THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

Those who have some acquaintance, however superficial, with the literary criticism of the Italian Renaissance will find an account of the Elizabethan theory of poetry a twice-told tale. In England, as in France, criticism during this period was of a more practical character than in Italy; but even for the technical questions discussed by the Elizabethans, some prototype, or at least some equivalent, may be found among the Italians. The first four stages of English criticism have therefore little novelty or original value; and their study is chiefly important as evidence of the gradual application of the ideas of the Renaissance to English literature.

The writers of the first stage, as might be expected, concerned themselves but little with the theory of poetry, beyond repeating here and there the commonplaces they found in the Italian rhetoricians. Yet it is interesting to note that as early as 1553, Wilson, in the third book of his Rhetoric, gives expression to the allegorical conception of poetry which in Italy had held sway from the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and which, more than anything else, colored critical theory in Elizabethan England. The ancient poets, according to Wilson, did not spend their time inventing meaningless fables, but used the story merely as a framework for contents of ethical, philosophic, scientific, or historical import; the trials of Ulysses, for example, were intended to furnish a lively picture of man's misery in this life. The poets are, in fact, wise men, spiritual legislators, reformers, who have at heart the redressing of wrongs; and in accomplishing this end,—either because they fear to rebuke these wrongs openly, or because they doubt the expediency or efficacy of such frankness with ignorant people,—they hide their true meaning under the veil of pleasant fables. This theory of poetic art, one of the commonplaces of the age, may be described as the great legacy of the Middle Ages to Renaissance criticism.

The writers of the second stage were, in many cases, too busy with questions of versification and other practical matters to find time for abstract theorizing on the art of poetry. A long period of rhetorical and metrical study had helped to formulate a rhetorical and technical conception of the poet's function, aptly exemplified in the sonnet describing the perfect poet prefixed to King James's brief treatise on Scotch poetry.[445] The marks of a perfect poet are there given as skilfulness in the rhetorical figures, quick wit, as shown in the use of apt and pithy words, and a good memory;—a merely external view of the poet's gifts, which takes no account of such essentials as imagination, sensibility, and knowledge of nature and human life.

Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) gives expression to a conception of the object of poetry which is the logical consequence of the allegorical theory, and which was therefore almost universally accepted by Renaissance writers. The poet teaches by means of the allegorical truth hidden under the pleasing fables he invents; but his first object must be to make these fables really pleasing, or the reader is deterred at the outset from any acquaintance with the poet's works. Poetry is therefore a delightful form of instruction; it pleases and profits together; but first of all it must delight, "for the very sum and chiefest essence of poetry did always for the most part consist in delighting the readers or hearers."[446] The poet has the highest welfare of man at heart; and by his sweet allurements to virtue and effective caveats against vice, he gains his end, not roughly or tyrannically, but, as it were, with a loving authority.[447] From the very beginnings of human society poetry has been the means of civilizing men, of drawing them from barbarity to civility and virtue. If it be objected that this art—or rather, from the divine origin of its inspiration, this more than art—has ever been made the excuse for the enticing expression of obscenity and blasphemy, Webbe has three answers. In the first place, poetry is to be moralized, that is, to be read allegorically. The Metamorphoses of Ovid, for example, will become, when so understood, a fount of ethical teaching; and Harington, a few years later, actually explains in detail the allegorical significance of the fourth book of that poem.[448] This was a well-established tradition, and indeed a favorite occupation, of the Middle Ages; and the Ovide MoralisÉ, a long poem by ChrÉtien Le Gouais, written about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the equally long Ovidian commentary of Pierre BerÇuire, are typical examples of this practice.[449] In the second place, the picture of vices to be found in poetry is intended, not to entice the reader to imitate them, but rather to deter sensible men from doing likewise by showing the misfortune that inevitably results from evil. Moreover, obscenity is in no way essentially connected with poetic art; it is to the abuse of poetry, and not to poetry itself, that we must lay all blame for this fault.

A still higher conception of the poet's function is to be found in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589). The author of this treatise informs us that he had lived at the courts of France, Italy, and Spain, and knew the languages of these and other lands; and the results of his travels and studies are sufficiently shown in his general theory of poetry. His conception of the poet is directly based on that of Scaliger. Poetry, in its highest form, is an art of "making," or creation; and in this sense the poet is a creator like God, and forms a world out of nothing. In another sense, poetry is an art of imitation, in that it presents a true and lively picture of everything set before it. In either case, it can attain perfection only by a divine instinct, or by a great excellence of nature, or by vast observation and experience of the world, or indeed by all these together; but whatever the source of its inspiration, it is ever worthy of study and praise, and its creators deserve preËminence and dignity above all other artificers, scientific or mechanical.[450] The poets were the first priests, prophets, and legislators of the world, the first philosophers, scientists, orators, historians, and musicians. They have been held in the highest esteem by the greatest men from the very first; and the nobility, antiquity, and universality of their art prove its preËminence and worth. With such a history and such a nature, it is sacrilege to debase poetry, or to employ it upon any unworthy subject or for ignoble purpose. Its chief themes should therefore be such as these: the honor and glory of the gods, the worthy deeds of noble princes and great warriors, the praise of virtue and the reproof of vice, instruction in moral doctrine or scientific knowledge, and finally, "the common solace of mankind in all the travails and cares of this transitory life," or even for mere recreation alone.[451]

This is the sum of poetic theorizing during the second stage of English criticism. Yet it was at this very time that the third, or apologetic, period was prepared for by the attacks which the Puritans directed against poetry, and especially the drama. Of these attacks, Gosson's, as the most celebrated, may be taken as the type. Underlying the rant and exaggerated vituperation of his Schoole of Abuse (1579), there is a basis of right principles, and some evidence at least of a spirit not wholly vulgar. He was a moral reformer, an idealist, who looked back with regret toward "the old discipline of England," and contrasted it with the spirit of his own day, when Englishmen seemed to have "robbed Greece of gluttony, Italy of wantonness, Spain of pride, France of deceit, and Dutchland of quaffing."[452] The typical evidences of this moral degradation and effeminacy he found in poetry and the drama; and it is to this motive that his bitter assault on both must be ascribed. He specifically insists that his intention was not to banish poetry, or to condemn music, or to forbid harmless recreation to mankind, but merely to chastise the abuse of all these.[453] He praises plays which possess real moral purpose and effect, and points out the true use and the worthy subjects of poetry much in the same manner as Puttenham does a few years later.[454] But he affirms, as Plato had done hundreds of years before, and as a distinguished French critic has done only the other day, that art contains within itself the germ of its own disintegration; and he shows that in the English poetry of his own time this disintegration had already taken place. The delights and ornaments of verse, intended really to make moral doctrine more pleasing and less abstruse and thorny, had become, with his contemporaries, mere alluring disguises for obscenity and blasphemy.

In the first of the replies to Gosson, Lodge's Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays, written before either of the treatises of Webbe and Puttenham, are found the old principles of allegorical and moral interpretation,—principles which to us may seem well worn, but which to the English criticism of that time were novel enough. Lodge points out the efficacy of poetry as a civilizing factor in primitive times, and as a moral agency ever since. If the poets have on occasion erred, so have the philosophers, even Plato himself, and grievously.[455] Poetry is a heavenly gift, and is to be contemned only when abused and debased. Lodge did not perceive that his point of view was substantially the same as his opponent's; and indeed, throughout the Elizabethan age, there was this similarity in the point of view of those who attacked and those who defended poetry. Both sides admitted that not poetry, but its abuse, is to be disparaged; and they differed chiefly in that one side insisted almost entirely on the ideal perfection of the poetic art, while the other laid stress on the debased state into which it had fallen. A dual point of view was attempted in a work, licensed in January, 1600, which pretended to be "a commendation of true poetry, and a discommendation of all bawdy, ribald, and paganized poets."[456] This Puritan movement against the paganization of poetry corresponds to the similar movement started by the Council of Trent in Catholic countries.

The theory of poetry during the second stage of English criticism was in the main Horatian, with such additions and modifications as the early Renaissance had derived from the Middle Ages. The Aristotelian canons had not yet become a part of English criticism. Webbe alludes to Aristotle's dictum that Empedocles, having naught but metre in common with Homer, was in reality a natural philosopher rather than a poet;[457] but all such allusions to Aristotle's Poetics were merely incidental and sporadic. The introduction of Aristotelianism into England was the direct result of the influence of the Italian critics; and the agent in bringing this new influence into English letters was Sir Philip Sidney. His Defence of Poesy is a veritable epitome of the literary criticism of the Italian Renaissance; and so thoroughly is it imbued with this spirit, that no other work, Italian, French, or English, can be said to give so complete and so noble a conception of the temper and the principles of Renaissance criticism. For the general theory of poetry, its sources were the critical treatises of Minturno[458] and Scaliger.[459] Yet without any decided novelty of ideas, or even of expression, it can lay claim to distinct originality in its unity of feeling, its ideal and noble temper, and its adaptation to circumstance. Its eloquence and dignity will hardly appear in a mere analysis, which pretends to give only the more important and fundamental of its principles; but such a summary—and this is quite as important—will at least indicate the extent of its indebtedness to Italian criticism.

In all that relates to the antiquity, universality, and preËminence of poetry, Sidney apparently follows Minturno. Poetry, as the first light-giver to ignorance, flourished before any other art or science. The first philosophers and historians were poets; and such supreme works as the Psalms of David and the Dialogues of Plato are in reality poetical. Among the Greeks and the Romans, the poet was regarded as a sage or prophet; and no nation, however primitive or barbarous, has been without poets, or has failed to receive delight and instruction from poetry.[460]

But before proceeding to defend an art so ancient and universal, it is necessary to define it; and the definition which Sidney gives agrees substantially with what might be designated Renaissance Aristotelianism. "Poetry," says Sidney,[461] "is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word ??s??, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth; to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture,[462] with this end,—to teach and delight."[463] Poetry is, accordingly, an art of imitation, and not merely the art of versifying; for although most poets have seen fit to apparel their poetic inventions in verse, verse is but the raiment and ornament of poetry, and not one of its causes or essentials.[464] "One may be a poet without versing," says Sidney, "and a versifier without poetry."[465] Speech and reason are the distinguishing features between man and brute; and whatever helps to perfect and polish speech deserves high commendation. Besides its mnemonic value, verse is the most fitting raiment of poetry because it is most dignified and compact, not colloquial and slipshod. But with all its merits, it is not an essential of poetry, of which the true test is this,—feigning notable images of vices and virtues, and teaching delightfully.

In regard to the object, or function, of poetry, Sidney is at one with Scaliger. The aim of poetry is accomplished by teaching most delightfully a notable morality; or, in a word, by delightful instruction.[466] Not instruction alone, or delight alone, as Horace had said, but instruction made delightful; and it is this dual function which serves not only as the end but as the very test of poetry. The object of all arts and sciences is to lift human life to the highest altitudes of perfection; and in this respect they are all servants of the sovereign, or architectonic, science, whose end is well-doing and not well-knowing only.[467] Virtuous action is therefore the end of all learning;[468] and Sidney sets out to prove that the poet, more than any one else, conduces to this end.

This is the beginning of the apologetic side of Sidney's argument. The ancient controversy—ancient even in Plato's days—between poetry and philosophy is once more reopened; and the question is the one so often debated by the Italians,—shall the palm be given to the poet, to the philosopher, or to the historian? The gist of Sidney's argument is that while the philosopher teaches by precept alone, and the historian by example alone, the poet conduces most to virtue because he employs both precept and example. The philosopher teaches virtue by showing what virtue is and what vice is, by setting down, in thorny argument, and without clarity or beauty of style, the bare rule.[469] The historian teaches virtue by showing the experience of past ages; but, being tied down to what actually happened, that is, to the particular truth of things and not to general reason, the example he depicts draws no necessary consequence. The poet alone accomplishes this dual task. What the philosopher says should be done is by the poet pictured most perfectly in some one by whom it has been done, thus coupling the general notion with the particular instance. The philosopher, moreover, teaches the learned only; the poet teaches all, and is, in Plutarch's phrase, "the right popular philosopher,"[470] for he seems only to promise delight, and moves men to virtue unawares. But even if the philosopher excel the poet in teaching, he cannot move his readers as the poet can, and this is of higher importance than teaching; for what is the use of teaching virtue if the pupil is not moved to act and accomplish what he is taught?[471] On the other hand, the historian deals with particular instances, with vices and virtues so commingled that the reader can find no pattern to imitate. The poet makes history reasonable; he gives perfect examples of vices and virtues for human imitation; he makes virtue succeed and vice fail, as history can but seldom do. Poetry, therefore, conduces to virtue, the end of all learning, better than any other art or science, and so deserves the palm as the highest and the noblest form of human wisdom.[472]

The basis of Sidney's distinction between the poet and the historian is the famous passage in which Aristotle explains why poetry is more philosophic and of more serious value than history.[473] The poet deals, not with the particular, but with the universal,—with what might or should be, not with what is or has been. But Sidney, in the assertion of this principle, follows Minturno[474] and Scaliger,[475] and goes farther than Aristotle would probably have gone. All arts have the works of nature as their principal object, and follow nature as actors follow the lines of their play. Only the poet is not tied to such subjects, but creates another nature better than ever nature itself brought forth. For, going hand in hand with nature, and being enclosed not within her limits, but only by the zodiac of his own imagination, he creates a golden world for nature's brazen; and in this sense he may be compared as a creator with God.[476] Where shall you find in life such a friend as Pylades, such a hero as Orlando, such an excellent man as Æneas?

Sidney then proceeds to answer the various objections that have been made against poetry. These objections, partly following Gosson and Cornelius Agrippa,[477] and partly his own inclinations, he reduces to four.[478] In the first place, it is objected that a man might spend his time more profitably than by reading the figments of poets. But since teaching virtue is the real aim of all learning, and since poetry has been shown to accomplish this better than all other arts or sciences, this objection is easily answered. In the second place, poetry has been called the mother of lies; but Sidney shows that it is less likely to misstate facts than other sciences, for the poet does not publish his figments as facts, and, since he affirms nothing, cannot ever be said to lie.[479] Thirdly, poetry has been called the nurse of abuse, that is to say, poetry misuses and debases the mind of man by turning it to wantonness and by making it unmartial and effeminate. But Sidney argues that it is man's wit that abuses poetry, and not poetry that abuses man's wit; and as to making men effeminate, this charge applies to all other sciences more than to poetry, which in its description of battles and praise of valiant men notably stirs courage and enthusiasm. Lastly, it is pointed out by the enemies of poetry that Plato, one of the greatest of philosophers, banished poets from his ideal commonwealth. But Plato's Dialogues are in reality themselves a form of poetry; and it argues ingratitude in the most poetical of philosophers, that he should defile the fountain which was his source.[480] Yet though Sidney perceives how fundamental are Plato's objections to poetry, he is inclined to believe that it was rather against the abuse of poetry by the contemporary Greek poets that Plato was chiefly cavilling; for poets are praised in the Ion, and the greatest men of every age have been patrons and lovers of poetry.

In the dozen years or so which elapsed between the composition and the publication of the Defence of Poesy, during which time it seems to have circulated in manuscript, a number of critical works appeared, and the indebtedness of several of them to Sidney's book is considerable. This is especially so of the Apologie of Poetrie which Sir John Harington prefixed to his translation of the Orlando Furioso in 1591. This brief treatise includes an apology for poetry in general, for the Orlando Furioso in particular, and also for his own translation. The first section, which alone concerns us here, is almost entirely based on the Defence of Poesy. The distinguishing features of poetry are imitation, or fiction, and verse.[481] Harington disclaims all intention of discussing whether writers of fiction and dialogue in prose, such as Plato and Xenophon, are poets or not, or whether Lucan, though writing in verse, is to be regarded as an historiographer rather than as a poet;[482] so that his argument is confined to the element of imitation, or fiction. He treats poetry rather as a propÆdeutic to theology and moral philosophy than as one of the fine arts. All human learning may be regarded by the orthodox Christian as vain and superfluous; but poetry is one of the most effective aids to the higher learning of God's divinity, and poets themselves are really popular philosophers and popular divines. Harington then takes up, one by one, the four specific charges of Cornelius Agrippa, that poetry is a nurse of lies, a pleaser of fools, a breeder of dangerous errors, and an enticer to wantonness; and answers them after the manner of Sidney. He differs from Sidney, however, in laying particular stress on the allegorical interpretation of imaginative literature. This element is minimized in the Defence of Poesy; but Harington accepts, and discusses in detail, the mediÆval conception of the three meanings of poetry, the literal, the moral, and the allegorical.[483] The death-knell of this mode of interpreting literature was sounded by Bacon, who, while not asserting that all the fables of poets are but meaningless fictions, declared without hesitation that the fable had been more often written first and the exposition devised afterward, than the moral first conceived and the fable merely framed to give expression to it.[484]

This passage occurs in the second book of the Advancement of Learning (1605), where Bacon has briefly stated his theory of poetry. His point of view does not differ essentially from that of Sidney, though the expression is more compact and logical. The human understanding, according to Bacon, includes the three faculties of memory, imagination, and reason, and each of these faculties finds typical expression in one of the three great branches of learning, memory in history, reason in philosophy, and imagination in poetry.[485] The imagination, not being tied to the laws of matter, may join what nature has severed and sever what nature has joined; and poetry, therefore, while restrained in the measure of words, is in all things else extremely licensed. It may be defined as feigned history, and in so far as its form is concerned, may be either in prose or in verse. Its source is to be found in the dissatisfaction of the human mind with the actual world; and its purpose is to satisfy man's natural longing for more perfect greatness, goodness, and variety than can be found in the nature of things. Poetry therefore invents actions and incidents greater and more heroic than those of nature, and hence conduces to magnanimity; it invents actions more agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, more just in retribution, more in accordance with revealed providence, and hence conduces to morality; it invents actions more varied and unexpected, and hence conduces to delectation. "And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things."[486] For the expression of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, the world is more indebted to poets than to the works of philosophers, and for wit and eloquence no less than to orators and their orations. It is for these reasons that in rude times, when all other learning was excluded, poetry alone found access and admiration.

This is pure idealism of a romantic type; but in his remarks on allegory Bacon was foreshadowing the development of classicism, for from the time of Ben Jonson the allegorical mode of interpreting poetry ceased to have any effect on literary criticism. The reason for this is obvious. The allegorical critics regarded the plot, or fable,—to use a simile so often found in Renaissance criticism—as a mere sweet and pleasant covering for the wholesome but bitter pill of moral doctrine. The neo-classicists, limiting the sense and application of Aristotle's definition of poetry as an imitation of life, regarded the fable as the medium of this imitation, and the more perfect according as it became more truly and more minutely an image of human life. In criticism, therefore, the growth of classicism is more or less coextensive with the growth of the conception of the fable, or plot, as an end in itself.

This vaguely defines the change which comes over the spirit of criticism about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and which is exemplified in the writings of Ben Jonson. His definition of poetry does not differ substantially from that of Sidney, but seems more directly Aristotelian:—

"A poet, poeta, is ... a maker, or feigner; his art, an art of imitation or feigning; expressing the life of men in fit measure, numbers, and harmony; according to Aristotle from the word p??e??, which signifies to make or feign. Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth; for the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any poetical work or poem."[487]