Concept of culture and meaning of ‘Anarchy in Society’ according to Matthew Arnold

Topic: Concept of culture and meaning of ‘Anarchy in Society’ according to Matthew Arnold

Name: Ranjan P. Velari

Class: M.A. Sem. 2

Paper No.: 6 (Victorian Literature)

PG Enrollment No.: 14101032

Email ID: ranjanvelari@gmail.com

Year: 2014-16

Guidance: Heenaba Zala

Submitted To: Smt. S.B. Gardi

                          Department of English

                          M.K. Bhavnagar University

v What is the concept of culture according to Matthew Arnold? Explain the various factors, which make ‘culture’. What does Arnold mean by ‘Anarchy in Society’ in his essay?

Introduction:
Matthew Arnold remarked that belong to a class of works in which the perfect balance of human nature is lost, and which have therefore, as spiritual productions, in their contents something excessive and morbid, in their form something not thoroughly sound.

v Concept of Culture according to Matthew Arnold:

·       Bishop Wilson unites, in Maxims, that downright honesty and plain good sense which our English race has so powerfully applied to the divine impossibilities of religion; by which it has brought religion so much into practical life, and has done its allotted part in promoting upon earth the kingdom of God.

·       His unction is so perfect, and in such happy alliance with his good sense, that it becomes tenderness and fervent charity. His good sense is so perfect, and in such happy alliance with his unction, that it becomes moderation and insight.

·       The whole scope of essay is,

“To recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them mechanically.”

·       Culture is above is all, an inward operation.

When we criticize the present operation of disestablishing the Irish Church, not by the power of reason and justice, but by the antipathy of the Protestant Nonconformists, English and Scotch, to establishments, we are called enemies of the Nonconformists, blind partisans of the Anglican Establishment, possessed with the one desire to help the clergy and to harm the Dissenters.

·       Culture is the study of perfection, to conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious perfection, developing all sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection, developing all parts of our society.

·       Hebraism and Hellenism, has for its main result to show how our puritans, ancient and modern, have not enough added to their care for walking staunchly by the best light they have, a care that that light be not darkness; has they have developed one side of their humanity at the expense of all others, and have become incomplete and mutilated in consequence.

·       We have got fixed in our minds that a more full and harmonious development of their humanity is what the Nonconformists most want, that narrowness, one-sidedness, and incompleteness is what they most suffer from; in a word, that in what we call provinciality they abound, but in what we may call totality they fall short.

·       The believer in machinery may think that to get a Government to abolish Church-rates or to legalize marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is to exert a moral and ennobling influence upon Government. But a lover of perfection, who looks to inward ripeness of our statesman than Dr. Watts, and has, therefore, done more to moralize and ennoble them, so an Establishment, which has produced Hooker, Barrow, Butler, has done more to moralize and ennoble English statesman and their conduct than communities which have produced the Nonconformist divines.

·       Only two religious disciplines seem exempted, these two are the Roman Catholic and Jewish. One may say that to be reared a number of national church is in itself a lesson of religious moderation, and a help towards culture and harmonious perfection.

·       National establishment of religion favors totality, whole-and corner forms of religion inevitably favor provincialism. However, perhaps we shall not be provincialized. For  Mr. White says that probably,

“ When all good men alike are placed in a condition of religious equality, and whole complicated iniquity of Government church patronage is swept away, more of moral and ennobling influence than ever will be brought to bear upon the action of statesman.”

·       The influence of religious establishments upon culture and a high development of our humanity,- we can surely see reasons why, with all energy and fine gifts, America does not show more of this development, or more promise of this.

·       In this essay, Matthew Arnold described that how our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the populace nearly. Philistines for the great bulk of the nation; and the Puritan and Hebraizing middle-class, and that its Hebraizing keeps it from culture and totality.

·       Culture, will never make us think it an essential of religion whether we have in our church discipline ‘a popular authority of elders’, as Hooker calls it, or whether we have Episcopal jurisdiction.

·       Culture is the disinterested Endeavor after man’s perfection. Culture, disinterestedly seeking in its aim at perfection to see things and they really are, shows us how worthy and divine a things is the religious side in man, though it is not the whole of man. But while recognizing the grandeur of the religious side in man, culture yet makes us also eschew and inadequate conception of man’s totality.

·       But although culture makes us fond stickers to know machinery, not even our own, and therefore we are willing to grant that perfection can be reached without it, with free churches as with established churches, and with instrumental statesmen as with creative statesmen as with creative statesman—yet perfection can never be reached without seeing things as they really are; and it is to this, therefore and to no machinery in the world, that we stick, we insist that men should not mistake, as they are prone to mistake, their natural test for the bathos for a relish for the sublime.

Sweetness and Light    

·       The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motives mere exclusiveness in vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or little, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all.

·       But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in intelligent beings, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbors, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to live the world better and happier then we found it, motives eminently such as are called social come is as part of the grounds of culture and the main and pre-eminent part.

·       Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing well.

·       The moment for culture is of service, culture which believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas, simply because they are new.

·       Religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself,- religion, that voice of the deepest human experience. Culture seeking the determination of this question through all the voices of human experience which have been heard upon it, of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order to give a greater fullness and certainty to its solution-likewise reaches.

·       Religion says: The kingdom of God is within you; and culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguishing from our animality. It places it in the ever-increasing efficacy and the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human nature.

“It is in making endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture.”

·       Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible while the individual remain isolated. But finally, perfection,-- as culture from a through disinterested study of human nature and human experience learns to conceive it, is a harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of human nature, and not consistent with the over-development of any one power at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived by us.

·       The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilization. The idea of perfection as a general expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the individual’s personality, our- maxim of ‘every man for himself’.

Culture: What is greatness? 

 Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration. If England were swallow up by the sea to-morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the love, interest, and admiration of mankind, -- would most, therefore, show the evidences of having possessed greatness, -- the England of last 20 years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and our industrial operations depending on coal, were very little developed? The people, who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines.

  Culture says; ‘Consider these people, then their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?’ And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which is of the highest of possible value in stemming the common tide of men’s thoughts in a wealthy and industrial community, and which saves the future, as one may hope being vulgarized, even if it cannot save the present.

·       Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of perfection, the flexibility which sweetness and light give, and which is one of the rewards of culture pursued in good faith.

·       Culture does not set itself against the games and sports; it congratulates the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its improved physical basis; but it points out that our passing generation of boys and young men is, meantime, sacrificed.

·       The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He, who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality.

Doing as One likes

·       Culture, is or ought to be, study and pursuit of perfection, and that of perfection as pursued by culture, beauty and intelligence, or in other words, sweetness and light, are the main characters.

·       It is said that a man Arnold’s theories of sweetness and light is full of antipathy against the rougher or coarser movements going on around him.

·       When Matthew Arnold began to speak of culture, he insisted on our bondage to machinery, on our proneness to value machinery as  end itself, without looking it to the end for which alone, in truth, it is valuable. Freedom, he said, was one of those things which we thus worshiped in it, without enough regarding the ends for which freedom is to be desired. In our common notions and talk about freedom, we eminently show our idolatry of machinery.

·       Our middle-class, the great representative of trade and Dissent, with its maxims of every man for himself in business, every man for himself in religion, dreads a powerful administration which might somehow interfere with it.

·       Then as to our working class. This class, pressed constantly by the hard daily compulsion of material wants, is naturally the very centre and stronghold of our national idea, that it is man’s ideal right and felicity to do as he likes.

·       Exclusive attention of ours to liberty, and of the relaxed habits of government which it has engendered. It is very easy to mistake or to exaggerate the sort of anarchy from which we are in danger through them.

·       Culture, which simply means trying to perfect oneself, and if light shows us that there is nothing so very blessed in merely doing as one likes, that the worship of the mere freedom to do as one likes is worship of machinery, that the really blessed thing is to like what right reason ordains, and to follow her authority, then we have got a practical benefit out of culture.

·       The state, the power most representing the right reason of the nation, and most worthy, therefore, of ruling,-- exercising, when circumstances require it, authority over us all,-- is for Mr. Carlyle the aristocracy.

·       Culture confers upon us, if in embarrassed times like the present it enables us to look at the ins and the outs of things in this way, without hatred and without partially, and with disposition to see the god in everybody all round.

·       Culture which Arnold talked was as Endeavor to come at reason and the will of God by means of reading, observing, and thinking. Still, to make it perfectly manifest that no more in the working class than in the aristocratic and middle classes can one find an adequate center of authority,-- that is, as culture teaches us to conceive our required authority, of light.

·       Two excellent rules of Bishop Wilson’s for a man’s guidance: ‘Firstly, never go against the best light you have; secondly take care that your light be not darkness’.

Anarchy in Society  

 

·       In the very beginning Matthew Arnold says that from a man without a philosophy no one can expect philosophical completeness. Therefore he observe that in trying to get a distinct notion of our aristocratic, our middle, and our working class, with a view of testing the claims of each of these classes to become a center of authority.

·       It is manifest, if the perfect and virtuous mean of that fine spirit which is the distinctive quality of aristocracies, is to be found in a high, chivalrous style, and its excess in fierce turn for resistance, that its defect must lie in a spirit not bold and high enough, and in an excessive and pusillanimous inaptness for resistance.

·       The working class is so fast growing and rising at the present time that instances of this defeat cannot well be now very common. He says that almost all my attention has naturally been concentrated on my own class, the middle class, with which he has in closest sympathy, and which has been, besides, the great power of our day, and has had its praises sung by all speakers and newspapers.

·       Philistine conveys a sense which makes it more peculiarly appropriate to our middle class than to our aristocratic. Aristocratic class called ‘The Barbarians’. The Barbarians brought with them that staunch individualism, as the modern phrase is and that passion for doing as one likes, for the assertion of personal liberty, which appears to Mr. Bright the central idea of English life.

·       The Barbarians, again, had the passion for asserting one’s personal liberty, and the great natural stronghold. The care of the Barbarians for the body, and for all manly exercise, the vigor, good looks, and fine complexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their families by these means,-- all this may be observed all this culture of the Barbarians was an exterior culture mainly. It consisted principally in outward gifts and graces, in looks, manner, accomplishments, and prowess.

·       Arnold says that it is notorious that our middle-class Liberals have long looked forward to this consumption, when the working class shall join forces with them. According to Plato’s subtle expression, with things of itself and not the real state. Working class which, raw and half developed, has long lain half-ridden amidst its poverty and squalor.

·       Division of English society, two things are to be borne in mind. The first is that since, under all our class divisions, there is common basis of human nature. The second things to be borne in mind that so far as we are Barbarians, Philistines, or Populace; imagine happiness to consist in doing what one’s ordinary self likes. Culture being the true nurse of the perusing love, and sweetness and light the true love with this bent emerge in all classes, -- among the Barbarians, Philistines and Populace.

·       Now it is clear that the very absence of any powerful authority amongst us, and the prevalent doctrine of the duty and happiness of doing as one likes, and to prevent the erection of any very strict standard of excellence, the belief in any very paramount authority of right reason, the recognition of our best self as anything very recondite and hard to come at.

·       Arnold has pointed out hoe in literature the absence of any authoritative center, like an Academy, tends to do this. Each section of the public has its own literary organ, and the mass of the public is without any suspicion that the value of these organs is relative to their being nearer a certain ideal center of correct information, taste, and intelligence, or farther away from it.

·       Our political system everybody is comforted. Our guides and governors who have to be elected by the influence on the Barbarians, and who depend on their favor, sing the praises of the Barbarians, and say all the smooth things that can be said of them.

·       Harsh things are said too, no doubt, against all the great classes of the community; but these things so evidently come from a hostile class, and are so manifestly dictated by the passions and prepossessions of a hostile class, and not by right reason, that they make no serious impression on those at whom they are launched, but slide easily off their minds.

Conclusion:

  So, we can conclude that from every walk of life some people must dedicate themselves to the pursuit of perfection. The doors of perfection and culture are wide open to any really dedicated soul from any three great divisions which Arnold finds proper to sort out the people of England.

  But then it is essential that man must strive to seek human perfection to establish his best self; and culture would, in the end, find its public recognition.

  

   

Keats' use of myths in his Odes

Topic: Keats’ use of myth in his odes

Name: Ranjan P. Velari

Class: M.A. Sem. 2

Paper No.: 5 (Romantic Literature)

PG Enrollment No.: 14101032

Email ID: ranjanvelari@gmail.com

Guidance: Heenaba Zala

Submitted to: Smt. S.B. Gardi 

                       Department of English

                       M.K. Bhavnagar University

Keats’ use of myth in his Odes

·      Introduction about John Keats:

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was born on 31 October, 1795. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets. The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery most notably in the series of odes. When Keats died at 25, he had been writing poetry seriously for only about 6 years. His first poem, the ‘Sonnet O Solitude’ appeared in ‘The Examiner’ in May 1816, while his collection ‘Lamia’, ‘Isabella’, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems’ was published in July 1820. The compression of his poetic apprenticeship and maturity into so short a time is just remarkable aspect of Keats’ work.

He used the term negative capability to discuss the state in which we are “capable of being in uncertainties,  mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason… content with half knowledge” where one trusts in the heart’s perceptions.

Ode on a Grecian Urn: 

 “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is Lyric ode with five stanzas containing ten lines each. The first stanza begins with the narrator addressing an ancient urn as, ‘ Thou still unravished bride of quietness!’, this is a conversation between the poet and the object, which the reader allowed to observe from a third- person point of view. Throughout the first two stanzas, the speaker addresses the urn as a single object, taking note of its silence at several points as he discusses unheard melodies and tunes heard not by the sensual ear. The second stanza begins to change tone as the poet shifts his focus from the urn as a whole to the individuals represented in the artwork. The two lovers, whose image the unknown artist has created through his craftsmanship, appear to the poet as couples who cannot kiss yet do not grow old. As the poem comes to a close, the narrator once again addresses the urn as a single object. In the final couplet, the poet provides a line for a urn, which complicates the narrative and has generated a multitude of critical responses as to the author’s intent:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all

        Ye know on earth, & all ye need to know.”

This ode is connected to the ‘Myth of Prometheus’, so let’s have a look on it.

Myth of Prometheus:

   Many years ago, according to the stories told by the people of ancient Greece, there lived two brothers who were not like either men or like the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus. They were the sons of one of the Titans who had fought against Zeus and been sent in chains to the prison of the lover world. The name of the elder of this brother was Prometheus (which means forethought). Prometheus was always thinking of the future and making things ready for what might happen tomorrow or next week or next year, or even in a hundred years time. The younger was called Epimetheus (which means after thought). Epimetheus was always so busy thinker of yesterday or past year, or a hundred years ago that he never worried at all about what might come to pass in the future. Prometheus did not want to live amongst the clouds on Mount Olympus. He was too busy for that while the God was spending their time in emeses drinking nectar and eating ambrosia. He was planning how to the world wiser and better than it had been before so unsteady of living on Olympus. Prometheus went out amongst mess to live with them and he quickly noticed that they were no longer happy as they had been during the golden days when Kronos, the Titan was king. He found them living is caves and in holes of the earth, shivering with the cold because there was no fire, dying of starvation, hunted by wild beasts and by one another the most miserable of all living creature. If they only had fire, said Prometheus to him they could learn to make tools and build themselves houses without fire, they worse off than the beast. Prometheus went to Zeus and begged him to give fire to people, so that so they might have a little comfort through the long, dreary Mont of winter. Prometheus didn't answer but his heart on helping mankind and he did not give up. As he walking by the seashore he found a fall stalk of fennel. He broke off and then saw that its hollow center was filled with a dry soft substance which would burn slowly and stay alight for a long time. He carried the stalk with him as he began a long journey to the top of mount Olympus. Mankind shall have fire despite what Zeus has decided he said to himself. And with that thought he snuck quietly into Zeus domain and stole a spark from Zeus own lightning bolt. Prometheus touched the end of the long speed to the spark and the dry substance within it caught on fire and burned slowly. Prometheus hurried back to his own land carrying with him .The precious spark hidden in the hollow center of the plant. When he reached home he called some of the shivering people from them caves and built a fire for them and showed them how to warm themselves by it and use it to cook their food. Men and women gathered round the fire and happy and thankful to Prometheus for the wonderful gift which he had brought to them. One chilly winter evening Zeus gazed down from Mount Olympus and noticed fires burning cheerfully at the heaths of men and women in every village across the land. It did not take him long to realize Prometheus has disobeyed him and give fire to men. Zeus was very angry and order that Prometheus be changed to the side of a mountain to suffer there for all eternity. And there Prometheus stayed thinking of the future happy in the knowledge that he had given fire to men until he was one day rescued by the mortal, which is a story for another day.

 

Ode to Psyche:

“Ode to Psyche” is a 67 line poem written in stanzas of varying length. The ode is written to a Grecian mythological character. The poet begins first stanza with “O Goddess!” Psyche, a creature so beautiful that she drew attention of Cupid himself and also draws the attention of the narrator, whose artistic imagination causes him to dream of her:

“Surely I dream’d to-day, or did I see

The winged psyche with awakened eyes?”

As he relates himself to the mythical character of Cupid, he confuses the god’s emotions with his own and imagines that he too has fallen with love with woman’s beauty. In line 50, the poet states, “Yes I will be thy priest, and build a fame”, which; Harold Bloom suggests, implies that the poet himself becomes a “prophet of the soul” as he regards the beauty of the psyche and attempts to place himself within Cupid’s personage, according to T.S.Eliot. It is the most prominent ode among the six great odes.

Myth of Psyche: 

  Cupid and Psyche is a story from the Latin novel Metamorphoses, also known as the Golden Ass, written in the second century AD by Apuleius. It concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche and Cupid or Amor and their ultimate union in marriage.

  Psyche is a former mortal woman and goddess of the soul in Greek mythology. She is the wife of Eros (Cupid) and the mother of Hedone. She is always pictured with butterfly wings.

   Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess, admired by everyone, but whom no one dared to proposed to. Desperate, the king consulted the god Apollo, who said that Psyche should be left alone, in a mourning dress, at the top of a mountain. Before daybreak, a serpent would come to her and marry her. The king obeyed, and throughout the night the princess waited, terrified and freezing, for the arrival of her husband. She ended up falling asleep. As she awoke, she was in a beautiful palace, transformed into a queen. Every night her husband would come to her, they made love, and he had just one condition. Psyche could have anything she desired, but she should trust him completely and never see his face. The young woman lived happily for a very long time; she had comfort, affection, joy, she was in love with the man who came to her every night. Once in a while, however, she was afraid of being married to a horrible serpent. One night, while her husband slept, she illuminated their bed with a lantern and found Cupid, a man of incredible beauty, beside her. The light woke him up and found out that the woman he loved wasn't able to fulfill his only desire, and disappeared. Concluding the Greek myth desperate to have her love back, Psyche submits herself to a series of tasks imposed by Venus, Cupid’s mother, who was envious of her beauty.

Ode to Nightingale:  

 “Ode to Nightingale” is Keats’ one of the supreme odes. It was written in May, 1819. It is the longest of Keats’ odes. There are 8 stanzas of 10 lines each.

    In the first stanza the poet hears the melodious song of the Nightingale. The song fills the heart of the poet with great joy. He forgets his surroundings and he feels as he has taken hemlock which has paralyzed this senses. Here the poet feels pain because too much happiness is also painful. In the 7^th line the word used ‘Dryad’ is an ancient Greek myth of trees, almost always female.

  In the second stanza the poet describes the sorrows of the world.  In the 16^th line the word used ‘Hippocrene’. The Hippocrene was a fountain in Greek mythology that was sacred to the muses. It was supposed to bring poetic inspiration when a person drank the water from the fountain.

  In the third stanza the poet says that he would happily leave this world of suffering where men suffer and beauty fades away. He would like to disappear in a forest and live where the nightingale lives.

  In the forth stanza the poet says that now he does not need wine because he can fly with the help of his poetic inspiration and imagination. Poetry is a more powerful medium than wine. On the wings of poetic fancy he would soar into the sky and go where the bird lives. In this stanza the word used ‘Bacchus and his pards’. Bacchus is the Roman god of wine. Here, Bacchus is used as a metonym for alcohol. Pards refer to teopards or other large felines, which are symbols associated with Ovid.

  In the next stanza the poet find himself in the country of the nightingale. The poet now feels the flowers at these feet. The poetic imagination takes him to the forest where the bird sings. The atmosphere is extremely pleasant.

  In the sixth stanza the poet expresses to the song of the nightingale. The song will provide his soul with eternal peace.

  In the seventh stanza the poet contrasts the immortality of the nightingale’s song with the mortality of human beings. The bird is a symbol continuity and permanent beauty. The song of the bird has been to live forever. The poet says that nightingale was born to live forever. The song of the bird has been heard in the past and it has been a soothing balm to the people in grief.

  In the last stanza the poetic vision fades and the song of the departing bird also becomes dimmer and dimmer. The bird flies away and the poet bids it a hearty farewell. He feels alone and lonely once again. The ode is rightly valued as one of the greatest poems in the English language.

  This ode is connected with Greek myth ‘Myth of Philomela’, so let’s have a look on it.

Myth of Philomela:

  Philomela is a minor figure in Greek mythology. She is identified as being the “princess of Athens” and the younger of two daughter of Pardion I, king of Athens and Zeuxippe. Her sister Procne was the wife of king Tereus of Thrace. While the myth has several variations, the general depiction is that Philomela, a migratory passerine bird native to Europe and southwest Asia noted for its song. Because of the violence associated with the myth, the song of the nightingale is often depicted or interpreted as a sorrowful lament.

  Tereus had raped Philomela who was his wife’s sister and cut out her tongue. Rendered unable to speak, she moves a tapestry and told her story to Procne. Procne was incensed and in revenge, she killed her son and served it as a meal to her husband. After eating, the sisters presented him with the severe head of his son and he became aware of their conspiracy and his cannibalistic meal. He snatched up an axe and pursued them with the intent to kill the sisters. They fled but mere almost overtaken by Tereus at Daulia in Phocis. In desperation, they prayed to the gods to be turned into binds and escape Tereus rage and vengeance. The gods transformed Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale.

Ben Jonson's chief Plays

Name: Ranjan Velari

Class: M.A. Sem.:1

Roll No. -25

Paper No. – 1

Email Id: ranajnvelari@gmail.com

Topic: Ben Jonson’s Chief Plays

Submitted to: Smt.S.B. Gardi 
                       Department of English 

                       M.K. Bhavnagar University

Question:

What are Ben Jonson’s chief plays? In what important respects did they differ from those of Shakespeare? Tell the story of The Alchemist and The silent Woman. Name other contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare. What causes led to decline of the drama?

·       Ben Jonson’s chief Plays:

  Jonson’s is the most commanding literary figure among the Elizabethans. For 25 years he was the literary dictator of London, the chief of all the wits that gathered nightly at the old Devil Tavern. With his great learning, his ability and his commanding position as poet Laureate, he set himself squarely against his contemporaries and the romantic tendency of the age.

His works:

A.    Satires

1.    Every Man in His Humor

2.    Cynthia’s Revels

3.    The Poetaster

B.    Comedies

1.    Volpone or the Fox

2.    The Alchemist

3.    Epicoene or the Silent Woman

C.    Tragedies

1.    Sejanus

2.    Catiline

D.   Travelope

1.    Foot Pilgrimage

E.     Unfinished Work

1.    Sad Shepherd

So, let’s have a look on one by one his famous work.

Every Man in His Humor

·       Jonson’s first comedy Every Man in His Humor, is a key to all his dramas. The word “humor” in his age stood for some characteristic whim or quality of society. Jonson gives to his leading character, some prominent humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the most characteristic feature of a face and so holds it before our attention that all other qualities are lost sight of; which is the method that Dickens used later in many of his novels.

·       Every Man in His Humor was the first of three satires. Its special aim was to ridicule the humors of the city.

Cynthia’s Revels

·       The second Cynthia’s Revels, satirizes the humors of the city.

The Poetaster

·       While the third, The Poetaster, the result of a quarrel with his contemporaries was leveled at the false standards of the poets of the age.

   The three best known of Jonson’s comedies are Volpone or the Fox, The Alchemist, or The Silent Woman. Volpone is a keen and merciless analysis of a man governed by an overwhelming love of money for its own sake. Volpone’s method of increasing his wealth is to play upon the avarice of men. He pretends to be at the point of death and his “suitors” who know his love of gain and that he has no heirs, Endeavour hypocritically to sweeten his last moment by giving him rich presents, so that he will leave them all his wealth. The intrigues of these suitors furnish the story of the play, and show to what infamous depths avarice will lead a man.

The Alchemist

·       The Alchemist is a study of quackery on one side and of gullibility on the other, founded on the medieval idea of the philosopher’s stone, and applies as well to the patent medicines and get-rich-quick schemes of his day as to the peculiar forms of quackery with which Jonson was more familiar.

·       In plot and artistic construction The Alchemist in an almost perfect specimen of the best English drama. It has some remarkably good passages, and in the most readable of Jonson’s plays.

·       Epicoene or The Silent Woman is a prose exceedingly well constructed, full of life, abounding in fun and unexpected situations. Here is a brief outline materials Jonson made up his comedies.

The Silent Woman

·       The chief character is Morose, a rich old codger whose humor is a horror of noise. He lives in a street so narrow that it will admit no carriages; he pads the doors; plugs the keyhole; puts mattresses on the stairs. He dismisses a servant who wears squeaky boots; make all the rest go about in thick stockings; and they must answer to him by signs, since he can not bear to hear anybody but himself talk. He disinherits his poor nephew Euginie, and , to make sure that the latter will not get any money out of him, resolves marry. His confident in this delicate matter is Cutbeard the barbar, who unlike his kind, never speaks unless spoken to, and does not even knick his scissors as he works. Cutbeard tells him of Epicoene, a rare, silent woman, and Morose is so delighted with her on the spot. Cutbeard produces a parson with a bad cold, who can speak only a whisper, to marry them; and when the parson coughs after the ceremony Morose demands back five shillings of the fee. To save it the parson coughs more, and is hurriedly bundled out if the house.

·       The silent woman finds her voice immediately after the marriage, begins to talk loudly and to make reforms in the household, driving Morose to distraction. A noisy dinner party from a neighboring house, with drums and trumpets and a quarreling man and wife, is skillfully guided in at this moment to celebrate the wedding. Morose flees for his life, and is found perched like a monkey on a crossbeam in the attic, with all his nightcaps tied over his ears. He seeks a divorce, but is driven frantic by the loud arguments of a lawyer and a divine, who are no other than Cutberad and a sea captain disguised. When Morose is past all hope the nephew offer to release him from his wife and her noisy friends if ha will allow him five hundred pounds a year. Morose offer him anything, everything, to escape his torment, and signs a deed to that effect. Then comes the surprise of the play when Euginie whips the wig from Epicoene and shows a boy in disguise.

·       It will be seen that The Silent Woman, with its rapid action and its unexpected situations, offers an excellent opportunity for the actors; but the reading of the play, as of most Jonson’s comedies, is marred by low intrigues showing a sad state of morals among the upper classes.

In what important respects did they differ from those of Shakespeare?

·       In disagree with the Lord Admiral’s Men for the murder of one their players, Jonson offered his services to the rival Lord Chamberlain’s Men and in 1598 Every Man in His Humor was accepted by them and performed with Shakespeare taking a part. This play made Jonson’s reputation. Apart from writing for public stage Jonson made a career for himself in the writing of court masques in collaboration with the architect Inigo Jones. For a contemporary account of a court masque see ‘Shakespearean Stage’. These elaborate entertainments became highly developed under king James and Jonson was by far the most successful and prolific exponent of the art form.

·       This set of oppositions is one which Jonson himself was interested in fostering. In referring to Shakespeare’s lack of classical learning is commendatory verse he was deliberately distinguishing Shakespeare’s practice from his own. There are many valuable contrasts to be made between the two writers, but it is important to recognize that the writers themselves knew each other and that their careers intersected. The competition between the two men is one of the reasons why they have been , and still are two same extent, viewed as appropriates other reasons for this oppositional view include the history of literary criticism since the mid 17^th century, and are beyond the scope of this subjective introduction. The differences between the two dramatists which are relevant to this unit can all be explored through the text on the syllabus, and no special biographical knowledge is necessary.

·       Shakespeare’s Contemporaries:

1.   Christopher Marlowe:

The brilliant, young playwright Christopher Marlowe was killed on a Tavern Brawl on 30^th May,1593, known as Shakespeare’s only literary peer until his untimely death, Marlowe is responsible for some of the finest lyrical poetry of any age and possibly add and in writing for of Shakespeare’s early dramas. Marlowe is supposed to have penned all the works attributed to Shakespeare and had then smuggled back to England.

2.   King James I:

After the death of Elizabeth I, James the VI of Scotland became the new ruler known an England as King James I. His fascination with the occults prompted him to write on treaties on witchcraft, their menology and many believe that James vehement belief in the divine right of kings influenced Shakespeare playwriting methodology. James I is probably best known for his translation of the Bible into English with became known as the authorized King James Version.

3.   Sir Walter Raleigh:

Certainly Sir Walter Raleigh the explorer, poet, philosopher, soldier, statesman and political pundit, had the busiest life of any Elizabethan subject. As one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite courtiers, the charming Raleigh enjoyed a life of fame, and riches. However, Raleigh’s arrogance and bravado made him unpopular with many and ha was eventually executed for treason against the new monarch, James I.

4.   Dr. Simon Forman:

The mysterious Dr. Forman, an English astrologer and doctor whose many scandals riveted Elizabethan England, wrote scores of papers on the subjects of medicine and astrology. He saved countless lives during the plague of 1592 and 1594, yet was imprisoned by the Royal College of Physicians in London for use of “magical potions” to the patients.

5.   Richard Burbage:

The famed Elizabethan actor, artist and theatrical entrepreneur unprecedented acclaim by playing many of the major Shakespearean characters, including Othello, Hamlet, King Lear and Richard III. In 1599, Richard with the help of his brother, built what is now the most recognizable playhouse in the Western world- the Globe Theatre.

·       Shakespeare’s Successors in the Drama:

1.   Beaumont and Fletcher:

·       The work of these two men is so closely interwoven that, though Fletcher outlived Beaumont by nine years and the latter had no band in 40 of the plays that bear their joint names, we still class them together, and only scholars attempt to separate their works so as to give writer his due share. Unlike most of the Elizabethan dramatists, they both came from noble and cultured families and were University trained. Their work, in strong contrast with Jonson’s is, intensely romantic, and in at all, however course or brutal the scene, there is still, as Emerson pointed out, the subtle “recognition of gentility”.

·       Beaumont (1584-1616) was the brother of Sir John Beaumont of Leicestershire. From Oxford he came to London to study law, but soon gave it up to write for the stage.

·       Fletcher (1579-1625) was the son of bishop of London, and shows in all his work of the influence of his high social position and of his Cambridge education. The two dramatist met at the under Ben Jonson’s leadership and soon became inseparable friends, living and working together. Tradition has it that Beaumont supplied the judgment and the solid work of the play, while Fletcher furnished the high-colored sentiment and the lyric poetry, without which an Elizabethan play would have been incomplete. Of their joint plays, the two best known are Philaster, whose old theme, like that of Cymbeline and Griselda, is the jealously of a lover and the faithfulness of a girl, and The Maid’s Tragedy.

·       Concerning Fletcher’s work the most interesting literary question is how much did he write of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, and how much did Shakespeare help him in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

2.   John Webster:

·       Of Webster’s personal history we know as a dramatist under James I. His extraordinary rank him talent seems to have been largely devoted to the blood-and –thunder play begun by Marlowe.

·       His two best known plays are The White Devil, and The Duchees of Malfi. The latter, spite of its horror, ranks him as one of the greatest masters of English tragedy. All the so-called blood tragedies of the Elizabethan period, from Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy down, however much they may condemn the brutal taste of English audiences, are still only so many search lights thrown upon a history of horrible darkness.

3.   Thomas Middleton:

·       Middleton is the best known by two great plays, The Changeling and Women Beware Women. In poetry and diction they are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare’s plays; otherwise; in their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense and are repulsive to the modern reader.

·       Two earlier plays, A Trick to catch the old One, his best comedy, and A Fair Quarrel, his earliest tragedy, are less mature-in thought and expression, but more readable, because they seem to express Middleton’s own idea of the drama rather than that of the corrupt court and playwrights of his later age.

4.   Thomas Heywood:

·       Heywood’s life, of which we know little in detail, covers the whole period of the Elizabethan drama. To the glory of that drama he contributed, according to his own statement, the greater part, at least, of nearly two hundred and twenty plays.

·        Heywood’s undoubted ability, are A Woman Killed with Kindness, a pathetic story of domestic life, and The Fair Maid of the West, a melodrama with plenty of fighting of popular kind.

5.   Thomas Dekker:

·       Dekker is in pleasing contrast with most of the dramatists of the time. Dekker’s personality and erratic genius in The Shoemaker’s Holiday, a humorous study of plain working people, and Old Fortunatus, a fairy drama of the wishing had and no end of money.

What causes led to decline of the drama?

·       It was inevitable that the drama should after Shakespeare, for the simple reason that there was no other great enough to fill his place. Aside from this, over causes were at work, and the chief of these was at the very source of the Elizabethan dramas. It must be remembered that our first playwrights wrote to please their audiences; that the drama rose in England because of the desire of a patriotic people to see something of the stirring life of the times reflected on the stage. For there were no papers and magazines in those days, and people came to the theaters not only to be amused but to be informed.

·       Like children, they wanted to know what is meant. Shakespeare fulfilled their desire. He gave them their story, and his genius was great to enough to show in every play not only their own life and passions but something of the meaning of all life, and of that eternal justice which uses the war of human passions for its own great ends. Thus good and evil is mingling freely in his dramas; but the evil is never attractive, and the good triumphs as inevitably as fate. Though his language is sometimes coarse, we are to remember that it was the custom of his age to speak somewhat coarsely, and that in language, as in thought and feeling, Shakespeare is far above most of his contemporaries.

·       With his successors all this was changed. The audience itself had gradually changed, and in place of plain people eager for a story and for information, we see a larger and larger proportion of those who went to the play because they had nothing else to do. They wanted amusement only, and since they had blunted by idleness the desire for simple and wholesome amusement, they called for something more sensational.

·       Shakespeare’s successors catered to the depraved tastes of this new audience. They lacked not only Shakespeare’s genius, but his broad charity, his moral insight into life. With the exception of Ben Jonson, they neglected the simple fact that man in his deepest nature is a moral being, and that only a play which satisfied the whole nature of man by showing the triumph of the moral law can ever wholly satisfy an audience or a people.

·       Beaumont and Fletcher, forgetting the deep meaning of life, strove for effect by increasing the sensationalism of their plays; Webster reveled in tragedies of blood and thunder; Massinger and Ford made another step downward, producing evil and licentious scenes for their own sake, making characters, and situation more immortal till, notwithstanding these dramatist’s ability, the stage had become insincere, frivolous, and bad.

·       Ben Jonson’s Ode, “Come Leave the Loathed Stage”, is the judgment of a large and honest nature grown weary of the plays and the players of the time. We read with a sense of relief that in 1642, only twenty-six years after Shakespeare’s death both houses of Parliament of lies and immortality.