A Defence Of Pretence – Indira Ghose

Even texts that castigate abuses of court life, such as Roger Ascham’s Scholemaster (1570) or Edmund Spenser’s Mother Hubberds Tale (published in 1591, but written at least a decade earlier), reveal an underlying faith in the courtly system, he argues, which continued until the 1590s, when disillusionment set in. Nor did the English share the French hostility towards Italian culture, which, despite the taint of papacy, continued to radiate an air of elegance and sophistication (120–22).

Javitch’s argument is persuasive, even if not all the evidence he adduces is equally convincing. He points out that North translates a line in which Philibert explicitly announces his satirical aim—claiming in writing the treatise, ‘je n’ay pu que je n’aye fait le Democrite, & usé de facities’—as ‘I have played Democrates, & applyed the whole too a pleasant [humorous] conclusion’ (B5v).

Javitch contends that the replacement of Democritus, the laughing philosopher, with Democrates, an otherwise unknown Presocratic thinker, was a sign of misinterpretation on the part of the translator which had the effect of obscuring the reference (110). However, the names of the two philosophers were frequently confused, and are both accepted as relating to Democritus.11 The fact that The Philosopher of the Court appears in Harvey’s list of recommended reading is not necessarily proof that the satire was misunderstood, as Javitch believes (115).

Early moderns were utilitarian readers, and selectively plundered works for ideas they could use for their own purposes. To a certain extent this is, of course, true of all readers. It is worth recalling, however, that in the Elizabethan age, the translation of prestigious foreign works was regarded as a national project, a matter of cultural transmission of high-end goods to a society racked with a sense of inferiority. The ironic thrust of the treatise is flagged up in the second edition.

It contains an additional poem by ‘Le Petit Angevin’, the sobriquet of the poet Jean Maugin, which explicitly drew attention to its comic matter in the lines, ‘I only wanted to warn you / In a word and without lying / That you will find matter for laughter here / Far more than I could say’.12 As Pauline Smith has shown, North used this edition, although he did not translate the poem, nor the dedicatory sonnets by Maurice Scève and O.

B.

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Published by Princeton University Press 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX press.princeton.edu GPSR Authorized Representative: Easy Access System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, [email protected] All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-26999-3 ISBN (pbk.) 978-0-691-26998-6 ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-27000-5 Version 1.0 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Editorial: Ben Tate and Josh Drake Production Editorial: Jenny Wolkowicki Cover design: Katie Osborne Production: Lauren Reese Publicity: William Pagdatoon and Charlotte Coyne Copyeditor: Joseph Dahm Cover credit: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo 1kitap1.com/en To Walter 1kitap1.com/en CONTENTS Illustrations ix Introduction 1 1 Castiglione, The Merchant of Venice, and the Imperative of Style 29 2 Manners and the Market 69 3 Theatricality and Lies in Coriolanus 109 4 Sejanus and the Degradation of Civility 148 5 Wit and the Art of Jesting 185 Conclusion 223 Acknowledgements 231 Bibliography 233 Index 257 1kitap1.com/en ILLUSTRATIONS 1.

Giovanni Battista Moroni, The Knight in Black (ca. 1567) 2. Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (ca. 1514–15) 3. John Massey Wright (1777–1866), scene from The Merchant of Venice 4. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam with Renaissance Pilaster (1523) 5. Title page of A Fair Quarrel (1622) by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley 6. Jacopo Pontormo, Monsignor della Casa (1541–44) 7. Soma Orlai Petrich, Coriolanus (1869) 8. Paul van Somer I, Portrait of Francis Bacon (1617) 9.

Jan Luyken, Sejanus, Favourite of Emperor Tiberius, Strangled, and at the Gemonian Stairs, Miserably Abused (1698) 10. Andrea del Sarto, Portrait of a Lady with a Book (ca. 1528) 11. Michele Beneditti, Falstaff at Herne’s Oak (1793) 1kitap1.com/en Introduction CIVILITY, WE ARE TOLD, is in crisis. In an increasingly polarised world, the ability to live together in civil society with a modicum of cordiality appears to be receding.

Common courtesy is in decline, as is the willingness to interact with those outside our own cohort and engage with views that contradict our own. Outrage and anger dominate discourse on social media.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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