Notes by the indefatigable Ira Maine, Poetry Editor
Cash money began to circulate. The conditions of the peasantry were vastly improved.
William Caxton (1415-1492) a successful merchant, brought the new art of printing to England, having very successfully printed and sold books in Europe. His very first printed book in English was Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales.’ Lots of others followed and he became the first ever book retailer in England.
Owning books and reading them became fashionable. Schools were established, at first for the sons of gentlemen, but as business increased, the three R’s became more and more necessary.
Books can carry ideas around and those ideas can be hoarded on bookshelves for everybody to enjoy. Gloriously, sedition sits in every library, waiting.
Money, education and ideas were beginning to make Europe rich. The painters and sculptors of the Renaissance were producing some of the most extraordinary work ever seen.
Surely, this was the beginning of our, of Europe’s Golden Age? We no longer needed to look back in envy..Look what we’ve achieved. Our way of life, people began to think, is at least as good as that of Ancient Greece. Others, like Erasmus and perhaps even Thomas More, were increasingly convinced that it might even be better.
People began to view themselves less as being at the mercy of the Fates, (or indeed the Church) and much more as being masters of their own destiny. This new form of humanity relied more and more on itself for answers and much less on the diktats of the Church. They slung the Fates out the window and European Catholic Christianity found itself being questioned mercilessly. People, instead Popes began to question the Church’s monopoly, and began to really believe in a modern, European Golden Age. Out of this grew the Humanist or Humanism movement. It would not be unfair to say that Humanism, the belief in humanity and humanity’s extraordinary creative capacity, created our modern world. Without it, without belief in ourselves,m the modern world would not exist.
Ben Johnson, splendid, incomparable Ben, is bidding farewell to William Shakespeare. who has died. These two literary, Golden Age Titans need look back on no one, bow to no one. It is WE who now look back on them, and thank God and humanity that they existed at all.
The poem is easy to understand and needs no further explanation. Go on, reader! Have a crack at it!
To The Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare: and What He Hath Left Us
by Ben Jonson
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book, and fame,
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
’Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:
For seeliest* Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind Affection, which doth ne’er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore,
Should praise a matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill-fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;
I mean, with great but disproportion’d Muses.
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee, surely, with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence, to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead
To life again, to hear thy buskin** tread
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! Thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or, like a Mercury, to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature’s family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet’s matter Nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are), and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses’ anvil, turn the same
And himself with it), that he thinks to frame,
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn!
For a good Poet’s made, as well as born;
And such wert thou! Look how the father’s face
Lives in his issue; even so, the race
Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnèd and true-filèd lines:
In each of which he seems to shake a lance
As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage;
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.
*seeliest: most seemly; here, it seems to stand in for “it seems that”
**buskin: a laced boot reaching halfway to the knee