coment

That can dissolve the riddle. . . . (III, 1, 75—77)
This, of course, refers to little more than a fleeting
scowl and I do not wish to suggest that Valasco, or
Dekker, had the entire and complex apparatus of physiog—
nomy in mind when the Speech was drawn. It does suggest,
however, the habit of searching the face, of reading the

passions, which physiognomy fosters and which is so charac—

teristic of the period. Again in Act IV of Match Me In

 

London we find a perfect example of the attentive care with
which the features are scanned for any meaning they will
yield. I am thinking of the scene in which the King engages
Martines to take the letter to his queen (IV, iv, 5A ff).
The play on faces, so similar in a way to the assassination
scene in Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris, begins immediately.
Martines has come from the queen to report her hOpe for an
early reconciliation. She is
drown'd in sorrow, that your brow

Has beene so long contracted into frownes,

Wishing to die unlesse she see it smooth'd.
Valasco cannot but add that he, too, fondly hopes that the
King will send some symbol of his love to "fetch up the red

blood her cheekes hath lost." Moments later our eyes,

having passed from the furrowed brow of the King to the

 

208

bloodless chalk of the queen's face, are riveted upon
Martines' face, this time caught in a blush which the King's
recounting of the supposed plot has raised. But it too

is an index and both Martines and the King know it. Almost
in triumph the King exclaims: "Blushing does you staine!"
and Martines unhesitatingly gives the correst reading:

"It is not guilt but anger." Having completed his little
charade, the brief scene closes with the King's hopeful

but uneasy assessment of Martines' loyalty. Physiognomy

is here corroborated by the reports 0f others: )

 

There's in thy face no Traytor, I cannot tell,
Good mouthes have given thee to mee.

Dekker's characters, then, unlike so many of Jonson's,
can scan the faces of others for the signs of passion, or
motive, without sacrificing the sympathy of the dramatist.
Pathognomic responses are commonplaces in the plays. When
Antoninus turns down Artemis's marriage proposal, he cannot
but notice that "in her lookes/Revenge is written” (Virgin
Martyr I, i, 376). So, too, does Mrs. Maybery, in 523327
ward Ho suspect that Kate Greenshield has been brought to
the house for her husband's illicit pleasure. As she
tells Bellamont, the evidence of Kate's character is to be
found in her eyes:

0 I cannot beleeve it, I know by her eies

She is not honest, why should my husband
Proffer them such kindness?

209

And Scumbroth, the cook in If This Be Not a Good Play,
expresses surprise that the sub-prior cannot see in his
face, the message of death which he brings to him.

Scum: Alas, wheres the sub—Prior?
Sub: Here; what ailest thou?
Scum: Can you picke nothing out of my face?
Is there not a Deaths—head standing on my
shoulders? (V, iii, 1-5)

The play closes with still another reference to the corres-
pondence between character and physical appearance in the
comic hell scene. The ghost of the inevitable puritan is
introduced and not only is it an unghost-like black ("we
were all smoakt out of our owne Countrey and sent to
Rotterdam") but, indeed, it is as crooked and twisted as
ever Joan Trash was:

Minos: How camst thou lame and crooked, why do'st
halt?
Puritan: All the brethren and sisters for the better
part are crooked, and halt: for my owne part,
I never went upright.
3. Iud: And yet a puritane? hence with him.

(V, iv, 278—81)
The double-meaning of "upright," of course, links stature
and character, and the ghost wanders away wondering how

he could be anything but crooked and lame, having pulled

"a whole church downe upon by back. ."1

g

lDekker's knowledge of and delight in the cant of
thieves would also have suggested to him the current cant
meaning of an "Upright man” which was, of course, the name
assigned to a superior kind of highwayman.

UWM‘IA'I.’R ’il". F31 -

210

Perhaps Dekker's most interesting use of physiognomy

in a single play is to be found in The Roaring Girl. Both

 

in the main and in the sub-plot one of the problems persis—
tently explored is that of the relation of character and
appearance, and physiognomic judgments, and their subse—
quent refutations, help to illuminate Dekker's examination
of it. The key to this motif is to be found in Sir Alexander
Wengrave's self—satisfied Opening speech in which he leads
his dinner guests into the parlor of which he is so osten-
tatiously proud (I, ii). But what is it in the room that
most pleases him and about which he feels compelled to
talk at such length? It is, in fact, a tapestry or
painting not unlike Lucrece's, cunningly filled with faces
which so artfully reveal the character of their possessor:

Stories of men and women (mixt together

Faire ones with foule, like sun—shine in wet—wether)

Within one square a thousand heads are laid

So close, that all of heads, the roome seemes made,

As many faces there (fill'd with blith lookes)

Shew like the promising titles of new bookes,

(Writ merily) the Readers being their owne eyes,

Which seeme to move and to give plaudites,

And here and there (whilst with obsequious eares,

Throng's heapes do listen) a cut purse thrusts and leeres

With hawkes eyes for his prey: I need not shew him,

By a hanging villanous looke, your selves may know him,

The face is drawne so rarely. (I, ii, 17-29)
Now it will not do to dwell too long on this passage or to
assign it a thematic significance which was never intended
for it. After all, Sir Alex's pre-occupation with the
painting and with the faces in it——each one a "title" to a

volume of human intention——may tell us little more about

 

211

him than that he admires the work and enjoys showing it
to others. But it is fair to observe that Sir Alex
fancies himself a good judge of human character and that
he is inclined to base his judgments upon appearance alone.
In the very scene in which the painting is talked about
he meets Ralph Trapdore and we observe that he scans
Ralph's face with the same care that, a moment before, he
lavished upon the cut—purse in the painting. And Ralph
must present something of the same appearance:
Troth honest fellow-—humh-ha-let me see,
This knave shall be the axe to new that downe
At which I stumble, h'as a face that promiseth
Much of a villaine. . . . (I, ii, 193-96)
But to the worth of practically everyone in the play Sir
Alex is blind. And yet he thinks he sees all too clearly.
He believes, by consulting her unorthodox appearance,
that he sees M01 as she truly is—-and that he beholds
Sebastian's "follies and untruthes,/ with two cleere glasses."
Having agonized through four acts of supposing that, in fact,
Sebastian is going to marry M01 and that his daughter-in-
law is an outrageous whore, Sir Alex is whip—lashed from
appearance to reality and back again, in the closing act,
until he is finally made to realize that human nature is
more complicated than surface appearances will ever reveal.
While there is nothing explicitly physiognomic about the
revelation scene, it implicitly informs the forcing of
Sir Alex to consider the human personality under the mask

worn to the world.

212

As this key confrontation scene Opens, Sir Alex is
as hopelessly addicted to the appearance Of things as he
was when the play began. Convinced that Sebastian is not
going to marry MOl he blissfully announces, "my heart's
cheer'd Gentlemen/ NO face can come unfortunately to me."
(italics added) Then, a moment later MOl appears with a
mask on and is presented as the bride. Sir Alex falls into
the trap immediately, proclaiming his daughter-in-law "a
goodly personable creature/ Just Of her pitch was my first
wife his mother." And then MOl removes her artificial
mask. Sir Alex is horror-stricken:

O my reviving shame, is't I must live,
TO be strucke blind, be it the worke Of sorrow,
Before age take't in hand.
The task remaining is tO teach the Old fOOl to see truly
beneath the real mask which hides MOl's courage and integrity.
When Mary FitzAllard is admitted, Sir Alex begins his un-
harrowing pilgrimage to a more balanced View Of human nature.
He has misjudged her too:
When I rejected thee, I saw thee not,
Sorrow and wilfull rashnesse grew like filmes
Over the eyes Of judgment, now so cleere
I see the brightnesse Of thy worth appeare. (193-5)
With MOl it takes a little longer. Now that his eyes have
cleared he can see enough not to "condemn" her-—then he
acknowledges sorrow for the "hard Opinion" he had conceived

Of her for she is a "good wench"——finally he closes with a

request for forgiveness:

213

Forgive mee, now I cast the worlds eyes from mee,
And looke upon thee freely with mine owne:

He will never again condemn by "common voyce" for that is

the "whore/ that deceives mans Opinion."

Sir Alex is not the only person in the play who pays

the closest attention to physical appearance. MOl herself

does so and she is even prepared to base a preliminary

judgment upon what she sees. But it is always preliminary

in nature. Note how she greets Ralph Trapdore in Act III:

Heere comes my man that would be: 'tis his houre.

Faith a gOOd well set fellow, if his Spirit

Be answerable to his vmbles; he walkes stiffe,

But whether he will stand to't stiffly, there's the point;
He's a good calfe for't, and ye shall have many a woman
Choose him she meanes to make her head by his calfe,

I do not know their trickes in't; faith he seemes

A man without; I'll try what he is within"

(III, 1, lAl-AB)

MOI knows enough about the pseudo~science Of physiognomy to
realize how the general scheme Of correspondence is supposed
tO work. She likes the overall build Of Ralph, his confi-
dent gait and the look Of his calf; and she is prepared to
believe that these might indicate something about his
character. But she is not learned in the science—-or as
She puts it, "I do not know their trickes in't," referring

to the women who choose their mates by studying the curve

Of their legs.1 And this is just as well.

Ralph seems a

There is an extraordinary amount Of attention, some
Of it serious, paid to masculine legs in Elizabethan liter-
ature——no doubt much Of it occasioned by the trunk hose so

214

man without but MOI, unlike Sir Alex, is going to reserve
judgment until she can Observe how he conducts himself:
"I'll try what he is within."

In the sub-plot, too, the chief concern is with'the

deception which Often accompanies a congenial surface appear-

ance. Our interest is focused upon the effort Of Goshawke
I
to aid his seduction Of Mistress Openworke by alienating her ‘
i
from her husband. The deception is amusingly discussed in ;

physiognomic terms by Mistress Gallipot and Mistress Open-

worke:

 

Mist Gal: Is then that bird Of yours (Maister
Goshawke) so wild?
Mist Open: A Goshawke, a Puttocke; all for prey: he
angles for fish, but he loves flesh better.
Mist Gal: It's possible his smoth face should have
wrinkles in't and we not see them?
Mist Open: Possible? Why have not many handsome legges

in silke stockins villanous splay feete for
all their great roses?

Mist Gal: Troth, sirra, thou saist true. (IV, ii, 1-8)
This incongruous picture Of artificially tapered legs

clothed in silk and gartered with roses issuing forth

popular at the time. Jonson satirizes Marston's pretensions
by referring to the association Of small calves and gentle
birth (Poetaster II, i) in only one Of the more well-known
references. Joseph Hall (Virgidemiarum, Lib III) and John
Davis Of Herford (Scourge Of Folly, Epic. 196) both Offer
extended satiric comments on the subject--and these are but
tYpical Of others tOO numerous tO cite. The physiognomists
also pay close attention to the legs. The general analogy
is based upon birds. Thus Thomas Hill cites Aristotle on
"slender shankes" to the effect that they denote a "leacher-
ous person, light and unstable in motion. And thys note
here conceyved Of the byrdes, having the like legges—-which
for that according to life are light and unstable and have

but a little Of the earthly gravitie yet much Of the ayriall
lightenesse." (cap. 50)

215

into monstrously flat feet recalls Jonson's satire Of
Anaides in Cynthia's Revels where Phantastes reports that
"hee puts Off the calves Of his legs, with his stockings,
every night"1 Dekker's intention, I think, is little more
vthan to suggest, in the sub-plot as in the main, the
disparity for both good and 111 that can exist between
outward seeming and inner reality.

This intention is explicitly developed in the "masking
scene" which so clearly parallels the revelation scene in
the main plot. In this instance it is Goshawke (who is, as
both ladies know, wearing a physiognomic mask), who in-
structs them to put on a real mask for the trip to Braimford.
The phrasing Of his command--"On with those false faces"--
is significant. The "unmasking" Of Goshawke is developed

specifically in terms of the false face he habitually wears.
Maister Openwork is the agent Of discovery:

Maist.Open: Why maskt?

Mist. Open: Dose a mask grieve you Sir?

Maist.Open: It does.

Mist. Open: Then y'are best get you a mumming.

Gosh: S'fOOle, you'l spoyle all.
Mist. Gal: May not wee cover our bare faces

with maskes as well as you cover your
bald heads with hats?

Maist.Open: NO maskes. Why, th'are theeves tO beauty,
that rob Of eies admiration in which true

love lies, why are maskes worne? Why good?
or why desired? Unlesse by their gay
collers wits are fiered to read the vildest
lookes; many bad faces, (Because rich gemmes

are treasured up in cases)
Passe by their priviledge currant,.

calls with the reference tO hid-

1
, also re 7
IV: 1’ 71 It t or Plaine-dealing in TES.I““”9

den "wrinkles," the assignmen
of Babylon (II, 1, 125).

but... ‘

 

216

Maister Openworke's monologue on masks continues for yet
another nine lines during which he points out again—-and tO
Goshawke's great discomfiture--that "Good faces maskt are
Jewels kept by spirits/ Hide none but bad ones,. . ."
until finally, after reading "storms" in his wife's eyes
and in her "browes” Openworke forces Goshawke to acknow—
ledge that he is not what he has seemed to be. And this
recognition is really all Openworke-—or Dekker-—is inter—
ested in. He readily abandons the interrogations:
NO more, hee's stung;

Who'd thinke that in one body there would dwell

Deformitie and beauty, (heaven and hell).

Goodnesse I see is but outside, wee all set,

In rings Of Gold, stones that be counterfet.
Having pronounced this benediction Openwork adds the final
absolution:

This blemish growes in nature not in you,

For mans creation sticke even moles in scorne

On fairest cheeks.
Maister Openwork has deftly engineered this entire confronta-
tion with Goshawke and literally forced him and the audience
to recognize that the world is full Of false faces which
have been put on only to deceive. But, beyond this, he
acknowledges that he has long since seen beneath the mask.
It was something he "read" in Goshawke's eye, Oddly enough,
but which, like that with Ralph Trapdore, he decided to
test. And this, he tells us, is why he manufactured the

story about the kept woman:

217

I'le tell you Maister Goshawke, in your eie

I have seene wanton fire, and then to try,

The soundnesse Of my judgment, I told you,

I kept a whoore. . . . (IV, ii, 207—10)
”To try the soundnesse Of my judgment” is precisely what
Mol does in the play and precisely what Sir Alex Wengrave
must learn to do.

It remains, then, to say a word about the untrussing

of the poet in Satiromastix, Dekker's stunning contribution

 

to the bitterly fought but short—lived "war Of the theatres ”
In bringing Jonson on the stage for this final humiliation,
Dekker depends in considerable measure upon profuse physical
detail to make his satiric point. And where the actor
playing Horace might have failed to make his features visible
for all in the theatre to see, Tucca and the others permeate
their comments with stinging references to the blemishes
which, however exaggerated, presumably marked Ben Jonson

from other men. He is, in Tucca's words, the "whooreson

poore lyme and hayre-rascall," that "thin-bearded Hermaphro-

dite," a "low-minded Pigmey," a "poore saffron-cheeke sun—

! H

burnt Gipsie," a "scurvy Lazarus,‘ and he has such a
terrible mouth, that thy beard's afraide to peepe out".

his face is "puncht full of oylet-holes. . .he is, in brief,
a "leane a hollow—cheekt scrag." And these are but the
descriptive adjectives applied by Tucca. Asinius adds to
this a well—meant reference to his "villanous broad backe,"

Dicache thinks Of his face as ungodly-~"it lookes for all

the world, like a rotten russet apple when tiz bruiz'd"--and

218

s ap Vaughan talks Of his "hairy skin" and his face

Sir Re

(1)

full of "pockey-holes and pimples." While Dekker does not
confine his satiric attack to physical description, he
clearly enjoys himself most when freeing Tucoa and the
others to add to the grotesque portrait of Jonson which

it is the intention of the play to produce.

And this, I suppose, is the main point. TO be at
all effective, the descriptive barbs must bear some recog-
nizable relationship to the real Jonson--enough so as to
aid in the identification Of the untrussed poet. And
this places genuine limits upon the employment Of physiog—
nomy. Personal satire is not free to choose amongst the
innumerable badges of shame supplied by the physiognomist;
his lore can be used only to the extent that the satiric

subject betrays features Of physiognomic significance.l

 

lDryden faced something like the same problem in his

satire Of Titus Oates in Absalom and Achitophel. And his
solution was remarkable Similar to Dekker's: to concentrate
on one or two outstanding features and to laden these with
as much damaging significance as the pseudo-science will
provide and they will bear. Dryden isolates Corah's long
chin, sunken eyes and harsh voice and in each case he points
to the physiognomic implication of the feature:

Sunk were his Eyes, his Voice was harsh and loud,

Sure signs he neither Cholerick was, nor Proud;

His long Chin prov'd his Wit; his Saintlike Grace

A Church Vermilio , and a Moses' Face (6H6-6A9)
As an example of the success with which Dryden chose the
features he wishes to emphasize, consider the following
physiognomic judgments of Corah's long chin and sunken eyes.
Richard Saunders reads a long chin in a man as an indication
that he can be "neither silent nor discreet—-cannot keep any-
thing secret" (p. 191). A sunken hollow eye indicates,
according to the Secreta Secretorum (cap 58) "malyce;" John
de Indagine finds them the mark Of "a craftye man;" Thomas Hill

 

 

219

For all Of the profusion Of descriptive adjectives

hurled upon Horace-Jonson in Satiromastix, Dekker nonethe-

 

less can be seen to have concentrated most Of his fire upon
relatively few traits: Horace is small, lean and hollow—
cheeked; saffron, running to "russet-apple” red, in color;
pock—marked and thin—bearded-—all Of the things which in
fact Jonson was in 1601.

TO the "pockey—holes and pimples,” for all the atten-
tion they receive, we need give little space. Clearly
Jonson's pimpled face was a well—known and not very attrac-
tive mark of the man and Dekker is content tO use the
feature chiefly as an identifying sign. Some loathsome
disease, no doubt syphilis, is meant to be suggested by
"pockey—holes,” but we cannot make an accurate diagnosis
with the details at hand. Jonson's bad complexion makes
him a "scurvy Lazurus" and we are left with the vague assump-

tion that he became one in a not very wholesome way.

 

concludes that the man with hollow eyes is "worthie no com—

mendation at all". . .they "do witnesse such a person to be
mutable, deceytfull, a betrayer,. . .corrumpte both with
envie and disdaine " Marchette Chute judges it a malicious
but accurate portrait: "The chief interest Of Dekker's
play is that it gives a full length portrait of what Jonson
looked like in 1601. . .the Londoners who flocked to the
Glove must have recognized it immediately." Ben Jonson of

 

Epstminster, E. P. Dutton & co. (1960), p. 99. Herford
and Simpson agree (Vol. I, p. A22), as does R. A. Small's
account in The Stage Quarrel Between Ben Jonson and the
§g~Called Poetasters, Breslau (1899).

 

220

Two Of the other physiognomic details--his short
stature and his thin beard—-are accompanied by definite
pointers. In the instance Of the thin beard, Dekker
merely underlines what almost everyone would have under-
stood--that it is a sure sign Of questionable masculine
virility. Jonson is a "thin-bearded Hermaphrodite" and
as Bartholomaeus Anglicus SO succinctly reminds us "a

”1 From this it follows

man hath a berde and not a woman.
that the man with a thin beard is "effeminate. . .fearful,
delicate and unconstant."2 Thomas Hill agrees with this
judgment: the "heares soft and thin and exceeding small

3

doe then declare an effeminate minde and courage," and
then he adds, significantly enough, "that this person

not onely lacking bloude, but [is] dull Of sense and
Show." Jonson's short stature is also linked with a
definite character trait for Dekker calls him a "low-minded
Pigmey" thus suggesting that the quality of his moral and
intellectual life conforms with his comparative shortness

Of body. Actually, a small body is commonly judged to be

a positive physiognomic sign. As Richard Saunders reminds
us, in a small body the "vital spirit. . .is united and

therefore the more strong. . .thus nature supplyes in wit

‘1

1Cited by W. C. Curry, Chaucer. Med. Sci., p. 60.

 

2R. Saunders, Op. cit , p. 190.
3Cap. 1A.

221

what is wanted in body." (p. 266) Dekker thus seeks to nul-
lify the advantage Of this orthodox interpretation by
supplying his own witty notion Of correspondence.

The remaining detailS--his lean, lank form and
saffron-red coloring--while nO doubt Jonsonian, merely
point to the choloric humour which Dekker has assigned
to Horace-Jonson to account for the irascibility which
made the play necessary in the first place. Tucca calls
him a "leane, a hollow—cheekt Scrag" and a "Poore saffron-
cheeke Sun-burnt Gipsie." According to the Kallendar Of

Shepherds, the choloric man "hath nature of fire, hot and

 

dry, naturally is lean and slender, covetous, ireful,

hasty, brainless, foolish, malicious, deceitful, and subtle
where he applieth his wit" (p. 151). The Secreta Secretorum
echoes this and adds that he is "hasty Of worde and Of
answere; he lovyth hasty wengeaunce" (cap. 58). In dis-
cussing the Martial man (the hot and dry complexion) Pro—
fessor Curry cites William Lilly's account which high-

lights his "lively high colour like sunne—burnt, or like

raw tanned leather."l Richard Saunders confines his descrip-

tion Of the face color Of the "cholerick or martitial oom-

plexion" to "brown or duskie;" the Kalendar Of Shepherds,

however, singles out red as the predominant color when

lCurry, Chaucer Mediaeval Sciences, p. 133.

2Saunders, p. 200.

 

   

 

222

discussing the properties of Mars (p. 143). Thomas Newton

in the Touchstone of Complexions, lookes for a red, brown

 

or tawny color in men of hot complexions.l In brief, then,
Dekker took some care to select precisely those physical
characteristics which would not only identify the target
of the satire but would contribute to it physiognomically
at the same time. The composite portrait is of a quarrel—
some, choleric, low—minded backbiter, impossibly proud of
his own productions and viciously uncharitable to those

of his colleagues. As Tucca so forcefully reminds the
Horace of the play, the real Horace was generous and kind.
"he lov'd Poets well. . .but thou lov'st none, neither
wise men nor fooles, but thy selfe." And the real Horace
had "a sweet visage," a "trim long—beard and a reasonable
good face for a Poet,” and he was a "goodly corpulent
Gentleman." In these essential physiognomic qualities,

as well as in the spiritual ones they suggest, Horace-
Jonson is found abysmally wanting-—as indeed he must be

for the two orders of nature go together, body and spirit,

H
complexion and conduct, sweetness of person and a sweet

Visage." It is ironic, and not unpleasantly so, that Ben

Jonson who had such savage fun with physiognomy in Every

Man Out of his Humour and in Cynthia's Revels should at last

be made the satiric subject of physiognomic portraiture in

Satiromastix.

 

3Cited by L. B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes,

Do 57.

 

Physiognomy in Dekker's plays never assumes the

thematic importance which Shakespeare give it in Richard III,

 

Marlowe in Tamburlaine or Jonson in Cynthia's Revels. In-

 

 

deed in only one play,The Roaring GirL does it assume a

 

defining position—-that of assisting in the unmasking of
the masked and, in the process, revealing the blindness
associated with the willingness to see no more than the
surface appearance of human beings. But for the rest,
Dekker is happy to employ the tokens of the pseudo—science
either literally or metaphorically when they will assist
him with a laugh or make a point clearer than it might
otherwise be. Dekker is, in fact, next to ShakeSpeare the
most versatile and flexible dramatist with regard to physiog-
nomy of the four men considered in this study. Jonson
despises the pretentions of the pseudo-science and uses it,
consequently, only when it can be despicably used. Marlowe,
on the other hand, seems to take it quite seriously and
confines his use to those occasions when it can be employed
literally. But Dekker, like his great master, approaches
physiognomy with more detachment and as a consequence
recognizes the full range of dramatic uses of which it is
capable. He Will grant its assumptions to paint a satiric
portrait of Horace—Jonson and yet will as easily reverse

those assumptions to develop the ”anti—physiognomic"

sketch in The Wonderful Year prologue or to eXplore the

 

fundamental relationships which obtain or ought to obtain

224

between outward appearance and inner reality. He can
smile at hypocrites putting on physiognomy's false faces
to fool the world and he can also build whole scenes upon
the principles of pathognomy.

In brief, then, physiognomy as we discover it in
Dekker's plays, is as broadly conceived as it was in the
larger world of 16th century England: it is an occult
science, elaborately codified and given to prophecy and
thus best fitted for ridicule——and, at the same time, it
represents a serious view of the universe and of the

relation of things.

CHAPTER IX

CONCLUSION

In the preceding pages I have attempted to show how
extensive was the interest in physiognomy in Elizabethan
England and with what versatility and success the pseudo-
science was employed by some at least of the leading
dramatists of the period. If physiognomy occupied an
ambivalent position in the larger society. . .eliciting the
belief and endorsement of educated men even as it was ridi—
culed by others and condemned by the law of the land.
so too was it admitted on uncertain or shifting ground in
the society recreated on the great public and private stages
of the period. As we have seen, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jon-
son and Dekker were all thoroughly, even intimately familiar
with its claims and with the meaning it so facilely attached
to particular features of the body. Even though their
private attitudes toward those claims may well have been
hostile, they all, nevertheless, admitted the pseudo-science
into their plays with a free and inventive spirit. Thus
they were instrumental in extending the range of physiognomy's
literary utility which had, prior to 1590, largely been

confined to literal statement.

225

226

They were not of course the only dramatists of the
period to use physiognomy in their plays. Chapman, Beaumont
and Fletcher, Webster, and Marston were equally aware of
its dramatic potential and its tOpical currency.l This is
especially true of Marston who betrayed an early interest
in the validity of the pseudo—science in his satire on

the Juvenalian epigram "Frontis nulla fides" and who,

 

thereafter found ways to introduce it on the stage. In the

preposterous erotic boasting of Nymphador in The Fawne

 

(III, 1) we can easily recognize the playwright who stood
at Dekker's shoulder in the untrussing of the choleric

Horace-Jonson in Satiromastix. Nymphador, it will be remem—

 

bered, has been led by Hercules, or Fawne, to boast of how
many conquests he. . .a "perfect Ovidian". . .might COpe
with in a given period. Hercules, thoroughly enjoying
himself, proposes a further refinement, the matching of the
mistress by appearance and temperament to the complexion

of the lover:

.if he were Saturnine, or melancholie to have
A blacke hayred, pall-fac'de, sallowe thinking
Mistresse to clippe him: if Joviall and Merrie, a
sanguine, light, tripping, singing, indeede a mistresse

lChapman's most amusing use of the pseudo-science may
well be the Angelo—Lorenzo encounter in May-Day (I, ii) in
which the old fool's poetic tribute to the charms of Fran-
ceschina is interpreted for the audience by the bemused Angelo.
In Philaster (I, i) Beaumont and Fletcher have Dion disclaim
any correspondence ("mens hearts and faces are so far asunder
that they hold no intelligence”) and yet in the Knight of the
Burning Pestle (III, v, 30 ff) the wife commenting on Jasper
remarks, "thou art as crooked a sprig as ever grew in London.
I warrant him he'll come to some naughty end or other, for

 

 

227

what would daunce a caranto as shee goes to embrace
him, if cholericke, impatient or irefull, to have a
Mistrisse with red haire, little Ferret eyes, a
leane cheeke, and a sharpe nose toentertain him.
And so of the rest.” (III, 1,)

While Marston's employment of physiognomy was extensive1
and occasionally as in the Hercules-Nymphador exchange,
comically inventive, he does not significantly add to the
several dramatic uses of the science developed by his
greater colleagues. For it is in the plays of Shakespeare,
Jonson, Marlowe and Dekker that we find physiognomy employed
in almost every conceivable way. . .to assist in character
revelation, in pathognomic "painting of the passions," in
satiric portraiture, as metaphoric resource, literally as
the science of outward signs and finally, as a ready—made
vehicle for the serious examinations of the question of
appearance and reality. Indeed this last and most signifi-
cant employment is important enough to Justify, by itself,
an examination of the pseudo-science and its role in the
intellectual life of Elizabethan England. But it must not
be permitted to cast into shade the several other effective

and, occasionally, subtle uses that men found for physiognomy

on the stage.

 

his looks say no less." Webster (Dutchess of Malfi I, i,

245 ff) has Bosco disclaim the veracity of physiognomy ("Doth
he study Physiognomie?/ There's no more credit to be given to
the face, then to a sick mans uryn") even as Shakespeare has
Richard III deny correspondence before his young nephew.

 

Other uses of physiognomy in Marston's plays can be
found in the Thais-Claridiana dialogue in The Insatiate
Countesse (I, ii); Eastward Ho (I, i; IV, i); The Fawne

 

 

 

228

Character Delineation

 

A system of thought which assigns meaning to the
details of physical appearance. . .granted that it is
widely enough understood. . .is uniquely suited to the
economic delineation of character. As Chaucer had shown,
the seemingly artless physical description of a character
in a poem can become, through physiognomy, an exciting
shorthand; the most hidden motives and the deepest secrets
of the personality may be revealed in the briefest Space.
and in the most sardonic manner.

This liberal and straightforward employment of the
pseudo—science is not often found in the drama of the late
16th century no doubt in part, because of the peculiar
restrictions and requirements of the theatre. It is one
thing to describe the physical appearance of a charactor
in a narrative poem, calling attention only to the details
which reveal the intended meaning. It is quite another to
produce that character on the stage, before hundreds of
peOple and with all the details of his physical appearance
competing one with the other for the attention of the
audience.

In spite of these difficulties, however, Marlowe's

conception of the character of Tamburlaine, as we have seen,

 

(I, ii; II, 1; V, i); The Dutch Curtezan (III, i) and
especially in The Malcontent (I, ii; I, iii; I, vi; III,
iii, IV, 1; V, i; V, ivg).

 

 

229

is in significant measure informed by the theory of the
humours and by the prescription of physical appearance
which physiognomy assigned to that theory. The difficulty
of isolating the particular features which reveal the
abundance of choler in the hero is largely overcome by

the systematic description of him given to others in the
play to share with the audience. Menaphon's elaborate
account of Tamburlaine's physiognomy serves the same purpose
and in the same way as Chaucer's description of the miller
or the reeve. And much the same could be said of Dekker's

portrait of Horace in Satiromastix or, in a more complex

 

setting, Shakespeare's use of deformity to suggest evil
in the character of Richard III.

But physiognomy can also be employed in reverse. .
which is to say, to reveal less about the character sub-
jected to physiognomic analysis and a good deal more

about the person conducting that analysis. In Antony and

 

Cleopatra Shakespeare employs this method to give us a
comically illuminating picture of an abandoned, jealous
but still hopeful queen. Octavia's appearance and person-
ality. . .ostensibly the subject of the interview with the
messenger. . .scarcely intrudes into a scene which is
actually devoted to Cleopatra's frantic effort to find in
physiognomy a reed of hope upon which to lean.

This is precisely the way Dekker uses physiognomy in

his poetic vignette in the Prologue to The Wonderful Year.

 

230

And it is one of the ways, at least, that Jonson uses the

pseudo—science to reveal Subtle's character in The Alchemist.

 

Physiognomy is not employed by Jonson to tell us about the
characters who came to Lovewit's house and who, in fact,
are subjected to physiognomic analysis. It is Subtle,
as physiognomist, who is revealed to us. The essential
playfulness of his mind, the cat-like quality of his per-
sonality, is illuminated by the sheer fun he derives from
the use of the science of outward appearance. Certainly
physiognomy helps prepare his victims for their ultimate
fleecing; but its essential role is to give Subtle the
pleasure of flirting with danger.

So, too, does Jonson turn the pseudo—science inside

out to show us the way Amorphus' mind works in Cynthia's

 

Revels. In this instance, of course, the precise tokens

of physiognomy are entirely set aside; Amorphus neither
believes in them, as Cleopatra does or so desperately wants
to, nor does he, like Subtle, feign a belief in them.
Rather, he callously studies physiognomy and teaches its
lessons to Asotus so that he can all the more successfully
exercise his gifts for hypocrisy in a world which in fact
does credit the meaning of outward appearance. When Jonson
employs Amorphus to study and teach the science of faces he
subtly alters the character of his courtier from a laughable

fop to a hardened and thoroughly conscious hypocrite.

231

Pathognomy: The Painting of the Passions

Physiognomy is also abundantly employed by the drama-
tists of the period in its role as interpreter of the
bodily changes induced by emotion. This branch of the
pseudo-science was, as we have seen, devoted to momentary
as Opposed to permanent tokens of the face and represented,
as a consequence, physiognomy's surest claim to truth.
Shakespeare is especially perceptive of the alteration in
color and in the cast of the face which severe emotion
invariably induces and is fond of employing verbal accounts
of these alterations for dramatic effect. Especially note-
worthy in this regard is the poignant scene between Morton

and Northumberland in 2 Henry IV in which pathognomy plays

 

an eXplicit role in heightening the pathos of a father's
knowledge of his son's death. Dekker's pathognomic emphasis

in Match Me In London (Act IV), in the scene in which

 

Martines is engaged by the King, though less concentrated,
is not unlike Shakespeare's employment of pathognomy in the
Northumberland—Morton scene. Far briefer in scope, but of
a similar order, is Marlowe's play on facial expression,
especially color changes, in the assassination scene of

The Massacre at Paris. In each case, pathognomy is made to

 

serve a precise dramatic end, whether it be the increase

of pathos or suspense.

232

Physiognomic Imagery

 

The extent to which physiognomy was used by Elizabethan
dramatists as a resource for poetic imagery can only be
suggested in a study of this length. It appears in one form
or another in virtually every play of the period, from
Marston's effortless citation of "a good faithful eye" in

The Dutch Curtezan (III, 1) to the metaphorical attribution

 

of "a forehead bold and big enough" to the rebel army in

 

Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV (I, iii). Even more typical is
Dion's aside when Philaster makes his first appearance in
Beaumont and Fletcher's play (I, i). The very diction em-
ployed by Dion is taken from physiognomy:

Let me be swallowed quick if I can find

in all the Anatomy of you mans vertues, one

sinew sound enough to promise for him,

he shall be Constable.
But to multiply examples of this kind would serve no useful
purpose. Physiognomy's ready-made system of discovering
truth could not but significantly contribute to the images
through which Elizabethan dramatists looked out upon their

world.

The Appearance-Reality Theme

 

As we have noted, by far the most significant use of

physiognomy in the plays discussed in this study is the

lPhilaster, I, i, The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher
(Cambridge, 1905), I.

 

233

utilization of the pseudo-science to sound, or echo, or
examine anew, the recurring problem of appearance and
reality. Physiognomy's basic assumptions, its very lang—
uage and mode ofthought are ideally suited to an examina-
tion of this kind, for the science unequivocally stands
upon the conviction that things are what they seem to be.
The caveats of the professional physiognomist notwith—
standing, the science is wholly predicated upon the notion
of correspondence between outward appearance and inner
spiritual reality.1 In Lucrece ShakeSpeare discovers how
physiognomy can be made to lend its imagery and its point
of View in commenting on its own inadequacy in the face of

human guile and treachery. In Richard III that theme is

 

sounded again but in the more intricate context of a play
about a man whose essential harmony between body and soul
remains undisturbed. Richard's quintessential skill at
hiding his true nature behind the mask of piety which is
his face, triumphs over the evidence of his corrupted body.
And so in Hamlet, too, Shakespeare evokes the language

and imagery of physiognomy to dissect the court of outward
seeming which inwardly festers with sin and hyprocrisy and

death.

¥

lThomas Hill's warning is typical of the modesty invari—
ably expressed in the introductory chapters of physiognomical
manuals, then abused in all that follows: "Thys is also to be
learned and noted, that any person (as afore uttered) to judge
alone by the face, mightily to erre and be deceyved, so that
necessarie it is, to gather and marke sundrie other notes of
the bodye, and after to pronounce judgment, and the same not
firmly, but conjecturally" (cap. i).

234

Jonson's comic world, no less given to outward show
than the Danish court, is also exposed through the agency
of physiognomy, the "science of outward show." In Every

Man out of His Humour and especially in Cynthia's Revels,

 

physiognomy_is shown to be an indiSpensable discipline

for the hypoctirical and vacuous courtier and his equally
empty ladies. To study faces and to master the art of
"putting on" the proper one, is no less important than the
other skills devoted to adorning appearance. . .proper
dress, prOper manners, proper accent, proper "wit,” and all
at the expense of inner integrity and intelligence and taste.
It is Jonson who ingeniously combines the imagery of dress
with physiognomy, or, as he more oftens puts it, "clothes
and face," to fashion his satiric strokes. Dekker's examina-

nation of the same theme in The Roaring Girl, while less

 

successful, is no less dependent upon the imagery of physiog—
nomy° Neither Goshawk nor Mol is what appearance suggests
they ought to be. In both the main and the sub—plots Dekker
emphasizes how common and how fruitless it is to mistake

the mask of the countenance for the spiritual reality

which it can at best only dimly reflect.

I have not tried to argue that the pseudo—science of
physiognomy deserves a central place in the intellectual
history of Elizabethan England. Still less do I suggest
that its study is essential to an understanding of the

dramatic literature of that period. That it deserves a

235

small place in that intellectual history and may reward
study by the student of the drama are the more modest
prOpositions I have tried to sustain. If it is true that
the Elizabethan dramatist did not consistently use physiog-
nomy to delineate character, it is no less true that
Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe and Dekker knew as much

about the pseudo-science as most to their countrymen and
freely adapted its ”truths" and its pretensions of their

dramatic purposes.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

236

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Awdeley, John. The Fraternitye of Vacabondes. ed., Edward
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Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Batman Uponn Bartholome, His Booke
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Blundeville, Thomas. Of Councils and Counselors (London,
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Browne, Sir Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. ed.
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Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. trans.,
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Chambers, Ephraim. Cyclopaedia or an Universal Dictionary
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Chapman, George. The Plays and Poems of George Chapman.
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Dryden, John. The Poems of John Dryden. ed. James Kinsley,
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Davies, John [of Hereford]. The Complete Works of John
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Dekker, Thomas. Dekker's Plague Pamphlets, ed. F. P. Wilson.
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. Dramatic Works. ed. Fredson Bowers, 3 vols.
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237

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