Beaumont & Fletcher: Introductory Material & The Woman Hater

John Addington Symonds, Blank Verse (1895), Kessinger, LLC, 2008

After a complete perusal of [Jonson’s] works I find very little of the fluent grace which belonged in so large a measure to Fletcher and to Shakespeare. 33

The melody which gives so chaste and elegant a beauty to these lines is invariable in the verse of Beaumont and Fletcher. We have too much of it there, and surfeit on sweets; for in a very short time we discover the trick of these great versifiers and learn to expect their luxurious alliterations, and repeated caesuras at the end of the fifth syllable. Their redundant and deficient lines, the sweetness long drawn out of their delicious cadences, become well known. Then the movement of their verse is not, like that of Shakespeare, self-evolved and thoroughly organic; it obeys a rule; luxury is sought for its own sake, and languor follows as a direct consequence of certain verbal mannerisms. Among these may be mentioned a decided preference for all words in which there is a predominance of liquids and of vowels. For instance, in this line: ‘Showers, hails, snows, frosts, and two-edged winds that prime the maiden blossoms’ there is no unlicensed redundancy of syllables; but the languor of getting through so many accumulated sounds produces a strange retardation of movement. Another peculiarity is the substitution of hendecasyllabic lines for the usual decasyllable blank verse through long periods of dialogue. In one scene of “Valentinian” there are fifty-five continuous lines, of which only five are decasyllabic verses, the rest being hendecasyllables; so that the license of the superfluous syllable, which is always granted in dramatic writing for the sake of variety, becomes, in its turn, far more cloying than a strict adherence to the five-footed verse. It is also noticeable that this weak ending is frequently constructed by the addition of some emphatic monosyllable…The natural consequence of these delays and languors in the rhythms is that the versification of Beaumont and Fletcher has always a meandering and rotary movement. It does not seem to leap or glide straight onward, but to return upon itself and wind and double. The following passage may be quoted as illustrative of its almost lyrical voluptuousness...The speech of Aspatia among her maidens is an excellent example of the more careful verse of Fletcher…There is enough variety and subtle melody in this without the usual effeminacy of Fletcher’s style…One more specimen of this most musical of poets may be allowed me… 34-38


George Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody From the Twelfth Century to the Present Day, Volume 2, MacMillan & Co., London, 1908

There are passages on passages in Beaumont and Fletcher themselves—notably that magnificent piece in The False One, which is one of the purplest patches in the coat of Elizabethan drama—where the hendecasyllable has it nearly all its own way, with no harm and much good. 54

[Beaumont and Fletcher] have trisyllabic feet, of course, but in comparison with Shakespeare’s these are few. Nor are they very fond of Alexandrines, though these do occur. On the other hand—and it is the great merit of their verse—they have learnt from Shakespeare, or found out for themselves, almost the full virtue of the varied pause and run-on sense, though they are less careful than he is to vary the variation. This varied pause and run-on sense, in fact, is almost necessary in order to carry of frequent redundance…In fact, the exquisiteness of their lyrics shows the very high prosodic degree which they, or one of them, probably Fletcher, had attained. 304

…the eccentricities of Donne—the “holes that you may put your hand in” that so did annoy Sir John Beaumont. 108

Tucker Brooke & Matthias A Shaaber, Book II, A Literary History of England, Ed. Albert Baugh, Appleton Century Crofts, New York, 1967

No more amiable personality than that of Francis Beaumont has recorded itself in English plays. He was the most original, the sanest, and probably the wittiest of the cavalier dramatists…If [The Knight of the Burning Pestle] is not the greatest dramatic burlesque in English, it is certainly the most genuinely mirth-provoking and the most genial. It gives a cavalier aristocrat’s view of the London middle class…without the least reflection upon their lives or characters. 572-3

Beaumont’s style is beautifully suited to these themes. It is in structure and emotional effect much like the style of Shakespeare’s last plays, rich in run-on lines and very sweetly modulated. It tends to elegiac and epigrammatic neatness, and, without being at all stilted or verbose, strikes one as being the veritable language of ladies and gentlemen such as society has not yet quite succeeded in developing. 573-4

It is an easy hand to detect, for Fletcher early developed an individual type of blank verse, marked by an enormous proportion (c. 90 percent) of end-stopped lines and an unprecedented number (c. 70 percent) of double or treble endings. His use of words is very diffuse, where Beaumont prided himself on being laconic. Fletcher makes his blank verse so conversational that his plays have no need of prose and are perhaps the most readable of all verse dramas. 574

Massinger’s contribution to the “Beaumont-Fletcher” Folios is in bulk very considerably larger than Beaumont’s; but in the plays he wrote with Fletcher Massinger was never the controlling partner…It is usually [Fletcher] who handles the great scenes of climax or boisterous nonsense, and who conceives the most original characters, while Massinger, who is one of the world’s finest dramatic technicians, attends usefully to the openings and closes and the general coherence. 577

Three plays only, The Scornful Lady (1616), A King and No King (1619), and Philaster (1620) , were printed during Fletcher’s lifetime as the joint-productions of himself and Beaumont; and the title-pages of those three dramas set forth that they were written by “Beaumont and Fletcher”,—the name of Beaumont standing first, either because he was known to have composed the larger portion of them, or because that precedence was considered as a mark of respect due to a deceased writer. At a later date no one was willing to disturb an arrangement which had become familiar to the reader… (The Works of Beaumont & Fletcher, V1, vii, Some Account of The Lives and Writings of Beaumont and Fletcher).

We are told by Fletcher’s biographers that he pursued his studies at the university with diligence and success. His plays, indeed, though containing various graceful recollections of the classic writers, evince no traces of superior scholarship; but we cannot therefore infer that he had not attained it: among our early dramatists several might be named, who were questionably masters of a deep and extensive eruditions, which, however, is but faintly reflected in their scenes. [Footnote: e.g. Chapman and Heywood. See their undramatic works.] (V1, xviii-xix)

We are told by Dryden that “Beaumont was so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and ’tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots” [On Dram. Poesy,--Prose Works, Vol. i. P. ii. p. 100, ed. Malone] For this report there may have been some foundation; but Dryden was accustomed to write on such subjects very much at random, and with very imperfect knowledge. (xxv)

The shafts of criticism had not yet assailed The Arcadia of Sidney; it was still the delight of thousands when it furnished the groundwork of the drama next to be mentioned,—Cupid’s Revenge. (xxxvi)

While the custom of acting only a single piece a day prevailed almost constantly at our early theatres, the manages, for the sake of a little variety, occasionally brought forward that peculiar species of entertainment which consisted of several short and distinct plays repressed within another play, and which occupied no longer time in the exhibition than a common drama. Concerning performances of this kind, —Three Plays in One, Four Plays in One, and Five Plays in One,—various notices are extant; but no specimen [footnote: That is, no complete specimen. A Yorkshire Tragedy (attributed to Shakespeare) is termed on the title-page All’s One, or, One of the foure Plaies in One, &c.: but the other three do not exist] of them remains except the Four Plays, or Moral Representations in One which we have among the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. In the composition of these Four Plays, the date of which is uncertain, there is every reason to believe that both our poets were concerned. They are entitled The Triumph of Honour, The Triumph of Love, The Triumph of Death, and The Triumph of Time, and they are introduced into a fifth play (a mere frame to contain them) as successive representations at the nuptials of the King and Queen of Portugal. (xxxix-xl)

The Captain appears to have been first acted either towards the end of 1612, or early the following year…It seems to have been the unassisted work of Fletcher…Leila boldly avows to her father the passion she has conceived for him, and as boldly argues in defense of its lawfulness. This is perhaps the most odious incident in any of our early dramas. Ford and Massinger, indeed, (not to mention others,) have written plays on the subject of incestuous love; but those are tragedies of the deepest horror, and in them the guilty parties are visited with signal punishment. Fletcher’s Leila is, on the contrary, a character in a broad comedy; and her father, though at first so indignant that he threatens to destroy her, seems afterwards to regard the overture she had made to him as little more than an indiscretion arising from the heat of youthful blood! (xlii)

Wit without Money…was one of those alluded to by Dryden when he said that Beaumont and Fletcher “understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better [than Shakespeare]; whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as they have done.” [On Dram. Poesy,--Prose Works, Vol. i. P. ii. p. 100, ed. Malone] (xliv)

There can be little doubt that the most unblushing licentiousness both in conversation and practice prevailed among the courtiers of James the First:...In this respect they sinned more grievously than any of their contemporary play-wrights…The example of Charles the First is generally supposed to have given a higher tone to the morals of our nobility and gentry; yet, shortly before the death of that monarch, we find Lovelace extolling the art with which in the present play a veil of seeming modesty is thrown over obscenity;
“View here a loose thought said with such a grace,
Minerva might have spoke in Venus’ face;
So well disguis’d, that’twas conceiv’d by none
But Cupid had Diana’s linen on” [Commend. Poems, vol.i.xxv.] :--
it would be curious to know what was Lovelace’s idea of downright coarseness!...If Dryden and the other dramatists of Charles the Second’s time did not equal their predecessors in open licentiousness (and of that they have a tolerable share), they far exceeded them in wanton innuendoes and allusions. (xlvii-xlviii)

We are ignorant at what period [Beaumont] became a husband: but I am inclined to fix the date of his marriage about 1613. His wife was Ursula, daughter and coheir to Henry Isley of Sundridge in Kent. The Isleys had been long settled in that parish, and were a family of some note: it would seem, however, that before the time of Beaumont’s marriage much of their property had passed into other hands. Beaumont died on the 6th of March, 1615-1616, and was buried, on the 9th of that month, at the entrance of St. Benedict’s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, near the Earl of Middlesex’s monument. It is said that he had not completed his thirtieth year. (li-lii)

The Woman’s Prize, or, The Tamer Tamed…It is wholly by Fletcher.—This comedy forms a sequel to The Taming of the Shrew… (lxiv)

Coleridge, however,--if we may credit the report of his sayings,--perceived no imperfections in the Beggar’s Bush: “I could read it,” he exclaimed, “from morning to night: how sylvan and sunshiny it is!” [Footnote: Table Talk,ii. 119, ed. 1835. I cannot help suspecting that Mr. Nelson Coleridge mistook the name of the play, and that his uncle mention, not the Beggar’s Bush, but The Faithful Shepherdess.] (lxix)

A Wife for a Month…its model,--the concluding scene of Shakespeare’s King John…With the occasional beauty of diction, the wailings of Alphonso are a succession of extravagances and conceits; and they are spun out to a length which must necessarily have weakened their impressiveness, had they been ever so truthful. Shakespeare, with his usual judgment, gave comparatively few speeches to the dying king…The dialogue of this drama is generally spirited, and has much of Fletcher’s rapid eloquence and flowing versification. (lxxi)

Rule a Wife and Have a Wife is better known than any play in this collection, for (with some alterations) it still proves an attractive entertainment on the stage…Fletcher…fell a victim to the plague, which was then prevalent in the metropolis. He died, before completing his forty-sixth year… (lxxii)

…congratulate thy own happiness, that, in this silence of the stage, thou hast a liberty to read these inimitable plays, to dwell and converse in these immortal groves, which were only shewed our fathers in a conjuring-glass, as suddenly removed as represented; the landscrap is now brought home by this optic… (V1, To the Reader. Prefixed to the Folio of 1647. iv, James Shirley)

…and, when thou art sick of this cure, (for the excess of delight may too much dilate thy soul,) thou shalt meet almost in every leaf a soft purling passion or spring of sorrow… (V1, To the Reader. Prefixed to the Folio of 1647. v, James Shirley)

Not to detain or prepare thee longer, be as capricious and sick-brained as ignorance and malice can make thee, here thou art rectified; or be as healthful as the inward calm of an honest heart, learning, and temper, can state thy disposition, yet this book may be thy fortunate concernment and companion. (V1, To the Reader. Prefixed to the Folio of 1647. v, James Shirley)

Fletcher, to thee we do not only owe
All these good plays, but those of others too;
Thy wit repeated, does support the stage,
Credits the last, and entertains this age.

(V1, Upon Master John Fletcher’s Plays, by Edmund Waller, xxiii)


That fate should be so merciful to me,
To let me live t’have said, I have read thee?

(V1, To Fletcher Revived, by Richard Lovelace, xxiv)


How I do fear myself, that am not worth
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth!
At once thou mak’st me happy, and unmak’st,
And giving largely to me, more thou tak’st.

(V1, To Master Francis Beaumont (Then Living). by Ben Jonson, xlvi)
If there be any amongst you that come to hear lascivious scenes, let them depart; for I do pronounce this, to the utter discomfort of all two-penny gallery-men, you shall have no bawdry in it:… (V1, The Woman Hater, Prologue, v)

Duke: ’Tis now the sweetest time for sleep; the night’s
Scarce spent: Arrigo, what’s o’clock?
Arrigo: Past four.
Duke: Is it so much, and yet the morn not up?

(V1, The Woman Hater, 1.1.p.11)


The Woman Hater

Duke: You are my friends, and you shall have the cause;
I break my sleeps thus soon so see a wench.

(TWH, 1.1.p.12)


Duke: Sister to count Valore: she’s a maid
Would make a prince forget his throne and state,
And lowly kneel to her: the general fate
Of all mortality, is hers to give;

(TWH, 1.1.p.12)


Duke:…With thee I will be plain:
We princes do use to prefer many for nothing, and to take particular and free knowledge almost in nature of acquaintance, of many whom we do use only for our pleasure; and do give largely to numbers, more out of policy to be thought liberal, and by that means to make the people strive to deserve our love, than to reward any particular desert of theirs to whom we give; and do suffer ourselves to hear flatterers, more for recreation than for love of it, though we seldom hate it:
And yet we know all these; and when we please,
Can touch the wheel, and turn their names about.

(TWH, 1.1.p.13)


Duke: Thou Cytherean goddess, that delights
In stirring glances, and art still thyself
More toying than thy team of sparrows be;

(TWH, 1.1.p.14)


Lazarillo: What an excellent thing did God bestow upon man, when he did give him a good stomach!

(TWH, 1.2.p.14-15)


Lazarillo: Give it me [Reads.] A bill of all the several services this day appointed for every table in the court.
Ay, this is it on which my hopes rely;
Within this paper all my joys are clos’d.
Boy, open it, and read it with reverence.

(TWH, 1.2.p.16)


Lazarilly: If poor unworthy I may come to eat
Of this most sacred dish, I here do vow
(If that blind huswife Fortune will bestow
But means on me) to keep a sumptuous house;

(TWH, 1.2.p.17)


Oriana: Ay, but they say one shall see fine sights at the court.
Valore: I’ll tell you what you shall see. You shall see many faces of man’s making, for you shall find very few as God left them: and you shall see many legs too; amongst the rest you shall behold one pair, the feet of which were in times past sockless, but are now, through the change of time (that alters all things), very strangely become the legs of a knight and a courter;…

(TWH, 1.3.p.18)


Valore: And they will praise your virtues; beware that:
The only way to turn a woman whore,
Is to commend her chastity. You’ll go?

(TWH, 1.3.p.19)


Duke: “May it please your grace, to take note of a gentleman, well read, deeply learned, and throughly grounded in the hidden knowledge of all salads and potherbs whatsoever.”

(TWH, 1.3.p.23)


Gondarino: Thou art a filthy, impudent whore; a woman, a very woman!
Oriana: Ha, ha, ha!
Gondarino: Begot when thy father was drunk.
Oriana: Your lordship hath a good wit.

(TWH, 2.1.p.27)


Valore: But let me not condemn her too rashly, without weighing the matter. She’s a young lady; she went forth early this morning with a waiting-woman and a page or so; this is no garden-house [footnote: i.e. summer-house. Buildings of this kind abounded formerly in the suburbs of London, and were often used as places of intrigue.] : in my conscience, she went forth with no dishonest intent;…

(TWH, 2.1.p.32)


Valore: Lazarillo, the Duke stays: wilt thou lose this opportunity?
Lazarillo: How must I speak to him?
Valore: ’Twas well thought of. You must not talk to him
As you do to an ordinary man,
Honest plain sense, but you must wind about him:
For example; if he should ask you what o’clock it is,
You must not say, “If it please your grace, ’tis nine;”
But thus, “Thrice three o’clock, so please my sovereign;”
Or thus, “Look how many Muses there doth dwell
Upon the sweet banks of the learned well,
And just so many strokes the clock hath struck;”
And so forth: and you must now and then enter
Into a description.

(TWH, 2.1.p.34)


Lazarillo:…Now no more shalt thou need to scramble for thy meat, nor remove thy stomach with the court; but thy credit shall command thy heart’s desire, and all novelties shall be sent as presents unto thee.

(TWH, 2.1.p.36)


Valore: I hate to leave my friend in his extremities.
Lazarillo: ’Tis noble in you: then I take your hand,
And do protest, I do not follow this
For any malice or for private ends,
But with a love as gentle and as chaste
As that a brother to his sister bears;
And if I see this fish-head yet unknown,
The last words that my dying father spake,
Before his eye-strings brake, shall not of me
So often be remember’d as our meeting.
Fortune attend me, as my ends are just,
Full of pure love and free from servile lust!

(TWH, 2.1.p.37)


Gondarino:…he’ll bring you to ’em. [Footnote: Old eds “him.” These words are frequently confounded by the early printers.]

(TWH, 2.1.p.37)


Gondarino: What madness possesseth thee, that thou canst imagine me a fit man to entertain ladies? I tell thee, I do use to tear their hair, to kick them, and to twinge their noses, if they be not careful in avoiding me.
Oriana: Your lordship may descant upon your own behaviour as please you, but I protest, so sweet and courtly it appears in my eye, that I mean not to leave you yet.

(TWH, 2.1.p.37-38)


Gondarino: Is such a thing as this allow’d to live?
What power hath let thee loose upon the earth
To plague us for our sins? Out of my doors!

(TWH, 2.1.p.38)


Julia: What the devil dost thou in black?
Pandar: As all solemn professors of settled courses do, cover my knavery with it.

(TWH, 2.2.p.39)


And can it be that this most perfect creature,
This image of his Maker, well-squar’d man,
Should leave the handfast that he had of grace,
To fall into a woman’s easy arms?

(TWH, 3.1.p.40) [handfast: i.e. hold, connextion with]


Oriana:…to work upon him; whether he will soonest be moved with wantonness, singing, dancing, or (being passionately) with scorn; or with sad and serious looks, cunningly mingled with sighs, with smiling, lisping, kissing the hand, and making short curtsies;…

(TWH, 3.1.p.40-41)


Gondarino:…Stand and reveal thyself;
Tell why thou followest me? I fear thee,
As I fear the place thou camest from, hell.

(TWH, 3.1.p.41)

Oriana:…Are you not yet
Relenting? ha’ you blood and spirit in those veins?
You are no image, though you be as hard
As marble: sure, you have no liver; if you had,
’Twould send a lively and desiring heat
To every member. Is not this miserable?
A thing so truly form’d, shap’d out by symmetry,
Has all the organs that belong to man,
And working too, yet to shew all these
Like dead motions moving upon wires?

(TWH, 3.1.p.42) [The liver was anciently imagined to be the residence of love.]


Gondarino: Let me be ’nointed with honey and turn’d
Into the sun, to be stung to death with horse-flies!
Hearest thou, thou breeder? here I will sit,
And, in despite of thee, I will say nothing.

(TWH, 3.1.p.43)


Gondarino: To ha’ my hair curled by an idle finger,
My cheeks turn tabors and be play’d upon,

(TWH, 3.1.p.43)


Gondarino:…for I will run from that smooth, smiling, witching, cozening, tempting, damning face of thine, as far as I can find any land, where I will put myself into a daily course of curses for thee and all thy family.

(TWH, 3.1.p.43)


Gondarino: ’Tis true; and if your grace, that hath the sway
Of the whole state, will suffer this lewd sex,
These women, to pursue us to our homes,
Not to be pray’d nor to be rail’d away,
But they will woo, and dance, and sing,
And, in a manner looser than they are
By nature (which should seem impossible),
To throw their arms on our unwilling necks—

(TWH, 3.1.p.45)


Gondarino: Are women grown so mankind? [masculine] must they be wooing?
I have a plot shall blow her up; she flies, she mounts!
I’ll teach her ladyship to dare my fury!
I will be known and fear’d, and more truly hated
Of women than an eunuch. She’s here again:

(TWH, 3.1.p.46)


Oriana: Gondarino? are you Milan’s general, that
Great bugbear Bloody-bones, at whose very name
All women, from the lady to the laundress,
Shake like a cold fit?

(TWH, 3.1.p.48)


First Intelligencer: Why, have not many men been raised from
This worming trade, first to gain good access
To great men, then to have commissions out
For search, and lastly to be worthily nam’d
At a great arraignment? Yes; and why not we?
They that endeavour well deserve their fee.

(TWH, 3.2.p.50)


Valore:…No; thou shalt live and know
Thy full desires; Hunger, thy ancient foe,
Shall be subdu’d; those guts that daily tumble
Through air and appetite, shall cease to rumble;

(TWH, 3.2.p.50)


Valore: Let it go! Hast not thou been held to have some wit in the court, and to make fine jests upon country-people in progress-time? and wilt thou lose this opinion for the cold head of a fish? I say, let it go! I’ll help thee to as good a dish of meat.

(TWH, 3.2.p.51)


Second Intelligencer:…burn the palace, kill the Duke, and poison his privy-council!

(TWH, 3.2.p.53)


Valore: If you could be drawn to affect beef, venison, or foul, ’twould be far the better.
Lazarillo: I do beseech your lordship’s patience!
I do confess that, in this heat of blood,
I have contemn’d all dull and grosser meats;
But I protest I do honour a chine of beef, I do reverence a loin of veal; but, good my lord, give me leave a little to adore this!

(TWH, 3.2.p.54)


Gondarino:…for how familiar a thing is it with the poets of our age, to extol their whores (which they call mistresses) with heavenly praises…

(TWH, 4.1.p.60)


Gondarino: Man never doth remember how great his offences are, till he do meet with one of you that plagues him for them.

(TWH, 4.1.p.62)


Gondarino: But I will bring you where she now intends
Not to be virtuous:…

(TWH, 4.1.p.64)


Pandar:…make yourself apt for courtship, stroke up your stockings, lost not an inch of your legs’ goodness:…

(TWH, 4.2.p.66)


Mercer:…posies for chimneys…

(TWH, 4.2.p.67; posies for chimneys: Inscriptions on different parts of the house, and particularly on chimnies, containing instructions


Lazarillo: The misery of man may fitly be compared to a didapper [bird], who, when she is under water, past our sight, and indeed can seem no more to us, rises again, shakes but herself, and is the same she was;…

(TWH, 4.2.68)


Boy. Muffle yourself in your cloak, by any means; ’tis a received thing among gallants, to walk to their lechery as though they had the rheum. ’Twas well you brought not your horse.
Lazarillo. Why, boy?
Boy. Faith, sir, ’tis the fashion of our gentry to have their horses wait at door like men, while the beasts their masters are within at rack and manger; …

(TWH, 4.2.69)


Lazarillo. …if thou be’st
Returning to thy first being, thy mother sea,
There will I seek thee forth: earth, air, nor fire,
Nor the black shades below shall bar my sight,

(TWH, 4.2.70)

Second Intelligencer. Amen. Sir, sir,
This cannot save that stiff neck from the halter.
Julia. Gentlemen, I am glad you have discovered him: he should not have eaten under my roof for twenty pounds; and surely I did not like him when he called for fish. [“In King Lear, one of Kent’s articles of self-recommendation is, that he eats no fish: the following explanation is there given by Warburton.—‘In Queen Elizabeth’s time the papist were esteemed, and with good reason, enemies to the government. Hence the proverbial phrase of, he’s an honest man, and eats no fish, to signify he’s a friend to the government and a protestant. …And Marston’s Dutch Courtezan: ‘I trust I am none of the wicked that eats fish a Fridays.’”—Ed. 1778. Perhaps, Warburton is right.

(TWH, 4.2.74)


Gondarino. All I can say, or may, is said already:
She is unchaste, or else I have no knowledge,
I do not breathe nor have the use of sense.

(TWH, 5.2.83)


Gondarino. Let her sit near her shame! it better fits her.
Call back the blood that made your stream in nearness,
And turn the current to a better use:
’Tis too much mudded; I do grieve to know it.

(TWH, 5.2.84)


Gondarino. Had not your grace and her kind brother been
Within level of her eye, you should have had a hotter
Volley from her, more full of blood and fire,
Ready to leap the window where she stood;
So truly sensual is her appetite.

(TWH, 5.2.84)


Valore. …our healthful state
Needs no such leeches to suck out her blood.

(TWH, 5.2.87)


Pandar. Do wisely, sir, and bid your own friends; your whole wealth will scarce feast all hers: neither is it for your credit to walk the streets with a woman so noted; get you home, and provide her clothes; let her come an hour hence with an hand-basket, and shift herself; she’ll serve to sit at the upper end of the table, and drink to your customers.

(TWH, 5.3.88)


Lazarillo. I pray thee, let me be delivered of the joy I am so big with: I do feel that high heat within me, that I begin to doubt whether I be mortal.

(TWH. 5.4.90)


Arrigo. Then, lady, you must know, you are held unhonest:
The Duke, your brother, and your friends in court,
With too much grief condemn you; though to me
The fault deserves not to be paid with death.

(TWH. 5.5.92)


Gondarino. Come not too near me! I have a breath will poison ye;
My lungs are rotten and my stomach raw;
I am much given to belching: hold off, as you love sweet airs!
Ladies, by your first night’s pleasure I conjure you,
As you would have your husbands proper men,
Strong backs and little legs; as you would have’em hate
Your waiting-woman—
Oriana. Sir, we must court you, till we have obtain’d
Some little favour from those gracious eyes;
’Tis but a kiss a-piece.

(TWH. 5.5.96)

Gondarino. Nay, now thou art come, I know it is
The devil’s jubilee; hell is broke loose!—

(TWH. 5.5.98)

impute

impute:

attribution for the purpose of assigning responsibility or a negative characteristic.

the failure of the customer to sign the credit-card receipt is imputed to me, the waiter; and i may impute idiocy to the customer who fails to sign the credit-card receipt.

to attribute or ascribe: The children imputed magical powers to the old woman. "All laws are published and available for study; [knowledge of] the content of the law is imputed to all persons who are within the jurisdiction, no matter how transiently."

to attribute something discreditable to a person.

Law. to ascribe to or charge (a person) with an act or quality because of the conduct of another over whom one has control or for whose acts or conduct one is responsible. "...the court can impute knowledge where appropriate"..."If the natural person who acts can be identified with the mind of the company when performing the actions forming the actus reus, all the relevant mental elements will be imputed to the company."

1325–75; ME imputen < L imputāre, im + putāre, to reckon, clear up, settle, prune.

Cobbling of Wikipedia History

At the accession of Charles I in 1625, England and Scotland had both experienced relative peace, both internally and in their relations with each other, for as long as anyone could remember. Charles hoped to unite the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland into a new single kingdom, fulfilling the dream of his father, James I of England (James VI of Scotland).

Although pious and with little personal ambition, Charles expected outright loyalty in return for "just rule". He considered any questioning of his orders as, at best, insulting. This trait, and a series of events, each seemingly minor on their own, led to a serious break between Charles and his English Parliament, and eventually to war.

Before the fighting, the Parliament of England did not have a large permanent role in the English system of government, instead as a temporary advisory committee — summoned by the monarch whenever the Crown required additional tax revenue, and subject to dissolution by the monarch at any time. Because responsibility for collecting taxes lay in the hands of the gentry, the English kings needed the help of that stratum of society in order to ensure the smooth collection of that revenue. If the gentry refused to collect the King's taxes, the Crown would lack any practical means with which to compel them.

One of the first events to cause concern about Charles I came with his marriage to a French Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta-Marie de Bourbon. The marriage occurred in 1625, right after Charles came to the throne. Charles' marriage raised the possibility that his children, including the heir to the throne, could grow up as Catholics, a frightening prospect to Protestant England.

Charles funded an expeditionary force to relieve the French Huguenots whom Royal French forces held besieged in La Rochelle. The royal favourite, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, secured the command of the English force. Unfortunately for Charles and Buckingham, the relief expedition proved a fiasco (1627), and Parliament, already hostile to Buckingham for his monopoly on royal patronage, opened impeachment proceedings against him. Charles responded by dissolving Parliament. This move, while saving Buckingham, reinforced the impression that Charles wanted to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny of his ministers. Having dissolved Parliament, and unable to raise money without it, the king assembled a new one in 1628. (The elected members included Oliver Cromwell.)

Charles I avoided calling a Parliament from 1629 to 1640, known as the "Eleven Years' Tyranny" or "Charles's Personal Rule". During this period, Charles's lack of money determined policies. Unable to raise revenue through Parliament — reluctant to convene it — he resorted to other means. Thus, not observing often long-outdated conventions became, in some cases, a finable offense. During the "Personal Rule," Charles aroused most antagonism through his religious measures: he believed in High Anglicanism, a creed shared with his main political advisor, Archbishop William Laud. In 1633, Charles appointed Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury and started making the Church more ceremonial, replacing the wooden communion tables with stone altars. Puritans accused Laud of reintroducing Catholicism; when they complained, he had them arrested. In 1637 John Bastwick, Henry Burton, and William Prynne had their ears cut off for writing pamphlets attacking Laud's views — a rare penalty for gentlemen, and one that aroused anger. Moreover, the Church authorities revived the statutes passed in time of Elizabeth I about church attendance, and fined Puritans for not attending Anglican church services.

Charles wanted one, uniform Church throughout Britain, and introduced a new, High Anglican, version of the English Book of Common Prayer to Scotland in summer of 1637. This was violently resisted. In spring of 1639, King Charles I accompanied his forces to the Scottish border, to end the rebellion known as the Bishops War. Scots army defeated Charles's forces. Charles eventually agreed not to interfere with Scotland's religion, and paid the Scots war-expenses. Charles finally bowed to pressure and summoned another English Parliament in November 1640. The new Parliament immediately began to discuss grievances against Charles. The legislators passed a law which stated that a new Parliament should convene at least once every three years — without the King's summons, if necessary.

In early January 1642, a few days after his failure to capture five members of the House of Commons, fearing for his own personal safety and for that of his family and retinue, Charles left the London area. As the summer progressed, cities and towns declared their sympathies for one faction or the other. At the outset of the conflict, much of the country remained neutral, though the Royal Navy and most English cities favoured Parliament, while the King found considerable support in rural communities. In general, the early part of the war went well for the Royalists. The turning-point came in the late summer and early autumn of 1643, when the Earl of Essex's army forced the king to raise the siege of Gloucester and then brushed the Royalist army aside at the First Battle of Newbury (20 September 1643), in order to return triumphantly to London. Charles negotiated a ceasefire in Ireland, freeing up English troops to fight on the Royalist side in England, while Parliament offered concessions to the Scots in return for aid and assistance.

In 1645 Parliament reaffirmed its determination to fight the war to a finish. It re-organized its main forces into the New Model Army ("Army"), under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Cromwell as his second-in-command and Lieutenant-General of Horse. In two decisive engagements — the Battle of Naseby on 14 June and the Battle of Langport on 10 July — the Parliamentarians effectively destroyed Charles' armies. In May 1646 he sought shelter with a Scottish army at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. This marked the end of the First English Civil War.

Charles I took advantage of the deflection of attention away from himself to negotiate a new agreement with the Scots, again promising church reform, on 28 December 1647. Although Charles himself remained a prisoner, this agreement led inexorably to the Second Civil War. A series of Royalist uprisings throughout England and a Scottish invasion occurred in the summer of 1648. Forces loyal to Parliament[7] put down most of the uprisings in England after little more than skirmishes, but uprisings in Kent, Essex and Cumberland, the rebellion in Wales, and the Scottish invasion involved the fighting of pitched battles and prolonged sieges. The Parliamentarians under Cromwell engaged the Scots at the Battle of Preston (17 August – 19 August). The battle resulted in a victory by the troops of Cromwell over the Royalists and Scots, and marked the end of the Second English Civil War.

The betrayal by Charles caused Parliament to debate whether to return the King to power at all. Those who still supported Charles' place on the throne tried once more to negotiate with him. Furious that Parliament continued to countenance Charles as a ruler, the Army marched on Parliament in December 1648. Troops arrested 45 Members of Parliament (MPs) and kept 146 out of the chamber. They allowed only 75 Members in to set up a High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I for treason. Charles's beheading took place on 30 January 1649. (After the Restoration in 1660, Charles II executed the surviving regicides not living in exile or sentenced them to life imprisonment.)

English Interregnum: 1649–1660. Scotland offered Charles II its crown. With his original Scottish Royalist followers and his new Scottish Covenanter (who did not agree with the execution of Charles I) allies, King Charles II became the greatest threat facing the new English republic. In response to the threat, Cromwell left some of his lieutenants in Ireland to continue the suppression of the Irish Royalists and returned to England. He arrived in Scotland on 22 July 1650 and proceeded to lay siege to Edinburgh. Cromwell's army then took Edinburgh, and by the end of the year his army had occupied much of southern Scotland. In July 1651, Cromwell followed Charles into England, leaving George Monck to finish the campaign in Scotland. Cromwell finally engaged the new king at Worcester on 3 September 1651, and defeated him. Charles II escaped, via safe houses and a famous oak tree, to France, ending the civil wars.These estimate indicate that England suffered a 3.7% loss of population, Scotland a loss of 6%, while Ireland suffered a loss of 41% of its population. Putting these numbers into the context of other catastrophes helps to understand the devastation to Ireland in particular. The Great Hunger of 1845-1852 resulted in a loss of 16% of the population, while during the second world war, the population of the Soviet Union fell by 16%. (Charles Carlton (1992). The Experience of the British Civil Wars, Routledge, ISBN 0415103916. pg 214).

The republican government of the Commonwealth of England ruled England (and later all of Scotland and Ireland) from 1649 to 1653 and from 1659 to 1660. Between the two periods Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector (effectively a military dictator) until his death in 1658. Upon his death, Oliver Cromwell's son Richard became Lord Protector, but the Army had little confidence in him. After seven months the Army removed Richard, and in May 1659 it re-installed the Rump Parliament. However, since the Rump Parliament acted as though nothing had changed since 1653 and as though it could treat the Army as it liked, military force shortly afterwards dissolved this, as well. After the second dissolution of the Rump, in October 1659, the prospect of a total anarchy loomed as the Army's pretence of unity finally dissolved into factions. Into this atmosphere General George Monck, Governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland. On 4 April 1660, in the Declaration of Breda, Charles II made known the conditions of his acceptance of the Crown of England. Monck organised the Convention Parliament, which met for the first time on 25 April 1660. On 8 May 1660, it declared that King Charles II had reigned as the lawful monarch since the execution of Charles I in January 1649. Charles returned from exile on 23 May 1660. On 29 May 1660, the populace in London acclaimed him as king. His coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661. These events became known as the English Restoration.

The civil wars effectively set England and Scotland on course to adopt a parliamentary monarchy form of government, for although the monarchy was restored, it was still only with the consent of Parliament. This system would result in the outcome that the future Kingdom of Great Britain, formed in 1707 under the Acts of Union, would manage to forestall the kind of bloody revolution typical of European republican movements and which generally resulted in the total abolition of monarchy. Specifically, future monarchs became wary of pushing Parliament too hard.

Francis Yates's Review of Joan Webber's "The Eloquent I"

Francis A. Yates, Bacon and the Menace of English Lit, The New York Review of Books, Volume 12, Number 6, March 27, 1969

The Eloquent "I" is also concerned with seventeenth-century prose style. Though purists will be antagonized by the deplorable title and by the author's bullying manner, this book does attempt to tackle the problem of style at a deep level. Joan Webber selects eight authors whom she takes as characteristically "Anglican" or "Puritan" and tries to define their differing attitudes to themselves as writers, and hence to their prose style. The "Anglicans" are Donne, Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Traherne; the "Puritans" are Bunyan, Lilburne, Milton; and Richard Baxter is an "Anglican Puritan." The attempt made to relate differences in style to deep levels of the personality where the "'I" faces God and the cosmos through different religious traditions results in some valuable observations.

Joan Webber finds that the seventeenth-century "Anglican" is deeply concerned with man as a microcosm of the universe and hence with cultivating a "cosmic personality." She has no difficulty in finding striking passages in support of this thesis in Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, in Browne's Religio Medici, and in Traherne's Centuries. The Anglican "I," she argues, is wrapped in this contemplative cosmic awareness, which it expresses through elaborate imagery. The Puritan, on the contrary, sees himself not as here and now related to the eternal and the divine, but as journeying through time to eternity. This gives a practical urgency to his awareness of himself and a certain combativeness to his prose style. Milton's prose controversies are, of course, taken as typical of the Puritan "I" as a writer, while the chapter on Donne and Bunyan attempts, through contrasting the totally different styles of these writers, to elucidate the basic differences which the book aims to bring out.
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This book has a certain value as an attempt at tackling a very important problem, the inner, deep-seated changes in the psyche during the early seventeenth century, the vital period for the emergence of modern European and American man. Its best observation is the emphasis on "Puritan" shift, from "Anglican" cosmic consciousness to a "progressive" attitude toward the religious life, and hence to the emergence of a different kind of "I." The book's drawbacks are the arbitrary classification of the writers studied and a good deal of ignorance of the backgrounds of thought on which they drew. It seems curious, for example, to write a chapter on Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy without once mentioning the Renaissance revaluation of the melancholy humor (which could well have been worked out according to the "I" theme) and the chapter on Sir Thomas Browne is also very unsatisfactory. The book's rigid classifications do not work for such a mind as Browne's whose whole effort was toward the avoidance of rigidity.../Though Joan Webber is less afraid of being unliterary and tackles larger issues, she too is conditioned by literature, for her book has to be about the emergence of different prose styles, or rather with style as the expression of the "I." This ever-present preoccupation distorts even her good ideas and observations and frequently leads her into painful insensitivity, particularly noticeable in the chapter on Traherne...

For example, why should seventeenth-century "Anglican" prose writers dwell on "cosmic consciousness," on man as microcosm? Should we not ask where in the period this philosophy was expressed as philosophy, and not as literature? There is no mention in Joan Webber's book of the great exponent of macrocosm and microcosm in seventeenth-century England, Robert Fludd; he did not write in English, does not figure as a literary person; therefore English Literature passes him by. The type of cosmic consciousness expressed by the Anglican writers was not a medieval survival but a new Renaissance development of medieval tradition. Francis Bacon knew this when he complained that the ancient opinion that man is a microcosm "hath been fantastically strained by Paracelsus and the alchemists.' Writers like Donne or Browne were Renaissance writers, aware of Renaissance trends from which the literary student must not draw back.

It is, I think, impossible to understand Traherne's writing without some knowledge of the Hermetic tradition by which he was obviously influenced, particularly in his religious and mystical aim of reflecting the universe within. He is also probably aware of Renaissance adaptations of the art of memory for this purpose. The "inner iconoclasm," through which Puritan Ramists attempted to destroy as idolatrous the formation of inner images, should be a basic consideration in any attempt to define the Puritan mentality.

The Puritan-Anglican antithesis itself is in need of new historical evaluation. Too little is known of what Friedrich Heer has called "Die dritte Kraft," the third, or middle, way of reconciliation or toleration pursued in this period of mystical secret societies, by "politiques," and by liberal and inquiring individuals, through which some of the most profound and fruitful tendencies of the age seem to pass undisturbed from one confessional camp to another.

Philip Sidney is a key figure here; he wore a Puritan label but probably had other mysterious affiliations, and certainly overlaps in his style with what Miss Webber would call "Anglican." A concept like Utopia is labeled Puritan by Miss Webber, because of the Utopian planning of the Puritan mind under the Commonwealth. Yet the first Utopia was written by a Catholic, Thomas More; others are by the heretical Catholic, Campanella, and by the "Rosicrucian," Valentin Andreae, not to mention Francis Bacon (to whom Miss Webber omits to apply her rules of thumb). In plotting the course of the history of Utopia one crosses and recrosses the conventional religious frontiers. And indeed the crossing of such frontiers was actually the aim of Utopians.