The Use of Names in Ben Jonson's Plays

The astute choice of a character’s name is something we, as readers, cherish in literature. We only have to recall Dickens’s villains to see how important a name can be in the depiction of a certain personality – the name Ebenezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol), for example, with its harsh consonants, immediately hints at unkindness and cruelty, whilst the name Verneering (Our Mutual Friend) at once reveals a sense of superficiality and an obsession with ostentation. When dwelling on the importance of names in literature, we may also recall Virginia Woolf’s feminist novel A Room of One’s Own, the heroine of which is never fully identified apart from as ‘Mary’. Given that this name was, at the time, the most common female name, this naming sets her forth as a universal figure of feminine life. This tradition of the precise selecting of names partly stems back to Medieval morality plays, in which the characters each represent a particular virtue or vice and are named accordingly: in the anonymously-written, archetypal morality play, Everyman, the protagonist is surrounded by characters like ‘Good-Deeds’, ‘Beauty’, ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Strength’. Arguably, it was this tradition that Ben Jonson drew on in the skilled naming of his characters: though their names can be easily overlooked, his specific choices often emphasise particular aspects of his satirical writing. In his three most famous comedies, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, Jonson uses names to exemplify the idiosyncrasies of his characters before we have even met them, and it is often the naming of his characters that drives his satire or elucidates his plots.

The naming of characters in Volpone is the simplest manifestation of this phenomenon. In the play, Jonson draws directly on the medieval fabliaux tradition and, as Michael Jamieson points out, ‘The people of the play are, through their names, invested with animal symbolism…’ The play is set in Venice, a city which was, to the Elizabethans, seen as a hub of corruption – many audience members would recall the usury of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The name Volpone, in Italian, literally means ‘sly fox’, and thus the protagonist comes to represent this corruption – his manipulative scheming (evident in his comic asides), like that of Subtle, Face, and Doll in The Alchemist, comes straight out of the cony-catching pamphlets of the Early Modern period. The other characters are likewise elucidated by their names: Corbaccio (‘the raven’), Voltore (‘the vulture’) and Corvino (‘the crow’) are all carrion-eating fowl, hungry not for flesh but for the wealth of the play’s protagonist. This animalism is so extreme that Corvino, for instance, commits to disinheriting his son and prostituting his wife. But this is Jonson’s name choosing at its most simple. More interesting are characters like Sir Politic Would-Be, whose name gives away his role as the ridiculous Englishman abroad, vainly attempting to be politic and sensible, an endeavour in which he fails miserably. Indeed, he is so absurd that he notes in his diary every single action he performs (including urination) during each day, and he characteristically ends the play hiding in a tortoise shell, the victim of one of Peregrine’s clever pranks. Thus, we can see how his name goes towards a satire of the ignorant English traveller, his mind filled with extravagant and bizarre business ideas with which he bores characters and audience alike. Likewise, the name ‘Littlewit’ is ironically telling, making the opening scene of Bartholomew Fair all the more humorous. This garrulous amateur dramatist is infatuated with his own negligible intelligence, constantly endeavouring to present himself as a witty and clever orator. For example, when Winwife employs some relatively clichéd metaphors (‘strawberry-breath, cherry-lips, apricot-cheeks, and a soft velvet head’), Littlewit ironically cannot restrain his admiration: ‘that I had not that before him, that I should not light on’t as well as he! Velvet head!’ Justice Overdo’s name is similarly revealing of his character, predicting the exaggeration and self-satisfied nature of his speeches: ‘Now to my enormities: look upon me, O London! and see me, O Smithfield! The example of justice, and mirror of magistrates, the true top of formality, and scourge of enormity. Hearken unto my labours…!’ He, along with the Puritan Rabbi Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, is just one of the many bourgeois characters of this carnivalesque play whose pretensions to honour, authority and religiosity are mocked by Jonson (who, of course, loathed the Puritans for their critique of the theatre), and it is the naming of these characters that contributes to Jonson’s mockery.

Similar naming techniques are used in one of Jonson’s other satirical comedies, The Alchemist. Sir Epicure Mammon is one of the ‘gulls’ hoping to get rich from Subtle’s feigned magical skill. The name Epicure refers to the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, famed for an emphasis on sensual pleasure (though this depiction of his philosophy is somewhat inaccurate and exaggerated). The name Mammon is also suggestive, meaning ‘wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship or devotion’. To an extent, then, the name Epicure Mammon is oxymoronic – though his forename implies an emphasis on material and physical existence, his surname seems to refute that, again showing how Jonson uses names to mock certain characters. So it’s no wonder that a character with such a name is so obsessed with the wealth and material riches that he hopes to acquire, which he boasts about to Doll: he shall have ‘glasses / Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse / And multiply the figures, as I walk / Naked between my succubæ.’

Even more witty a choice of name is the name adopted by Jeremy the Butler, who refers to himself as Captain Face whilst he is operating as a member of London’s criminal underworld. The name alone suggests the adoption of a mask, though we don’t find out until Act V that his real name is Jeremy. As Jonathan Haynes points out, ‘All traces of origin are effaced’ by Face’s ‘constant and impeccable role-playing.’ Thus, Face is an ‘impostor’, one of many corrupt characters lurking in London’s underworld: as the Prologue explains, ‘No clime breeds better matter, for your whore, / Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more.’ (lines 7-8) At the end of the play, though, Face is unmasked. And yet, he is, to some extent, the victor of the play. He is so manipulative and skilful that Lovewit’s neighbours think ‘Jeremie / Is a very honest fellow…’ Moreover, as the name Lovewit would imply, Face’s master appreciates his wit and scheming intellect, and thus Face can use his wit to gain his master’s pardon:

‘Give me but leave to make the best of my fortune,

And only pardon me thi' abuse of your house:

It's all I beg. I'll help you to a widow,

In recompense, that you shall give me thanks for…’

Hence, at the end of the play, Lovewit pays tribute to his servant’s ingenuity: he is ‘very grateful’ to have ‘received such happiness by a servant.’ It’s no surprise that a character called Lovewit would feel obliged to be ‘A little indulgent to that servant’s wit,’ and thus again we can see how Jonson’s use of naming helps not only to illustrate his characters, but to develop and almost foreshadow the plot. And though Lovewit is the eventual winner of the play (gaining a wife and augmented wealth), Face certainly ends up better off than his two scheming companions Subtle and Doll, who are forced to flee once the master of the house arrives unexpectedly. Face is what was known in the Renaissance period as a ‘taker-up’:

‘The taker-up seemeth a skilful man in all things, who hath by long travail learned without book a thousand policies to insinuate himself into a man’s acquaintance. Talk of matters in law, he hath plenty of cases at his fingers’ ends, and he hath seen, and tried, and ruled in the King’s courts. Speak of grazing and husbandry, no more knowether more shires than he, nor better way to raise a gainful commodity, and how the abuses and overture of prices might be redressed.’ – Greene, Notable Discovery

Face can use his wit to adopt multiple different personalities (hence the name ‘Face’, establishing his use of masks) – as Haynes explains, ‘Everyone is spoken to in his own language.’ He can talk to Drugger about tobacco, he can talk to Dapper about his milieu, all the while ready to transform back into Jeremy the Butler. Thus, the barrier between the criminal underworld and straight society becomes permeable for him, whilst it is not for Subtle and Doll. In this sense, Face can be seen as a warning to Elizabethan theatre-goers, his character demonstrating the Trump-like deceptions and manipulations not only of the criminal underworld, but of society in general.

We must remember, though, how aware Jonson was of the dangers of satire – he was, after all, arrested and imprisoned more than once for his satirical work. One of his most interesting satirical works, Poetaster, works completely differently in terms of naming. Jonson’s play sets out, amongst other things, to revenge the criticism he had received from Marston, Dekker and others during the so-called ‘War of the Theatres’ or Poetomachia. But, as he explains in his Apologetical Dialogue, he aims to ‘spare the persons and to speak the vices’. By setting his play in Augustan Rome rather than in London, Jonson champions his own style of Horatian satire (or, at least, the style of poetry to which he aspires), while criticising the Juvenalian satire of Marston and Dekker (though, in bitterly attacking these two playwrights as ‘vile ibids’ in the Apologetical Dialogue, Jonson was hypocritically sinking to the Juvenalian level) – thus, the play can be seen as a general satire of the poetaster figure whilst also criticising Jonson’s rivals. The loathsome Crispinus is often read as a representation of Marston – towards the end of the play, Crispinus vomits up what Tom Cain refers to as a series of ‘Marstonisms’, a pretentious and bombastic lexical flood including words like ‘retrograde’, ‘incubus’, ‘glibbery’, ‘magnificate’ and more. Moreover, the two poems that Crispinus and Demetrius read are undeniable parodies of Marston and Dekker’s work. But still, by choosing not to name Marston in the play, Jonson arguably escapes accusations of Juvenalian, bitter satire.

By (uncharacteristically) avoiding the use of illuminating names, Jonson is also able to compare himself to the great Augustan poet Horace, ‘a self-projection of Jonson’ according to Tom Cain. After all, the two poets were indeed very similar – Horace was often taunted because his father was a freed slave, and Jonson was acutely self-conscious of his step-father’s profession as a brick-layer; Horace had fought in Philippi, Jonson fought in the Low Countries. To an extent, then, Jonson seems to be modelling himself on Horace: in fact, in his Discoveries Jonson advocated exactly that: the ability ‘to bee able to convert the substance, or Riches of an other Poet, to his owne use.’ Thomas Smith even praised Jonson as ‘the elaborate English Horace,’ and like Horace, Jonson often chose to write in a realist style, ‘out of use and experience’ (Discoveries). Thus, Jonson could implicitly compare himself to the great Augustan satirist in an attempt to elevate his style.

There are other comparisons in Poetaster that also ought not to be ignored. The play opens with Ovid composing a poem which turns out to be one of Marlowe’s own translations of Ovid, lines from a banned edition published with Sir John Davies’s epigrams. Marlowe was one of the most loved poets of the day, and Jonson clearly respected him, though Marlowe does not completely escape criticism – compared to the virtues of Virgil and Horace, Ovid is seen as sensuous and arguably blasphemous in his organisation of the Divine Banquet (this, again, would link the Ovid character to Marlowe, who was often accused of blasphemy and atheism, and whose play Dr Faustus presents us with a similarly blasphemous banquet scene in Rome). So by presenting Ovid in such a way that we can’t help thinking of Marlowe, Jonson was able to express his opinions without fear of danger – Thomas More arguably used a similar technique in Utopia, hiding his own beliefs from the reader. Thus, the banishment of Ovid could be compared to the death of Marlowe, and as Tom Cain writes, ‘The Ovid being rejected is as much the Ovid of the 1590s in England [i.e. Marlowe and poets who wrote in a similar vein] as the historical Ovid of Augustan Rome.’ Finally, by setting the play in Rome, Jonson could make a subtle contrast and criticism between the high regard poets were held in under Augustus’s rule, and their relatively harsh treatment in Elizabethan England. It is poets that guide the Emperor Augustus in Jonson’s play, whilst it was libel and informers (like Tucca) that drove the Essex Rebellion of 1601, the year Jonson’s play was first performed.

So it’s clear that names played a huge role in Ben Jonson’s dramatic work. In his later comedies, he used names to elucidate and expound the personalities of certain characters whilst also satirising or ironizing them, whilst in the earlier Poetaster he deliberately avoids the direct naming of his subjects (if we can go so far as to say for sure that Jonson was attempting to satirise Marston and Dekker, amongst others). It is Histrio’s plays that directly mock and bitterly attack individuals: Ben Jonson, posing as the virtuous Horace, suggests he will not wrong ‘men’s fames’ (Trebatius’s words) in his verse. The implication is that Jonson (as Horace), along with Virgil (whom some critics have claimed resembles Chapman), is aloof from that, though it is doubtful whether he really is. Whatever the answer, it’s clear that Jonson thought very carefully about the choice of names in his plays, and through those names he makes his comedies and satires all the more powerful. As Haynes argues, Jonson used his art ‘in society as a weapon, or tool, or organ.’ Whether it was mocking the folly of naïve bourgeois figures like Cokes or Littlewit; whether it was revealing and revelling in the dark scheming of the criminal underworld; whether it was critiquing Early Modern nascent capitalism; or whether it was responding to the attacks of other poets, Jonson made the naming of characters an expressive tool in his work, carrying on and expanding earlier traditions, and influencing the work of writers who came after him.

Opposition and Ambiguity in Milton's 'Paradise Lost'

The story of the Fall is one of opposition and conflict, centred around the battle of good and evil, faith and temptation. Michelangelo’s Fall of Man epitomises this opposition with its two separate depictions of Adam and Eve. On the left, Adam and Eve are shown in the throes of temptation, about to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; and on the right, Adam and Eve are shown in their post-Lapsarian state, banished from Eden by the Archangel Michael. These two opposing presentations of pre-Lapsarian and post-Lapsarian man are divided by the evil figure of the wily serpent, the manifestation of wickedness in the Genesis story. John Milton, in adopting this story as the material for his epic poem, likewise adopts this emphasis on opposition and duality, with two main conflicts highlighted throughout: firstly, and most importantly, the conflict between good and evil, and secondly, how that conflict manifests itself in the two different states of humankind, sinless and then, after ‘Man’s first disobedience’, sinful. And yet, Milton’s presentation of these conflicts is not so straightforward as we might expect – there are ambiguities throughout. With the dubiously heroic portrayal of Satan and the rather ominous and seemingly cruel portrayal of God, we are forced to question, as readers, whether the line between the abstract concepts ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is really so finite. Likewise, with the hints at sinfulness and wantonness in Eve and in Eden before the Fall, and conversely, with the sense of man’s retained goodness after the Fall, Milton stresses the elusiveness of sinlessness and sinfulness, whilst also preparing us for the inevitable – first, the Fall of Man, and second, Man’s salvation through the death of Christ. In this way, Milton plays on these oppositions and conflicts in the poem and uses ambiguity to increase our anticipation and thrill as readers.

The epic poem begins with Milton declaring his intentions, to ‘assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men.’ Less than ten lines later, we are introduced to Satan, first referred to as ‘Th’infernal Serpent… whose guile’ is ‘Stirred up with envy and revenge.’ Thus, the poem begins with the aforementioned opposition of good and evil, the just ways of God as Milton perceives them, contrasted with the envious deceptions of his foe, the fallen angel Lucifer. This conflict is repeatedly emphasised in the poem – Christ is presented to us as the archetype of goodness in whom ‘the fullness dwells of love divine,’ whilst Satan declares his mission in completely opposing terms: ‘To do aught good never will be our task, / But ever to do ill our sole delight, / As being the contrary to his high will…’ This conflict between good and evil is stressed again and again, as when Milton observes how all Satan’s malice will serve ‘but to bring forth / Infinite goodness,’ a direct reversal of Satan’s wish to ‘out of good still to find means of evil’. Indeed, throughout the poem, there are echoing phrases like these that serve to recall earlier lines and give emphatic poignancy to their contrasting sentiments. For instance, in Book I, Satan exclaims: ‘hail, horrors, hail / Infernal world…’ whilst Book III opens with Milton’s similarly alliterative interjection, ‘Hail holy Light.’

We might also see this contrast in the epic poem’s contrasting elements of creation and destruction in the poem. Whilst God (the representative of ‘good’ in the poem) is the force of creation in Milton’s cosmos, Satan is the force of destruction – having already ‘sought / Evil to others’, he is now pictured ‘In meditated fraud and malice, bent / On man’s destruction.’ This opposition between creation and destruction is made particularly potent in Milton’s beautiful description of God’s creative acts, with all aspects of this new world revelling in fresh life. For example, the mountains heave their ‘broad bare backs’ into the clouds and the rivers hasten ‘with glad precipitance’. When we first see Eden, it is described (through Satan’s eyes) thus: ‘In narrow room Nature’s whole wealth, yea more, / A Heav’n on earth, for blissful Paradise / Of God the garden was, by him in the east / Of Eden planted…’ Here, Milton is drawing on the teleological argument to highlight God’s goodness as it manifests itself in the beauty and harmony of the natural world. As Helen Gardner notes, these descriptions of Edenic splendour demonstrate God’s kindness and are ‘inspired by Milton’s passionate belief in the goodness of the natural world as it was created and his delight in the principle of life...’ And yet, Satan’s evil prevents him from appreciating that beauty and goodness: he ‘Saw undelighted all delight’. I also ought to mention briefly the contrast between Satan and Abdiel (perhaps a manifestation of Milton himself), whose heroism we cannot help applaud as Milton describes him: ‘Among the faithless, faithful only he; / Among innumerable false, unmoved, / Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified…’ There is, then, clearly an opposition created in the poem between good and evil, between creation and destruction, and between faithfulness and faithlessness.

And yet, it’s hard to deny that, at some points, that good/evil division becomes blurred. Indeed, though in the first book Milton’s vocal interruptions colour our view of Satan as evil, Satan is still one of the most charismatic and apparently heroic figures in the poem, if not in the entirety of English literature. Who has ever read the aphoristic line ‘Awake, arise, or be forever fall’n’ without feeling an overwhelming sense of admiration for Satan’s heroic ambition and ‘fierce passion’? As Hazlitt remarks, we cannot help applauding Satan and his Promethean valour: ‘After such a conflict as his, and such a defeat, to retreat in order, to rally, to make terms, to exist at all, is something; but he does more than this – he founds a new empire in hell, and from it conquers this new world…’ Satan’s charm and irresistibility may come, in part, from the fact that his speeches were the first of the work to be written, originally part of Milton’s plan for a dramatic tragedy – hence, Gardner comments, ‘The intensely dramatic handling of the figure of Satan is a main cause of the extraordinary hold he has on the imagination.’ Moreover, we often find ourselves agreeing with Satan’s view of God as a cruel monarch who ‘Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.’ After all, when God is first introduced, he is seen ‘High throned above all heighth’ and he later ‘Commands all the angels to adore him’. Given Milton’s own religiously individualist and politically republican stances, it is no wonder, really, that he ‘wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God’ – in the words of Samuel Johnson, Milton had an ‘envious hatred of greatness,’ ‘a sullen desire of independence’ and a ‘pride disdainful of superiority’. Thus, the beginning of the poem, whether intentionally or not, tempts us to agree with Satan that it is ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n’. The lines between good and evil are blurred, and though we know that Satan’s speeches only ‘bore / Semblance of worth, not substance,’ we cannot help being attracted towards him.

There are similar oppositions in the presentation of Adam and Eve as they are seen before and after the Fall. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve are

‘Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

Godlike erect…

And worthy seemed, for in their looks divine

The image of their glorious Maker shone,

Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,

Severe, but in true filial freedom placed…’

They are presented to us as the image of perfect innocence – even their sexuality contains in it a certain pure nobility, repeatedly described with the word ‘mysterious’ which, in Milton’s time, had more to do with divinity than secrecy. Indeed, Milton even defends their open sexuality, saying that ascetics and Puritan hypocrites often defame ‘as impure what God declares / Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.’ Moreover, before the Fall, there was no sense of ‘guilty shame’ or dishonour in embracing sexuality. This pre-Lapsarian innocence is explicitly and immediately reversed after Adam and Eve eat the divinely prohibited fruit, when they engage at once in the ‘carnal pleasure’ against which Raphael warns them in Book VIII. They are described ‘As with new wine intoxicated both,’ the fruit inflaming in them ‘Carnal desire’. Adam casts ‘lascivious eyes’ on Eve, and ‘in lust they burn’. Likewise, Eve’s ‘eye darted contagious fire’. These repeated references to heat and fire highlight not only the sensuous and wanton nature of these desires, they also recall the burning fires of Pandemonium, and thus implicitly link this sexual depravity to the evil of Satan. And it’s not just in their sexuality that their post-Fall corruption reveals itself – they also grow blasphemous and proud, ‘and fancy that they feel / Divinity within them breeding wings…’ After eating the fruit, Eve even contemplates how the fruit may ‘render me more equal, and perhaps, / A thing not undesirable, sometime / Superior; for inferior who is free?’ The final question here again recalls Satan’s rhetoric when, in Book V, he questions how unequals can really be free. Not long after, the two are filled with ‘high passions, anger, hate, / Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook sore / Their inward state of mind, calm region once / And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent.’ Thus, Milton is keen to highlight the immediate change in his two human protagonists after they commit their first sin.

But there are ambiguities in this shift, too. Even before the fall, there are suggestions of sin and wantonness in both Eden and in man, prophetic suggestions of what is to come. This is largely insinuated through Milton’s descriptions of Eve’s hair, and as Jason Scott-Warren argues, ‘Milton makes Eve’s naturally curly hair indirectly responsible for the Fall of Man.’ Eve’s hair is described as ‘Disheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav’d, / As the Vine curles her tendrils’. This directly links Eve with the serpent, who is described as both ‘sly’ and ‘insinuating’ even before Satan has adopted the serpent’s form (demonstrating the evil already present in Eden before the Fall). The word ‘insinuating’, as Scott-Warren points out, comes from the Latin word ‘sinuare’ (notably containing the word ‘sin’) which means ‘to bend’ or ‘to curl’, thus linking Eve’s curling tresses to the serpent’s curling body. Thus, we are here given a premonition of Eve’s temptation and her eventual sin, highlighted in the word ‘wanton’ as used to describe her ‘ringlets wav’d’. This word is also used to describe the trees of the garden, which require ‘More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth…’ And finally, the river of Eden is described as curving and curling in ‘mazie error’. All of this combines to insinuate from our very first sighting of Eden that sin and the possibility of sin is indeed already present, despite the apparently innocent purity of Adam and Eve.

Milton also highlights the retained goodness in Adam and Eve even after their fall – unlike Satan, who knows there is ‘no place / Left for repentance’, Adam and Eve commit themselves to penitence and remorse. Milton describes how they ‘fell / Before him reverent, and both confessed / Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, with tears / Watering the ground, and with their sighs the air / Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign / Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek.’ This repentance is wholly ‘unfeigned’, distinct from Satan’s false and superficial protestations of sorrow in Milton’s sequel, Paradise Regained. As Johnson says, Adam and Eve are ‘amiable’ after the Fall ‘for repentance and submission.’ But it is not just in their repentance that we sympathise with them. It is also in the pure and wholly virtuous love that they show towards one another – for example, they both wish they could take all the punishment on themselves (Eve wishes ‘that all / The sentence from thy head removed may light / On me’). But it is Milton’s beautiful expression of their love that leaves us most sympathetic: Adam says to Eve, ‘How can I live without thee, how forgo / Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined, / To live again in these wild woods forlorn? / Should God create another Eve, and I / Another rib afford, yet loss of thee / Would never from my heart…’ Eve reflects these sentiments when she tells Adam in such honourable terms, ‘thou to me / Art all things under Heav’n…’ Thus, as Waldock argues, we cannot help sympathising here, not only because they are now imperfect, mortal humans like us, but also because they are ‘following here the highest moral value we know – Love.’ And finally, we can only admire their dignity in accepting the loss of their paradise and embracing the ‘Paradise within’ as they ‘Through Eden took their solitary way.’

So it’s clear that Milton was keen, in this poem, to employ established oppositions and conflicts, whilst also manipulating them and making us question their validity. Just as Satan and God are held up against each other and yet both presented relatively ambiguously, so pre- and post-Fall humanity are explicitly contrasted though depicted in a nuanced way, with both sin and honour present before and after the Fall. Milton did this for a number of reasons, but it is largely due to the fact that the story of Paradise Lost was universally known, so Milton plays games with this idea of foreknowledge throughout. Satan is presented as tempting and almost admirable in Book I not only as an indication of Eve’s later temptation and seduction, but also as a warning to us to demonstrate how easy it is to be charmed by rhetoric, thus encouraging us to sympathise with Eve in her Fall.

In the same way, the descriptions of Eden and pre-Lapsarian Adam and Eve are littered with subtle insinuations of their future wantonness, thus preparing us for the Fall that we know is already inevitable. Because we’ve been prepared for the event by all these subtle references to sin, the simple climax of the poem needs no adornment to give it weight: ‘So saying, her rash hand in evil hour / Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck’d, she eat…’ As Gardner points out, ‘When at last we come to it, with the weight of the poem behind it, the undramatic presentation of this simple act of disobedience is profoundly dramatic.’ And finally, Adam and Eve are shown to retain their goodness after the Fall in order to prepare the Christian reader for what was to come – not only the goodness of Noah and Moses, but more importantly, the redemption and salvation of man through Christ’s death, as narrated by Michael. It is perhaps in this sense that Coleridge referred to Milton as ‘the deity of prescience,’ in that Milton is recounting a story that all his readers knew, and thus he fills it throughout with portentous and fateful hints to add to the story’s unfolding excitement. So, by blurring these traditional lines of opposition, Milton not only surprises his readers, he also makes his poem more dramatically effective. He has indeed fulfilled his wish that he might ‘leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.’ 

The Conflict of Idealism and Realism in The Parnassus Plays

Though we often think of modernism as the point at which artistic creation and the role of the artist-poet in society really became a major consideration of artistic work (exemplified by Wallace Stevens’s ‘Of Modern Poetry’), it was, in fact, during the Renaissance that this trend was first developed. Rogier van der Weyden’s Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin (right, c. 1445-50) is a perfect example of this motif, with van der Weyden’s painting bringing to the fore the idea of artistic creativity. The same can be said of Vermeer’s The Art of Painting (below left, 1666), a self-portrait of Vermeer painting an allegorical figure, possibly the Muse of History. As Walter Liedtke suggested, the painting can be read ‘as a virtuoso display of the artist's power of invention and execution…’ We can also see this focus on artistic creation as a theme in the poetry of the Elizabethan sonneteers, with Astrophel and Stella’s opening sonnet considering the difficulties of writing innovative verse. Still, the main focus of the sequence is not art itself – though it contemplates the ideas of artistic creation and convention, the sequence is mainly concentrated on love and desire. The Parnassus Plays, alongside the plays of the Poetomachia, were the first set of plays wholly devoted to the idea of writing as their central subject. As Paula Glatzer argues, the trilogy is ‘an Elizabethan embodiment of the eternal conflict between an artist and his society.’ But whilst the aforementioned paintings emphasise the dignity and importance of the artist in society, The Parnassus Plays, written at the turn of the century by Johnian students, focus more on the difficulties faced by scholar-poets. The trilogy moves from an almost naïve idealization of the accumulation of knowledge, to a highly pessimistic depiction of a cruel society, with the final two plays dominated by harsh realism and stinging satire. It is this progression from idealism to realism that holds the trilogy together and makes it such a relevant text to both students and artists today.

The first play is by far the most idealistic of the three. It begins with Consiliodorus counselling Philomusus and Studioso before they set out on their voyage to Parnassus, an allegory for embarking on their university studies. Consiliodorus speaks from ‘experience’ when he urges them on their voyage, lucidly depicting an idealised vision of Parnassus: ‘Where with sweet Nectar you youre vaines may fill, / … And teache them write some sweeter poetrie…’ Consiliodorus explains that, if he were young, he would make the voyage, even though he ‘foreknewe that gold runns to the boore’ – as he says, he would ‘be a scholler though I liue but poore.’ This is the central theme of the entire trilogy – that intellect will not bring worldly goods, and that scholars are largely condemned to poverty (‘Learninge and pouertie will euer kiss’). This is indeed a realist depiction of the scholar-poet’s struggle, and yet, for Consiliodorus, this is no reason for abandoning the scholarly life – rather, the problem is with society itself, ‘That knoweth not howe to weigh youre worthiness.’ As Glatzer argues, ‘if artistic values are superior, then society and its material rewards are things that the true Parnassian must transcend.’ Consiliodorus urges the scholars to go to ‘that pure and happie springe’ and then ‘Returne triumphant with youre laurel boughes…’

These are indeed glorified visions of learning and poetry, visions that will later be challenged by the failed scholar-poets and poetasters encountered during the voyage, the very ‘lozell, lazie, loitering gromes, / All foggie sleepers, and all idle lumps’ that Consiliodorus warned them against. The first tempter they encounter is Madido (‘moist one’), a drunkard who has abandoned his voyage in the land of logic in favour of wine and the poetry he believes that alcohol can inspire. Though Madido is a comic character and an antagonist, we are charmed by his effective use of simple diction set in rhythmic prose. We must also remember that this was first performed for students, who must have experienced similar temptations. And when Madido complains of patrons with ‘asses ears’ and claims that ‘This Parnassus and Hellicon are but the fables of the poetes,’ we cannot help but agree. Still, Philomusus and Studioso remain steadfast in their resolution, rejecting alcohol for ‘learnings glorious meede’. The second character they meet is Stupido, a much less persuasive character. Whilst Studioso says that he ‘neuer sawe a more delicious earth… Then here is in this lande of Rhetorique,’ the puritan Stupido condemns ‘these vaine artes of Rhetorique, Poetrie, and Philosophie.’ Stupido is an archetypal version of the satirized puritan figure, pompous, repetitious, arrogant, and generally ignorant. For example, the only argument he has for art’s immorality is the outlandish clothing of poets: ‘Artistes [are] fools, and that you may know by there vndecent apparell.’ This exchange, then, partially links to Sidney’s Defence of Poesy in that the author of The Pilgrimage is defending poetry against puritanical accusations of immorality. The real reason for Stupido’s puritanical rage, Philomusus reveals, is not his morals, but that fact that ‘he cannot reach vnto the artes’ and thus ‘Makes showe as though he would neglect’ them.

The next two failed scholar-poets that the protagonists encounter are Amoretto and Ingenioso, met in the land of poetry and the land of philosophy respectively. Amoretto enters reading verses from Ovid and seems to personify the argument against poetry that Sidney referred to when he described ‘how much it abuseth men’s wit, training it to wanton sinfulness and lustful love…’ Amoretto has made the error of believing that love and lust are the only subjects for real poetry – it is in poetry, Amoretto says, that they shall ‘all youre hungrie sences feaste…’ The two scholar-poets are tempted by Amoretto, who eloquently tempts them towards ‘wantome merriments’. These temptations are so strong that Philomusus speeches tend towards the more sensuous rhetoric of Amoretto, particularly when he says: ‘Phoebus hath laid his golden tressed locks / In the moist cabinet of Thetis lapp.’ And yet, with the opening of Act V, the two seem unsatisfied with these ‘yonge maides’, as Studioso says: ‘Howe sourelie sweete is melting venerie: / It yealdeth honie, but it straighte doth stinge.’ This leads Studioso to abandon the realm of poetry altogether, and this is precisely what Sidney warns against in his Defence – the danger of rejecting all poetry simply because of a few ‘entisinge Panders, subtile baudes’. But Philomusus refutes Studioso’s argument, picking up on the Sidneian rationale that ‘who reades poets with a chaster minde / Shall nere infected be by poesie.’ Like Sidney, the playwright suggests the greatest threat to poetry comes from those who abuse it from within.

The two protagonists’ final encounter is with Ingenioso, who agrees with Consiliodorus that ‘Learninge and pouertie will euer kiss’. And yet, whilst Consiliodorus saw this as a matter of Stoic acceptance, valuing learning above material wealth, Ingenioso lures Philomusus and Studioso from their path because ‘Parnassus is out of siluer…’ This final act prepares us for the succeeding two plays, with Ingenioso describing how ‘Apollo is banckroute’ whilst ‘tapsters, ostlers, carters, and cobblers haue a fominge pauch.’ But the protagonists reject Ingenioso’s complaints, declaring that, though they ‘knowe that scholers comonlie be poore / And that the dull worlde there good partes neglecte,’ they still ‘thinke not worse of faire Parnassus hill’. This stoic acceptance and idealised conception of intellectual value is admirable, but Ingenioso’s final words are nonetheless prophetic: ‘Farewell, and take heede I take youe not napping twentie yeares henc in a vicars seate… or els interpreting Pueriles Confabulationes to a companie of seauen years olde apes.’ The play ends with a beautiful description of Parnassus, a ‘laurell shadie groue’ where they shall ‘heare the Muses tunefull harmonie.’ Thus, the first play of the trilogy presents those failed scholar-poets who could not stomach the voyage to Parnassus as the real antagonists, whilst Philomusus and Studioso persevere in their idealism despite temptation and the realist knowledge that learning will not lead to material wealth. They follow Consiliodorus’s advice, and end the play with a sense of pure optimism.

This hopefulness, though, is shattered at the start of the first part of The Return. As Glatzer says, the plays progress in ‘increasing disillusionment’ and this opening demonstrates the start of that progression. The playwright of the Pilgrimage is said to have been made ‘a staide man’ whose ‘looke was neuer sanguine since that daye,’ a meta-theatrical demonstration of the play’s major theme – the suffering of the scholar-poet. And yet, there is still, arguably, a sense of idealism in the opening, even if the play demonstrates the increased insignificance of the scholar-poet in society. For example, the stagekeeper tells the audience ‘Our muses praise depends not on thy breath.’ This daringly suggests that the play has artistic merit independent of audience approval, and thus it is, perhaps, a writer’s proud rejection of societal appreciation in general. Still, the majority of the play is pessimistic about the role of the scholar-poet and the difficulties facing him. The play depicts Studioso and Philomusus once they have left Parnassus and entered the real world. Whilst the first play was a tension between the scholar-poets and those that tempted them away from their course, the two Return plays dramatize the tensions between the scholar-poet and society, only briefly alluded to in the previous play. Hence, Ingenioso, who previously emphasised this tension in the Pilgrimage but was dismissed as a ‘wilie knaue’, becomes one of the major protagonists in this sequel and is greeted as an old friend.

The most obvious change in tone comes in Consiliodorus. Though he was previously aware that wealth and learning do not go hand in hand, he seems now to believe that the value of learning is not enough in itself. As he says: ‘Hencforthe let none be sent by carefull syres, / Nor sonns nor kinred, to Parnassus hill, / Since waywarde fortune thus rewardes our coste / With discontent, theire paines with pouertie.’ Consiliodorus, Philomusus, and Studioso have realized, in the words of Glatzer, that ‘Parnassus may, after all, not suffice.’ Thus, each of them addresses this problem in a different way: Ingenioso turns to satire, even if that means abandoning his poetic principles (‘Foole I to angell in a misers mudd, / But hope of gould did make mee guilde this woode’); Philomusus becomes a sexton; and Studioso becomes a tutor, as Ingenioso prophesized. But even in abandoning their scholarly and poetic principles, all three protagonists struggle. Philomusus and Studioso lose their dignity, and later lose their employment, whilst Ingenioso (often compared to Nashe) struggles to find patronage, and is only given ‘two groates’ for his pamphlet – it is worth noting that Nashe, too, had difficulty finding patronage. Ingenioso’s interactions with Gullio dramatize the poet’s dilemma in dealing with patrons who are unable to appreciate artistic merit when they see it – Gullio condemns both Chaucer and Spenser, whilst praising Shakespeare at length who, at that time, was considered a relatively low-brow romantic poet rather than the great bard we think of today. Still, despite Gullio’s ignorance, Ingenioso needs the money: ‘My pen is youre bounden vassall to comande,’ he tells him obsequiously.

It’s not long, though, before all three are left poverty-stricken and out of work. Ingenioso has been dismissed by Gullio as a ‘Base, base, base, peasant’ for telling the truth about Gullio’s mistress; Studioso was kicked out of his role as tutor for being proud; and Philomusus was replaced for negligence. But, whilst, as Glatzer points out, ‘Philomusus and Studioso’s social battle with the worldlings is debilitating,’ Ingenioso’s is, to some extent, ‘exhilerating’. Philomusus constantly laments and complains, attacking Studioso for his stoicism: ‘Why, can a man be galde by pouertie, free spirits subiected to base fortune, and put it vp like a Stoick.’ Ingenioso, on the other hand, retains his spiritual superiority over others, explaining that he would ‘rather liue in pouertie / Than be tormented with the tedious tales / Of Gullios wench and of his luxuries…’ He is, according to Glatzer, determined ‘to exact literary vengeance on his social opponent, to use his verse for the purpose of abusing the patron.’ Thus, he says, ‘For Gullios sake Ile proue a Satyrist.’ This, again, is arguably another meta-theatrical comment in that the play itself is a satire, and the protagonist is praised as a satirist. Indeed, Glatzer even says that the literary moral of the Returnplays is that ‘satire is the price a society must pay for disdaining its artists.’ Thus, the second part of the trilogy ends with Ingenioso more prepared for the real world than Philomusus and Studioso. He explains: ‘Well, fawne the worlde, or frowne, my wit maintaine mee: / The press shall keepe mee from base beggarie’. Conversely, Studioso and Philomusus head off ‘To Rome or Rhems’ and bid farewell to this ‘heard hearted clyme’. And so, we have seen in these first two plays the progression of Philomusus and Studioso from scholars yearning for an idealised sense of knowledge and intellect, to debased scholar-poets trying to make their way in a society that does not appreciate their wit. Though they knew all along that intellect does not lead to wealth, they now begin to doubt the value of intellect in itself.

The third play takes this realism to a new extreme, with the scholar-poets now pleading with members of the monied middle classes, the ‘new men’ of Elizabethan England. Ingenioso appeals first to Danter, the notoriously licentious printer, sacrificing his artistic principles in writing a shameless pamphlet which he knows will sell well, and then appeals to a trio of ignorant private patrons; Academico sues for pastoral preferment from Sir Raderick and Amoretto; and Philomusus and Studioso, the once idealistic pilgrims from Parnassus, pose as physicians and cony catchers. They have, by this point, completely abandoned Consiliodorus’ principle of self-integrity, most evident when Philomusus says to Studioso: ‘But lets leaue this capping of rimes… let vs run through all the lewd formes of lime-twig purloyning villaynes, let vs proue Cony-catchers, Baudes, or any thing, so we may rub out.’ They even begin to despise the very learning they acquired at Cambridge, with Philomusus saying that ‘if any of the hidebound brethren of Cambridge and Oxforde… that abused vs in times past… become our patients, wee’l alter quite the stile of them…’ Like Ingenioso in his vow to attack the society that has neglected his art, so Philomusus and Studioso are determined to revenge their maltreatment by whatever means. By this point, as Glatzer argues, ‘Their recent worldly exploits have cursed them with the knowledge of social evil, and in The Second Return they descend ever further, and choose, cynically, to experience evil.’ When these exploits fail them, they descend even further, attempting to become professional actors (‘mimick apes’ and ‘glorious vagabonds’) – a profession scorned at the universities.

It is, arguably, at this point that our sympathy for Philomusus and Studioso begins to dwindle. Of course, we pity their predicament, but their complete abandonment of their principles certainly puts them at a distance from the audience. Glatzer eloquently writes: ‘Not only do they abuse the world on its own terms, playing the false physician and tutor; they also pervert their own artistic values by co-opting with Burbage and Kempe, and then by fiddling for Sir Barbarism’s patronage.’ Whilst they frequently demand sympathy from the audience as rejected Parnassians (‘To beare too long argues an asses kinde’), they also take part in society’s own Machiavellian schemes. Thus, the play ends in complete pessimism, with no real persuasive argument for the worth of the arts. The final scene shows all the scholar-poets encountering one another again, all having abandoned their previous attempts at accumulating wealth. Philomusus explains that they ‘haue run through many trades, and thriue by / Poore in content’ and are now intent on a Spenserian shepherd’s life. Ingenioso and his companions are fleeing to the ‘Ile of Dogges’ to ‘vext breath in snarling wast’, having been apprehended for their slanderous satire (again, recalling Nashe and his lost play). As Studioso remarks, ‘well thou dost from this fond earth to flit, / Where most mens pens are hired parasites.’ Academico, on the other hand, will return to his cell in Cambridge, even though it is a ‘melancholick life’. Thus the play ends in utterly pessimistic realism, ‘discontent’ because ‘few schollers fortunes are content’.

And so, the plays begin with a knowledge that wealth and learning are mutually exclusive, but with learning valued above material wealth. It is only when they get into the real world that they realise how naïve they had been in thinking they could survive on knowledge alone. In the new capitalist world emerging in the late 16^thCentury, one needed more than just knowledge to get by. As Glatzer notes: ‘The harsh but unavoidable conclusion of the Parnassus Plays [withdrawal to the countryside] is that there is no legitimate secular place for the artist in society.’ In a sense then, the two Return plays can be seen as a response to both the Pilgrimage play and also Club Law (1599), a play performed at Clare Hall in which Cambridge civilians are forced to accept the university scholars as superior. The Return plays seem to refute the idealism of the Pilgrimage whilst also rejecting the optimism of Club Law. The ideal view that the scholar’s knowledge surpasses all material wealth and that the scholar will triumph over citizens, the Return plays suggest, is simply untenable, not only because Cambridge is not representative of the realities of the wide world, but also because the premises of the two plays are based wholly on a false and idealistic romanticising of knowledge. Thus, though it may be somewhat unsavoury for the modern audience, the Parnassus Plays seem to reveal the naivety of young scholars and demonstrate the severe difficulties they will face once they leave Parnassus. Perhaps, the plays seem to suggest, the voyage to Parnassus is not really worth it – perhaps Ingenioso was right all along. 

The Development of Poetic Form in Renaissance England

It was, of course, Geoffrey Chaucer who laid the foundations for the rise of a vernacular English poetry. In his Canterbury Tales, he developed the iambic pentameter and the rhyming couplet, and to that extent, he is rightly seen as the ‘father’ of English verse. And yet, this essay will argue that Renaissance writers are overlooked in the central role they played in advancing a distinctive English poetic style. We often think of Pope and Dryden as the first great English critics, ignoring the important formal developments that took place in both poetry and criticism during the Renaissance. It was, in fact, during the 16^th and 17^th centuries that poets and critics really developed an understanding of form as central to verse. This epoch took up and advanced the idea that form (mainly structure, metre, and rhyme) can be a tool of expression; that manner can be just as important as manner. Though previous writers (including Chaucer) had indeed experimented with form, it was in the Renaissance period that formal innovations were taken to new heights, laying crucial foundations the for critical and poetic works of Pope, Dryden, and others. Indeed, the writers of Renaissance England are almost entirely responsible for the way we think of poetry today.

There were a number of different factors that led to this Renaissance emphasis on form. The first, and perhaps the most important, was the prominence given to the ‘dignity’ of man. The most obvious example of this is Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ drawing, the presentation of the ideal man in all his grandeur. Pico della Mirandola’s work De hominis dignitate reflects a similar pride in humanity. This work was so influential at the time that it is often referred to as the ‘Manifest of the Renaissance’ in that it championed this newfound sense of man’s worth and intellect. One of the central ideas behind this text is the emphasis on man’s ability to create. As he says, ‘as the free and proud shaper of your own being’, you have the ability to ‘fashion yourself in the form you may prefer.’ This work highlights throughout that man was formed in the God’s image, and thus it stressed that man has and ought to use his God-given creative faculties. This is something that Sidney picked up on in his Defence of Poesy. Though he rejected the idea of furor poeticus, he believed that man was created as a ‘maker’ and given ‘the force of divine breath’. Sidney focuses throughout on man’s God-like creative power: ‘Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done…’ Puttenham also adopted this position when he wrote – ‘A poet is as much to say as a maker… Such as (by way of resemblance and reverently) we may say of God.’ After all, the word ‘poet’, as Sidney points out, comes from the Greek ‘poiein’ which means ‘to make’.

Thus, Sidney stresses the poet’s role as creator and craftsman, and the need to employ our God-given intellect in order to give glory to God. This intellect often manifested itself in formal innovation and the attempt to show wit and skill in poetic form, also influenced by a revived interest in Classical rhetoric, which stressed the importance of ‘inventio’ in writing. But it wasn’t just in divine poetry that this need to show formal skill was important: in the court, in order to advance themselves and attract patronage, poets often found they had to differentiate themselves from their contemporaries, and this differentiation frequently expressed itself in formal ingenuity and skill. What is more, because of the high rate of Elizabethan criticism, poems of the time, as Catherine Ing argues, ‘were the products of highly conscious artists, often working to rule, always well aware of the effect they wished to produce, and deliberately choosing certain means towards their chosen ends.’ And so, Ing goes on, ‘it probably seemed to the Elizabethan critic that the truth of a poet’s inspiration must show itself in his delight and care in labour.’ The need to distinguish one’s own poetry from that of others, and likewise this new sense of man as ‘maker’ and of poet as ‘craftsman’, all combined to emphasise the importance of form in the poetry of the day.

The most obvious and clear example of this special use of form is seen in the rise of figured poems in Renaissance England, again influenced by the renewed interest in Classical poets, the originators of figured poetry. They are, perhaps, the most blatant instance of poets using form to reflect content in that the poems are shaped according to what the poet is describing. This development was also induced by the development of print culture in the 16^th century and the rise of competing printing houses. As Elizabeth Cook suggests, printers wanted ‘to demonstrate their skills in the display of uniform type in clearly contoured diagrammatic forms.’ Likewise, the rise in baroque art during this time led to an emphasis on ‘various layers of communication’ working cumulatively to achieve a collaborative intensity’ (Cook) – this is exactly what figured poems seem to do. Puttenham’s Pyramids or ‘spire’ poems show not only how poets could distinguish themselves from other through formal innovation (one of the spires must be read from bottom to top, manipulating normal reading conventions), but also how form can reflect meaning. In the first spire, we move from the earthly ‘figure’ of the spire up towards the ‘azurd skie’ to reflect the queen’s vow that she shall ‘mount on hie’ and ‘aspire / After an hier / Crown & empir’. The second poem, which we read from the top down, aptly begins with:

  ‘God

    On

    Hie

  From

 Aboue

Sends loue’.

This clearly demonstrates Puttenham’s awareness of how form can reflect and even go some way to expressing meaning. Elsewhere, he argued that the figure of the pillar, for example, can suggest ‘stay, support, rest, state, and magnificence,’ showing a manifest link between form and matter.

George Herbert’s later poem ‘Easter Wings’, partly inspired by a similar ancient Greek poem by Simmias of Rhodes, is a more interesting specimen for analysis in that it uses its form in multiple ways at once. Rather than simply writing a poem in the form of its title, Herbert directly uses that form to reflect certain semantic meanings. For example, in the first stanza we see how, as man is ‘Decaying more and more’ so the lines diminish until we get to the words ‘Most poor’ (directly reflected in the placement of the words ‘Most thin’ in the second stanza). But then, the lines grow longer and longer once man is supported by ‘thee’, God, until they return to the length of the first line, when man was created ‘in wealth and store’. Moreover, as the two final lines show, the form is mimetically reflective of Herbert’s conceit – he is literally ‘imping’ the wings of the angels which he hopes will, with Affliction, ‘advance the flight in me’. Thus, Herbert not only fits his matter into a structural mimesis, but he uses this structure to enhance the poem’s meaning, allowing it various layers of expression.

This is just one of many examples of how poets of this period used strophic or formal structure as a method of illustrating meaning. For instance, Andrew Marvell’s ‘To his Coy Mistress’ is divided into three stanzas to reflect the syllogistic nature of his argument. The stanzas begin ‘Had we… But… Now therefore…’ reflecting the typical trajectory of logical induction. By splitting his poem into three large stanzaic units, Marvell is showing off his awareness of rhetorical and argumentative finesse, whilst also purposefully undermining his own argument and demonstrating its artificiality. Though I would not agree with Eliot that this carpe-diem poem really contains much ‘serious matter’, I would agree that Marvell has used ‘structural decoration’ to elucidate the poem’s content. John Donne’s poem ‘The Good Morrow’ works in a similar way in its stanzaic divisions, though to different ends. Donne divides his poem up into three stanzas, the first of which reflects on the past (hence the emphatic placement and trochaic stress of ‘Did’ in the second line), the second on the present (opening ‘And now’) and the third, on the future, which hints at love’s eternalising qualities: ‘If our two loves be one, or, thou and I / Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.’

John Milton also shows an awareness of formal importance in his composition of Paradise Lost. The great epic was originally going to be written in the form of a play, a dramatic production of the Fall of Man. However, he then decided that the epic form suited the story better, perhaps because he aimed at a sense of elevation and grandeur to stress the significance ‘Of man’s first disobedience…’ This grandeur would, presumably, come from the associations of the epic form with writers like Homer (The Iliad and The Odyssey), Virgil (The Aeneid), and later on Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queene). And yet, when the poem was first published, it contained only ten books (perhaps to associate it with Lucan’s ten-book work, Pharsalia), and it was only later that Milton settled on a twelve-book form, affirming its affinity with Virgil’s Aeneid, also comprised of twelve books. All of this, according to Ing, shows Milton’s ability ‘To recognize that certain forms may mould some subjects more happily than others may show as much imaginative perception as to feel that certain subjects flow more happily into some forms than into others.’ Thus, by choosing to write his rendition of the Fall in the form of a twelve book epic, Milton was not only adding grandeur to his work, he was also showing an awareness of form’s importance and demonstrating the connotations that certain forms can bring with them. And yet, at the start of his work, he is keen to show that he will not be dominated by these traditional connotations. Hence, as Hurley points out, he picks up on the Classical idea of Mount Helicon as the home of the Muses, but suggests that, because his muse is ‘Heav’nly’ he can ‘soar / Above th’Aonian mount.’ Here, then, we can see how writers may want to work with their chosen form, whilst also working against it, or at least working against the form’s connotations (as Milton also did in his decision to write political sonnets).

Specialised use of form also manifested itself in the choice of metres and rhyme patterns of poems during this period. One of the reasons why metre and rhyme were so important was because much of the poetry written in the early 16^th century was translation of earlier poems. This meant that poems were often indistinguishable in terms of subject-matter, all of them exploiting similar conventions and traditions. As Ing explains, Elizabethan lyrics ‘are notorious for their repetitive subject-matter… their well-worn imagery and their light intellectual weight.’ What this means, then, is that poets had to differentiate themselves mainly in their use of form, and thus our ‘enjoyment is dependent on our appreciation of that in the poem which is truly the result of the poet’s art.’ Moreover, because these poems were often translations of Italian work, English poets found they could not just replicate Italian forms, which were often unsuitable to the English language. This was for a number of reasons, but mainly because of the comparative lack of easy feminine rhymes in the English language. Thus, poets like Wyatt and Surrey adapted the hendecasyllabic metre of Italian sonneteers into the English iambic metre, and settled on rhyme-schemes which allowed for the increased difficulty of repeated rhyming in English. Hence, Wyatt introduced a final couplet into the sestet (cddc;ee) and Surrey changed the number of rhyme endings from four or five in the Petrarchan tradition to seven, also often using a final rhyming couplet. This gave the English poets the same freedom the Italians had, though it may seem otherwise. It also meant that the poems often finished with an epigrammatic clinch in the couplet, which poets often used wittily to summarise their poems. Indeed, the final couplet often became the location of the sonnet’s volta, as in Sidney’s sonnet ‘Thou blind man’s mark’, which ends with the conclusive couplet: ‘Within myself to seek my only hire, / Desiring nought but how to kill desire.’ This demonstrates how English sonneteers not only adapted the Italian sonnet, but used this formal adaption to their advantage.

This period also saw an increased awareness of how different metrical feet and rhyme schemes could have different emotional effects on the reader. As Puttenham points out, the variation of feet can play a significant emotional role in a poem: ‘for a foote by his sence natural is a member of office and function’. Thus, metres can be ‘sometimes swift, sometimes slow, sometime vnegally marching or peraduenture steddy.’ In ‘Of Proportion by Situation’, Puttenham talks about how different metres can make verse ‘either lighter or grauer, or more merry, or mournfull, and many wayes passionate to the eare and hart of the hearer…’ Thus, despite common misconception, it wasn’t Pope who first demonstrated the power of metrical variation when he wrote: ‘When Ajax strives, some Rock's vast Weight to throw, / The Line too labours, and the Words move slow…’ Indeed, the Renaissance and Elizabethan writers were already well versed in exploiting metrical expression. Hence in his poem ‘Anacreontick’ Thomas Campion uses a trochaic dimeter to speed up our reading of the poem, reflecting the swift-footedness of ‘Nimble’ Lawra and the poem’s meaning that ‘Time can conquer’. Campion shows a similar awareness of metrical power in his poem ‘Follow your Saint’, in which the first two lines begin with imperative trochaic feet (‘Follow’ and ‘Haste you’) for emphasis, but then fall into iambics towards the line ends. Perhaps, when Campion writes ‘Haste you, sad noates, fall at her flying feete’ he is commenting on the difference between the poetic feet he is using: the first two feet are trochaics (falling feet) and they are thus ‘sad noates’ which must ‘fall’, whereas the Saint’s are ‘flying feete’ and thus iambic (rising feet). Hence, it’s clear that Campion is using his metrical pattern to reflect the matter of his verse. Rhyme can be used in a similarly mimetic way: in ‘Madrigal V’, Drummond begins with high-pitched rhymes like ‘bring’ and ‘king’ but ends with the rhyming couplet: ‘Late having deckt with beauty’s rose his tomb, / Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.’ The fall to a much lower-pitched rhyme here suggests a settling into a sorrow of acceptance at the poem’s end.

This skilled use of metrical variation was best employed by the Elizabethan playwrights, notably Marlowe and Shakespeare. For example, Faustus’s final soliloquy shows a collapse of regular iambic pentameter to reflect the character’s mind state of horror and impending doom. He exclaims: ‘Oh, I’ll leap up to my God: who pulls me down? / See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament. / One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ!’ These lines contain extra syllables and the iambic rhythms seem to have completely vanished, with ‘See, see, where Christ’s blood streams’ arguably having five stresses in just six syllables. Thus, Marlowe uses variation and the collapse of metre to suggest his tragic hero’s panic in this poignant scene. As Hurley and O’Neill comment, we see Faustus in extremis, ‘the author’s manipulation of the line’ making ‘the reader feel’ and making stresses ‘obey the dictates of the voice’s urgencies.’ There is a similar breakdown in Hamlet’s ‘Oh what a rogue’ soliloquy in which he exclaims, ‘For Hecuba!’ This exclamation is set on its own line, breaking up the metre entirely. Likewise, fuelled by fury, his words break loose from their metrical restraints when he cries: ‘Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! / O, vengeance! –’ And yet, the speech ends with a perfectly iambic rhyming couplet, to reflect Hamlet’s newfound sense of resolve: ‘The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.’

Thus, I have shown how poetic form, notably the verse’s visual presentation on the page and the use of metre and rhyme, was used in the Renaissance period not only to provide beautiful harmonies (though this was also a valid argument for these devices) but to present a proportionate whole, where various different aspects of a work come together to create and emphasize its various meanings. This awareness is evident not only in the poetry of the time, but also in the criticism, with Puttenham, Campion and Daniel all clearly concerned with how form ‘can give pleasure in itself and also, at best, deepen the meaning.’ This conjunction of manner and matter is what really creates beauty, as defined by De Re Aedificatoria: ‘the harmony and concord of all the parts achieved in such a manner that nothing could be added or taken away or altered except for the worse.’ Jonson expressed a similar sentiment when he defines a ‘strict and succinct style [as] that, where you can take away nothing without losse, and that losse to be manifest’. This is what the Renaissance and Elizabethan writers were working towards, and it was most certainly a noble aim. It was this aim that has shaped the poetics of today, and for that, if not for the great poetry they created in the process, we should be incredibly grateful.