A334

Book 2
Restoration and Enlightenment
Edited by Anita Pacheco
This publication forms part of the Open University module A334 English literature from Shakespeare to
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ISBN 978 1 7800 7987 5

2.1
Contents
Introduction 5
Chapter 1
Poetry of sex and seduction 25
Chapter 2
Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy 69
Chapter 3
The Country Wife (1675) by William Wycherley 115
Chapter 4
An authorless literary classic: the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments 149
Chapter 5
The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels 191
Chapter 6
Gulliver’s Travels in the world 233
Chapter 7
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy
Letters 269
Poetry for Chapter 1 309
Glossary 385
Acknowledgements 393
Index 397
Introduction
Anita Pacheco
Contents
Introduction 9
Politics: a brief overview 10
Restoration and Enlightenment 14
Literary culture 18
Women, courtship and contesting patriarchy 20
References and further reading 23
 Introduction

Introduction
Anita Pacheco
Welcome to ‘Restoration and Enlightenment’, Book 2 of A334. Let’s
start with some basic definitions. ‘Restoration’ refers to the restoration
of the English monarchy, which had been abolished in 1649 after six
years of civil war between the supporters of the king and the
supporters of Parliament ended with the defeat of the royalist forces.
As a historical period, it begins in 1660 with the coronation of King
Charles II whose father Charles I (r.1625–49) had been tried for
treason and executed in 1649. The term ‘the Enlightenment’ is harder
to define with anything like precision but, broadly speaking, it refers to
certain values and beliefs that achieved increasing currency not just in
Britain but across Europe as a whole in the late seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. These encouraged the questioning of traditional
(including religious) authorities, advocated the growth of the scientific
world view, and placed enormous faith in the powers of human reason
to better the condition of humankind.
You might expect Book 2 to start in 1660, but in fact it starts where
Book 1 left off: with the poet John Donne. This is in part because we
wanted Chapter 1 of this book to provide a link between Books 1 and
2 by showing how a particular poetic tradition developed from the late
sixteenth century through to the 1660s and 1670s. It also seemed to
make little sense to start in 1660 without taking some account of the
cataclysmic political events that preceded and led to the Restoration.
So Book 2 concentrates on the period 1660–1750 but also looks back
briefly at the first half of the seventeenth century. As the two
definitions with which we started suggest, this period witnessed
profound shifts in the political and cultural landscape. This
Introduction examines a few of these far-reaching changes.

9
Introduction

Politics: a brief overview

Let’s look first at the political developments. Why did civil war break
out in 1642? There is arguably no event in English history as
contentious as the English Civil War (1642–48). So the answers to that
question are complex and contested; the most I can hope to do here is
to identify several of the pressures, both political and religious, that
contributed to the outbreak of war.
You saw in the Introduction to Book 1 that James I (r.1603–25) took
an absolutist view of kingship. He adopted a fairly crude version of the
divine right of kings, expressed here in a speech to Parliament in
1610: ‘kings are not only God’s lieutenants on earth, and sit upon
God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods’ (quoted in
Poplawski, 2008, p. 171). His son Charles I appeared to many of his
subjects to have embraced the same view of kingship, but without his
father’s capacity for compromise. Tensions arose in the 1620s over
royal finances, traditionally supplied by taxation approved by the House
of Commons. Chronically short of cash, and faced with a Commons
often reluctant to vote for taxes on their constituents, Charles resorted
to non-parliamentary methods for raising money, including ‘forced
loans’ that he regarded as a test of his subjects’ loyalty and had no
intention of ever repaying; refusal to ‘lend’ was punished with
imprisonment (Hughes, 1991, pp. 92–3). These levies looked dubiously
legal to many of his subjects, and in 1628 the House of Commons
presented Charles with the Petition of Right, which claimed that the
liberties of the king’s subjects were being threatened by his belief that
he possessed ‘a sovereign power […] above the laws and statutes of
the kingdom’ (quoted in Worden, 2009, p. 19). In 1629 Charles
dissolved what he saw as a fractious and troublesome Parliament and
ruled without it for 11 years, a period known as the ‘Personal Rule’.
Charles’s extra-parliamentary taxation was accompanied by religious
innovations guaranteed to offend many of his subjects. As you saw in
Book 1, the Church of England at this time was Calvinist in its
theology – it accepted the two cardinal doctrines of irremediable
human depravity and predestination. Hopelessly contaminated with
original sin, human beings were powerless to bring about their own
salvation and were instead wholly dependent on God’s grace, which he
dispensed only to a chosen few, having consigned most of the human
race to eternal hellfire before they were born. Charles favoured a rival

10
 Politics: a brief overview

form of Protestantism, known as Arminianism after the Dutch

theologian Jacob Arminius (1560–1609), who rejected predestination
and argued that human beings’ capacity for goodness had survived
original sin and could play a part in securing their salvation. To many
of Charles’s subjects, particularly to those intensely devout individuals
we call Puritans, all of this smacked of ‘popery’, of a return to the
doctrines and practices of the hated and feared Roman Catholic
Church (Worden, 2009, p. 21; Cust, 2007, pp. 92–5).
England and Scotland were separate kingdoms at this time, but
Charles, like his father before him, was the ruler of both nations (along
with Ireland). His political and religious innovations produced a
constitutional crisis in England but he might well have survived this
had he not decided to impose his religious preferences on his Scottish
subjects as well (Worden, 2009, pp. 26–7). The Church of Scotland was
a thoroughgoing Calvinist church and it rebelled against the imposition
of the English Prayer Book in 1637. Two years later the Scots went to
war against the king. Forced to summon Parliament in order to pay for
the war, Charles encountered a House of Commons dominated by
politically astute critics of royal policy who forced concessions from
him. In 1642 his attempt to arrest the parliamentary leaders on charges
of treason proved a dismal failure and it became clear he had lost
control of London. He left the city and would not return until 1649 as
a prisoner of the parliamentary forces.
The events that followed turned the world of early modern England
upside down: the king was tried and executed, the monarchy abolished
and England declared a Commonwealth. In 1652 the Commonwealth
gave way to a period of military rule known as the Protectorate. Yet
the fact that the son of the executed king was invited back in 1660
indicates how difficult it was for the parliamentarians to find an
alternative way of running the country. Held together by the
formidable personality of its leader, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), the
revolutionary experiment in non-monarchical government began to fall
apart on Cromwell’s death in 1658.
Yet when Charles II was crowned king in 1660 none of the problems
that had led to civil war had really been resolved, and in the late 1670s
conflict between the crown and Parliament resurfaced. This time it was
focused on Charles II’s heir, his brother James, Duke of York, another
absolutist and a Catholic to boot, whom a significant portion of MPs
(called Whigs) attempted to exclude from succeeding to the throne.
The monarchy and its supporters (called Tories) won this particular

11
Introduction

Figure 0.1 John Weesop, An Eyewitness Representation of the Execution of Charles I, c.1649, oil on
canvas. Private collection. Photo: © Bridgeman Images

battle, known as the Exclusion Crisis, and James succeeded his brother
in 1685. But the victory was short-lived; in 1688, after his high-handed
pro-Catholic policies had alienated even his staunchest Tory allies,
James fled abroad in the face of a Dutch army led by the Protestant
William of Orange, who had been invited to intervene by a group of
James’s most powerful subjects.
The toppling of James II, known as the Glorious Revolution, led to
the passing of the Bill of Rights (1689), a vitally important political
document that placed clear limits on the powers of the monarch and
strengthened Parliament. The Stuarts did not go quietly, however; their
supporters, the Jacobites, proved a thorn in the side of successive
governments well into the eighteenth century, as they fomented
rebellion at home and engineered invasions from abroad, most notably
in 1715 and 1745.
In 1707 the Act of Union established a formal political union between
Scotland and England (which included Wales), creating the single
united kingdom of Great Britain. The political life of the nation in the
first half of the eighteenth century was dominated by party political
conflict between the Whigs and the Tories, the two parties which had
first appeared on the political scene during the Exclusion Crisis. When

12
 Politics: a brief overview

Figure 0.2 Robert Walker, Oliver Cromwell, c.1649, oil on canvas, 126cm x
102cm. National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 536. Photo: © National
Portrait Gallery, London

the first Hanoverian king, George I (r.1714–27), acceded to the throne,

the Whigs went on to enjoy several decades in power, much of it
under the stewardship of Robert Walpole (1676–1745), effectively
Britain’s first prime minister.

13
Introduction

Restoration and Enlightenment

The Restoration was characterised by a backlash against the Puritan
values of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, manifested most
notoriously in the extravagance and licentiousness of Charles II’s court.
Yet the reaction took other forms as well, including a repudiation of
the religious enthusiasm that many royalists blamed for having fuelled
and legitimised rebellion and regicide. Religious zeal became deeply
unfashionable among the Restoration elite. Some mocked Christianity
and revealed religion as nothing more than superstitious fables
designed to line the pockets of a corrupt clergy and keep the masses in
awe. Others, including some in the Anglican establishment, took a
more moderate stance, arguing that religion remained important but
should be based on reason and morality rather than revelation and
faith (Ellenzweig, 2008, pp. 1–28).
Such critical and rationalist attitudes to religion were not exclusive to
England; they were a central feature of the pan-European
Enlightenment project. They chimed with another essential aspect of
Enlightenment thought: the belief that the acquisition of knowledge
comes from the scientific method of systematic observation and
experiment producing empirical evidence. The Royal Society was
founded in London in 1662 for ‘the promoting of Physico-
Mathematical Experimental Learning’ and boasted among its members
such scientific luminaries as Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), whose
discoveries of gravity and planetary movement provided dramatic
support for the claim that science could explain the natural world
independently of religious authorities. On Newton’s death, the poet
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) neatly summed up his central position in
Enlightenment thought: ‘Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:/
God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light’.
Yet the historical period covered in Book 2 was far from homogeneous
in its beliefs and values. If the Restoration courtier and poet the Earl
of Rochester (whom you will encounter in Chapter 1) derided the
Christian conception of the afterlife as ‘senseless stories, idle tales,/
Dreams, whimseys, and no more’ (‘From Seneca’s Troades’, ll.17–18),
John Milton’s (1608–74) great Christian epic Paradise Lost (1667) is
also a Restoration text, written, according to some critics, to explain
and justify God’s apparent abandonment of the political and religious
aims of the parliamentary cause to which the poet had devoted many

14
 Restoration and Enlightenment

Figure 0.3 Thomas Hawker (attributed), King Charles II, c.1680, oil on
canvas, 227cm x 136cm. National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 4691.
Photo: © National Portrait Gallery

years of his life. While Pope eulogised Newton, his contemporary and
friend Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) satirised the Royal Society in Part
III of Gulliver’s Travels and countered Enlightenment faith in the powers
of human reason with his insistence that human beings are not rational
animals but merely animals capable of reason. As you will see in

15
Introduction

Chapter 6, Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels presents a complex interrogation

of the meaning of the word ‘reason’.

Figure 0.4 John Milton, engraving by William Faithorne, 1670, 21cm x

15cm. National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 610. Photo: © National
Portrait Gallery

Overseas trade and European colonisation expanded rapidly in this

period, as did the European taste for foreign commodities like coffee,

16
 Restoration and Enlightenment

tea, sugar and porcelain. In Britain the boom in sugar consumption

was made possible by the rise of the Atlantic slave trade and the
increasing use of African slave labour in Caribbean sugar plantations.
Travel narratives proliferated at this time and often express the
Enlightenment desire to acquire and classify knowledge of foreign and
exotic peoples and places. Several Book 2 texts register this increased
exposure to the goods and people of other cultures, including the
famous ‘china scene’ in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, discussed
in Chapter 3. As you will discover in Chapters 4 and 7, respectively,
both the Arabian Nights and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish
Embassy Letters – a collection based on her personal correspondence
written in Turkey in 1717–18 during her husband’s tenure as
ambassador – proved enormously popular texts, providing European
readers with different perspectives on the Ottoman empire. Gulliver’s
Travels, too, is inflected by European accounts of the native inhabitants
of ‘savage nations’. The British and other Europeans in this period
increasingly defined themselves and their place in the world in relation
to other peoples and cultures.

17
Introduction

Literary culture
While it is clear that literary texts of this period were deeply engaged
with contemporary social and cultural developments, the conditions of
literary production and consumption were also undergoing significant
changes. The culture of manuscript circulation was gradually giving way
to one dominated by print. The growing literary marketplace and the
spread of bookselling meant the weakening of the patronage system,
while the institution of copyright in Britain in 1710 strengthened the
identification of literary works with their authors (Poplawski, 2008,
pp. 244–5).
‘Literature’ in this period was a much broader, less restrictive category
than it is today, encompassing drama, poetry, history, philosophy and
letters, among other kinds of writing. This is reflected in the diversity
of genres studied in Book 2 – poetry, comic drama, various works of
prose fiction – and in the inclusion of Montagu’s Turkish Embassy
Letters. Yet within this generic diversity there is a clear prominence of
prose. Indeed, with the exception of Chapters 1 and 2, Book 2 deals
entirely with texts written in prose. Two of these works, the Arabian
Nights and Gulliver’s Travels, are works of narrative prose fiction. The
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries are commonly seen as
the literary period when the genre of the novel began to evolve out of
a variety of existing kinds of prose narrative. This is not to say that the
Arabian Nights and Gulliver’s Travels are novels; the former is a
collection of oriental tales, and critics differ on the question of the
genre of Gulliver’s Travels. But both texts were written at a time when
the novel was becoming the dominant fictional form.
The Restoration and Enlightenment are also notable for their fondness
for satire. Not that satire was unpopular during the Renaissance, but
in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries it achieved a
special prominence. This is often explained as an expression of
reverence for the literature of antiquity, in particular for the verse
satires of Roman poets like Horace (65–8 BCE) and Juvenal (d.130 CE).
While such reverence undoubtedly existed, it fails to explain why so
many writers in this period modelled their work specifically on Roman
satiric verse when the classical past afforded them a multitude of other
poetic modes and genres for imitation. Much of the satire produced in
this period targets particular political and religious affiliations: Samuel
Butler’s (1612–80) narrative poem Hudibras (1662/3) is a scathing

18
 Literary culture

attack on the parliamentarians, while John Dryden’s (1631–1780)

satirical allegory ‘Absalom and Achitophel’, written in 1681 at the
height of the Exclusion Crisis, takes aim at the leading Whigs who
were attempting to block the accession of the Duke of York.
Throughout the late 1670s and early 1680s, when renewed conflict
between the crown and Parliament seemed to many to threaten a
return to civil war, dramatists participated fully in the political struggles
of the day, writing plays that supported either the Whigs or the Tories,
often through savage satirical portraits of their political opponents
(Owen, 1996). Perhaps, then, these writers’ attachment to the Roman
satirists is more a symptom than a cause – an expression of the central
role played by satire in a highly politicised society riven by particularly
deep-seated political and religious divisions.
Satire figures prominently in Book 2. The Earl of Rochester, as you
will see in Chapter 1, found satire a highly congenial mode, as he
heaped scorn on individuals, institutions and social groups, including
Christianity and the Church of England. His ‘Satire on Charles II’, also
known as ‘Verses for which he was banished’, is a reminder that satire
directed at those in power can be dangerous. The French dramatist
Molière discovered this to his cost when he staged his comedy Tartuffe
(the subject of Chapter 2), with its mockery of the Jesuits. Wycherley’s
The Country Wife, discussed in Chapter 3, makes outrageous fun of
most of its character ‘types’, while, as you will discover in Chapters 5
and 6, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a classic of satirical writing,
providing, in the guise of a fantastical travel book, a funny, embittered
and comprehensive assault on contemporary political, social and
intellectual life in Britain and Europe.

19
Introduction

Women, courtship and contesting

patriarchy
Despite profound and diverse changes, official attitudes towards
women remained relatively constant in this period. In medical,
scientific, legal and political discourses, as well as in popular culture,
women continued to be represented much as they had been in the
sixteenth century: as inferior and therefore necessarily subordinate to
men. Child marriages were rare by the seventeenth century, but young
elite women continued to be subject to marriages arranged by their
families largely for economic and dynastic reasons. Women from the
lower classes had more opportunities to exercise personal choice in
marriage; often sent out to service in adolescence, they enjoyed a
greater degree of freedom from parental interference. This could
enable them to take part in what the historians Sara Mendelson and
Patricia Crawford refer to as the ‘plebeian culture of courtship’, which
was associated with seasonal holidays like May Day and Whit Sunday
and is vividly evoked in Robert Herrick’s poem ‘Corinna’s Going a
Maying’ (Mendelson and Crawford, 1998, p. 111).

20
 Women, courtship and contesting patriarchy

Figures 0.5 and 0.6 Formal and Informal Courtship (Pepys Ballads, iii. 255
and iii. 280). By permission of The Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Oxford.
In Figure 0.5 an elite couple engage in a formal, publically approved
courtship while Figure 0.6 depicts the more informal, private courtship
common among plebeian couples.

However, the sexual double standard was well and truly in place, and it
was highly risky for any woman, of whatever rank, to sacrifice her
virginity before marriage. As Mendelson and Crawford point out, the
problem was intensified by the fact that ‘the boundaries between the
forbidden and the permitted were so ambiguous’ (Mendelson and
Crawford, 1998, p. 118). Opinion still differed as to when a marriage
actually took place and when sexual activity became socially legitimate.
For some, the betrothal ritual – the ‘handfasting’ or ‘spousal’ –
constituted the moment of marriage, which the church service merely
formalised. For others, sexual relations were taboo before the church
wedding. In the seduction poems discussed in Chapter 1, male speakers
seek to persuade women to throw aside their fears of the grave
possible consequences of having sex outside wedlock: loss of
reputation and irreparably damaged marital prospects, not to mention
pregnancy.
Yet if women’s lot in many ways remained unchanged in the course of
the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they managed
nonetheless to challenge contemporary constructions of gender.
Christianity may have denigrated all women as the daughters of Eve,
but it also tended to argue that, because souls have no gender, women

21
Introduction

were the spiritual equals of men. During the civil war years, women
used this doctrine to push against patriarchal assumptions that wives
owed their husbands unquestioning obedience and that women should
be excluded from the public, political sphere. In her treatise Reflections
upon Marriage (1706), the philosopher and early feminist Mary Astell
(1666–1731), friend and patron of Montagu, pointed out the
inconsistency of men who, during the political conflicts of the period,
had challenged the right of kings to exercise absolute power while
granting the same right to husbands: ‘How much soever Arbitrary
Power may be dislik’d on a throne, not Milton himself wou’d cry up
Liberty to poor Female Slaves, or plead for the Lawfulness of Resisting
a Private Tyranny’ (Astell, 1706, p. 27). This was also the period in
which unprecedented numbers of women entered the public domain
through their writing. In Book 2 you will briefly encounter the poetry
of Aphra Behn and spend in a week in the company of Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu and her letters. But there were many more women
writing and publishing in this period, especially in the field of the
novel, women like Delarivier Manley (c.1670–1724) and Eliza Haywood
(1693–1756). Their work, along with Behn’s numerous prose fictions,
established a connection between the genre of the novel and the figure
of the female author that would prove remarkably durable. It will lead
us in Book 3 of the module to the works of Jane Austen.

22
 References and further reading

References and further reading

Asterisked items are those suggested for further reading; items without
an asterisk are the works cited in this Introduction.
*Amussen, S. (1988) An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early
Modern England, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Astell, M. (1706) Reflections upon Marriage, 3rd edn, London, R. Wilkin.
*Cressy, D. (1997) Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the
Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Cust, R. (2007) Charles I: A Political Life, London, Pearson Education.
Ellenzweig, S. (2008) The Fringes of Belief: English Literature, Ancient
Heresy, and the Politics of Freethinking , 1660–1760, Stanford, CA,
Stanford University Press.
*Harris, T. (2005) Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms 1660–1685,
London, Penguin.
*Harris, T. (2007) Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy
1685–1720, London, Penguin.
Hughes, A. (1991) The Causes of the English Civil War, Basingstoke,
Macmillan.
*Israel, J.I. (2001) Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of
Modernity, 1650–1750, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Mendelson, S. and Crawford, P. (1998) Women in Early Modern
England, 1550–1720, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
*Milton, J. (1968 [1667]) Paradise Lost, ed. A. Fowler, London and
New York, Longman.
*Nussbaum, F.A. (2003) The Global Eighteenth Century, Baltimore, MD,
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Owen, S.J. (1996) Restoration Theatre and Crisis, Oxford, Clarendon
Press.
*Pocock, J.G.A. (1993) The Varieties of British Political Thought 1500–
1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

23
Introduction

Poplawski, P. (ed.) (2008) English Literature in Context, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press.
*Richetti, J. (ed.) (1996) The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-
Century Novel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; available
through the OU Library website at http://dx.doi.org.libezproxy.open.
ac.uk/10.1017/CCOL0521419085 (Accessed 17 November 2014).
*Rivers, I. (ed.) (2001) Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century
England: New Essays, London and New York, Continuum.
Worden, B. (2009) The English Civil Wars: 1640–1660, London,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

24
Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and
seduction
Anita Pacheco
Contents
Aims 29
Materials you will need 30
Introduction 31
Classical models 33
‘Oh my America, my new found land’: John Donne’s
Elegy 19 34
‘Love’s Elysium’: Carew’s ‘A Rapture’ 36
Poetry and politics: the Cavalier poets and the
English Civil War 38
‘Time's trans-shifting’: Robert Herrick 41
Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47
Restoration libertinism: the Earl of Rochester 51
Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’ 59
Conclusion 60
References and further reading 61
Reading 1.1 Marvell’s pastoral art 63
Reading 1.2 Logic and illogic in Marvell’s ‘To His
Coy Mistress’ 65
Reading 1.3 ‘Virgins all beware’ 66
 Aims

Aims
This chapter will:
. introduce you to a particular poetic tradition of the seventeenth-
century: poems about sex and seduction
. consider some of the classical models for these poems, as well as
some of their political and cultural contexts
. give you the opportunity to develop your skills of close analysis of
poetry.

29
Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Materials you will need

You will need to read the poetry associated with this chapter, which
you will find at the back of this book. (The poems that are discussed
in the chapter are listed on the next page.)
You may wish to listen to the audio recordings of the poetry, which
you will find on the module website.

30
 Introduction

Introduction
You will remember from your study of Chapter 8 of Book 1 of this
module that Petrarchan love poetry has certain fairly clearly defined
conventions. It tends to foreground the feelings of the male lover,
particularly his suffering in the face of a cruel or indifferent female
object of desire. If the unattainable mistress is rebuked for her
coldness, she is also idealised, placed on a pedestal and worshipped as
a goddess by her spurned yet devoted lover. Sometimes, in good neo-
Platonic fashion, her physical beauty is invested with spiritual
significance and itemised in the blazon, a kind of catalogue of the
mistress’s physical charms: eyes like the sun, lips like coral, skin as
white as snow and so on.

The following poems are discussed in this chapter:

Christopher Marlowe, translations of poems from Ovid, Amores:

. Book 1, Elegy 5
. Book 3, Elegy 12
John Donne, Elegy 19, ‘To His Mistress Going To Bed’
Thomas Carew, ‘A Rapture’
Robert Herrick, from Hesperides:

. ‘The Argument of His Book’

. ‘The Vine’
. ‘Delight in Disorder’
. ‘To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time’
. ‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’
Thomas Campion, ‘My sweetest Lesbia, In Imitation of Catullus’
Sir Thomas Hawkins, translation of Horace, Odes, Book 1, Ode 11
Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’
John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester:

. ‘From Seneca’s Troades’

. ‘A Satire Against Reason and Mankind’
. ‘A Satire on Charles II’ (‘Verses for which he was banished’)

31
Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

. ‘The Disabled Debauchee’

. ‘Régime de vivre’ (‘I rise at eleven’)
. ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’
Aphra Behn, ‘The Disappointment’.

Petrarchan poetry tends to shy away from sex, preferring to explore

the pains of unrequited adoration rather than the pleasures of a
reciprocal passion. Despite his obsession with the mistress’s physical
attributes, the Petrarchan lover likes to lay claim to a pure, spiritual
love, more interested in the mistress’s soul than in her body. There
was, however, another poetic tradition that flourished in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries that was far less coy about sexual desire.
Poets working in this tradition write more frankly about sex, from a
variety of perspectives. Erotic poetry of the period – meaning poetry
about ‘Eros’, or sexual love, rather than poetry that is sexually arousing
– often presents an explicit challenge to Petrarchan conventions; yet it
resembles Petrarchan love poetry in so far as it almost always involves
male poets writing about women.
This chapter will introduce you to the variety of poems about sex and
seduction written in the seventeenth century, as well as some of the
classical models that inspired them. During your work on it you should
aim to read all of the poems that are reproduced in the poetry section
at the back of the book, but it might be an idea to begin by focusing
on the poems that are discussed in this chapter (they are listed in the
textbox). Don’t worry if you find some of the poems challenging; just
try to get the gist of what the speakers are saying. You will probably
find this easier to do if you listen to the recordings of the poems as
well as reading them; you will find these recordings on the module
website. You should also read the biographical material provided on
the poets in the poetry section, as well as the Introduction to Book 2.
Once you’ve done that you should return to this chapter, where we will
be discussing most of the poems in the textbox in some detail.

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 Classical models

Classical models
Poets writing erotic verse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were able to follow numerous classical models, one of the most
important of which was the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso,
commonly known as Ovid (43 BCE–c.17 CE). You have already
encountered Ovid’s influential work Metamor phoses in Book 1. But he
also wrote a sequence of love poems, or elegies, called the Amores. (An
elegy was originally any poem written in elegiac couplets; it was only
much later that it came to refer to a poem of mourning or lament.)
Although Ovid’s speaker starts out in a love-sick state for a woman
who is unattainable because married, by the fifth elegy the love is
consummated.
In translating Elegy 5 (in Book 1 of the Amores) from Latin into
English, the sixteenth-century poet and dramatist Christopher Marlowe
chose to use the heroic couplet, lines of iambic pentameter that
rhyme in pairs. We find, instead of the Petrarchan blazon, a detailing of
Corinna’s naked body: her breasts, arms, shoulders, smooth belly,
‘large’ legs and ‘lusty’ thighs, all of them perfect or without a ‘wen’ (ll.
18–22). The troublingly aggressive and triumphal tone of the poem,
with Corinna first striving ‘to be covered’ and finally yielding to the
speaker (ll. 14–16), reappears in Book 2, Elegy 12, when the speaker
celebrates his success in circumventing the attempts of Corinna’s
husband to protect her from the advances of other men: ‘About my
temples go triumphant bays!/Conquer’d Corinna in my bosom lays’ (ll.
1–2). Ovid’s speaker thus displays a strong sense of sex as an
expression of his own dominance, over the woman in question and, in
this case, over other men.

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

‘Oh my America, my new found land’:

John Donne’s Elegy 19

Activity
Now reread John Donne’s Elegy 19: ‘To His Mistress Going To Bed’. In
what ways can we see this as a poem influenced by Ovid? See if you
can make a list of three ways in which this poem resembles Marlowe’s
translations of Ovid’s two elegies. Try to think about form (metre and
rhyme) as well as content.

Discussion
Here’s what I’ve come up with:
1 As with Marlowe’s translations of Ovid, Donne opts to write his elegy
in heroic couplets.
2 Like the speaker of Ovid’s Elegy 5, Donne’s speaker is talking about
a fully consummated relationship, as the title alone tells us. The
poem itself is suffused with the speaker’s appreciation of the
mistress’s beauty and his impatient anticipation of their love-making.
3 As with Ovid’s Elegy 5, there is no Petrarchan blazon. Instead we
have a catalogue of the items of clothing the speaker orders the
mistress to remove.

You may also have noticed that there is a similar urge for dominance
in Donne’s poem, which is especially evident in the second verse
paragraph, where the speaker describes the mistress through the
metaphor of virgin territory that he has explored and conquered: she
is ‘safeliest when with one man mann’d’ (l. 28); she is a ‘new found
land’ on which the speaker has set his seal (ll. 27, 32).
Yet there are also significant differences between Ovid’s and Donne’s
elegies. For one thing, Donne has his speaker address the mistress
directly rather than describe her to his readers in the third person.
Elegy 19 is also shot through with what you will recognise from
Book 1, Chapter 8 as Donne’s characteristic wit and verbal
inventiveness. We see this in the speaker’s extravagant and ingenious
flattery of the woman; for example, to describe the revelatory

34
 ‘Oh my America, my new found land’: John Donne’s Elegy 19

experience of seeing her take off her dress he uses the simile of a
flowery field emerging suddenly from out of the shadow cast by a
nearby hill. As in his famous seduction poem ‘The Flea’, Donne
displays his cleverness and fashionable irreverence by employing a
religious discourse to talk about sex. So the bed is ‘love’s hallow’d
temple’ (l.18), the mistress is an angel bringing him to paradise (ll. 19–
21), and the first verse paragraph culminates in a bawdy joke about
malign spirits who make our hairs stand on end versus good ones who
set ‘the flesh upright’ (ll. 22–4).
Interestingly, Donne provides no ‘salivating survey of the female
physique’ such as we find in Ovid’s Elegy 5 (Carey, 1990, p. 93).
Instead, the focus is on the numerous and expensive articles of
clothing the mistress is removing, all of which seem to imply her
exalted rank (Carey, 1990, pp. 91–2). This gives an added charge to the
metaphor of the mistress as the speaker’s ‘new found land’ (l. 27). She
is ‘My kingdom’, ‘My mine of precious stones, my empery’ (ll.28, 29).
The repeated possessives stress ownership and mastery, while the
metaphors – ‘kingdom’, ‘mine of precious stones’ and ‘empery’ – invest
the woman with an appeal that seems to have an economic dimension.
Yet it’s worth adding that the metaphorical representation of gender
relations in the poem is not entirely straightforward. In line 31 the
speaker imagines himself as the woman’s prisoner, bound in her arms
but paradoxically free; and later in the poem she is among the ‘mystic
books’ whose mysteries are revealed only to the lucky chosen few (ll.
41–3). Yet the poem ends with an image of the man on top: ‘What
need’st thou have more covering than a man’ (l. 48). Is this, as Achsah
Guibbory argues, a witty reassertion of male supremacy (Guibbory,
1990, p. 822)?

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

‘Love’s Elysium’: Carew’s ‘A Rapture’

Donne’s Elegies were not published in his lifetime. Instead, as was
common in this period, they circulated in manuscript among a coterie
audience. When they were published, in 1633 and 1635, several were
omitted, including Elegy 19, perhaps because of their sexual content.
Elegy 19 did not appear in print until 1669.
Donne’s erotic poetry proved highly influential on a later generation of
poets, among them Thomas Carew, a courtier in the court of Charles I
who produced most of his poetry in the 1630s. His poem ‘A Rapture’,
for example, bears the marks of Donne’s Elegy 19. It too is concerned
with the joys of love-making and Carew’s speaker recalls the ‘roving
hands’ (Elegy 19, l. 25) of Donne’s when he imagines Celia naked:
‘There my enfranchised hand on every side/Shall o’er thy naked
polished ivory slide’ (ll. 29–30). Perhaps above all Carew shows his
debt to Donne in the obvious pleasure he derives from witty argument:
‘A Rapture’ is a seduction poem, in which the speaker tries to persuade
Celia to sleep with him, an objective which requires that he confront
and demolish the power of the code of honour which prohibits women
from engaging in extra-marital sex. He does this in part through
ridicule: honour is just a ‘vast idol’ who commands only ‘the servile
rout/Of baser subjects’ (ll. 6, 4–5).
But most of his rhetorical energy is expended in a long, ecstatic verse
portrait of ‘Love’s Elysium’ (l. 2), the erotic paradise to which Carew’s
speaker seeks to tempt Celia. As Carew piles up similes and metaphors
in an effort to convey the rapturous love-making that awaits them, a
new sexual explicitness appears, very different from Donne’s Elegy 19,
as this extended nautical metaphor makes clear:

Thou like a sea of milk shalt lie displayed,

Whilst I the smooth, calm oceän invade
With such a tempest as when Jove of old
Fell down on Danae in a storm of gold:
Yet my tall pine shall in the Cyprian strait
Ride safe at anchor and unlade her freight;
My rudder with thy bold hand, like a tried

36
 ‘Love’s Elysium’: Carew’s ‘A Rapture’

And skilful pilot, thou shalt steer, and guide

My bark into love’s channel …
(ll. 81–9)

The equation of sex and conquest we noticed in Ovid and Donne

reappears, as Carew’s speaker imagines penetration as a form of
invasion. While accorded the role of ‘skilful pilot’ in line 88, Celia is at
the start of the passage entirely passive, ‘a sea of milk’ acted on by the
speaker’s ‘tempest’ (ll. 81, 83). The classical allusion reinforces the
power differential, figuring the speaker as Jove, the king of the gods,
and Celia as Danae, one of the many mortal women he forced himself
on, in this case in the form of a shower (or ‘storm’) of gold. Later in
the poem there is a long section in which the speaker imagines this
sexual paradise peopled by several legendarily chaste women – Lucrece,
Daphne, Penelope and Petrarch’s Laura (the first two, incidentally,
victims of rape or attempted rape) – all of them eager for sex. By this
point, ‘A Rapture’ may seem less a seduction poem than a rather sordid
male fantasy, but Carew’s wildly overblown language may indicate that
he does not want us to take the poem or the speaker entirely seriously
(Corns, 1993, pp. 210–11).

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Poetry and politics: the Cavalier poets

and the English Civil War
Carew is often called a Cavalier poet, along with Robert Herrick, Sir
John Suckling and Richard Lovelace (among others). The word
‘cavalier’ means knight or cavalry officer, from the French chevalier. In
a mid-seventeenth-century context it refers to the courtier-soldiers,
men like Carew, Suckling and Lovelace, who supported the king in the
lead-up to and during the civil war. Yet in the main it was a term of
abuse, deployed by the Parliamentarians to demonise the king’s
supporters as courtly degenerates, addicted to whoring, drinking,
swearing and other forms of godless behaviour (Knoppers, 2007,
p. 289). Like most stereotypes, it had some basis in fact: many of
Charles I’s courtiers, especially Carew and Suckling, had reputations as
incorrigible gamblers and womanisers.

Figure 1.1 Cavaliers and Roundheads face off in a contemporary woodcut, 1642. The Cavaliers may be
identified principally by their long curly hair (as may their dog). Photo: © Bridgeman Images/TopFoto

38
 Poetry and politics: the Cavalier poets and the English Civil War

The royalists’ response to this negative portrait was twofold: on the

one hand, they challenged it by invoking an idealised picture of the
Cavalier as ‘a Gentleman, a Commander on Horsebacke’ who ‘dares
fight and be valiant, obey law, and serve for his Soveraigne, his
Countrey, for the true Religion established’ (quoted in Knoppers, 2007,
p. 290). But, on the other, they embraced the stereotype of the rake as
a way of vilifying the parliamentary opposition as cold-blooded
puritanical Roundheads. The Cavalier was a valiant gentleman loyal to
his king and country and possessed of a healthy appetite for the
pleasures of the flesh alien to life-denying puritans. In the context of
the propaganda wars of the 1640s, the libertine posture of Carew’s ‘A
Rapture’ and a significant portion of other Cavalier poets’ verse took
on a strong political significance as the voice of a once-dominant
royalist courtly elite.

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Figure 1.2 In the style of Jean Varin, Thomas Carew, 1633, line engraving.
Carew’s long Cavalier locks are given prominence here. National Portrait
Gallery, London, NPG D2179. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London

40
 ‘Time's trans-shifting’: Robert Herrick

‘Time's trans-shifting’: Robert Herrick

Although Robert Herrick is usually called a Cavalier poet, he was an
Anglican minister rather than a courtier. He was a royalist, however,
and, like many Church of England clergymen, was ejected from his
living for his support of the king during the civil war. Hesperides, the
collection of Herrick’s secular verse, was first published in 1648, when
the king was in prison and the royalist cause in obvious decline, but
many of the poems were written much earlier, in the 1620s and 1630s.
A ‘loose, baggy monster of some 1400 poems’ (Creaser, 2009, p. 171),
written in a dazzling range of lyric forms, Hesperides is dedicated to
Prince Charles, the king’s son and heir, and is prevailingly royalist in its
politics. In ‘The Argument of his Book’, Herrick declares his intention
to ‘write of youth, of love, and have access,/By these, to sing of
cleanly wantonness’ (ll. 5–6); the climactic phrase, with its claim that
human desire and sexuality are healthy rather than sinful, offers a clear
challenge to puritan morality. The poetic persona of Hesperides is most
definitely a libertine: he claims to have had thousands of mistresses.
Herrick’s numerous erotic poems are sometimes nearly as explicit as
Carew’s ‘A Rapture’. In his poem ‘The Vine’, for example, the speaker
dreams that his penis turns into a vine ‘crawling one and every way’ (l.
3) over his lover Lucia; he then wakes abruptly to discover ‘this flesh
of mine/More like a stock than like a vine’ (ll. 22–3). Other poems in
the collection display an erotic fascination with the appearance of
carelessness in women’s dress. ‘Delight in Disorder’, for example, in a
one-sentence string of images, sings the praises of a ‘sweet disorder’ in
women’s clothes (l. 1), which the speaker finds both sexually arousing
and a sign of ‘wild civility’ (l. 12). The latter phrase, with its
paradoxical yoking of wildness and civilisation, tells us that Herrick is
not thinking of country girls here, a point reinforced by the expensive
items of clothing he details in the poem, which recall the costly
accessories lovingly described in Donne’s Elegy 19. Rather, Herrick is
commending a refined but sophisticated and worldly court culture and
opposing it to an attitude to dress which is ‘too precise in every part’
(l.14) – the word ‘precise’ having strong puritan connotations.
In ‘The Argument of his Book’ Herrick mentions several other
subjects that will preoccupy him in Hesperides: the natural world – ‘I
sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers’ (l. 1); traditional
holiday festivities – ‘I sing of Maypoles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes’ (l.
3); and the passage of time – ‘I sing of time's trans-shifting’ (l. 9). It is

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Figure 1.3 Portrait of Mary 'Moll' Davis (c.1651–1708), actress, mistress of

Charles II and rival of Nell Gwyn, affecting the fashionable carelessness in
dress so admired by Herrick. The portrait is a replica of the lost original by
Sir Peter Lely, painted after 1670, oil on canvas, 128cm x 100cm. Private
collection. Photo: © Philip Mould Ltd, London/Bridgeman Images

for his poems about time that Herrick is perhaps best known today, in
particular his lyric ‘To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time’. This is a
carpe diem poem, a poetic motif to which you were introduced in
Chapter 7 (on Spenser’s Faerie Queene) in Book 1. You will remember,
then, that carpe diem is Latin for ‘seize the day’. This poetic genre is
often traced back to two Roman poets: Catullus (c.84 BCE–54 BCE), in

42
 ‘Time's trans-shifting’: Robert Herrick

particular his poem ‘Carmen 5’, and Horace (65 BCE–8 BCE), Ovid’s
older contemporary, in particular the eleventh poem from his first
book of odes.
The two poems are very different. Catullus’s poem, in Thomas
Campion’s very loose translation, is addressed to Lesbia and, like
Carew’s ‘A Rapture’, is an invitation to love, a seduction poem. ‘My
sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love’, the speaker urges (l. 1), in
defiance of society’s oppressive and misguided values. In the 1625
translation by Sir Thomas Hawkins, the speaker of Horace’s Book 1,
Ode 11 advises the woman Leuconoë not to waste time trying to
divine ‘what end/The gods above to me or thee will send’ (ll. 1–2). As
human beings are condemned to live in ignorance of their fate, the
only sensible course of action is to seize the day, to live fully in the
present. Yet what energises both poems is the fear of death, which
Campion turns into a plangent refrain: ‘But soon as once set is our
little light,/Then must we sleep one ever-during [ever-enduring or
everlasting] night’ (ll. 5–6), while Hawkins expresses it in the
memorable couplet, ‘Whilst we are talking, envious Time doth slide:/
This day’s thine own; the next may be denied’ (ll. 9–10).
Herrick’s poem ‘To the Virgins’ is different again, but seems more
Catullan than Horatian in inspiration. It is addressed to young women,
the virgins of the title, so that the exhortation to ‘make much of time’
is specifically about the fading of female beauty with the passage of
time; the climactic lesson, delivered in the final stanza, is to ‘be not
coy’ (l. 13). Thus Herrick’s car pe diem poem is, like Catullus’s, an
invitation to love, although the lesson is generalised and given social
legitimacy by being directed at the goal of marriage. ‘To the Virgins’
shares with its classical predecessors the certainty that ‘envious Time
doth slide’, though in Herrick’s poem it flies, the natural imagery of the
first three stanzas repeating the same truth: that youth and beauty are
fleeting. The sun image of the second stanza is interesting in this
regard. We might expect the sun’s cyclical movement to militate against
the speaker’s message; indeed, the speaker of Campion’s ‘My sweetest
Lesbia’ draws a distinction between the motion of ‘heav’n’s great
lamps’, which ‘dive/Into their west, and straight again revive’ (ll. 3–4),
and the ‘ever-during night’ which awaits human beings. Herrick’s
speaker, by contrast, perceives only the speed of the sun’s ‘race’ across
the sky (l. 7); that is, only the brevity of human existence.
The car pe diem motif turns up in Carew’s, Suckling’s and Lovelace’s
poetry as well, often as a seduction tactic, and it is not hard to see why

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

its world view would have appealed to a Cavalier sensibility bent on

offending puritans and celebrating the joys of wine, women and song.
Yet this world view also entails a resolute denial of anything beyond
the earthly and temporal, which can impart to carpe diem verse a
melancholy tone. Moreover, as you will recall from Book 1, Chapter 7,
the example of Acrasia in Book II of The Faerie Queene reminds us that
seducers’ fondness for carpe diem poetry means that it pays to be
especially sceptical of its speakers’ motives and arguments.
Herrick’s pervasive interest in festivity in Hesperides is another aspect
of his royalist political agenda. Leah Marcus situates his verse in the
context of the determined efforts of both James I and Charles I to
defend traditional English holiday pastimes against puritan attempts to
suppress them on the grounds that they encouraged superstition and
idolatry, not to mention drunkenness and fornication (Marcus, 1993,
pp. 175–6). Herrick’s support for festivity therefore constitutes another
swipe at the opposition.

Activity
Let’s look now at ‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’, Herrick’s poem about May
Day, the traditional celebration of springtime and fertility. Reread the
poem and then try to answer the following questions:
1 How is the relationship between the human and natural worlds
represented in the poem?
2 What role does religion play in the poem?

Discussion
1 The human and natural worlds are intimately linked in the poem,
each taking on the qualities of the other. So, for example, in stanza 1
the birds sing hymns (ll. 10–11) while young girls ‘[s]pring, sooner
than the lark, to fetch in May’ (l. 14). In the second stanza the
speaker imagines Corinna as a symbol of the natural world: her
clothes are her ‘foliage’ (l.15) and the morning dew her jewellery,
while stanza 3 erases the distinction between village and countryside,
as ‘each field turns a street’, presumably because they are filled with
villagers, and ‘each street a park’ decorated with greenery (ll. 30–1).
2 The use of a religious register turns the May Day celebration into a
religious rite: it is ‘sin’ and ‘profanation’ to stay indoors on a day like
this. The numerous classical allusions to pagan gods – to Apollo, ‘the
god unshorn’ (l. 2), to Aurora, Roman goddess of the dawn, and to
Flora, Roman goddess of spring – tell us that this is a pagan rite

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 ‘Time's trans-shifting’: Robert Herrick

dedicated to the worship of nature. In stanza 2 Corinna is even

advised to cut short her morning prayers, as ‘[f]ew beads are best
when once we go a Maying’ (l. 28). On May Day the religion of
nature takes precedence over orthodox religion.

It’s not hard to perceive the political resonance of this representation

of May Day and the way it would have challenged puritan sensibilities.
Yet what is the poem’s speaker after? Why is he so insistent, exhorting
Corinna (‘Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed’: l. 5) to ‘go a Maying’? We get a
hint of his motives in stanza 4, when he turns to the subject of
another ‘natural’ part of human beings: sex and desire. The ‘budding’
boys and girls (l. 43) are celebrating May Day in part through flirtation
and amorous play, and if this is to some extent safely yoked to
marriage through phrases like ‘plighted troth’ (l. 49), this is far from
the whole picture. Other images, like the ‘green-gown[s]’ (l. 51) which
conjure up couples rolling in the grass, the keys ‘betraying/This night’
(ll. 55–6) and finally those ‘picked’ locks (l. 56), gesture towards a far
more free and easy, and less socially sanctioned, attitude towards
human sexuality.
The fifth stanza, if we were still in any doubt, makes it clear that this is
a seduction poem: ‘Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,/And
take the harmless folly of the time’ (ll. 57–8). ‘Harmless folly’ recalls
the ‘cleanly wantonness’ of ‘The Argument of his Book’ (l. 6) and the
word ‘prime’, so important in ‘To the Virgins’, turns up again. So does
the car pe diem motif, which forms the final stage of the speaker’s
seductive argument. Nature now is characterised less by its sparkling,
luminous beauty than by its brevity – a property in which human life
also participates: ‘Our life is short, and our days run/As fast away as
does the sun’ (ll. 61–2). And what awaits us is oblivion: ‘All love, all
liking, all delight/Lies drowned with us in endless night’ (ll. 67–8), the
repetition of ‘all’ underscoring the eradication of pleasure, and the
phrase ‘endless night’ echoing Campion’s ‘ever-during night’. Every
stanza of the poem has ended in a couplet that culminates in some
variant of the exhortation ‘Let’s go a Maying’. The rhymes, because
they are feminine (or double), all draw a certain amount of attention
to themselves, but none packs a punch like the last one: ‘Then while
time serves, and we are but decaying,/Come, my Corinna, come, let’s
go a Maying’ (ll. 69–70).

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Is Herrick’s speaker one of the would-be seducers whose ‘seize the day’
argument we are meant to regard with suspicion? It seems unlikely, in
view of the fundamental seriousness and depth of feeling of the
poem’s final stanza, which John Creaser calls ‘the most impassioned
lines Herrick ever wrote’ (Creaser, 2006, p. 333). The overall impact of
the poem is well described by Creaser, who argues that ‘the more
joyous the earlier stanzas, the more desolating’ the final one, and the
more precious the fleeting pleasures of May Day appear with hindsight
(Creaser, 2009, p. 167). Certainly Herrick conveys with remarkable
power the anguish at mortality that underlies so much carpe diem
poetry.

46
 Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’

Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’

We turn now to Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’, generally
considered one of the finest and most complex carpe diem poems of
the period. Although it seems likely that Marvell wrote the poem in
the late 1640s or early 1650s, he is the first poet we’ve discussed who
belongs as much to the Restoration as to the mid-century. Unlike
Carew and Herrick, Marvell is never seen as a Cavalier poet, and
although he tackled a poetic genre closely associated with royalism, he
did not necessarily do so from the same loyalist political perspective as
Herrick.
‘To His Coy Mistress’ is written in iambic tetrameter couplets, a form
often used in love lyrics and also in comic verse. It is divided into
three verse paragraphs, which correspond to the three stages of the
speaker’s argument, his ‘persuasion to love’ addressed to the coy
mistress. The first verse paragraph starts things off by making the
lady’s coyness and reserve sound preposterous: they make sense only in
a world not governed by the laws of space and time (Pittock, 1998,
p. 219). In such a fanciful world, they could afford to court forever:
‘We would sit down, and think which way/To walk, and pass our long
love’s day’ (ll. 3–4). From this point on, the speaker launches into
sustained mockery of the conventions of love poetry. The exotic image
of the mistress finding rubies beside the Ganges is undercut by that of
the speaker complaining alongside the distinctly unglamorous Humber
(the river that runs through Marvell’s home town of Hull) (Sokol,
1990, p. 248). Much ink has been spilt unpacking the phrase ‘vegetable
love’, which the speaker insists would grow ‘[v]aster than empires, and
more slow’ (ll. 11–12). B.J. Sokol tells us that Marvell is ‘referring to
the procreative vegetative soul, not a prize marrow’ (Sokol, 1990,
p. 248), but the image hardly seems designed to stimulate a reverential
attitude to romantic notions of eternal love.
A parody of a Petrarchan blazon follows, which works by allocating
comically long chunks of time to the speaker’s adoration of the
mistress’s body parts:

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Two hundred to adore each breast:

But thirty thousand to the rest.
(ll. 13–16)

There are no ingenious similes here, no rapturous descriptions of the

mistress’s beauty – just a short list of the physical features normally
singled out for praise by Petrarchan poets, while the charms that go
unmentioned here are rather curtly dismissed as ‘the rest’. Marvell’s
speaker is witty and urbane, too sophisticated to take Petrarchan
idealism seriously, though he is sufficiently gallant to add that the
mistress ‘deserves’ the hyperbolic praise he would bestow on her if
only they had ‘world enough, and time’ (ll. 19, 1).
The second verse paragraph begins with a heavily stressed ‘But’ (l. 21)
and brings a shift of tone as startling as that which we found in the
final stanza of ‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’, as the speaker replaces the
fantasy of endless love and courtship with what he presents as the
cruel reality of a world governed by time:

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
(ll. 21–4)

The iambic beat is disrupted at the start of lines 22 and 24, drawing
attention to the words ‘Time’ and ‘Deserts’. The images are resonant
and powerful: Marvell conjures not just time’s winged chariot but also
its movement, its hasty, hurried advance from behind. The eternity that
stretches out before us is not one of leisurely amorous play but an
infinite void, ‘[d]eserts of vast eternity’.
From here the speaker moves abruptly into the lady’s grave, the silent
‘marble vault’ (l. 26) where, her beauty gone, only ‘worms shall try/
That long-preserv’d virginity’ (ll. 27–8). It is hard not to be taken
aback by this graphic image. Herrick’s speaker may have pressed
Corinna to remember that she is decaying, but Marvell’s describes the
process, focusing on the fate of the mistress’s genitalia – a process
carried on in the next line in the off-colour pun on ‘quaint’: ‘And your
quaint honour turn to dust’ (l. 29). After an admission that what he
feels for the lady is ‘lust’ (l. 30), the speaker draws this section of his

48
 Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’

argument to a close with the witty couplet, ‘The grave’s a fine and
private place,/But none I think do there embrace’ (ll. 31–2).
As we expect from a car pe diem poem, the fact of human mortality
justifies sexual activity in defiance of social mores. In the third verse
paragraph the speaker adopts the imperative mood typical of car pe diem
poetry, repeatedly exhorting the mistress to abandon her coyness while
she is still young and desirable: ‘let us sport us while we may’ (l. 37),
‘Let us roll all our strength’ (l. 41). Repetition of the word ‘now’ keeps
an insistent focus on the present and imparts a sense of urgency: ‘Now
therefore’ (l. 33), ‘Now let us’ (l. 37), ‘And now’ (l. 38). And time is the
problem the speaker seeks to overcome, arguing that if it is impossible
to stop time, it is possible for the lovers to make love with such
furious intensity that they will in effect outrun time: ‘Thus, though we
cannot make our sun/Stand still, yet we will make him run’ (ll. 45–6).
Though Herrick’s favourite sun image appears here in the poem’s
concluding couplet, there are no rosebuds to be gathered in this final
verse paragraph, no exhortations to ‘go a Maying’. The images are
striking, but neither pretty nor lyrical: the lovers should, in the
speaker’s view, make love ‘like am’rous birds of prey’ (l. 38), devouring
time before it slowly devours them; they should ‘tear’ their ‘pleasures
with rough strife,/Thorough the iron gates of life’ (ll. 43–4). The
emphasis is on violence, struggle and animal vitality (Sokol, 1990,
p. 251).

Activity
What should we make of Marvell’s speaker? Are we supposed to take
what he says on trust, or are we being invited to adopt a more sceptical
attitude to his arguments?
At the end of this chapter you will find Readings 1.1–1.3, which are
extracts from three different critical studies of ‘To His Coy Mistress’, by
Donald M. Friedman, B.J. Sokol and Malcolm Pittock, respectively. Read
them now and then summarise briefly how each critic answers these
questions.

Discussion
1 In Reading 1.1, Friedman seems to take the speaker’s arguments at
face value, accepting their validity. He appears to have no problem
with the way the speaker treats the ‘coy mistress’ and accepts his
claim that she is secretly as eager for sex as he is. Friedman
discusses some of the ways in which the poem deviates from the

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

carpe diem tradition and sees this as the source of its unique power
and intensity: it provides an unflinching account of the brute fact of
human mortality, along with a stirring evocation of the lovers’ ultimate
triumph over time.
2 In Reading 1.2, Sokol’s view is quite different. Like Friedman, he is
interested in the question of genre, but he reads the poem as a
parody of the carpe diem tradition which works by exposing its
underlying assumptions. By replacing the customary rose-strewn
prettiness of carpe diem poetry with startlingly graphic and violent
images, he argues, Marvell lays bare both the terror of death and the
phallic aggression that motivates it.
3 In Reading 1.3, Pittock, too, thinks Marvell wants us to take the
speaker’s arguments with a pinch of salt. The poem is ‘a siren’s
song’, he argues, designed to tempt the male reader but also to
reveal to him its own speciousness. Unlike Friedman, he finds the
speaker’s attitude to the woman deeply objectionable and he points
out a few of the biblical echoes that, in his view, serve to undermine
and condemn the speaker’s libertine values.

You should assess the validity of these critical opinions for yourself.
Friedman’s reading is fairly typical of one camp of critics, which sees
‘To His Coy Mistress’ as a particularly fine example of car pe diem verse
that breathes new life into the genre by producing a radically new and
vigorous evocation of the power of a mutual sexual passion. Sokol and
Pittock belong to the opposing camp, which tends to read ‘To His Coy
Mistress’ less as a car pe diem poem than as a critique of seduction
poetry whose speaker we are intended to regard with a detached
scepticism.

50
 Restoration libertinism: the Earl of Rochester

Restoration libertinism: the Earl of

Rochester
In 1660 the monarchy was restored and the court of the new king,
Charles II, soon became infamous for its extravagance and
licentiousness. The king himself had numerous mistresses and
illegitimate children (though no legitimate ones), and he enjoyed the
company of a select group of courtiers known as the ‘court wits’:
upper-class men of impressive intellectual and artistic achievements
also known for their sexual adventurism, chronic drunkenness and
public brawling. The most notorious of this notorious group was John
Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. In his short life, he produced a body
of verse notable for its shockingly explicit sexual content and
unrestrained obscenity that has sparked both admiration and disgust
ever since. He lived as well as wrote as a libertine and died at the age
of 33.
To say that Rochester was a libertine means on one level simply that
he engaged in a hedonistic lifestyle. Yet it also means that he
participated in a social and intellectual movement called ‘libertinism’,
which was less coherent and consistent than the word ‘movement’
suggests. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some of its principal
strands of thought. Libertines tended to adopt a materialist view of the
world, which means not that they were obsessed with material
possessions but that they believed that physical matter is the only
reality. This in turn inclined them to view death as annihilation and so
to discount Christian claims of otherworldly rewards and punishments.
The Greek philosopher Epicurus (341 BCE–270 BCE) and his Roman
disciple Lucretius (who died in the mid to late 50s BCE) were major
influences, in terms of both their materialist philosophy and their belief
that pleasure is the highest good to which human beings can aspire.
From philosophical scepticism, with its questioning of humans’ ability
to possess true knowledge, came a tendency to question the validity of
social institutions like marriage and the Church and to dismiss social
conventions as artificial constructs.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) also proved
influential. In Chapter 13 of his work Leviathan, first published in
1651, Hobbes argues that humans are not naturally social beings;
rather, in a state of nature they are natural enemies, each man (sic) bent

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

on attaining his own desires and on destroying any competitors who

stand in his way:

And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which
nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in
the way to their end, (which is principally their own conservation,
and sometimes their delectation only,) endeavour to destroy, or
subdue one another. […] And from this diffidence [distrust] of
one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself, so
reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master
the persons of all men he can […]
Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a
common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that
condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man,
against every man. […] and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short.
(Hobbes, 1996 [1651], pp. 83–4)

For Hobbes, this is an argument for a government invested with

absolute political authority – the ‘common power’ which can keep the
savagery of human beings under control. For a Restoration libertine
like Rochester, this becomes the basis of a notably jaundiced vision of
human nature.
We have already encountered what is essentially a materialist view of
human existence in carpe diem poetry and a defiant assertion of the
value of sensual pleasure in the work of the Cavalier poets. It is clear,
then, that some of these ‘libertine’ ideas were current well before the
Restoration. Yet it is probably fair to say that libertinism gained a new
prominence during the Restoration period, due in part to the political
triumph of royalism, with its corresponding hostility to puritanism and
its scandalously licentious court culture under Charles II. And in
Rochester’s work we find libertine poetry that differs significantly from
the sex poetry we have studied thus far: on the one hand, there are
explicitly philosophical poems; on the other, there are poems about sex
that are deliberately shocking in their defiance of conventional
standards of decency.
‘From Seneca’s Troades’, Rochester’s translation of a speech from the
play Troades by the Roman dramatist and philosopher Seneca (4 BCE–
65 CE), is a kind of libertine manifesto, affirming the central materialist

52
 Restoration libertinism: the Earl of Rochester

Figure 1.4 The frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651, depicting

the all-powerful sovereign authority, sword in one hand, sceptre in the other,
who contains within himself all the subjects who have surrendered their
sovereignty to him. British Library, London, 522.k.6. © The British Library
Board.

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

tenet that death is a state of nothingness. Rochester turns this belief

into a double-edged attack on the Christian concept of the afterlife: on
the one hand, the ‘hopes of heaven’ (l.4) embraced by the ‘ambitious
zealot’ (l. 3) are condemned as a manifestation of human pride, while,
on the other, hell is dismissed as ‘senseless stories, idle tales’ (l. 17),
the purpose of which is to instil terror in those ‘slavish souls’ (l.5)
foolish enough to believe them.
Rochester launches another assault on Christianity in ‘A Satire Against
Reason and Mankind’, taking aim at the traditional Christian view of
humanity as the pinnacle of God’s creation, unique in its possession of
a rational faculty. For Rochester’s speaker this is the source of the
human pride that ‘makes a mite,/Think he’s the image of the infinite’
(ll. 76–7). Reason, the speaker claims, is hopelessly fallible and ‘fifty
times for one does err’ (l. 11); in good libertine fashion, he argues that
it is tantamount to madness to prefer reason to ‘certain instinct’ (l. 10)
and to reject the senses as ‘too gross’ (l. 8). The first part of the poem
(before the ‘Apology’ or ‘Addition’ that begins at line 174) draws to a
close with a protracted rant against human beings which is Hobbesian
in inspiration: they are more contemptible than animals because they
are driven by ‘lust of pow’r’ (l. 145) and fear of others. This is
Hobbes’s view of ‘man’ in a state of nature, a world in which to be
fair-minded and honest spells inevitable ruin, a judgement Rochester
emphasises in a short four-syllable line: ‘You’ll be undone’ (l. 163).
This final section of the poem illustrates forcefully the deep pessimism
about human nature that is so prevalent in Rochester’s work.
Rochester is best known nowadays for his sex poetry, but in many
ways satire was his natural mode and many of his poems about sex are
satirical in intent. Let’s look now at one of his best-known satirical
poems, which is sometimes known as ‘A Satire on Charles II’ and
sometimes as ‘Verses for which he was banished’ – Charles apparently
saw the poem by mistake and promptly banished Rochester from
court.

Activity
Reread ‘A Satire on Charles II’ now and then answer the following
questions:
1 Who or what is Rochester satirising in the poem? This may seem
obvious from the title, but is the satire more complex than the title
suggests?

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 Restoration libertinism: the Earl of Rochester

Figure 1.5 Unknown artist, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, c.1665–70,
oil on canvas, 127cm x 99cm. Rochester is depicted crowning his monkey
with a wreath of bay leaves. Photo:© National Portrait Gallery, London

2 What do you make of Rochester’s use of obscenity? Is it merely

gratuitous, or does it have a more serious satirical purpose?

Discussion
1 At first glance it looks as if the target of Rochester’s satire is ‘the
French fool’ (l. 6), King Louis XIV, who enjoyed absolute power and
had expansionist ambitions. Charles seems to come off well in
comparison; the speaker pays tribute to his personal charm and

55
Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

intelligence: he is the ‘best-bred man alive’ (l. 4). Louis, by contrast,

in a poem written in heroic couplets, is cut down to size in a triplet:

Him no ambition moves to get renown

Like the French fool, that wanders up and down
Starving his people, hazarding his crown.
(ll. 5–7)

But the appearance of obscenities in the opening lines signals

immediately that this is not a conventional poem of praise. Any
doubts we may have had about whether we are meant to take the
tribute to Charles at face value are confirmed by lines 8–9, which join
the entirely conventional line ‘Peace is his aim, his gentleness is
such’ to ‘And love he loves, for he loves fucking much’.
The poem goes on to focus on the subject of the king’s penis. While
the speaker concedes it is impressively long (‘His sceptre and his
prick are of a length’ [l. 11]), his central point is that a king who is
governed by his sexual desires is powerless, stupid and a disaster as
a ruler. The penis that rules the king takes on a life of its own in lines
14–19, and it is invested with the traits of a despot: proud and
peremptory, it disregards ‘safety, law, religion, life’ in its relentless
pursuit of sexual gratification (l. 18). So it turns out that Charles is not
so different from Louis XIV after all, except that while the French king
is ‘[s]tarving his people’ and ‘hazarding his crown’ to satisfy his lust
for power (l. 7), Charles rolls restlessly ‘from whore to whore,/A merry
monarch, scandalous and poor’ (ll. 20–1). Logically, then, the poem
closes with an eruption of anti-monarchical loathing – ‘All monarchs I
hate, and the thrones they sit on’ – which encompasses both the
‘hector’ (bully) of France and the ‘cully’ (fool or dupe) of Britain (ll.
32–3).
2 So the real target of Rochester’s satire is kingship, with Charles and
Louis serving as exemplars of the unrestrained egoism that is its
defining attribute. The obscenity seems to me to have an important
part to play in the poem: it serves to strip monarchy of its customary
mystique, not only through its power to shock but also because this
most demotic of registers works to diminish kingship, to deny it the
respect and deference it traditionally claims.

For our purposes, what is most interesting about the poem is its
intensely negative representation of the libertine lifestyle. Is Rochester’s
point simply that libertinism is a bad idea for kings but perfectly

56
 Restoration libertinism: the Earl of Rochester

acceptable for those with less public responsibility? In fact the

portrayal of libertinism in Rochester’s poems is often ambiguous, if not
overtly critical. For example, the martial register in which the speaker
of ‘The Disabled Debauchee’ looks back nostalgically on his past life is
arguably designed to emphasise the violence and brutality of his career
of dissipation and exploitation. The apocryphal ‘Régime de vivre’ (also
known as ‘I rise at eleven’), with its comically sing-song rhythm, gives
us an account of a typical day in the life of a dissolute aristocrat, and
what emerges starkly is that this life dedicated to the pursuit of
pleasure is actually devoid of pleasure.
Let’s look now in greater detail at ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’,
Rochester’s poem about premature ejaculation, a popular sub-genre
during the Restoration, derived from Ovid and seventeenth-century
French poetry. The poem begins with the speaker recalling what is (for
Rochester) a remarkably tender love scene. The love-making is
described with his customary explicitness but little obscenity: we don’t
encounter a ‘dirty word’ until line 18. The male speaker begins by
stressing the mutuality of the lovers’ affection and desire: they are
‘equally inspir’d with eager fire’ (l. 3). His diction is expansive and
exalted, and the use of alliteration and hyperbole renders it comical:
the lady’s tongue is ‘love’s lesser lightning’ (l. 7), her genitalia the
‘balmy brinks of bliss’ (l. 12), his penis ‘[t]he all-dissolving thunderbolt’
(l. 10) which will ‘convey my soul up to her heart’ (l. 14).
But the all-dissolving thunderbolt lets him down, leaving the woman
unsatisfied and the speaker a ‘wishing, weak, unmoving lump’ (l. 36).
From this point on, the tone of the poem changes radically, as we
learn about the speaker’s libertine life. His sense of shame at his poor
sexual performance expresses itself in a nine-line reassertion of his
virility. Yet he moves from the first-person to the third, speaking not
of ‘I’ or ‘me’, but of his penis, ‘[t]his dart of love, whose piercing
point oft tried,/With virgin blood, ten thousand maids has died’ (ll.
37–8). The speaker’s talent for hyperbole has not deserted him, as he
tries to make himself feel better by claiming that in the past he has
‘died’, or brought to orgasm, ten thousand virgins. He carries on in
much the same vein, recollecting with obvious pride a long career of
casual and indiscriminate sexual encounters, when ‘[s]tiffly resolved’,
his penis would ‘carelessly invade,/Woman or man, nor ought its fury
stayed’ (ll. 41–2).
This passage is enormously revealing. The shift to third person in the
context of a near-desperate affirmation of his manliness discloses just

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

how much the speaker’s libertine identity is bound up with his phallus.
And his language tells us that for him sex is inseparable from violence;
it is a form of ‘brutal valour’ (l. 58) associated in his mind with blood,
invasion and fury. What comes across here is a disturbingly aggressive
brand of sexuality, rooted in the same desire for dominance we have
encountered on several previous occasions, though represented here
with unprecedented savagery.
But now that he has had a painful encounter with sexual failure, the
speaker launches into an extended diatribe directed at the penis whose
exceptional potency he has just recalled so approvingly. At line 46 he
switches to the second person, addressing his penis directly, trying to
distinguish between himself and what he now calls the ‘[w]orst part of
me’ (l. 62). In his lengthy and hilarious rant, the speaker asks the right
question: ‘Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove,/So true to
lewdness, so untrue to Love?’ (ll. 48–9), a query Rochester develops in
a simile which figures the penis as a bully and thug who loves a good
street brawl but runs a mile when his king and country call.
What we see, but the speaker doesn’t, is that he should be asking
himself why he excels at impersonal sexual encounters but falls short
with a woman he loves. Rochester makes this clear not just through his
characterisation of the speaker’s sexuality but also through tell-tale
signs of anxiety in the opening section of the poem, when the
speaker’s ardour is entangled with unease at the power this adored
woman has over him. This seems to be hinted at in the slightly
discordant tone of the line ‘She clips me to her breast, and sucks me
to her face’ (l. 6), and rears its head in her ‘[s]wift orders’ to hurl the
thunderbolt (l. 9). Once he has dissolved into ‘liquid raptures’ (l. 15),
she chides him and he struggles but fails to ‘show my wished
obedience’ (l. 26). Love brings in its wake an unsettling of the sexual
power relations to which the speaker is accustomed. Rather like
Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’, which some critics read as a subtle
critique of carpe diem poetry, ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’ turns out to
be less a libertine poem than a poem about the psychology of
libertinism and the way in which it frustrates the very fulfilment it is
intended to secure.

58
 Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’

Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’

Rochester has often, with good reason, been accused of misogyny, but
his contemporary Aphra Behn, our one woman writer in this chapter,
largely agreed with his diagnosis of the causes of inadequate male
sexual performance. In ‘The Disappointment’, her poem about
impotence, Behn eschews Rochester’s obscenity and mock-heroic idiom
for a formal pastoral register, employing a third-person narrator to
recount the story of the failed sexual encounter between Lysander and
Cloris. After struggling with the conflict between her desire and the
dictates of feminine honour, Cloris surrenders to the former only to
find that Lysander, who has not been restrained in his sexual advances,
is unable to perform, a failure the narrator explains as an excess of
love: ‘Pleasure which too much love destroys’ (l. 74); ‘Excess of love
his love betray’d’ (l. 88). As in Rochester’s ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’,
love undermines virility, though Behn gives a different slant to this
diagnosis by having her hero vent his frustration not on his penis but
on his object of desire:

He curs’d his birth, his fate, his stars;

But more the shepherdess’s charms,
Whose soft bewitching influence,
Had damn’d him to the hell of impotence.
(ll. 137–40)

Writing from the woman’s perspective, what Behn sees is the tendency
of men to blame women for being sexually alluring.

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Conclusion
We have seen in this chapter the inventiveness and technical brilliance
with which poets writing erotic verse in the seventeenth century
adapted and responded to their classical models and to their more
recent forebears. Yet it should come as no surprise that the main
subject of this chapter has turned out to be seventeenth-century
masculinity. Time and again, we have seen how writing about sex is for
these poets an expression of their masculine power over women,
though it’s clear that the masculine ideal is also bound up with the wit
and ingenuity with which such impulses are expressed, and that for
some poets the impulses themselves are dissected with clear-sighted
candour. We have seen the strong link between politics and erotic
verse, particularly in the civil war years, when advocating sexual licence
became a means of affirming the royalist cause and a particular brand
of upper-class Cavalier manliness. Perhaps most interestingly of all, this
chapter has shown that in much erotic poetry sex and seduction seem
secondary to the anguished contemplation of death as our final end.

Independent study
You will find suggestions for independent study on the module
website.

60
 References and further reading

References and further reading

Asterisked items are those suggested for further reading; items without
an asterisk are the works cited in this chapter.
Carey, J. (1990) John Donne: Life, Mind and Art, revised edn, London,
Faber & Faber.
*Corns, T.N. (1992) Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature,
1640–1660, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Corns, T.N. (ed.) (1993) The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry,
Donne to Marvell, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (available
through the OU Library website).
Creaser, J. (2006) ‘Herrick at play’, Essays in Criticism, vol. 56, no. 4,
pp. 324–50 (available through the OU Library website).
Creaser, J. (2009) ‘Time’s trans-shifting: chronology and the misshaping
of Herrick’, English Literary Renaissance, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 163–96
(available through the OU Library website).
*Ellenzweig, S. (2002) ‘“Hitherto propertied”: Rochester’s aristocratic
alienation and the paradox of class formation in Restoration England’,
English Literary History, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 703–25 (available through
the OU Library website).
*Fisher, N. (ed.) (2000) That Second Bottle: Essays on John Wilmot, Earl
of Rochester, Manchester, Manchester University Press.
Friedman, D. (1970) Marvell’s Pastoral Art, London, Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Guibbory, A. (1990) ‘“Oh, let mee not serve so”: the politics of love in
Donne’s elegies’, English Literary History, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 811–33
(available through the OU Library website).
Hobbes, T. (1996 [1651]) Leviathan, ed. J.C.A. Gaskin, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Knoppers, L.L. (2007) ‘Cavalier poetry and civil war’ in Cheney, P.,
Hadfield, A. and Sullivan Jr., G.A. (eds) Early Modern English Poetry:
A Critical Companion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 289–301.
*Lavery, H. (2014) The Impotency Poem from Ancient Latin to
Restoration English Literature, Farnham, Ashgate.

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Marcus, L.S. (1993) ‘Robert Herrick’ in Corns, T.N. (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, pp. 171–182 (available through the OU Library
website).
*Payne Fisk, D. (ed.) (2005) Four Restoration Libertine Plays, Oxford,
Oxford University Press (available through the OU Library website).
Pittock, M. (1998) ‘“Virgins all beware”: “To His Coy Mistress”
revisited’, English, vol. 47, autumn, pp. 215–30.
*Pugh, S. (2006) ‘Cleanly-wantonnesse’ and puritan legislation: the
politics of Herrick’s amatory Ovidianism’, Seventeenth Century, vol. 21,
pp. 249–69 (available through the OU Library website).
Sokol, B.J. (1990) ‘Logic and illogic in Marvell’s “To His Coy
Mistress”’, English Studies, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 244–52 (available through
the OU Library website).
*Turner, J.G. (1985) ‘The properties of libertinism’, Eighteenth-Century
Life, vol. 9, pp. 75–87.

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 Reading 1.1 Marvell’s pastoral art

Reading 1.1 Marvell’s pastoral art

Source: Friedman, D.M. (1970) Marvell’s Pastoral Art, London, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, pp. 184–7 (notes omitted)
Indeed, the ‘Coy Mistress’ gains in intensity because the exaggeration
of the first twenty lines underlines the impossibility of ignoring the
menace of death while it mocks the conventional hyperbole of carpe
diem poetry. Not only is there not enough time (as measured in the
ordinary days of earthly lovers), but there is not enough ‘World’ – it
will wear out or decay, the speaker pretends, before the Lady’s beauties
can be praised adequately. […]
The bitterness is transformed into a solemn, but acid, warning at the
sound of ‘Times winged Charriot’ in line 22. The sound of death is
behind, the prospect of arid and endless unfulfilment before; the lovers
are caught and balanced on the point between the two, and Marvell’s
exhortation has all the urgency of their precarious position. But this
urgency is combined with a relentlessly clear-sighted vision of the
inevitable fate of ‘coyness’ fallen victim to the effects of time. […]
[H]e is destroying the pretence of chastity constructed by the rules of
worldly hypocrisy; worms shall ‘try’ the lady’s virginity and her
‘Honour’ will turn to dust. […]
Having established the nature of the necessary end, the poet turns with
a demonstrative ‘Now therefore’ to the final act of persuasion, which
receives its impetus from the horror inspired by the vision of
encroaching death. Thus far Marvell has diverged from the
conventions of the genre in not including any precise description of
his mistress’s beauty. And even here her portrait is given only in
images that convey her readiness and her eagerness for love; we know
nothing of her features. […]
From this point the imagined surrender of the lady and the
consummation of their love is not rendered in the familiar terms of
pastoral dalliance or courtly compliment. Rather, the images and
conceits are harsh and vigorous, as if in recognition of the struggle
that must be waged if time is to be defeated. […]
Perhaps the point is that when passion reaches its perfect state and
renders Time powerless, the way that normally leads to death opens up
unimaginable prospects of life – life lived so intensely in the moment
that it seems to subsume eternity itself within a point of time. […]

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Marvell’s hyperbole will not extend to the point of falsifying the facts
of existence; the consummation of physical passion cannot do away
with Time or eternity, but it can create a world of its own where
passion is the only sovereign force.

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 Reading 1.2 Logic and illogic in Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’

Reading 1.2 Logic and illogic in

Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’
Source: Sokol, B.J. (1990) ‘Logic and illogic in Marvell’s “To His Coy
Mistress”’, English Studies, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 250–1
Marvell’s poem in other ways actually parodies that genre [carpe diem]
by urging its usual arguments without employing its characteristic
distracting elegiac softness. For example, where his friend Lovelace and
other Cavalier poets would be elegantly pagan, Marvell in ‘To His Coy
Mistress’ insistently exposes the assumption of no-afterlife required for
the Epicurean outlook. There is a kind of Pascal-like terror1 foreign to
the car pe diem genre in Marvell’s poetic contemplation of vacant
‘Desarts of vast Eternity’. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ also makes
uncomfortably vivid the physical aspects of sexual ‘doing’ and sexual
neglect that are hinted at but glossed over in typical car pe diem poems.
Where these poems offer images of fading roses Marvell’s poem
presents:

then Worms shall try

That long preserv’d Virginity.

The impact of this is insistently to uncover the conventional genre’s

hidden phallic theme, and to make brutally concrete its usually wistful
treatment of waste and decay.
Thus ‘To His Coy Mistress’ goes beyond parody to even travesty the
typical car pe diem advice to ‘gather rosebuds’. It logically suggests these
poems are not stating all they mean, and through the urgency
expressed in the violent images of its third paragraph suggests that the
drives underlying ‘time flies’ poetry do not ask for beautiful
satisfaction, but for harsh concupiscence.

1
A reference to Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French mathematician and Christian
philosopher whose posthumous work Pensées acknowledged that human beings simply
cannot know whether or not God exists and thus whether death brings eternal life or
annihilation. His famous argument for belief in God, known as ‘Pascal’s wager’, posited
that it was prudent to bet on God’s existence as one stands to gain everlasting bliss if
he does and will lose nothing if he does not.

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

Reading 1.3 ‘Virgins all beware’

Source: Pittock, M. (1998) ‘“Virgins all beware”: “To His Coy Mistress”
revisited’, English, vol. 47, autumn, pp. 218–19, 223–4 (some notes
omitted)
The text of ‘To His Coy Mistress’ does not, it seems to me, aim to
tempt a woman (who may very well be a fictional creation), but the
reader and, more particularly, the male reader. It is a siren’s song,
whose purpose is to challenge the reader to hear the counterpoint
which is the antidote to it. The text, for example, invites the reader to
assent to the depersonalisation of the coy mistress. For it is difficult to
see a woman reductively if she is given a convincing human presence.
[…]
Though the woman has no voice or human presence in the poem, she
is nonetheless allowed an existence as an assemblage of bodily parts:
forehead, skin and breasts are explicitly named and her genitalia are
alluded to on five occasions in various periphrastic or metaphorical
disguises: ‘the rest’ (16); ‘quaint’ (29); ‘honour’ (29); ‘iron gates of life’
(44). The reader is being tempted to see the woman as a sexual object.
The text further disarms the reader by tempting him to accept the
speaker’s claim that the woman is merely playing hard to get,
pretending to inhibit her own desire. It aims, therefore, to block off
active awareness in the reader of perfectly good reasons for a woman’s
not wanting to be seduced. […]
As part of the overall strategy, the text exploits the use of ‘Coy’ in the
title, reinforced as it is by ‘coyness’ in l.2. To accuse a woman of being
coy was, particularly in certain contexts, to imply that her resistance
was an affectation whose aim was merely to tantalise. [Robert] Ayton,
in his identically titled poem, which must have been composed before
Marvell’s since he died in 1638, is virtually explicit:

I sport in her denials and do know

Women love best that does love least in show.
Too sudden favours may abate delight;
When modest coyness sharps the appetite,

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 Reading 1.3 ‘Virgins all beware’

I grow the hotter for her cold neglect,

And more inflamed when she shows least respect.2

[…] [T]he reader has to wait until the third verse paragraph to learn
that, allegedly, her ‘willing soul transpires / At every pore with instant
fires’ (35–36); a veiled way of implying that, however she may demur,
the speaker claims to be able to see for himself that she is really on
heat. […]
So much for what I have designated the text: but the subtext
undermines it by counterpoint. […]
Thus, in the second [verse paragraph], the Christian memento mori
tradition, which the text has deliberately perverted and paganised, still
achieves presence at one point in its original form. Significantly it is in
the couplet where the subtext threatens to push the text aside:

And your quaint honour turn to dust;

And into ashes all my lust. (29–30)

is clearly reminiscent of the burial service:

earth to earth, asshes to asshes, dust to dust, in sure and certayne

hope of resurreccion to eternal lyfe .… ([Book of Common
Prayer]1552 version)

It is a reminiscence which completely negates the pagan ‘Deserts of

vast eternity’ (24), reminding us that unrepented fornication was a
barrier to the enjoyment of eternal life. […]
And the first verse paragraph, which appears to trivialise Christian
beliefs by frivolous references to them, actually activates them. Indeed,
as Buttrey and Smith point out, the reference to world and time in the
first line involves a literal translation of ‘leolam vaed’, the ‘world
without end’ of the psalter. As they rightly say: ‘The recognition of a
Biblical reference in the very first line of the poem heightens our sense
of the seriousness of the whole. The Old Testament phrase always
2
The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse, ed. Alastair Fowler (Oxford, 1992),
pp. 77–78, ll.3–8.

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Chapter 1 Poetry of sex and seduction

expresses the permanence inherent in the divine’.3 This is, of course,

sustained by the other references: ‘the flood’ (8) and ‘the conversion of
the Jews’ (10) were the results of the Fall, which necessitated the
Atonement and the Last Judgment.

3
T.V. Buttrey and Ruth Smith, ‘World and Time in Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”’,
Anglia, 103.3–4 (1985), p.402; p.404.

68
Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe
and the limits of comedy
Richard J. Jones
Contents
Aims 73
Materials you will need 74
Introduction 75
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and the French stage 77
The Italian actors 79
The French court 80
Tartuffe, Acts 1–4 82
Act 1 82
Act 2 84
Act 3 86
Act 4 89
The quarrel of Tartuffe 92
Tartuffe, Act 5 96
Conclusion 98
References 100
Reading 2.1: Dock on costume and fashion in
Tartuffe 102
References 104
Reading 2.2: Molière, ‘Preface’ to Tartuffe (1669) 105
Reading 2.3: Spingler on the role of the king 110
Reading 2.4: Simonds on the deus ex machina 112
 Aims

Aims
This chapter will:
. introduce the work of the seventeenth-century French actor and
playwright Molière
. examine the writing, staging and reception of his play Tartuffe –
and the part that spectators play in it
. question whether a definitive version of the play is possible or
desirable.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Materials you will need

In this chapter you will be referred to the set book:
. Maya Slater (ed. and trans.) (2001) Molière: The Misanthrope,
Tartuffe and Other Plays, Oxford World’s Classics series, Oxford,
Oxford University Press.
You will need to watch the following film, which you will find on the
module website:
. Tartuffe, Act 1, Scene 4.
You may also wish to listen to the following audio recording, which
you will find on the module website:
. ‘London and Paris theatre’.

74
 Introduction

Introduction
Welcome to France. Having spent part of the last chapter in the court
of Charles II, you will find that it is not much of a journey to get here.
You have already met Louis XIV (r.1643–1715) in the guise of
Rochester’s ‘hector of France’, who is presented as a more ambitious
version of Charles – but one no less out of touch with his subjects.
Like Charles in Rochester’s poem, Louis XIV might be described as
someone who was preoccupied with his own performances. From early
in his reign, when at the age of 15 Louis took the role of ‘the Sun
King’ in a court ballet, the theatre had served as a vehicle for royal
propaganda. As you will see when you come to study the English
Restoration theatre in Chapter 3, Charles II attempted something
similar: one of his first acts, on his restoration to the throne in 1660,
was to license and thereby control two new playhouses. In this chapter,
however, we are not just interested in the way that theatrical
conventions made their way from France to England (the court of
Charles II had, notably, spent some time in exile in France). Rather, we
are interested in the work of a French actor and playwright in his own
terms, as he pushed the boundaries of the Parisian theatre in
the 1660s. In terms of canonical status, this actor-playwright, known as
Molière, is sometimes regarded as the Shakespeare of France; today, his
plays are performed at a national institution, the Comédie-Française,
which has a history reaching back to Molière’s own theatrical company.
In what follows, we will consider the working practices of that original
company as it sought to put on a play in the court of Louis XIV – a
play that had to allow for the grandeur, spectacle and order of the
court but which ultimately derived its inspiration from the side-shows
of the street.
The play you are going to be studying in this chapter is Molière’s
Tartuffe. That straightforward sentence, however, hides some problems.
First of all, you will be studying the play in an English translation – in
other words, you will be studying a version of the play. We might ask:
is this version still Tartuffe? The question is pertinent because there are
other versions to be considered – and not just other translations. The
play was first performed at court in 1664 and then banned and
rewritten at least twice before it was finally staged in a theatre in 1669.
Which version is Tartuffe? Furthermore, we might consider a play to
be something more than its words; that is, we might see the script of
Tartuffe as a series of ‘notations’ for a play that exists only in

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

performance (René Bray quoted in Norman, 1999, p. 26). As you study

this chapter you will have to decide, as Molière’s audience did, what
version of the play you are happy to watch – as we will see, this is
partly about knowing when to stop watching. If this sounds a bit
complicated, then we should also consider the role of ‘Molière’ in the
opening sentence of this paragraph. Molière is the stage name of Jean-
Baptiste Poquelin (1622–1673). To say that Molière wrote Tartuffe takes
us, in fact, onto another stage – that of the French court in which
Poquelin played his part. Who or what, then, was Molière? One of the
earliest biographical accounts of Molière presents him as receiving
written material from audience members who wished to see themselves
up on stage. Some critics have therefore seen his plays not as
‘authored’ works but as ‘transcriptions’ of reality (see Norman, 1999,
pp. 32–4): in this case, ‘Molière’ seems to function more as a label to
describe a process. As Larry Norman puts it in his account of Molière:
‘Few literary figures have found themselves so thoroughly canonized
and yet so sharply challenged in their very function as an author’
(Norman, 1999, p. 26). So another aim of this chapter is to explore
Molière’s part in his own plays and the different stages on which he
found himself.

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 Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and the French stage

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and the French

stage
Let us begin with a moustache. You can see it in Figures 2.1 and 2.2.
When we’ve done that and considered the different contexts in which
Molière wore it, we shall turn to Tartuffe.
In 1643, at the age of 21, Poquelin became an actor. Like other
seventeenth-century actors, he adopted a stage name: ‘Molière’ was a
geographical name, intended to suggest nobility (Scott, 2000, p. 59).
Like other actors, before and since, he also hid himself behind a
theatrical mask. For similar distinctive appendages, we might think
today of Groucho Marx’s greasepaint eyebrows or Woody Allen’s
heavy-rimmed glasses. While a heavy, black moustache might mean that
we lose sight of Poquelin, it also means that Molière becomes easy to
identify. If you look ahead in this chapter to an engraving of a scene
from Tartuffe (Figure 2.4), for example, you will immediately recognise
Molière in it, peeping out from under a table. An audience watching
one of Molière’s plays would have had a similar experience. They were
not just watching, in this case, the character of Orgon. They were
watching ‘Molière playing Orgon’ – one of the many parts that he had
written for himself. If we felt like making a bold claim about a
moustache, then, we might say that it reveals Poquelin playing two
parts at once. (If you would like to read a biography of Molière, you
can find some suggestions under ‘Independent study’ on the module
website.)
What led Poquelin to present himself in this way? If we look more
closely at Figure 2.1, we begin to find an answer. It shows an
engraving, published in 1670, meant as a frontispiece for a pamphlet
attacking Molière. Under the figures is the phrase: ‘Scaramouche
enseignant, Elomire estudiant’ (‘Scaramouche teaches, Elomire studies’).
You might want to spend a few moments noting your reactions to this
image. If you have trouble identifying Molière in it, then that, of
course, is partly the point. The two figures are clearly mirroring each
other. To be more precise, Molière is copying the figure named
Scaramouche, using a mirror to perfect the expression on his face.
Scaramouche holds a whip, suggesting he is the master. The
engraving’s message seems to be that Molière has learned his art from
Scaramouche – or perhaps, indeed, stolen it. Elomire, you might have
noticed, is an anagram of his name.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Figure 2.1 Laurent Weyen, Scaramouche Teaching Elomire, his Student,

engraving for the frontispiece of D’Elomire Hypocondre, 1670. This version
was produced for a French postcard. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de
France.

Figure 2.2 Claude Simonin, Molière in the Role of Sganarelle, print.

Bibliothèque nationale de France. Photo: © akg-images/De Agostini Picture
Library/J.E. Bulloz

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 Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and the French stage

The Italian actors

Scaramouche was the stage name of another actor – an Italian, Tiberio
Fiorelli (1608–1694). In Figure 2.1 we might see him as representing
the Italian comic tradition, a tradition that had been alive and strong in
Paris since the sixteenth century. Faced with a language barrier in Paris,
Italian actors had become known for a physical theatre that had,
effectively, dispensed with a dramatist and created shows through
improvisation (Andrews, 2005, pp. 446–7). The term commedia
dell’arte is sometimes used to describe this improvisational theatre
(although it would not have been a term familiar to Molière). On this
stage, we find the stock characters of lovers, pompous old men and
crafty servants – each with recognisable costumes and masks – thrown
together into a predictable situation (see Scott, 1990, pp. 3–5). Molière
had created such characters as he toured the provinces of south-west
France in the early days of his acting career. When he returned to Paris
in 1658, he staged a play in the Italian tradition, The Amorous Doctor,
in front of Louis XIV. Famously, the play followed a performance of
Nicomède, a tragedy by the respected playwright Pierre Corneille (1606
−1684), but it was Molière’s doctor that caught the attention of the
king (see Scott, 2000, pp. 91–2). Louis XIV granted Molière’s troupe
the right to play first in the Salle de Petit-Bourbon (from 1658) and
then in the Grande Salle at the Palais Royal (from 1661). These were
spaces that Molière shared with the Italian actors – first taking the less
profitable performance days of the week and then acquiring the more
popular ones (Scott, 2000, pp. 89–90, 113). In this period Molière
became known for the stock characters of Mascarille and Sganarelle
(both, like Scaramouche, crafty servants in the Italian tradition). As
Figure 2.1 suggests, Molière continued to be perceived in this way over
the next ten years, even as the nature of his plays began to change.

Theatres in Paris
The Grande Salle at the Palais Royal, where Molière’s troupe was
based after the demolition of the Petit-Bourbon in 1661, had been
created as the private theatre of Cardinal Richelieu under Louis XIII
(r.1610–43). In a dilapidated state when the troupe arrived, it was
repaired to create an auditorium like those of the two rival
companies in Paris: the Hôtel de Bourgogne and the Théâtre du
Marais. The long and narrow interior was modelled on the jeu-de-
paume or tennis-court theatres which Molière had already used in

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Paris and in the provinces (McCarthy, 2002, pp. 164–5). With the
stage raised at one end, such theatres resembled the makeshift
platforms you might have found outside in the streets. At the same
time, they allowed for the gradual development of sophisticated
scenery and stage effects. You can find out more about
seventeenth-century staging practices in the audio recording
‘London and Paris theatre’ and by following the suggestions for
independent study on the module website.

The French court

If Molière’s moustache places him with the Italian actors in town, it
also signals his role at the French court. It is easy to find, in the image
of Molière as Sganarelle (Figure 2.2), a subservient courtier of Louis
XIV. Indeed, Molière was to play this part alongside the king himself
in a new form of court entertainment, the comedie-ballet, which invited
the participation of selected members of the audience, including the
king, as dancers in a ‘shared fantasy’ (McCarthy, 2002, p. 103). At
court, the ‘shared fantasy’ was what Molière’s drama was all about. In
October 1663 his troupe was invited to the king’s residence at
Versailles for the first time. The play they chose to perform was The
Impromptu at Versailles (which you can find in your set book and
might want to explore as part of your independent study). While the
title suggests an improvisation, the play was in fact a carefully
conceived defence of another of Molière’s plays, The School for Wives,
which had caused a scandal among rival actors, playwrights and
religious groups in 1662 (see Scott, 2000, pp. 116, 126–7). In the
Impromptu, Molière takes on the part of ‘Molière’, helping his actors,
who are also playing themselves, to rehearse a play that has been
requested by the king. Although the rehearsal is fictional, we are
offered a glimpse of Molière’s troupe at work – and not so much on a
stage as in one of the everyday rooms at Versailles. Within the fiction
of the drama, it is the offstage character of the king who saves Molière
embarrassment by postponing the play he was to have performed.
What Molière created, then, was a play in which there was no play –
and in which his troupe and the court shared the same theatrical space.
Such a blend of drama and reality was a risky one.
In May 1664 Louis XIV hosted a series of entertainments at Versailles,
entitled Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée (‘The Pleasures of the Enchanted

80
 Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and the French stage

Isle’). The festival was intended to outdo the misguided aspirations of

Nicolas Fouquet, a minister who had created a similar lavish spectacle,
including a comedie-ballet by Molière, in his own gardens in 1661 (Scott,
2000, p. 134). While Fouquet lamented his decision in prison, the
gardens at Versailles were gradually transformed – and spaces created
for theatre within them. (It was not until the 1680s, however, that the
house became the great palace that you might recognise today.) You
can get a sense of the grandeur of the occasion from Figure 2.3, which
shows the stage that was erected for Molière’s La Princesse d’Elide (‘The
Princess of Elis’) – another blend of music, dance and drama. In the
engraving, the king sits in an auditorium within his gardens watching a
representation of the gardens – a form of theatrical fantasy that
continued for seven days (McCarthy, 2002, pp. 104–7). Boldly, Molière
had placed his wife, Armande, in the title role of this play – bold
because, as she was the supposed daughter of his former mistress,
Madeleine Béjart, he was confronting rumours of incest (you can find
both Madeleine and Armande represented in the Impromptu). But this
was nothing compared with the boldness with which, on the sixth day
of the festival, he presented a version of what we now know as
Tartuffe. Georges Couton, the editor of the standard French version of
Molière’s works, evocatively describes it as ‘an abscess, purulent,
nauseating, amidst the splendid scenery’ of Versailles (quoted in Scott,
2000, p. 145). What did Molière think he was doing? Hadn’t he, like
Fouquet before him, gone a bit too far?

Figure 2.3 Israel Silvestre, copper engraving of the second day

(‘Performance of The Princess of Elis’) from the series Les Plaisirs de l’île
enchantée, 1664. Photo: © akg-images

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Tartuffe, Acts 1–4

If you have not already read Tartuffe, you should do so now. You
should read it in the version provided in the set book, translated by
Maya Slater. This version has been chosen because it is a faithful line-
by-line translation, retaining Molière’s use of rhyming alexandrines. Of
course, it is possible to pick up another version. Molière’s play has
been translated into prose, blank verse and rhyming iambic pentameter.
The text is often adapted to meet the demands of its new audiences:
Matthew Medbourne’s English version of 1670 is the first example but,
more recently, you might encounter Richard Wilbur’s 1963 version, or
Roger McGough’s 2008 ‘retelling’. The choice to make Slater’s text the
set book, therefore, reveals something about what I consider Tartuffe
to be. I am not alone in having to make such a choice. Molière’s first
audience was also faced with the question of what it was they were
watching at Versailles.
We will now work our way through the first four acts of Tartuffe
before stopping to consider the controversy around it. We will then
turn to the fifth act.

Act 1
What are we watching as we begin Act 1? Certainly, it’s hard to see
from these first few scenes what led Louis XIV, after that first
performance at Versailles, to forbid any further performances. What we
are presented with is a family – and in more ways than one. On one
level, we have Orgon’s mother, Madame Pernelle, providing a brief
portrait of each of the other characters: Dorine (the servant), Damis
and Mariane (Orgon’s children), Elmire (his wife) and Cleante (his
brother-in-law). But there is also a second family on stage here:
Molière’s wife, Armande, for example, in the role of Elmire, Madeleine
Béjart (her mother) as Dorine, Joseph Béjart (her brother) as Madame
Pernelle. At the beginning of the play, Molière has brought almost his
entire troupe on stage and we can see them, as in The Impromptu at
Versailles, in the act of putting on a play. Madame Pernelle provides
information that is useful not only for an audience but for actors too.
Furthermore, her satirical portraits are offered as objects of satire in
themselves – a kind of ‘doubling up’, or ‘technique of satirizing the
verbal satirist’ (Norman, 1999, pp. 172–3), that resembles Molière’s
own representations of himself.

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 Tartuffe, Acts 1–4

Activity
You are now going to watch one of the scenes from Act 1 – this is the
scene in which Orgon makes his appearance (Scene 4). In this activity,
you will watch the scene in French – but don’t worry, you don’t need to
understand any French to complete this activity!
You will find the film, ‘Tartuffe, Act 1, Scene 4’, on the module website.
Watch it through now. As you do so, make some notes about anything
that strikes you about the sounds or the rhythms of the language. In
particular, try to pick out any features that help to structure the scene.

Discussion
One of the reasons for this activity is to allow you to hear the sounds of
Tartuffe as Molière’s audience might have heard them – you might have
noted the flow of French alexandrines with a pause in the middle of each
line. Perhaps the rhyme was not as intrusive as you might have
anticipated. You should also have been able to pick out the structure of
the scene, which is based on repetition. Orgon asks, ‘Et Tartuffe?’ (‘And
Tartuffe?’) four times and responds, ‘Le pauvre homme!’ (‘Poor man!’) to
each of Dorine’s replies.

The repetition involved in Orgon’s questioning of Dorine suggests how

the improvisational practices of the Italian actors underpinned such a
scene. Recently Richard Andrews, writing on the relationship of
Molière to the Italian tradition, has focused on ‘identifiable structures
of dialogue, which can be recognized independently of what the actors
happen to be saying’ (Andrews, 2005, p. 449). The idea is that such
structures provide a way for improvising actors to build up a scene –
and they are what Andrews calls ‘elastic’: Orgon might answer Dorine
four times but, in an improvised performance, that might as well have
been three times or five (Andrews, 2005, p. 452). Andrews thus sees
Molière, the playwright, as having ‘frozen for all time, on the page, one
possible performance version of each flexible unit of dialogue’
(Andrews, 2005, p. 451). What we are experiencing here, then, is one
of a repertoire of speeches that actors might use to get from one point
in a play to another – Madame Pernelle’s frequent interruptions are
probably another example. For Andrews, Molière’s script has emerged
out of a rich but elusive ‘climate of oral transmission’ (Andrews, 2005,

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

p. 459), a climate that might suggest multiple versions rather than a

single definitive version of a play.
So far, we have suggested that Molière’s audience would have been
familiar with what they were watching – and we have suggested this
without looking very closely at what any particular character has
actually said. We haven’t even translated the interchange between
Orgon and Dorine. Once we start to put this into English, of course,
we create still further versions of the scene. For example, here Tartuffe
is said to drink ‘quatre grands coups de vin’. As Nancy Senior asks, in
an article on translating Tartuffe, should this be rendered as four ‘large
glasses’ of wine – or a ‘draught’, a ‘stoup’, a ‘swig’, or even ‘four
beakers full of port’? Senior continues:

Orgon’s repeated exclamation ‘le pauvre homme,’ following

Dorine’s reports on Tartuffe’s hearty appetite, is the chief source
of laughs in the scene. Even today the adjective pauvre has a
double meaning in French, expressing either pity or affection.
Orgon could have used it in either sense in speaking of Elmire, in
view of her illness. However, ignoring the news of his wife, he
expresses his attachment to Tartuffe by this word. At the same
time the audience thinks of the other meaning, clearly not
applicable to Tartuffe. The English translator cannot have it both
ways; he or she must choose ‘dear’ or ‘poor’.
(Senior, 2001, p. 50)

As we move on in the play, we should stay alert to such choices of

translation. Indeed, we might compare them to choices about
performance – that is, as another form of improvisation around a fixed
structure. For, at the end of Act 1, Molière’s play seems to be as much
about facilitating such performances as being any one of them.

Act 2
You might want to spend a few moments looking back over this act to
remind yourself about its purpose in the play. I phrased that task as if
it should be a simple thing to do – but, as you might find, it is not.
You might have expected, for example, that this act would have seen
the introduction of Tartuffe. Instead, we get another series of verbal
portraits, including Orgon’s description of him as a ‘gentleman’
(II.2.485–94) and Dorine’s view of his ‘fine scarlet ears’ (II.3.641–8).

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 Tartuffe, Acts 1–4

Tartuffe’s absence is one of the reasons this act is sometimes viewed as

a later and superfluous addition to the play. Another reason is the
quarrel that takes place between the lovers, Mariane and Valère – a
quarrel that is as puzzling as it seems irrelevant. Notably, however, one
of the characters, the servant Dorine, is also struck with what she calls
the ‘load of rot’ (II.2.462), ‘rubbish’ (II.2.468) and ‘nonsense’ (II.4.768)
of Act 2. As an audience, we watch Dorine watching first the scene
with Orgon and Mariane and then the scene with Mariane and Valère.
Unlike us, however, Dorine intervenes in the action when she has had
enough. ‘I let you quarrel,’ she explains to the lovers, ‘watched the
whole scenario,/To get a clear idea of how far you’d both go’
(II.4.755–6). Her words might describe our own bemusement as we
find that we too have kept on watching. If there is a purpose to be
found in this act, then, we might find it in the way that it presents
Dorine watching it.
For Orgon, Dorine is an unwanted spectator – primarily because she
tries to interfere in his plans and change their outcome. Notice that
when she first appears Orgon accuses her of spying:

Now what’s this I find?

You’re desperate to know what’s going on, eh, Miss,
And so that’s why you come to spy on us like this?
(II.2.456–8)

Such a character would not have been that unusual on the seventeenth-
century stage, since members of the audience regularly found a seat on
it. (This was a practice that had begun as a temporary expedient in
1637, to accommodate the spectators for Corneille’s Le Cid, but which
continued for a century afterwards; Howarth, 1995, pp. 230–1.) In
presenting Dorine intervening in the action of the play, Molière reflects
his audience back on itself. When Valère arrives, for example, Dorine’s
aside (‘Let’s see what comes of this. They’re making quite a stir’) is
complicit with those spectators who are quite happy to see what sort
of trouble the actors are making for themselves. This kind of baroque
‘doubling up’, or the formation of ‘plays-within-plays’ (and thus the
representation of representation itself), has been seen as typical of an
age obsessed with the mirror (see Norman, 1999, pp. 1–3). As a
mirror, Molière’s play reflects, as we shall see, a fundamental part of its
own staging: the presence of spectators themselves.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Molière’s audience would have found Dorine to be familiar in other

ways. You might have noticed, for example, that she is a type of
faithful servant – a stock character you also encountered in Book 1
when you studied As You Like It. Her presence on the stage has the
same ‘elastic’ structure that we found in Act 1. Notice, for example,
these two stage directions: ‘Every time he turns away to speak to his
daughter, she [Dorine] interrupts him’ (II.2.543) and ‘He gets ready to slap
her; but every time he looks at her, D ORINE stands rigid without speaking’
(II.2.572). The situation lends itself to improvisational comedy,
especially as Molière played the part of the harassed Orgon. The
situation might also lend itself to a ballet of movement and gesture, as
Gerry McCarthy has suggested (McCarthy, 2002, p. 116). Like the
marriage plot that Dorine interrupts, Molière’s audience would also
have recognised the form of what is known as le depit, or lovers’
quarrel. Michael Spingler has called this a ‘striking example of self
imitation’, since Molière had already made use of the scene in two
other plays (Spingler, 1985, p. 243). What marks it out in Tartuffe,
however, is precisely the presence of ‘an onlooker who changes from
spectator to intervening participant’ (Spingler, 1985, p. 243). As
Spingler notes, Valère and Mariane seem unable to resolve things for
themselves. It is Dorine who intervenes and saves the situation. As
Spingler puts it: ‘She succeeds brilliantly in controlling this little play-
within-the-play but has no power over the larger play at all’ (Spingler,
1985, p. 242). What Spingler is implying here is the need for another
form of spectatorship that does have some power over the ‘larger play’
of Tartuffe. Why such a spectatorship is needed is an interesting
question – and we shall consider it as we move on. For now, though,
we should find in Dorine’s words (‘You won’t behave like this, I won’t
allow you to!’; II.4.767) a suggestion of some limits to Molière’s stage.

Act 3
If Dorine is the controlling spectator of Act 2, then that role passes to
Damis in Act 3 (see Spingler, 1985, pp. 244–5). Understanding that
Elmire is going to meet with Tartuffe, Damis declares that ‘when they
meet, I want to be there, listening’ (III.1.847). Dorine tells him to leave
but Damis insists: ‘No. I can watch without losing my cool’ (III.1.851).
This, of course, turns out to be untrue – as indeed it was for many
other members of Molière’s first audience. The problem for Damis is
that though he wishes ‘to stop that stinker’s monkey-tricks today’
(III.1.831), he finds that he is not able to do so.

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 Tartuffe, Acts 1–4

In Act 3, Tartuffe finally makes his appearance. I choose my words

carefully here because Tartuffe makes his appearance in more ways
than one. First, of course, he steps onto the stage – but, second, we
see him constructing a version of himself. His insincerity is clear from
his first line, which, we are told, is delivered after ‘noticing D ORINE ’.
You might want to look back over Act 3 to find other examples of
this, such as how Tartuffe pretends to be the ‘guilty, wicked man’
(III.6.1074) that he really is. If you look at Figure 2.4, you can see a
third way in which Tartuffe makes his appearance: that is, through the
clothes that he is wearing. Although Tartuffe refers to his ‘hairshirt’
(III.2.853), this image shows him well dressed and perhaps not as
‘truffle-like’ or ‘weasely’ as his name suggests (‘Tartuffe’ is sometimes
translated along these lines). Nevertheless, there are physical signs here
that an audience would have known how to interpret when they at last
set eyes on him.

Figure 2.4 Jean Sauvé, L'Imposteur, copper engraving based on a drawing

by Pierre Brissart. From Oeuvres de Molière, 1682. Bibliothèque nationale
de France. Photo: © akg-images

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Activity
Turn to the first reading for this chapter, Reading 2.1, which is an extract
from Stephen Dock’s book Costume and Fashion in the Plays of Jean-
Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1992). Read through the extract and identify
two points that Dock makes about Tartuffe’s appearance.

Discussion
This extract is part of a book on the costumes worn in Molière’s plays,
and you might have been surprised by the wealth of detail that is
available – something that testifies to the value placed on the material
and visual aspects of the play. The first point I noted was that Tartuffe’s
costume was controversial. As Dock puts it, Tartuffe was ‘the
vestimentary image of the pious laymen of the day who wore large hats,
short hair, and small collars’. You can see some of this in Figure 2.4 but,
as Dock explains in his account of other images, things are not quite
that straightforward: in Figure 2.4, there are more ‘worldly’ features such
as a protruding shirt (‘in the fashion of dandies’) and breeches with
‘large ribbon garters’. This leads me to the second point I identified,
which is that Molière changed Tartuffe’s costume after the first version of
the play. Dock quotes from Molière’s ‘Second Petition’ of 1667 (which we
will turn to later), where the playwright notes how he ‘disguised the
character in the attire of a man of the world’.

Tartuffe’s appearance, then – in all its senses – leads us straight into

the controversy surrounding the play. At Versailles, in 1664, Tartuffe
was likely to have been instantly recognised as a petit collet (or layman
of the church). As Dock observes, he might also have been perceived,
to a certain extent, as a Jesuit. The kind of casuistic reasoning Tartuffe
employs in Act 3 can be seen as typical of the ‘caricatural Jesuit’ (see
Calder, 1993, p. 156), a figure who was often presented as scheming
and merciless in the advancement of the Society of Jesus and the
Catholic Church. As we will see, members of Molière’s audience lost
their cool at such an appearance – which is one reason why Molière
tried to disguise Tartuffe by, paradoxically, making him look more like
he really was (as a ‘man of the world’). Orgon, of course, is completely
taken in: he brushes aside Damis, as he did Dorine, as one more
spectator who is trying to put a stop to things. At this point in the

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 Tartuffe, Acts 1–4

play, Orgon seems determined to continue his own performance to an

increasingly bitter end.

Act 4
It has been argued that Act 4 was the final act of Molière’s original
play at Versailles. Some of the evidence for this comes from Molière’s
fellow actor, La Grange (1635–1692), who lists a three-act version of
Tartuffe in his account of Molière’s works. It is hard to know exactly
what the original spectators of the play would have seen. John
Cairncross has argued that Acts 1, 3 and 4 made up a complete version
of the play and some additional weight has been given to this by Lori
Sonderegger, discussing Medbourne’s English adaption of 1670, who
observes that these acts were the least altered in translation (see
Howarth, 1982, pp. 196–7; Sonderegger, 2000, p. 566).

Activity
Look back over Acts 3 and 4 and jot down a summary of the plot. How
would you describe the play if it was brought to an end at this point?

Discussion
One way to describe this play would be ‘socially unacceptable’ (Spingler,
1985, p. 249). Although Orgon finally sees the truth (is ‘made [to] see for
sure that what we say is true’, as Elmire puts it; IV.3.1340), he is
nevertheless still duped and loses his house. Elmire, meanwhile, comes
perilously close to submitting to Tartuffe – her repeated cough to catch
Orgon’s attention is, as you might have recognised, another form of
improvisation that might as well have gone on and on. The play affirms
itself as a farce: Orgon, like Dorine and Damis before him, listens to the
action but his own reticence belies a wish to let things run their course.
Tartuffe, in this situation, is not an unsympathetic figure: he is the
clownish ‘seducer’ of young wives and Orgon is the cuckolded husband,
justly outwitted given his abusive treatment of his family. This is the kind
of play Molière might have toured around the provinces at the beginning
of his career, or, indeed, which his audience might have found playing in
the streets around Pont Neuf in Paris. As for Tartuffe’s religious
appearance, no harm is meant: as one critic puts it, it is simply a guise
to achieve ‘the witty triumph of fertility over foolish senility’ (Simonds,
1977, p. 88).

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We shall shortly turn to Act 5 for some clues as to how Molière

reworked the play in the years that followed its first performance. In
Act 4, however, we can see him struggling. Take, for example, the
stage note in Scene 5: ‘This is a scoundrel speaking’ (IV.5.1488). Why
add such a note? On the one hand, it indicates that Tartuffe’s
reasoning is the work of an imposter – not that of a real Jesuit or
churchman. On the other, we might read the note as an act of
desperation: an attempt by Molière to regain some control over a play
that is running away even from himself. For in Act 4 Tartuffe seems
unstoppable. Notice how Elmire repeats the structure of the previous
acts by hiding Orgon under the table, telling him:

It’s up to you to stop his passion, call his bluff,

When you decide that things have gone quite far enough.
(IV.4.1381–2)

Orgon has difficulty making that decision, of course (he clearly likes a
good show), and, in Orgon’s absence, Elmire is trapped by her own
language of refusal which, she says, should be heard as affirmation
(Spingler, 1985, pp. 246–7). There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to
assert the limits of the scene.
In 1664 it was pressure from religious groups, including the powerful
Compagnie du Saint Sacrement, that effectively put an end to the play
(Simonds, 1977, pp. 89–90). Louis XIV forbade further performances –
and we will consider the petitions Molière wrote in response. As
Molière engaged in reworking his play, he was inevitably involved in
questions about the nature of its comedy. As P. Muñoz Simonds puts
it, following the ban ‘Tartuffe could no longer be played as a harmless
adventurer in the boudoirs of bored middle-class ladies’ (Simonds,
1977, p. 88). What we have seen as a kind of ‘doubling up’ in the play,
as well as its ‘elasticity’ and physicality, represents a certain view of
what comedy is – one that would probably have fitted well with the
original festivities at Versailles. Such a view of comedy is sometimes
described as carnivalesque – a term that derives from the work of the
philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin associates it with
‘festive laughter’:

[First,] [c]arnival laughter is the laughter of all the people. Second,

it is universal in scope; it is directed at all and everyone, including

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 Tartuffe, Acts 1–4

the carnival’s participants. The entire world is seen in its droll

aspect, in its gay relativity. Third, this laughter is ambivalent: it is
gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding. It asserts
and denies, it buries and revives.
(Bakhtin, 1984 [1965], pp. 11–12)

For Bakhtin, ‘carnivalesque’ describes the pre-modern, medieval world

of the writer François Rabelais (1494–1553). It represents the kind of
drama you might find in the market square or, indeed, on the stages of
the Italian actors in Paris. Importantly, it does not invite an ‘individual
reaction’ but remains something that is shared and, in certain ways,
endlessly open. As we see Molière wrestling with the limits imposed on
his play, we should keep in mind the carnivalesque world from which it
seems to have emerged.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

The quarrel of Tartuffe

Before we turn to Act 5 of Tartuffe, let us consider how Molière
responded to the king’s censorship of the play. It seems that Louis
XIV was already under pressure to stop the performance before it was
produced at Versailles (Scott, 2000, p. 161). Perhaps some early
readings had taken place. If so, Louis looks a lot like one of the
spectators who might have intervened but were nevertheless interested
to see what would happen. What happened was an outcry from the
dévots (religious groups at court) and a retraction of the king’s support
– no doubt for political rather than moral reasons (Scott, 2000, p. 162).
Molière’s first response was a petition, sent to the king in August 1664,
in which he describes how his ‘unhappiness has been assuaged’ by the
king’s personal views, which he describes directly: ‘you having had the
goodness to declare that you found nothing reprehensible in this play
that you have forbidden me to produce in public’ (Congdon and Scott,
2009, p. 67). Molière is clearly on risky ground here and, notably, no
change was made to the king’s proclamation (Scott, 2000, p. 166).
Instead Tartuffe went through a series of private performances and
readings (you can see a re-creation of one of these in Figure 2.5). The
play then appeared on Molière’s stage at the Palais Royal in
August 1667 as L’Imposteur, with Tartuffe renamed as Panulphe and
‘disguised’ amid the various costume changes that we have already
noted. However, its performance was banned again, this time in the
king’s absence, prompting a second petition from Molière, in which he
comes close to going on strike:

I respectfully await the judgement that Your Majesty will deign to

pronounce on this matter; but it is very certain, Sire, that I will
no longer think of writing plays if the Tartuffes have the
advantage …
(Congdon and Scott, 2009, p. 70)

Molière’s biographer, Virginia Scott, notes the subsequent absence of

his plays from the repertoire of his troupe in the following season,
1668 (Scott, 2000, pp. 177–9). Molière’s pressure on the king seems to
have paid off: in February 1669 Tartuffe began a long run at the Palais
Royal. Molière arranged to publish the play almost immediately –
perhaps he remained concerned about the reliability of the king’s
public opinion.

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 The quarrel of Tartuffe

Figure 2.5 Nicolas-André Monsiau, Molière lisant Tartuffe chez Ninon de Lenclos, 1802, oil on canvas,
97cm x 85cm. Bibliothèque de la Comédie-Française, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais/Agence Bulloz

Activity
Find Reading 2.2 for this chapter, which is Molière’s preface to the
published edition of Tartuffe (March 1669). Read it through and make
some notes on the following questions:
1 What does Molière identify as the problem with Tartuffe?
2 How does he describe the ‘purpose of comedy’?
3 Who does he cite in support of the theatre?

Discussion
1 The most obvious problem is, as Molière puts it, the power of ‘the
people it mocks’. Notice that fault is found not only with the language
of the play but its ‘gestures’: ‘the least wink, the least wag of the
head, the least step to the right or left’. Notably, Molière concludes by
comparing his play to a play by Scaramouche. In this comparison,
Scaramouche’s play, though more irreligious, is seemingly more

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

abstract: the problem for Molière is that he appears to have targeted

a particular group.
2 Molière claims that the ‘purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of
men’. Such correction comes about through ‘seeing […] faults
imitated’. According to Molière, then, he should be praised, not
vilified, for his acts of imitation. Notice, though, that Molière is careful
to describe such acts in general terms: he portrays ‘the character of
a wicked man’ or ‘a hypocrite’, not particular people.
3 Molière cites the ‘testimony of the ancients’ – and those who ‘made
profession of austere virtue’. In particular, he notes how ‘Aristotle
devoted some evenings to the theatre and took the trouble to reduce
to precepts the art of writing plays’. He draws attention to the theatre
of Greece and Rome and, in his own day, to one of his rivals,
‘Monsieur Corneille’.

In the ‘Preface’ to Tartuffe, as in the petitions, Molière presents himself

as someone who, at the very least, has thought carefully about the
theatre. On the one hand, it is tempting to see this as another part that
he is playing: Molière assumes the self-knowledge and good judgement
of someone such as Cleante in Tartuffe – a stock character known as
an honnête homme, or ‘honest man’ (Calder, 1993, p. 92). On the
other hand, Molière does ally himself with theorists of the stage. The
final version of Tartuffe, with its five acts, observance of the unities,
polished verse and universal characters, might be considered to follow
fashionable, neo-classical rules (see box). As we turn to Act 5, we
might even say that Molière used the conventions of neo-classical
drama to curb the direction of his precariously unpolished farce.

Neo-classical theatre
In your study of Shakespeare’s As You Like It in Book 1, you
encountered some of the rules of neo-classical theatre. You also
noted that Shakespeare did not always follow them: for example,
As You Like It is presented in multiple scenes rather than being
unified by time, place and action – precepts that derive ultimately
from Aristotle. In France, such rules were given additional weight
by the Académie française, established by Cardinal Richelieu in
1635 to encourage orthodoxy and stabilise the monarchy. Alongside
the three classical unities, a further ‘unity of tone’ was promoted:

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 The quarrel of Tartuffe

characters and plots should be plausible and follow conventions

(Howarth, 1995, pp. 226–7). The Academy’s criticisms of
Corneille’s tragi-comic play Le Cid in 1637 are sometimes seen as
consolidating the move from irregular forms to plays based on
classical models (Howarth, 1995, pp. 229–31). Primarily, this meant
tragedies (Aristotle didn’t have a lot to say about comedies), but
dramatists could turn to the Roman playwrights Plautus and
Terence for examples of more elegant, less offensive comic writing
– drawn, in turn, from the New Comedy of ancient Greece (Calder,
1993, pp. 1–5). With its five acts, polished verse and family setting,
Molière’s Tartuffe can be seen as eventually fulfilling many of
these criteria. If you are interested to see how this is developed in
Molière’s later work, you might turn to The Misanthrope in your set
book.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Tartuffe, Act 5
An anonymous pamphlet, published after the performance of Tartuffe
(as L’Imposteur) in 1667, declared that the best part of the play was the
denouement: ‘nothing could be greater, more magnificent and more
wonderful, and yet more natural, more happy and more appropriate’
(Lettre sur la comedie de l’Imposteur, quoted in Calder, 1993, p. 177).
Such a view has not always been shared and you may well have found
the ending, in which the king’s officer arrives to put everything right,
somewhat contrived. As Calder notes, such an ending was
unconventional and it is unlikely that Molière could have made use of
the king in this way without his permission (Calder, 1993, pp. 177–8).
Even so, as Scott observes, what might have been a sincere ending in
1667 must have rung a bit hollow in 1669 (Scott, 2000, pp. 179–80).
After all, Louis had now banned the play for a second time: he could
perhaps no longer be trusted, as his officer proclaims, to ‘tell truth
from lies’ (V.7.1909) or hold ‘all hypocrites in great aversion’
(V.7.1916). We might read Molière’s ‘Preface’ as a document that
concedes power to those people whom the king had supposed to have
overcome. Other critics have similarly seen a ‘disquieting shadow’ cast
over the light of Louis, the Sun King, finding, in the reverence
accorded him, a parallel with Orgon’s idolisation of Tartuffe (Gossman,
1963, pp. 119–20).

Activity
What is your view of the ending of Tartuffe? Reread Act 5, Scene 7 and
jot down your own thoughts. Then turn to Readings 2.3 and 2.4, which
are extracts from articles by Michael Spingler and P. Muñoz Simonds,
respectively. How would you summarise these accounts of the ending of
the play?

Discussion
Both Spingler and Simonds see the king’s intervention as a key part of
the play’s structure and meaning. For Spingler, there are two endings in
tension: a subversive one (which we have associated with the commedia
dell’arte) and a conventional ‘restoration of harmony’ (associated with
neo-classical drama). The king’s intervention is for Spingler a kind of
‘hidden joke’, because the play can proceed only through an act of
censorship. For Simonds, the ending similarly reveals a highly theatrical
world. Tartuffe becomes a ‘metaplay’, reminding its audience that its

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 Tartuffe, Act 5

‘own performances are under scrutiny’. Simonds thus sees the

unconvincing aspects of the deus ex machina as a comment on the
performance of the king. Both critics extend Molière’s satirical reach from
hypocrisy and religion to the political order.

You will make up your own mind about where Tartuffe leaves us – but
I am struck by Spingler’s view of Molière’s characters casting about in
search of an ending (Spingler, 1985, p. 250): ‘Where are you going?’
asks Cleante at the beginning of Act 5; ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Orgon
replies. As at the end of Act 4, each of the characters remains strangely
powerless: notice, for example, in a repetition of an earlier scene, how
Orgon struggles to persuade Madame Pernelle of Tartuffe’s real nature.
All of this, of course, serves to assert the final power of the king. We
have already noted a situation like this earlier: at the end of The
Impromptu at Versailles, it is the king’s messenger that saves Molière’s
troupe from the embarrassment of putting on an unfinished play. So,
here again, at the end of Tartuffe, we find Molière’s troupe looking for
a play to perform. How far can they take their improvisations,
repetitions and ridicule? Notably, when the king’s officer arrives, he
confesses that he ‘was sent/To follow him [Tartuffe] and see how far
the whole thing went’ (V.7.1930). The king might be the ultimate limit
of Molière’s stage but he also seems, like Dorine watching the lovers’
quarrel, to be seduced by it. No one would have dared to represent
Louis XIV in person on stage – but, in the same way as every other
member of the audience, Louis would have seen himself reflected in
Molière’s mirror. Tartuffe might have ended up as a sign of his majesty
– like all the entertainments at the original festivities at Versailles – but
it was also a sign of what happened when he wanted to just keep on
watching.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Conclusion
In this chapter we have put Molière on a number of different stages.
You can explore some of them further by following the suggestions for
independent study on the module website. We have also examined how
Tartuffe takes the form of different versions. The defining presence of
the king in the play might have reminded you of another piece of
improvised drama: the dumbshow that Hamlet presents to the court at
Elsinore. As Hamlet observes: ‘The play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch
the conscience of the King’ (2.2.539–40). What matters for Molière, as
for Hamlet, is ultimately the reaction of his audience – and, as the
audience turns to view itself, the boundaries of the stage are lost (see
Norman, 1999, pp. 8–9).
In his first petition for Tartuffe, Molière complained that the ‘originals
have finally suppressed the copy’ (Congdon and Scott, 2009, p. 67) –
meaning that the religious groups at court had got their way. But, in
the end, we might find that Molière’s copy suppressed the originals.
Unlike Hamlet, Molière aspired to lift his play beyond the particular
circumstances of its performance: various figures around the French
court disappear into the general character types of the commedia
dell’arte and neo-classical drama. Even Molière turned himself into
such an abstraction: we see him playing the part of the duped, easy-to-
be cuckolded Orgon – but we also see Orgon as the performer
‘Molière’, onstage alongside his own young wife. As an abstraction,
Molière continued to move through other plays and court
entertainments. In 1666, in the midst of the quarrel around Tartuffe,
for example, he staged The Misanthrope in which he played the part of
Alceste, an honnête homme who wishes to leave a hypocritical society. In
Molière’s last play, the blurring of representation and reality reached
new heights. Taking the title role of The Imaginary Invalid in 1673,
Molière created a character with a cough (because he himself had one
at the time) and then died while playing a part in which he had to
pretend to be dead: he was the ‘imaginary corpse’, as many epitaphs at
the time described him (Scott, 2000, pp. 256–9). It is only here that
Molière seems to have reached the limits of his comic stage.

98
 Conclusion

Independent study
You will find suggestions for independent study on the module
website.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

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Simonds, P. Muñoz (1977) ‘Molière’s satiric use of the deus ex machina

in Tartuffe’, Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 85–93.
Slater, M. (ed. and trans.) (2001) Molière: The Misanthrope, Tartuffe
and Other Plays, Oxford World’s Classics series, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Sonderegger, L. (2000), ‘Sources of translation: a discussion of
Matthew Medbourne’s 1670 translation of Molière’s Tartuffe’, Papers on
French Seventeenth-Century Literature, vol. 27, no. 53, pp. 553–69.
Spingler, M. (1985), ‘The king’s play: censorship and the politics of
performance in Molière’s Tartuffe’, Comparative Drama, vol. 19, no. 3,
pp. 240–57.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Reading 2.1: Dock on costume and

fashion in Tartuffe
Source: Dock, S.V. (1992) Costume and Fashion in the Plays of Jean-
Baptiste Poquelin Molière: A Seventeenth-Century Perspective, Geneva,
Slatkine, pp. 141–7 (notes omitted)
Tartuffe’s original costume, the one worn at the 12 May 1664 première
during Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée, offended the religious community,
which already opposed the play itself. According to L’Histoire du père
de La Chaise (1694), ‘the impostor appeared for the first time if not in
Jesuit’s robes, at least in cassock and in a hat with a wide brim.’
(Couton OC 1: 838) La Chaise’s qualification is important: if Tartuffe
([played by] Du Croisy) did not in fact appear in a Jesuit’s robes, then
he at least wore the familiar churchman’s cassock and hat with a wide
brim. Because he hesitates, the author’s description is inconclusive.
Like La Chaise, Georges Couton attests to the ecclesiastical air of the
costume without specifying what Tartuffe wore:

His costume sufficed so that, at the moment of his entry, the first
Tartuffe was catalogued: he was one of those postulants for
ecclesiastical benefits, who have without doubt been tonsured and
perhaps even received minor orders, and [who] have ‘launched
themselves into reform.’ (Couton OC 1: 836–37)

In his 1667 production of L’Imposteur, Molière attempted to disguise

Tartuffe as Panulphe, a pious man of the world. Molière describes his
efforts at changing Tartuffe’s image in his ‘Second Petition presented
to the King in his camp in front of the city of Lille in Flanders’
written shortly after the 5 August 1667 production of L’Imposteur:

My comedy, Sire, did not here [in Paris] enjoy Your Majesty’s
goodness. In vain I produced it under the title of L’Imposteur, and
disguised the character in the attire of a man of the world; in vain
I gave him a small hat, a lot of hair, a large collar, a sword, and
lace all over the costume, [in vain] I incorporated mollifications,
[in vain] I carefully removed everything that I judged capable of
furnishing the shadow of a pretext to the famous originals of the

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 Reading 2.1: Dock on costume and fashion in Tartuffe

portrait I wished to make: all that served for naught. (Couton

OC1: 891–92)

Georges Couton argues convincingly that if we reverse Panulphe’s

worldly image (the small hat, the long wig, the large collar, etc.), we
arrive at the vestimentary image of the pious laymen of the day who
wore large hats, short hair, and small collars. (Couton OC 1: 835–36)
Such laymen were in fact known as petits collets or ‘small collars.’ In his
letter of 6 August 1667 to de Lionne, Desfontaines writes: ‘the little
collars are so mistreated in it [in Tartuffe] that I have no doubt that
they will do their best to have it suppressed.’ (Mongrédien Recueil 1:
287) Antoine Furetière specifies that they actually wore small collars
and that hypocrites wore them to affect piety:

They call Petit collet, a man who has reformed himself through
devotion because, for reasons of modesty, the men of the Church
wear small collars, whereas the men of the world wear large ones
decorated with needlework and lace. And sometimes it is said in a
bad way of hypocrites who affect modest manners, especially by
wearing a small collar. (Furetière DU 1 s.v. COLLET)

Interestingly, this definition aptly summarizes the kinds of vestimentary

transformations Molière probably effected in Tartuffe’s costume
between 1664 and 1667.
As for the Tartuffe costume of 1669, we do not know enough about it
either. Seventeenth-century engravings suggest that Tartuffe wore
worldly clothing with pious accessories. In an engraving attributed to
François Chauveau […], which appeared in the June 1669 and
May 1673 editions of the play, Tartuffe’s dark costume consists of a
low round hat with a medium brim, a knee-length cape, a small plain
white collar, a close-fitting buttoned doublet with small white cuffs, a
rhinegrave, dark stockings, and flat shoes with small rosette
decorations. Tartuffe’s small collar and short hair suggest that he is a
petit collet, but those elements contrast with the cape and rhinegrave
which were worldly garments. In a detached engraving, also by an
anonymous engraver […], Tartuffe wears an identical costume with
some small modifications: he holds his hat in his left hand; his collar is
medium-sized; the separation between his doublet and breeches is
decorated with a line of ribbons; and he wears wide breeches with dark

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ribbon garters rather than a rhinegrave. In his 1682 engraving for

L’Imposteur [Figure 2.4 in this chapter], Brissart copies Tartuffe’s
costume from the original 1669 engraving with slight modifications:
Tartuffe’s hat is taller and has a wider brim; his collar is smaller and
squarer; a white shirt protrudes from under the bottom of his partially
unbuttoned short doublet in the fashion of dandies; and he wears
breeches with large ribbon garters under his rhinegrave. In the
1669 and 1673 engravings, Tartuffe looks very young. His hair is ear-
length, his face thin; and he wears a small mustache and goatee. In the
detached engraving he is also young, but his hair is longer and his face
fuller. In Brissart’s engraving, Tartuffe appears somewhat older with
shoulder-length hair and a rounded face with only a trace of a
mustache and goatee.
According to Orgon’s son Damis, Tartuffe is a boor, a pied plat (I i 59)
who is as unacceptable in society as a peasant wearing flat shoes.
Dorine, Mariane’s lady-in-waiting, adds that in fact Tartuffe had no
shoes when Orgon took him in; furthermore, his clothing was not
worth six deniers (I i 63–[64]) or half a sou. In his famous opening
lines Tartuffe mentions his hairshirt and scourge to impress listeners
with his religious zeal: Laurent, serrez ma haire avec ma discipline III ii
853 (Laurent, go put my hairshirt away with my scourge). The
ridiculousness of this line becomes apparent when one realizes that a
truly devout person would never treat these objects as if they were no
different from a hat and coat. Tartuffe’s healthy physical appearance
(Gros et gras, le teint frais, et la bouche vermeille. I iv 233 [Big and fat,
fresh of complexion, and red-mouthed.] and Il a l’oreille rouge et le teint
bien fleuri II iii 647 [He has red ears and a very florid complexion])
plainly suggests that he would never have accepted flagellation or the
wearing of a hairshirt, and his costume, as depicted in the engravings,
confirms the fact that he has not taken the vow of poverty.

References
Couton OC: Oeuvres de Molière, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols. (Paris:
Gallimard, 1971).
Furetière DU: Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel, 3 vols. (La
Haye: 1690. Paris: Le Robert, 1978).
Mongrédien, Recueil: Georges Mongrédien, Recueil des textes et des
e
documents du XVII siècle relatifs à Molière (Paris, CNRS, 1965).

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 Reading 2.2: Molière, ‘Preface’ to Tartuffe (1669)

Reading 2.2: Molière, ‘Preface’ to

Tartuffe (1669)
Source: Congdon, C. (ed.) and Scott, V. (trans. and ed.) Molière, Tartuffe
(2009) New York and London, W.W. Norton & Co., pp. 77–81
Here is a play, much talked about and long persecuted; and the people
it mocks have shown that they are more powerful in France than all
the others I have satirized up to now. The marquises, the pretentious
society women, the betrayed husbands, and the doctors have suffered
in silence when they’ve been put on the stage, and they have pretended
to be amused by their portraits along with everyone else; but the
hypocrites have not wanted to hear jokes about themselves. They are
shocked, and they have found it strange that I would have the nerve to
make fun of their pious faces and would want to disparage a
profession adopted by so many gentlemen. This is a crime they cannot
forgive, and they have taken up arms against my play with terrible fury.
But they have not attacked it because of what actually wounded them:
they are too politic for that, and know too well how not to reveal the
depths of their souls. Following their praiseworthy custom, they have
covered their self-interest with the cause of God; and Tartuffe, in their
mouths, is a play that offends piety. It is, from beginning to end, filled
with abominations, nothing is to be found there that does not deserve
the fire. Every syllable is impious; even the gestures are criminal, and
the least wink, the least wag of the head, the least step to right or left
hides mysteries that they find a way to explicate to my disadvantage.
I have listened to the ideas of my friends and to the critiques of
everyone; the corrections I have made, the judgment of the king and
the queen, who have seen it, the approbation of the great princes and
the ministers, who have honored it publicly with their presence; the
testimony of truly devout men, who have found it profitable, all of that
has served for nothing. They will not budge an inch, and still every day
the indiscrete [sic] zealots cry out in public, piously slandering me and
charitably damning me.
I would care very little for what they say were it not for their artful
way of making me enemies of those I respect, and winning to their
party some truly devout people, whose good faith they count on, and
who, thanks to the ardor they feel for the cause of heaven, are only
too impressionable. That is what obliges me to defend myself. It is to

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

the truly devout that I want to justify the way I have written my play;
and I beg them, with all my heart, not to condemn things before
seeing them, and to rid themselves of all prejudices and not serve the
purposes of those whose dissimulation dishonors them.
Anyone who takes the trouble to examine my play in good faith will
see without any doubt that my intentions are entirely innocent, and
that it nowhere trifles with things that ought to be revered; that I have
treated the subject with all the delicacy it requires; and that I have used
all possible art and care to distinguish the character of the hypocrite
from that of the truly devout. I have taken two whole acts to prepare
for the entrance of my scoundrel. The audience is not left in doubt for
a single moment; he is instantly recognizable by the way he has been
described and, from beginning to end, he says not a single word nor
takes a single action that does not paint for the spectator the character
of a wicked man, clearly shown in opposition to that of a truly devout
man.
I know perfectly well that, in answer, these gentlemen will try to
insinuate that it is not for the theatre to speak of these matters; but I
ask them, with their permission, upon what grounds they base this
proposition, which is only a supposition and which they cannot prove
in any way. And, without a doubt, it would not be difficult to show
them that the theatre, during ancient times, had its origin in religion
and was part of its mysteries; that the Spanish, our neighbors, celebrate
no feast day without a play; that – even among us – the theatre owes
its birth to the cares of a religious fraternity that still today owns the
Hôtel de Bourgogne, a place where the most important mysteries of
our faith were once performed; that some plays are still printed in
gothic letters, in the name of a doctor of the Sorbonne; and that there
have been performed, in our times, plays on holy subjects by Monsieur
Corneille, that have been admired by all France.
If the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I do not see
for what reason some vices are privileged. That would have, within the
State, the most dangerous consequence; and we have seen that the
theatre has a great power to correct. The most beautiful moral writings
are often less powerful than the darts of satire; and nothing corrects
most men better than seeing their faults imitated. Vices are best
attacked when they are exposed to the laughter of everyone. We easily
endure reprimands, but not being laughed at. We want to be wicked,
but not ridiculous.

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 Reading 2.2: Molière, ‘Preface’ to Tartuffe (1669)

I have been reproached for putting the language in piety in the mouth
of my Imposter. So, should I forbid myself to use such words to
properly represent the character of a hypocrite? It is enough, or so it
seems to me, that I have made clear the criminal motives that lead him
to say these things, and that I have cut out the sacred words that
might be troubling when used improperly by him. But in the fourth
act, he spouts a pernicious doctrine. Yet isn’t that doctrine something
which everyone has heard over and over? Is it new in my play? Should
we be afraid that something so generally detested might make an
impression on someone’s mind? That by putting it on the stage I make
it dangerous? That it gains authority in the mouth of a scoundrel?
There are no grounds for that; and the play Tartuffe must be approved,
or all plays must be condemned.
There’s the real reason for this attack, for never has such fury been
unleashed against the stage as it has been recently. I cannot deny that
there were fathers of the Church who have condemned the theatre; but
it also cannot be denied that some have treated it more gently. Thus
the authority claimed to support censure is balanced by the other; and
the only conclusion that can be drawn from the diversity of opinion in
these minds of equal intelligence is that they have seen the theatre
differently, and that some have considered it in its pure form while
others have looked at its corrupt form and confused it with all those
vile spectacles that are rightly called depraved. In effect, since we
should speak of things and not of words, and since most
contradictions arise from lack of understanding and from confounding
opposing meanings in a single word, it remains only to lift the veil of
ambiguity, and look at what theatre is, in itself, to see if it should be
condemned. We will discover, without a doubt, that being no other
thing than an ingenious poem, which reproves men’s faults by means
of agreeable lessons, theatre cannot be censured without injustice; and
if we will listen to the testimony of the ancients, we will learn that the
most celebrated philosophers, those who made profession of austere
virtue and who cried out ceaselessly against the vices of their century,
have praised the theatre; we will learn that Aristotle devoted some
evenings to the theatre and took the trouble to reduce to precepts the
art of writing plays. We will learn that the greatest men, the first in
dignity, have gloried in writing plays themselves, while others have not
disdained to publicly recite those they have composed; that Greece
showed its esteem for this art by glorious prizes and by the superb
theatres with which she honored it; and that, finally, in Rome this same
art received some extraordinary honors: I do not speak of debauched

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Rome given license by the emperors, but of a disciplined Rome, ruled

by the consuls, in the time of the vigor of Roman virtue.
I confess there have been times when theatre became corrupt. But
what is there that never becomes corrupt in this world? There is
nothing so innocent that men cannot make it criminal, no art so
healthy that they cannot reverse its intentions, nothing so good that
they cannot put it to bad use. Medicine is a beneficial art, and
everyone reveres it as one of the most excellent arts we have; and yet,
at times it is rendered odious, and often has become an art of
poisoning. Philosophy is a gift of heaven; it has been given to us to
bring our minds to the knowledge of God through contemplation of
the marvels of nature; and yet, we are not ignorant of the fact that it
has often been diverted from its purpose, and used publicly to support
impiety. Even the most holy things are not protected from the
corruption of men and we see scoundrels who, every day, abuse piety
and make it maliciously serve the greatest crimes. But we do not fail to
make the necessary distinctions. We do not confuse the essential
goodness of what has been corrupted with the malice of the
corrupters. We separate bad practice from the intention of the art and,
as we do not forbid medicine because the Romans banished it, nor
philosophy for having been publicly condemned in Athens, so we
should not prohibit the theatre because it was censured in certain
times. There were reasons for that censure which do not exist here.
Censure now restricts itself to what it sees; we should not allow it
beyond the limits it has set itself, extend it farther than it needs to go,
and force it to embrace the innocent with the guilty. The theatre that
needs to be censured is not at all the theatre we want to defend. We
must be careful not to confound the one with the other. They are two
entities whose morals are completely opposed. They have no
connection with each other, although their names are the same; and it
would be a frightful injustice to condemn Olympia the virtuous woman
because there was once another Olympia who was debauched. Such
actions, without a doubt, would make a great disorder in the world.
Nothing would exist that could not be condemned; but since we do
not observe that rigor regarding so many things that are abused every
day, we must grant the same grace to the theatre, and approve plays in
which instruction and decency reign.
I know that there are some minds so delicate they cannot endure plays
of any kind, who say that the most decent are the most dangerous;
that the passions depicted in them are all the more moving because

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 Reading 2.2: Molière, ‘Preface’ to Tartuffe (1669)

they are virtuous, and that souls are softened by these sorts of
performances. I do not see what great crime it is to be moved by the
sight of decent emotion; the total lack of sensibility to which these
persons seek to raise our souls is virtue at its highest, but I doubt if
human nature is strong enough to reach such perfection, and I don’t
know if it is not better to work to rectify and soften the passions of
men than to want to remove them entirely.
I confess there are some places that are better to frequent than the
theatre; and if you want to avoid all things that do not relate directly to
God and our salvation, plays must be among them, and I do not find
it wrong if they are condemned with all the rest. But let us suppose, as
is the case, that there are intervals between exercises of piety and that
men need diversions – then I maintain that nothing more innocent
than the theatre can be found.
But I am running on and on. Let us finish with a word from a great
prince [probably the prince of Condé] on the play of Tartuffe:
A week after it was prohibited, a play entitled Scaramouche the Hermit
was performed for the court; and the king, as he was leaving, said to
the great prince I mentioned: ‘I would really like to know why the
people who are so scandalized by Molière’s play say nothing about
Scaramouche’s play.’ To which the prince replied: ‘The reason for that
is that Scaramouche’s play mocks heaven and religion, for which these
gentlemen care nothing; but Molière’s play mocks them; that’s what
they cannot abide.’

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Reading 2.3: Spingler on the role of the

king
Source: Spingler, M. (1985) ‘The king’s play: censorship and the politics of
performance in Molière’s Tartuffe’, Comparative Drama, vol. 19, no. 3,
pp. 251–2 (notes omitted)
The progress of the play to this point thus involves an intensification
of the tension between the comic ending that Orgon’s family has
pursued, with its conventional baroque affirmation of the restoration
of harmony in a well-ordered universe, and the alternative, discredited
ending of the Ur-Tartuffe, ancient, anarchic, and subversive, with its
roots in Greek and Latin farce, the medieval fabliaux, and the Italian
Commedia. In its view, dupes may well remain dupes, husbands are
cuckolded, wives are seduced, virtue when allied with foolishness will
go unrewarded, and Tartuffe will get away with it. The last scenes of
the third and fourth acts oscillate between both endings and conclude
with the subversive ending of Tartuffe’s triumph. Near the conclusion
of Act V at the point where Orgon is about to be led off to prison,
the apparently imminent destruction of the stable and conventional
comic structure by the repeated assertion of the socially devalued
farcical structure seems inevitable. It is as if Molière were saying that
the play with Tartuffe in it simply cannot be resolved in any way
conforming to the morality of les dévots or any other audience which
thinks that Tartuffe can be defeated with the conventional resources of
comedy. For how can a fraud who is himself a master performer be
defeated in a world which is constructed around performance? The
time has come for the King to intervene and perform his perfected
version of Dorine’s model act of interruption.
The concluding scene of the King’s intervention, which still causes
embarrassment to directors, is deeply embedded in the play’s structure,
authenticated by the repeated gestures of interruption performed by
the players in their futile quest to bring acceptable closure to the play.
Now the King repeats within the frame of the play the very gesture
which he has performed in the world, that of pulling the play off the
boards, of stopping it from proceeding any further. In effect, he stops
the subversive resolution from happening – that is, he censors it. The
hidden joke in Tartuffe is that for the play to end properly, it must
once again be banned by the King. Indeed, he does not really rescue
Orgon but rather cancels the catastrophic ending before bringing down

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 Reading 2.3: Spingler on the role of the king

the curtain on what has been, for the characters, a series of farcical
mishaps and blunders.

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Chapter 2 Molière’s Tartuffe and the limits of comedy

Reading 2.4: Simonds on the deus ex

machina
Source: Simonds, P. Muñoz (1977) ‘Molière’s satiric use of the deus ex
machina in Tartuffe’, Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 29, no. 1,
pp. 92–3
Like many plays with deus ex machina endings, Tartuffe is structured
around two basic metaphors which promise the eventual appearance of
a god figure by their very nature. The first of these is the insane
asylum metaphor. Life in Orgon’s household is like ‘a madhouse’ (‘la
cour du roi Pétaud,’ or house of misrule) as Mme Pernelle describes it,
‘with the keeper gone’ (I, 1, 12), implying that there is a sane world
outside and a keeper who will one day reappear. The King does
eventually bring the light of reason into this bourgeois Parisian
madhouse; but France herself is analogous to Orgon’s family and still
awaits the appearance of Louis’s ‘keeper’ to cure, in turn, the royal
excesses.
The second basic metaphor compares life to a stage play with unseen
divine spectators looking on. This theatre metaphor has implications
similar to those of the madhouse metaphor. If the King represents
Reason in judgment of madness, he also symbolizes in Tartuffe the
Divine Spectator of the human comedy. But simultaneously, he too is
being observed, as he enacts his kingly role, by the true Divine
Spectator whom he represents in the theatre of the world. Molière sees
to it that the audience is always conscious of watching a play during a
performance of Tartuffe. First, the dialogue constantly reminds us of
role playing and masks, as many commentators have pointed out;
secondly, we see that consummate actor Tartuffe shifting easily from
one role to another; and finally, we watch Elmire stage two plays-
within-the-play before a hidden spectator in order to unmask the
hypocrite. Like all such metaplays, Tartuffe is clearly designed to
suggest a metaphysical significance and presence behind its otherwise
absurd events.
Having been thus prefigured in such a theatrical situation, god-figures
or messengers from the world of reality who interfere with the unreal
action onstage are never totally surprising to the spectators. They
remind the audience that their own performances are under scrutiny as
well. Plays of this sort often combine the convention of God as

112
 Reading 2.4: Simonds on the deus ex machina

spectator with the deus ex machina and clearly state that we must all of
us, even kings, play our parts well on the great stage of the world or
face the critical consequences in a final scene of unmasking. To bring
Louis XIV onstage, even by way of a messenger, is therefore to point
up his role as an actor like Molière in the theatre and like Poquelin out
of it. The Divine Spectator observes both in the Great Theatre of the
World.
Thus, Molière’s deus ex machina is far from being an excrescence on
the structure of Tartuffe. It is not a fault in the dramatic structure at all
but a vital element of the play’s structure which contributes directly to
the meaning of Tartuffe. It is a symbolic action which ironically
corrects the assumptions of the characters, and of the audience as well,
by overriding normal expectations for the outcome of the plot. Above
all, it calls attention to the humbling notion that we live in a theatrum
mundi overseen by gods, and it reminds Louis XIV (and the audience
generally) of his humanity by overpraising his pretensions to divinity.
The seventeenth century cultural point of view in France upheld
Reason as a standard against which all human behavior must be
judged. Since Orgon’s understanding of religion and his idolatry were
unreasonable, they became for Molière the objects of laughter. Since
the King’s claim to superhuman powers of Reason was also patently
unreasonable, the action of the deus in Tartuffe may resolve the plot
but (because it is also ex machina) it is at the same time unconvincing,
even absurd. Molière has in this way subtly employed the deus ex
machina convention to satirize the unreasonable extravagances in the
politics and religion of his time.

113
Chapter 3 The Country Wife
(1675) by William Wycherley
Anita Pacheco
Contents
Aims 119
Materials you will need 120
Introduction 121
The Country Wife: the persons (pages 3–4) 124
The Country Wife, Act 1, Scene 1 126
Plot lines and erotic triangles 132
Horner–Pinchwife–Margery 132
Sparkish–Alithea–Harcourt 134
Horner–Sir Jaspar Fidget–Lady Fidget 137
An anatomy of masculinity 142
The dénouement 145
References and further reading 147
 Aims

Aims
This chapter will:
. introduce you to the genre of Restoration comedy through the study
of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife
. discuss the play’s treatment of the rake-hero, a prominent character
type of Restoration comedy
. consider some of Wycherley’s dramatic and theatrical techniques.

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Chapter 3 The Country Wife (1675) by William Wycherley

Materials you will need

In this chapter you will be referred to the set book:
. William Wycherley, The Country Wife, ed. James Ogden, introduction
by Tiffany Stern (2014) New Mermaids series, London, Methuen
Drama.
You may also wish to listen to the following audio recordings, which
you will find on the module website:
. The Country Wife (1985 BBC Radio 4 production, with Maggie
Smith and Jonathan Pryce)
. ‘London and Paris theatre’.

120
 Introduction

Introduction
In 1642, with the outbreak of the English Civil War, Parliament closed
the theatres and, with the exception of a few performances of opera in
the 1650s (and private household entertainments), they remained closed
until 1660. So the Restoration brought with it not only the re-
establishment of monarchy but also the return of the theatre to the
social and cultural life of London. The king granted the right to put on
plays to two companies, the King’s and the Duke’s, and the theatres
built for the purpose were indoor structures which used changeable
scenery and required the use of artificial light. This theatrical design,
very different from Shakespeare’s open-air Globe, drew its inspiration
from several sources: the indoor Blackfriars Theatre where
Shakespeare’s acting company staged winter performances; the Jacobean
and Caroline court theatres, with their elaborate scenic displays; and the
continental theatres with which Charles II and his court had become
familiar during their long years of exile. The two acting companies
licensed by the king followed continental practice in another way as
well: by having all the female roles played by actresses.
Restoration theatres retained the apron stage of the pre-civil war
London theatres; extending out into the auditorium, this stage formed
the main acting area and was accessed by two doors on either side.
Behind the apron stage was the proscenium arch and a large scenic
stage where the scenery was situated. An elaborate system of shutters,
set in a number of grooves on the floor, could be opened to reveal
characters and to alter the set and the stage space (see Figure 3.1).
By restricting the right to put on plays to two royally appointed acting
companies, Charles II, like his French counterpart Louis XIV,
necessarily exercised a significant degree of control over the Restoration
theatre. The relationship between the court and the theatre, especially in
the 1660s and 1670s, was rendered still closer by the fact that many of
the playwrights were either courtiers or closely connected to the court.
The Earl of Rochester, whom you will remember from Chapter 1,
played an important role in the development of Restoration drama,
writing plays, acting as patron and critic, and apparently serving as the
model for a number of rakish comic protagonists, most notably
Dorimant in Sir George Etherege’s (1636–1692) comedy The Man of
Mode (1676). Yet going to the theatre was by no means an exclusively
upper-class pastime in this period; the middle and lower classes

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Figure 3.1 Interior view of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, designed by Sir
Christopher Wren, where The Country Wife was first staged. Scale
reconstruction by Richard Leacroft, from Richard and Helen Leacroft, Theatre
and Playhouse: An Illustrated Survey of Theatre Building from Ancient
Greece to the Present Day, 1984

attended as well, probably in larger numbers than the elite (Langhans,

2000, pp. 3, 13, 16).
In this chapter we are studying another well-known Restoration comedy,
The Country Wife (1675) by William Wycherley (1640/1–1715), who was
a friend of Rochester and had close links to the court. Comedy became
increasingly popular in the late 1660s and 1670s, due in part to the
enormous influence of Molière, whose plays L’École des maris (1661)
and L’École des femmes (1662) are sources for the Pinchwife plot in The
Country Wife. In terms of genre, Wycherley’s play has over the years
been called a comedy of manners, a wit comedy, a sex comedy and a
libertine comedy. The last two terms have the advantage of conveying
the fact that, like much Restoration drama of the 1670s, Wycherley’s
comedy is to some extent the vehicle of libertine ideas. To call a play
‘libertine’ is not the same thing as saying that it’s about sex, though that
will certainly be one of the main ingredients. Deborah Payne Fisk
argues that what characterises libertine plays of the 1670s is ‘the
persistence of a set of attitudes’, and you will recognise from Chapter 1

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 Introduction

on erotic poetry the list of libertine attitudes she offers: ‘scepticism

about received knowledge; defiance against social sanctions and
institutions; and a professed commitment to a life of hedonism’ (Payne
Fisk, 2005, p. xix). To this list we might add the vision of human nature
and society presented in Chapter 13 of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (you
may want to refer back to Chapter 1 to refresh your memory here).
You should read The Country Wife in its entirety before returning to
this chapter to look more closely at particular scenes, ideas and themes.

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The Country Wife: the persons (pages

3–4)
Before considering the play’s opening scene, let’s look briefly at one of
Wycherley’s central techniques of characterisation: the names he gives
his characters. A quick look at the cast list on page 3 of the set book
reveals that he is availing himself of a device much loved by early
modern comic dramatists, especially those with a satirical bent such as
Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson (1572–1637): the use of type-
names, or names that reveal the essential quality of individual characters.
The protagonist Harry Horner is, as the editor of the set book points
out, a maker of ‘cuckolds’: the term of shame and ridicule given
throughout the early modern period to husbands whose wives were
sexually unfaithful. Cuckolds were normally pictured with horns (see
Figure 3.2). Yet if Horner’s name refers to his expertise in cuckolding
married men, it necessarily alludes as well to his phallic prowess. Sir
Jaspar ‘fidgets’ because he is always impatient to be off to his ‘business’,
while Pinchwife’s name encapsulates his role as domestic tyrant.
However, the relationship between name and character is on occasion
more complicated than these straightforward correspondences might
suggest. Take, for example, Sir Jaspar’s sister Dainty and her friend Mrs
Squeamish: their names come to signify not modesty and refinement
but merely the appearance of such qualities. Their names thus stand not
for their essential characters but for the attributes they pretend to have.
Wycherley’s use of type-names in the play suggests that he is interested
less in ‘well-rounded’ characters than in character types and that, like
Molière’s Tartuffe, which you studied in Chapter 2, this comedy is going
to have a satirical dimension.

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 The Country Wife: the persons (pages 3–4)

Figure 3.2 A woodcut, after the original 1605 version, that accompanied the
ballad ‘A Married Man's Miserie’. As the wife prepares to have a sexual
dalliance with a devil, the husband (pictured in the window above her),
apparently deaf to the loud warning issued by a well-wisher, sprouts the
horns that are the chief signifier of cuckoldry. From The Roxburghe Ballads,
London, The Ballad Society. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC,
PR1181 .B3 v.1. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library

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Chapter 3 The Country Wife (1675) by William Wycherley

The Country Wife, Act 1, Scene 1

The opening scene of the play introduces us to its libertine hero, Harry
Horner, one of a number of such protagonists who appear in
Restoration comedies of the late 1660s and 1670s. Through his
discussion with the Quack (a stock character who figures prominently in
early modern drama and whose name speaks volumes about how the
medical profession was viewed in this period), we learn about Horner’s
ruse: he will pretend to the London society he inhabits that he is a
‘eunuch’ (that is, rendered impotent by treatments for venereal disease)
in order to gain untrammelled sexual access to women. So committed is
he to the pursuit of sexual pleasure that he is content to be mocked and
humiliated as that most ludicrous of figures: a now-impotent former
super-stud. As the would-be wit Sparkish puts it later in the scene,
Horner is now merely ‘a sign of a man’ (1.1.274–275).
Horner’s opening lines set him up as the representative of nature: ‘A
quack is as fit for a pimp as a midwife for a bawd; they are still but in
their way both helpers of nature’ (1.1.1–2). What’s he saying here? The
Quack has been tasked with spreading the news of Horner’s malady
through the town. Horner envisages him as his pimp, because he is
helping Horner gain access to women. He then observes that doctors
are as fit to be pimps as midwives are to be ‘bawds’, or brothel-keepers:
the last two professions are often linked in early modern writing, for the
simple reason that it would clearly be convenient for a bawd to know
how to deliver babies. Horner goes on to say that pimps and bawds,
just as much as doctors and midwives, are ‘helpers of nature’. In other
words, sexual appetite is an entirely natural impulse and the Quack is
simply helping Horner to fulfil it.
The nature he represents is clearly opposed to society: Horner’s pose as
a eunuch is necessary because social conventions are the enemy of
nature. Particularly culpable is the institution of marriage and all the
social rules and values that surround and support it. We have already
encountered one of these: the social convention which dictates that a
married man who has so little control over his wife that she sleeps with
other men is the object of social ridicule. Then there is the
complementary code of feminine honour, which threatens women with
an irreparable loss of status and respectability should they surrender to
their natural impulses and forsake their chastity. Horner’s ruse will allow
him to become ‘the passe-partout of the town’ (1.1.149), passing invisibly

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through the doors that social conventions dictate should be kept firmly
locked.
It is no accident then that the first characters to enter once we have
been introduced to Horner and the Quack are Sir Jaspar Fidget, his
wife Lady Fidget and his sister Dainty Fidget, for the Fidgets embody
(or pretend to) all the social values and conventions that Horner is
assaulting in the play. Sir Jaspar is the first of the play’s two husbands
and he is characterised by his fear of being cuckolded. His preference
for business over spending time with his wife is inconvenient because it
necessitates leaving her ‘unguarded’. Wycherley gives several of his
characters distinctive identifying features. In Sir Jaspar’s case this is his
signature giggle (‘Ha, ha, ha!’), which expresses his unending delight that
Horner, the notorious Don Juan whom he would once rather have died
than allow into his wife’s company has now been rendered so harmless
that he can act as her constant companion. So the anxiety-ridden
husband will fall in with Horner’s plans and cuckold himself.
As for Lady Fidget and friends, as Horner explains to the Quack,
‘women of quality’, or upper-class women, are extremely hard to read.
How does a man pierce through the layers of good breeding and tell
which ones really are chaste and which ones ‘love the sport’ (1.1.142)?
Horner calculates that those who, like Lady Fidget, show ‘an aversion’
for his new ‘unmanned’ self are those who are most willing to engage in
an extra-marital dalliance and, like a good libertine, he knows that the
code of honour makes such women care not about their chastity but
about their reputation for chastity: ‘your women of honour, as you call
’em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons, and ’tis
scandal they would avoid, not men’ (1.1.143–5). Social rules do not
destroy natural impulses, just send them underground.
After the Fidgets exit the stage Wycherley introduces us to Horner’s two
friends, Harcourt and Dorilant. This episode works to situate Horner
within a particular society of fashionable upper-class men about town
with their own distinct value system. Harcourt and Dorilant share
Horner’s libertine values in so far as they are clearly accustomed to
having mistresses but take a dim view of love and marriage. They also
attach an enormous importance to the possession of wit.

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Activity
Read the passage below carefully and then try to answer these two
questions:
1 What are Harcourt and Dorilant saying about women?
2 On the basis of these two extracts, what would you say Harcourt and
Dorilant (and Horner for that matter) mean by ‘wit’?
HARCOURT: No, mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too
much they doze you and make you unfit for company, but if used
discreetly you are the fitter for conversation by ’em.
DORILANT: A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the
town; not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away, to taste
the town the better when a man returns.

(1.1.186–91)

Discussion
1 Both characters say more or less the same thing about women: that
as long as they are kept strictly in their place, they can enhance a
man’s life.
2 These two speeches (which, like the play as a whole, are in prose)
exemplify the wit that most distinguishes these rakish young men
from the other male characters. As we saw in Chapter 1 on erotic
poetry, wit is always about intelligence, but on the basis of Harcourt’s
and Dorilant’s speeches, we can be more precise than that. Both
characters are offering analogies in the form of similes. Harcourt
likens mistresses to books and reading: too much makes you a bore,
while just the right amount sharpens your social skills. Dorilant goes
on to make an analogy between a mistress and ‘a little country retreat
near the town’: both offer a brief respite from the town which serves
to make it even more pleasurable when one returns. So, on the basis
of these two speeches I would say that for these characters ‘wit’
means the ability to make connections between apparently dissimilar
things.

Time and again in this play the characters, and especially Horner and
his friends, demonstrate their wit in comparable ways. Here is Horner
trying to explain the reasoning behind his stratagem to the
uncomprehending Quack: ‘Come, come, doctor, the wisest lawyer never

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discovers [reveals] the merits of his cause till the trial. The wealthiest
man conceals his riches, and the cunning gamester his play’ (1.1.40–3).
Dispensing in this case with the ‘like’ or ‘as’ that marks a simile, Horner
identifies his ruse with the kind of prudence and cunning often shown
by men who conceal rather than brag about their strengths. In addition
to such witty analogies, we should mention Horner’s talent for making
pithy, epigram-like statements, for example later in the play when he
says to Lady Fidget: ‘the reputation of impotency is as hardly recovered
again [recovered from] in the world as that of cowardice, dear madam’
(2.1.527–9).
The next character to appear on stage reinforces the importance of wit
in this sophisticated upper-class dramatic world. Sparkish (the ‘ish’
conveying that he wants but fails to be a ‘spark’, or stylish man about
town) is another example of a character type who turns up in numerous
Restoration comedies: the buffoon who thinks he’s a wit. He provides
the essential yardstick against which the true wits are measured. Like
any elite club, this one defines itself by excluding or, in this case, barely
tolerating eager but patently unqualified applicants for membership.
The last character to be introduced in the opening scene is our second
husband, the recently married Pinchwife. He is the only male character
in the play who has not heard about Horner’s loss of manhood. Why
does Wycherley want Pinchwife to see Horner as a still-potent threat? It
is so he can turn his all-consuming, well-nigh psychotic fear of being
made a cuckold into the stuff of comedy. Pinchwife’s visit to Horner’s
lodgings is the occasion for some interesting discussions. The men talk
about the difference between the city and the country, a perennial theme
of Restoration comedy which Wycherley makes the basis of Pinchwife’s
signature saying, ‘I understand the town, sir’. The views of marriage
expressed are fashionably cynical; so Horner asks Pinchwife, ‘Well, Jack,
by thy long absence from the town, the grumness of thy countenance,
and the slovenliness of thy habit, I should give thee joy, should I not, of
marriage?’ (1.1.314–16).
They also talk about women, with Pinchwife expressing the view that
stupid women make by far the best wives: ‘’Tis my maxim, he’s a fool
that marries, but he’s a greater that does not marry a fool. What is wit
in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?’ (1.1.373–5). This
misogynistic view contrasts with Horner’s that ‘wit is more necessary
than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no
handsome woman agreeable without it’ (1.1.370–2). Most of all, though,
knowing full well the extent of his sexual jealousy, the wits torment

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Pinchwife – forcing him to confess that he is married to the comely

woman they saw him with at the theatre the day before.
So what can we conclude about this long opening scene of the play,
which introduces us to all the major characters apart from Margery and
Alithea? How, for example, does it invite us to feel about its libertine
protagonist? As he is visited by a succession of characters, Horner
remains completely in control: acting the role of woman-hater to
persuade Sir Jaspar that he really is a eunuch; politely allowing Sparkish
to make a fool of himself; and torturing Pinchwife with the prospect of
the cuckoldom he dreads. He remains in control too with his friends
Harcourt and Dorilant. We might expect that Horner would tell them
the truth, but he acts the part of ruined Lothario with them as well.
Wycherley alerts us here (quietly, without overt comment) to the human
and social cost of Horner’s libertine career: he lies to his friends just as
he lies to his dupes. Nothing, it seems, certainly no human attachment
or social bond, is allowed to get in the way of his pursuit of unfettered
sexual pleasure. Thus, if society is prudish and repressive, nature is
shown to be anti-social. However, if there is a hint here of a critical
attitude to Horner, we need to remember that by making us privy to
Horner’s plot, Wycherley gives a central place to dramatic irony. Does
our superior knowledge work to make us Horner’s allies, complicit in
his scheming?
If Horner, the advocate of sexual freedom, seems imperfectly socialised,
what of the rest of the characters that appear in the opening scene?
Apart from Harcourt’s and Dorilant’s apparent fondness for Horner, it
is hard to find much evidence of human affection or social cohesiveness
in this upper-class dramatic world. Pinchwife clearly fears and detests
Horner, just as the credulous Sir Jaspar used to; and with Pinchwife this
hostility coexists with a relationship to the hero of some closeness. All
the wits despise Sparkish, and the opening scene leaves us in no doubt
that the play’s marriages are shams. These characters are all imperfectly
social beings, and this explains the prominence of the aside in this play:
unable or unwilling to communicate with one another, the characters
regularly address themselves to us instead.
Yet these curiously anti-social characters are at the same time extremely
sociable. They may distrust and dislike one another but, judging from
the first scene, they can’t stop visiting one another. As we will see, this
is entirely characteristic of the world of The Country Wife, which is full
of busy scenes, crowded with characters. Apart from two episodes with

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Margery (4.2 and 4.4), when she appears alone on stage writing a letter,
there are no scenes in the play featuring a solitary character.
Derek Hughes sees this strange conjunction of mutual antipathy and
gregariousness as an expression of Wycherley’s interest in Hobbes’s
conception of society. For Hobbes, he explains,

society is necessitated specifically by the appetitive, antisocial

savagery of the human race. Humanity creates societies not to
fulfil its nature but to escape it. The paradox of a civilization
created by and inseparable from the intrinsic savagery of its
members recurs throughout the drama of Charles II’s reign. […] It
is a prime postulate of such plays that man is in equal measure
both savage and citizen.
(Hughes, 1996, p. 13)

According to Hughes, the opposition between nature and society that

fuels Horner’s stratagem is central to the play as a whole, which gives
comic shape to a Hobbesian view of human beings as hopelessly
divided between their natural (including their sexual) drives and their
need to establish relationships with others.

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Plot lines and erotic triangles

In our earlier discussion of Wycherley’s use of type-names, we noted
that they imply some kind of satirical aim on the dramatist’s part. The
question is: what is the principal target of Wycherley’s satire? There are
two chief contenders: the hypocrisy represented by Lady Fidget and
company, which is of course the principal vice satirised in Molière’s
Tartuffe, and the jealous husbands whom Horner is intent on
cuckolding. After the opening scene, the play proceeds to set up three
interconnected plot lines, each of which involves an erotic triangle: one
comprising Horner, Pinchwife and Margery, another involving Harcourt,
Sparkish and Alithea, and yet another made up of Horner, Sir Jaspar
and the ‘women of honour’. We are going to examine these plot lines
now, considering some of Wycherley’s techniques of characterisation
along with his staging of particular scenes. As we do this, keep in mind
the question of what the play is satirising.

Horner–Pinchwife–Margery
Margery’s story is essentially that of an innocent, guileless country girl,
quite unpractised at deception, who does exactly what her husband
doesn’t want her to do: learn the ways of the town. In part this
narrative is driven by Margery’s own desires, about which she is artlessly
candid, confessing in Act 2, Scene 1 her fascination with the stylish
London gentry and her attraction to the handsome actors she saw on
her first trip to the theatre. But Pinchwife emerges as the chief culprit
in his wife’s loss of innocence, in the main because his brutal
oppressiveness as a husband is accompanied by an astonishing degree
of incompetence. Thus it is Pinchwife who repeatedly intensifies
Margery’s longing for the pleasures of town life in the very act of
attempting to suppress it. So he tells her: ‘Ay, my dear, you must love
me only, and not be like the naughty town-women, who only hate their
husbands and love every man else; love plays, visits, fine coaches, fine
clothes, fiddles, balls, treats, and so lead a wicked town-life’ (2.1.71–4).
Alithea comments in an aside: ‘The fool has forbid me discovering to
her the pleasures of the town, and he is now setting her agog upon
them himself ’ (2.1.78–9). It is Pinchwife who first tells Margery that
‘one of the lewdest fellows in town’ (2.1.100) – Horner, of course – is
in love with her.

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 Plot lines and erotic triangles

Pinchwife’s paranoia and misogyny are on full display in Acts 2, 3 and

4. When we first see him in Act 2, he is spying on his wife and sister
from behind the door. He will allow Margery to savour what Alithea
calls ‘the innocent liberty of the town’ (2.1.41) only when disguised as
her own younger brother. As we see in Act 3, Scene 2, this turns out to
be a disastrously misconceived stratagem for keeping Horner at bay.
Margery’s male dress, complete with tight breeches, merely advertises
her figure, just as ‘the breeches part’ so beloved of Restoration
dramatists served to advertise the figure of the actress playing the role;
in the case of Margery, this was the actress Elizabeth Boutell (c.1650
−1715). The presence of actresses on the Restoration stage clearly gave
the role of the cross-dressed heroine a very different erotic charge to
that which we find in a play like As You Like It, which you will recall
from Book 1, Chapters 1 and 2, with its boy-actor playing a woman
playing a boy.
At any rate, Horner quickly sees through Margery’s disguise and blithely
suggests to Harcourt and Dorilant that they join forces to ‘torment this
jealous rogue a little’ (3.2.399). There follows a lengthy torture session,
with Horner in full-on seduction mode with ‘this pretty young
gentleman’ (3.2.360) and Pinchwife in an agony of sexual jealousy
conveyed to the audience in a barrage of asides (‘I am upon a rack!’:
3.2.394). When Horner sweeps Margery away for a few moments,
Pinchwife is left running frantically on and off the stage in a fruitless
quest to find her.
This long, crowded and lively scene is set in the New Exchange, an
arcade of fashionable shops, the change of location signalled by a
change of moveable scenery. The stage is decorated with tradesmen’s
signs – ‘the Bull’s Head, the Ram’s Head, and the Stag’s Head’ (3.2.173–
4); all Pinchwife can see are the animals’ horns, ‘emblems of his own
impending cuckoldry’ (Neill, 1988, p. 8). The maniacally jealous
husband literally misreads the signs, and the same thing happens when
Margery returns to the stage ‘with her hat under her arm, full of oranges
and dried fruit’ (stage direction, 3.2.484). For Pinchwife the oranges are
more than pieces of fruit; they are the signs of his own disgrace, as in
yet another aside he says of Horner: ‘You have only squeezed my
orange, I suppose, and given it me again’ (3.2.490–1).
After this traumatic episode, Pinchwife turns nasty. In the first letter-
writing scene, he expresses the stereotypical view of women as
inherently duplicitous and lascivious that was invoked for centuries to
legitimise male dominance: ‘Why should women have more invention in

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love than men? It can only be because they have more desires, more
soliciting passions, more lust, and more of the devil’ (4.2.53–5). He
threatens Margery with violence – ‘Write as I bid you, or I will write
“Whore” with this penknife in your face’ (4.2.84–5) – and locks her in
her room when he goes out, trying to make sure she stays away from
the window by warning her that he has a spy in the street (a falsehood,
he tells us). Yet, once again, the incompetence is as marked as the
hysteria. As Margery puts it in her substitute letter to Horner, ‘and now
[my husband] has taught me to write letters, you shall have longer ones
from me’ (4.2.151–3). The male character who praised the wisdom of
keeping one’s wife ignorant (1.1.373–5) teaches her the joys of literacy,
only to find her writing another letter to Horner in Act 4, Scene 4,
which Margery pretends she is writing on behalf of Alithea. Pinchwife
decides he would ‘rather give him my sister than lend him my wife’
(5.1.59–60), and so ends up delivering Margery, now disguised as
Alithea, straight into the cuckold-maker’s hands. It is Margery who is
the agent of this comic punishment, as she learns how to lie and
manipulate appearances.

Sparkish–Alithea–Harcourt
Wycherley is clearly interested in the subject of male sexual jealousy, as
he sets up an explicit contrast between Pinchwife’s hysterical insecurity
and Sparkish’s apparent insouciance. Sparkish purports to disdain
jealousy, on the grounds that it is incompatible with his status as a wit.
‘Why, d’ye think I’ll seem to be jealous, like a country bumpkin?’
(2.1.225), he asks the horrified Pinchwife in Act 2, Scene 1. Sparkish
has brought Harcourt along to introduce him to Alithea, and he
insistently seeks Harcourt’s approval of his fiancée: ‘Harcourt, how dost
thou like her, faith?’; ‘Tell me, I say, Harcourt, how dost thou like her?’
(2.1.129, 133).
Pinchwife is of course appalled, and accuses Sparkish of acting as ‘a
pander to your own wife’ (2.1.191–2), but as usual he’s got things
wrong. Sparkish wants to use Alithea, and Harcourt’s admiration for
her, as a way of cementing his relationship with the wits (Sedgwick,
1993, pp. 51–2). Indeed, apart from her dowry, this is the only value he
attaches to his betrothed. In Act 3, Scene 2, the New Exchange scene,
he sees Alithea rather as Sir Jaspar sees Lady Fidget: as an obstacle to
his pursuit of his own interests at court. He agrees to stay and spend
time with her solely for Harcourt’s sake. Harcourt’s appreciation of

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Figure 3.3 Maggie Smith as Margery (pen in hand) in The Country Wife,
Chichester Festival Theatre, 1969. Photo: © John Timbers/ArenaPAL

Alithea promises not just to consolidate Sparkish’s membership of the

exclusive and hierarchical club of wits but to give him power over its
other members: ‘I love to be envied’, he tells Pinchwife (3.2.324),
relishing the enhanced status which this desirable piece of female
property will bring him.

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Yet Sparkish, of course, is too dim to be a wit, and too self-satisfied to

realise it. As Dorilant remarks, Sparkish ‘can no more think the men
laugh at him than that women jilt him, his opinion of himself is so
good’ (1.1.211–12). His egoism renders him as incompetent as
Pinchwife at reading signs, as we see when Harcourt begins to court
Alithea before his face and Sparkish interprets his words and actions in
the light most flattering to his own self-esteem. Thus, in Act 2, Scene 1,
when Harcourt declares his opposition to the marriage, Sparkish
interprets his hostility as an expression not of desire for Alithea but of
his fear of losing Sparkish’s company once he marries (2.1.173–5).
Later, in the New Exchange scene, Harcourt takes full advantage of
Sparkish’s blindness by courting Alithea with what Michael Neill
describes as ‘a screen of elaborate semaphore’: ‘He accompanies what
professes to be a self-deprecating encomium of Sparkish’s virtues with a
parade of sign language calculated to draw Sparkish and Alithea into
opposite conclusions about his real intentions; verbal and gestural signs
collide here in a babel of contradictory suggestions’ (Neill, 1988,
pp. 6–7). Like Pinchwife, this fool is far too self-obsessed to be able to
read the signs correctly, even though he has the benefit of a fiancée
who, in her devotion to truth, interprets them for him with unerring
accuracy.
Sparkish’s egoism means that his indifference to jealousy is apparent
rather than real, a performance sustainable only for as long as nothing
threatens his most cherished sense of self. But as soon as Alithea
appears to be damaging rather than consolidating his reputation as ‘a
gentleman of wit and pleasure about the town’ (5.3.33), he angrily
rejects her. In Act 5, when Pinchwife shows him the letter to Horner he
thinks was written by Alithea, Sparkish is quick to believe in her guilt
and shows himself to be as susceptible as Pinchwife to paranoid
woman-hating, reeling off a comical list of misogynist epithets: ‘Nay, I’ll
to her, and call her as many crocodiles, sirens, harpies, and other
heathenish names as a poet would do a mistress who had refused to
hear his suit’ (5.3.18–20). His masculine ego, it turns out, is as hyper-
sensitive to the prospect of ridicule and diminishment as Pinchwife’s.
Older critics, such as Norman Holland, tend to see Alithea (whose
name means ‘truth’) as Wycherley’s ideal, the ‘right way’ he opposes to
the ‘wrong ways’ represented by the play’s other characters (Holland,
1967, pp. 77–9). Yet it is worth stressing how mistaken this
embodiment of truth is shown to be. As Hughes points out, Alithea is
in many ways the opposite of Horner, ‘the champion of social bonds’ as

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opposed to ‘the champion of antisocial freedom’ (Hughes, 1996, p. 41).

She is determined to be loyal to Sparkish out of a sense of honour,
because she has given him her word, despite the fact that she has fallen
in love with Harcourt. Yet as Harcourt and Lucy insist, Alithea’s
commitment to social principle comes at the expense of her personal
happiness. As Lucy asks her, on the morning of the wedding day, ‘But
what a devil is this honour? ’Tis sure a disease in the head, like the
megrim, or falling sickness, that always hurries people away to do
themselves mischief. Men lose their lives by it; women what’s dearer to
’em, their love, the life of life’ (4.1.28–32). In this play, to live inflexibly
by social bonds is a kind of madness, and when Alithea tells a lie in Act
2, Scene 1 in order to protect Harcourt from Sparkish’s brief outburst
of aggression, we have the first indication of her willingness to
compromise principle and acknowledge the claims of passion.

Horner–Sir Jaspar Fidget–Lady Fidget

Of Horner’s two victims, it is Sir Jaspar Fidget who is subjected to the
more memorable humiliation. And though he is less violent than
Pinchwife, Sir Jaspar is unquestionably portrayed as a nasty piece of
work. That signature giggle we noticed in Act 1, Scene 1 resurfaces in
later scenes and signals the intense pleasure he derives from what he
sees as his steady emasculation of Horner, whom he reduces to the
level of a domestic servant and refers to at one point as ‘my eunuch
[…] he, he, he’ (3.2.510). What he doesn’t know is not only that
Horner’s manhood is intact but that Lady Fidget is in on the secret,
which Horner whispers to her at the end of Act 2, Scene 1. She is
suitably impressed:

But, poor gentleman, could you be so generous, so truly a man of

honour, as for the sakes of us women of honour, to cause yourself
to be reported no man? No man! And to suffer yourself the
greatest shame that could fall upon a man, that none might fall
upon us women by your conversation?
(2.1.503–7)

This quotation ends with a double entendre (literally, ‘to hear double’),
as ‘conversation’ refers to both social and sexual intercourse. This final
section of Act 2, Scene 1 abounds in doubles entendres, most of which
come out of the mouth of Sir Jaspar. Sir Jaspar’s doubles entendres are

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entirely unconscious and depend on the presence of dramatic irony:

they work as a comic device only because we know more than Sir
Jaspar does, and so hear more than he hears. So, for example, we pick
up on the sexual subtext to which Sir Jaspar is blissfully deaf when,
speaking of his wife, he assures Horner, ‘you shall have your liberty
with her’ (2.1.484–5). He goes on to tell Dainty and Squeamish proudly
that he has ‘provided an innocent playfellow for you there’ (2.1.494–5),
and finally, with obvious satisfaction, he sets the seal on his new
domestic arrangements: ‘Therefore, now you like him, get you gone to
your business together; go, go, to your business, I say, pleasure, whilst I
go to my pleasure, business’ (2.1.543–5).
Wycherley has much worse in store for this obtuse and self-satisfied
husband. Having eagerly integrated Horner into his household, Sir
Jaspar will be made to stand on stage in Act 4, Scene 3 oblivious to the
fact that his wife and Horner are having sex in the next room. This is
the infamous ‘china scene’. Let’s examine how the scene works.

Activity
Reread Act 4, Scene 3, lines 1–240, thinking about the following
questions:
1 Where is the scene set? How many characters are present on stage?
How does Wycherley use the resources of the Restoration stage?
What do the stage directions indicate about the movement of the
characters around the stage?
2 How does Wycherley use language to create humour in the scene?
3 Are there any props used? To what purpose?

Discussion
1 The scene is set in Horner’s lodgings, and it marks his first sexual
liaison with Lady Fidget. Given its intimate subject matter, it is a
surprisingly crowded and busy scene, involving five different
characters entering and exiting the stage at different times: Horner,
Lady Fidget, Sir Jaspar, Mrs Squeamish and her grandmother, Old
Lady Squeamish. In addition, the Quack is present throughout, hidden
behind a screen and offering comments to the audience on the
scarcely believable events unfolding onstage. Wycherley makes full
use of the two sets of doors on either side of the apron stage, the
most important of which is presented as the door to Horner’s
bedroom. These provide different entry and exit points for the

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characters, creating a vivid sense of Horner’s lodgings and focusing

our attention on what is taking place just offstage.
2 When it comes to Wycherley’s language in this scene, the double
entendre reigns supreme. Sir Jaspar enters to find Lady Fidget
embracing Horner and from this point on the doubles entendres come
thick and fast. Lady Fidget quickly comes up with the story that she
was ‘trying if Master Horner were ticklish’ (4.3.74–5) and suggests
they try tickling him together. To which Sir Jaspar replies, ‘your
ladyship will tickle him better without me’ (4.3.77). Having told her
husband that she was going to the china house, Lady Fidget now
uses that lie as the basis for carrying on the desired sexual dalliance
under Sir Jaspar’s nose. Declaring that Horner ‘knows china very
well’ and has some fine pieces which she is determined to locate, she
exits the stage through the door to Horner’s bedroom and locks
herself in. Horner, still playing the role of the woman-hating eunuch
for Sir Jaspar’s benefit, exits through another door, telling Sir Jaspar
‘but I’ll get into her the back way, and so rifle her for it’ (4.3.116–17).
Calling to his wife through the locked door, Sir Jaspar cries, ‘Wife! My
Lady Fidget! Wife! He is coming into you the back way! […] He’ll
catch you, and use you roughly, and be too strong for you’ (4.3.120–
1, 123). At this point Wycherley has his onstage spectator, the Quack,
remark, ‘This indeed I could not have believed from him, nor any but
my own eyes’ (4.3.125–6). When Mrs Squeamish enters, looking for
‘the odious beast’ Horner, Sir Jaspar tells her that ‘[h]e’s within his
chamber, with my wife; she’s playing the wag with him’ (4.3.134–6);
she rapidly exits ‘at another door’, intent on finding and disturbing the
couple.
3 There is one prop: the roll-wagon or cylindrical china vase which Lady
Fidget is carrying when she re-enters the stage, with Horner in tow,
and exclaims, ‘I have been toiling and moiling for the prettiest piece
of china, my dear’ (4.3.169–70). The phallic shape carries on the
central joke of the scene, as well as the all-important link between
china and sex.

Thus, not only does Wycherley make this foolish husband stand onstage
while his wife is committing adultery next door but, through the use of
double entendre, he has Sir Jaspar unwittingly offer a kind of running
commentary on the liaison as it happens. It would be hard to imagine a
more complete comic humiliation. Like the play’s other fools, Sir Jaspar
is utterly inept at deciphering signs, while Horner and Lady Fidget
demonstrate great improvisational skill in constructing their own private

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Figure 3.4 A roll-wagon vase, 1637, originally from China. Museum of East
Asian Art, Bath. Photo: © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy

language in the scene. Yet Horner’s triumph is not unqualified, for at

this point Mrs Squeamish demands to have some china as well, and
takes some convincing that Horner has ‘none left now’ (4.3.175). As
Mrs Squeamish clamours for some china of her own and Lady Fidget
insists that ‘we women of quality never think we have china enough’
(4.3.183–4), Horner the Lothario does not seem to have enough china
to go around.

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 Plot lines and erotic triangles

So, why china? Some older critics have seen it as a moral statement on
Wycherley’s part, a way of conveying the cold and dehumanised sexual
appetite of Horner and the ‘women of honour’. But is a stern moral
reading appropriate for a scene that is so determined to make the
audience laugh? It’s worth remembering that china was expensive and
much prized in late seventeenth-century England, an index of good
taste and urbanity. In the china scene this symbol of polite society is
made to signify its opposite: the unruly sexual desires that society tries
in vain to repress (Neill, 1988, p. 9).
Its fragility had for long made china an emblem of female chastity: ‘Yet
woman though she be a fine thing must be charily kept from touching,
or she will crack like a China dish, with a little blow’ (Dryden, 1675,
4.1). Lady Fidget’s chastity is indeed ‘cracked’, but the roll-wagon, along
with Horner’s struggle to satisfy the women of quality, seems to invest
male virility rather than female chastity with a china-like fragility.
There is no doubt that the china scene, and much of the play, offended
some members of its original audience, and in his next play, The Plain
Dealer (1676), Wycherley took revenge on them by putting their
opinions in the mouth of the absurdly prudish Olivia, who thinks the
china scene the ‘lewdest, filthiest thing’ in a ‘hideous’, ‘filthy’ play: ‘nay,
I will never forgive the beastly Author his China: he has quite taken
away the reputation of poor China it self ’ (Wycherley, 2000, 2.1.561–4).

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An anatomy of masculinity
It seems clear from this discussion of the play’s three triangular subplots
that its satirical force is aimed chiefly at its desperately inadequate
husbands and husband-to-be. Yet what precisely is it about these fools
that Wycherley is mocking? On one level, they seem to be the
dramatist’s vehicle for satirising contemporary attitudes to women and
exposing the stupidity, anxiety, egoism and self-satisfaction that underlie
them. The play certainly demonstrates how little these characters
actually care about women, whom they regard simply as extensions of
themselves, capable of enhancing or damaging their image in the eyes of
the world. Yet one could argue that the fools are objects of scorn for
quite another reason as well: because they lack the wit, cleverness and
virility to be successful upper-class men. On this level, Wycherley, the
gentleman-playwright, is peddling through his rake-hero a model of
desirable elite masculinity and holding up for ridicule those male
characters who fall lamentably short of it.
The play’s treatment of masculinity has attracted a lot of critical
attention, and it’s not hard to see why. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick provides
one of the best known of such readings. She interprets the play as a
classic dramatisation of what she calls ‘homosocial desire’: the tendency
of heterosexual men to form erotic triangles in which their most intense
and meaningful relationship is not with the woman involved but with
their male rival. The woman has value chiefly as an object of
competition and thus as a conduit through which male bonds are
formed and expressed. Sedgwick argues that The Country Wife, with its
proliferating erotic triangles and obsession with cuckoldry, portrays a
dramatic world in which relationships between men are by far the most
important ones, even if they are rooted not in friendship but in rivalry
and hostility. Our discussion of the play’s three main plot strands makes
it clear that for the play’s three fools, this is indeed the case: their
bonds with men, whether based in illusory friendship or deep-seated
dread, are much more significant than those with women. Yet
Sedgwick’s reading incorporates Horner as well: what he chiefly wants,
in her view, is not to bed lots of women but to cuckold as many men
as he can (Sedgwick, 1993, pp. 21, 49–60).
How plausible is this reading of Horner? The protagonist’s willingness
to sacrifice his reputation for manliness would seem to call Sedgwick’s
homosocial thesis into question; far from wishing to assert his

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dominance over other men, he is happy to be despised by them as long

as he achieves his aim of sexual pleasure. However, by placing the
Pinchwife subplot outside the circle of Horner’s stratagem, Wycherley
allows us to watch the ‘old’ womanising Horner in action, as it were. As
we have seen, when it comes to this particular erotic triangle it seems
clear that the protagonist is driven principally by the desire to torment
the husband rather than to seduce the wife. By disclosing the aggressive
impulses underlying Horner’s role as Lothario in the Pinchwife plot,
does the play suggest that similar motives fuel his covert attack on Sir
Jaspar?
Sedgwick’s reading of the play is in many ways compelling. But there are
other ways to interpret the masculine aggression Wycherley represents;
for example, as an instance of the cut-throat rivalry endemic in a
Hobbesian society. Moreover, Wycherley’s female characters arguably
have more agency than Sedgwick’s homosocial reading can account for.
Lady Fidget drives the action in the china scene as much as if not more
than Horner, and Margery is instrumental in bringing about Pinchwife’s
cuckolding, along with the enormously resourceful Lucy. We could argue
as well that Wycherley’s portrayal of his libertine protagonist is more
complex than Sedgwick allows. It is possible, for example, to see
Horner as in some sense the ally of women. His performance of
misogyny in his role as eunuch parodies the way in which the fools and
the wits talk about women, and though Horner does not necessarily
mean everything he says, he does on occasion appear to challenge the
misogynistic views of Pinchwife and others, as in his discussion in the
opening scene of the merits of wit in women. The china scene presents
Horner and Lady Fidget very much as a double act, and in the banquet
scene in Act 5, Scene 4 he gains admittance to the private realm of ‘the
virtuous gang’ (5.2.88). They drink heavily and Lady Fidget sings the
play’s only song, which asserts the right of married women to enjoy the
pleasures of drink in which their husbands habitually indulge. In this
private space, alone with Horner, the women remove their masks and
‘speak the truth of [their] hearts’ (5.4.18). The mood of plain speaking
gives rise to some fairly distasteful confessions of hypocrisy on the part
of Lady Fidget, but it also produces an interesting conversation between
the pseudo-eunuch and the pretenders to honour in the course of which
they exchange confidences in an atmosphere of sincere mutual interest.

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Chapter 3 The Country Wife (1675) by William Wycherley

Figure 3.5 The banquet scene, with Toby Stephens as Horner and Patricia Hodge as Lady Fidget, in the
2007 production of The Country Wife at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London, directed by Jonathan
Kent. Photo: © Nigel Norrington/ArenaPAL

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 The dénouement

The dénouement
Not that Wycherley in any way sentimentalises Horner. The multiple
comic confusions of the plot eventually bring the dinner party to an end
as all the characters crowd into Horner’s lodgings. Margery has all along
been hiding in his bedroom, and he now finds himself in the position
of having to choose between saving her honour and that of Alithea. In
an aside he remarks, ‘But that’s no new thing with me; for in these
cases I am still on the criminal’s side, against the innocent’ (5.4.206–8).
He covers for his mistress and refuses to clear Alithea, despite
Harcourt’s appeals. There is nothing romantic about this decision. When
Margery bursts onto the stage threatening to reveal all, she is silenced
by the assembled women and packed off back to her loathsome
husband.
Horner triumphs in so far as his stratagem remains intact. But
Wycherley again stresses the human cost. Horner’s treatment of Alithea
creates a space for Harcourt to declare his faith in her innocence and
his determination to marry her. Yet it inevitably reinforces the
hollowness of Horner’s friendships. The libertine thus remains an anti-
social presence, at least to some extent. For he has developed a fairly
strong social bond with ‘the virtuous gang’ who, in the banquet episode,
have agreed to dispense with sexual jealousy and become ‘sister sharers’
in ‘Harry Common’ (5.4.153, 161). Many critics have felt that this
constitutes a fairly devastating closing comment on Horner’s libertine
ambitions: he ends up as a kind of male whore, the sex toy of a group
of sexually voracious women. Yet it is also consistent with the
Hobbesian logic of the play that human society proves inescapable even
for the rakish advocate of untrammelled nature.
As you saw in Book 1, Chapters 1 and 2 on As You Like It, comedies
traditionally end with a sorting out of comic confusion that represents a
restoration of order. In The Country Wife, Wycherley gives us instead
the consolidation of deception and obfuscation as the cracks in the
code of wifely chastity are desperately papered over. The community
carries on, though with little evidence of improved social relations
(Pinchwife draws his sword at least three and perhaps five times) or a
healthier attitude to the human libido. Through Alithea and Harcourt,
Wycherley acknowledges the possibility of a happy marriage. But the
closing dance, which in comedies normally evokes a renewal of social
harmony, is in this play a dance of cuckolds.

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Chapter 3 The Country Wife (1675) by William Wycherley

Independent study
You will find suggestions for independent study on the module
website.

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 References and further reading

References and further reading

Asterisked items are those suggested for further reading; items without
an asterisk are the works cited in this chapter.
*Burke, H.M. (1988) ‘Wycherley’s “tendentious joke”: the discourse of
alterity in The Country Wife’, Eighteenth Century, vol. 39, no. 3,
pp. 227–41.
Dryden, J. (1675) The Mistaken Husband, London [Online]; available
online through the OU Library website.
Holland, N. (1967) The First Modern Comedies, Bloomington, IN,
Indiana University Press.
Hughes, D. (1996) English Drama 1660–1700, Oxford, Clarendon
Press (available online through the OU Library website).
*Katritzky, P. (2014) ‘Historical and literary contexts for the
skimmington: impotence and Samuel Butler’s Hudibras’ in Matthews-
Grieco, S.F. (ed.) Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe, 15th–
17th Century, Farnham, Ashgate, pp. 59–82.
Langhans, E.A. (2000) ‘The theatre’ in Payne Fisk, D. (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press (available online through the OU Library
website).
Neill, M. (1988) ‘Horned beasts and china oranges: reading the signs in
The Country Wife’, Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 3–17.
*Payne, D.C. (1986) ‘Reading the signs in The Country Wife’, Studies in
English Literature 1500–1900, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 403–19.
Payne Fisk, D. (ed.) (2005) Four Restoration Libertine Plays, Oxford,
Oxford University Press (available online through the OU Library
website).
*Rosenthal, L.J. (2008) ‘“All injury’s forgot”: Restoration sex comedy
and national amnesia’, Comparative Drama, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 7–28.
*Sedgwick, E.K. (1984) ‘Sexualism and the citizen of the world:
Wycherley, Sterne, and male homosocial desire’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 11,
no. 2, pp. 226–45.

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Sedgwick, E.K. (1993) Between Men: English Literature and Male

Homosocial Desire, revised edn, New York, Columbia University Press.
*Turner, J.G. (2002) Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London:
Sexuality, Politics and Literary Culture, 1630–1685, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press.
*Weber, H. (1986) The Restoration Rake-Hero: Transformations in Sexual
Understanding in Seventeenth-Century England, Madison, WI, University
of Wisconsin Press.
*Webster, J.W. (2012) ‘In and out of the bed-chamber: staging libertine
desire in Restoration comedy’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies,
vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 77–96.
Wycherley, W. (2000) The Plain Dealer in Womersley, D. (ed.) Restoration
Drama: An Anthology, Oxford, Blackwell.
Wycherley, W. (2014) The Country Wife, ed. J. Ogden, intro. T. Stern
New Mermaids series, London, Methuen Drama.

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Chapter 4 An authorless
literary classic: the Arabian
Nights’ Entertainments
Shafquat Towheed
Contents
Aims 153
Materials you will need 154
Introduction 155
Narrating the Arabian Nights: frame-narrators and
storytellers in the tales 156
Fabricating the Arabian Nights: oral composition,
manuscript circulation, translations and editions 162
What is an author? 172
The Arabian Nights today: reinventing a tradition? 176
Conclusion 180
References 181
Reading 4.1 What Is an Author? 183
 Aims

Aims
This chapter will:
. introduce you to the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (first published
in English between 1705/6 and 1721) through a study of the
introductory tale and two of the most famous stories from the
collection
. examine some of the varied narrative devices found in the text
. explore the complicated translation, publication and circulation
history of the Arabian Nights
. encourage you to think about the role of the author in the
production of a literary work.

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Chapter 4 An authorless literary classic: the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments

Materials you will need

In this chapter you will be referred to the set book:
. Robert L. Mack (ed.) (2009) Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Oxford
World’s Classics series, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
You will need to watch the following films, which you will find on the
module website:
. The Secrets of the Arabian Nights (Parts 1 and 2).
You will need to listen to the following audio recordings, which you will
find on the module website:
. ‘Orientalism and material culture’
. ‘Orientalism and literary texts’.
You will also find the following online resources helpful:
. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) (available via the
OU Library website)
. The UK Reading Experience Database (RED) (available via the OU
Library website).

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 Introduction

Introduction
Before you start, you should read the following parts of the set book:
the introductory tale (pp. 1–17); ‘The Story of Sindbad the Sailor’ (pp.
140–79); and ‘The Story of Aladdin’ (pp. 651–726). You will also want
to read the additional critical material (introduction, chronology and
appendices) in the set book before the end of the week. The
independent study options presented on the module website suggest
further tales for you to read and ask you to engage with a number of
diverse critical approaches to interpreting this work, including
perspectives from book history and literary theory.
There are two important aspects of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
that make it very different from the texts that you have studied so far
in this module. The first is the title, which, more than that of any other
work you have encountered, is an unstable and varied one. A collection
of tales known in Arabic as Alf Layla wa-Layla (literally, ‘the thousand
nights and one night’) has appeared in English under many different
names, including The Arabian Nights; One Thousand and One Nights;
The Thousand and One Arabian Nights; Tales of 1,001 Nights; and the
title of your set book, Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The title is also
inexact: there are far fewer than the 1001 stories expected from the
promise of one story per night, suggested in the narrative. The second
aspect is the issue of translation. There is no approved system for
transcribing Arabic names or places into English, and many of the
names in the stories are themselves translated from other languages
(chiefly Persian) into Arabic. As a result, there are dozens of variant
spellings of the main fictional storyteller: Scheherezade, Scheherazade,
Sheherazade, Shaharazade, Shahrzad, Shéhérazade, Shahrazad, Shihrazad
and so on. I have used the same spelling as that in your set book
(Scheherazade), unless I am quoting from a critic or a different edition
or translation of the text, where they have used another spelling. The
twin issues of the title and the translation of names should immediately
alert you to the fact that, far from being the perfect, unadulterated
expression of an author, all literary works are shaped by the
interventions of editors, translators, printers and publishers.

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Chapter 4 An authorless literary classic: the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments

Narrating the Arabian Nights: frame-

narrators and storytellers in the tales
This is the first work of prose fiction that you will encounter in this
module. In order to understand it fully, you will need to hone skills
appropriate to your study of the genre, especially those of close reading
and the identification of specific narrative devices. This section guides
you through some relevant devices (the terms are emboldened and may
also be found in the glossary) defined by literary critics of the Arabian
Nights (Pinault, 1992; Gerhardt, 1963).
The introductory tale, which is told by an anonymous narrator, offers a
frame narration for the stories that follow by providing the back-story
to the tales and by introducing at its end the main (inset) storyteller,
Scheherazade. By frame narration, I mean a narrative that sits outside
the main sequence of tales in both time and space and provides a
context, just like the frame of a painting. Almost all of the tales that
Scheherazade subsequently recounts are frame narratives, which involve
her setting the scene and providing the context, with one or more
characters (sometimes in turn) then telling the story (all the tales after
the introductory tale are told to Schahriar and Dinarzade by
Scheherazade). Sultan Schahriar and his younger brother Schahzenan,
sons of the Sassanian (Persian) king, are rulers of the Indies and
Tartary, respectively, but both are overwhelmed by domestic discord.
Returning early from a hunting trip, Schahzenan discovers his wife in
the arms of another man inside the palace in Samarkand and murders
both lovers instantly. On a trip to his brother Schahriar’s palace in the
Indies, he is further tormented by witnessing Schahriar’s wife, the
Sultaness (and other palace women), engaged in a sexual orgy with a
number of black slaves in the harem gardens. Afraid that his brother
will not believe him until he has seen the Sultaness’s adultery with his
own eyes, Schahzenan arranges for a fake hunting party to be
announced and asks Shahriar to hide in the guest quarters and witness
what he has already seen. On seeing the orgy, Schahriar enacts a terrible
revenge, strangling the Sultaness and beheading the other women of the
palace.
Repetitive designation is a key narrative device in the introductory
tale, and one used throughout the Arabian Nights. This is where
seemingly unimportant objects, events or scenes are present more than
once, in the first instance in order to foreshadow events that will

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 Narrating the Arabian Nights: frame-narrators and storytellers in the tales

unfold. An excellent example of repetitive designation in the

introductory tale is the scene-setting of Schahzenan’s quarters in
Schahriar’s palace, where the brothers witness the orgy. The insignificant
details about Schahzenan’s guest rooms – the view from the window,
the enclosed garden opposite the harem, the number of buildings, the
procession of women emerging from the harem compound – are all
presented to us in the first account, witnessed by Schahzenan, and then
repeated in the second account, witnessed by both brothers. The first
instance sets the scene and foreshadows what is to come; the second
confirms the expectations of the audience by allowing them the
‘pleasure of recognition at that later moment when the object reappears
and proves significant’ (Pinault, 1992, p. 18). Repetitive designation is a
reward for attentiveness, and evidence of the patterning of the narrative
of the Arabian Nights as a whole.
The empire descends into tyranny and its young women are slaughtered
as Schahriar marries a new wife each night and, in order to prevent any
infidelity, murders her the next morning. The stage is set for the entry
of Schahriar’s Vizier and his two daughters, Scheherazade and
Dinarzade. In a remarkable act of female solidarity and in defiance of
her father’s wishes, Scheherazade offers to marry the Sultan to save her
sister and the rest of the young women of the empire from certain
death. Within the introductory tale is embedded a short ‘tale-within-a-
tale’, or inserted story, ‘The Fable of the Ass, the Ox and the
Labourer’ (Mack, 2009, pp. 11–15), told by the Vizier to his daughter
Scheherazade as a cautionary moral fable; however, far from warning
his daughter off marrying the murderous Sultan, it emboldens her
further. You will find this device of nesting a short (usually moralistic)
story within the main tale many times in the Arabian Nights, as it is
one of the most common examples of the formal patterning of the
narrative, offering a continuity of expectation and experience from the
readers of and listeners to the text. The inserted story, Mia Gerhardt
observes, is ‘of lesser consequence’ than the main tale, and ‘never the
centre of gravity’ (Gerhardt, 1963, p. 388).
The Vizier’s inserted moral fable is also an example of another narrative
device used throughout the Arabian Nights: the time-gaining frame.
This is when a person tells a story in order to delay imminent
punishment, death or danger. The Vizier is trying to buy time to
persuade Scheherazade of the recklessness of her actions, but he does
not succeed in diverting her from her aims. We soon find out that
Scheherazade’s strategy for dealing with Schahriar’s anger is based on

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the very premise of the time-gaining frame – that each story she tells
will captivate the Sultan, assuage his anger and buy her an extra day of
life. Similar to the time-gaining frame is the ransom frame, where a
character in the tale must tell a story to redeem a life held hostage. In
the ransom frame, as Gerhardt notes, ‘the telling of stories has a
paramount function: to redeem a human life’ and the story or stories
told by the condemned person, or others intervening on his or her
behalf, must be good enough to save that life (Gerhardt, 1963, p. 402).
There are many examples of the ransom frame in the first dozen or so
tales, but few after that. Storytelling is invested with tremendous value
throughout the Arabian Nights, for persuasive rhetoric can make the
difference between life and death.
Narrative patterning in the Arabian Nights can be both formal and
thematic. An example of thematic patterning can be found in the
introductory tale: tyrannical male retribution for female infidelity is
enacted on a regular basis, but it does not result in satisfaction, security
or happiness for either Schahriar or Schahzenan. This theme (violence
generates further unhappiness) is reinforced by the supernatural
encounter in the story, when the brothers meet the genie and his
mysterious lady, who threatens them with death if her sexual demands
are not met.
These are some of the main narrative strategies and devices in the
Arabian Nights; let us now use these to interpret the tales in more
detail.

Activity
Reread ‘The Story of Sindbad the Sailor’ (Mack, 2009, pp. 140–79),
paying particular attention to the transitions between the seven voyages.
Which of the narrative devices discussed above are found in the story,
and how are they used? Don’t worry if you can’t find all of these; the idea
is to help you identify and interpret some of the various narrative devices
in the Arabian Nights.

Discussion
I don’t consider my response to be at all comprehensive or exhaustive,
and you are not obliged to agree with me, but here are some of the
things I found:

. Before narrating the first voyage Scheherazade introduces the

historical context for Sindbad’s tales: we are in Baghdad during the

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reign of the fifth Abbasid caliph, Haroun Alraschid (c.763–809). We

experience the voyages through the eyes and ears of Hindbad, a
poor porter, who chances on Sindbad’s house and becomes a proxy
for the audience, a means by which Sindbad can tell his stories.
Unlike some of the other story sequences, Scheherazade does not
intervene during the telling of these tales; Sindbad is the storyteller
and recounts each voyage in full after dinner – apart from the
formulaic transition between each voyage (involving dinner and a
promise to return the next evening), almost the whole narrative is
delivered in the first person by Sindbad (his listeners are captivated
and do not interrupt).
. Inserted stories: none – each voyage is recounted first hand by
Sindbad, but there is some reported conversation.
. Formal patterning: very evident, as each voyage is a self-contained
journey, always starting from the same premise (sailing abroad on
trade), involving at least one disastrous calamity (usually a
shipwreck), a professional setback (the loss of income or trade
goods), Sindbad’s own unerring spirit of enterprise and survival
(inventing stirrups, using eagles to gather diamonds), a near-death
encounter (with cannibals, monsters, giants), and ending with a safe
(and profitable) return. At the end of each journey Sindbad vows to
retire to a life of comfort, only to set sail again on another voyage.
. Thematic patterning: Sindbad’s pleasure on finding fresh water or
edible fruit on the islands where he is shipwrecked is a classic
example of thematic patterning throughout the tales. So too is his
repeated refusal to countenance suicide; even when the situation
appears hopeless, he believes that all his setbacks are part of a
greater divine plan. Another example of thematic patterning is
demonstrated when Hindbad the porter’s aggrieved expostulation
before the telling of the first voyage (p. 141) is balanced by his
contrition at the end of the seventh voyage (p. 178). Hindbad’s moral
voyage is one from resentment at Sindbad’s riches, to admiration of
his forbearance and ability to withstand suffering without complaint. If
there is a moral point to the tales, perhaps it is to be grateful for what
we have and to be generous with our possessions. Despite his
tribulations, Sindbad is a generous and convivial host who enjoys
human company. As you will see in Chapter 6, in this he is very
unlike Gulliver at the end of Gulliver’s Travels.
. Repetitive designation: there is quite a lot of this within each tale, and
sometimes across the tales. For example, the description of the Roc
in the tale of the second voyage, which darkens the sky ‘as if it had
been covered with a thick cloud’ (p. 148), is echoed in the story of the
fifth voyage, when birds appear from the distance like ‘two great

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clouds’ (p. 164). Sindbad knows what these are immediately, and we
are expected to recognise them as well. Similarly, the cannibal giant’s
snoring in the tale of the third voyage (pp. 152–3) provides a
particularly terrifying repetitive designation, for each night’s sleep is
preceded by the consumption of one of Sindbad’s comrades.
. Ransom frames: none that I could identity. However, there is a point
where a ransom frame story might have appeared – this is when
Sindbad is condemned to be buried alive and tries to plead
(unsuccessfully) to be spared (in the tale of the fourth voyage,
p. 161).
. Time-gaining frames: none in these tales.
The thing I found most appealing was the variety of Sindbad’s
adventures, with no two setbacks or chance encounters ever the same,
despite the repeated formal patterning of the voyages. The only two
formulaic elements that never change in the story sequence are the
truncated and uneventful return journeys at the end of each voyage
(always back to Basra and then Baghdad), and the premise of an
evening meal before Sindbad recounts each voyage. Sindbad’s
dinners, with Hindbad as the newest member of the party, continue
after the telling of the seven voyages is complete (p. 179). All of the
narrative devices I have noted here are used throughout the Arabian
Nights; you can repeat this activity on your own with ‘The Story of
Aladdin’ (pp. 651–726).

The Arabian Nights is a narrative tour de force which has been imitated
extensively ever since its first appearance. Scheherazade’s virtuosic,
seemingly haphazardly organised narration holds Schahriar spellbound,
as in the painting by the French artist Paul-Émile Destouches
reproduced here as Figure 4.1, and is designed to invite plot resolution,
while almost always deferring a definitive conclusion.
Many of the narrative devices and strategies found in the Arabian
Nights are not exclusive to it and can be found elsewhere, such as in
the ancient Indian Jataka and Panchatantra tale sequences, Homer’s
Odyssey, Boccaccio’s Decameron, or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
However, the unique combination of a tale sequence related by a female
storyteller weaving together multiple embedded and interlinked
narratives, all while under the threat of death, proved to be as
compelling and captivating to its original readership as it is to us today.
But how did Scheherazade’s magically addictive narrative come to its

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 Narrating the Arabian Nights: frame-narrators and storytellers in the tales

Figure 4.1 Paul-Émile Destouches, Sheherazade, 1824, oil on canvas, 81cm

x 64cm. Musée d’Art Thomas Henry, Cherbourg. Photo: © Musée d’Art
Thomas Henry/Bridgeman Images

readers? What form did the book take, and how did readers
and listeners come to read or hear the tales, both in the east and in
the west?

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Fabricating the Arabian Nights: oral

composition, manuscript circulation,
translations and editions
You have been reading the tales in a printed single-volume paperback
edition with continuously numbered pages, a visible beginning and an
end, and standardised spelling, punctuation and formatting. We have
discussed stories and narrative devices from the set text of the Arabian
Nights as if it were a stable, definitive published work. In fact, nothing
could be further from the truth, for the Arabian Nights did not spring
into the literary consciousness fully formed, like the first edition of a
modern best-selling novel, but rather through centuries of transcription,
editing, translation, composition, manuscript circulation, oral retelling,
and reprinting.
Before the tales were written down, they existed as stories told by
professional storytellers through an entirely oral tradition. A
professional storyteller, known in Arabic as a h akawātī,
̣ would relate
both well-known and newly composed stories in the cafés, inns and
rest-houses of Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus, often adding their own
improvisational flourishes. The last full-time professional h ̣akawātī in
the Arab world, Abu Shady at the Al-Nawfara coffee-shop in Damascus
(see Figure 4.2), continued to offer nightly storytelling sessions until the
outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in March 2011.
The Arabian Nights stories were themselves freely borrowed from other
sources, such as the Persian collection known as the Hazār Afsāneh
(‘thousand stories’); Persian personal and place names are evident
throughout the Arabian Nights. Sometimes the tales were compiled in
handwritten manuscripts. The earliest evidence of stories from the
Arabian Nights existing in manuscript form is found in fragments
dating from the early ninth century (Reynolds, 2006, p. 270); by the
early fourteenth century, manuscript collections were circulating in Syria
and Egypt (Figure 4.3). Extant manuscript collections from this period
consist of between 200 (Egyptian) and 282 (Syrian) nights and only 35
stories, and do not include what are now the most popular tales,
notably those of Sindbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
Despite manuscript circulation and the culture of public storytelling in
the Arabic world, the tales were unknown in Europe until translator and
oriental scholar Antoine Galland (1646–1715) entered the picture.

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Figure 4.2 Abu Shady, h. akawātī at the Al-Nawfara coffee-shop, Damascus,

Syria, 2010. Photo: yeowatzup. Used under the following licence: https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Galland spent 15 years in Constantinople (now Istanbul) as secretary to

the French ambassador (in 1670–75, 1676–77 and 1680–88) and during
this time he travelled extensively in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine,
where he would have come across manuscripts of different story
collections. On his return to France he worked as a translator and
professor of Arabic, but it was in 1704, with the publication of a first
volume titled Les Mille et une nuits: contes arabes, that he achieved almost
instant celebrity. Freely translating the working manuscripts that he had
brought back from his travels, Galland presented himself as the
translator of an existing work of oriental genius. Les Mille et une nuits
took Paris by storm, for the tales appeared at a time when there was a
tremendous fashion for fairy tales (contes des fées) and tales of the
fantastical and the supernatural. More volumes followed, and Galland
was fêted. But his material was limited: his original manuscripts
contained only 35 tales. By the seventh volume of Les Mille et une nuit in
1706, Galland (unlike Scheherazade) had run out of tales, but such was
the public demand that his publishers wanted more. Without his
permission, they issued an eighth volume in 1709, cobbled together
from other manuscripts that Galland had not seen, owned or translated.
Galland was piqued into action and he went on to produce another four
volumes of tales – but as he had no more manuscript material to work

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Figure 4.3 Arabic manuscript used by Antoine Galland for his Les Mille
et une nuits, fourteenth century, Syria. From the Bibliothèque nationale
de France (Galland Collection), Département de manuscrits, Arabe 3609,
ff. 11–12

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on, first he had to find an alternative source. Enter a Syrian Christian

priest, Ḥannā Diyab; originally from Aleppo and now visiting Paris, he
was a noted storyteller and a favourite at Parisian dinner parties. Arabist
scholar Dwight Reynolds notes that the tales told by Ḥannā in Paris
salons ‘form the final four volumes – a full third – of Galland’s Nights’,
including the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, and
‘the most famous motifs, such as the magic lamp and the flying carpet,
neither of which are found in earlier Arabic sources’ (Reynolds, 2006,
p. 279). In the final 12-volume version issued in 1717, two years after
Galland’s death, ‘only nine of the twenty-one stories in Galland’s Nights
are drawn from Arabic manuscripts of Alf layla wa-layla’ (Reynolds,
2006, p. 279). As much of the material in Galland’s Les Mille et une nuits
was concocted in Paris rather than directly translated from a known
manuscript, Ḥannā can justly be considered a collaborator, and Galland
an author as well as a translator. Despite this, Galland and his
publishers consistently presented him as the sole translator of the
stories from Arabic manuscript sources.

Activity
Now watch The Secrets of the Arabian Nights (Part 1), an excerpt from a
BBC documentary first broadcast in 2011. This short film is about the
collection of Galland’s manuscripts held in the Bibliothèque nationale de
France. It is available on the module website.

The first translation of the tales into English appeared, volume by

volume, between 1705/6 and 1721; this anonymous work, often called
the ‘Grub Street’ translation, is the basis for your set text. Grub Street,
in London’s Moorfields district, was at this time populated by
impoverished hack writers and so became a byword for poorly paid
literary work. By the end of the eighteenth century many different
editions, excerpts and printings of the Arabian Nights, both legal and
pirated and all drawn from the Galland text, were circulating in English.

Activity
To get a sense of how British eighteenth-century readers might have first
encountered the Arabian Nights, watch TheSecrets of the Arabian Nights
(Part 2), another extract from the BBC documentary of 2011. In this short

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film, the actor Richard E. Grant interviews Robert L. Mack (the editor of
the set book) about the rise of cheap printed versions and free
adaptations of a number of the tales in English, especially in the
chapbook form. The film is available on the module website.

Watching this film, I am immediately struck by the ways in which

specific story sequences, such as the voyages of Sindbad or the tale of
Aladdin, have been lifted out and given a semi-independent life as
cheap reprints, often with suitably eye-catching illustrations. I am also
surprised to see the range of different literary genres that these printed
works inhabit, from children’s literature and moral fable, to popular
drama and cheap fiction. This strongly indicates that the range of
readers of the Arabian Nights widened as the eighteenth century
progressed: access to the tales was not restricted only to those who
could afford to buy the expensive, multi-volume editions containing
Galland’s full set of stories, it was also available to poorer, newly literate
readers who were able to spend twopence on a chapbook abridgement
of ‘Aladdin’, at a time (1785–1800) when a single copy of The Times
newspaper cost sixpence. Many of these readers were also theatre-goers,
and would have seen tales from the Arabian Nights freely adapted on
the London stage at Drury Lane, or in pantomime performances
around the country. Not all of these printed versions were truthful to
either Galland’s compilation or the first English translation, and they
were already many times removed from the original medieval Arabic
manuscripts.

Activity
This activity is designed to develop your book history skills and help you
start your own investigation of the translation, publication and circulation
history of the Arabian Nights in English.
First, go to the OU Library website and find Eighteenth Century
Collections Online (ECCO). Instructions on how to do this are available
on the module website. Once you are logged on to ECCO, enter ‘Arabian
Nights’ next to ‘Find’ and check ‘Title’ in the list of buttons after ‘Search
in’. Now click on ‘Search’. Your search should return 108 items with
‘Arabian Nights’ somewhere in the title or description of the work,
spanning the period from 1712 to 1799. In the top right-hand box, click
on ‘Sort by’ and select ‘Publication Date Ascending’ to arrange

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everything in chronological order. Some titles are unauthorised reprints of

the anonymously translated Grub Street edition that you are studying as
the set text; some claim to be freshly translated from Galland’s edition;
others are freely adapted excerpts, arrangements, or loosely adapted
versions. Spend a few minutes clicking through the pages that list the
titles.
Then, from the 108 items, select any one work for further investigation.
Click on the title of your chosen work; this takes you to the scanned title-
page and full electronic citation. At this point, you can download or print
the title-pages and the citations, and work offline (you will find a series of
icons allowing you to print, email or download the page and generate a
citation).
Now, look at your chosen title-page and the citation information and see
if you can answer the following questions:
1 Does the title refer directly to the Arabian Nights, or is it implied?
2 Does it claim to be a translation, and, if so, from which language?
3 What is the year and place of publication?
4 Is it a first edition, or a reprint?
5 Is it a single-volume or a multi-volume edition, and is the price
mentioned anywhere on the title-page?
6 Is there a named editor or author on the title-page, and what status
might they have?
Retrieve the relevant information (where possible) and then write a brief
commentary about your chosen edition. Don’t worry if you can’t answer
all of the questions; the activity is designed to make you think about the
diverse material forms of the Arabian Nights in the eighteenth century.

Discussion
From the search results on ECCO, I chose Arabian Nights
Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories, Told by
the Sultaness of the Indies, to Divert the Sultan from the Execution of a
Bloody Vow …: the first of eight volumes published in 1736 in London by
Thomas Longman (item 38). I have reproduced the title-page as
Figure 4.4, and examined the full citation in ECCO. Now let me try to
answer the questions I posed.
1 The edition I chose reproduces the formulaic, descriptive short title by
which the Arabian Nights came to be known in English from the 1705/
6 translation onwards. The long descriptive title summarises the
introductory story. The ‘Containing’ subheading describes the work as
a factual travel narrative. The mixing of genres might be compared to

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Figure 4.4 Title-page of Arabian Nights Entertainments: Consisting of One

Thousand and One Stories, Told by the Sultaness of the Indies, to Divert the
Sultan from the Execution of a Bloody Vow …, eighth edition, volume
1, 1736. Published by Thomas Longman, London. Bodleian Library,
shelfmark: Vet. A4 f. 741, v.1. Photo: The Bodleian Libraries, The University
of Oxford

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that found in the title-pages of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

(1719) or Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), for example.
2 The edition explicitly describes itself as a translation: ‘translated into
French from the Arabian MSS [manuscripts] by M. Galland of the
Royal Academy; and now done into English from the last Paris
Edition’. It claims legitimacy through being a translation of the most
recent Galland Paris edition (itself translated from Arabic).
3 It was published in 1736 in London by Thomas Longman in
Paternoster Row. ‘At the Ship’ refers to the sign of the printer’s firm,
included so that buyers could identify the shop in Paternoster Row
and buy the book there.
4 The 1736 volume is the eighth edition of the Arabian Nights to appear
since the first English translation of 1705/6–21.
5 It is part of an eight-volume set (each volume, incidentally, consisted
of around 140 pages). No price is mentioned, but as this is a multi-
volume edition it would have been expensive.
6 It does not name an author, but is conversant with the principal idea
of authorship, that of authenticity, declaring that the book is a ‘better
Account … than is to be met with in any Author hitherto published’. It
stakes its reputation on its faithfulness to Galland.
My chosen edition illustrates one of the many different formats and
publications of the Arabian Nights as a compilation of tales found
throughout the eighteenth century. It suggests that the Arabian Nights
was frequently reprinted, that eighteenth-century readers liked to mix
different genres in their reading and that, although many readers were
still indifferent as to whether authors were named on books, the idea of
an ‘author’ of a literary work was becoming an important one.

By the end of the eighteenth century some of the tales from the
Arabian Nights had been disseminated so widely as to have become
part of the British popular cultural consciousness. As the name
suggests, Eighteenth Century Collections Online includes only titles
published in the 1700s; the greatest surge in reprints, adaptations,
abridgements and free reinterpretations of the Arabian Nights took
place in the nineteenth century and beyond, especially after the new
translations by Edward Lane (in 1838–42) and Richard Burton (in
1885–88). Countless abridgements, adaptations and cheap reprints for
children during the course of the nineteenth century, many of them
richly illustrated, meant that, like Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe,

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the Arabian Nights migrated both downwards and outwards among the
reading public, with its potential readership encompassing children as
well as adults, poor as well as rich, semi-literate as well as highly
educated. In the twentieth century the Arabian Nights rapidly travelled
into the multimedia world, with dozens of film and television
adaptations, as well as comics, opera, classical music and visual art,
based on the original tales. In the twenty-first century it has inspired
computer games, manga, digital animation and e-commerce, with the
world’s largest online retailer, Alibaba.com, named after the enterprising
schemer in one of the best-known stories in the Arabian Nights. There
are now more versions, adaptations and derivative works based on the
Arabian Nights than at any previous time in the last 300 years.
You can follow up your search of ECCO with post-1800 investigations
of the publication, dissemination and adaptation of the Arabian Nights
by searching other databases or catalogue holdings, such as the British
Library main catalogue or the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s general
catalogue. At the time of writing, a search of the British Library main
catalogue with ‘Arabian Nights’ in the title field returned 825 separate
items (including books, musical scores, articles, audio recordings and
images), 767 of which were published after 1800 – and 165 of these
after 1997 (British Library, n.d.). A similar title search of the
Bibliothèque nationale de France’s general catalogue for the
corresponding term ‘Les mille et une nuits’ returned 1615 items, of
which 1550 first appeared after 1800 (Bibliothèque nationale de France,
n.d.). (The Bibliothèque nationale de France’s ‘Ask a Librarian’ online
service is very appropriately called ‘SINDBAD’.)
What these catalogues indicate is the remarkably rich trail left by the Arabian
Nights in almost every conceivable genre, media and cultural expression:
from high literature to pantomime (see Figure 4.5), from speculative fiction
to opera, and from children’s books to pop art. As the cultural historian
Marina Warner has observed, the tales constituting the Arabian Nights have
a regenerative capacity that defies easy categorisation by genre or measures of
literary value based on ideas of authenticity or individual genius, for the
‘stories themselves are shape-shifters’ (Warner, 2011, p. 7). The Arabian
Nights have been much read, esteemed and imitated through the centuries
despite the lack of a named author or originating genius, unlike any of the
other works that you have encountered so far in this module. That in itself
makes it noteworthy: for if a text can become a literary classic without a
named author, what is the point of an author?

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Figure 4.5 Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom (left),
with her sister Princess Margaret in the pantomime Aladdin at Windsor Castle
during Christmas 1943. © NMPFT/Daily Herald Archive/Science & Society
Picture Library – All rights reserved

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What is an author?
While the significance of the Arabian Nights to the world’s literary
culture is immense, the issue of its authorship remains problematic. The
tales themselves, anchored by Scheherazade’s narrative strategies, can
mutate and shape-shift across time, language and culture, but authors
cannot: they are invariably actual individuals with names, dates of birth
and death, and verifiable identities. Who, if anyone, can be said to be
the author of the Arabian Nights? Is it a matter of ascription, where the
name on the title-page of an editor, translator or adapter is associated
with the work and thereby assumes the role of the author, even though
he or she is not the creator per se of the content? Is it a matter of
assuming a specific function, such as compiling the text and printing it,
or selling and distributing it? Who, for example, is the author of your
set edition of the Arabian Nights: is it the editor, Robert L. Mack? Or
the anonymous translator of the first English Grub Street edition,
published between 1705/6 and 1721? Or Antoine Galland, the
impresario translator, editor and creative genius responsible for much of
the first French publication? Or Ḥannā Diyab, Galland’s trusted Syrian
Christian source and originator of the most famous stories? Or the
scribe (or scribes) who compiled and then copied by hand the earliest
known Arabic manuscript fragments? Or the storytellers in medieval
Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and other cities who performed the stories
nightly, in a sequence of their choosing and with their own personal
variations and flourishes? Or, indeed, the publishing house and imprint
(Oxford University Press) that has made the set book available to you
today? Or is authorship, far from being the unique expression of an
individual creative genius, a category shaped by a range of other forces,
such as the economics of book production, the rise of publishing
houses, the need to enforce copyright protection and the requirement
for writers to earn a living from their labours?
The Arabian Nights appeared in print in English at an interesting
historical period in the definition of the role and function of the author.
On 5 April 1710 Queen Anne (r.1702–14) gave the royal assent to the
first copyright act in the anglophone world: the Act for the
Encouragement of Learning, known as the ‘Statute of Anne’. Until this
act, the copyright of printed matter was signed over to the printer or
publisher (usually for an outright payment), a process organised by the
Stationers’ Company, the official royal chartered guild for publishers and
printers, who enjoyed a monopoly over printing in England until 1695.

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In reality, this meant that prior to the 1710 act copyright for a literary
work was primarily vested in the printer or publisher, not the author.
The Statute of Anne changed this by recognising named authors as the
original owners of any work. The legal recognition of the author as a
rightful owner of literary property would have a huge impact on the
development of literature. By the end of the eighteenth century it was
possible to be a highly commercially and critically successful writer, and
the era of the celebrity writer (with their name attached to their work,
and vice versa) had arrived.

Copyright law
For a brief history of British copyright law and its implications for
authors, take a look at the entry for ‘Copyright/Libel’ in Wiley-
Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of the Novel (Towheed, 2011).

The Statute of Anne provides us with a legal framework for the

recognition of authors’ rights, but how might an author be defined or
identified? At this point it might be worth turning to literary theory, to
understand how the role and function of the author might be theorised.
The best place to start is with the essay ‘What Is an Author?’ by the
French philosopher, historian and literary theorist Michel Foucault
(1926–1984). Originally delivered as a lecture in French on 22
February 1969 and soon afterwards translated into English, Foucault’s
seminal essay outlines the systemic role of the ‘author function’ through
literary history, while also provocatively arguing that the end of the
named author in contemporary culture is at hand.

Activity
Read the extract from Foucault’s ‘What Is an Author?’ (1991), reproduced
as Reading 4.1 at the end of this chapter. Foucault’s essay is complex
and abstract, and sometimes uses difficult language; don’t be put off if
you find this challenging. The reading, like the Arabian Nights that you
are studying, is a translation from French.
Now try to answer the following questions:
1 What does Foucault mean by an ‘author’s name’?
2 How does Foucault define a ‘work’, and, in your understanding, does
the Arabian Nights qualify as a ‘work’?

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3 How does Foucault define the ‘author function’?

4 From your understanding of Foucault’s essay, does the Arabian
Nights need to have an ‘author’ in order to be a literary classic?
Don’t be disheartened if you can’t find answers for all these questions:
the objective is to get you to think about the role of the author in relation
to the literary work.

Discussion
Here are my responses, and you’re not obliged to agree with them.
1 Foucault says that the author’s name is not just a proper name like
any other, but rather performs a function of classification: it ties
together a certain number of texts under a single identity, and
allows us to differentiate these texts from other ones. The author’s
name also establishes a relationship between all the texts that are
attributed to it. In the context of the early translations and publications
of the Arabian Nights, Galland’s name (as editor/translator) takes up
most of this role – they all refer to Galland as the key name tying the
tales together.
2 Foucault rejects the notion that a work is simply the identified output
of an author or authors; he declares that the term ‘work’ is a
problematic one, and that a theory defining it clearly does not exist.
He asks whether an authorless text such as The Thousand and One
Nights constitutes a work, and questions where we draw the line to
define what constitutes an author’s ‘works’.
3 Instead of approaching literature from the perspective of the work or
the author, Foucault defines the ‘author function’ as a process
through which certain discourses are endowed with the privileges of
authorship, while others are denied it. The ‘author function’ has four
salient features. The first involves appropriation or ownership – where
a text is ascribed an author/owner because of strict legal rules.
Foucault sees this as emerging in the eighteenth century. Second,
this works differently in scientific and literary discourses in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – literature becomes accepted
only when ‘endowed with the author function’ (Foucault, 1991,
p. 109); in other words, when it has an authorial name attached to it.
Third, the ‘author function’ does not develop spontaneously, but is
rather the outcome of a complex set of forces (economic, social,
political and aesthetic) that define an author. Fourth, the ‘author
function’ does not refer directly to a real individual, but can give
rise to several subjects that can be occupied by different individuals
or groups.

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4 If we accept Foucault’s argument that the author impedes the free

circulation of the text by limiting and excluding material that carries
his or her name, then the Arabian Nights is clearly advantaged by
not having a named author ascribed to it. The ‘author function’ role for
the Arabian Nights is assumed by legal, economic and publishing
forces, and by people such as translators, editors, scribes and so
on. Foucault does not consider a named author to be essential for a
work to be a literary classic; indeed, he argues that the era of the
named author being an essential prerequisite for literary success is
at an end.

Authorship is a problematic and contested category, at once a means by

which a work might be correctly identified with a specific person and
therefore commercially and critically validated and esteemed, and also a
means by which the free circulation, adaptation and re-composition of
fiction is constrained. Indeed, it is perhaps because of the lack of an
identifiable author that the Arabian Nights has enjoyed such a free
percolation through all types of literary forms in the last three centuries.

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The Arabian Nights today: reinventing a

tradition?

The UK Reading Experience Database

To find out how UK readers through history have responded to the
Arabian Nights, search the UK Reading Experience Database,
1450–1945, which is available online either directly or through the
OU Library website. Go to the ‘Search’ page, scroll down to
‘Advanced Search’ and find ‘Text Being Read’. Enter ‘Arabian
Nights’ as the search term in the ‘Title’ field here, leaving everything
else blank, and then click ‘Submit’ at the bottom.

In European literature from 1704 to the present day, the Arabian

Nights has become an indelible part of the literary landscape in a
number of genres, from science fiction to children’s literature, and from
travel writing to the oriental tale. Galland’s oft-reprinted and much
pirated French ‘translation’ has left a rich imprint on European and
American writers over the last 300 years, and the roll call of great
authors who have been inspired by it is telling: William Beckford,
Voltaire, Jan Potocki, Mary Shelley, Alexander Pushkin, Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred Tennyson, John Ruskin,
Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges,
Italo Calvino, Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter and Stephen King, to
name just a few. Almost all western writers who have been influenced
by the Arabian Nights read the stories in print as translated into French
by Galland, or into English in various hack translations or in the
famous ones of Burton or Lane; almost all of them read the stories in a
literary sense – that is, not as the expression of an oral form, but as a
translation positioned within an established literary tradition. As the
Argentinian novelist, short-story writer and essayist Jorge Luis Borges
noted in his famous essay on the translators of the Arabian Nights, all
versions of the work ‘can only be conceived of in the wake of a
literature. Whatever their blemishes or merits, these characteristic
works pre-suppose a rich (prior) process’ (Borges, 1986, p. 55; emphasis
in original).

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This view of reading the stories as translated into (and engaging with)
an existing literary tradition is one borne out by the evidence offered up
by writers themselves. Voltaire claimed to have read the Arabian Nights
from start to finish no fewer than 14 times, while the mother of the
seven-year-old Walter Scott made him read the stories, together with
speeches from Shakespeare plays, out aloud in the family circle. We
might like to consider the paradox that while the Arabian Nights might
have started life as the manifestation of an orally mediated and
manuscript-circulation culture, it has entered the twenty-first century
comfortably embedded within western literary traditions in print,
especially in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish, and often
included within lists of the great author-identified works of the literary
canon. Historian and novelist Robert Irwin has noted that we are all
‘children of the Nights’, and that asking about its influence ‘is a little
like asking about the influence on western literature of that other great
collection of oriental tales, the Bible’ (Irwin, 2012, p. 237).
But can a tradition become a tyranny? The rise of the popularity of the
tales coincided with the British and French military conquest of the
Middle East and North Africa. Orientalism, the western cultural
fascination with an eastern world which was viewed as essentially
backward, colourful, sexually licentious, irrational, superstitious and
incapable of progress, developed in tandem with Europe’s political and
economic domination over the region.

Activity
For a discussion about orientalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, you should now listen to these audio recordings:

. ‘Orientalism and material culture’

. ‘Orientalism and literary texts’.
These are available on the module website.

To some extent, the Arabian Nights in translation, mediated and

produced in Europe, must be viewed as an ‘orientalist’ text. So
pervasive, disproportionate and suffocating has been the influence of
the Arabian Nights that it has often almost entirely displaced the rest of
Arabic (and Persian) literature from western literary consciousness. The

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Anglo-Syrian cultural historian Rana Kabbani has complained bitterly of

the ‘West’s obsessive familiarity with the Arabian Nights to the exclusion
of the majority of other narratives’, and argues that this ‘ignorant
neglect of the rich traditions of classical and contemporary Arabic
letters is a reflection of the West’s political and cultural contempt for
the Arab world’ (Kabbani, 2004, p. 26), a problem that she claims is
long-standing and deeply ingrained. The incredible popularity of the
Arabian Nights has come at a price: the culture of an entire region and
the literature of the sixth most spoken language in the world, Arabic,
has been seen through the appealingly phantasmagorical filter of magic
lanterns, flying carpets and jinns, and not through science, commerce or
rationalist inquiry.
But how might a twenty-first-century version of this popular classic, at
once too well known through the filters of cinema, pantomime, video
games and children’s literature, and not well known enough as a
foundation text of the literary canons both eastern and western, be
reinterpreted for modern audiences? Perhaps one starting point might
be to consciously acknowledge the fact that there is no single originating
text, that all translators are also implicitly editors and authors, that all of
the extant versions of the Arabian Nights are, in the strictest sense,
‘fabrications’: creative reinterpretations of a loosely organised series of
stories, structured through the inviting premise of Scheherazade’s frame
narration, and Schahriar and Dinarzade’s (and our own) compulsion to
keep listening or reading. While Shakespeare scholars have studied the
composition of successive quarto editions and the First Folio of his
plays, or have determined source material for specific works, any such
approach to the Arabian Nights would be difficult: even the earliest
manuscripts of the Arabic Alf Layla wa-Layla and the Persian Hazār
Afsāneh are simply miscellaneous compilations of tales that had already
been orally composed, transmitted by scribes, and relentlessly
transformed, for centuries.
The term ‘fabrication’ implicitly refutes the notion of authenticity, while
at the same time it explicitly foregrounds the relevance of the stories for
contemporary readers, cultures and contexts. This is the approach taken
by the Lebanese novelist and short-story writer Hanan al-Shaykh in her
creative reinterpretation, One Thousand and One Nights: A New Re-
Imagining (2011). Al-Shaykh retells 19 of the stories (in English rather
than in Arabic) from a particular thematic perspective: that of individual
female agency and the power of the spoken word, against male tyranny
and state-sanctioned violence. Despite being an acclaimed short-story

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writer, al-Shaykh was not initially a child reader of the tales: her first
encounter with the Alf Layla wa-Layla was as a child listening to a
Lebanese radio adaptation of the tales, which then took her to a
children’s edition (undoubtedly a censored and selected abridgement)
and finally to the fuller (unexpurgated) texts in adulthood. The initial
point for her imaginative retelling was also non-textual: the start of a
collaborative project with the theatre director Tim Supple to produce a
new, multilingual stage dramatisation (in Arabic, French and English) of
the One Thousand and One Nights which premiered at the Toronto Festival
of Arts in June 2011 and was then staged at the Edinburgh Festival in
August 2011. Al-Shaykh and Supple’s cross-media-inspired collaboration
produced a stage performance and a play text, and came at a critical
moment in the history of the Middle East and North Africa: the series
of popular uprisings that came to be known as the ‘Arab Spring’
reached Egypt in January 2011, just as Supple had assembled his cast
for the first production. Al-Shaykh and Supple’s partnership eschews the
idea of a definitive version of the Arabian Nights, but rather insists on it
being ‘a living work, with its own unique character, grounded in the
past but entirely open to the present’ (al-Shaykh and Supple, 2011, p.
viii). They make explicit what you might have already recognised as one
of the most important qualities of a literary ‘classic’: that it is open to
reinterpretation and enjoyment by very different readers and listeners
across space and time and through countless generations. The sequence
of tales started by the brilliant Scheherazade to postpone the Sultan’s
deadly promise is as alive and compelling for us today as it was in
tenth-century Baghdad, fourteenth-century Cairo and Damascus, or
eighteenth-century Paris and London.

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Conclusion
This chapter has introduced you to some of the ways in which you can
approach, interrogate and understand this complex and protean work.
Examining three of the stories and some of the narrative devices at
work will provide you with the tools to evaluate the rest of the stories
in a more analytical way, while the ECCO-based activity (looking at
different English editions of the Arabian Nights) will equip you with
book history skills that you can also apply to other works studied in this
module or elsewhere. The extract from Foucault’s essay which you read
as Reading 4.1 should embolden you to consider the role of the author
more widely in the literature that you encounter, while the modern
reinterpretations of the Arabian Nights by al-Shaykh and Supple should
encourage you to think about how the literature of the past is constantly
remade in the present. There is ample opportunity for further discovery;
the independent study options on the module website suggest some of
the ways in which you can continue to engage with the Arabian Nights
on your own.

Independent study
You will find suggestions for independent study on the module
website.

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 References

References
Bibliothèque nationale de France (n.d.) ‘Catalogue général’ [Online].
Available at http://catalogue.bnf.fr/jsp/recherchemots_simple.jsp?
nouvelleRecherche=O&nouveaute=O&host=catalogue (Accessed 9
February 2015.
Borges, J.L. (1986) ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ in Borges, Seven
Nights: Lectures, trans. E. Weinberger, London, Faber & Faber,
pp. 42–57; first published in Spanish in 1980.
British Library (n.d.) ‘Explore the British Library’ [Online]. Available at
http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?
dscnt=1&dstmp=1423483866914&vid=BLVU1&fromLogin=true
(Accessed 9 February 2015).
Foucault, M. (1991) ‘What Is an Author?’ in Rabinow, P. (ed.) The
Foucault Reader : An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, Harmondsworth,
Penguin, pp. 101–20.
Gerhardt, M.I. (1963) The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the
Thousand and One Nights, Leiden, E.J. Brill.
Irwin, R. (2012) The Arabian Nights: A Companion, revised edn,
London, I.B. Tauris.
Kabbani, R. (2004) ‘The Arabian Nights as an orientalist text’ in
Marzolph, U. and van Leeuwen, R. (eds) with Wassouf, H., The Arabian
Nights Encyclopaedia, Santa Barbara, CA, ABC-Clio, pp. 25–9.
Mack, R.L. (ed.) (2009) Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Oxford World’s
Classics series, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Pinault, D. (1992) Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Leiden,
E.J. Brill.
Reynolds, D.F. (2006) ‘A Thousand and One Nights: a history of the text
and its reception’ in Allen, R. and Richards, D.S. (eds) Arabic Literature
in the Post-Classical Period, Cambridge History of Arabic Literature
series, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 270–91; available
online through the OU Library website.
al-Shaykh, H. (2011) One Thousand and One Nights: A New Re-
Imagining, London, Bloomsbury.

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al-Shaykh, H. and Supple, T. (2011) One Thousand and One Nights,

Methuen Drama series, London, Bloomsbury.
Towheed, S. (2011) ‘Copyright/Libel’ in Melville Logan, P. (ed.) The
Encyclopedia of the Novel, vol. 2, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell,
pp. 212–18.
UK Reading Experience Database 1450–1945 (n.d.) [Online]. Available
at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/search.php (Accessed 9
February 2015).
Warner, M. (2011) Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian
Nights, London, Chatto & Windus; Part 4 (‘Oriental masquerades’) is
available online through the OU Library website.

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 Reading 4.1 What Is an Author?

Reading 4.1 What Is an Author?

Source: Foucault, M. ‘What Is an Author?’ in Rabinow, P. (ed.) (1991)
The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp. 101–20. First
translated from the French by J.V. Harari in Harari (ed.) (1980) Textual
Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, London, Methuen,
pp. 141–60. (Note: This essay is the text of a lecture presented to the
Société française de philosophie on 22 February 1969 (Foucault gave a
modified form of the lecture in the United States in 1970). Harari’s
translation has been slightly modified.)
The coming into being of the notion of ‘author’ constitutes the
privileged moment of individualization in the history of ideas,
knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences. Even today, when
we reconstruct the history of a concept, literary genre, or school of
philosophy, such categories seem relatively weak, secondary, and
superimposed scansions in comparison with the solid and fundamental
unit of the author and the work.
I shall not offer here a sociohistorical analysis of the author’s persona.
Certainly it would be worth examining how the author became
individualized in a culture like ours, what status he has been given, at
what moment studies of authenticity and attribution began, in what kind
of system of valorization the author was involved, at what point we
began to recount the lives of authors rather than of heroes, and how
this fundamental category of ‘the-man-and-his-work criticism’ began.
For the moment, however, I want to deal solely with the relationship
between text and author and with the manner in which the text points
to this ‘figure’ that, at least in appearance; is outside it and antecedes it.
[…]
First of all, we can say that today’s writing has freed itself from the
dimension of expression. Referring only to itself; but without being
restricted to the confines of its interiority, writing is identified with its
own unfolded exteriority. This means that it is an interplay of signs
arranged less according to its signified content than according to the
very nature of the signifier. […]
The second theme, writing’s relationship with death, is even more
familiar. This link subverts an old tradition exemplified by the Greek
epic, which was intended to perpetuate the immortality of the hero: if
he was willing to die young, it was so that his life, consecrated and

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magnified by death, might pass into immortality; the narrative then

redeemed this accepted death. In another way, the motivation, as well as
the theme and the pretext of Arabian narratives – such as The Thousand
and One Nights – was also the eluding of death: one spoke, telling stories
into the early morning, in order to forestall death, to postpone the day
of reckoning that would silence the narrator. Scheherazade’s narrative is
an effort, renewed each night, to keep death outside the circle of life.
[…]
None of this is recent; criticism and philosophy took note of the
disappearance – or death – of the author some time ago. But the
consequences of their discovery of it have not been sufficiently
examined, nor has its import been accurately measured. A certain
number of notions that are intended to replace the privileged position
of the author actually seem to preserve that privilege and suppress the
real meaning of his disappearance. […]
The first is the idea of the work [oeuvre]. It is a very familiar thesis that
the task of criticism is not to bring out the work’s relationships with the
author, nor to reconstruct through the text a thought or experience, but
rather to analyze the work through its structure, its architecture, its
intrinsic form, and the play of its internal relationships. At this point,
however, a problem arises: What is a work? What is this curious unity
which we designate as a work? Of what elements is it composed? Is it
not what an author has written? Difficulties appear immediately. If an
individual were not an author, could we say that what he wrote, said,
left behind in his papers, or what has been collected of his remarks,
could be called a ‘work’? […]
Even when an individual has been accepted as an author, we must still
ask whether everything that he wrote, said, or left behind is part of his
work. The problem is both theoretical and technical. When undertaking
the publication of Nietzsche’s works, for example, where should one
stop? Surely everything must be published, but what is ‘everything’?
Everything that Nietzsche himself published, certainly. And what about
the rough drafts for his works? Obviously. The plans for his aphorisms?
Yes. The deleted passages and the notes at the bottom of the page? Yes.
What if, within a workbook filled with aphorisms, one finds a reference,
the notation of a meeting or of an address, or a laundry list: Is it a
work, or not? Why not? And so on, ad infinitum. How can one define a
work amid the millions of traces left by someone after his death? A
theory of the work does not exist, and the empirical task of those who

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naively undertake the editing of works often suffers in the absence of

such a theory.
We could go even further: Does The Thousand and One Nights
constitute a work? […] A multitude of questions arises with regard to
this notion of the work. Consequently, it is not enough to declare that
we should do without the writer (the author) and study the work itself.
The word work and the unity that it designates are probably as
problematic as the status of the author’s individuality. […]
It is not enough, however, to repeat the empty affirmation that the
author has disappeared. […] Instead, we must locate the space left
empty by the author’s disappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and
breaches, and watch for the openings that this disappearance uncovers.
First, we need to clarify briefly the problems arising from the use of the
author’s name. What is an author’s name? How does it function? Far
from offering a solution, I shall only indicate some of the difficulties
that it presents.
The author’s name is a proper name, and therefore it raises the
problems common to all proper names. […] Obviously, one cannot turn
a proper name into a pure and simple reference. It has other than
indicative functions: more than an indication, a gesture, a finger pointed
at someone, it is the equivalent of a description. When one says
‘Aristotle,’ one employs a word that is the equivalent of one, or a series,
of definite descriptions, such as ‘the author of the Analytics,’ ‘the
founder of ontology,’ and so forth. One cannot stop there, however,
because a proper name does not have just one signification. When we
discover that Rimbaud did not write La Chasse spirituelle, we cannot
pretend that the meaning of this proper name, or that of the author,
has been altered. The proper name and the author’s name are situated
between the two poles of description and designation: they must have a
certain link with what they name, but one that is neither entirely in the
mode of designation nor in that of description; it must be a specific link.
However – and it is here that the particular difficulties of the author’s
name arise – the links between the proper name and the individual
named and between the author’s name and what it names are not
isomorphic and do not function in the same way. There are several
differences.
If, for example, Pierre Dupont does not have blue eyes, or was not
born in Paris, or is not a doctor, the name Pierre Dupont will still
always refer to the same person; such things do not modify the link of

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designation. The problems raised by the author’s name are much more
complex, however. If I discover that Shakespeare was not born in the
house that we visit today, this is a modification which, obviously, will
not alter the functioning of the author’s name. But if we proved that
Shakespeare did not write those sonnets which pass for his, that would
constitute a significant change and affect the manner in which the
author’s name functions. If we proved that Shakespeare wrote Bacon’s
Organon by showing that the same author wrote both the works of
Bacon and those of Shakespeare, that would be a third type of change
which would entirely modify the functioning of the author’s name. The
author’s name is not, therefore, just a proper name like the rest.
Many other facts point out the paradoxical singularity of the author’s
name. To say that Pierre Dupont does not exist is not at all the same as
saying that Homer or Hermes Trismegistus did not exist. In the first
case, it means that no one has the name Pierre Dupont; in the second,
it means that several people were mixed together under one name, or
that the true author had none of the traits traditionally ascribed to the
personae of Homer or Hermes.[…]
These differences may result from the fact that an author’s name is not
simply an element in a discourse (capable of being either subject or
object, of being replaced by a pronoun, and the like); it performs a
certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory
function. Such a name permits one to group together a certain number
of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to
others. In addition, it establishes a relationship among the texts. Hermes
Trismegistus did not exist, nor did Hippocrates – in the sense that
Balzac existed – but the fact that several texts have been placed under
the same name indicates that there has been established among them a
relationship of homogeneity, filiation, authentication of some texts by
the use of others, reciprocal explication, or concomitant utilization. The
author’s name serves to characterize a certain mode of being of
discourse: the fact that the discourse has an author’s name, that one can
say ‘this was written by so-and-so’ or ‘so-and-so is its author,’ shows
that this discourse is not ordinary everyday speech that merely comes
and goes, not something that is immediately consumable. On the
contrary, it is a speech that must be received in a certain mode and that,
in a given culture, must receive a certain status.
It would seem that the author’s name, unlike other proper names, does
not pass from the interior of a discourse to the real and exterior
individual who produced it; instead, the name seems always to be

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present, marking off the edges of the text, revealing, or at least

characterizing, its mode of being. The author’s name manifests the
appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the status of this
discourse within a society and a culture. It has no legal status, nor is it
located in the fiction of the work; rather, it is located in the break that
founds a certain discursive construct and its very particular mode of
being. As a result, we could say that in a civilization like our own there
are a certain number of discourses that are endowed with the ‘author
function,’ while others are deprived of it. A private letter may well have
a signer – it does not have an author; a contract may well have a
guarantor – it does not have an author. An anonymous text posted on a
wall probably has a writer – but not an author. The author function is
therefore characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and
functioning of certain discourses within a society.
Let us analyze this ‘author function’ as we have just described it. In our
culture, how does one characterize a discourse containing the author
function? In what way is this discourse different from other discourses?
If we limit our remarks to the author of a book or a text, we can isolate
four different characteristics.
First of all, discourses are objects of appropriation. The form of
ownership from which they spring is of a rather particular type, one
that has been codified for many years. We should note that, historically,
this type of ownership has always been subsequent to what one might
call penal appropriation. Texts, books, and discourses really began to
have authors (other than mythical, ‘sacralized’ and ‘sacralizing’ figures)
to the extent that authors became subject to punishment, that is, to the
extent that discourses could be transgressive. In our culture (and
doubtless in many others), discourse was not originally a product, a
thing, a kind of goods; it was essentially an act – an act placed in the
bipolar field of the sacred and the profane, the licit and the illicit, the
religious and the blasphemous. Historically, it was a gesture fraught with
risks before becoming goods caught up in a circuit of ownership.
Once a system of ownership for texts came into being, once strict rules
concerning author’s rights, author-publisher relations, rights of
reproduction, and related matters were enacted – at the end of the
eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century – the possibility
of transgression attached to the act of writing took on, more and more,
the form of an imperative peculiar to literature. […]

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The author function does not affect all discourses in a universal and
constant way, however. In our civilization, it has not always been the
same types of texts which have required attribution to an author. There
was a time when the texts that we today call ‘literary’ (narratives, stories,
epics, tragedies, comedies) were accepted, put into circulation, and
valorized without any question about the identity of their author, their
anonymity caused no difficulties since their ancientness, whether real or
imagined, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of their status. On the
other hand, those texts we now would call scientific – those dealing
with cosmology and the heavens, medicine and illnesses, natural
sciences and geography – were accepted in the Middle Ages, and
accepted as ‘true,’ only when marked with the name of their author.
[…]
A reversal occurred in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Scientific
discourses began to be received for themselves, in the anonymity of an
established or always redemonstrable truth; their membership in a
systematic ensemble, and not the reference to the individual who
produced them, stood as their guarantee. The author function faded
away, and the inventor’s name served only to christen a theorem,
proposition, particular effect, property, body, group of elements, or
pathological syndrome. By the same token, literary discourses came to
be accepted only when endowed with the author function. We now ask
of each poetic or fictional text: From where does it come, who wrote it,
when, under what circumstances, or beginning with what design? The
meaning ascribed to it and the status or value accorded it depend on
the manner in which we answer these questions. And if a text should be
discovered in a state of anonymity – whether as a consequence of an
accident or the author’s explicit wish – the game becomes one of
rediscovering the author. […] As a result, the author function today
plays an important role in our view of literary works. […]
The third characteristic of this author function is that it does not
develop spontaneously as the attribution of a discourse to an individual.
It is, rather, the result of a complex operation which constructs a
certain rational being that we call ‘author.’ Critics doubtless try to give
this intelligible being a realistic status, by discerning, in the individual, a
‘deep’ motive, a ‘creative’ power, or a ‘design,’ the milieu in which
writing originates. Nevertheless, these aspects of an individual which we
designate as making him an author are only a projection, in more or
less psychologizing terms, of the operations that we force texts to
undergo, the connections that we make, the traits that we establish as

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 Reading 4.1 What Is an Author?

pertinent, the continuities that we recognize, or the exclusions that we

practice. All these operations vary according to periods and types of
discourse. We do not construct a ‘philosophical author’ as we do a
‘poet,’ just as, in the eighteenth century, one did not construct a novelist
as we do today. […]
Modern literary criticism, even when – as is now customary – it is not
concerned with questions of authentication, still defines the author the
same way: the author provides the basis for explaining not only the
presence of certain events in a work, but also their transformations,
distortions, and diverse modifications (through his biography, the
determination of his individual perspective, the analysis of his social
position, and the revelation of his basic design). The author is also the
principle of a certain unity of writing – all differences having to be
resolved, at least in part, by the principles of evolution, maturation, or
influence. The author also serves to neutralize the contradictions that
may emerge in a series of texts: there must be – at a certain level of his
thought or desire, of his consciousness or unconscious – a point where
contradictions are resolved, where incompatible elements are at last tied
together or organized around a fundamental or originating
contradiction. Finally, the author is a particular source of expression
that, in more or less completed forms, is manifested equally well, and
with similar validity, in works, sketches, letters, fragments, and so on.
[…]
No doubt analysis could discover still more characteristic traits of the
author function. I will limit myself to these four, however, because they
seem both the most visible and the most important. They can be
summarized as follows: (1) the author function is linked to the juridical
and institutional system that encompasses, determines, and articulates
the universe of discourses; (2) it does not affect all discourses in the
same way at all times and in all types of civilization; (3) it is not defined
by the spontaneous attribution of a discourse to its producer, but rather
by a series of specific and complex operations; (4) it does not refer
purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise
simultaneously to several selves, to several subjects – positions that can
be occupied by different classes of individuals. […]
§
[…] How can one reduce the great peril, the great danger with which
fiction threatens our world? The answer is: one can reduce it with the
author. The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous

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Chapter 4 An authorless literary classic: the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments

proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not

only with one’s resources and riches, but also with one’s discourses and
their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the
proliferation of meaning. As a result, we must entirely reverse the
traditional idea of the author. We are accustomed, as we have seen
earlier, to saying that the author is the genial creator of a work in which
he deposits, with infinite wealth and generosity, an inexhaustible world
of significations. We are used to thinking that the author is so different
from all other men, and so transcendent with regard to all languages
that, as soon as he speaks, meaning begins to proliferate, to proliferate
indefinitely.
The truth is quite the contrary: the author is not an indefinite source of
significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works;
he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits,
excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free
circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition,
and recomposition of fiction. In fact, if we are accustomed to
presenting the author as a genius, as a perpetual surging of invention, it
is because, in reality, we make him function in exactly the opposite
fashion. One can say that the author is an ideological product, since we
represent him as the opposite of his historically real function. (When a
historically given function is represented in a figure that inverts it, one
has an ideological production.) The author is therefore the ideological
figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the
proliferation of meaning. […]
[S]ince the eighteenth century, the author has played the role of the
regulator of the fictive, a role quite characteristic of our era of industrial
and bourgeois society, of individualism and private property, still, given
the historical modifications that are taking place, it does not seem
necessary that the author function remain constant in form, complexity,
and even in existence. I think that, as our society changes, at the very
moment when it is in the process of changing, the author function will
disappear[.]

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Chapter 5 The worlds of
Gulliver’s Travels
David Johnson
Contents
Aims 195
Materials you will need 196
Introduction 197
The historical contexts of Gulliver’s Travels 200
The paratexts of Gulliver’s Travels 203
The genre of Gulliver’s Travels? 207
Gulliver in Lilliput 210
Gulliver in Brobdingnag 217
Conclusion 225
References 226
Reading 5.1 The Growth of Political Stability in
England 1675–1725 228
Reading 5.2 Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the
Black Act 230
 Aims

Aims
This chapter will:
. introduce Parts I and II of Gulliver’s Travels
. locate Gulliver’s Travels within England’s political and literary culture
. reflect on the representations of women in Gulliver’s Travels
. consider the potency and the limits of Swift’s satire.

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Materials you will need

In this chapter you will be referred to the set book:
. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, edited by Albert J. Rivero (2002)
New York, W.W. Norton & Co.
You will need to listen to the following audio recording, which you will
find on the module website:
. ‘Satire from Swift to the present’.
You will also find the following online resources helpful (all of them are
available online through the OU Library website):
. Early English Books Online (EEBO)
. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO)
. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB).

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 Introduction

Introduction
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver
(henceforth referred to as Gulliver’s Travels, or Gulliver) by Jonathan
Swift (1667–1745) was first published in London on 28 October 1726
by Benjamin Motte. It was an instant success: within six months 20,000
copies were in circulation in London alone. In the centuries since then
it has never been out of print, appealing to the widest audiences, with
readers acclaiming it as a classic literary novel, a popular children’s story,
a devastating political satire, a comic parody of travellers’ tales, and as
proto-science fiction.
In this chapter we shall be focusing on Parts I and II of the book. We
begin with Swift’s own ambitions for Gulliver’s Travels, which he set out
in a letter to his friend Alexander Pope (1688–1744) on 29
September 1725:

[It is] intended for the press when the world shall deserve [it], or
rather when a Printer shall be found brave enough to venture his
Eares […] the chief end I propose to my self in all my labors is to
vex the world rather then divert it, and if I could compass that
designe without hurting my own person or Fortune I would be the
most Indefatigable writer you have ever seen […] I have ever
hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is
towards individualls […] principally I hate and detest that animal
called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so
forth. [T]his is the system upon which I have governed my self
many years (but do not tell) and so I shall go on till I have done
with them[.] I have got Materials Towards a Treatis proving the
falsity of that Definition animal rationale [rational animal]; and to
show it should be only rationis capax [capable of reason]. Upon
this great foundation of Misanthropy … [t]he whole building of
my Travells [Gulliver’s Travels] is erected: And I never will have
peace of mind till all honest men are of my Opinion.
(Swift, 2002, pp. 261–2)

Swift reveals here his dependency on a printer bold enough to risk

publishing Gulliver and hints at his own past experiences of censorship,
as well as his awareness of the politically fractious atmosphere that will
greet the publication of his latest book. He hopes Gulliver is not too

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explicit in its criticisms, thus making him vulnerable to prosecution, but

at the same time he wants it to ‘vex the world’ rather than simply to
provide entertainment. He describes his credo as a hatred of humankind
in general combined with a love for particular individuals, and declares
but a modest belief in people’s capacity for reason. These contradictory
convictions, he claims, underwrite Gulliver’s Travels, but the self-mocking
hope expressed in the final lines (‘I never will have peace of mind till all
honest men are of my Opinion’) introduces uncertainty as to quite how
serious Swift is in this private letter to his fellow satirist.

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 Introduction

Figure 5.1 Charles Jervas, Jonathan Swift, early eighteenth century, oil on
canvas, 76cm x 64cm. Private collection. Photo: © Philip Mould Ltd, London/
Bridgeman Art Library

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The historical contexts of Gulliver’s

Travels
Swift was 58 years old when Gulliver’s Travels was published, with a
chequered career in writing and politics behind him, so it is useful to
start by summarising the key events in his life preceding its publication.
He was born in Dublin in 1667 to English parents. His father died
before his birth and his mother employed an English nurse, who
(apparently) took him to England with her for three years. He returned
to Ireland aged 4 and was educated at Kilkenny School and Trinity
College, Dublin, from where he graduated in 1686. He left Ireland in
1689 during the upheavals accompanying the ‘Glorious Revolution’,
during which the Protestant William of Orange (William III of England;
r.1689–1702) defeated and drove into exile the Catholic James II. In
England, Swift served the diplomat Sir William Temple until 1695,
when he was ordained into the Church of Ireland and returned to a
parish in County Antrim. He returned briefly to Temple’s household,
but in 1699 came back to Ireland before being sent once again in 1704
to London as emissary of the Church of Ireland. From 1710 he worked
closely as pamphleteer and propagandist for Robert Harley, the Tory
senior statesman, and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, the
secretary of state. With the death of Queen Anne in 1714 and the fall
of the Tory government later that year, Swift returned to Ireland to take
up the post of Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. Apart from two
short visits to England, he remained in Ireland until his death in 1745.
(For a more detailed biography of Swift, see his entry in the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography: Probyn, 2004.)
With these biographical details in mind, the next step is to locate the
literary text in its historical context; in the case of Gulliver’s Travels, this
means England in the early eighteenth century. Establishing this context
requires much more, however, than simply establishing the historical
‘background’ to the text; it requires a critical reading of competing
historical accounts of its context. In other words, there is more than
one ‘history’ of England in the early eighteenth century, and our first
task is to grasp certain historiographical disagreements and to develop
our own independent sense of the historical moment: how are we to
characterise its main actors, as well as its most significant economic,
political, social, cultural conflicts?

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 The historical contexts of Gulliver’s Travels

Figure 5.2 Robert Walpole’s stately home, Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Photo: © Holmes Garden Photos/
Alamy

Activity
The dominant political figure in English politics in Swift’s age was Sir
Robert Walpole (1676–1745). The readings at the end of this chapter are
accounts of England and Walpole in the 1720s written by two major
twentieth-century historians: J.H. Plumb (author of Reading 5.1) and E.P.
Thompson (author of Reading 5.2). Read these now and then summarise
the points of agreement and main differences between Plumb’s and
Thompson’s accounts. Which of them do you find the more persuasive?

Discussion
Plumb and Thompson agree on the centrality of patronage in securing
the power base of the political elite in the age of Walpole and Swift. They
also agree that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had a more direct
influence on the political culture of the 1720s than the Puritan Revolution,
or English Civil War, of the 1640s. But these essentials aside, their
respective historical interpretations diverge.
Plumb starts with the central figure of Walpole, crediting him with fusing
the contending factions of aristocracy, high finance, executive
government and the landed gentry into a cohesive ruling elite who were
of ‘tremendous importance for England’s future development’. Beyond
the individual character of Walpole, Plumb’s key word in assessing the
political structure assembled in the early eighteenth century is ‘stability’.
He sees the problems of the eighteenth century from the perspective of
those in power, as he reflects on how for them ‘government,
administration, and decision […] must have seemed a precarious and
fickle world’. Although his comment that patronage in the eighteenth
century was ‘naked and quite unashamed’ suggests criticism, Plumb’s
concluding assessment of both the political age and its leading

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representative is positive: the period after 1715 produced ‘a political

system more secure than England had ever known or was to know’, and,
in Walpole, the nation was fortunate to have ‘a man of uncommon
judgement, political insight, and capacity for decision’.
Thompson, by contrast, reads Walpole and his class in a more critical
light. Walpole, he points out, exploited his position as Paymaster-General
to acquire his great wealth, which vastly exceeded the income of the
majority. His power, like those of his political adversaries, was built on
bribery and nepotism. The defining characteristic of the political system
presided over by Walpole was corruption, and the governing elite
retained power by presenting themselves as the only alternative to civil
war or a Jacobite takeover. The longevity of Walpole’s regime was due to
his hard work, attention to detail, ruthlessness and good luck, but he is
nonetheless judged to be ‘England’s first and least lovely prime minister’.
Thompson’s sympathies lie not with the wealthy governing classes, but
rather with ‘the common man’s poverty’.
To sum up in one sentence: where Plumb sees stability, Thompson sees
corruption. Whether you find Plumb or Thompson more persuasive will
depend on your knowledge of eighteenth-century English history. But it
might well also depend on your views on twenty-first-century British
politics, on whether you yourself value stability above corruption, and on
whether your sympathies lie principally with those engaged with
governing in ‘a precarious and fickle world’, or with those suffering ‘the
common man’s poverty’. More immediately, your reading of Gulliver’s
Travels will require you to reflect on how you connect the literary text, the
historical context and contemporary politics.

What did Swift himself think of Walpole? The tense political

atmosphere restricted his capacity to express his opinions, but in a letter
to Pope in 1725 he declared, ‘I am no more angry with [Walpole] than I
was with the Kite that last week flew away with one of my Chickins and
yet I was pleas’d when one of my Servants shot him two days after’
(Swift, 1999, vol. 4, p. 106). The metaphor of Walpole as bird of prey
suggests that for Swift political rulers are by nature predisposed to
destroy the weak, and that their own ultimate destruction is therefore
nothing to lament. Whether such critical views percolate Gulliver’s
Travels is a question to consider as we read the text.

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 The paratexts of Gulliver’s Travels

The paratexts of Gulliver’s Travels

The cultural theorist Jürgen Habermas describes Swift’s age –
specifically the period between 1680 and 1730 – as the golden age of
coffee-houses. Frequented predominantly by businessmen discussing
trade deals, by the first decade of the eighteenth century the 3000
London coffee-houses also hosted a mix of aristocrats and middle-class
intellectuals. The topics of conversation in the coffee-houses varied
accordingly, so that ‘critical debate ignited by works of literature and art
was soon extended to include economic and political disputes’
(Habermas, 1989 [1962], p. 32). While the exchanges in the coffee-
houses could be governed by appeals to reason (as opposed to feudal
obeisance or religious deference), they could also be fractious and even
seditious. A more recent history sums up the coffee-houses’
contradictory image in the early eighteenth century: ‘this image of the
coffee shop as a paradigm for the emergence of an “enlightened” civil
society always had to struggle against the more critical fears of coffee
house incivility’ (Cowan, 2005, p. 229).
Emerging and flourishing in symbiosis with the coffee-houses were a
number of magazines and periodicals: Daniel Defoe’s Review (1704–13),
Swift’s Examiner (1710–14), Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The
Tatler (1709–11) and The Spectator (1711–12), John Tutchin’s Observator
(1702–12), Nicholas Amhurst’s The Craftsman (1726–52) and Common
Sense: or, the Englishman’s Journal (1737–43), among many others.
These publications invariably took sides in the political and literary
debates of the time, and thus provided a staple diet for conversation in
the coffee-houses. Habermas describes this emergent literary-political
culture as ‘the bourgeois public sphere’, and sees it as a significant
development in checking the political power of the monarch and
parliamentary majorities: ‘[t]he minority that did not get its way in
Parliament could always seek refuge in the public sphere and appeal to
the judgment of the public’ (Habermas, 1989 [1962], p. 63). There was
also a constant and vigorous traffic between the ephemeral periodical
literature and more enduring literary works, with several first published
in the late 1720s: in addition to Gulliver’s Travels in 1726, Pope’s The
Dunciad (1728) and the Beggar’s Opera (1728) by John Gay (1685–1732)
also appeared.
What would the first readers of Gulliver’s Travels in late 1726 have
expected from the book when they held it in their hands? To appreciate

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their impressions of Gulliver’s Travels, we shall consider Motte’s edition

as a material object, and then compare it to two similar
contemporaneous works. The book historian Gérard Genette suggests
that before readers encounter a text, they first encounter what he calls
paratexts – the variety of texts around and within the main text, most
typically covers, images (including ones of the author), title-pages,
prefaces, advertisements, maps, annotations. Paratexts inhabit the space
between readers and texts, influencing in important ways how texts are
interpreted, mediating ‘the text’s presence in the world, its “reception”
and consumption in the form […] of a book’ (Genette, 1997, p. 1).
Swift in his earlier publications had manipulated and parodied these
paratexts, with pseudonyms, mock prefaces, fictitious annotations and
bogus advertisements. In all his publications, the paratexts are therefore
essential keys to establishing the meanings of the texts.
In Motte’s first edition, the most obviously perplexing paratextual detail
is the identity of the author, as there is nothing to connect the hero and
narrator Lemuel Gulliver with Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick’s
Cathedral in Dublin. Swift’s fear of being charged with sedition had led
him to publish Gulliver anonymously. The author was not being
paranoid; another of his recent publications, his fourth Drapier’s Letter
of 1724, had been banned and his publisher, John Harding, jailed. The
main paratext of Gulliver’s Travels is the prefatory ‘The Publisher to the
Reader’, which is attributed to Gulliver’s cousin, Richard Sympson.
Functioning within the fictional world of Gulliver, Sympson summarises
Gulliver’s and his ancestors’ moves within England from Banbury
(Oxfordshire) to Redriff (London) to Newark (Nottinghamshire), and
explains how Gulliver’s papers came into his possession. Vouching for
Gulliver’s absolute reliability as a narrator, Sympson expresses the hope
that his published travels might be ‘a better Entertainment to our young
Noblemen, than the common Scribbles of Politicks and Party’ (Swift,
2002, p. 5). He defends his decision to ‘strike out innumerable Passages
relating to the Winds and Tides’ (even though such changes might irk
Gulliver), because he is determined to ‘fit the Work as much as possible
to the general Capacity of Readers’ (Swift, 2002, p. 6). Sympson’s
address to the reader is very similar to prefaces to other seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century travel narratives, fictional or factual, and it
establishes Gulliver’s authority, which is further consolidated when the
reader turns the page and Gulliver’s first-person narration commences
with his family history in the opening lines of ‘A Voyage to Lilliput’.

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 The paratexts of Gulliver’s Travels

Figure 5.3 Frontispiece in Jonathan Swift, Travels into Several Remote

Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, 1726 (first edition),
London, Benjamin Motte, Photo: © The British Library Board

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

The paratexts added in subsequent eighteenth-century editions of

Gulliver’s Travels continued to embellish the truth-claims of Gulliver’s
narrative. In Motte’s second edition of 1727, Pope’s five ‘Verses on
Gulliver’s Travels’ appear before Sympson’s preface, with each poem
centred on (and some in the voice of) a character in Gulliver: Titty Tit,
Esq. Poet Laureat to His Majesty of Lilliput; Glumdalclitch of
Brobdingnag; the Unhappy Houyhnhnms now in Slavery and Bondage
in England; Mary Gulliver (wife of Lemuel); the King of Brobdingnag
(Swift, 2002, pp. 277–85). In Dublin bookseller George Faulkner’s 1735
edition, which appears in the third volume of his Swift’s Collected
Works, two further paratexts are added: an ‘Advertisement’ disparaging
Motte’s editions and claiming this one as the accurate version, and ‘A
Letter from Capt. Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson’ (Swift, 2002,
pp. 253–7). Quite how these paratexts influence the meaning of the text
of Gulliver is best gauged after reading the whole book, but even at this
preliminary stage it is worth noting the difference in tone between
Pope’s verses and ‘Gulliver’s’ letter to ‘Sympson’. Whereas Pope’s verses
seek to amuse, as in Mary Gulliver’s sexual innuendoes about her
husband’s fondness for his sorrel mare, Gulliver’s denunciations of
Yahoo vice, ‘so deeply rooted in the very Souls of all my Species;
especially the Europeans’ (Swift, 2002, p. 257), express much more bitter
sentiments.

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 The genre of Gulliver’s Travels?

The genre of Gulliver’s Travels?

The expectations of Gulliver’s first readers would also have been
influenced by the genre of writing they assumed Gulliver to be.
However, establishing the genre of Gulliver would not have been
straightforward, as we shall discover in comparing Gulliver’s paratexts
and opening paragraphs with those of two significant antecedents –
William Dampier’s A Voyage around the World (1698) and Daniel
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Inspecting the actual books might be
difficult, but you can get a fair sense of their physical appearances from
online databases: Dampier in Early English Books Online (EEBO) and
Defoe in Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO).
In Gulliver’s letter to Sympson in the 1735 edition, he refers to how
‘some young Gentlemen of either University’ put in order and corrected
the style of the travel accounts of ‘my Cousin Dampier […] in his Book
called, A Voyage round the World’ (Swift, 2002, p. 253). In addition to
appearing here in the writings of the character Gulliver, Dampier’s book
was also listed in Swift’s own personal library. The paratexts of
Dampier’s Voyage include a dedication to Charles Montague, Esq., the
president of the Royal Society, and a preface, both of which express
many of the stock clichés of the travel-writer: declarations of a ‘hearty
Zeal for the promoting of useful knowledge, and of any thing that may
[…] tend to my Countries advantage’; promises to serve the reader by
‘[gratifying] his Curiosity’; and commitments to a plain style, divested
‘of Sea Phrases, to gratify the Land Reader’ (Swift, 2002, p. 293–5).
Sympson’s letter to the reader in Gulliver’s Travels makes substantially
similar claims to Dampier’s, as it vouches for Gulliver’s ‘very plain and
simple’ style and his reputation for telling the truth; promises to provide
knowledge – if not exactly useful, at least superior to ‘the common
Scribbles of Politicks and Party’; and reassures readers that they will not
be bogged down in ‘the minute Descriptions of the Management of the
Ship in Storms, in the Style of Sailors’ (Swift, 2002, pp. 5–6).
Published seven years before Gulliver, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe also
borrowed heavily from the conventions of travel accounts like
Dampier’s. The short preface in the 1719 edition published in London
by W. Taylor reads:

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If ever the Story of any private Man’s Adventures in the World

were worth making Publick, and were acceptable when Publish’d,
the Editor of this Account thinks this will be so.
The Wonders of this Man’s Life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be
found extant; the Life of one Man being scarce capable of a
greater Variety.
The Story is told with Modesty, with Seriousness, and with a
religious Application of Events to the Uses to which wise Men
always apply them (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this
Example, and to justify and honour the Wisdom of Providence in
all the Variety of our Circumstances, let them happen how will.
The Editor believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither
is their [sic] any Appearance of Fiction in it; And however thinks,
because all such Things are disput’d, that the Improvement of it,
as well to the Diversion, as to the Instruction of the Reader, will
be the same; and as such, he thinks, without farther Compliment
to the World, he does them a great Service in the Publication.
(Defoe, 1719, preface)

After these prefatory claims, the novel starts with Crusoe as first-person
narrator: ‘I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good
Family, tho’ not of that Country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen,
who settled first at Hull’ (Defoe, 1719, p. 1). Crusoe’s preface, like
Dampier’s, promises a travel account narrated with modesty and
seriousness, with close adherence to fact, and with the ultimate end of
improving and instructing the reader. Gulliver’s preface pays lip service
to these stock promises, but differs from Crusoe’s preface in a couple of
subtle but significant ways. Sympson makes no great claims for
extraordinary adventures to follow; indeed, if anything, his apology for
cutting the boring seaman-speak hints that the rest of Gulliver’s travel
account is not all that exciting. Further, he makes no attempt to justify
the religious benefits of Gulliver’s tales; his thoroughly secular and
downbeat aim is simply ‘to fit the Work as much as possible to the
general Capacity of Readers’ (Swift, 2002, p. 6).

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 The genre of Gulliver’s Travels?

For modern readers, Dampier’s Voyage is unambiguously a factual travel

account, and Crusoe and Gulliver are unambiguously works of fiction.
But as this brief inspection of their respective paratexts and opening
pages demonstrates, such confident generic distinctions would not have
been obvious to readers in the 1720s.

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Gulliver in Lilliput

Activity
Now read Part I of Gulliver’s Travels. As you read, keep in mind two
questions:

. How does Gulliver present himself to his readers? (This is a question

that will run through your reading of the whole book.)
. How does Gulliver’s account of Lilliput comment on the eighteenth-
century English political landscape?

A month after the publication of Gulliver, Swift was still denying his
authorship of the work. In a letter to his friend Mrs Howard, he
distinguished himself emphatically from Gulliver:

I am not such a prostitute Flatterer as Gulliver; whose chief Study

is to extenuate the Vices, and magnify the Virtues, of Mankind,
and perpetually dins our Ears with the Praises of his Country, in
the midst of Corruptions, and for that Reason alone, hath found
so many readers; and probably will have a Pension, which, I
suppose, was his chief design in writing.
(Swift, 2002, p. 269)

On the basis of reading Part I, what evidence is there for Swift’s

charges against his creation Gulliver? In the opening paragraphs,
Gulliver presents himself as well educated (his studies at Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, were followed by an apprenticeship with an
eminent surgeon and then by further training in ‘Physick’ in Leyden);
widely travelled in the areas of the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Indian
Ocean; unsuccessful as a surgeon-businessman on account of his
honesty (‘my Conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad
Practice among too many of my Brethren’); and widely read in ‘the best
Authors ancient and modern’ (Swift, 2002, p. 16). At this early stage,
Gulliver comes across as a sympathetic and trustworthy narrator.
Once he lands in Lilliput, however, Gulliver makes a number of
observations which suggest that his words should not be taken entirely

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on trust. Once he has been fed by the Lilliputians, he declares, ‘I now

consider’d myself as bound by the Laws of Hospitality to a People who
had treated me with so much Expence and Magnificence’ (Swift, 2002,
p. 20). Given that he had been bound and threatened by his hosts,
such generosity on Gulliver’s part borders on the naive. This is again in
evidence much later in Part I, when Gulliver refuses the Emperor of
Lilliput’s order to lay waste the empire of Blefuscu, insisting, ‘I would
never be an Instrument of bringing a Free and Brave People into
Slavery’ (Swift, 2002, p. 44). When his refusal to comply with these
orders provokes a conspiracy against him hatched by the Emperor and
clique of ministers, he concludes, ‘Of so little weight are the
greatest Services to Princes, when put into the Ballance with a
Refusal to gratify their Passions’ (Swift, 2002, p. 44). In this case,
Gulliver’s generosity seems less naive than a humane opposition
to despotism.
The views of the author Swift (as he reveals himself in his letter to
Mrs Howard) might well coincide with those of his character Gulliver
in the matter of his refusing to destroy all of Blefuscu, but in two final
examples from Part I it is much more likely that Swift is using irony in
order to cast Gulliver as a target of fun, even ridicule. Gulliver’s
elaborate defence of ‘the Reputation of an excellent Lady’ accused of
having an affair with him is memorable both for one glaring silence,
namely that at no point does he mention their different physical sizes
as an obstacle to sexual impropriety, and for his fears about how such
an affair would damage his own status and reputation: ‘I had then the
honour to be a Nardac, which [his accuser] the Treasurer himself is
not, for all the world knows he is only a Clumglum, a title inferiour by
one degree, as that of a Marquiss is to a Duke in England’ (Swift,
2002, p. 55). Gulliver’s extreme deference to authority – even cruel and
arbitrary authority – is also evident in his meek acceptance of his
unjust sentence to be blinded for committing treason: ‘I might easily
with Stones pelt the Metropolis to pieces; but I soon rejected that
Project with Horror, by remembring the Oath I had made to the
Emperor, the Favours I received from him, and the high Title of
Nardac he conferred upon me’ (Swift, 2002, p. 60). What these
four extracts reveal is that Gulliver-as-narrator must be read with
great care, as he is neither a reliable first-person narrator (like
Robinson Crusoe), but nor is he consistently unreliable.
Sometimes he expresses views close to Swift’s own, and can be
trusted (in the passages where he refuses to destroy Blefuscu),

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but on many other occasions his earnest words hint at his foibles and
flaws – naivety, vanity, obsequiousness.
To try to answer how Gulliver’s account of Lilliput might comment on
eighteenth-century England, three sources of information are
immediately available: the footnotes in the set book; a key to Gulliver,
produced shortly after its publication, by the opportunistic publisher
Edmund Curll (available to read on ECCO); and the biographies of key
figures in eighteenth-century England – notably Sir Robert Walpole – in
the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB).
First, the notes in the set book suggest the following parallels between
Lilliput and England, where a fictional character or event can be
identified with someone or something in reality:
. the Emperor of Lilliput with George I
. Flimnap with Walpole
. Reldresal with Lord Carteret/the 1st Earl Stanhope/Lord
Townshend
. Skyresh Bolgolam (or Galbet) with the 2nd Earl of Nottingham
. the Trackemsam Party/High Heels with the Tories or High Church,
and the Slakemsam Party/Low Heels with the Whigs or Low
Church
. Blefuscu with France
. the long-running war between Lilliput and Blefuscu with the War of
the Spanish Succession (1701–13) between England and France
. Big Endians (those who break eggs at the larger end) with Catholics,
and Little Endians (those who break eggs at the smaller end) with
Protestants
. the Big Endians in exile in Blefuscu with the Jacobites in France
. the Empress of Lilliput (after Gulliver urinated on her chambers to
extinguish the fire) with Queen Anne
. the ‘excellent Lady’ accused of having an affair with Gulliver with
Walpole’s wife, Catherine Shorter.
Second, Lemuel Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the
World. Compendiously Methodized, for Publick Benefit; with Observations
and Explanatory Notes Throughout (1726) was published by Edmund
Curll and attributed to one ‘Corolini di Marco’, a gentleman who

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 Gulliver in Lilliput

Figure 5.4 Gulliver Captured by the Lilliputians, engraving, in Jonathan Swift,

Gulliver’s Travels, eighteenth century. Private collection. Photo: Bridgeman
Images

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

‘probably hailed from nearer Bow than Brescia’ (Baines and Rogers,
2007, p. 178). Quite how parasitic on Swift’s Gulliver Curll’s publication
was can be appreciated by noting how very similar the two
frontispieces are (compare Figures 5.3 and 5.5): a hasty book-buyer
could easily have mistaken Curll’s opportunistic volume for Swift’s
original. In the opening address to his readers, Di Marco explains, ‘for
you are to know, that, under the Allegory of a Voyager, Mr. Gulliver
gives us an admirable System of modern Politicks’ (Di Marco, 1726,
pp. 5–6), and further, ‘Mr Gulliver’s prospect of the Country of Lilliput
very much resembles a View of St James’s Park from White-hall, and his
Description of the town looks very like the good city of London’ (Di
Marco, 1726, p. 8). In his discussions of the individual chapters of
Gulliver, Di Marco hints at the targets of Swift’s satire. His commentary
on Chapter 3, for example, claims: ‘I will yet undertake to produce
within the Domains of Great-Britain two performers in every respect
superior to Flimnap and Reldresal’ (Di Marco, 1726, pp. 10–11), and
then tantalises his readers with digressions and long quotations
describing the rope-dancing court ritual, before observing, ‘With how
much glee will a T—d [Townshend] or a W—p—e [Walpole] read this
Pygmaean account of Flimnap or Reldresal’ (Di Marco, 1726, p. 13). Di
Marco is less oblique in explaining the significance of the Lilliputian
Emperor’s system of awarding blue, red and green silken threads ‘as
Prizes for those Persons whom the Emperor hath a mind to
distinguish by a peculiar Mark of his Favour’ (Swift, 2002, p. 32).
Swift’s intent in this passage, according to Di Marco, ‘could be no
other than to ridicule our three most noble Orders of the Garter, the
Thistle and the Bath’ (Di Marco, 1726, p. 16).
Finally, the entry on Walpole in the ODNB provides a wealth of
biographical information (more than you strictly need for your purposes
here), but it does support the argument for identifying Flimnap with
Walpole. The fact that Flimnap is Treasurer resonates with Walpole’s
reputation for financial acumen; Flimnap and Walpole are alike in their
pre-eminence in court intrigues; and the literal contortions performed
by Flimnap in the rope-dancing contest and in leaping and creeping his
way past the Emperor’s stick have their correspondence in Walpole’s
dexterous manoeuvrings in the Hanoverian court. But notwithstanding
these similarities, Flimnap remains a two-dimensional caricature, partly a
satirical version of Walpole, but also partly a generic corrupt courtier.
For contemporary audiences, there were other works of satire which
were more subversive and took greater risks in attacking Walpole. As
the ODNB biographer Stephen Taylor suggests, ‘[t]he political satire of

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 Gulliver in Lilliput

Figure 5.5 Frontispiece in Jonathan Swift, Lemuel Gulliver’s Travels into

Several Remote Nations of the World, a reissue of A Key, Being
Observations and Explanatory Notes, upon the Travels of Lemuel Gulliver,
1726, London, Edmund Curll. Photo: © The British Library Board

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

[Gay’s Beggar’s Opera] was much more pointed and personal than
anything in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels [and] audiences found it
easy to draw parallels between both the highwayman Macheath and the
thief-taker Peachum on the one hand and Walpole on the other’
(Taylor, 2004).

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 Gulliver in Brobdingnag

Gulliver in Brobdingnag
Gulliver’s sudden transition from being a giant among the little people
of Lilliput to being a small figure surrounded by giants in Brobdingnag
prompts him to reflect on philosophical questions about the subjectivity
of perception. Such concerns were current at the time, and extensively
elaborated in the writings of Swift’s friend, the Irish philosopher George
Berkeley (1685–1753). Berkeley published An Essay towards a New
Theory of Vision in 1709, followed a year later by his major
philosophical work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge, and in 1713 by a more accessible exposition of his ideas in
dialogue form in Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.
Anticipating Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity two centuries later,
Berkeley argues that ‘great and small, swift and slow, are allowed to exist
nowhere without the mind; being entirely relative, and changing as the
frame or position of the organs of sense varies’ (Berkeley, 1998 [1710],
p. 106). Gulliver in Part II of his Travels pauses several times to share
his common-sense version of this philosophical insight. Soon after
arriving on the island of Brobdingnag, he reflects: ‘Undoubtedly
Philosophers are in the right when they tell us, that nothing is great or
little otherwise than by Comparison. It might have pleased Fortune to
let the Lilliputians find some Nation, where the People were as
diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me’ (Swift, 2002,
pp. 72–3). In a later passage, once Gulliver has grown accustomed to
his small size compared with his gigantic hosts, he starts to see both
himself and English society through their eyes:

For, after having been accustomed several Months to the Sight and
Converse of this People, and observed every Object upon which I
cast my Eyes to be of proportionable Magnitude, the Horror I had
first conceived from their Bulk and Aspect was so far worn off,
that if I had then beheld a Company of English Lords and Ladies
in their Finery and Birth-day Cloaths, acting their several Parts in
the most courtly manner of Strutting, and Bowing and Prating; to
say the Truth, I should have been strongly tempted to laugh as
much at them as this King and his Grandees did at me.
(Swift, 2002, pp. 89–90)

More than having just changed his sense of perspective with respect to
size, Gulliver has by now internalised the Brobdingnag values that

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

favour modesty above ostentatious display, and from this newly revised
perception both his own vanity and that of his preening countrymen
appear laughable. By the time of his escape, Gulliver has become
thoroughly habituated to the Brobdingnag scale, and finds ordinary
humans Lilliputian. On encountering his sailor-rescuers, he declares, ‘I
was equally confounded at the Sight of so many Pigmies, for such I
took them to be, after having so long accustomed my Eyes to the
monstrous Objects I had left’ (Swift, 2002, p. 120). In terms of both
their size and their morality, humans compare very poorly with the
giants of Brobdingnag, a judgement Gulliver uncompromisingly extends
to himself: ‘they were the most little contemptible Creatures I had ever
beheld [and] I could never endure to look in a Glass after my Eyes had
been accustomed to such prodigious Objects, because the Comparison
gave me so despicable a Conceit of myself ’ (Swift, 2002, p. 123).
The change in perspective from Part I to Part II enables Swift to
represent certain recurring concerns from different angles, and in the
remainder of this chapter we shall consider two: first, how he represents
women in Gulliver’s Travels, and second, having noted how he satirises
corrupt governance in Lilliput, how he imagines its opposite in
Brobdingnag. These concerns are developed substantially in Parts III
and IV of Gulliver, so treat the discussion below as introductory.

Activity
Read Part II of Gulliver’s Travels. Then read the three passages below,
which are extracts from commentaries by the critics Laura Brown, Claude
Rawson and Louise Barnett, respectively. Summarise the main ideas in
these extracts, attending to both their points of agreement and their
differences.

Brobdingnagian gigantism is intimately linked to misogyny.

Indeed, the scenes that emphasize the scale of size in Book II
are all centered around the female figure. The hideous …
corporeality of the Brobdingnagian women is represented first
in the anti-madonna scene that Gulliver witnesses almost upon
his arrival in Brobdingnag – the woman nursing her child […]
[t]he nauseous scent […] almost overwhelms Gulliver in the
apartments of the maids of honour […] And disease […] gives
Gulliver his most horrific fantasy of female corruption in
Brobdingnag […] [T]he hideous corporeality that we have seen
elsewhere in Swift’s texts to be so powerfully and specifically

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 Gulliver in Brobdingnag

associated with the female figure pervade[s] the second book

of his Travels. In Book II […] Gulliver’s disgust with the maids
of honor is balanced by a titillating voyeurism that singles out
the ‘handsomest’ and suggests that he is sexually implicated
in the scene […] The story of the cancerous breast, in this
context, supplies a parallel image of explicit incorporation, in
which Gulliver responds to the sight of female corruption with
the extraordinary and unexpected fantasy of creeping inside
and covering his whole body in the ‘nauseous unwholesome
living carcase’ of the diseased woman. In fact, Gulliver actually
does take the place of the female figure at more than one
prominent point in the Travels.
(Brown in Swift, 2002, pp. 359–61)

[In Gulliver’s Travels there is] no critique of misogyny except

one which imputes the same shortcomings to men as to
women. […] [Laura] Brown’s argument [that ‘Brobdingnagian
gigantism is intimately linked to misogyny’] […] is in fact baldly
(and often immediately) contradicted by Swift’s almost
automatic habit of balancing female instances with an exact
male counterpart. Brown cites the macabre comedy of the
Brobdingnagian ‘Woman with a Cancer in her Breast, swelled
to a monstrous Size, full of Holes’, but omits to quote the
immediately following example of the gross unsavoury ‘Fellow
with a Wen on his Neck, larger than five Woolpacks’. […]
Gulliver’s report to Sympson about imputations of misogyny in
responses to the first edition presents the issue as bound up
with that of an attack on ‘human Nature’: ‘I see myself
accused of reflecting upon great States-Folk; of degrading
human Nature […] and of abusing the Female Sex’. This […]
is not a denial of misogyny, but the diablerie of flaunting
something he knows people accuse him of, neither conceding
nor denying the imputation but needling those who proffer it.
[…] The reference to ‘degrading human Nature’ (or for that
matter attacking highly placed politicians) involves a similar
flaunting, inviting the reader to take it or leave it, but the whole
momentum of the volume enforces the view that the reader is
to be vexed by this project and that ‘abusing the Female Sex’
is subsumed within it and otherwise beside the point.
(Rawson, 2001, pp. 177–9)

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

Nevertheless, in spite of the women he valued, whenever Swift

thought in sweeping terms about humanity, he focused on its
terrible defects. Women, as the acknowledged inferior sex,
were more culpable and thus more likely to become a general
gender stereotype in his texts. […] Swift’s detailed descriptions
[of women characters] are at bottom superficial – their
garments, their repulsive bodies, the messes that they leave
behind. Throughout his writings and with characteristic
passion, Swift expresses the desire to contain women in
circumscribed space, both physical and nonphysical. […] The
violation of boundaries considered impermeable explains a
great deal of Swift’s negativism toward women, but not all. […]
To characterize Swift as a ‘notorious misogynist,’ as so many
have done, requires a disregard of all that is not single-
mindedly and sweepingly negative in his treatment of women.
Swift may more accurately be described as a writer whose
representations of women sometimes cross the line into
misogyny by promulgating the idea that women are evil in
some natural and inexplicable way as a sex and a gender
rather than as individuals. […] In eluding understanding, that
is, male understanding, women become susceptible in Swiftian
texts to being redefined as other than human, as worse than
monkeys or as animals in skirts. […] When Swift crosses the
line, he represents women as vehicles of mental confusion,
frightening sexuality, disgusting physicality, and disease. […]
Much of Swift’s criticism of women is not sex-specific in reality,
but it functions as all stereotypes of alterity do, as a way of
shifting the feared and the undesirable from self to other.
(Barnett, 2007, pp. 172–4)

Discussion
All three critics agree that there are passages in Gulliver’s Travels which
represent women in a misogynistic fashion. Brown writes of the ‘hideous’
‘corporeality’ of Swift’s representations of the female figure; Rawson
notes that Swift himself does not deny the charge of misogyny in his
letter to Sympson in the 1735 edition (see Swift, 2002, p. 255); and
Barnett argues that Swift’s ‘representations of women sometimes cross
the line into misogyny’.
They disagree, however, over quite how to interpret and what weight to
attribute to these misogynistic representations of women in Gulliver. For

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 Gulliver in Brobdingnag

Brown, there are numerous examples of misogynistic representations of

the gigantic women of Brobdingnag: the anti-madonna scene (Swift,
2002, pp. 76–7); Gulliver’s encounter with the woman with cancer in her
breast (Swift, 2002, pp. 93–4); and his visits to the maids of honour
(Swift, 2002, p. 98–9). In addition, Brown argues that Gulliver himself
often ‘take[s] the place of the female figure’. Taking the evidence of these
examples together, Brown concludes that these misogynistic descriptions
of women characters are at the centre of Swift’s vision in Gulliver.
(Brown’s arguments about Swift’s representation of women tie in closely
with her arguments about his representations of the Yahoos in Part IV.
We return to Swift’s representation of the Yahoos in detail in the next
chapter.)
Rawson recognises the presence of extensive misogynistic
representations of women in Gulliver, but makes three qualifications.
First, he argues that every negative description of a woman character is
immediately coupled with an equally repellent or unflattering description
of a male character. For example, the description of the woman with the
cancerous breast is followed in the next lines with the description of the
‘Fellow with a Wen in his Neck’ (Swift, 2002, p. 94). Second, Swift’s
hostile representations of women form but one element in his hostile and
highly critical representation of human nature in general (including that of
highly placed politicians). And third, Rawson believes Swift’s misogyny is
flaunted as a self-conscious provocation to his readers.
Barnett argues that Swift’s focus on humankind’s terrible defects is
accentuated when he describes women characters. His descriptions of
women are concentrated on superficialities like their clothes and bodies.
They express especially his desire to contain women within
‘circumscribed’ spaces, both physical and non-physical, and their
transgression of (male-defined) boundaries lies at the root of Swift’s
antipathy to women. For Barnett, Swift cannot be dismissed as
consistently misogynistic, as due regard must be given to his writings
that are not sweepingly negative about women. Rather, it is more
accurate to argue that Swift’s descriptions of women on occasions ‘cross
the line into misogyny’. At his most misogynistic, Swift represents women
as evil in some ‘natural’ way; as beyond rational (male) understanding;
as ‘other than human’; and as vehicles of ‘mental confusion, frightening
sexuality, disgusting physicality, and disease’.

Which of these critics’ ideas about Swift’s women characters do you find
the most persuasive? Your own view will be determined in part by how

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

you interpret key passages in the Brobdingnag section of Gulliver’s

Travels. You should, however, treat your opinions as provisional, and
delay judgement until you have completed the whole book, as there are
subtle but significant shifts through the four parts of Gulliver.
A striking instance of such shifts is the contrast between Gulliver’s
encounter with the Emperor of Lilliput and his exchanges with the King
of Brobdingnag. You will recall that Gulliver comes across rather well
when he refuses the Lilliputian Emperor’s order to lay waste Blefuscu,
but he emerges less well in his disagreements with the King of
Brobdingnag. In Part II, Chapter 3 the King’s critical comments about
England wound Gulliver’s national pride, as he colours ‘with
Indignation to hear our noble Country, the Mistress of Arts and Arms,
the Scourge of France, the Arbitress of Europe, the Seat of Virtue, Piety,
Honour and Truth, the Pride and Envy of the World, so
contemptuously treated’ (Swift, 2002, p. 89). Gulliver adapts his
perspective in order to accommodate the King’s criticisms, but a few
chapters later he provides a much lengthier account of English history
and politics, interrupted along the way by the King’s astute questions,
like, ‘Whether, a stranger with a strong Purse might not influence the
vulgar Voters to chuse him before their own Landlord’ (Swift, 2002,
p. 108). The King’s judgement on Gulliver’s sympathetic account of his
homeland and its people is devastating: ‘I cannot but conclude the Bulk
of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin
that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth’
(Swift, 2002, p. 111). The contrast between Gulliver’s national hubris
and the King’s benevolent wisdom is then clinched with Gulliver’s
blundering offer to make gunpowder for the King. The King’s horror at
the devastation threatened by gunpowder – ‘he would rather lose half
his Kingdom than be privy to such a Secret’ – is greeted
condescendingly by Gulliver as ‘[a] Strange Effect of narrow Principles
and short Views’ (Swift, 2002, p. 113). The King and his people’s
rejection of gunpowder, according to Gulliver, is a ‘Defect among them
to have risen from their Ignorance, they not having hitherto reduced
Politicks into a Science, as the more acute Wits of Europe have done’
(Swift, 2002, p. 113).
The image of the diminutive and war-mongering Englishman Gulliver’s
confrontation with the gigantic and pacific foreign King was adapted
during the Napoleonic Wars to serve a quite different satirical purpose.
James Gillray in 1803 produced a cartoon of Gulliver as Napoleon and
the King of Brobdingnag as King George III (r.1760–1820),

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 Gulliver in Brobdingnag

reproducing words from Gulliver in the King’s speech-bubble (see

Figure 5.6). In Gillray’s cartoon Swift’s satire is reversed, with Gillray’s
target the foreign (French) leader and his exemplary ruler the
Hanoverian (English) monarch. Gillray’s appropriation of Gulliver in the
service of a quite different political agenda raises interesting questions
not only about the capacity of Swift’s satire to retain its critical edge or
focus when travelling beyond 1720s Britain, but also about the ability of
satire as a genre more generally to transcend its immediate topicality.

Activity
In order to consider and reflect on conflicting arguments about Swift’s
satire and its influence, listen now to the audio recording relating to this
chapter and the next, ‘Satire from Swift to the present’.

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

Figure 5.6 James Gillray, The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver, 1803, hand-
coloured etching. Published by Hannah Humphrey. New College, Oxford.
Photo: © Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford/
Bridgeman Education

224
 Conclusion

Conclusion
In contrasting Gulliver with the Lilliputian Emperor to Gulliver with
the King of Brobdingnag, it is clear that on the former island his is the
sympathetic voice, whereas on the second island the King is the
sympathetic character. What remains constant in Parts I and II is the
oblique satire on England’s political system, although different satirical
strategies are used, and different targets attacked: in Lilliput, Gulliver is
the reasonable moral reference point and the corrupt and bloodthirsty
objects of criticism are Flimnap/Walpole and the Emperor/George I,
whereas in Part II Gulliver becomes the object of criticism,
exemplifying an unthinking and militaristic English nationalism, and the
King functions as a kind of ideal wise sovereign.

Independent study
You will find suggestions for independent study (relating to both
Chapter 5 and Chapter 6) on the module website.

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

References
Baines, P. and Rogers, P. (2007) Edmund Curll, Bookseller, Oxford,
Clarendon Press.
Barnett, L.K. (2007) Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women, New
York, Oxford University Press.
Berkeley, George (1998 [1710]) A Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge, ed. J. Dancy, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Cowan, B. (2005) The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British
Coffeehouse, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
Defoe, D. (1719) The Life and Strange Sur prizing Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe, of York, Mariner, London, W. Taylor.
Di Marco, C. (1726) A Key, Being Observations and Explanatory Notes
upon the Travels of Lemuel Gulliver by Signor Corolini, a Noble Venetian
Now Residing in London, London, Edmund Curll.
Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: Thresholds of Inter pretation, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press.
Habermas, J. (1989 [1962]) The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere, trans. T. Burger, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Plumb, J.H. (1967) The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675–
1725, London and Basingstoke, Macmillan.
Probyn, C. (2004) ‘Swift, Jonathan’ in Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press; available online through the
OU Library website at http://www.oxforddnb.com.libezproxy.open.ac.
uk/view/article/26833?docPos=1 (Accessed 3 January 2015).
Rawson, C. (2001) God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the
European Imagination, 1492–1945, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Swift, J. (2002 [1726]) Gulliver’s Travels, ed. A.J. Ribeiro, New York, W.
W. Norton & Co.
Swift, J. (1999) The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., 5 volumes,
ed. D. Woolley, Frankfurt, Peter Lang.

226
 References

Taylor, S. (2004) ‘Walpole, Robert, first earl of Orford (1676–1745)’,

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University
Press; available online through the OU Library website at http://www.
oxforddnb.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/view/article/28601?docPos=2
(Accessed 4 January 2015).
Thompson, E.P. (1977 [1975]) Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the
Black Act, Harmondsworth, Peregrine.

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

Reading 5.1 The Growth of Political

Stability in England 1675–1725
Source: Plumb, J.H. (1967) The Growth of Political Stability in England
1675–1725, London and Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, pp. 187–9
[T]he [Whig] party fused the interests of aristocracy, high finance, and
executive government, a process extended by [Sir Robert] Walpole to
embrace the bulk of the landed gentry. By doing so he put the
noblemen and gentlemen back at the heart of English political society.
This was to be of tremendous importance for England’s future
development. The seventeenth century had witnessed the beginnings
and partial success of a bourgeois revolution that came near to changing
the institutions of government. In this, however, it never succeeded.
The Revolution of 1688 and all that followed were retrogressive from
the point of view of the emergence of the middle class into political
power. Socially and economically they continued to thrive, but not
politically. The power of the land and of commerce fused to create a
paradise for gentlemen, for the aristocracy of birth; it thus became
much easier for England to adopt an imperial authority, to rule alien
peoples, and to train its ruling class for that purpose, rather than to
adjust its institutions and its social system to the needs of an industrial
society […] What Sir Robert Walpole and the Whigs did was to make
certain that political and social authority should devolve by inheritance
[…] And power by inheritance must mean a world run by patronage
[…] But patronage has been, and is, an essential feature of the British
structure of power, no matter how varied the costume it may wear. In
the eighteenth century it scarcely bothered to wear a fig-leaf. It was
naked and quite unashamed. […] It was patronage that cemented the
political system, held it together, and made it an almost impregnable
citadel, impervious to defeat, indifferent to social change. […] After
1715, power could not be achieved through party and so the rage of
party gave way to the pursuit of place. This pursuit, of course, was
never simple, never easy; it was full of pitfalls, full of the unexpected,
created both by temperament and by events. It was conducted in a
world of government, administration, and decision. To those who lived
within it, and fought for the highest office, it must have seemed a

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 Reading 5.1 The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725

precarious and fickle world; to us who can view it in relation to what

went before and what came after, however, it possesses an almost
monolithic stability, a political system more secure than England had
ever known or was to know. And that was the work not only of
[general economic, social and political] factors, but also of a man of
uncommon judgement, political insight, and capacity for decision – Sir
Robert Walpole.

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Chapter 5 The worlds of Gulliver’s Travels

Reading 5.2 Whigs and Hunters: The

Origin of the Black Act
Source: Thompson, E.P. (2013 [1975]) Whigs and Hunters: The Origin
of the Black Act, London, Breviary Stuff Publications, p. 153
Political life in England in the 1720s had something of the sick quality
of a ‘banana republic’. This is a recognized phase of commercial
capitalism when predators fight for the spoils of power and have not
yet agreed to submit to rational or bureaucratic rules and forms. Each
politician, by nepotism, interest and purchase, gathered around him a
following of loyal dependants. The aim was to reward them by giving
them some post in which they could milk some part of the public
revenue: army finances, the Church, excise. Every post carried its
perquisites, percentages, commissions, receipt of bribes, its hidden
spoils. The plum jobs of political office – notably that of Paymaster-
General, upon the tenure of which the Earl of Ranelagh, the Duke of
Chandos and Sir Robert Walpole all founded their wealth– were worth
fortunes. The great commercial interests (whether in merchanting or
finance) depended also upon political and military favours, and these
could be paid for at a high rate. The great gentry, speculators and
politicians were men of huge wealth, whose income towered like the
Andes above the rain-forests of the common man’s poverty. Status and
influence demanded ostentatious display, the visible evidence of wealth
and power: Blenheim, Caversham, Cannons, Stowe, Houghton. Deer-
parks were part of this display.
The Whigs, in the 1720s, were a curious junta of political speculators
and speculative politicians, stock-jobbers, officers grown fat on [the
Duke of] Marlborough’s wars, time-serving dependants in the law and
the Church, and great landed magnates. They were the inheritors, not of
the Puritan Revolution, but of the canny and controlled Settlement
of 1688. The libertarian rhetoric passed down from their forefathers
they wore awkwardly, like fancy-dress. They derived what political
strength they had in the country from the fact that they offered
themselves as the only alternative to civil war or to a Stuart and
Catholic repossession of the island. […]

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 Reading 5.2 Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act

In 1723 Walpole was still entering uncertainly into supreme power. Nor
did this power (which he shared with his brother-in-law Townshend,
and also, to some degree, with his rival Carteret) seem secure. No
contemporary could have had the foresight to predict he was to
establish his power for twenty years, and become England’s first and
least lovely prime minister. He attained office by industry and
exceptional attention to detail, ruthlessness, but chiefly through the luck
of the survivor.

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Chapter 6 Gulliver’s Travels
in the world
David Johnson
Contents
Aims 237
Materials you will need 238
Introduction 239
Gulliver in Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib,
Luggnagg and Japan 240
Gulliver in the country of the Houyhnhnms 251
Conclusion 262
References 263
Reading 6.1 A New Voyage to the East-Indies 265
Reading 6.2 A Voyage to and from the Island of
Borneo in the East Indies 266
Reading 6.3 Captain Singleton 267
 Aims

Aims
This chapter will:
. introduce Parts III and IV of Gulliver’s Travels
. locate Gulliver within its Irish contexts
. consider Swift and Gulliver in relation to Enlightenment Reason
. locate Gulliver within its colonial contexts.

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Materials you will need

In this chapter you will be referred to the set book:
. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, edited by Albert J. Rivero (2002)
New York, W.W. Norton & Co.
You should also refresh your memory of the audio recording you
listened to in Chapter 5, which you will find on the module website:
. ‘Satire from Swift to the present’.

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 Introduction

Introduction
Swift’s editors agree that Part III of Gulliver’s Travels was written after
Part IV. One of Swift’s major biographers summarises the sequence of
Gulliver’s composition:

[T]he book which Swift began early in 1721 was substantially

complete by August 1725. He had written Chapter Five of Part
Two no later than June 1722. He had completed Part Four by the
end of 1723. He was approaching the end of Part Three in
April 1724, but then joined the controversy over Wood’s patent,
which slowed down the work on Gulliver. […]
When he decided to place Part Four at the end, although written
before Part Three, he also indicated a desire for the sequence of
parts to have its own power.
We know now […] that Swift produced Gulliver’s Travels not when
he had little else to occupy his genius but after the lure of Irish
politics drew him back into the business of pamphleteering.
(Ehrenpreis, 1983, pp. 444–5)

In this chapter we begin by exploring whether the ‘lure of Irish politics’

marked Gulliver in any way, particularly Part III, which was written at
precisely the same time as Swift was writing pamphlets about Ireland.
The chapter then proceeds to examine the colonial contexts of Parts III
and IV.

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Gulliver in Laputa, Balnibarbi,

Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg and Japan
Part III is different from the other three parts of Gulliver in that it
includes journeys to several island-nations. The absence of a single
setting – as with Lilliput in Part I, Brobdingnag in Part II, and the
country of the Houyhnhnms in Part IV – has contributed to critics and
readers over the centuries paying relatively less attention to Part III. In
the space available it is impossible to give detailed attention to all of
Part III, so I have singled out three aspects for particular attention:
first, Swift’s attitude towards Ireland as a key to interpreting the
Lindalinian rebellion; second, the satire on Laputa’s intelligentsia and
scientific elite; and third (briefly), the significance of Japan as a
destination – the only non-fictional island visited by Gulliver.
Swift lived for well over 50 of his 78 years in Ireland, and wrote the
whole of Gulliver’s Travels there. His most recent biographer has
emphasised the difference between the pre-1714 ‘English’ Swift and the
‘Irish’ Swift of the 1720s: ‘In his London days, Swift had looked down
from above as a champion of those in power, the Tory ministry and the
established Church. Now [in the 1720s] he was still defending the
Church, but otherwise he was looking up from below’ (Damrosch,
2013, p. 356). While this serves as a useful general distinction, Swift did
belong to a privileged minority in Ireland. As Dean of St Patrick’s
Anglican Cathedral in Dublin, he was defined in opposition not only to
the Catholic majority, but also to the Presbyterians in the north of
Ireland. His affluent urban existence and his close ties to the
English Tory elite added to the distance between Swift and most of his
fellow Irish.
Economic hardship in Ireland was particularly pronounced in the 1720s:
‘Things became so bad in 1720–21 that Archbishop William King
maintained that between one-third and one-half of the city of Dublin
“needed charity” to get by’ (Kelly, 1991, p. 9). There was a slight
improvement between 1722 and 1724, but by the mid-1720s conditions
had deteriorated further. The increase in levels of poverty was attributed
not only to immediate causes, notably the poor harvest of 1725 and
rapidly rising food prices and rents, but also to longer-term pressures
on the Irish economy: the lack of trading opportunities due to
restrictions imposed by Westminster on the export of Irish goods; the
domination of the agricultural economy by absentee English landlords;

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the preference for farming livestock for profit over cultivating crops for
subsistence; the widespread appointment of Englishmen to the Irish
civil service; and the shortage of low-denomination silver coin.
Dublin had a small but lively public sphere, as one historian explains:

The increase in a powerful and literate bourgeoisie cherished a

distinctive culture of print, which in turn opposed and subverted
the state […] A bookish culture certainly existed in the Dublin of
the 1720s and 1740s […] Without it, the pamphlet controversies
would hardly have erupted. Locals contributed as authors, printers,
publishers and readers. Views critical of the English state in
Ireland were stridently voiced. Also, the inventiveness of the satires
and invectives entertained. […] Pamphleteers […] borrowed
heavily, in terms and techniques, from contemporary England.
(Barnard, 1999, p. 62)

As a veteran of London’s pamphleteering culture, Swift was uniquely

placed to intervene in public debates about the ‘state of Ireland’.
Between 1713, when he was installed as Dean of St Patrick’s, and his
death in 1745, Swift wrote over 60 pamphlets on Irish politics. Nearly
all of them were written either anonymously or pseudonymously, and
about a third were published only after his death. He was especially
prolific in the 1720s, starting with A Proposal for the Universal Use of
Irish Manufacture (1720), in which he complained about the Penal Laws
that benefited England at Ireland’s expense, and argued that Irish
people should purchase Irish products in order to achieve greater
economic self-sufficiency. Between 1724 and early 1725 he assumed the
pseudonym of ‘M.B. Drapier’ in order to write seven pamphlets
protesting against the grant of a patent to the English entrepreneur
William Wood to mint low-denomination coin for Ireland. In the
persona of an Irish tradesman, Swift attacked England’s fraudulent
profiteering at Ireland’s expense, mobilising Irish opinion against Wood
so successfully that the patent was revoked. The fourth Drapier’s Letter
was prosecuted for sedition, and Swift’s publisher was jailed. Although
they were published after the appearance of Gulliver, two further
pamphlets also shed light on Swift’s political vision in his
contemporaneous fictional work: A Short View of the State of Ireland
(1727) and A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People
in Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or the Country; and for
Making them Beneficial to the Publick (1729). In A Short View he lists

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14 requirements a nation must satisfy in order to be prosperous, but

finds Ireland deficient in nearly all 14, concluding bitterly, ‘I have often
wished, that a Law were enacted to hang up half a Dozen Bankers every
Year; and thereby interpose at least some short Delay, to the further
Ruin of Ireland’ (Swift, 1991, p. 112). In A Modest Proposal Swift assumes
the voice of a ‘projector’ outlining a scheme for the salvation of Ireland.
After two pages of earnestly setting out the problems of poverty in the
country, Swift’s irony is revealed when he reaches the proposal: that the
children of the poor should be sold as food for the rich, since ‘a young
Healthy Child, well nursed, is, at a Year old, a most delicious,
nourishing, and wholesome Food; whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or
Boiled; and, I make no doubt, that it will equally serve in a Fricasie, or a
Ragoust’ (Swift, 1991, p. 145).

Activity
Read the passage below from the fourth Drapier’s Letter. Then read the
first four chapters of Part III of Gulliver, including the account of the
Lindalinian rebellion in the Appendices (Swift, 2002, pp. 129–51, 258–
60). Once again, as you read these four chapters of Gulliver, make use
of the footnotes in the set book.
As you read the extract from the Drapier’s Letter below, consider the
following questions:
1 Who is Swift addressing in the letter? (You may find it helpful to circle
the pronouns in the extract as a first step in trying to establish Swift’s
sense of his audience.)
2 What strikes you about Swift’s language in the letter, particularly his
use of the word ‘Reason’?

One great Merit I am sure we have, which those of English

birth can have no pretence to; that our Ancestors reduced this
Kingdom to the Obedience of ENGLAND; for which we have
been rewarded with a worse Climate, the Privilege of being
governed by Laws to which we do not consent; a ruined
Trade, a House of Peers without Jurisdiction; almost an
Incapacity for all Employments, and the Dread of Wood’s Half-
pence. […]

For in Reason, all Government without the Consent of the

Governed, is the very Definition of Slavery[…]

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The Remedy is wholly in your own Hands; and therefore I

have digressed a little, in order to refresh and continue that
Spirit so seasonably raised amongst you; and to let you see,
that by the Laws of GOD, of NATURE, of NATIONS, and of
your own Country, you ARE and OUGHT to be as FREE a
people as your Brethren in England. […]

[T]he people of England are utterly ignorant of our Case:

Which, however, is no Wonder; since it is a Point they do not
in the least concern themselves about; farther than, perhaps,
as a Subject of Discourse in a Coffee-House, when they have
nothing else to talk of. For I have Reason to believe, that no
Minister ever gave himself the Trouble of reading any Papers
written in our Defence; because I suppose their Opinions are
already determined, and are formed wholly upon the Reports
of Wood and his Accomplices […]

Our Neighbours, whose Understandings are just upon a Level

with Ours (which perhaps are none of the Brightest) have a
strong Contempt for most Nations, but especially for Ireland:
They look upon us as a Sort of Savage Irish, whom our
Ancestors conquered several Hundred Years ago: And if I
should describe the Britons to you, as they were in Caesar’s
Time, when they painted their Bodies, or cloathed themselves
with the Skins of Beasts, I should act full as reasonably as
they do. However, they are so far to be excused, in relation to
the present Subject, that, hearing only one Side of the Cause,
and having neither Opportunity nor Curiosity to examine the
other, they believe a Lye, merely for their Ease; and conclude,
because Mr. Wood pretends to have Power, he hath also
Reason on his Side.
(M.B. Drapier, Letter IV to the Whole People of Ireland (22
October 1724) in Swift, 1991, pp. 73, 80–1)

Discussion
1 The pronouns used in the extract reveal that Swift’s address to the
‘Whole People of Ireland’ in fact includes only a narrow range of
Ireland’s population. The ‘we’ he speaks for in the first sentence of
the extract includes those of English origins born in Ireland (as
opposed to Englishmen living in Ireland but born in England). The
‘you’ he informs are ‘as FREE a People as your Brethren in England’
again suggests an Anglo-Irish audience with fraternal connections in

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England. And, perhaps most tellingly, in distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘a

Sort of Savage Irish, whom our Ancestors conquered several
Hundred Years ago’, he identifies himself and his audience with the
Anglo-Protestant minority – descendants of the English who
conquered Ireland in 1688–89 – and in opposition to the impoverished
rural Catholic majority. The editor of a collection of Swift’s Irish
pamphlets makes the point in precise terms: ‘[Swift’s] pamphlets were
distributed to a small section of the Anglican community in Dublin,
and to sympathetic friends in the country […] In such a fractured
society, still recovering from the changes of 1690, spokesmen like
Swift were inevitably the voice of a sectional interest […] [His] is,
evidently, a feudal outlook’ (Swift, 1991, p. 18).
2 In terms that embrace those well beyond his Anglo-Irish constituency,
the Drapier first appeals to ‘Reason’ to declare that ‘all Government
without the Consent of the Governed, is the very Definition of
Slavery’, and then invokes the laws of God, nature and nations, as
well as of Ireland, to declare his audience ‘as FREE a People as your
Brethren in England’. The letter’s rhetoric, reinforced by its italicising
and capitalising of key terms, expresses universal aspirations for self-
government and equality, but its Irish context inflects its meanings.
The author’s anti-English, anti-colonial sentiments encapsulate one of
the two essential elements of early eighteenth-century Irish-Protestant
nationalism, as one historian explains: ‘the “imagined community” of
the Protestant nation required an imagined identity with which to
define itself against two “Others”, the inhabitants of the mother
country and the native Irish’ (Bartlett, 1995, p. 79). Locally specific
antipathies, hierarchies and exclusions therefore shadow the letter’s
universalising language of reason and natural justice.
The key term ‘reason’ appears twice more in the extract. First, the
Drapier concedes that were their contemporary English brethren
described to him as they had been in Caesar’s time, with painted
bodies and clad in animal skins, he would ‘act full as reasonably as
they do [in judging contemptuously the ‘Savage Irish’]’. Second, he
rejects the logic accepted by the English which assumes that
because Wood ‘pretends to have Power, he hath also Reason on his
Side’. The Drapier’s argument is that if these appeals to reason were
heard, England would cease oppressing Ireland, both in the specific
case of Wood’s patent and more generally. He thus expresses a faith
that reason exercised within the public sphere will produce just
results, a faith that was vindicated in this instance with the revocation
of Wood’s patent. But in the late 1720s Swift reverted to a bitter
pessimism, expressed vividly in A Modest Proposal, which suggests
that rational arguments expressed within the (English or Irish) public
sphere are ineffectual, and all that remains for the critical writer is to

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satirise with maximum savagery the projectors’ schemes wedded to

spurious conceptions of reason and progress.

How then do the Drapier’s Letters (and Swift’s Irish pamphleteering

more generally) illuminate the opening chapters of Part III of Gulliver?
Skimming through the footnotes in Chapters 1 to 4, it is evident that as
in Lilliput and Brobdingnag, so too in Laputa there are parallels with
contemporary political figures. The adulterous wife of Laputa’s Prime
Minister (like the ‘excellent Lady’ of Lilliput) hints at Catherine Shorter,
Walpole’s wife (Swift, 2002, p. 140); the tyrannical King of Laputa
resembles George I but, unlike George I, has been held back from
oppressing his subjects by his ministers (Swift, 2002, pp. 144–5); the
benevolent but marginalised Lord Munodi brings to mind several
English and Irish landowners admired by Swift (Swift, 2002, p. 147);
and the images of Balnibarbi’s people ‘in Rags’ echo Swift’s descriptions
of Irish poverty in his pamphlets of the 1720s (Swift, 2002, p. 148).
Such specific parallels, however, were too oblique to make Swift
vulnerable to charges of defamation, but the political topography of
Laputa, Lagado and Balnibarbi, as well as the history of the Lindalinian
rebellion, repeats in a more general fictionalised form Swift's
commitments and dislikes as expressed in the Drapier’s Letters.
The unequal power relationship between the Laputan elite and their
subjects on Balnibarbi resembles the Drapier’s descriptions of England’s
governance of Ireland, right down to certain particulars. First, the
Laputans dwell obsessively on politics, ‘passionately disputing every Inch
of a Party Opinion’ (Swift, 2002, p. 138), and they need ‘flappers’ to
keep them focused on the here-and-now, much like England’s governing
classes, who talk and argue idly in coffee-houses but remain ignorant of
the sufferings of those they rule – like the Irish – and constantly need
reminding of their responsibilities by reasonable men like the Drapier.
Second, the methods used by the Laputan rulers to reduce their
rebellious subjects to obedience are ruthless and effective (Swift, 2002,
pp. 145–6), but the five-paragraph history of the Lindalinian rebellion
(added later by Swift, and published for the first time only in 1899)
suggests that on certain occasions resistance to tyranny can succeed.
The demands of the people of Lindalino against their rulers – ‘the
Redress of all their Greivances, great Immunitys, the Choice of their

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own Governor, and other like Exorbitances’ (Swift, 2002, p. 259) – far
exceed the Drapier Letter’s demands in the campaign against Wood’s
patent. But nonetheless, the triumphant Lindalinian struggle against
their Laputan rulers might plausibly be read both as an allegory of
successful anti-colonial resistance, and as an inflated fictionalisation of
the Drapier’s campaign against his English rulers’ attempts at further
enrichment.
Third, immediately following the history of the Lindalinian rebellion,
Gulliver’s guided tour of Balnibarbi provides a contrast between, on the
one hand, a countryside devastated as a consequence of the ‘Schemes of
putting all Arts, Sciences, Languages, and Mechanicks upon a new Foot’
(Swift, 2002, p. 149) and, on the other, the perfectly ordered and
productive estate of his host Munodi, who ‘was content to go on in the
old Forms, to live in the Houses his Ancestors had built, and act as
they did in every part of Life without Innovation’ (Swift, 2002, p. 150).
The same contrast animates Swift’s political pamphlets, although his
nostalgia for aristocratic country living is less prominent, and his
antipathy to projectors of new schemes is if anything even fiercer. The
sequence in Gulliver therefore runs from the Lindalinian rebellion, to a
nation impoverished by bogus schemes of ‘improvement’, to Munodi’s
Tory idyll, and if there is a lesson to be drawn from Gulliver’s narrative,
it is that departures from the Munodi model presage revolution and/or
desperate poverty.
The second aspect of Part III to consider is Gulliver’s encounter with
Laputa’s intelligentsia and, more broadly, what this encounter might
reveal about Swift’s own attitude towards the ideals of the
Enlightenment: Reason, science, knowledge, learning, improvement and
progress. As you read Chapters 5–6 of Part III of Gulliver’s Travels
(Swift, 2002, pp. 151–63), bear in mind two considerations: first, that
the ‘Grand Academy of Lagado’ satirises the Royal Society in London
(see Swift, 2002, p. 149, n. 3), which was acclaimed as a cornerstone of
the Enlightenment; and, second, that Gulliver’s opinions and
judgements should not be read at face value. (Recall how his views on
English politics and history were ironically presented and therefore
subject to critical judgement and even ridicule in his conversations with
the King of Brobdingnag.)
In Gulliver’s descriptions of the many ‘scientific’ projects – extracting
sunbeams from cucumbers, reducing excrement to its original food, and
so on – the principal focus of the satire is on scientists and their
ridiculous schemes, with Gulliver a credulous but reliable witness. Such

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Figure 6.1 Edward Bawden, Balnibarbi Raining Stones on Lindalino,

opposite page 160 in Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, 1976, London, The
Folio Society. Photo: The Folio Society. © The Estate of Edward Bawden

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Chapter 6 Gulliver’s Travels in the world

passages suggest a highly critical attitude on Swift’s part towards the

claims of Enlightenment science. In other passages which outline the
projects on language and political administration, however, Gulliver’s
tone and his reliability as a narrator fluctuate, as the following
three examples demonstrate. First, the scheme for substituting
words for things is an object of derision, but Gulliver’s judgement of it
is also satirised:

the Women in conjunction with the Vulgar and Illiterate […]

threatned to raise a Rebellion, unless they might be allowed the
Liberty to speak with their Tongues, after the manner of their
Ancestors; Such constant irreconcilable Enemies to Science are the
Common People. However, many of the most Learned and Wise
adhere to the New Scheme of expressing themselves by Things
(Swift, 2002, p. 157)

In siding with the ‘Learned and Wise’, Gulliver on this occasion is

misguided, and he is mocked accordingly.
In the second passage, it is not immediately clear whether it is Gulliver
or the ‘Professors’ – the representatives of Enlightenment Reason –
who are being ridiculed:

In the School of Political Projectors I was but ill entertained, the

Professors appearing in my Judgment wholly out of their Senses,
which is a Scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These
unhappy People were proposing Schemes for persuading Monarchs
to chuse Favourites upon the score of their Wisdom, Capacity and
Virtue; of teaching Ministers to consult the Publick Good; of
rewarding Merit, great Abilities and eminent Services; of
instructing Princes to know their true Interest by placing it on the
same Foundation with that of their People
(Swift, 2002, p. 158)

An initial reading might suggest that here once again Gulliver is being
satirised. The ‘Professors’ are surely right to promote these modes of
wise governance, and Gulliver is stupid not to see that. But if Swift’s
cynicism about monarchs and their ministers – expressed so vehemently
in his political pamphlets – is given due weight, it is quite possible that

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Gulliver in this case is echoing Swift’s own prejudices: anyone who

expects wise governance from rulers is indeed ‘out of their Senses’.
There is a third example a few pages later in Chapter 8 on
Glubbdubdrib, when Gulliver summarises what he has learned from the
great intellects of the ancient and more recent past:

For having strictly examined all the Persons of greatest Name in

the Courts of Princes for an hundred Years past, I found how the
World had been misled by prostitute Writers, to ascribe the
greatest Exploits in War to Cowards, the Wisest Counsel to Fools,
Sincerity to Flatterers, Roman Virtue to Betrayers of their Country,
Piety to Atheists, Chastity to Sodomites, Truth to Informers. How
many innocent and excellent Persons had been condemned to
Death or Banishment, by the practising of great Ministers upon
the Corruption of Judges, and the Malice of Factions. How many
Villains had been exalted to the highest places of Trust, Power,
Dignity, and Profit: […] How low an Opinion I had of human
Wisdom and Integrity, when I was truly informed of the
Springs and Motives of great Enterprizes and Revolutions in the
World, and of the contemptible Accidents to which they owed
their Success.
(Swift, 2002, pp. 169–70)

It is hard to detect irony here; rather, a tone of righteous anger

pervades Gulliver’s pessimistic diagnosis of ‘prostitute Writers’
systematically lying in the service of cowards, fools, flatterers, traitors,
atheists, Sodomites and informers; of the ‘innocent and excellent’
suffering at the hands of the corrupt and malicious; and of the
‘contemptible Accidents’ which underlie ‘great Enterprizes and
Revolutions’. Some distance from the witless champion of gunpowder in
Part II, Gulliver in this extract criticises political corruption in ways that
echo Swift’s pamphlets of the 1720s.
Gulliver’s third voyage ends with another significant exchange with an
island ruler: the Emperor of Japan. In contrast with the corrupt rulers
of Lilliput and Laputa, the Japanese Emperor (like the King of
Brobdingnag) exhibits compassion towards Gulliver and wisdom in
negotiating with him. Swift’s sympathetic representation of the Japanese
court at the end of Part III is consistent with his earlier characterisation
of the kind Japanese pirate at the start of his third journey. In sharp

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contrast to the villainous Dutch pirate, Gulliver had found ‘more mercy
in a Heathen, than in a Brother Christian’, and had owed his survival to
the ‘Japanese captain [who] was so kind to double out his own Stores,
and would permit no Man to search me’ (Swift, 2002, p. 131). At the
end of the journey, Gulliver’s generous treatment by the Emperor is
once again juxtaposed with dubious Dutch behaviour. As in his
encounters with the sovereigns of Lilliput, Brobdingnag and Laputa, so
too in Japan Gulliver negotiates from a position of weakness, but in this
case his difficulties are caused by the Dutch traders who preceded him.
European attempts to subdue militarily or even to trade advantageously
with Japan had been severely restricted by the Tokugawa policy of
sakoku (closed country), and in order to attain limited trading rights the
Dutch had agreed not to proselytise and to respect Japanese authority
by observing ‘the protocols of abjection – yefumi, trampling on the
cross’ (Markley, 2004, p. 472). With the dexterous assistance of the
Emperor, Gulliver avoids performing the sacrilegious ritual, so
distinguishing himself from the Dutch, who are thus confirmed as
England’s treacherous and compromised rival. Swift’s hostile
representation of the Dutch in Gulliver is related to the fact that they
were at the time formidable maritime and commercial rivals of Britain,
whereas his more sympathetic portrayal of the Japanese conveys the
hope that they might become significant trading partners.

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Gulliver in the country of the

Houyhnhnms
Before reading the final part of Gulliver’s Travels it is useful to pause
and once again try to inhabit the mindset of Gulliver’s first readers, and
to reflect in particular on how much they knew about foreign lands.
Their perception of Japan, for example, might have been quite well
informed, as over 1500 works on Asia were published in Europe
between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries (Markley, 2004, p. 479).
How English readers of Gulliver approached Part IV would have been
influenced by what they had read elsewhere about the inhabitants of
‘savage nations’. Between 1700 and 1750, four times as many books
about Africa were published than had appeared in the whole of the
seventeenth century (Wheeler, 2000, p. 94), a rise intimately connected
to the rapid growth of the Atlantic slave trade in the same period. In
the decades immediately preceding the publication of Gulliver, the
number of ships journeying from England to Africa increased from
26 in 1712 to 200 in 1726 (Wheeler, 2000, p. 101); the number of slaves
in British Caribbean islands increased from 64,000 in 1680 to
219,000 in 1730 (Blackburn, 1997, p. 404); and British consumption of
sugar – a staple of the coffee-houses frequented by Swift – increased
from 2 pounds (almost 1kg) per head in the 1660s to 8 pounds (over
3.5kg) per head in the period 1710–19 (Blackburn, 1997, p. 271). One
historian of racism argues that up until the 1720s and 1730s, ‘concepts
of the European and African are still in formation and not
overdetermined by racist ideology’ (Wheeler, 2000, p. 91). Older
oppositions, such as those between ‘civilised’ and ‘savage’, and
‘Christian’ and ‘heathen’, retained considerable force, and the racial
discourse elevating ‘white’ over ‘black’ was to coalesce and dominate
only later in the century. The passages on ‘savage nations’ in Gulliver
therefore appear at a transitional moment in the discursive struggle over
precisely what terms define the differences between Europeans on the
one side, and Africans/Americans/Asians on the other. Many European
travellers’ descriptions of the peoples beyond Europe were based not on
direct observation, but on recycling earlier travellers’ accounts.

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Activity
Turn to Readings 6.1–6.3, which you will find at the end of this chapter.
Reading 6.1 is an account of the ‘Hottentots’ of the Cape, Reading 6.2 is
a description of the orang-utans of Borneo and Reading 6.3 is a fictional
sketch of the inhabitants of Madagascar.
Read these three extracts now. Then read the first two chapters of Part
IV of Gulliver’s Travels, focusing on Gulliver’s descriptions of the Yahoos,
and make notes on the similarities and differences between the four
passages.

Discussion
The first similarity between the three readings and Swift’s descriptions of
the Yahoos is that they all question quite what distinguishes a human
being from a beast. In Reading 6.1 François Leguat asks whether, in the
case of the Cape ‘Hottentots’, ‘one may give the name of Men to such
Animals’. In Reading 6.2 Daniel Beeckman describes the orang-utans as
‘handsomer I am sure than some Hottentots that I have seen’, notes that
they have hair on their bodies ‘where it grows on humane Bodies’, and
reports that the locals believe that ‘these [orang-utans] were formerly
Men, but Metamorphosed into Beasts for their Blasphemy’. In Reading
6.3 Defoe’s narrator, Captain Singleton, describes the native
Madagascans as ‘an ignorant, ravenous, brutish sort of People’, and the
island as ‘inhabited by a Parcel of Creatures scarce human, or capable
of being made sociable on any Account whatsoever’. Gulliver initially
notes the ‘Tracks of Human Feet’, but on first sighting the Yahoos
describes them as ‘Animals’, ‘Beasts’, ‘Monsters’, a ‘cursed Brood’ and
‘detestable Creature[s]’ (Swift, 2002, pp. 189–90, 194). It is only when his
Houyhnhnm Master compares Gulliver to the Yahoo that Gulliver is
forced to acknowledge his and the Yahoos’ common humanity: ‘My
Horror and Astonishment are not to be described, when I observed, in
this abominable Animal, a perfect human Figure’ (Swift, 2002, p. 195).
Following on from this primary identification of the indigenes with
animals, there are further similarities between the four passages. The
‘Hottentots’, the orang-utans of Borneo, the Madagascans and the
Yahoos have similar physiognomies (flat noses, wide mouths, low
foreheads, abundant hair). There is a repeated emphasis on the
repulsiveness of the women indigenes in Reading 6.1 and in Gulliver: in
that reading, Leguat insists that the ‘Hottentot’ women are ‘more ugly and
more forbidding’ than their husbands, that they hang raw guts around
their necks and legs, and that ‘the vanity of these ugly Witches is
incredible’. The culminating image of Gulliver’s first description of the
Yahoos also singles out the females: ‘Dugs hung between their Fore-feet,

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and often reached almost to the Ground as they walked’ (Swift, 2002,
p. 189). The eating of carrion is also a repeated trope: in Reading 6.1
Leguat observes that the ‘Hottentots’ ‘eat raw Flesh and Fish’; and
Gulliver sees the Yahoos ‘feeding upon Roots, and the Flesh of some
Animals, which I afterwards found to be that of Asses and Dogs’ (Swift,
2002, p. 194).
Gulliver’s descriptions of the Yahoos reiterate and enhance many of the
negative aspects attributed to the peoples of ‘savage nations’ in earlier
travel narratives and novels. However, it is worth noting that his Yahoos
are substantially worse than the peoples (and orang-utans) described in
Readings 6.1–6.3, which all ascribe (very limited) positive qualities to
those observed: the ‘Hottentots’ have some sense of ‘Laws’ and ‘natural
Equity’; the orang-utans of Borneo are strong and nimble and, though
mischievous and thievish, not malevolent; while Singleton recognises that
the Madagascans were useful in that they traded food and at least ‘did
not disturb or concern themselves much about us’.

The Yahoos therefore represent a compressed synthesis of all the most

pejorative descriptions in the extant travel narratives and novels. Swift
himself was more than capable of contributing to this body of negative
images, and did not need to leave Ireland to do so. In his ‘Letter to the
Archbishop of Dublin, Concerning the Weavers’ (1729), for example, he
questions

whether those animals which come in my way with two legs and
human faces, clad, and erect, be of the same species with what I
have seen very like them in England, as to outward shape, but
differing in their notions, natures, and intellectuals more than any
two kinds of Brutes in a forest.
(Swift, 1955, p. 65)

Swift’s tone is quite different from that of Leguat, Beeckman or Defoe,

but his description of his own encounter with the impoverished Irish
and his difficulty in assessing where they lie on the boundary between
the human and the animal is analogous to Gulliver’s own agonised
meeting with the Yahoos and his strenuous efforts to differentiate
himself from them.

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Figure 6.2 ‘The Oran-ootan’, page 37 in Daniel Beeckman, A Voyage to and

from the Island of Borneo in the East Indies, 1718, London, T. Warner & J.
Batley. Photo: © The British Library Board

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 Gulliver in the country of the Houyhnhnms

Activity
Now read Chapters 3–11 of Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels (Swift, 2002,
pp. 198–244). As you read, continue to note how Gulliver-as-narrator is
presented, and keep in mind allusions to contemporary England and
Ireland (checking all the footnotes in the set book, as before). Also take
careful note of Gulliver’s descriptions of his relationship with the
Houyhnhnms. In particular, circle all references to ‘Reason’ and the
‘rational’. Try to enumerate and explain the different meanings of
‘Reason’ in Gulliver’s account of the Houyhnhnms.

Discussion
You will have discovered that ‘Reason’ is invoked over 30 times in Part
IV, but its connotations are far from stable or consistent. The shifting
meanings of the term provide a key to understanding both Gulliver’s
reliability as a narrator and a commentary on the societies of the
Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos and England. We outline the various
connotations of Reason in more detail below.

The basic opposition between the Houyhnhnms as possessors of

Reason and the Yahoos as wholly deficient in Reason is established after
ten weeks, once Gulliver has acquired the rudiments of the Houyhnhnm
language. He reports that his Houyhnhnm Master:

was extremely curious to know from what Part of the Country I

came, and how I was taught to imitate a rational Creature, because
the Yahoos, (whom he saw I exactly resembled in my Head, Hands
and Face, that were only visible,) with some appearance of
Cunning, and the strongest Disposition to Mischief, were observed
to be the most unteachable of all Brutes.
(Swift, 2002, p. 199)

His progress prompts his Master to invite other Houyhnhnms to see

Gulliver, who is described as ‘a wonderful Yahoo, that could speak like a
Houyhnhnm, and seemed in his Words and Actions to discover some
Glimmerings of Reason’ (Swift, 2002, p. 199). The Houyhnhnms’
assessment of Gulliver as a Yahoo who contradicts his essential nature
by displaying signs of Reason gains increasing authority as Gulliver

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confirms their judgement of him over and over again: his Master was
‘more astonished at my Capacity for Speech and Reason, than at the
Figure of my Body’ (Swift, 2002, p. 201); and, furthermore, thought ‘no
Creature of equal Bulk was so ill contrived [as a Yahoo], for employing
that Reason in the common Offices of Life’ (Swift, 2002, p. 204).
Gulliver’s lecture on English history to his Houyhnhnm Master echoes
his unsuccessful defence of his nation to the King of Brobdingnag. As
in Part II, so too in his exchanges here Gulliver’s patriotic hubris is the
object of satire. In his justification of the right of conquest, heavy irony
reverses the meanings of the conventional opposition between
‘civilisation’ and ‘barbarism’: ‘If a Prince sends Forces into a Nation,
where the People are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of
them to Death and make Slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and
reduce them from their barbarous Way of Living’ (Swift, 2002, p. 208).
And his relish in describing the gory slaughter perpetrated by English
soldiers and their supporters warns readers to withhold or at least
moderate their uncritical identification with the narrator: ‘to set forth
the Valor of my own dear Countrymen, I assured him, that I had seen
them blow up a Hundred Enemies at once in a Siege, and as many in a
Ship, and beheld the dead Bodies come down in pieces from the
Clouds, to the great Diversion of the Spectators’ (Swift, 2002, p. 209).
Gulliver’s description of his nation’s history, politics and war so shocks
his Houyhnhnm Master that he judges the English as even worse than
the Yahoos, who at least do not pretend to have Reason:

That although he hated the Yahoos of this Country, yet he no more

blamed them for their odious Qualities, than he did a Gnnayh (a
Bird of Prey) for its Cruelty, or a sharp Stone for cutting his Hoof.
But when a Creature pretending to Reason, could be capable of
such Enormities, he dreaded lest the Corruption of that Faculty
might be worse than Brutality itself. He seemed therefore
confident, that instead of Reason, we were only possessed of some
Quality fitted to increase our natural Vices
(Swift, 2002, p. 209)

By means of the device of Gulliver recounting his version of English

history, his identification with the individual Yahoo in Chapter 2 is
extended to an identification of the English in England with the Yahoos
in the country of the Houyhnhnms. But the Houyhnhnm concession
that Gulliver might be an exceptional Yahoo in that he possesses

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‘Glimmerings of Reason’ in no way extends to the English as a nation.

Rather, the English are judged by the Houyhnhnms to exhibit
something even worse than an absence of Reason, namely ‘some
Quality fitted to increase our natural Vices’. Gulliver’s further
descriptions of England’s legal system, forms of government and
constitution reinforce the Houyhnhnm Master’s negative assessment, as
he finally looks on humans ‘as a sort of Animals to whose Share […]
some small Pittance of Reason has fallen, whereof we made no other
Use than by its Assistance to aggravate our natural Corruptions, and to
acquire new ones which Nature had not given us’ (Swift, 2002, p. 218).
Having internalised the judgements of the Houyhnhnms, and
accordingly reiterated their firm disavowal of English claims to Reason,
Gulliver proceeds to explain how the Houyhnhnms exercise Reason in
organising their society. Gulliver’s respectful summary of Houyhnhnm
Reason is preceded by the incident that confirms conclusively his
kinship with the Yahoos, namely the young female Yahoo sexually
assaulting him in the pond. His horrified recoil from her assault propels
him into his intense embrace of Houyhnhnm customs.
Gulliver begins by explaining the centrality of Reason to the
Houyhnhnms:

As these Noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by Nature with a

general Disposition to all Virtues, and have no Conceptions or
Ideas of what is Evil in a Rational Creature, so their grand Maxim
is, to cultivate Reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is
Reason among them a Point Problematical as with us, where Men
can argue with Plausibility on both sides of a Question; but strikes
you with immediate Conviction; as it must needs do where it is
not mingled, obscured or discoloured by Passion and Interest.
(Swift, 2002, p. 225)

What emerges from Gulliver’s descriptions is that Houyhnhnm Reason

is singular and uncontroversial, a kind of social cement binding the
society together in a virtuous and eternal consensus. The Yahoo/
English idea that there might be competing arguments all claiming to be
based on Reason is simply laughed off by Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm
Master. With the education system, the colour-based ‘Distinction of
Ranks’, the breeding and mating arrangements, and the procedures for
political assemblies all securely anchored in Reason, an array of virtues

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flourish: friendship, benevolence, temperance, industry and cleanliness

(Swift, 2002, pp. 226–7). Houyhnhnm conversations are characterised by
‘no Interruptions, Tediousness, Heat, or Indifference of Sentiments’,
and the subjects they discuss include ‘Friendship and Benevolence, or
Order and Oeconomy, sometimes upon the visible Operations of
Nature, or ancient Traditions, upon the Bounds and Limits of Virtue,
upon the unerring Rules of Reason’ (Swift, 2002, p. 234).
When the Houyhnhnm General Assembly pronounces Gulliver’s
practice of conversing with his Houyhnhnm Master ‘not agreeable to
Reason or Nature, nor a thing ever heard of before among them’ (Swift,
2002, p. 235), its members face the choice of returning Gulliver to the
Yahoo community or expelling him from the country of the
Houyhnhnms. The Assembly chooses the latter, justifying its decision
on the basis that Gulliver ‘had some Rudiments of Reason, added to
the natural Pravity of those Animals’, and he might therefore lead the
Yahoos ‘to destroy the Houyhnhnms Cattle’ (Swift, 2002, p. 235).
Gulliver accepts the Assembly’s judgement and its logic – ‘[f]or they
have no Conception how a Rational Creature can be compelled, but only
advised, or exhorted, because no Person can disobey Reason, without
giving up his Claim to be Rational Creature’ (Swift, 2002, p. 236) – and
builds a boat for his departure.
Having so comprehensively taken on the Houyhnhnm world view,
Gulliver’s first encounters with his European rescuers are disorientating.
Again, it is the competing meanings of Reason that encapsulate his
internal conflict. Whereas Gulliver believes he has embraced true
Reason in the country of the Houyhnhnms, the seamen who rescue him
‘all conjectured, that my Misfortunes had impaired my Reason’ (Swift,
2002, p. 241). In other words, they believe that his time with the
Houyhnhnms has damaged his Reason, not (as Gulliver believes)
enhanced it. And finally, acknowledging the kindness of his Portuguese
rescuer, Don Pedro, Gulliver grudgingly concedes that he ‘assured me
he only meant to do me all the Service he was able, and spoke so very
movingly, that at last I descended to treat him like an Animal which had
some little portion of Reason’ (Swift, 2002, p. 242). Don Pedro, like
Gulliver himself, is an exceptional Yahoo in that he possesses a
modicum of Reason.
In trying to draw together the variety of meanings associated with
Reason in Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels, it is perhaps easiest to start by
identifying what Gulliver excludes from his definition of true Reason.
The Yahoos exhibit certain qualities that might resemble Reason, but

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 Gulliver in the country of the Houyhnhnms

Figure 6.3 Sawrey Gilpin, Gulliver Taking his Final Leave of the Land of the Houyhnhnms, 1769, oil on
canvas, 104cm x 140cm. Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA. Photo: Bridgeman
Images

are more properly defined as ‘Cunning’, ‘Mischief ’, or (more vaguely) as

‘some Quality fitted to increase our natural Vices’. In addition, Gulliver
rejects the English version of Reason, which can either be a ‘Point
Problematical’ that enables contending parties to claim its authority, or
is ‘mingled, obscured or discoloured by Passion and Interest’. By
contrast, true Reason – identified with the Houyhnhnms – ‘strikes you
with immediate Conviction’ as the supreme authority, as both the secure
basis for regulating all aspects of society and as intrinsic to a complex
of mutually reinforcing virtues: friendship, benevolence, temperance,
industry, cleanliness, order and economy. Are we to trust Gulliver’s
admiration of the Houyhnhnms, and read their society as a legitimate
aspiration for humankind? Or are we to detect irony in Gulliver’s hero-
worship of the Houyhnhnms, and read theirs as yet another flawed

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society? Readers have wrestled for decades with such questions, as one
recent critic summarises: ‘The debate developed its own specialist
vocabulary – the “hard” school read the Houyhnhnms as human
paradigms and the “soft” interpreters saw them as false ideals – and
interpreters were seldom allowed compromise or deviation from the
established party lines’ (Hunter, 2003, p. 233). In the context of Part IV
as a whole, a more plausible candidate than the Houyhnhnms as an
exemplar for humanity is Don Pedro, whose ‘little Portion of Reason’,
combined with kindness and patience, is essential in returning Gulliver
to England and his family.
The final chapter of Gulliver is fascinating for many reasons, but, as
you read it, focus in particular on two aspects: first, Gulliver’s
denunciation of colonialism; and, second, his ultimate failure to
reintegrate with his wife and family in England.
The chapter opens with Gulliver again parroting travel-narrative clichés:
the account of his travels, he claims, relates ‘plain Matter of Fact in the
simplest Manner and Style’; he aims through his tales ‘to make Men
wiser and better’; he adheres strictly to ‘Truth’; and his ‘sole Intention
was the PUBLICK GOOD’ (Swift, 2002, pp. 245–6). He also claims to
have no political motives, to have written ‘without Passion, Prejudice, or
Ill-will against any Man or number of Men whatsoever’ (Swift, 2002,
p. 247). After these standard disclaimers, and with the end of the book
in sight, Gulliver’s first readers, familiar with the conventions of travel
narratives and novels, would have anticipated a concluding summary of
how the distant lands described in the volume should be colonised by
England. Gulliver frustrates these expectations, providing several
reasons why England should not colonise the lands he has visited. First,
unlike Hernando Cortés, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico in the early
sixteenth century, the English would face stiff resistance. Second, given
the superiority of the Houyhnhnms over the English, it would be far
preferable if the Houyhnhnms could ‘send a sufficient Number of their
Inhabitants for civilizing Europe’ (Swift, 2002, p. 247). Third, and most
importantly, Gulliver’s travels have taught him to question the entire
colonising enterprise, which he describes as little different from piracy
dressed up with pious words:

A Crew of Pyrates are driven by a Storm they know not whither,

at length a Boy discovers Land from the Top-mast, they go on
Shore to Rob and Plunder; they see an harmless People, are
entertained with Kindness, they give the Country a new Name,

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 Gulliver in the country of the Houyhnhnms

they take formal Possession of it for their King, they set up a

rotten Plank or a Stone for a Memorial, they murder two or three
Dozen of the Natives, bring away a Couple more by Force for a
Sample, return home, and get their Pardon. Here commences a
new Dominion acquired with a Title by Divine Right. Ships are sent
with the first Opportunity, the Natives driven out or destroyed,
their Princes tortured to discover their Gold; a free Licence given
to all Acts of Inhumanity and Lust, the Earth reeking with the
Blood of its Inhabitants: And this execrable Crew of Butchers
employed in so pious an Expedition, is a modern Colony sent to
convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous People.
(Swift, 2002, p. 248)

Denunciations of colonialism, such as Gulliver’s, would have been

familiar to his first English readers, as such attacks were frequently
directed against other colonising nations – the Spanish, the Dutch and
the French. The assumption, which still has currency, is that England/
Britain colonises benevolently, humanely and in the best interests of the
colonised, whereas competing European colonisers do so greedily,
violently, hypocritically and at the expense of the colonised. Such a
reassuring opposition, however, is denied in Gulliver, as the very next
paragraph acclaims with heavy irony the British nation’s credentials as a
coloniser: ‘an Example to the whole World for their Wisdom, Care, and
Justice in Planting Colonies’ (Swift, 2002, p. 248).

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Conclusion
Not only does the final chapter resist a narrative of national-imperial
progress, but Gulliver’s personal narrative of domestic reconciliation is
also compromised. Instead of observing the generic requirement of
travel narrative and novel alike that the peripatetic hero be happily
reunited with wife and family on the final page, Gulliver presents a hero
still in thrall to Houyhnhnm Reason, and deeply alienated from Yahoo/
English society. His alienation extends from self-loathing to being
repulsed by the smell and conversation of his wife, and to experiencing
a pathological antipathy to any demonstrations of human pride. The
difficulty of accommodating the absence of a happy ending is perhaps
best illustrated by noting that all film versions of Gulliver’s Travels have
rewritten the ending. Instead of an isolated and misanthropic Gulliver
still obsessed with Houyhnhnm virtues, the credits always roll on images
of a happily domesticating nuclear family. In the best film adaptation,
the 1996 version directed by Charles Sturridge and starring Ted
Danson, Gulliver, his wife and son embrace fondly atop iconic white
cliffs: a comforting image of domestic and national harmony restored
after the traumas occasioned by foreign travel.

Independent study
You will find suggestions for independent study (relating to both
Chapter 5 and Chapter 6) on the module website.

262
 References

References
Barnard, T. (1999) ‘Reading in eighteenth-century Ireland: public and
private pleasures’ in Cunningham, B. and Kennedy, M. (eds) The
Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives, Dublin, Rare Books
Group of the Library Association of Ireland and Economic and Social
History Society of Ireland, pp. 60–77.
Bartlett, T. (1995) ‘Protestant nationalism in eighteenth-century Ireland’
in O’Dea, M. and Whelan, K. (eds) Nations and Nationalisms: France,
Britain, Ireland and the Eighteenth-Century Context, Oxford, Voltaire
Foundation, pp. 79–88.
Beeckman, D. (1718) A Voyage to and from the Island of Borneo in the
East Indies, London, T. Warner (available online on ECCO through the
OU Library website).
Blackburn, R. (1997) The Making of New World Slavery: From the
Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800, London, Verso.
Damrosch, L. (2013) Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World, New
Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
Defoe, D. (1990 [1720]) Captain Singleton, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Ehrenpreis, I. (1983) Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, Volume
3: Dean Swift, London, Methuen and Co.
Hunter, J.P. (2003) ‘Gulliver’s Travels and the later writings’ in Fox, L.
(ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, pp. 216–40 (available online through the
OU Library website).
Kelly, J. (1991) ‘Jonathan Swift and the Irish economy in the 1720s’,
Eighteenth-Century Ireland, vol. 6, pp. 7–36.
Leguat, F. (1708) A New Voyage to the East-Indies, London, R.
Bonwicke (available online on ECCO through the OU Library website).
Markley, R. (2004) ‘Gulliver and the Japanese: the limits of the
postcolonial past’, Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 457–79
(available online through the OU Library website).
Swift, J. (2002) Gulliver’s Travels, ed. A.J. Rivero, New York, W.W.
Norton & Co.

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Swift, J. (1955) Swift’s Prose Works, Volume XII: Irish Tracts, 1728–33,
Oxford, Blackwell.
Swift, J. (1991) Swift’s Irish Pamphlets, ed. J. McMinn, Gerrards Cross,
Colin Smythe Ltd.
Wheeler, R. (2000) The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in
Eighteenth-Century British Culture, Philadelphia, PA, University of
Pennsylvania Press.

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 Reading 6.1 A New Voyage to the East-Indies

Reading 6.1 A New Voyage to the East-

Indies
Source: Leguat, F. (1708) A New Voyage to the East-Indies, London, R.
Bonwicke, pp. 228–34
The Cafre Hottentots are extreamly ugly and loathsom, if one may give
the name of Men to such Animals. […]They are extreamly Lazy, and
had rather undergo almost Famine, than apply themselves to any
Labour, contenting themselves with what Nature has produc’d of her
self. […]They eat raw Flesh and Fish, finding them, it seems, better,
and more savoury so, than when they are boil’d or fry’d: Nay, they
trouble the Kitchin so little, that when they find a dead Beast they
immediately [dis]embowel him, sweet or stinking […]
These People are almost all of that Stature which we call middling.
Their Noses are flat, their Eyes round, their Mouths wide, their Ears
the same, and their Foreheads low. They have very little Beard, and that
which they have is black and woolly. Their Hair is extreamly frizzled.
[…]
The Wives have somewhat yet more ugly and more forbidding Phyz’s
[physiques] than their Husbands, for over and above, that they are to
the full as black and nasty as they, they have moreover the loathsom
Custom to wear several rounds of raw Guts about their Necks and Legs
in lieu of Necklaces and Garters, which being green and corrupted,
stink abominably. […]
Notwithstanding all this, the vanity of these ugly Witches is incredible.
They fancy themselves the finest Women in the World, and look on us
from top to bottom with their Hands to their Sides, disdainfully. […]
The Inhabitants scatter’d here and there, form to themselves certain
sorts of little Republicks, where they observe Customs, that have in
time become Laws … [and] [t]hey have diverse other usages founded
upon natural Equity.

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Reading 6.2 A Voyage to and from the

Island of Borneo in the East Indies
Source: Beeckman, D. (1718) A Voyage to and from the Island of
Borneo in the East Indies, London, T. Warner, pp. 37–8
The Monkeys, Apes, and Baboons are of many different Sorts and
Shapes; but the most remarkable are those they call Oran-ootans, which
in their Language signifies Men of the Woods: These grow up to six
Foot high; they walk upright, have longer Arms than Men, tolerable
good Faces (handsomer I am sure than some Hottentots that I have
seen) large Teeth, no Tails nor Hair, but on those Parts where it grows
on humane Bodies; they are very nimble footed and mighty strong; they
throw great Stones, Sticks, and Billets at those Persons that offend
them. The Natives do really believe that these were formerly Men, but
Metamorphosed into Beasts for their Blasphemy. They told me many
strange Stories of them, too tedious to be inserted here. I bought one
out of curiosity, for six Spanish Dollars; it lived with me seven Months,
but then died of a Flux; he was too young to show me many Pranks,
therefore I shall only tell you that he was a great Thief, and loved
strong Liquors; for if our Backs were turned, he would be at the
Punch-bowl, and very often would open the Brandy Case, take out a
Bottle, drink plentifully, and put it very carefully into its place again. He
slept lying along in a humane Posture with one Hand under his Head.

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 Reading 6.3 Captain Singleton

Reading 6.3 Captain Singleton

Source: Defoe, D. (1990 [1720]) Captain Singleton, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, p. 21
[A]s for Food, [the Natives of the Island of Madagascar] were at first
very useful to us, but we soon grew weary of them, being an ignorant,
ravenous, brutish sort of People, even worse than the Natives of any
other Country that we had seen; and we soon found that the principal
Part of our Subsistence was to be had by our Guns, shooting of Deer
and other Creatures, and Fowls of all other Sorts, of which there is
Abundance.
We found the Natives did not disturb or concern themselves much
about us; nor did they enquire, or perhaps know whether we stay’d
among them or not […]
The next Day two of us went into the Country one Way, and two
another, to see what kind of Land we were in; and we soon found the
Country was very pleasant and fruitful, and a convenient Place enough
to live in; but as before, inhabited by a Parcel of Creatures scarce
human, or capable of being made sociable on any Account whatsoever.

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Chapter 7 Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, The Turkish
Embassy Letters
Nicola J. Watson
Contents
Aims 273
Materials you will need 274
Introduction 275
The celebrated Lady Mary 277
The culture of letters 279
Writing as a traveller 286
The east and the female traveller 291
The naked and the clothed 294
The veiled and the unveiled 296
Portrayed in Turkish dress 298
Conclusion 303
References and further reading 305
 Aims

Aims
This chapter will:
. to introduce you to a celebrated eighteenth-century woman writer
. to place the Turkish Embassy Letters within three contexts: those of
eighteenth-century letter-writing, travel-writing and orientalist
discourse.

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Chapter 7 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters

Materials you will need

In this chapter you will be referred to the set book:
. Teresa Heffernan and Daniel O’Quinn (eds) (2013) The Turkish
Embassy Letters: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Peterborough, Ont.,
Broadview Press.
You will need to watch the following film, which you will find on the
module website:
. ‘A letter from Constantinople’.
You may also find it useful to refresh your memory of the two audio
recordings you listened to in Chapter 4, which you will find on the
module website:
. ‘Orientalism and material culture’
. ‘Orientalism and literary texts’.

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 Introduction

Introduction
At a crucial moment in Orlando (1920), Virginia Woolf ’s playful tribute
in fiction to her then lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando goes as a man
to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) on what proves to be an
unsuccessful ambassadorial mission, only to wake up one morning and
discover that she has become a woman. Orlando’s transformation,
which occurs in the novel at the beginning of the eighteenth century, is
based on the adventures of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762),
aristocrat, heiress, beauty, lover, wife, mother, political hostess, poet,
novelist, learned lady, essayist, travel-writer and Enlightenment thinker.
In particular, it is based on Montagu’s celebrity as the writer of a series
of letters about her life in Turkey between April 1717 and June 1718, as
the wife of the British ambassador there. These would come to be
known under various titles − here we are designating them, as the set
book does, The Turkish Embassy Letters, and we will be referring to
them simply as the Letters. Woolf ’s evocation of Lady Mary’s career in
her fictional protagonist paid tribute to Montagu’s status as, if not the
first English woman writer by any means, one of the earliest and most
high-profile (see Winch, 2007, for more information on Woolf ’s reading
of Montagu). As lively, acid, provocative, clever, funny, gossipy and
intelligently bloody-minded as their writer, the Letters made Montagu a
celebrity letter-writer in a century of famous letter-writers; they still
provide us with an extraordinarily intimate, immediate, detailed and
entertaining encounter with early eighteenth-century cosmopolitan
culture. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions and Jane Austen’s
Persuasion, which you will be studying in Book 3, Montagu’s letters were
circulated in manuscript within a limited social circle in the author’s
lifetime and published only posthumously.
In the context of this module, the Letters are included to make an
intriguing diptych with the Arabian Nights, as offering different views
of the Ottoman empire to the European reader. The Letters were just as
celebrated as the Arabian Nights and were read in relation to them.
Montagu herself, on the threshold of arriving at Adrianople (today’s
Edirne), entertained her host in Belgrade, the effendi Achmed Bey, by
discussing with him the ‘Persian tales’: ‘I pass for a great scholar with
him by relating to him some of the Persian tales, which I find are
genuine’ (Letters, p. 97). Her library contained a copy of François Pétis
de la Croix’s Les Mille et un jours: contes persanes, published in 1710–12
(Halsband, 1965, vol. I, p. 308, n. i). The ‘Persian tales’ remained for

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her one of the texts against which she tested her own experience and
which she assumed would construct her readers’ expectations:

Now do I fancy that you imagine I have entertained you all this
while with a relation that has (at least) received many
embellishments from my hand. This is bit too like (says you) the
Arabian tales; these embroidered napkins, and a jewel as large as a
turkey’s egg! —You forget dear Sister, those very tales were writ by
an author of this country and (excepting the enchantments) are a
real representation of the manners here.
(Letters, p. 158)

Like the Arabian Nights, the Letters occupy a rather ambiguous position
with regard to dominant models of authorship, the literary canon and
literary history. They sit at the limits of what modern literary culture
popularly thinks of as ‘literature’ because they are not fictional, or at
any rate are not supposed to be fictional. Although only one of the
original letters actually survives, the Letters are thought to, and certainly
claim to, derive from real letters, and to modern eyes belong within the
very loose documentary genre of travel-writing. We’ll therefore be
concerned with what a literary critic is supposed to do with what could
just as well be thought of as historical documents. At the same time,
Montagu’s status as an ‘author’ was and is precarious; as a woman and
an aristocrat she had some licence to write in certain genres, including
the letter, but she was never a professional author in that she herself
did not go into print. Moreover, the lapses of time between when the
Letters were first written (in 1717–18), first took the form in which we
know them (in the 1720s) and were first printed (in 1763) complicate
our understanding of how to periodise these letters within literary
history − which end of the century do they really belong to, and
therefore in what historical context should they be read?

Activity
Begin your work on the Letters by viewing the introductory film, ‘A letter
from Constantinople’. This is available on the module website.
You will find it helpful to have read Letter 40 (Letters, pp. 153–60) before
you watch the film.

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 The celebrated Lady Mary

The celebrated Lady Mary

The eighteenth century was ‘the age of politeness’, so some formal
introductions seem in order. By the time Lady Mary found herself
‘hurried up and down, without intermission, these last eight months,
wholly taken up either in going post [travelling by stages by horse-
drawn post-chaise], or unavoidable court attendance’ (Letters, p. 225) as
she travelled across Europe to Constantinople, she was in her late 20s
and had been a celebrity since she was 7 years old. As Lady Mary
Pierrepoint, she came from an ancient aristocratic family, and was a
beauty and an heiress. She had caused a huge scandal by eloping with
Edward Wortley to escape a distasteful arranged marriage, she had
nearly died of a disfiguring attack of smallpox, she had become a
political hostess and she had been acknowledged as an accomplished
poet and wit, an intimate of the Twickenham circle which included her
close friend (subsequently a bitter enemy) Alexander Pope, along with
Horace Walpole and, more distantly, Jonathan Swift. She was, in short,
celebrated, even notorious; the Letters would only increase that celebrity.
We are going to be concentrating on that part of the Letters which deals
with Montagu’s arrival first in Adrianople and then in Constantinople with
her husband and their young son (also called Edward). Wortley was the
newly appointed ambassador to Turkey. Lady Mary decided to accompany
him and, rather unusually for the time, to take her young son with her
rather than leave him with a relative. They travelled overland via Paris to
Vienna and so to Belgrade, at which point they crossed over into the
Ottoman empire. They then made their way under armed escort down to
Adrianople and then to Constantinople. They spent a scant year there −
unknown to them, Wortley’s appointment had been rescinded almost as
soon as they arrived. They were then forced to leave Constantinople to
return to England, which they did by taking ship to Genoa, where they left
their son and infant daughter to return by ship (which took a full six
months), while they themselves took the swifter but more exhausting route
back overland. Figure 7.1 is a map of Montagu’s journey to Constantinople
and back, which you should find helpful.
Start by reading Letter 27 (1 April 1717; Letters, pp. 100–3). We will
ungallantly leave Lady Mary to get herself home again via Tunis, Greece
and Italy, departing on 6 June 1718, which means you will need to read
only from here to the end of Letter 44 (Letters, p. 180). Of course, if
you become hooked on reading one of the most famous letter-writers

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Chapter 7 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters

Figure 7.1 Map of Europe, showing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s route to Constantinople and back.
Based on Grundy, 1999, p. 116

ever, no-one is stopping you from reading on. I suggest you read the
letters slowly as you work through the chapter, and at more than one
sitting, as an eighteenth-century reader would have done; intersperse
your reading with studying the next section of teaching material. You
will probably find it useful to make a list of Montagu’s designated
correspondents and the subjects each letter tackles. I should warn you
at the outset that it is not much good reading the Letters for the ‘story’,
because there isn’t one in the conventional sense − the ‘story’ is about
Lady Mary’s encounters with a foreign culture.
You should find it helpful as you read to focus on these questions:
. How does Montagu present herself ? Is she always playing the same
character, or does she present herself differently to her various
correspondents through differentiated language, range of allusion
and subject matter?
. How does Montagu present the east and her own culture in relation to
it? Are her views fixed, or do they seem to evolve? Conversely, what
view or views of European, especially British, society does she try out?

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 The culture of letters

The culture of letters

Since the rise of virtual social networks composed of electronic rather
than physical correspondence, of emails, texts, tweets, instant messaging
and Snapchat rather than pieces of paper covered at some length in
handwriting, stamped and sent by hand, literary texts have rarely been
presented as a series of letters. So there are a few things that it is
helpful to know about the culture of eighteenth-century letters as you
begin to read Montagu.
Let’s begin with the materiality of letters and letter-writing. As you will
know from the film ‘A letter from Constantinople’, the eighteenth-
century letter-writer would typically have had what was known as a
‘writing desk’: a hinged box which sometimes partly folded out into a
writing-slope and which held the necessary equipment for writing and
for papers more generally. Such portable desks had been known for
many centuries and in many countries before they became fashionable
in the third decade of the eighteenth century in England; it is possible
that Montagu, at the top of society, possessed one. Writing equipment
included a supply of quill-pens, perhaps kept in a quill-case. Quill-pens
were made laboriously by stripping, hardening and trimming goose
feathers (ideally those from the left wing if the writer was right-handed,
so that the curve of the feather-spine would not be inconvenient as he
or she wrote). Other essentials were a ‘penknife’ or quill-cutter, to trim
or mend the pen as it became worn and softened with writing; an
inkpot, filled with black and corrosive iron gall ink; and expensive
sheets of laid paper, folded over into a booklet. A letter-writer would
also have needed a sander, or sand-box, or ‘ponce-pot’, full not of sand,
as its name might suggest, but variously of powdered chalk, pumice,
cuttlefish bone or the resinous gum sandarac which acted to prevent the
ink bleeding into the paper and so made the writing sharper − it also
blotted the wet ink before the advent of blotting paper around the end
of the century. Once written, the letter would have been folded up into
itself, forming its own envelope (envelopes as we know them had not
yet been invented), addressed and then sealed with sealing wax, melted
by the essential candle once the wick had been trimmed with a pair of
scissors. It’s likely that the writer would also have had a seal or a signet-
ring with which to stamp the warm sealing wax. This was an elementary
security precaution against any tampering with the wax seal en route.

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Letters and their writers

If you would like to see photographic reproductions of some of
Montagu’s actual letters (although not the Turkish Embassy letters),
you should consult the plates in Robert Halsband’s edition of her
correspondence (Halsband, 1965).
If you would like to see visual depictions of letter-writers, you could
search the Bridgeman Art Library with the key words ‘letter’, ‘writing’
and ‘quill’. A word of warning: discount the evidence of anything
after about 1850, when artists are often historically inaccurate in
their romantic depiction of the eighteenth century.

The economics and practicalities of sending and receiving a letter were

very different from nowadays. There were no stamps (a nineteenth-
century invention). Unless letters were delivered by personal messengers,
the addressee had to pay postage according to the number of sheets
and the distance travelled. This accounts for the anxiety Lady Mary
regularly expresses over filling her sheet of paper fully and at whether
her correspondent is finding her letter too long or too dull; both blank
paper and dullness could feel very expensive to the recipient. In Lady
Mary’s case, her letters from Constantinople were carried back to
England either by a dedicated mail ship or ‘packet’ ship, or by a private
merchant ship, or perhaps courtesy of a diplomatic courier service
which would have travelled in a Royal Navy vessel. You’ll see, for
example, that Montagu sent Letter 41 by the Smyrniote, a merchantman
on its way back to England (Letters, p. 160, n. 3). The letters that you
will read are full of the problems of the time-lag this meant between
writing and receiving a letter: as she writes to her friend Mrs Hewet,
‘Before you can receive this, you must consider all things as six months
old which appear new to me’ (Letters, p. 225); that is to say, she
anticipates that it may take as much as six months to get a letter back
to England. She is not above exploiting this uncertainty for advantage:
she writes to her husband that he might do well to make up to her
father, suggesting that ‘you may date your Letter as if writ during my
Lying in’, or in other words just after she had given birth to her
daughter Mary (Letters, p. 227), as part of the softening up process
necessary to asking him for all sorts of help on the family’s return to
England. Elsewhere, her letters speak of how they are shaped in length
and subject matter by the arrival (or non-arrival) of a convenient ship.

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 The culture of letters

Letters might well be lost in transit; Montagu sometimes speculates that

this is what has happened to her letters or her correspondent’s letters: ‘I
had rather ten of my letters should be lost than you imagine I don’t
write, and I think it ’tis hard fortune if one in ten don’t reach you’
(Letters, p. 153). As insurance, it was customary to keep copies of letters
in a ‘letter-book’, generally alongside letters received; the writer would
then send a ‘fair copy’ to his or her correspondent. Montagu certainly
kept a list of her letters, along with very brief summaries of their
contents.
Who wrote letters? Almost anyone with the requisite level of education,
from the aristocracy, through the middling sort, down to the almost
illiterate, who could employ someone to write a letter for them. The
scale of letter-writing and letter-reading in the eighteenth century is
staggering. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of letters existed in
manuscript in this period. Most of these were widely circulated beyond
the addressee, around family and friends, and were called ‘familiar
letters’ for this reason; Lady Mary writes to Mrs Hewet that her friend’s
letters will be truly charitable since she will not be able to ‘boast’ them,
by which she means disseminate them and therefore display her friend’s
writing skills by reading them out aloud or circulating them further
(Jack, 1994, p. 55). This remark points to something very important
about the circulation of letters at the time: they were seen as part and
parcel of the sociable exchange of favours that contemporary theorists
believed underpinned polite society. This sense that letters circulated
more widely than the nominal addressee is part of a general
phenomenon of manuscript circulation and can be thought of as
‘manuscript sociability’ or as ‘social authorship’, to adopt Margaret
Ezell’s term (Ezell, 1999). It is here that writing letters begins to shade
into a form of publication. Michel Foucault argues that a private letter
has a signatory but no author − meaning that it is a form of writing
that does not describe the writer as ‘an author’ (Foucault, 1998 [1969],
p. 211). But in fact there was a form of authorship operating as we
might understand it, in the sense that the letter was being written to an
audience that the writer was not directly addressing and did not
necessarily know personally, and where circulation could not be
controlled.

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Letter-writing manuals
If you would like to explore the eighteenth-century culture of letter-
writing more extensively, I suggest you look at some of the many
letter-writing manuals that were published at the time. Go online
to the OU Library website, locate the database for Eighteenth
Century Collections Online (ECCO) and search ‘letter-writer’ as a
title word. You will be able to sample the texts of such beguiling
manuals as The Universal Letter-Writer (1708), The Accomplish’d
Letter-Writer: Or the Young Gentlemen and Ladies’ Polite Guide to
an Epistolary Correspondence in Business, Friendship, Love …
(1787) and many others.

In fact, eighteenth-century familiar letters often found their way into

print. Both as a practice and a genre, they typically crossed the
conventional divide between ‘personal’ and ‘public’, and between
manuscript and print. Letters were therefore read in the context both of
a culture of writing and reading familiar letters and of writing and
reading letters designed from the outset for print circulation. Between
1700 and 1800 more than 21,000 items were published that used the
word ‘letter’ or ‘letters’ in the title. The culture was networked by letters
both private and published. The published letters − real or fictive, of
parental advice, of travel, of love and on many other subjects besides −
were just the skimmings of a great rush of writing, but they also
depended on that rush, assuming that readers knew how to read letters
and collections of letters as a special kind of non-fictional narrative. In
short, as Clare Brant has argued, ‘the genre of letters’ can plausibly be
regarded as ‘the most important kind of writing in the eighteenth
century’ (Brant, 2006, p. 2).
When we look at Montagu’s Letters, then, we are looking at an instance of
this complex and fluid culture of the circulation of letters. The individual
letters that make up the Letters were probably based on actual letters −
that is to say, versions of them were originally addressed and sent to real
people, and individually must have been passed around family and friends
in manuscript form. Furthermore, the letters dramatise themselves as real
letters; as we’ve seen, they are sometimes conscious of themselves as
losable, delayable and destroyable, even though clearly these particular
letters were not lost or destroyed. But although the Letters may have begun
as single, handwritten letters, and present themselves as such, it would be

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very unwise to take that claim at face value. For one thing, they present
themselves as a collection of letters and were the product of much more
considered editing and revision. This was not, incidentally, unusual − it was
a well-established practice. This process of editing and revision has been
rather obscured by the common editorial practice of splicing in letters other
than those that appear in Montagu’s fair copy letter-book. But, back in
London, sometime between 1719 and 1724, Montagu wrote up her travel
experiences, using the actual letters supported by her journal (Grundy,
1999, p. 199). She chose 14 individuals as addressees, although only ten of
these figured in the list of those to whom she had actually written from
Turkey (Grundy, 1999, p. 199). Equally, she excluded many to whom she
had actually written, including her father, the playwright William Congreve
and others. The correspondents she featured were deliberately varied
socially, geographically and in level of intimacy: a member of the royal
family, a famous poet, female friends both provincial and from high society,
and her sister. She shared out material across letters, avoiding the
duplication natural to actual letters, and making the content fit the recipient
(Grundy, 1999, p. 199). She spliced in extra passages of historical material
from standard sources, and corrected and alluded to the work of other
travel-writers (Grundy, 1999, p. 200). The resulting manuscript in two
volumes, copied out in a fair hand and neatly bound, was then circulated in
this form, accreting contributions from its readers, including the feminist
bluestocking Mary Astell. Indeed, it is only in this form that the letters
survive – the majority of the originals seems to have been lost or discarded.
This was, then, a sort of publication.

Private and public letters

If you go to the letters that the editors of the set book have
relegated to an appendix because they do not appear in the letter-
book (Appendix B, items 1, 2 and 3), you will get a strong sense of
the difference between the formal letters that present themselves as
‘private letters’ and those that really were private − in the sense that
they were directed to one person and not intended for further
circulation. In the latter Montagu is markedly less discursive,
provides more personal news and is more focused on immediately
pragmatic arrangements. These letters are also more cryptic
because they do not contain all the information we as the non-
original readers need − in short, they are a good deal more like
‘real’ letters.

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Chapter 7 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters

Figure 7.2 Manuscript book of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters, open at
the first page of Letter 40. Sandon Hall, Stafford, United Kingdom. Photo:
Open University

As Heffernan and O’Quinn point out in their introduction to your set

book, the text’s complicated history of production, circulation and
reception, combined with the peculiarity of its self-presentation as
private letters, means that ‘care must be taken not to mistake the letters
for actual letters, and the performance of writing needs to be constantly
at the fore of the contemporary reader’s mind’ (Letters, p. 16). You
yourselves will not be reading the Letters as Montagu herself originally
intended. It was not polite for an aristocratic woman to appear in print
– at any rate, not deliberately or avowedly under her own name. The
book you are reading represents yet a third stage in the incarnation of
her letters as Letters. You are reading them as a collection of letters
circulated well beyond her immediate circle, in print form, and having
paid for the privilege. What you have in your hand (setting aside for the
minute the extensive scholarly apparatus) is a text made up of texts that
gesture to a previous existence as manuscripts addressed to 14 different
persons, which have nonetheless now arrived in print, addressed, by
implication, to a far wider audience.
This was a mostly posthumous development. Although one of
Montagu’s actual letters was published in 1719 by a recipient, the Abbé
Conti, under the title The Genuine Copy of a Letter Written from
Constantinople by an English Lady … No Less Distinguish’d by her Wit
than her Quality; to a Venetian Nobleman, one of the Prime Virtuosi of the

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Age, the Letters otherwise remained unpublished until more than 40

years later, after Montagu’s death, and they made it into print only
through a spectacular act of piracy (see Grundy, 1999). On 7 May 1763
the Dutch publishers Becket and De Hondt printed Letters of the Right
Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e, Written during her Travels in Europe,
Asia, and Africa, to Persons of Distinction, Men of Letters, etc, in Different Parts
of Europe. Which Contain, among Other Curious Relations, Accounts of the
Policy and Manners of the Turks, Drawn from Sources That Have Been
Inaccessible to Other Travellers. This was a hit, excerpted in newspapers,
running to a second edition, reviewed by Voltaire, admired by Tobias
Smollett, Dr Johnson and Hester Thrale Piozzi, pirated, supplemented
with extra spurious letters, and finally supplied with illustrations in 1783
(Grundy, 1999, p. 626). The text would have a long afterlife in a
number of editions, often censored, until it showed up in 1907 in the
biography of Montagu written by the feminist ‘George Paston’, which
was probably Virginia Woolf ’s source for Orlando.

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Writing as a traveller
Letters have had a long history as a vehicle for travelogue; the modern
variant is the travel blog. What opportunities does the letter-form offer
to travel-writing?
In her survey of eighteenth-century letter-writing culture, Brant develops
a set of generalisations about epistolary travel-writing which are useful
when it comes to reading Montagu’s Letters (Brant, 2006, pp. 229–45):
1 Letters dramatise travel by implying geographical separation and
being addressed from successive locations.
2 Letters dramatise acts of ordering and reflecting on experience,
licensing subjective response and claiming eyewitness authority.
3 Letters are ‘loose’, informal and ‘open’ in form, and this is
analogous to keeping the open mind supposed to characterise
travelling.
4 Letters allow the trying out of different identities.
5 Letters dramatise the addressee as much as the writer, imagining the
addressee’s body, location and response, consciously responding to
or disappointing the addressee’s imagined requests or expectations.
They often include the reader within the scene being described,
solicit readerly input and reaction, and require the reader to be a
witness to the writer’s authority and subjectivity. Thus the letter is an
‘intersubjective’ form, and often advertises its sociable motives such
as entertaining or instructing others. This effect is amplified by the
social circulation of letters beyond the original addressee.
6 Letters, because they mediate between ‘home’ and ‘abroad’, are the
perfect vehicle for reflecting on oppositions (or, more counter-
intuitively and satirically, similarities) between the foreign and the
familiar.
Let’s try out how these generalisations might work in reading one of
Montagu’s letters – I’ve chosen more or less at random her letter of 1
April 1717 to Pope (Letter 31; Letters, pp. 117–24).
Letters dramatise travel by implying geographical separation. You’ll notice,
to begin with, that this letter is headed as being sent from Adrianople
and begins with an assertion of the spectacular distance between herself
and her correspondent in London, Montagu having ‘gone a journey not
undertaken by any Christian of some hundred years’ (Letters, p. 117).

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Letters dramatise acts of ordering and reflecting on experience, licensing

subjective response and claiming eyewitness authority. Montagu describes
what she has ‘often seen’ of the local pastimes, which she likens to
ancient pastoral idyll – that is to say, she thinks of her travel experience
within the terms of a western classical education.
Letters are ‘loose’, informal and ‘open’ in form. This letter moves nimbly
between an accident that didn’t happen, Montagu’s house on the banks
of the Hebrus, commentary on local customs and a disquisition on
Turkish poetry – personal experience is intermingled with
Enlightenment-style observation and collection of information.
Letters allow the trying out of different identities. Here we are on less
satisfactory ground, because Montagu is trying to impress her famous
friend as a fellow cosmopolitan poet. She engages in a rather leaden
form of flirtation spiced with intellectual chat, the sort of conversational
style typical of the London salon of the day. She moves from classical
quotation and allusion to a discussion of pastoral, ‘scripture language’
resembling the Song of Solomon, an exercise in poetic translation and
discussion of versification via Boileau’s strictures. Still, in between all
this, she inserts something like the modern ‘selfie’ – a tantalising, self-
exoticising snapshot of herself dancing with local women.
Letters dramatise the addressee as much as the writer. The very first line of
the letter, ‘I dare say you expect at least something very new in this
letter …’ (Letters, p. 117), dramatises Pope as the addressee, and this
‘you’ continues to appear throughout the letter in imaginary dialogue
with the writer: ‘must not you confess to my praise that ’tis more than
ordinary discretion that can resist the wicked suggestions of poetry …?’
(Letters, p. 118). This addressee will be entertained or instructed by this
conversation: ‘You see I am pretty far gone in oriental learning […] I
wish my studies may give me occasion of entertaining your curiosity,
which will be the utmost advantage hoped from it’ (Letters, p. 124).
Letters, because they mediate between ‘home’ and ‘abroad’, are the perfect
vehicle for reflecting on oppositions (or, more counter-intuitively and
satirically, similarities) between the foreign and the familiar. Montagu’s
reflections on the differences between home and abroad range from the
comically trivial (the lack of butter) to more mordant remarks on what
might be untranslatable between cultures: ‘I cannot determine, upon the
whole, how well I have succeeded in the translation, neither do I think
our English proper to express such violence of passion, which is very
seldom felt amongst us …’ (Letters , p. 124).

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Brant notes that eighteenth-century travel letters are typical of the

Enlightenment thirst for amassing knowledge of the foreign and exotic.
The sort of letters that Lady Mary was sending were designed to
exchange knowledge – they were quintessentially part of what was called
‘the republic of letters’, a pan-European community of letter-writers
strung between London, Edinburgh, Paris, St Petersburg, Weimar,
Vienna and elsewhere that underpinned and fuelled the eighteenth-
century encyclopaedic and rationalist approach to collecting, collating
and generating scientific knowledge (which included knowledge of other
cultures). This enterprise underlay, for example, the Encyclopédie, ou
dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers first published in
France between 1751 and 1772, edited in the first instance by the
philosopher Denis Diderot. The letter, whatever else it was, was the
form and engine of Enlightenment. This sort of travel-writing dwells on
common subjects, including national difference, religious difference, the
status of women, trade and politics, the curiosities or beauties of nature,
‘the monuments of art’ and ‘the manners of the inhabitants’ (Brant,
2006, p. 237). Importantly, these reflections are used to comment on
things taken for granted ‘at home’.
If we take a look at Letter 30 (to Lady Mar on 1 April 1717; Letters,
pp. 112–16), we can see Montagu tackling some of this standard subject
matter. Montagu here promises her sister ‘a full and true relation of the
novelties of this place’ (Letters, p. 113). This letter concentrates
specifically on the status of women. The very first woman on display,
paradoxically, is herself, attired ‘in my Turkish habit’. She rates this in
terms of richness, comfort, strangeness and modesty – the trousers
‘conceal the legs more modestly than your petticoats’, although the
smock seems to be unusually revealing of the ‘shape and colour of the
bosom’ (Letters, p. 113). She notes the local women’s habits of plucking
their eyebrows, using kohl eye-liner and colouring their fingernails, but
remarks on her inability to appreciate this last custom because of its
strangeness: ‘I cannot enough accustom myself to this fashion to find
any beauty in it’ (Letters, p. 114). From the women’s appearance, she
moves on to their morals. This was conventional enough generally; and
the more so in the case of Turkish women because of their habit of
going veiled in public. Montagu argues that although other writers have
deplored this veiling as slavery, in practice it provides the women with
‘liberty’, in fact ‘more liberty than we have’ (Letters, p. 114). She thinks
through this custom in terms of the eighteenth-century amusement of
masquerade, calling it ‘this perpetual masquerade’ (Letters, p. 115). In
masquerade, associated with the masked ball and the pleasure gardens at

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Vauxhall in London, men and women went masked (covering not just
the face but wearing a full cloak and hood which might even conceal
their gender), a practice that originated and survives in Venetian
carnival. It was thought of as an opportunity for sexual licence and
social confusion. Christopher Pitt’s poem of 1727, ‘On the
Masquerades’, disapprovingly describes ‘the lewd joys of this fantastic
scene’ (l.50), which often included dressing up in oriental costume:

[…] lost in one promiscuous whim we see

Sex, age, condition, quality, degree.
Where the facetious crowd themselves lay down,
And take up every person but their own.
Fools, dukes, rakes, cardinals, fops, Indian queens,
Belles in tie-wigs, and lords in harlequins […]
Idiots turn conjurors, and courtiers clowns,
And sultans drop their handkerchiefs to nuns.
(ll.27–32, 45–6, in Lonsdale, 1984, pp. 198–9)

Montagu makes an extended comparison between London and

Adrianople – in London assignations are made at convenient ‘Indian
houses’ (meaning textile warehouses), in Adrianople they’re typically
made at ‘a Jew’s shop’ (Letters, p. 115). She notes that the women are
therefore not faithful wives, through a combination of opportunity,
safety, a lack of fear of punishment in the next life and financial
independence, all of which (she does not quite say) western women are
denied. The harem, far from being a prison, is a female empire. She
concludes with a typical Enlightenment claim to scientific objectivity:
‘Thus you see, dear sister, the manners of mankind do not differ so
widely as our voyage writers would make us believe. Perhaps it would
be more entertaining to add a few surprising customs of my own
invention, but nothing seems to me so agreeable as truth …’ (Letters,
p. 116). As we’ll see, this is not Montagu’s first, last or definitive view
of the state of women in Turkey – she goes on thinking about it right
through the run of letters, and so will we. What I want you to notice
here, though, is the deliberately provocative argumentative stance,
typical of the Enlightenment letter.

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Activity
Taking any one of the Letters as a model, write an Enlightenment-style
letter of no more than 300 words and share it online with your tutorial
group. You should write about any recent trip you have taken,
commenting on the same sort of things that Lady Mary chooses as her
subject matter. For example, if you were to model your writing on Letter
14, you would first characterise your addressee and then comment on
your experience of getting to a destination, your accommodation, the
history of the place, its current state (such as property prices, who has
chosen to live there, the cost of living, available entertainments, the local
food and women’s fashions). Above all, you would endeavour to be
entertaining and witty. Don’t be too slavish or anxious in your imitation,
but if you would like to attempt a pastiche of Lady Mary’s style, so much
the better.
You will also find it useful to review and incorporate Brant’s insights into
the genre of such letters, that they

. dramatise travel by implying geographical separation

. dramatise acts of ordering and reflecting on experience, licensing
subjective response and claiming eyewitness authority
. are ‘loose’, informal and ‘open’ in form
. allow the trying out of different identities
. dramatise the addressee as much as the writer
. are a vehicle for reflecting on oppositions (or, more counter-intuitively
and satirically, similarities) between the foreign and the familiar.

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The east and the female traveller

Brant notes that travellers’ letters staged an ‘intricate and subtly various
process of difference, similarity, presence, absence, connection,
displacement, and strangeness’ which ‘helped readers acclimatise to
strangeness too’ (Brant, 2006, p. 244). The sort of ‘strangeness’
that Montagu encountered and depicted was ‘oriental’, that is to say, of
the east.
For writers and thinkers in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
‘the east’ had many meanings. First and foremost, it was ‘not Europe’,
that is, it was outside the spread of Enlightenment progressive thought
on political systems, on religion, on trade and on education. Within this
category, though, the Middle East had particular inflections. One was
based on hard geopolitics and religious division. Europe and the
Ottoman empire, whose capital was then Constantinople, had ever since
the fall of the Roman empire been uneasy neighbours. It was as recently
as the 1680s that the Ottoman forces had finally been beaten back from
the gates of Vienna, and in the eighteenth century the Ottoman empire
still extended right across the territories of ancient Greece, the cradle of
western civilisation – you might have noticed an anxiety about this
when you were looking at Lady Mary’s letter to Pope above.
With the lessening of the geopolitical threat after the 1680s, the Middle
East developed a less warlike ideological presence in European culture.
Commonly thought of as ‘Persian’ or ‘Arabian’, it carried a number of
meanings: a place of fable, fatalistic superstition, enchantment, wealth,
and forms of ‘barbarity’ and sexual exoticism, including the practices of
promiscuity, polygamy and sexual enslavement. Refining our categories
still further, ‘Turkishness’ carried specific associations of ‘despotism’,
promiscuity, violence, cruelty and sodomy (Wilson, 1985, p. 80). The
east was exotic and erotic, a suitable setting for romance and intrigue,
as in the early novels of Delarivier Manley (c.1670–1724) and Eliza
Haywood (1693–1756). Edward Said’s defining study of nineteenth-
century orientalism is relevant to eighteenth-century culture too; it
argues that the west discursively feminised and eroticised the east as
part of a process of post-colonial domination (Said, 2001 [1978]).
But, as altogether ‘other’ to the west, the east also served as an
imaginary vantage point from which to criticise western society. The
‘oriental tale’ was as likely to be a political fable as it was to be a
translation of one of the Arabian Nights. This period accordingly gave

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birth to the imaginary traveller from the east, for one of the most
popular forms of travel-writing was not the Enlightenment travelogue at
all, but satiric accounts of ‘home’ seen through the eyes of supposed
foreigners, including ‘Persians’. One of the most influential of these
throughout the century was Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, translated as
Persian Letters in 1722, which saw Europe as corrupt and in need of
improvement across the board. Just like Gulliver, whose adventures you
studied in Chapters 5 and 6, the oriental traveller was employed to
comment on and satirise contemporary British politics, religion, social
and sexual mores through letters home expressing his wonder or
incomprehension. Just like Gulliver too, the oriental traveller was a
mere fiction; unlike Lady Mary, Montesquieu himself never travelled to
the east.
Montagu’s Letters were therefore produced and published within a
nexus of epistolary writings about Turkey that comprised political satire,
romance and the well-established conventions of Enlightenment
travelogue, a heady and unstable mix of fantasy and observation, fiction
and fact. They were also produced at a peculiarly important moment in
Ottoman history, for 1718 introduced a spate of westernisation that
would last 12 years and was part of an Ottoman strategy to strengthen
the empire after its defeat in Vienna at the end of the seventeenth
century (Konuk, 2004, p. 393). As the Ottoman empire continued to
decline, it became a spectacle for European enlightened inquiry –
Montagu’s Letters were a part of this inquiry. As we’ve already seen, the
Letters engage explicitly or implicitly with writings on the Ottomans that
preceded hers, updating and critiquing them. These comprise histories –
Richard Knolles, The History of the Turks (1603), Paul Rycaut, The
Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1668), Paul Rycaut, History of the
Turks (1700); and travelogues – George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey
Containing a Description of the Turkish Empire (1615), Jean Dumont,
Nouveau Voyage au Levant (1694, translated 1696), A. Hill, A Full and
Just Account of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1709).
But although by the time Montagu’s letters found their way into print in
1763 the field of travel-writing on Turkey had widened to include, for
example, Aubry de la Mottraye’s Travels through Europe, Asia, and into
Part of Africa (in two volumes: 1723 and 1732), Montagu’s letters
remained unusual in dealing with Constantinople, and close to unique in
being by a woman traveller. The only other eighteenth-century female
travel-writer on Constantinople was Lady Elizabeth Craven, who

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published her Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople: In a Series of

Letters in 1789.
Thus the Letters owe much of their celebrity then and now to providing
an account of travel in the east from a European female perspective.
Their piquancy derived in part from this conjunction – for the
observant letter-writer was of the sex whose oppression within the
harem figured everything that the west was supposedly not, and she was
herself, as an aristocrat and learned lady, the very antithesis of the
eastern woman, stereotyped as ‘inherently lewd, cruel, and faithless’
(Frith, 1994, p. 107). Or, to put it in Rycaut’s words: ‘they are
accounted the most lascivious and immodest of all women, and excel in
the most refined and ingenious subtilities to steal their pleasures’
(quoted in Bohls, 1995, p. 29). These ‘subtilities’, according to him and
others, extended to using radishes, gourds, cucumbers and so forth as
dildoes. As Elizabeth Bohls remarks, in western travel-writing the
oriental woman was ‘doubly other and doubly exotic’, ‘a synecdoche for
the Orient itself ’, while her ‘supposedly insatiable sexual appetites offer
[ed] an excuse for the sexualized domination that these travelogues
underwrite’ (Bohls, 1995, p. 28).
Literary and cultural critics thinking about Montagu’s letters have
therefore over recent years been principally concerned with two
interlocking questions: how does Montagu represent the east? And how
does she represent herself as a western woman in relation to it?
I said at the outset that you would be unwise to read the Letters as though
they were going to provide you with a story, but this does not mean that
the Letters as a whole do not have a plot. First and foremost, the basic
structure of the volume traces the oldest plot of all, the journey, from
leaving, to travelling, to arriving, and then to leaving again. Montagu
journeys away from home to a place almost beyond the ken of ‘home’, the
place of the Arabian Nights. The journey is more than merely a matter of
geographical distance – Montagu enters alternative possibilities for being a
human and for being a woman. Those of you who have travelled
extensively or have lived overseas may have experienced, like Montagu, the
freedom of being excepted from the host culture as well as released from
the constraints of your own. One of the results of this is that the foreign
culture appears variously as utopian and dystopian; this effect is most
famously figured in Montagu’s account of her visits to interior spaces
unavailable to the male traveller: the women’s quarters at the Topkapı
Palace (the harem), and the women’s bath (the hammam).

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The naked and the clothed

Activity
Reread Letter 27 (Letters, pp. 100–3). Think about what position
Montagu finds herself in at the beginning of her visit, and what position
she invites the reader to take up in regard to the scene.

Discussion
To help you think about this, I am going to summarise one critic’s reading
of this letter and then counterpose it with another. How far would you
agree with either?
Elizabeth Bohls (1995) argues that Montagu’s problem as a woman
travel-writer is to find a stance from which to write. For her this scene
falls into three sections. The first is when the traveller, entering the
hammam in her mannish riding dress, finds herself not so much the
interested spectator as an object of curiosity herself. This is a reversal of
the standard relation between traveller and local. Second, Montagu
insists that the hammam is not a scene of immodesty; rather, she offers it
variously as a prelapsarian Eden, or a classical pastoral. To do this, she
aestheticises the women by referencing literature and the visual arts, but
in so doing reinstates them as the objects of the masculine gaze of the
artist. The third ‘turn’ in her account, though, is when, threatened with
being undressed, she is transformed again into an aesthetic spectacle
(rather than a powerful spectator), for both the women in the hammam
and for her readers. Her stays mark the absolute line between west and
east – although her assertion of ‘English modesty’ to save herself from
nudity is read by the women as marital oppression (Bohls, 1995,
pp. 23–45).
Srinavas Aravamudan (1995), by contrast, is interested in the erotic
charge of the scene, especially in the moment that Montagu is forced to
partly undress. She notes that Montagu ‘is masquerading in the same
costume for two audiences simultaneously’. ‘For the Turkish women, her
English stays are an infernal machine, a straitjacket imposed upon her by
a jealous husband’ and which conceal her from view. ‘Yet, she has
exposed herself, ever so slightly, to the English gaze by revealing a
glimpse of her underwear’. She becomes the focus for both ‘the female
gaze at the bath, and for the mixed gaze back in England’, and ‘both the

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viewing Turks and the reading English are led on to fantasize medieval
chastity belts on Montagu’. Aravamudan argues that the erotics of the
scene transmute into politics. Montagu’s incomplete striptease is both
quasi-pornography for the English reader and a description of her own
oppression by comparison with that of the Turkish women (Aravamudan,
1995, pp. 84–5).

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The veiled and the unveiled

In the scene in the hammam described in Letter 27, Montagu draws a
contrast between east and west in terms of the unclothed prelapsarian
east and the clothed, repressed and civilised west. She plays with her
position as a woman and a travel-writer in both these dispensations. In
public, however, both eastern and western women went veiled, eastern
women in the ‘yasmak’, or face veil, something that shielded them from
being in public in the same way that Montagu’s sedan chair would have
shielded her in London. In Constantinople, the veil offered great
practical advantage to Montagu, enabling her to move around on foot
undetected. As we’ve seen, she plays with a very western idea of it, as a
masquerade costume. She argues that the veil offered the eastern
woman release from being the object of the male gaze, allowing her to
slip into anonymous spectatorship, and that its anonymity also offered
her a sexual liberty undreamed of by western women. On the other
hand, anonymity could also mean invisibility in an altogether less
benign sense.
Letter 43 (Letters, pp. 170–7), supposedly written as Montagu prepares
to leave Constantinople, is organised around three stories which each
test this proposition about the veil. It is framed by her assertion that
she is spending much time rambling around the city ‘wrapped up in my
ferace [a long, loose overgarment] and yashmak’ (Letters, pp. 170–1),
which disguise is enabling her to ‘see’ more clearly than previous
writers. In particular, she contests their insistence on ‘the miserable
confinement of the Turkish ladies’ (Letters, p. 171). Her first story, then,
is an account of a visit to the bagnio (or hammam), where she sees an
all-female bridal ceremony. After this account of the unveiling of all the
young women ‘to the state of nature’ (Letters, p. 172), the letter changes
tone about the veil: ‘’Tis true the same customs that give them so many
opportunities of gratifying their evil inclinations (if they have any) also
puts it very fully in the power of their husbands to revenge them if they
are discovered’ (Letters, p. 173). To illustrate this she instances another
naked young woman, murdered and exposed to the public male gaze in
the morgue: ‘She was not yet quite cold, and was so surprisingly
beautiful that there were very few men in Pera that did not go to look
upon her; but it was not possible for anybody to know her, no woman’s
face being known’ (Letters, p. 173). The veil, then, in this instance, has
literally allowed someone to get away with murder.

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The letter then tries to mitigate this unpunishable act of male violence
by recounting the second story, that of a Spanish lady. Captured and
raped by a Turkish admiral, the Spanish lady is eventually ransomed,
but, faced with a choice between being confined to a nunnery by her
relatives – in short, being forced to take the veil – and rescuing her
honour through marriage to her ‘infidel lover’ and taking the veil in a
different sense, opts for the second course. Cynthia Lowenthal points
out that this is one of the moments in the Letters when the logic of
orientalist romance takes over to, as she puts it, ‘throw a veil’ over the
harsh realities of sexual power relations (Lowenthal, 2010, p. 106).
The final story in this letter thinks again about the power of the veil
and deals with Armenian matrimonial customs. An Armenian bride,
unknown to her future husband, remains veiled from him for three days
after the marriage, and this is constructed by the letter as a form of
female power asserted against men: ‘one young fellow who wept when
he spoke of it, being promised by his mother to a girl that he must
marry in this manner, though he protested to me he had rather die than
submit to this slavery, having already figured his bride to himself with
all the deformities in nature—’ (Letters, p. 177).
To put it another way, the letter explores various possible power
relations between men and women in terms of veiling and unveiling.
Montagu engages with the veiling of women through assembling
anecdotes which put pressure on the commonplace orientalist
formulation that eastern women were both more voluptuous and more
oppressed by patriarchy, while western women were both more chaste
and more free. It would not do, however, to say that Montagu adopts a
stable position, so that we can state with certainty ‘what Montagu
thinks’ – instead, and again, I want to highlight the nature of this letter
as a thought-experiment or provocation sent back into the heart of
English society.

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Portrayed in Turkish dress

Montagu’s ‘journey’ as represented in the Letters is not merely a matter
of geography. It displays a distinctive trajectory, moving from cultural
confrontation through to utopian fantasies of going native, and
insistently pushes the limits of her own western identity, a ‘partiality’ for
which she is eventually obliged to resume at the end of her book,
however satirically:

having seen part of Asia and Africa and almost made the tour of
Europe, I think the honest English squire more happy, who verily
believes the Greek wines less delicious than March beer, that the
African fruits have not so fine a flavour as golden pippins, that the
becà figuas of Italy are not so well tasted [do not taste as good] as
a rump of beef, and that, in short, there is no perfect enjoyment
of this life out of Old England. I pray God I may think so for the
rest of my life, and since I must be contented with our scanty
allowance of daylight, that I may forget the enlivening sun of
Constantinople.
(Letters, pp. 213–14)

Back in England, Lady Mary consciously retained some of her

‘Turkishness’, developing a persona as aristocratic female oriental
traveller and writer. As we’ve seen, she had written at great length about
her own sexually ambiguous Turkish dress in Letter 30; on her return,
she had herself painted in a slightly Europeanised version of it. Offering
herself as a spectacle dressed like this was not a way of blending in
(unlike wearing the veil), but a way of dramatising her own
exceptionality to both cultures – as a woman, as an aristocrat and as an
author. Marcia Pointon (1993) lists no fewer than seven portraits of
Montagu in her Turkish dress, although admittedly some are conjectural
identifications:
an anonymous engraving of The Female Traveller
Charles Jervas, Portrait of a Lady (called Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu), c.1730
George Knapton, Portrait of a Lady (called Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu)
Jonathan Richardson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, c.1725

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 Portrayed in Turkish dress

J.B. Vanmour, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, c.1713–16

J.B. Vanmour, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her Son, c.1717
Caroline Watson, after Sir Godfrey Kneller, Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu,1720.

Figure 7.3 Jean Baptiste Vanmour, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her
Son, Edward Wortley Montagu, and Attendants, c.1717, oil on canvas, 69cm
x 91cm. Primary Collection NPG 3924, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Photo: NPG

You’ve already had a chance to look at the Richardson portrait in the

short film ‘A letter from Constantinople’. Its depiction of Montagu in
front of the Constantinople skyline provides compelling evidence of the
nature of Montagu’s celebrity as a traveller to the east. If we take a
more detailed look at Vanmour’s Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her
Son (Figure 7.3), we can see that this portrait is designed to describe
Montagu more precisely as a woman writer – or perhaps to describe the
conditions under which Montagu might claim to be a woman writer.
She is again depicted here against the backdrop of Constantinople,
although she herself is framed by curtains representing an oriental
interior. She holds her young son by her right hand, emphasising her
motherhood. She is flanked on each side by an oriental figure: on the
left, a woman playing a musical instrument seated on a sofa, and on the

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right (outside the space demarcated as domestic), a turbaned man who

offers her a letter. She herself, richly dressed in a robe coded as
‘Turkish’, stares straight out at the viewer. Pointon remarks that the
letter being delivered is ‘a sort of professional imprimatur – a reminder
of Montagu’s role as correspondent’ and would also have referenced
‘the Turkish love-letter, a topic particularly dear to English audiences’
(Pointon, 1993, pp. 156–7). Lady Mary is poised between east and west,
between letter and music, between business and pleasure. But even so,
one of the oddest things about the portraits of Montagu in Turkish
dress is that not one of them show her actually writing a letter. She is
therefore depicted not so much as a writer, but as a character in her
own Letters.

In Turkish dress
It is instructive to compare the portraits of Montagu to other
eighteenth-century portraits of high-society women in Turkish dress.
There was quite a fashion in these, helped along by the popularity
of Turkish dress as a masquerade costume. However, as
demonstrated by the portrait of Mrs Baldwin (in Turkish dress and
seated cross-legged on a sofa) which Joshua Reynolds painted in
1782 (see Figure 7.4), the intended effect of this sort of portrait is
very different – it is one of soulful eroticism brooding over the
picture of a lover.

So much, then, for those presentations of self that were more or less
under Montagu’s own control. The Letters were very much admired,
and so indeed were her actions in introducing inoculation against
smallpox. (For example, in the eighteenth-century garden of Wentworth
Castle in South Yorkshire there stands an obelisk, originally surmounted
by a bronze disc, representing the sun and emblematic of the ‘Light of
Reason’. The inscription reads TO THE MEMORY/of the Rt.Hon.
Lady/Mary Wortley Montagu/who in the Year 1720/Introduced
Inoculation/of the Small Pox into/England from Turkey.’ It was erected
by William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford, in about 1743.)
Nevertheless, she attracted considerable criticism for her violation of
gender norms. Samuel Richardson cast her as the masculine Miss
Barnevelt in his novel of 1754, Sir Charles Grandison (Halsband, 1956,
p. 256), and John Cleland depicted her with great hostility as Lady Bell

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 Portrayed in Turkish dress

Figure 7.4 Joshua Reynolds, Mrs Baldwin in Eastern Dress, 1782, oil on
canvas, 141cm x 110cm. Compton Verney, Warwickshire, United Kingdom.
Photo: © The Compton Verney House Trust

Travers in Memoirs of a Coxcomb (1751). Horace Walpole lampooned her

as a masculine despiser of women:

A lady of masculine features and whose mind belied not those

features; for she had the character of being loud, bold, free, even
fierce when opposed, and affects at all times such airs of contempt
of her own sex that one wonders at her condescending to wear

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petticoats […] One reason indeed she everywhere gives for being
satisfied with being a woman is that she cannot be married to a
woman.
(Quoted in Frith, 1994, p. 116)

Montagu’s reputation would further decay in the nineteenth century

when she was typically vilified by readers (male and female) as
immodest and over-aristocratic, largely because she separated from her
husband and lived alone for the last 20 years of her life. Even so, the
Letters continued to have a popular, middlebrow success.

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 Conclusion

Conclusion
In this chapter we have been exploring Montagu’s Turkish Embassy
Letters in a variety of ways. We have looked at them in terms of their
genre, relating them to an eighteenth-century letter-writing culture and
to Enlightenment travel-writing. We have looked at them as cultural and
historical documents, thinking about them as feminist cultural critique.
We have considered them, too, as operating at the social and conceptual
hinge that existed in the early eighteenth century between the practice
of manuscript sociability and burgeoning print culture. Above all, we
have been concerned to place them in relation to literary history,
pointing out the ways that they put some of the standard assumptions
of literary history under pressure. One of those assumptions is to do
with the idea of authorship. The Letters are not ‘authorless’ in the sense
that the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments is – they certainly have a single
writer, and that writer is credited as a writer. Nor, as this chapter has
shown, is this writing private, artless or unrevised – in this sense the
Letters are properly literary. But precisely because they present
themselves as private letters, they and their writer have continued to be
problematically placed in relation to the modern literary canon and
modern ideas of authorship. For Foucault, the ‘author’ is not the real
individual who produces a text, but a way of marking the text as
literary. He argues that ‘in a civilization like our own there are a certain
number of discourses endowed with the “author function” while others
are deprived of it. A private letter may well have a signer – it does not
have an author’ (Foucault, 1998 [1969], p. 211). As the writer of the
Letters, Montagu appears not quite ‘outside’ or disentanglable from her
work (as, for instance, Spenser or Swift appear to be) – she appears to
be as much constructed by the letters as the constructor of them. This
is why the portraits of her do not show her as a writer but as a sort of
orientalist fantasy. Hers, it seems, is a model of the writer that is too
intimate, female and amateur, and not public, masculine or professional
enough, entirely to fit modern ideas of either the author or literary
discourse.

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Chapter 7 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters

Independent study
You will find suggestions for independent study on the module
website.

304
 References and further reading

References and further reading

Asterisked items are those suggested for further reading; items without
an asterisk are the works cited in the chapter.
Aravamudan, S. (1995) ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the hammam:
masquerade, womanliness, and Levantinization’, English Literary History,
vol. 62, nos. 1–2, pp. 69–104.
*Bigold, M. (2013) Women of Letters, Manuscript Circulation, and Print
Afterlives, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Bohls, E.A. (1995) ‘Aesthetics and orientalism in Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu’s letters’, Chapter 1 in Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the
Language of Aesthetics, 1716–1818, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, pp. 23–45; also available online through the OU Library website
in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (1994) vol. 23, pp 179–205, at
http://muse.jhu.edu.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/journals/
studies_in_eighteenth_century_culture/v023/23.bohls.pdf (Accessed 11
February 2015).
Brant, C. (2006) Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture,
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
*Campbell, J. (1994) ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the historical
machinery of female identity’ in Fowkes Tobin, B. (ed.) History, Gender
and Eighteenth-Century Literature, Athens, GA, University of Georgia
Press.
*Chard, C. (1999) Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour : Travel Writing
and Imaginative Geography 1600–1830, Manchester, Manchester
University Press.
Ezell, M. (1999) Social Authorship and the Advent of Print, Baltimore,
MD, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Foucault, M. (1998 [1969]) ‘What Is an Author?’ in Faubein, J.D. (ed.)
Essential Works of Foucault 1964–1984,vol. 2: Aesthetics, Method, and
Epistemology, trans. R. Hurley et al., New York, New Press, pp. 205–22.
Frith, W. (1994) ‘Sex, smallpox, and seraglios’ in Perry, G. and
Rossington, M. (eds) Femininity and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century
Arts and Culture, Manchester, Manchester University Press, pp. 99–122.

305
Chapter 7 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters

Grundy, I. (1999) Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the

Enlightenment, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
*Grundy, I. (2002) ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her daughter: the
changing use of manuscripts’ in Justice, G.L. (ed. and intro.) and Tinker,
N. (ed.) Women’s Writing and the Circulation of Ideas: Manuscript
Publication in England, 1550–1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, pp. 182–200.
*Hall, N. (2000) ‘The materiality of letter writing’ in Barton, D. and
Hall, N. (eds) Letter Writing as a Social Practice, Amsterdam, John
Benjamins Publishing, pp. 83–108.
Halsband, R. (1956) The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Oxford,
Clarendon Press.
Halsband, R. (ed.) (1965) The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, 3 volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
*Hamalian, L. (1981) Ladies on the Loose: Women Travellers of the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, London, Dodd, Mead & Co.
*Heffernan, T. (2000) ‘Feminism against the east/west divide: Lady
Mary’s Turkish Embassy letters’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 33, no.
2, pp. 201–15.
Heffernan, T. and O’Quinn, D. (eds) (2013) The Turkish Embassy
Letters: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Peterborough, Ont., Broadview
Press.
Jack, M. (ed.) (1994) The Turkish Embassy Letters,London, Virago.
*Jordan, N. (2010), ‘Eastern pastoral: “female fears” and “savage foes”
in Montagu’s “Constantinople”’, Modern Philology: Critical and Historical
Studies in Literature, Medieval through Contemporary, vol. 107, no. 3,
pp. 400–20.
*Kietzman, M.J. (1998), ‘Montagu’s Turkish Embassy letters and cultural
dislocation’, SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, vol. 38, no.
3, pp. 537–51.
Konuk, K. (2004) ‘Ethnomasquerade in Ottoman–European encounters:
reenacting Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’, Criticism: Quarterly for
Literature and the Arts, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 393–414.
*Landry, D. (2001) ‘Horsy and persistently queer: imperialism, feminism
and bestiality’, Textual Practice, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 467–85.

306
 References and further reading

*Lew, J. (1991) ‘Lady Mary’s portable seraglio’, Eighteenth-Century

Studies, vol. 24, pp. 432–50.
Lonsdale, R. (ed.) (1984) The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century
Verse, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.
Lowenthal, C.J. (2010) ‘The veil of romance: Lady Mary’s embassy
letters’, Chapter 3 in Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the
Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter, Athens, GA, University of Georgia
Press, pp. 80–113.
*Melman, B. (1992) Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle
East (1718–1918), Basingstoke, Macmillan.
Pointon, M. (1993) Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation
in Eighteenth-Century England, New Haven, CT and London, Yale
University Press.
Said, E.W. (2001 [1978]) Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient,
London, Penguin.
*Scholz, S. (2012) ‘English women in oriental dress: playing the Turk in
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy letters and Daniel
Defoe’s Roxana’ in Schütling, S., Müller, S.L. and Hertel, R. (eds and
intro.) Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East: Performing
Cultures, Farnham, Ashgate, pp. 85–98.
*Weitzman, A.J. (2002) ‘Voyeurism and aesthetics in the Turkish bath:
Lady Mary’s school of female beauty’, Comparative Literature Studies,
vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 347–59.
Wilson, W.D. (1985) ‘Turks on the eighteenth-century operatic stage and
European political, military, and cultural history’, Eighteenth-Century
Life, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 79–92.
Winch, A. (2007) ‘“In plain English, stark naked”: Orlando, Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu and reclaiming Sapphic connections’, Critical Survey,
vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 51–61.

307
Poetry for Chapter 1
Contents
Aphra Behn (1640–1689) 313
The Disappointment 314
Thomas Campion (1567–1620) 319
My Sweetest Lesbia, In Imitation of Catullus 319
Thomas Carew (1594/5–1640) 321
The Spring 322
Song: Persuasions to Enjoy 322
Upon a Ribband 323
A Rapture 324
John Donne (1572–1631) 330
Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going To Bed 330
Sir Thomas Hawkins (?1575–1640) 333
Book 1, Ode 11 333
Robert Herrick (1591–1674) 334
To the Most Illustrious and Most Hopeful Prince, Charles,
Prince of Wales 335
The Argument of his Book 335
The Vine 336
Upon the Loss of his Mistresses 337
Delight in Disorder 337
Julia’s Petticoat 338
Corinna’s Going a Maying 338
To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses 341
To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time 343
To Daffodils 344
Upon Julia’s Clothes 344
Richard Lovelace (1618–1657) 345
Song: To Lucasta, Going Beyond The Seas 346
Song: To Lucasta, Going to the Wars 347
Song: To Amarantha, That She Would Dishevel Her Hair 347
Gratiana Dancing and Singing 348
To Althea, from Prison: Song 349
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) 351
Amores, Book 1, Elegy 5 352
Amores, Book 2, Elegy 12 353
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) 355
To His Coy Mistress 356
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) 359
A Satire Against Reason and Mankind 360
From Seneca’s Troades 368
The Disabled Debauchee 368
Régime de Vivre 371
The Imperfect Enjoyment 371
A Satire on Charles II 374
Upon his Leaving his Mistress 375
A Song 376
Sir John Suckling (1609–1641) 377
Sonnet I 378
Sonnet II 378
Sonnet III 379
Against Fruition I 381
Song: Why so pale and wan fond lover? 382
The Constant Lover 383
 Aphra Behn (1640–1689)

Aphra Behn (1640–1689)

Aphra Behn was probably born in Kent in 1640, the daughter of a
barber and a wet-nurse. She claimed that she travelled to Surinam on
the north-east coast of South America in the early 1660s, and scholars
who credit the claim think she may have gone there as a government
spy. Back in London it seems she married a Mr Behn, probably a
merchant of German descent, though the marriage was apparently
short-lived; the fate of Mr Behn is not known. Her career in espionage
took her to Antwerp in the 1660s, where she had to borrow money to
pay her debts; unable to repay the loan when she returned to London,
she may have spent some time in a debtors’ prison. She was not the
first Englishwoman to have a play produced, but she was the first one
to have a career as a professional dramatist, writing at least 19 plays for
the Duke’s Company in the course of the 1670s and 1680s. Although
she wrote one tragedy and several tragi-comedies, comedy, often of the
bawdy variety, was her favoured dramatic genre. In the 1670s she was
associated with the circle of the Earl of Rochester, and it is probably at
this time that she wrote risqué poems like ‘The Disappointment’.
During the political turmoil sparked in the late 1670s by the Popish
Plot and the Exclusion Crisis – the movement to exclude Charles II’s
brother and heir, the Catholic James, Duke of York, from the throne –
she was a loyal supporter of the monarchy. Her oeuvre includes
numerous works of prose fiction, including her now-canonical novel
about slavery, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688). She died in 1689,
soon after James II’s fall from power.

Edition
The text of the poem is from Janet Todd (ed.) (1992) The Works of
Aphra Behn, Volume 1: Poetry, London, William Pickering.

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Janet Todd [JT]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

313
Poetry for Chapter 1

The Disappointment
Behn’s main source is ‘Sur une Impuissance’, a French poem by de
Cantenac (about whom little is known, not even his first name). A more
distant relation is Ovid’s Amores, Book 3, Elegy 7. ‘The
Disappointment’ was first published in 1680 in Rochester’s Poems on
Several Occasions and for a long time was thought to have been written
by him. The poem’s pastoral setting is Behn’s invention; de Cantenac’s
poem takes place in a town. [AP]

1
One day the amorous Lysander,
By an impatient passion sway’d,
Surpris’d fair Cloris, that lov’d maid,
Who cou’d defend herself no longer.
5 All things did with his love conspire;
That gilded planet of the day,
In his gay chariot drawn by fire,1
Was now descending to the sea,
And left no light to guide the world,
10 But what from Cloris brighter eyes was hurl’d.
2
In a lone thicket made for love,
Silent as yielding maid’s consent,
She with a charming languishment
Permits his force, yet gently strove;
15 Her hands his bosom softly meet,
But not to put him back design’d,
Rather to draw ’em on inclin’d:
Whilst he lay trembling at her feet;
Resistance ’tis in vain to show,
20 She wantsº the pow’r to say – Ah! what d’ye do? ºlacks
3
Her bright eyes sweet, and yet severe,
Where love and shame confus’dly strive,
1
The sun, figured in Greek mythology as a chariot driven by Apollo, the sun god. [AP]

314
 Aphra Behn (1640–1689)

Fresh vigour to Lysander give;

And breathing faintly in his ear,
25 She cried – Cease, cease – your vain desire,
Or I’ll call out – What would you do?
My dearer Honour ev’n to you,
I cannot, must not give – retire,
Or take this life, whose chiefest part
30 I gave you with the conquest of my heart.
4
But he as much unus’d to fear,
As he was capable of love,
The blessed minutes to improve,
Kisses her mouth, her neck, her hair;
35 Each touch her new desire alarms,
His burning, trembling hand he press’d
Upon her swelling snowy breast,
While she lay panting in his arms.
All her unguarded beauties lie
40 The spoils and trophies of the enemy.
5
And now without respect or fear,
He seeks the object of his vows;
(His love no modesty allows)
By swift degrees advancing – where
45 His daring hand that altar seiz’d,
Where gods of love do sacrifice.
That awful throne, that paradise
Where rageº is calm’d, and anger pleas’d, ºsexual passion
That fountain where delight still flows,
50 And gives the universal world repose.
6
Her balmy lips encount’ring his,
Their bodies, as their souls, are join’d;
Where both in transports unconfin’d,º ºfeelings of exaltation, rapture
Extend themselves upon the moss.

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Poetry for Chapter 1

55 Cloris half dead and breathless lay;

Her soft eyes cast a humid light,
Such as divides the day and night;
Or falling stars, whose fires decay:
And now no signs of life she shows,
60 But what in short-breath’d sighs returns and goes.
7
He saw how at her length she lay,
He saw her rising bosom bare;
Her loose thin robes, through which appear
A shape design’d for love and play;
65 Abandon’d by her pride and shame,
She does her softest joys dispense,
Off ’ring her virgin innocence
A victim to love’s sacred flame;
While the o’er-ravish’d shepherd lies,
70 Unable to perform the sacrifice.
8
Ready to taste a thousand joys,
The too transported haplessº swain ºill-starred, luckless
Found the vast pleasure turn’d to pain;
Pleasure which too much love destroys:
75 The willing garments by he laid,
And heaven all open’d to his view;
Mad to possess, himself he threw
On the defenceless lovely maid.
But oh what envying gods conspire
80 To snatch his power, yet leave him the desire!
9
Nature’s support (without whose aid
She can no human being give),
Itself now wants the art to live;
Faintness its slack’ned nerves invade:
85 In vain th’enraged youth essay’d
To call its fleeting vigour back,

316
 Aphra Behn (1640–1689)

No motion ’twill from motion take;

Excess of love his love betray’d;
In vain he toils, in vain commands;
90 The insensible fell weeping in his hand.
10
In this so amorous cruel strife,
Where love and fate were too severe,
The poor Lysander in despair
Renounc’d his reason with his life:
95 Now all the brisk and active fire
That should the nobler part inflame,
Serv’d to increase his rage and shame,
And left no spark for new desire:
Not all her naked charms could move
100 Or calm that rage that had debauch’d his love.
11
Cloris returning from the trance
Which love and soft desire had bred,
Her timorousº hand she gently laid, ºfrightened, apprehensive
(Or guided by design or chance),2
105 Upon that fabulous priapus,3
That potent god, as poets feign;
But never did young Shepherdess,
Gath’ring of fern upon the plain,
More nimbly draw her fingers back,
110 Finding beneath the verdant leaves a snake:
12
Than Cloris her fair hand withdrew,
Finding that god of her desires
Disarm’d of all his awful fires,
And cold as flow’rs bath’d in the morning dew.
115 Who can the nymph’s confusion guess?
The blood forsook the hinder place,
2
Guided by either design or chance
3
The deformed son of Venus and Bacchus, Priapus was the god of the phallus and the
patron of licentiousness. [JT]

317
Poetry for Chapter 1

And strew’d with blushes all her face,

Which both disdain and shame expressed:
And from Lysander’s arms she fled,
120 Leaving him fainting on the gloomy bed.
13
Like lightning through the grove she hies,
Or Daphne from the Delphic god,4
No print upon the grassy road
She leaves, t’instruct pursuing eyes.
125 The wind that wanton’d in her hair,
And with her ruffled garments play’d,
Discover’d in the flying maid
All that the gods e’re made of fair.
So Venus, when her love was slain,
130 With fear and haste flew o’er the fatal plain.5
14
The nymph’s resentments, none but I
Can well imagine or condole:
But none can guess Lysander’s soul,
But those who sway’d his destiny.
135 His silent griefs swell up to storms,
And not one god his fury spares;
He curs’d his birth, his fate, his stars;
But more the shepherdess’s charms,
Whose soft bewitching influence,
140 Had damn’d him to the hell of impotence.

4
The nymph Daphne, who fled from the unwanted love of the god Apollo, was turned
into a laurel. [JT]
5
Venus’s beloved Adonis received a mortal wound from a wild boar when hunting; she
rushed to his aid. [JT]

318
 Thomas Campion (1567–1620)

Thomas Campion (1567–1620)

Thomas Campion was an English poet, composer and physician. Born
in London, he studied at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge for four
years before going on to study law at Gray’s Inn, London. In 1605 he
received a medical degree from the University of Caen in Normandy,
France and probably went on to practise as a doctor in London until
his death. A true polymath, he left behind a large and varied body of
work, including numerous poems, over a hundred songs for the lute,
masques, and treatises on poetry and music.
The poem here is a loose translation of Catullus’s ‘Carmen 5’. Catullus
(c.84 BCE–54 BCE), whose full name was Gaius Valerius Catullus, was a
prominent Latin poet of the late Roman Republic.

Edition
The text of the poem is from Joan Hart (ed.) (1976) Ayres and
Observations: Selected Poems of Thomas Campion, Cheadle, Fyfield
Books/Carcanet Press.
Spelling and punctuation have been modernised by Anita Pacheco.

Notes
Notes are by Anita Pacheco.

My Sweetest Lesbia, In Imitation of Catullus

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,
And though the sagerº sort our deeds reprove,º ºwiser; ºcriticise
Let us not weighº them: heav’ns great lamps do ºconsider, take into account,
dive pay attention to
Into their west, and straight again revive,
5 But soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during1 night.
If all would lead their lives in love like me,
Then bloody swords and armour should not be;

1
everlasting (literally, ever-enduring)

319
Poetry for Chapter 1

No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should ºdisturb

move,º
10 Unless alar’m2 came from the camp of love:
But fools do live, and waste their little light,
And seek with pain their ever-during night.

When timely death my life and fortune ends,

Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends,
15 But let all lovers rich in triumph come,
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb;
And Lesbia, close up thou my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.

2
Alarum, or an alarm calling people to arms

320
 Thomas Carew (1594/5–1640)

Thomas Carew (1594/5–1640)

The son of a lawyer, Thomas Carew (pronounced ‘Carey’) was intended
for his father’s profession, but after a year at the Middle Temple he
abandoned the law and took up a post as secretary to Sir Dudley
Carleton on diplomatic missions to Italy and Holland. He was sacked
for making libellous comments about Carleton and his wife, but
managed to secure other prominent figures as patrons and by 1630 had
been appointed to posts at court that brought him into close and
regular contact with King Charles I and were a clear mark of high royal
favour. Throughout his career as a courtier, Carew had a reputation as a
libertine. Most of his lyric poetry, much of it unusually sexually explicit,
was probably written in the 1620s. He was apparently a popular poet,
often alluded to favourably by his contemporaries. Although his poems
circulated widely in manuscript, only ten were published in his lifetime.
Carew’s work has been the subject of a critical reappraisal since
the 1980s. While the nineteenth-century critic and essayist William
Hazlitt dismissed him as an ‘elegant court trifler’, that view has been
rejected by critics and historians like John Kerrigan and Kevin Sharpe,
who have stressed the complexity and technical brilliance of his work.

Edition
The texts of the poems are from Thomas Clayton (ed.) (1978) Cavalier
Poets: Selected Poems, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Thomas Clayton [TC]
. Hugh Maclean (ed.) (1974) Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets, New
York, W.W. Norton & Co. [HM]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

321
Poetry for Chapter 1

The Spring

Now that the winter’s gone, the earth hath lost

Her snow-white robes; and now no more the frost
Candiesº the grass, or casts an icy cream ºcoats with ice
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
5 But the warm sun thaws the benumbèd earth,
And makes it tender, gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow,1 wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
10 In triumph to the world the youthful spring;
The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array,
Welcome the coming of the longed-for May.
Now all things smile; only my love doth lour,
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
15 To melt that marble ice which still doth hold
Her heart congealed, and makes her pity cold.
The ox which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall doth now securely lie
In open fields, and love no more is made
20 By the fireside; but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris2 sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

Song: Persuasions to Enjoy

Set to music by Henry Lawes and Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi
di Carravaggio. [HM]

If the quickº spirits in your eye ºvivid, vital

1
Swallows are said to have been ‘sacred unto the Penates or household gods of the
ancients’ (Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646, V.xxiii.3). [TC]
2
Amyntas … Chloris: conventional names for shepherd and shepherdess in pastoral
literature. [TC]

322
 Thomas Carew (1594/5–1640)

Now languish, and anonº must die; ºstraightaway

If every sweet, and every grace,
Must fly from that forsaken face:
5 Then, Celia, let us reap our joys,
Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys.

Or if that golden fleece must grow

Forever free from agèd snow;
If those bright suns must know no shade,
10 Nor your fresh beauties ever fade:
Then fear not, Celia, to bestow
What, stillº being gathered, still must grow. ºcontinually
Thus, either Time his sickle brings
In vain, or else in vain his wings.

Upon a Ribband
This silken wreath, which circles in mine arm,1
Is but an emblem of that mystic charm
Wherewith the magic of your beauties binds
My captive soul, and round about it winds
5 Fetters of lasting love. This hath entwined
My flesh alone, that hath impaledº my mind: ºenclosed
Time may wear out these soft weak bands, but those
Strong chains of brass Fate shall not discompose.
This holy relic may preserve my wrist,
10 But my whole frame doth by that power subsist:
To that my prayers and sacrifice, to this
I only pay a superstitious kiss:
This but the idol, that’s the deity;
Religion there is due, here cer’mony.
15 That I receive by faith, this but in trust;
Here I may tender duty, there I must.
This order as a layman I may bear,
But I become Love’s priest when that I wear.
1
bracelet of hair used as a love token; cf. Donne, ‘The Funeral’ and ‘The Relic’. [TC]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

This moves like air, that as the centreº stands; ºearth

20 That knot your virtue tied, this but your hands;
That Nature framed, but this was made by Art;
This makes my arm your prisoner, that my heart.

A Rapture
Carew’s poem has some affinity with Donne’s Elegy 19 (‘Going to
Bed’). Not very surprisingly, ‘A Rapture’ excited the admiration of
many among Carew’s contemporaries; [Thomas] Randolph,
[William] Cartwright, John Cleveland, and others composed verses
that clearly reflect the influence of its language and tone. [HM]

I will enjoy thee now, my Celia, come,

And fly with me to Love’s Elysium:1
The giant, Honour, that keeps cowards out,
Is but a masquer,2 and the servile rout
5 Of baser subjects only bend in vain
To the vast idol, whilst the nobler train
Of valiant soldiers daily sail between
The huge Colossus’ legs,3 and pass unseen
Unto the blissful shore. Be bold and wise,
10 And we shall enter: the grim Swiss4 denies
Only tame fools a passage, that not know
He is but form and only frights in show
The duller eyes that look from far; draw near,
And thou shalt scorn what we were wont to fear.
15 We shall see how the stalking pageant5 goes
With borrowed legs, a heavy load to those
That made and bear him; not as we once thought
1
Love’s paradise. In the Latin poets, Elysium is that part of the underworld reserved for
those whose earthly lives had been heroic or markedly righteous. [HM]
2
masquerader, pretended ‘giant’
3
Alluding to the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world; it
was Chares’s huge bronze statue of Apollo, whose legs were said (as here) to have
straddled the entrance of the harbour. [TC]
4
Alluding to the mercenary soldiers from Switzerland who served as special bodyguards at
the Vatican and at the courts of some continental monarchs. [AP]
5
A piece of stage machinery, or a mechanical contrivance or machine generally (OED 2b),
here specifically a mechanical giant.

324
 Thomas Carew (1594/5–1640)

The seed of gods, but a weak model wrought

By greedy men that seek t’enclose the common6
20 And within private arms impaleº free woman. ºenclose
Come, then, and mounted on the wings of Love
We’ll cut the flitting air, and soar above
The monster’s head, and in the noblest seats
Of those blest shades quench and renew our heats.
25 There shall the Queen of Love, and Innocence,
Beauty, and Nature, banish all offence
From our close ivy-twines; there I’ll behold
Thy barèd snow and thy unbraided gold;
There my enfranchised hand on every side
30 Shall o’er thy naked polished ivory slide.
No curtain there, though of transparent lawn,º ºfine linen
Shall be before thy virgin-treasure drawn;
But the rich mine, to the enquiring eye
Exposed, shall ready still for mintage7 lie,
35 And we will coin young Cupids. There a bed
Of roses and fresh myrtles8 shall be spread
Under the cooler shade of cypress groves;
Our pillows of the down of Venus’ doves,
Whereon our panting limbs we’ll gently lay
40 In the faint respites of our active play,
That so our slumbers may in dreams have leisure
To tell the nimble fancy our past pleasure;
And so our souls, that cannot be embraced,
Shall the embraces of our bodies taste.
45 Meanwhile the bubbling stream shall court the shore;
Th’enamoured chirping wood-choir shall adore
In varied tunes the deity of Love;
The gentle blasts of western winds shall move
The trembling leaves, and through their close
boughs breathe
6
To seize for personal gain that which is properly common to all (as rich men ‘enclosed’
common land for pasturage). [HM]
7
Coinage, here with reference specifically to the stamping of images. [TC]
8
Myrtles were sacred to Venus and an emblem of love. [TC]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

50 Still music, whilst we rest ourselves beneath

Their dancing shade; till a soft murmur, sent
From souls entranced in am’rous languishment,
Rouse us, and shoot into our veins fresh fire,
Till we in their sweet ecstasy expire.
55 Then, as the empty bee, that lately bore
Into the common treasure all her store,
Flies ’bout the painted field with nimble wing,
Deflow’ring the fresh virgins of the spring,
So will I rifle all the sweets that dwell
60 In my delicious paradise, and swell
My bag with honey, drawn forth by the power
Of fervent kisses, from each spicy flower.
I’ll seize the rose-buds in their perfumed bed,
The violet knots, like curious mazes9 spread
65 O’er all the garden, taste the ripened cherry,
The warm firm apple, tipped with coral berry;
Then will I visit, with a wandering kiss,
The vale of lilies and the bower of bliss;10
And, where the beauteous region doth divide
70 Into two milky ways, my lips shall slide
Down those smooth alleys, wearing as I go
A tract for lovers on the printed snow;
Thence climbing o’er the swelling Apennineº ºmountain range in Italy
Retire into thy grove of eglantine,11
75 Where I will all those ravished sweets distil
Through love’s alembic,12 and with chemic skill
From the mixed mass one sovereign balm13 derive,
Then bring that great elixir14 to thy hive.
Now in more subtile wreaths I will entwine
9
violet knots … curious mazes: as found in the elaborate gardens of the period. [TC]
10
After Faerie Queene, II.xii, the garden of sensual pleasure. [TC]
11
Sweetbriar, a species of rose having prickles, pink single flowers, and small aromatic
leaves. [TC]
12
An instrument used in alchemy for distilling; the first term in the elaborate alchemical
metaphor of lines 75–8. [AP]
13
An ointment with medicinal qualities
14
Another term from alchemy. The ‘elixir’ was a substance supposedly capable of turning
base metals into gold. [AP]

326
 Thomas Carew (1594/5–1640)

80 My sin’wy thighs, my legs and arms, with thine;

Thou like a sea of milk shalt lie displayed,
Whilst I the smooth, calm oceän invade
With such a tempest as when Jove of old
Fell down on Danae in a storm of gold:15
85 Yet my tall pine16 shall in the Cyprian17 strait
Ride safe at anchor and unlade her freight;
My rudder with thy bold hand, like a tried
And skilful pilot, thou shalt steer, and guide
My bark into love’s channel, where it shall
90 Dance, as the bounding waves do rise or fall.
Then shall thy circling arms embrace and clip
My willing body, and thy balmy lip
Bathe me in juice of kisses, whose perfume
Like a religious incense shall consume,
95 And send up holy vapours to those powers
That bless our loves and crown our sportful hours,
That with such halcyon calmness18 fix our souls
In steadfast peace as no affright controls.
There no rude sounds shake us with sudden starts;
100 No jealous ears, when we unrip19 our hearts,
Suck our discourse in; no observing spies
This blush, that glance, traduce;º no envious eyes ºdefame, slander, accuse
Watch our closeº meetings; nor are we betrayed ºsecret
To rivals by the bribèd chambermaid.
105 No wedlock bonds unwreathe our twisted loves;
We seek no midnight arbour, no dark groves,
To hide our kisses; there the hated name
Of husband, wife, lust, modest, chaste, or shame,
Are vain and empty words, whose very sound

15
In Roman mythology, Danae was beloved by Jove (Zeus in Greek mythology). When she
was confined in a tower by her father, the king of the gods visited her in the form of a
shower of gold. As a result of this union, she gave birth to Perseus. [AP]
16
A common synecdoche for ship, here with obvious phallic connotations. [AP]
17
Venus’s birthplace was Cyprus. [TC]
18
According to legend, during the period when the halcyon (a sea bird) makes and
maintains her nest, the ocean’s waves are calm. [HM]
19
Open; the word originally meant ‘strip (a house or roof) of tiles’. [TC]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

110 Was never heard in the Elysian ground.

All things are lawful there that may delight
Nature or unrestrainèd appetite;
Like and enjoy, to will and act, is one:
We only sin when Love’s rites are not done.
115 The Roman Lucrece20 there reads the divine
Lectures of love’s great master, Aretine,21
And knows as well as Lais22 how to move
Her pliant body in the act of love.
To quench the burning ravisher,º she hurls ºTarquin
120 Her limbs into a thousand winding curls,
And studies artful postures, such as be
Carved on the bark of every neighb’ring tree
By learnèd hands that so adorned the rind
Of those fair plants, which as they lay entwined,
125 Have fanned their glowing fires. The Grecian
dame,
That in her endless web toiled for a name
As fruitless as her work, doth there display
Herself before the youth of Ithaca,
And th’amorous sport of gamesomeº nights prefer ºplayful, merry, sportive
130 Before dull dreams of the lost traveller.23
Daphne hath broke her bark, and that swift foot
Which th’ angry gods had fastened with a root
To the fixed earth, doth now unfettered run
To meet th’ embraces of the youthful Sun:24
20
The name of Lucretia, who took her own life after she had been raped by Tarquin,
became a byword for chastity in later times. [HM]
21
Lectures … Aretine: presumably the erotic sonnets Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) wrote to
accompany the sixteen engravings Marcantonio Raimondi made for [the painter and
architect] Giulio Romano. [TC]
22
There were three celebrated Greek courtesans of this name. [TC]
23
A reversal of the story of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, in the Greek
epic poem The Odyssey. In the poem Penelope remains faithful to her husband (‘the lost
traveller’) during his long absence from Ithaca. She puts off her many suitors (‘the youth
of Ithaca’), who assume Odysseus is dead, by saying she will choose a new husband as
soon as she finishes a tapestry on which she is working. Every night she unpicks the
work she has done during the day; hence her ‘endless web’. [AP]
24
An allusion to (and reversal of) the myth of Daphne, a nymph pursued by Apollo (the
sun god) and turned into a bay tree. [AP]

328
 Thomas Carew (1594/5–1640)

135 She hangs upon him like his Delphic lyre;25

Her kisses blow the old, and breathe new fire;
Full of her god, she sings inspired lays,
Sweet odes of love, such as deserve the bays,
Which she herself was. Next her, Laura lies
140 In Petrarch’s learnèd arms, drying those eyes
That did in such sweet smooth-paced numbers flow
As made the world enamoured of his woe.26
These, and ten thousand beauties more, that died
Slave to the tyrant,º now enlarged deride ºhonour
145 His cancelled laws, and for their time mis-spent
Pay into Love’s exchequer double rent.
Come then, my Celia, we’ll no more forbear
To taste our joys, struck with a panic fear,
But will depose from his imperious sway
150 This proud usurper and walk free as they,
With necks unyoked; nor is it just that he
Should fetter your soft sex with chastity,
Which Nature made unapt for abstinence;
When yet this false impostor can dispense
155 With human justice, and with sacred right,
And maugreº both their laws command me fight ºin spite of
With rivals, or with em’lousº loves, that dare ºemulous or competitive
Equal with thine their mistress’ eyes or hair:
If thou complain of wrong, and call my sword
160 To carve out thy revenge, upon that word
He bids me fight and kill, or else he brands
With marks of infamy my coward hands;
And yet Religion bids from bloodshed fly,
And damns me for that act. Then tell me why
165 This goblin Honour, which the world adores,
Should make men atheists, and not women whores.

25
As the patron god of music and poetry, Apollo was often represented with a lyre; he was
also the patron god of the famous oracle at Delphi. [AP]
26
Laura, to whom Petrarch addressed his sonnets, is here transformed from the
unattainable object of desire into the poet’s willing lover. [AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

John Donne (1572–1631)

For Donne’s biography, see the entry for him in the poetry section in
Book 1 of the module.

Edition
The text of the poem is from Helen Gardner (ed.) (1965) John Donne:
The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Spelling and punctuation have been modernised by Anita Pacheco.

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Helen Gardner [HG]
. A.J. Smith (ed.) (1971) John Donne: The Complete Poems,
Harmondsworth, Penguin [AJS]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going To Bed

[In this poem there is a slight difference between the printed
and the audio versions, indicated by an asterisk.]

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,1

Until I labour, I in labour lie.2
The foe oft-times, having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing,3 though they never fight.
5 Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone4 glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breast-plate,5 which you wear

1
His virile powers defy inaction or sleep. [AJS]
2
Donne puns on two meanings of ‘labour’: to make love and to await impatiently. [AP]
3
a) standing to, in expectation of action; b) standing erect, as a tumid penis. [AJS]
4
The belt of Orion; or the furthest circle of the universe with its inlay of fixed stars. [AJS]
5
The stomacher, which covered the chest under the laced bodice, was often richly
ornamented with jewels. [HG]

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 John Donne (1572–1631)

That th’eyes of busy fools6 may be stopped there:

Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime7
10 Tells me from you that now ’tis your bed time.
Off with that happy busk,º whom I envy ºcorset
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown’s going off such beauteous state reveals
As when from flowery meads th’hills shadow steals.
15 Off with your wiry coronet8 and show
The hairy diademº which on you doth grow. ºcrown
Off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’dº temple, this soft bed. ºsacred, holy
In such white robes heavens angels us’d to be
20 Receiv’d by men; thou angel bring’st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s paradise;º and though ºa heaven of sensual blisses
Ill spirits walk in white,9 we easily know
By this these angelsº from an evil sprite:º ºwomen; ºspirit
They set our hairs, but these the flesh upright.º ºgive us an erection
25 Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Behind, before, above, between, below.
Oh my America, my new found land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man
mann’d,10
My mine of precious stones, my empery,º ºterritory ruled by an emperor
30 How blest am I in this discovering thee.
To enter in these bonds11 is to be free,
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness, all joys are due to thee.
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be
35 To taste whole joys.12 Gems which you women use
Are as Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
6
Prying people, who will be so taken up with the ornaments that they will look no further.
[AJS]
7
The lady is wearing a chiming watch. [HG]
8
A band of metal worn round the brow
9
Evil spirits sometimes masquerade as angels to deceive men. [AJS]
10
a) inhabited; b) supplied with and used by a man. [AJS]
11
Binding commitments; fetters (her arms)
12
As souls cast off the body to taste the fullness of joy, so bodies must cast off their
clothes. [HG]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a gem

His earthly soul may* covet theirs not them.13 *might
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
40 For laymen,14 are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
Whom their imputed grace will dignify
Must see reveal’d.15 Then, since I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife show
45 Thyself; cast all, yea this white linen hence.
Here is no penance, much less innocence.16
To teach thee, I am naked first: Why then
What need’st thou have more covering than a man?17

13
[In Greek mythology] Atalanta said that she would marry only a suitor who could beat
her in a foot-race; no one could, until Hippomenes got three golden apples from
Aphrodite and threw them down as he ran, so that Atalanta forgot the race and picked
them up. But Donne’s simile makes women the distracting agents and men the gross
dupes. [AJS]
14
a) the laity; and b) unschooled outsiders who are capable of grasping things only through
pictures or the decorated covers of books. [AJS]
15
In Calvinist doctrine, Christ imputes grace to a few elect in order to save them since
men cannot acquire it for themselves or gain salvation by any merit of their own. The
suggestion here is that a man cannot gain by merit the revelation and bliss he seeks but
depends upon the arbitrary election of the woman, who imputes to him, and loves him
for, her own qualities. [AJS]
16
White is the garb of a penitent and of innocence … [the speaker asks the woman] to
throw the linen off because in this situation neither the garb of penance nor that of
virginity is appropriate. [AJS]
17
a) more clothes on than the poet himself; b) anything else to cover her than a man.
[AJS]

332
 Sir Thomas Hawkins (?1575–1640)

Sir Thomas Hawkins (?1575–1640)

Sir Thomas Hawkins, poet and translator, was baptised in 1575 at
Boughton under Blean in Kent. His family was Catholic. He was
knighted by James I in 1618, but his religion provoked repeated
problems with the authorities in the 1620s and 1630s. His 1625
translation, The Odes of Horace the Best of Lyric Poets, was reprinted
three times in the course of the 1630s, and in 1652 it was paid the
compliment of being plagiarised. Hawkins left a valuable library behind
him which was destroyed by fire in 1715, when the family home, Nash
House, was attacked by a Protestant mob during the Jacobite uprising.
The poem here is a translation of a poem by Horace (65 BCE–8 BCE) –
whose full name was Quintus Horatius Flaccus – the chief Roman lyric
poet during the reign of the emperor Augustus.

Edition
The text of the poem is from Antony Lentin (ed.) (1997) Horace: The
Odes in English Verse, Ware, Wordsworth Editions.

Notes
Notes are by Anita Pacheco.

Book 1, Ode 11
Strive not, Leuconoë, to know what end
The gods above to me or thee will send;
Nor with astrologers consult at all,
That thou mayst better know what can befall;
5 Whether thou liv’st more winters, or thy last
Be this, which Tyrrhen waves1 ’gainst rocks do cast.
Be wise! Drink free, and in so short a space
Do not protracted hopes of lifeº embrace. ºhopes of a long (protracted) life
Whilst we are talking, envious Time doth slide:
10 This day’s thine own; the next may be denied.

1
A reference to the Tyrrhenian Sea, part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of
Italy.

333
Poetry for Chapter 1

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

Robert Herrick was born in London in 1591, the fifth surviving child of
Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith, and his wife Julian Stone.
When Herrick was 15 months old, his father fell to his death from a
fourth-floor window of his house, two days after making his will. A
suspected suicide, he was buried in unhallowed ground and his estate
narrowly escaped being confiscated by the crown. In 1607 Robert was
apprenticed as a goldsmith to his uncle Sir William Herrick, but a few
years later abandoned his father’s vocation and entered St John’s
College, Cambridge. By the 1620s he was in London, moving in the
literary circle that gathered around poet and playwright Ben Jonson. He
was ordained a minister of the Church of England in 1623 and served
as chaplain on the ill-fated mission to relieve the French Protestants at
New Rochelle which was led by James I’s controversial favourite, the
Duke of Buckingham. Herrick was appointed vicar of Dean Prior in
Devon in 1629 and his first published poems appeared in the
early 1630s. His royalist sympathies during the civil war years led to
expulsion from his vicarage in 1647. He returned to London, where he
remained until the Restoration of 1660. Hesperides, his enormous
volume of over a thousand poems, appeared in 1648. Herrick returned
to Devon after the Restoration and died there, still a bachelor, at the
age of 83.

Editions
The texts of the poems are from Thomas Clayton (ed.) (1978) Cavalier
Poets: Selected Poems, Oxford, Oxford University Press, apart from the
following:
. ‘To the Most Illustrious and Most Hopeful Prince, Charles, Prince of
Wales’ is from L.C. Martin (ed.) (1965) The Poems of Robert Herrick,
Oxford, Oxford University Press. Spelling modernised by Anita
Pacheco.
. ‘To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses’ is from Hugh
Maclean (ed.) (1974) Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets, New York
and London, W.W. Norton & Co.

334
 Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Thomas Clayton [TC]
. Hugh Maclean [HM]
. Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (eds) (2013) The Complete Poetry of
Robert Herrick, Oxford, Oxford University Press [C&C]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

To the Most Illustrious and Most Hopeful Prince, Charles,

Prince of Wales
Well may my book come forth like public day,
When such light as you are leads the way:
Who are my work’s creator, and alone
The flame of it, and the expansion.
5 And look how all those heavenly lamps acquire
Light from the sun, that inexhausted fire:
So all my morn, and evening stars from you
Have their existence, and their influence too.
Full is my book of glories; but all these
10 By you become immortal substances.

The Argument of his Book

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers;
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, hock-carts,1 wassails, wakes;2
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes.
5 I write of youth, of love, and have access,
By these, to sing of cleanly wantonness.
I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece
Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris.º ºa waxy substance used in
perfumes

1
Carts which carried home the last load of the harvest. [TC]
2
Village festivals as well as vigils for the dead. [TC]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

I sing of time’s trans-shifting; and I write

10 How roses first came red, and lilies white.
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy-King.3
I write of hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of heaven, and hope to have it after all.

The Vine
I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which, crawling one and every way,
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
5 Methought her long, small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nerveletsº were embraced; ºtendrils
About her head I writhing hung,
10 And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung:
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.1
My curls about her neck did crawl,
15 And arms and hands they did enthrall:
So that she could not freely stir
(All parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
20 Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke;
And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.

3
Oberon and Mab are king and queen of the fairies. [HM]
1
Bacchus, the god of wine, is ravished, or enthralled, by grapevines. [AP]

336
 Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

Upon the Loss of his Mistresses

I have lost, and lately, these
Many dainty mistresses:
Stately Julia, prime of all;
Sappho next, a principal;
5 Smooth Anthea, for a skin
White and heaven-like crystalline;
Sweet Electra, and the choice
Myrrha, for the lute, and voice;
Next, Corinna, for her wit,
10 And the graceful use of it;
With Perilla, all are gone;
Only Herrick’s left alone,
For to number1 sorrow by
Their departures hence and die.

Delight in Disorder
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:1
A lawnº about the shoulders thrown ºa scarf or shawl of fine linen
Into a fine distraction;º ºconfusion
5 An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher;2
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbandsº to flow confusedly; ºribbons
A winning wave (deserving note)
10 In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility;
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

1
To count, ascertain the amount or quantity
1
An unfettered gaiety (with the secondary sense of ‘unruliness’). [HM]
2
An ornamental item of dress worn under the lacings of the bodice. [HM] Compare
Donne Elegy 19, line 7. [AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Julia’s Petticoat
Thy azure robe I did behold,
As airy as the leaves of gold;1
Which erring here, and wandering there,
Pleased with transgression everywhere:
5 Sometimes ’twould pant, and sigh, and heave,
As if to stir it scarce had leave;
But having got it, thereupon
’Twould make a brave expansion.
And pounced2 with stars, it showed to me
10 Like a celestial canopy.
Sometimes ’twould blaze, and then abate,
Like to a flame grown moderate;
Sometimes away ’twould wildly fling;
Then to thy thighs so closely cling
15 That some conceitº did melt me down, ºidea, fanciful notion
As lovers fall into a swoon;
And all confused, I there did lie
Drown’d in delights, but could not die.
That leading cloud3 I followed still,
20 Hoping t’have seen of it my fill;
But ah, I could not: should it move
To life eternal, I could love!

Corinna’s Going a Maying

Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.1
See how Aurora2 throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air:

1
Leaves of gold: with allusion possibly to gold-foil, but not probably to gold leaf. [TC]
2
Pinked; ornamented; OED (citing this use), ‘sprinkled with powder’. [TC]
3
‘the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud’ (Exod. 13: 21). [TC]
1
The sun god, whether as Helios or Apollo, radiating both hair and light in the passage.
[TC]
2
‘the blooming morn’ (l. 1) and the goddess of the dawn. [TC]

338
 Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

5 Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see

The dew bespangling herb and tree.
Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east
Above an hour since; yet you not dressed,
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
10 When all the birds have matinsº said ºmorning prayers
And sung their thankful hymns? ’Tis sin,
Nay, profanation to keep in,
Whenas a thousand virgins on this day,
Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.3

15 Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen

To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and
green,
And sweet as Flora.4 Take no care
For jewels for your gown, or hair;
Fear not: the leaves will strew
20 Gems in abundance upon you;
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Againstº you come, some orientº pearls unwept; ºuntil; ºlustrous, eastern
Come, and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night,
25 And Titanº on the eastern hill ºthe sun god
Retires himself, or else stands still
Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in
praying:
Few beads5 are best when once we go a Maying.

Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark

30 How each field turns a street, each street a park
Made green and trimmed with trees; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough,
3
to gather white hawthorn flowers (and so to celebrate the coming of full spring). [HM]
4
A goddess of fertility and flowers
5
Prayers, as said with rosary beads, perhaps. [TC]

339
Poetry for Chapter 1

Or branch: each porch, each door, ere this,

An ark, a tabernacle, is,6
35 Made up of whitethornº neatly interwove, ºwhite hawthorn blossom
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street
And open fields and we not see’t?
Come, we’ll abroad; and let’s obey
40 The proclamation made for May,7
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;
But my Corinna, come, let’s go a Maying.

There’s not a budding boy or girl, this day,

But is got up and gone to bring in May.
45 A dealº of youth, ere this, is come ºa great number
Back, and with whitethorn laden home.
Some have dispatched their cakes and cream
Before that we have left to dream;
And some have wept, and wooed, and plighted
troth,
50 And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth.
Many a green-gown8 has been given,
Many a kiss, both odd and even;
Many a glance too has been sent
From out the eye, love’s firmament;
55 Many a jest told of the keys betraying
This night, and locks picked, yet we’re not a
Maying.
Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless folly of the time.
6
Each porch and door is transformed and made holy. For the Hebraic ‘Ark of the
Covenant’ and ‘Tabernacle’, cf. Exodus 37, 40. Herrick combines the religious ceremonies
of Holy Scripture with those of a religion of nature. [HM]
7
Perhaps only in allusion to the traditional rites of spring, but perhaps also with allusion to
some such proclamation as ‘The King’s Majesty’s Declaration to His Subjects Concerning
Lawful Sports To Be Used’ (1618), in which the festive-minded were not to be hindered
by Puritans and like-minded others from ‘any lawful recreation; such as dancing […],
leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreation, nor from having of May-games,
Whitsun ales, and Morris Dances, and the setting up of May-Poles and other sports
therewith used.’ [TC]
8
A dress stained with green, from rolling in the grass. [HM]

340
 Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

We shall grow old apace, and die

60 Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun;
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne’er be found again,
65 So when or you or Iº are made ºeither you or I
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drowned with us in endless night.
Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
70 Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a Maying.

To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses

Now is the time for mirth,
Nor cheek or tongue be dumb;
For with the flow’ry earth
The golden pomp is come.

5 The golden pomp is come;

For now each tree does wear,
Made of her papº and gum, ºpulp
Rich beads of amber here.

Now reigns the rose, and now

10 Th’Arabian dew besmears
My uncontrollèd brow
And my retortedº hairs. ºbent backward

Homer,1 this health to thee,

In sack2 of such a kind
15 That it would make thee see
Though thou wert ne’er so blind.
1
The poet of the Greek epics The Iliad and The Odyssey, traditionally represented as blind.
[AP]
2
A white wine from Spain and the Canaries

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Next, Vergil3 I’ll call forth

To pledge this second health
In wine, whose each cup’s worth
20 An Indian commonwealth.

A goblet next I’ll drink

To Ovid, and suppose,
Made he the pledge, he’d think
The world had all one nose.4

25 Then this immensive cup

Of aromatic wine,
Catullus,5 I quaff up
To that terse Muse of thine.

Wild I am now with heat;

30 O Bacchus! cool thy rays!
Or frantic, I shall eat
Thy thyrse,6 and bite the bays.7

Round, round the roof does run;

And being ravished thus,
35 Come, I will drink a tunº ºlarge cask
To my Propertius.8

Now, to Tibullus,9 next,

This flood I drink to thee;
But stay, I see a text10
40 That this presents to me.
3
Roman epic poet, author of the ‘Aeneid’
4
Herrick puns on Ovid’s full name, Publius Ovidius Naso (‘nose’). [HM]
5
A celebrated Roman elegiac poet (c.84 BCE–54 BCE). See Thomas Campion’s loose
translation of his famous poem ‘My sweetest Lesbia let us live and love’. [AP]
6
Thyrsus, the wand of the god Bacchus, a staff wreathed with ivy. [AP]
7
Chewing bay leaves was thought to inspire poetic performance or prophetic trances. [C&C]
8
Born c.51 BCE, Propertius was, like Catullus, a well-known Roman elegiac poet. [AP]
9
Another Roman elegiac poet, c.54 BCE–18 BCE. [AP]
10
The ‘text’ is Ovid’s Amores, III.ix.39–40, which Herrick translates in the next stanza. [HM]

342
 Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

Behold, Tibullus lies

Here burnt, whose small return
Of ashes scarce suffice
To fill a little urn.

45 Trust to good verses, then;

They only will aspire,
When pyramids, as men,
Are lost i’ th’ funeral fire.

And when all bodies meet,

50 In Lethe11 to be drowned,
Then only numbersº sweet ºverses
With endless life are crown’d.

To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time

Gather ye rose buds while ye may,
Old time is still a flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

5 The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

10 When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time;

And while ye may, go marry:
11
The river of forgetfulness, one of the five rivers of Hades (the underworld) in Greek
mythology. [AP]

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15 For, having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.

To Daffodils
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
5 Stay, stay,
Until the hastingº day ºmoving quickly
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
10 Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
15 We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
20 Ne’er to be found again.

Upon Julia’s Clothes

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see

5 That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me!

344
 Richard Lovelace (1618–1657)

Richard Lovelace (1618–1657)

A poet, courtier and army officer, Richard Lovelace was the heir to a
large estate in Kent. His late seventeenth-century biographer Anthony
Wood describes him in his student days at Oxford as ‘the most amiable
and beautiful person that ever eye beheld, a person of innate modesty,
virtue and courtly embodiment’. Lovelace went on to become a courtier
at the court of Charles I as well as a gentleman scholar at Cambridge
University. Like John Suckling and Thomas Carew, he served in the
king’s Scottish expedition in 1639. Although he seems not to have
fought in the civil war, he remained a steadfast supporter of the
monarchical cause. After presenting a defiantly royalist petition to the
House of Commons in 1642, Lovelace was thrown into prison, where
legend has it he wrote his famous royalist poem ‘To Althea’ (‘Stone
walls do not a prison make’). Wood alleges that Lovelace spent much of
the war years in London, using his considerable fortune to supply the
king’s supporters with arms and horses. He was imprisoned again in
1648 where, according to Wood, he prepared for publication his
collection Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, Etc. Lovelace died,
possibly in great poverty, in 1657. His biography and lyric poetry have
contributed to his reputation as a romantic, dashing Cavalier committed
to high ideals of honour and love.

Edition
The texts of the poems are from Thomas Clayton (ed.) (1978) Cavalier
Poets: Selected Poems, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Thomas Clayton [TC]
. Hugh MacLean (ed.) (1974), Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets, New
York, W.W. Norton & Co. [HM]
. Anita Pacheco [AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Song: To Lucasta, Going Beyond The Seas

Set to music by Henry Lawes. [HM]

If to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that when I am gone
You or I were alone;
5 Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blust’ring wind, or swall’wing wave.

But I’ll not sigh one blast or gale

To swell my sail,
Or pay a tear to swageº ºassuage, pacify, soothe
10 The foaming blue-god’sº rage; ºNeptune, god of the sea
For whether he will let me pass
Or no, I’m still as happy as I was.

Though seas and land be ’twixt us both,

Our faith and troth,
15 Like separated souls,
All time and space controls:
Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet.

So then we do anticipate
20 Our after-fate,
And are alive i’ th’ skies:
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfined
In heaven, their earthy bodies left behind.

346
 Richard Lovelace (1618–1657)

Song: To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Set to music by John Lanier. [TC]

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

5 True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

10 As thou too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Song: To Amarantha, That She Would Dishevel Her Hair

Set to music by Henry Lawes. [HM]

Amarantha sweet and fair,

Ah, braid no more that shining hair!
As my curious hand or eye,
Hovering round thee, let it fly.

5 Let it fly as unconfined
As its calm ravisher, the wind,
Who hath left his darling, th’ East,
To wanton o’er that spicy nest.

Every tress must be confessed

10 But neatly tanglèd at the best,
Like a clewº of golden thread ºball of thread or yarn
Most excellently ravellèd.

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Do not then wind up that light

In ribbands, and o’ercloud in night,
15 Like the sun in’s early ray,
But shake your head and scatter day.

See ’tis broke! Within this grove,

The bower and the walks of love,
Weary lie we down and rest,
20 And fan each other’s panting breast.

Here we’ll strip and cool our fire

In cream below, in milk-baths higher;
And when all wells are drawn dry,
I’ll drink a tear out of thine eye,

25 Which our very joysº shall leave, ºour deepest and truest joys
That sorrows thus we can deceive;
Or our very sorrows weep,
That joys so ripe so little keep.

Gratiana Dancing and Singing

See with what constant motiön,
Even and glorious as the sun,
Gratiana steers that noble frame,
Soft as her breast, sweet as her voice
5 That gave each winding law and poise,
And swifter than the wings of Fame.

She beat the happy pavèment

By such a star made firmament,1
Which now no more the roof envies,
10 But swells up high with Atlas2 ev’n,
1
The arch or vault of heaven with its clouds and stars (OED, ‘firmament’, n., 1a). [AP]
2
The Titan compelled to support the heavens with his head and hands, and also a
mountain on the northwest coast of Africa regarded as supporting the heavens. [TC]

348
 Richard Lovelace (1618–1657)

Bearing the brighter, nobler heav’n,

And in her all the deities.

Each step trod out a lover’s thought

And the ambitious hopes he brought,
15 Chained to her brave feet with such arts,
Such sweet command, and gentle awe,
As, when she ceased, we sighing saw
The floor lay paved with broken hearts.

So did she move, so did she sing,

20 Like the harmonious spheres that bring
Unto their rounds their music’s aid;3
Which she performèd such a way,
As all th’enamoured world will say
25 The Graces4 dancèd, and Apollo played.

To Althea, from Prison: Song

Set to music by John Wilson. [TC]

When Love with unconfinèd wings

Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
5 When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The gods that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round

10 With no allaying Thames,º ºdiluting water
3
Gratiana is compared with the angelic Intelligences that guide the transparent, musical
and nested spheres which surround the earth in the geocentric [earth-centred] universe of
the Ptolemaic cosmology. [TC]
4
In Greek mythology, the three Graces – Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia – were daughters
of Zeus and represented beauty, good cheer and festivity. Gratiana’s name links her to the
Graces. [AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Our careless heads with roses bound,

Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
15 Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When (like committedº linnets) I ºcaged, imprisoned

With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
20 And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlargèd winds that curl the flood
Know no such liberty.

25 Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;1
If I have freedom in my love,
30 And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.

1
Literally, the habitation of a hermit; here, a solitary or secluded place (OED, ‘hermitage’,
n., 1b). [AP]

350
 Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

Christopher Marlowe is one of the most important dramatists and poets
of the English Renaissance. The son of a Canterbury shoemaker, he
won a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he studied divinity
and was expected to take holy orders. Instead he began to write plays
for the public theatres, along with defiantly secular verse. His short life
was exceptionally productive, eventful and turbulent. He probably
worked as a spy for the government of Elizabeth I and in 1592 was
deported from the Netherlands for counterfeiting. The historical record
provides evidence of several run-ins with the law, including a spell in
prison for his involvement in a London street fight in which a man died
and a later assault on a tailor in Canterbury. Several contemporaries
accused him of atheism and sodomy, and in May 1593 he was
summoned to appear before the Privy Council on a charge of heresy.
Released on bail, he was stabbed to death in a house in Deptford,
London, ostensibly during a quarrel over the bill for the day’s expenses,
though some of the men involved in the incident had intelligence
connections. Marlowe’s experiments with blank verse drama in plays like
Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus played a vital role in the development of
English Renaissance drama. His translations of Ovid’s Amores and his
own Ovidian narrative poem in English, Hero and Leander, were also
highly influential.
Publius Ovidius Naso, popularly known as Ovid (43 BCE–17/18 CE),
was a Latin poet who wrote during the reign of the emperor Augustus.
His poetry, especially the Metamorphoses, a long narrative poem
recounting over 250 classical myths, exerted an incalculable influence on
writers in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Edition
The texts of the poems are from Roma Gill (ed.) (1987) The Complete
Works of Christopher Marlowe, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Spelling and punctuation have in most instances been modernised by
Anita Pacheco.

351
Poetry for Chapter 1

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Roma Gill [RG]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

Amores, Book 1, Elegy 5

Corinnae Concubitus 1

In summer’s heat and mid-time of the day

To rest my limbs upon a bed I lay;
One window shut, the other open stood,
Which gave such light as twinkles in a wood,
5 Like twilight glimpse at setting of the sun
Or night being past, and yet not day begun.
Such light to shamefastº maidens must be shown, ºbashful, modest
Where they may sport, and seem to be unknown.
Then came Corinna in a long loose gown,
10 Her white neck hid with tresses hanging down:
Resembling fair Semiramis2 going to bed
Or Layis3 of a thousand wooers sped.
I snatched her gown: being thin, the harm was
small,4
Yet striv’d she to be covered there withal.
15 And striving thus as one that would be cast,
Betray’d herself, and yielded at the last.
Stark naked as she stood before mine eye,
Not one wenº in her body could I spy. ºa spot, blemish, stain
What arms and shoulders did I touch and see,
20 How apt her breasts were to be pressed by me.
How smooth a belly under her waist saw I,
How large a leg, and what a lusty thigh?
1
Going to bed with Corinna (a loose translation). [AP]
2
An Assyrian queen of great beauty, whose husband Ninus resigned the crown of Assyria
to her under duress; legend attributed to her the building of Babylon. [RG]
3
A celebrated courtesan of Corinth in the fourth century BCE. [RG]
4
The material was transparent, so from the poet’s point of view, it did little harm. [RG]

352
 Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

To leave the rest, all lik’d me passing well,

I cling’d her naked body, down she fell,
25 Judge you the rest; being tired she bade me kiss;
Joveº send me more such afternoons as this. ºanother name for Jupiter,
king of the gods

Amores, Book 2, Elegy 12

Exultat, quod amica potitus sit. 1

[There is a slight difference between the printed and the audio
versions of this poem, indicated by an asterisk.]

About my temples go triumphant bays,2

Conquer’d Corinna in my bosom lays.
She whom her husband, guard, and gate, as foes,
Lest arts* should win her, firmly did enclose. *art
5 That victory doth chiefly triumph merit,
Which without bloodshed doth the prey inherit.
No little ditchèd towns, no lowly walls,
But to my share a captive damsel falls.
When Troy by ten years’ battle tumbled down,
10 With the Atrides3 many gained renown.
But I no partner of my glory brook,º ºput up with, tolerate
Nor can another say his help I took.
I guide and soldier won the field and wear her,
I was both horseman, footman, standard bearer.
15 Nor in my act hath fortune mingled chance,
O care-got triumph hetherwardsº advance. ºhitherwards, in this direction
Nor is my war’s cause new; but for a queen4
Europe and Asia in firm peace had been.
1
Roughly, ‘he rejoices that he has conquered his mistress’. [AP]
2
A wreath made of woven leaves of the bay tree was a symbol of military victory. [AP]
3
Agamemnon and Menelaus, the Greek kings and leaders of the Greek army in the Trojan
War, were the sons of Atreus. [AP]
4
Were it not for a queen. The queen in question is Helen of Troy, married to the Greek
king Menelaus. Her abduction by the Trojan prince Paris sparked the Trojan War, which
is figured here as a war between Europe (Greece) and Asia (Troy, thought to have been
located in Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey). [AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

The Lapiths and the Centaurs for a woman

20 To cruel arms their drunken selves did summon.5
A woman forc’d the Troyansº new to enter ºTrojans
Wars, just Latinus, in thy kingdom’s centre:6
A woman against late-built Rome did send
The Sabine fathers, who sharp wars intend.7
25 I saw how bulls for a white heifer strive,
She looking on them did more courage give.
And me with many, but yet me without murther,8
Cupid commands to move his ensignsº further. ºmilitary flags

5
An allusion to the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia, at which the drunken centaurs
became violent and provoked a battle with the Lapithae, led by Hercules and Theseus.
[AP]
6
The reference is to the battle between Turnus and Aeneas over Lavinia, the daughter of
Latinus, a story recounted in Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid. [RG] Aeneas was a Trojan
prince who fled the burning city of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he founded Rome.
[AP]
7
The indefinite article is misleading; it was women, rather than a woman who caused the
Sabines to become the first enemies of the newly established Romans after the Romans
had insulted them. [RG]
8
The early modern form of ‘murder’

354
 Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

Andrew Marvell was born at Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire and
moved to Hull in 1624 when his father, a clergyman, was appointed
lecturer at Holy Trinity Church. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge,
where he began writing Greek and Latin verses. His father drowned in
the Humber in 1641. Marvell travelled on the continent for four years
between 1643 and 1647 and so was absent during most of the civil war.
His political allegiances during this tumultuous period are hard to pin
down. When he returned to England he moved in London literary
circles, including royalist ones; he contributed a poem to Lovelace’s
collection Lucasta in 1649. In 1650 he wrote what is generally
considered to be the greatest political poem of the period, the
supremely ambiguous ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from
Ireland’. He then served as tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax, the
Parliamentarian general, and in 1657 he took over the post of Latin
secretary to the Council of State in the Cromwellian government from
his friend and mentor John Milton, now blind. In 1659 Marvell was
elected MP for Hull, a post he occupied until his death. After the
Restoration he helped to secure Milton’s release from prison and soon
began to write satires (in verse and prose) attacking courtly corruption
and the abuse of royal power and advocating toleration for those whose
religious beliefs did not conform to the Church of England. For many
years, he was probably better known for his polemical writing than for
his lyric poetry. T.S. Eliot’s 1921 essay ‘Andrew Marvell’ sparked a
widespread reappraisal of his work. He is now considered one of the
pre-eminent English poets of the seventeenth century, characterised by
his versatility and by the subtlety and complexity which he brought to
the poetic genres in which he wrote.

Edition
The text of the poem is from H.M. Margoliouth (ed.) (1971) The Poems
and Letters of Andrew Marvell, Volume 1, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Spelling and punctuation have been modernised by Anita Pacheco.

355
Poetry for Chapter 1

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. H.M. Margoliouth [HMM]
. Nigel Smith (ed.) (2003) The Poems of Andrew Marvell, Harlow,
Pearson Education [NS]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

To His Coy1 Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
5 Thou by the Indian Ganges side
Should’st rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber2 would complain.3 I would
Love you ten years before the flood:4
And you should if you please refuse
10 Till the conversion of the Jews.5
My vegetable6 love should grow
Vaster then empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.
15 Two hundred to adore each breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,

1
a) modest, shy; b) disdainful. [NS]
2
Broad estuarial river marking the border between Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, on the
eastern side of northern England. Marvell’s place of childhood residence and education,
Hull, lay on the north bank of the Humber, and his place of birth, Winestead, not far
from it. Marvell’s father drowned in the river. [NS]
3
As in the genre of the ‘lover’s complaint’. [NS]
4
The biblical deluge; see Genesis 6:7–8:22. [AP]
5
The conversion of the Jews to Christianity was one of the events supposed to precede the
Second Coming of Christ (the Millennium). [NS]
6
Plantlike or treelike: characterised by slow, steady growth (in the Aristotelian scheme of
vegetative, sensitive and rational souls, the first is characterized only by growth). [NS]

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 Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

And the last age7 should show your heart.

For Lady, you deserve this state;
20 Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
25 Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity:
And your quaint8 honour9 turn to dust;
30 And into ashes all my lust.10
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue11
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
35 And while thy willing soul transpires12
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport usº while we may; ºtake our pleasure; make love
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
40 Than languish in his slow-chapped pow’r.13
Let us roll all our strength, and all

7
The Millennium, the thousand year reign of Christ, immediately preceding the Last
Judgement. [NS]
8
a) proud (OED a. II 9); b) prim (OED a. II 10). There is also a pun on Middle English
‘queynte’ (vagina). [NS]
9
honour: a) reputation (OED n. 1); b) chastity (OED n. 3); c) literally: maidenhead (OED
n. 3b). [NS]
10
‘we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to
dust, in sure and certain hope of resurrection.’ (‘The Order for the Burial of the Dead’,
The Book of Common Prayer). [NS]
11
A famous textual crux. Other editions of the poem give the word ‘glew’, meaning
‘sweat’. [AP]
12
Passes out as vapour through the skin
13
The power of his slowly devouring jaws

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Our sweetness, up into one ball:

And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the iron gates of life.
45 Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still,14 yet we will make him run.

14
In Joshua 10:12–14, Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still while the
Israelites avenged themselves upon the Amorites; in Psalm 19:6 the sun is imagined
‘running’: ‘Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a
strong man to run a race’. [NS]

358
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

(1647–1680)
John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, was born in Oxfordshire, his
father a royalist war hero, his mother a pious woman who came from a
prominent Puritan family. He attended Wadham College, Oxford and
toured the continent after graduating. At the age of 18 he abducted the
heiress Elizabeth Malet, an adventure which got him thrown in the
Tower of London. After his release he served with distinction in the
war against the Dutch. He eventually married Malet despite the
opposition of her family. Rochester tended to divide his time between
life in the country with his family and a fairly riotous, dissipated and
occasionally violent life in London, where he was chief among the
‘court wits’ that surrounded Charles II. He had several mistresses,
among them the accomplished actress Elizabeth Barry. In the eighteenth
century, Samuel Johnson judged that Rochester had ‘blazed out his
youth in lavish voluptuousness’ and he himself once claimed to have
been continually drunk for five years. He was fascinated with the
theatre, and though his high rank precluded him from acting on the
public stage, several stories survive (of disputed authority) of his
fondness for donning disguises, including as the mountebank Dr
Alexander Bendo. By his early 30s he was seriously ill, and according to
the Anglican cleric Gilbert Burnet repented his atheistic and debauched
life on his deathbed. Rochester’s deliberately shocking and
unprecedentedly sexually explicit poetry has aroused controversy ever
since. Nowadays he is generally accepted as an important literary figure
who gave uniquely forceful and complex expression to the ideas and
values of Restoration libertinism. Critics also acknowledge the significant
contribution he made to the development of the verse satire that would
become so important a poetic genre during the eighteenth century.

Editions
The texts of the following poems are from Keith Walker (ed.) (1984)
The Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Oxford, Blackwell (spelling
and punctuation have been modernised by Anita Pacheco):
. ‘A Satire Against Reason and Mankind’
. ‘The Disabled Debauchee’

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Poetry for Chapter 1

. ‘Régime de Vivre’
. ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’.
The texts of the following poems are from David M. Vieth (ed.) (1962)
The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, New Haven, CT
and London, Yale University Press:
. ‘From Seneca’s Troades’
. ‘A Satire on Charles II’
. ‘Upon his Leaving his Mistress’
. ‘A Song’.

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Keith Walker [KW]
. David M. Vieth [DMV]
. Keith Walker and Nicholas Fisher (eds.) (2010) John Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester : The Poems and Lucina’s Rape, Oxford, Blackwell [KW/
NF]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

A Satire Against Reason and Mankind

This is just one of the many titles given in the different
manuscript and print versions of the poem. Walker favours the
simpler (and old spelling) ‘Satyr’. [AP]
[There are slight differences between the printed and the audio
versions of the poem, indicated by an asterisk.]

Were I (who to my cost already am

One of those strange, prodigious creatures, Man)
A spirit free, to choose for my own share
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
5 I’d be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

360
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

The senses are too gross, and he’ll contrive

A sixth, to contradict the other five,
10 And before certain instinct, will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err.
Reason, an ignis fatuus 1 in the mind,
Which leaving light of Nature, sense, behind,
Pathless and dang’rous wand’ring ways it takes
15 Through error’s fenny bogs and thorny brakes;º ºa clump of bushes, thicket
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimseys,2 heaped in his own brain;
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong
down
Into doubt’s boundless sea where, like to drown,
20 Books bear him up awhile, and make him try
To swim with bladders of philosophy;
In hopes still t’oretake th’escaping light,
The vapour3 dances in his dazzlingº sight ºdazzled, confused
Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.
25 Then old age, and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful, and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.
Huddled in dirt, the reas’ning engine lies,
30 Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise.
Pride drew him in, as cheats their bubblesº catch, ºdupes
And makes him venture, to be made a wretch.
His wisdom did his happiness destroy,
Aiming to know that world he should enjoy.
35 And wit was his vain, frivolous pretence
Of pleasing others at his own expense.
For wits are treated just like common whores,
First they’re enjoyed, and then kicked out of doors.
1
Latin for ‘foolish fire’; a phosphorescent light seen hovering or floating over marshy
ground; a will-o’-the-wisp (OED, ‘ignis fatuus’, n.); hence, a delusion. [AP]
2
Whims; capricious notions or fancies
3
the will-o’-the-wisp

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Poetry for Chapter 1

The pleasure past, a threat’ning doubt remains,

40 That frights th’ enjoyer with succeeding pains.
Women and men of wit are dangerous tools,
And ever fatal to admiring fools:
Pleasure allures, and when the fopsº escape, ºfools, dandies
’Tis not that they’re beloved, but fortunate,
45 And therefore what they fear, at heart they hate.
But now, methinks, some formal band and beard4
Takes me to task. Come on, sir; I’m prepared.
‘Then, by your favour, anything that’s writ
Against this gibing, jingling knack called wit
50 Likes me abundantly; but you take care
Upon this point, not to be too severe.
Perhaps my muse were fitter for this part,
For I profess I can be very smartº ºsevere, critical
On wit, which I abhor with all my heart.
55 I long to lash it in some shar p essay,
But your grand indiscretion 5bids me stay
And turns my tide of ink another way.
‘What rage ferments in your degen’rate mind
To make you rail at Reason and mankind?
60 Blest, glorious Man! to whom alone kind Heav’n
An everlasting soul has freely giv’n;
Whom his great Maker took such care to make
That from himself he did the image take;
And this fair frame in shining Reason dressed
65 To dignify his nature above beast;
Reason, by whose aspiring influence
We take a flight beyond material sense,
Dive into mysteries, then soaring pierce
The flaming limits of the universe,
70 Search heav’n and hell, find out what’s acted there,
And give the world true grounds of hope and fear.’
4
A clergyman. Many Restoration clergymen wore Geneva bands, a clerical collar that fell
into a pair of strips (called bands). The speaker of the poem changes temporarily at this
point to the Restoration clergyman. [AP]
5
In early use, ‘want of discernment or discrimination’ (OED 1). [KW]

362
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

Hold, mighty man, I cry, all this we know

From the pathetic pen of Ingelo;6
From Patrick’s Pilgrim,7 Stillingfleet’s replies,8
75 And ’tis this very Reason I despise:
This supernatural gift, that makes a mite
Think he’s the* image of the infinite: *an
Comparing his short life, void of all rest,
To the eternal and the ever bless’d;
80 This busy, puzzling stirrer-up of doubt,
That frames deep mysteries, then finds ’em out,
Filling with frantic crowds of thinking fools
Those reverend bedlams, colleges and schools;9
Borne on whose wings, each heavy sot can pierce
85 The limits of the boundless universe;
So charming ointments make an old witch fly
And bear a crippled carcass through the sky.10
’Tis this exalted pow’r, whose business lies
In nonsense and impossibilities.
90 This made a whimsical philosopher
Before the spacious world, his tub prefer,11
And we have modern cloistered coxcombsº who ºacademics
Retire to think ’cause they have naught to do.
But thoughts are giv’n for action’s government;
95 Where action ceases, thought’s impertinent:º ºirrelevant
Our sphere of action is life’s happiness,
And he who thinks beyond, thinks like an ass.
Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh,
6
The Reverend Nathaniel Ingelo (?1621–83). His long religious-allegorical romance,
Bentivolio and Urania (1660), was reprinted several times during the Restoration period.
‘Pathetic’ here means ‘moving’ or ‘stirring’. [DMV]
7
The Parable of the Pilgrim (1664), by Simon Patrick (1626–1707), later Bishop of Ely. It
resembles Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. [DMV]
8
Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699) was chaplain in ordinary to Charles II. In February 1675
he preached a sermon apparently directed against Rochester’s ‘Satire’. Earlier versions of
the text read ‘Sibbs Soliloquies’, alluding to the puritan Richard Sibbs (1577–1635). The
later version may represent Rochester’s revision following Stillingfleet’s sermon. [AP]
9
The line equates colleges and schools with ‘bedlams’, or lunatic asylums. [AP]
10
According to popular superstition, witches anointed themselves [here with ‘charming
ointments’] to fly through the air. [DMV]
11
A reference to Diogenes the Cynic (fourth century BCE), who allegedly lived in a tub.
[AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

I own right Reason, which I would obey:

100 That Reason that distinguishes by sense,
And gives us rules of good and ill from thence;
That bounds desires with a reforming will
To keep ’em more in vigour, not to kill.
Your Reason hinders, mine helps t’enjoy,
105 Renewing appetites yours would destroy.
My Reason is my friend, yours is a cheat;
Hunger calls out, my Reason bids me eat;
Perversely, yours your appetite does mock:
This asks for food, that answers, “What’s o’clock?”
110 This plain distinction, sir, your doubt secures:12
’Tis not true Reason I despise, but yours.
Thus I think Reason righted, but for Man,
I’ll ne’er recant; defend him if you can.
For all his pride and his philosophy,
115 ’Tis evident, beasts are, in their degree,
As wise at least, and better far than he.
Those creatures are the wisest who attain,
By surest means, the ends at which they aim.
If therefore Jowler13 finds and kills his hares
120 Better than Meres14 supplies committee chairs,
Though one’s a statesman, th’ other but a hound,
Jowler, in justice, would be wiser found.
You see how far Man’s wisdom here extends;
Look next if human nature makes amends:
125 Whose principles most generous are, and just,
And to whose morals you would sooner trust.
Be judge yourself, I’ll bring it to the test:
Which is the basest creature, Man or beast?
Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,
130 But savage Man alone does Man betray.
Pressed by necessity, they kill for food;
12
In the obsolete sense ‘to free from doubt, to satisfy’ (OED v. 1b). [KW]
13
A general term for hunting dogs
14
Sir Thomas Meres (1635–1715), MP for Lincoln and a prominent member of the
country (later Whig) party. [DMV]

364
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

Man undoes Man to do himself no good.

With teeth and claws by Nature armed, they hunt
Nature’s allowance, to supply their want.
135 But Man, with smiles, embraces, friendships, praise
Inhumanly15 his fellow’s life betrays;
With voluntary pains works his distress,
Not through necessity, but wantonness.
For hunger or for love they fight or tear,
140 Whilst wretched Man is still in arms for fear.
For fear he arms, and is of arms afraid,
By fear, to fear successively betrayed;
Base fear, the source whence his best passion came:
His boasted honour, and his dear-bought fame;
145 That* lust of pow’r, to which he’s such a slave, *The
And for the which alone he dares be brave;
To which his various projects are designed;
Which makes him gen’rous, affable, and kind;
For which he takes such pains to be thought wise,
150 And screws his actions, in a forc’d disguise,
Leading a tedious life in misery
Under laborious, mean hypocrisy.
Look to the bottom of his vast design,
Wherein Man’s wisdom, pow’r, and glory join:
155 The good he acts, the ill he does endure,
’Tis all for fear, to make himself secure.
Merely for safety, after fame we thirst,
For all men would be cowards if they durst.
And honesty’s against all common sense:
160 Men must be knaves, ’tis in their own defence.
Mankind’s dishonest; if you think it fair
Amongst known cheats to play upon the square,º ºto play fairly
You’ll be undone.
Nor can weak truth your reputation save:
165 The knaves will all agree to call you knave.
Wronged shall he live, insulted o’er, oppressed,
15
Walker has ‘Unhumanely’; Veith ‘Inhumanly’. [AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Who dares be less a villain than the rest.

Thus sir, you see what human nature craves:
Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves.
170 The diff ’rence lies (as far as I can see),
Not in the thing itself, but the degree,
And all the subject matter of debate
Is only: Who’s a knave of the first rate?16

All this with indignation have I hurled

175 At the pretendingº part of the proud world, ºclaiming a right or authority
Who, swoll’n with selfish vanity, devise
False freedoms, holy cheats, and formal lies
Over their fellow slaves to tyrannize.
But if in Courtº so just a man there be ºthe royal court
180 (In Court, a just man, yet unknown to me)
Who does his needful flattery direct,
Not to oppress and ruin, but protect;
Since flattery, which way so ever laid,
Is still a tax on that unhappy trade.17
185 If so upright a statesman you can find,
Whose passions bend to his unbias’d mind,
Who does his arts and policies apply
To raise his country, not his family;
Nor, while his pride own’d18 avarice withstands,
190 Receives closeº bribes from friends’ corrupted hands. ºsecret
Is there a churchman who on God relies?
Whose life, his faith and doctrine justifies?
Not one blown up with vain prelatic pride,19
Who, for reproof of sins, does Man deride;
195 Whose envious heart makes preaching a pretence,
With his obstrep’rous, saucy eloquence,
To chide at Kings, and rail at men of sense;
16
The shorter version of the poem ends here. What follows (sometimes entitled in the
early texts ‘Apology’ or ‘Addition’) is in part a reply to Stillingfleet (see note to Line 74).
[KW]
17
Flattery is the price one pays for being a courtier. [AP]
18
Admitted, acknowledged as one’s own
19
The pride of a prelate, a clergyman of high rank and authority. [AP]

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 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

Who from his pulpit vents more peevish lies,

More bitter railings, scandals, calumnies,º ºslanders
200 Than at a gossiping20 are thrown about,
When the good wives get drunk, and then fall out.
None of that sensual tribe whose talents lie
In avarice, pride, sloth, and gluttony;
Who hunt good livings,21 but abhor good lives,
205 Whose lust exalted, to that height arrives,
They act adultery with their own wives.
And ere a score of years completed be,
Can from the lofty pulpit proudly see
Half a large parish their own progeny.
210 Nor doting Bishop, who wou’d be ador’d
For domineering at the Council Board;
A greater fop in business at fourscore,
Fonder of serious toys, affected more,
Than the gay, glittering fool at twenty proves
215 With all his noise, his tawdry clothes, and loves;
But a meek, humble man, of honest sense,
Who preaching peace, does practice continence;
Whose pious life’s a proof he does believe
Mysterious truths, which no man can conceive.
220 If upon earth there dwell such God-like men,
I’ll here recant my paradox22 to them,
Adore those shrines of virtue, homage pay,
And, with the rabble world, their laws obey.
If such there are, yet grant me this at least:
225 Man differs more from man, than Man from beast.

20
A meeting of gossips; originally a christening feast, or a meeting of friends at a birth
(OED, ‘gossiping’, n., 1, 2). [AP]
21
Positions as vicar or rector with income or property or both (OED, ‘living’, n., 5). [AP]
22
In the sense of a statement that defied the doxa (or accepted wisdom) of the age. [KW]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

From Seneca’s Troades

Rochester’s poem is adapted from the Chorus to Act II of the
Troades by the Roman dramatist and philosopher Seneca (4 BCE–
65 CE). [AP]

After death nothing is, and nothing, death:

The utmost limit of a gasp of breath;
Let the ambitious zealotº lay aside ºa fanatical enthusiast
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
5 Let slavish souls lay by their fear,
Nor be concerned which way nor where,
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
10 Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring time swallows us whole;
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God’s everlasting fiery jails
15 (Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,1
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more.

The Disabled Debauchee

Please note: this poem contains explicit material.
The verse form of this piece is the so-called ‘heroic stanza’,
which was widely used in the seventeenth century for works of
an epic character such as Davenant’s Gondibert (1651) and
Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis (1667). [DMV]

1
Cerberus, the mythological three-headed dog that guards the door to the classical
underworld. [AP]

368
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

[There are slight differences between the printed and the audio
versions of this poem, indicated by an asterisk.]

As some brave admiral, in former war,

Deprived of force, but pressed withº courage ºurged on by
still,
Two rival fleets appearing from afar,
Crawls to the top of an adjacent hill;

5 From whence, with thoughts full of concern, he views

The wise and daring conduct of the fight,
And* each bold action to his mind renews *Whilst
His present glory and his past delight;

From his fierce eyes flashes of rage he throws,

10 As from black clouds when lightning breaks
away;
Transported, thinks himself amidst his* foes, *the
And absent, yet enjoys the bloody day;

So when my days of impotence approach,

And I’m by pox and wine’s unlucky chance
15 Forced from the pleasing billows of debauch
On the dull shore of lazy temperance,

My pains at least some respite shall afford

Whilst* I behold the battles you maintain *while
When fleets of glasses sail about the board,º ºtable
20 From whose broadsides volleys of wit shall rain.

Nor let the sight of honourable scars,

Which my too forward valour did procure,
Frighten new-listedº soldiers from the wars: ºnewly enlisted
Past joys have more than paid what I endure.

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Poetry for Chapter 1

25 Should any youth (worth being drunk) prove nice,º ºshy, reluctant, unwilling
And from his fair inviter meanly shrink,
’Twill please the ghost of my departed vice
If, at my counsel, he repent and drink.

Or should some cold-complexioned sot1 forbid,

30 With his dull morals, our night’s brisk alarms,
I’ll fire his blood by telling what I did
When I was strong, and able to bear arms.

I’ll tell of whores attacked, their lords at home;2

Bawds’º quarters beaten up, and fortress won; ºbrothel-keepers’
35 Windows demolished, watchesº overcome ºnight watchmen
And handsome ills, by my contrivance done.

Nor shall our love-fits, Chloris, be forgot,

When each the well-looked link-boy3 strove
t’enjoy,
And the best kiss was the deciding lot,
40 Whether the boy fucked you, or I the boy.

With tales like these, I will such thoughts inspire

As to important mischief shall incline:
I’ll make him long some ancient church to fire,
And fear no lewdness he’s called to by wine.

45 Thus, statesmanlike, I’ll saucilyº impose, ºinsolently

And safe from action, valiantly advise;
Shelter’d in impotence, urge you to blows,
And being good for nothing else, be wise.

1
A fool or blockhead temperamentally devoid of passion. [AP]
2
While their pimps were with them
3
A boy employed to guide pedestrians at night with a torch. [KW/NF]

370
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

Régime de Vivre
Please note: this poem contains explicit material.
The title means, loosely, ‘way of life’. Some of Rochester’s
editors think the poem is authentic, others that it was written by
his friend the Earl of Dorset. The poem thus does not appear
in all editions of Rochester’s verse. Walker includes it, in a
section entitled ‘Poems possibly by Rochester’, and uses the title
‘Regime d’viver’. Paddy Lyons gives the title as ‘Régime de
Vivre’ (in Rochester : Complete Poems and Plays, London, J.M.
Dent, 1993). [AP]
I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap,
I spendº in her hand, and I spew in her lap. ºejaculate
5 Then we quarrel and scold, till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch, growing bold, to my pocket does creep;
Then slyly she leaves me, and to revenge th’ affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.
If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk,
10 What a coilº do I make for the loss of my punk!4 ºnoisy disturbance, fuss
I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage,
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then, crop-sick5 all morning, I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning ’till eleven again.

The Imperfect Enjoyment

Please note: this poem contains explicit material.
This poem stems from a long poetic tradition deriving
ultimately from Ovid’s Amores, 3.7. [AP]
[There is a slight difference between the printed and the audio
versions of this poem, indicated by an asterisk.]

Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,

I fill’d with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspir’d with eager fire,
4
Slang for prostitute
5
Sick with excess and debauchery

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Melting through kindness, flaming in desire;

5 With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clipsº me to her breast, and sucks me to her face. ºclasps
The* nimble tongue (love’s lesser lightning) played *her
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
10 The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My flutt’ring soul, sprung1 with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hov’ring o’er her balmy brinks of bliss.
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
15 In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er,
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ’t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
20 And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, ‘Is there then no more?’
She cries. ‘All this to love and rapture’s due;
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?’
25 But I, the most forlorn, lost man alive,
To show my wished obedience vainly strive:
I sigh, alas! and kiss, but cannot swive.º ºcopulate
Eager desires confound my first intent,
Succeeding shame does more success prevent,
30 And rage at last confirms me impotent.
Ev’n her fair hand, which might bid heat return
To frozen age, and make cold hermits burn,
Applied to my dead cinder, warms no more
Than fire to ashes could past flames restore.
35 Trembling, confused, despairing, limber,º dry, ºslack, limp
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie.
This dart of love, whose piercing point oft tried,

1
To spring a bird is to make it rise from cover. [KW]

372
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

With virgin blood, ten thousand maids has died;2

Which nature still directed with such art
40 That it through every cunt reached every heart.
Stiffly resolved, ’twould carelessly invade
Woman or man, nor ought its fury stayed:
Where’er it pierced, a cunt it found or made.
Now languid lies, in this unhappy hour,
45 Shrunk up and sapless, like a withered flow’r.
Thou treacherous, base, deserter of my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my fame,
Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to Love?
50 What oyster, cinder, beggar,3 common whore
Didst thou e’er fail in all thy life before?
When vice, disease, and scandal lead the way,
With what officious haste dost thou obey?
Like a rude, roaring hectorº in the streets ºbully
55 That scuffles, cuffs, and ruffles all he meets;
But if his King or country claim his aid,
The rakehell villain shrinks, and hides his head;
Ev’n so thy brutal valour is displayed,
Breaks every stew,º does each small whore invade, ºbrothel
60 But when great Love the onset does command,
Base recreant,4 to thy Prince, thou dar’st not stand.
Worst part of me, and henceforth hated most,
Through all the town a common fucking post,
On whom each whore relieves her tingling cunt
65 As hogs on gates do rub themselves and grunt,
Mayst thou to ravenous shankers5 be a prey,
Or in consuming weepings6 waste away;
May strangury and stone7 thy days attend;
2
has brought to orgasm. Some editors prefer the reading ‘ten thousand maids have died’.
[AP]
3
oyster, cinder, beggar: oyster-wench, cinder-woman, beggar-woman. [KW]
4
A person unfaithful to his duty
5
Chancres (lesions caused by venereal disease).
6
Discharges of moisture from the body
7
Strangury is slow painful urination; stone refers to stones in the kidneys or bladder. [AP]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

May’st thou ne’er piss, who didst refuse to spend,º ºejaculate

70 When all my joys did on false thee depend.
And may ten thousand abler pricks agree
To do the wrong’d Corinna right for thee.

A Satire on Charles II
Please note: this poem contains explicit material.
According to a letter dated 20 January 1673/4 […], ‘my Lord
Rochester fled from Court some time since for delivering (by
mistake) into the King’s hands a terrible lampoon of his own
making against the King, instead of another the King asked him
for’. [DMV]
[There is a slight difference between the printed and the audio
versions of this poem, indicated by an asterisk.]
I’ th’isle of Britain, long since famous grown
For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,
There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive,
The easiest King and best-bred man alive.
5 Him no ambition moves to get renown
Like the French fool,1 that wanders up and down
Starving his people, hazarding his crown.
Peace is his aim, his gentleness is such,
And love he loves, for he loves fucking much.
10 Nor are his high desires above his strength:
His sceptre and his prick are of a length,
And she may sway the one who plays with th’ other,
And make him little wiser than his brother.2
Poor prince! thy prick, like thy buffoons at Court,
15 Will govern thee because it makes thee sport.
’Tis sure the sauciest prick that e’er did swive,º ºcopulate
The proudest, peremptoriest3 prick alive.
Though safety, law, religion, life lay on ’t,
’Twould break through all to make its way to cunt.
1
The ambitious and expansionist King Louis XIV. [AP]
2
James, Duke of York, Charles’s heir (in the absence of any legitimate children), and a
Catholic. He was not known for his intelligence. [AP]
3
The most obstinate, self-willed, dictatorial

374
 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)

20 Restless he rolls about from whore to whore,

A merry monarch, scandalous and poor.
To Carwell,4 the most dear of all his dears,
The best relief of his declining years,5
Oft he bewails his fortune, and her fate:
25 To love so well, and be beloved so late.
For though in her he settles well his tarse,º ºpenis
Yet his dull, graceless ballocks hang an arse.6
This you’d believe, had I but time to tell ye,
The pains it costs to* poor, laborious Nelly,7 *the
30 Whilst she employs hands, fingers, mouth, and
thighs,
Ere she can raise the member she enjoys.
All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on,
From the hectorº of France to the cullyº of ºbully; ºdupe
Britain.

Upon his Leaving his Mistress

[There is a slight difference between the printed and the audio
versions of this poem, indicated by an asterisk.]
’Tis not that I am weary grown
Of being yours, and yours alone;
But with what face can I incline
To damn you to be only mine?
5 You, whom some kinder pow’r did fashion,
By merit and by inclination,
The joy at least of one* whole nation. *a

Let meaner spirits of your sex,

With humbler aims their thoughts perplex:
10 And boast if by their arts they can
Contrive to make one happy man.
4
Louise de Kérouaille (1649–1734), Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles’s mistress from
October 1671 until about 1676. [KW]
5
Charles at this time was 43 years old, Rochester 26. [DMV]
6
Hold back, are reluctant or tardy
7
The actress Nell Gwyn (?1650–1687), another of the king’s mistresses. [AP]

375
Poetry for Chapter 1

Whilst, mov’d by an impartial sense,º ºthe sensual faculty

Favours like nature you dispense,
With universal influence.

15 See, the kind seed-receiving earth

To every grain affords a birth:
On her no showers unwelcome fall;
Her willing womb retains ’em all.
And shall my Celia be confined?
20 No! Live up to thy mighty mind,
And be the mistress of mankind.

A Song
Absent from thee, I languish still;
Then ask me not, when I return?
The straying fool ’twill plainly kill,
To wish all day, all night to mourn.

5 Dear! from thine arms then let me fly,

That my fantastic1 mind may proveº ºtry, experience
The torments it deserves to try
That tears my fixed heart from my love.

When, wearied with a world of woe,

10 To thy safe bosom I retire
Where love and peace and truth does flow,
May I contented there expire,

Lest once more wandering from that heaven,

I fall on some base heart unblest,
15 Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven,
And lose my everlasting rest.

1
Fanciful, impulsive, capricious, arbitrary (OED 4b). [KW]

376
 Sir John Suckling (1609–1641)

Sir John Suckling (1609–1641)

Born in Twickenham, Middlesex into an old landed family, Sir John
Suckling inherited a large estate on his father’s death in 1626. After
studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, he spent several years on the
continent, travelling extensively and serving as a diplomat and soldier.
He was knighted in 1630. Back in England from 1632 onwards, he
embarked on a career as one of Charles I’s most profligate courtiers.
John Aubrey, in his Brief Lives, claimed that Suckling ‘grew famous at
Court for his readie sparkling witt’. He was ‘the greatest gallant of his
time’, according to Aubrey, as well as ‘the greatest gamester both for
Bowling and Cards, so that no shop-keeper would trust him for 6d’.
Suckling also wrote copiously, producing plays and political and religious
works as well as the poetry for which he is now principally known. In
1639 Suckling raised a troop of cavalry to accompany the king in his
expedition against the Scots. He was widely mocked for decking them
out in scarlet uniforms and plumed hats. In 1641, when Parliament
imprisoned Charles’s adviser the Earl of Strafford in the Tower of
London, Suckling became involved in a plot to free him. When
summoned by Parliament to account for his movements, he fled to
France and died in Paris shortly afterwards, according to Aubrey after
taking poison.

Edition
The texts of the poems are from Thomas Clayton (ed.) (1978) Cavalier
Poets: Selected Poems, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Notes
Footnotes are by the following:
. Clayton [TC]
. Hugh Maclean (ed.) (1974) Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets, New
York, W.W. Norton & Co [HM]
. Anita Pacheco [AP].

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Poetry for Chapter 1

Sonnet I
Sonnet: diminutive of ‘song’ and a term of much more general
application than at present. There are musical settings of the
poem, by Henry Lawes and John Goodgroome. [TC]

Dost see how unregarded now

That piece of beauty passes?
There was a time when I did vow
To that alone;
5 But mark the fate of faces;
That red and white1 works now no more on me
Than if it could not charm or I not see.

And yet the face continues good,

And I have still desires,
10 Am still the selfsame flesh and blood,
As apt to melt
And suffer from those fires;
Oh, some kind power unriddle where it lies,
Whether my heart be faulty, or her eyes?

15 She every day her man doth kill,

And I as often die;
Neither her power, then, nor my will
Can question’d be;
What is the mystery?
20 Sure Beauty’s empires, like to greater states,
Have certain periods set, and hidden fates.

Sonnet II
Musical settings: Nicholas Lanier and William Webb [TC]

1
The lady’s complexion. The Petrarchan convention of praising ‘red and white’ female
beauty, regularly a feature of Elizabethan poetry, was largely repudiated, for various
reasons, by seventeenth-century English poets. [HM]

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 Sir John Suckling (1609–1641)

Of thee, kind boy,º I ask no red and white ºCupid

To make up my delight,
No odd becoming graces,
Black eyes, or little know-not-whats,2 in faces;
5 Make me but mad enough, give me good store
Of love, for her I court,
I ask no more:
’Tis love in love that makes the sport.

There’s no such thing as that we beauty call,

10 It is mere cozenageº all; ºtrickery
For though some long ago
Liked certain colours mingled so and so,
That doth not tie me now from choosing new;
If I a fancy take
15 To black and blue,
That fancy doth it beauty make.

’Tis not the meat, but ’tis the appetite

Makes eating a delight,
And if I like one dish
20 More than another, that a pheasant is;
What in our watches, that in us is found,3
So to the height and nick
We up be wound,
No matter by what hand or trick.

Sonnet III
Oh for some honest lover’s ghost,
Some kind unbodied postº ºmessenger
Sent from the shades below!

2
je-ne-sais-quois; beauty spots or patches. [TC]
3
The conceit of man’s likeness to a timepiece occurs in Suckling’s verse with some
frequency. Thomas Hobbes, in the Introduction to Leviathan (1651), inquired, ‘What is
the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many
wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer?’ [HM]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

I strangely long to know

5 Whether the nobler chapletsº wear ºgarlands
Those that their mistress’ scorn did bear,
Or those that were used kindly.1

For whatsoe’er they tell us here

To make those sufferings dear,
10 ’Twill there I fear be found,
That to the being crowned
T’ have loved alone will not suffice,
Unless we also have been wise,
And have our loves enjoyed.

15 What posture can we think him in,

That here, unloved again,
Departs, and’s thither gone
Where each sits by his own?
Or how can that Elysium2 be
20 Where I my mistress still must see
Circled in others’ arms?

For there the judges all are just,

And Sophonisba3 must
Be his whom she held dear,
25 Not his who loved her here;
The sweet Philoclea, since she died,
Lies by her Pirocles’s side,
Not by Amphialus.4

Some bays (perchance) or myrtle bough,5

1
lines 5–7: whether those (l. 6) or those (l. 7) wear the nobler chaplets. [TC]
2
Paradise. In the Latin poets, Elysium is that part of the underworld reserved for those
whose earthly lives had been heroic or markedly righteous. [HM]
3
Daughter of the third-century BCE Carthaginian general Hasdrubal, Sophonisba was
married to Syphax but fell in love with his enemy Masinissa. [AP]
4
Philoclea, Pirocles and Amphialus: characters from the Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney. Both
Pyrocles and Amphialus loved Philoclea, but she loved Pyrocles. [TC]
5
Types of symbolic as opposed to tangible reward. ‘Bay’ signifies victory, ‘myrtle’ love.
[TC]

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 Sir John Suckling (1609–1641)

30 For difference crowns the brow

Of those kind souls that were
The noble martyrs here;
And if that be the only odds
(As who can tell), ye kinder gods,
35 Give me the woman here.

Against Fruition I
Poems for and against fruition […] were popular in the earlier
seventeenth century […] The purported speaker is a man of
some age and worldly experience; he addresses the ‘fond youth’
in much the same terms as the speaker of ‘Why so pale and
wan, fond lover?’ The senses of ‘fruition’ as commercial success,
propagation, and sexual consummation are all present in the
poem, with Gen, I: 22 providing the sub-text: ‘be fruitful and
multiply’. [TC]

Stay here, fondº youth, and ask no more, be ºfoolish

wise:
Knowing too much long since lost Paradise;1
The virtuous joys thou hast, thou wouldst should
still
Last in their pride; and wouldst not take it ill
5 If rudely from sweet dreams (and for a toy)
Th’wert waked? He wakes himself that does enjoy.

Fruition adds no new wealth, but destroys,

And while it pleases much the palate, cloys;
Who thinks he shall be happier for that
10 As reasonably might hope he should grow fat
By eating to a surfeit: this once past,
What relishes? Ev’n kisses lose their taste.

Urge not ’tis necessary. Alas, we know

The homeliest thing which mankind does is so;
1
The forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil condensed to carnal
knowledge. [TC]

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Poetry for Chapter 1

15 The world is of a vast extent we see,

And must be peopled: children then must be;
So must bread, too; but since there are enough
Born to the drudgery, what need we plough?

Women enjoyed (whats’e’er before th’ave been)

20 Are like romances read, or sights once seen;
Fruition’s dull, and spoils the play much more
Than if one read or knew the plot before;
’Tis expectation makes a blessing dear:
It were not heaven, if we knew what it were.

25 And as in prospects we are there pleased most

Where something keeps the eye from being lost
And leaves us room to guess, so here restraint
Holds up delight, that with excess would faint.
They who know all the wealth they have are poor
He’s only rich that cannot tellº his store. ºreckon up, count, number

Song: Why so pale and wan fond lover?

First printed in Suckling’s play Aglaura (IV.ii.15–29) in 1638,
this most famous of the poet’s lyrics was set to music by
William Lawes. [HM]

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
5 Prithee why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
10 Prithee why so mute?

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 Sir John Suckling (1609–1641)

Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move,

This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
15 The Devil take her.

The Constant Lover

Musical setting: Henry Lawes. [TC]

Out upon it, I have loved

Three whole days together,
And am like to love three more,
If it hold fair weather.

5 Time shall moult away his wings

Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.

But a pox upon’t, no praise

10 There is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stay,
Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she

And that very very face,
15 There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.

383
Glossary
allegory
A narrative or image that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden moral
or political meaning.
absolutism
A narrative or image that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden moral
or political meaning.
Arminianism
Based on the ideas of the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius (1560–
1609), Arminianism rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination
and saw human beings as free to determine their own spiritual destiny.
aside
The dramatic convention, much loved by early modern dramatists, in
which a character on stage addresses remarks to the audience which
are presented as inaudible to the other characters on stage.
authorship
This term refers to both (a) the act or occupation of writing; and (b)
the identification of a literary work or works with an originator or
originators.
blazon
Common in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century love poetry, the
‘blazon’ is a kind of poetic catalogue of the mistress’s physical charms
and other attributes.
carnivalesque
A term used by the philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin to describe
the appearance of carnival in literature. For Bakhtin, carnival (and the
carnivalesque) liberated its participants from established rules and
beliefs and allowed new forms of thinking to emerge.
chapbook
A small (generally around 15cm x 10cm), hand-printed booklet of
between 8 and 32 pages, often including a woodcut illustration,
prevalent in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

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Chapbooks were cheap (usually costing only 1 or 2 old pence) and

generally sold by itinerant vendors.
commedia dell’arte
A form of comic drama, largely improvised around stock characters
and given scenes. It was developed by Italian actors in the sixteenth
century.
deus ex machina
Literally ‘god from a machine’, this Latin phrase refers to the way that
the plots of some Greek and Roman plays were resolved by the
(improbable) arrival of a god – usually by some mechanical means.
discourse
In general terms, this word refers to written or spoken communication,
but in literary criticism and theory it describes the vocabulary and
linguistic conventions used in a particular social practice or intellectual
field. Examples of the former include legal discourse and political
discourse; examples of the latter include philosophical discourse and
feminist discourse.
divine right of kings
The political doctrine which claimed that kings were appointed by God
and therefore not subject to any earthly authority.
double entendre
French for ‘to hear double’, double entendre is an ambiguous use of
language, usually employed for comic effect, in which a word or phrase
has two meanings, one of which is often bawdy.
dramatic irony
Dramatic irony occurs when an audience or reader is in possession of
knowledge of which a character is ignorant.
elegiac couplet
Common in Greek and Roman verse, an elegiac couplet consists of a
line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. A
dactylic foot contains three syllables with the stress on the first
syllable, as in the word ‘meaningful’. So an elegiac couplet is comprised
of two quite long lines of verse, the first containing six dactyls and the
second five.

386
elegy
Originally a poem written in elegiac couplets, the term ‘elegy’ later
came to mean a lyrical poem, often melancholy or meditative in tone,
written to commemorate a person who has died.
epigram
A poem or statement in prose characterised by its brevity and wit.
feminine rhyme
Also known as ‘double rhyme’, feminine rhyme is an end-rhyme on
two syllables, as in these lines from Robert Herrick’s ‘Corinna’s Going
a Maying’: ‘Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,/Come,
my Corinna, come, let’s go a Maying’ (ll.69–70).
formal patterning
A system of organising and patterning a narrative through the repeated
use of a particular narrative form or device. In ‘The Story of Sindbad
the Sailor’ in the Arabian Nights, the recurring use of the shipwreck
and Sindbad’s vow to stay at home at the end of each journey is an
example of formal patterning.
frame narration
A narrative that sits outside the main sequence of a story in both time
and space and provides a context, just like the frame of a painting. The
introductory tale in the Arabian Nights is a good example.
genre
The French word for ‘kind’, a genre is a category or type of artwork
with its own form and conventions. For example, in literary studies,
tragedy is a distinct genre of drama characterised by (among other
conventions) an unhappy ending.
h ̣akawātī
An Arabic term for a professional traditional storyteller, or teller of
tales. The h ̣akawātī would usually perform in a public space such as a
café, inn or marketplace, and would often improvise with an existing
stock of well-known stories.
heroic couplet
Lines of iambic pentameter verse that rhyme in pairs.

387
Book 2

honnête homme
Appearing for the first time in seventeenth-century French literature,
the honnête homme (or ‘honest man’) represents a code of moral and
social behaviour. The honnête homme is the ideal aristocrat: elegant,
well-educated, cultured and sincere.
ideology
This term describes a set of ideas and beliefs which map a political or
economic system, providing either a justification for the system (for
example, capitalist ideology in the United States), or a critique of the
system (socialist ideology applied to the United States). The term is
often associated with the distribution of power in society, with a
dominant ideology supporting the interests of the powerful, and an
oppositional ideology those of the powerless.
imagined community
Associated with the historian Benedict Anderson, this term refers
principally to the modern nation, which Anderson argues arose after
literacy levels increased with the coming of print capitalism, so that
communities of readers imagined themselves belonging to a particular
national community.
inserted story
A ‘tale-within-a-tale’. The narrative device of nesting a short (usually
moralistic) story within the main tale occurs often in the Arabian
Nights, for example. The inserted story is generally of less importance
than the main tale.
irony
The general meaning of irony is the use of words to express the
opposite of their usual meaning. The literary-critical sense of irony
refers to dramatic irony.
Jacobites
The supporters of the last Stuart king, James II (r.1685–88), and his
heirs after James’s fall from power during the Glorious Revolution
of 1688. The name derives from Jacobus, Latin for James. Jacobites
claimed that James and his heirs were the rightful kings of England,
Scotland and Ireland, and made several attempts to restore them to
power during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

388
literary canon
An authoritative list of the most important and influential literary
works – that is, those considered to be of the greatest artistic merit.
literary history
The practice of recounting in narrative form some process of change
in a given body of literature (for instance in a national literature, or in
a genre such as drama), or an example of such an account of literary
developments. Literary history as we know it dates from the eighteenth
century.
materiality
The physical embodiment of texts (paper, ink, notebooks, tables,
almanacs, other writing surfaces) and of the materials that go into
producing them. The materiality of a printed book includes the paper,
ink, glue for binding, covers and so on.
metaphor
A type of figurative language that establishes an identity between two
apparently dissimilar things.
New Comedy
A term used to describe the last of three periods of ancient Greek
comedy, often seen as the origin of the modern ‘comedy of manners’.
Based on everyday situations, young lovers and stock characters, its
influence can be traced through Roman dramatists to Shakespeare,
Molière and William Wycherley.
orientalism
The western cultural fascination with an eastern world which was
viewed as essentially backward, colourful, sexually licentious, irrational,
superstitious and incapable of progress.
paratexts
Associated with the French theorist Gérard Genette, this term refers to
the variety of texts around and within the main text, most typically
covers, images (including those of the author), title-pages, prefaces,
advertisements, maps and annotations. Paratexts inhabit the space
between readers and texts, mediating the text’s relationship with its
readership.

389
Book 2

parody
An imitation designed to mock or undermine a well-known author,
work or genre.
public sphere
Associated with the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, this term
refers to institutions outside both the private sphere (family) and the
state, where members of the public express and exchange their
opinions. These include the popular press and publishing industry in
their many forms, from newspapers in the eighteenth century to the
internet in the twenty-first, as well as meeting places such as coffee-
houses, lecture halls and libraries.
ransom frame
A narrative device where a character in a tale must tell a story to
redeem a life held hostage. There are several examples in the Arabian
Nights.
register
A type or style of language associated with a particular context. So, for
example, we can talk about formal and informal registers, or registers
of language associated with particular professions (legal, medical,
academic and so on).
repetitive designation
A narrative device where seemingly unimportant objects, events or
scenes are present more than once, in the first instance in order to
foreshadow events that will unfold.
rhetoric
The art of persuasive speech or writing, which became codified in an
influential form in ancient Greece and Rome.
Roundheads
The pejorative term given to the supporters of the parliamentary cause
during the English Civil War.
satire
A type of work that seeks to diminish its subject through ridicule.

390
simile
A type of figurative language that makes a comparison between
apparently dissimilar things, using either ‘like’ or ‘as’ to enforce the
comparison.
thematic patterning
A system of organising and patterning a narrative through the
successive occurrence of a particular theme. In the Arabian Nights, the
theme that violence only generates further unhappiness is an example
of thematic patterning.
time-gaining frame
A narrative device where a person tells a story in order to delay
imminent punishment, death or danger. Examples can be found in the
Arabian Nights.
Tories
Originally the name given to the opponents of the campaign to exclude
James, Duke of York, the Catholic heir to the throne, from becoming
king during the Exclusion Crisis of the late 1670s and early 1680s. Like
the Whigs, the Tories went on to become a powerful political party in
England during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
promoting the conservative values of royalism and social hierarchy.
Whigs
Originally the name given to supporters of the campaign to exclude
James, Duke of York, the Catholic heir to the throne, from becoming
king during the Exclusion Crisis of the late 1670s and early 1680s. Like
the Tories, the Whigs developed into a powerful political party in
England in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They tended
to uphold a limited concept of monarchical power and to champion
the liberties of the subject.

391
 Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have
been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make
the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
Logic and illogic in Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’: Chapter 1 Reading
1.2: Logic and illogic in Marvell's ‘To His Coy Mistress’, B.J Sokol,
English Studies, vol. 71, no. 3, 13 August 2008, Pub. Swets and
Zellinger/Routledge, reprinted by permission of the publisher Taylor &
Francis Ltd (http://www.tandfonline.com).
Dock on costume and fashion in Tartuffe: Chapter 2 Reading 2.1:
Costume and Fashion in the Plays of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière: a
seventeenth-century perspective, 1992. With kind permission from
Editions Slatkine SA.
Molière, ‘Preface’ to Tartuffe (1669): Chapter 2 Reading 2.2:
TARTUFFE: A NORTON CRITICAL EDITION by Molière, edited
by Constance Congdon and Virginia Scott, translated by Constance
Congdon. Copyright © 2009 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used
by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
What Is an Author?: Chapter 4 Reading 4.1: From The Foucault reader
– What is an Author? by Michel Foucault ed. Paul Rabinov. Copyright
© 1984/1991 by Cornell University. Reprinted by permission of the
publisher, Cornell University Press. All Rights Reserved.
Aphra Behn Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1: Footnotes of poem ‘The
Disappointment’. Taken from The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume 1
Poetry edited by Jane Todd. William Pickering, 1992.
Thomas Campion Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1: Ayres and
Observations: selected poems of Thomas Campion, ‘My sweetest Lesbia, in
imitation of Catullus’, Carcanet Press Limited, 1976.
Thomas Carew Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1: CAVALIER POETS:
SELECTED POEMS edited by Clayton (1978) 1050w and 226 lines
from ‘The Spring’, ‘Song: Persuasions to Enjoy’, ‘Upon a Ribband’, ‘A
Rapture’, ‘Sonnet I’, ‘Sonnet II’, ‘Sonnet III’, ‘Against Fruition I’, ‘The
Constant Lover’ pp. 155, 162–163, 174, 182–187, 224–225, 228–232,
237. By permission of Oxford University Press.

393
Acknowledgements

Robert Herrick and Richard Lovelace Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1:

CAVALIER POETS: SELECTED POEMS edited by Thomas Clayton
(1978): Richard Lovelace: pp. 255–6: Song to Lucasta, Going beyond
the Seas – 24 lines p. 256: Song to Lucasta, Going to the Wars – 12
lines pp. 257–8: Song to Amarantha – 28 lines pp. 258–9: Gratiana
Singing and Dancing – 24 lines pp. 275–6: To Althea, from Prison –
32 lines Robert Herrick: p. 5: The Argument of His Book – 14 lines
p. 6: Upon the Loss of His Mistresses – 14 lines pp. 6–7: The Vine –
23 lines p. 13: Delight in Disorder – 14 lines pp. 40–1: Julia's Petticoat
–22 lines pp. 42–4: Corinna's Going A-Maying – 70 lines pp. 52–3: To
Live Merrily...– 52 lines p. 56: To the Virgins ... – 16 lines pp. 87: To
daffodils – 20 lines p. 139: Upon Julia's clothes – 6 lines. By
Permission of Oxford University Press.
Christopher Marlowe Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1: Text used with
kind permission from: Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. ‘Ovid,
Amores trans. Marlowe, Book I Elegy 5, Book II Elegy 12’ from The
Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe Volume I. Author Christopher
Marlowe (ed. Roma Gill), 1987.
Sir John Suckling Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1: CAVALIER POETS:
SELECTED POEMS edited by Clayton (1978) 1050w and 226 lines
from ‘The Spring’, ‘Song: Persuasions to Enjoy’, ‘Upon a Ribband’, ‘A
Rapture’, ‘Sonnet I’, ‘Sonnet II’, ‘Sonnet III’, ‘Against Fruition I’, ‘The
Constant Lover’ pp. 155, 162–163, 174, 182–187, 224–225, 228–232,
237. By permission of Oxford University Press.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1: ‘A Satire
Against Reason and Mankind’, ‘The Disabled Debauchee’, ‘Regime de
Vivre’, ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’. The poems of John Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester by Keith Walker. Reproduced with permission of Blackwell
Publishing Incorporated in the format Republish in continuing
education materials via Copyright Clearance Center.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester Poems: Poetry for Chapter 1: ‘From
Seneca’s Troades’, ‘A Satire on Charles II’, ‘Upon his Leaving his
Mistress’, ‘A Song’. John Wilmot, The Complete Poems of John Wilmot,
Earl of Rochester. Copyright © 1962 by Yale University.

394
 Index

Index
‘Absalom and Achitophel’ (Dryden) 19 adaptations and translations 176–7
Abu Shady (professional storyteller) 162, 163 eighteenth-century 165–70
Achmed Bey 275 Galland 162–5, 167, 169, 172, 176
Act of Union (1707) 12 Grub Street edition 165, 167, 172
Addison, Joseph 203 and the literary landscape 176–7
African slave labour 17 Longman (1736) 167, 168
Africans multimedia 170
eighteenth-century concepts of 251–53, 265, 267 nineteenth century and beyond 170–1
and the Yahoos in Gulliver's Travels 251–3 ‘Ali Baba and the 40 thieves’ 162, 165
agricultural economy in Ireland 240–1 audio recordings 170
al-Shaykh, Hanan authorship 165, 167, 170–3
One Thousand and One Nights: A New different titles in English 155
Re-Imagining 178–9, 180 ‘The Fable of the Ass, the Ox and the Labourer’
alexandrines 157
in Tartuffe 82, 83 as a fabrication 178–9
Allen, Woody 77 film (The Secrets of the Arabian Nights) 165
Amhurst, Nicholas frame narrators and storytellers 156–61, 178
The Craftsman 203 inserted stories 157
Amores (Ovid) 316, 345 manuscript circulation 162, 163–5
Marlowe’s translations of 31, 33, 34–5, 36, 354, modern reinterpretations of 178–9, 180
355–7 and Montagu’s Letters 275–6, 303
The Amorous Doctor (staged by Molière) 79 oral composition and professional storytellers
ancient Greece 162, 172
and the Ottoman empire 291 and Orientalism 177–8
theatre 94–5 pantomimes 166, 170
ancient Rome Schahzenan 156, 157, 158
car pe diem poetry of 41–2 Scheherazade 155, 157–8, 159, 172, 178, 179, 182
and libertinism 51 ‘The Story of Aladdin’ 160, 162, 165, 166
Molière on the ‘testimony of the ancients’ 94 ‘The Story of Sindbad the Sailor’ 158, 159–60,
pagan gods 44–5 166
verse satire of 18, 19 Sultan Schahriar 154, 156–7, 158, 160, 178
Andrews, Richard 83–4 theatre productions 166, 179
Anglican Church translation of names 155
Church of England 10–11, 14 Arabic language
Swift and the Church of Ireland 200, 240 and the Arabian Nights 155, 179
Anglo-Irish population Aravamudan, Srinavas 294–5
and Swift’s Irish pamphlets 243–4 Aristotle
Anne, Queen 200 and Greek theatre 94, 95
Statute of Anne 172–3 Arminianism 11
Arab Spring As You Like It (Shakespeare) 86, 94, 133, 145
and the Arabian Nights 179 Astell, Mary 283
Arabian Nights’ Entertainments 155–90 Reflections upon Marriage 22

395
index

Aubrey, John Britain

Brief Lives 379 and colonialism in Gulliver's Travels 260–61
Austen, Jane 22 copyright law 172–3
Persuasion 275 sugar trade 17, 251
authorship British Library
and the Arabian Nights 165, 167, 170–3 catalogue of the Arabian Nights 168
copyright and the Statute of Anne 172–3 Brown, Laura
Foucault on 173–5, 180, 183–90 on women in Gulliver's Travels 218–19, 220–21
of Gulliver's Travels 204 Burnet, Gilbert 360
Ayton, Robert Burton, Richard
‘To His Coy Mistress’ 66 translation of the Arabian Nights 169
Butler, Samuel
Bakhtin, Mikhail Hudibras 18–19
on carnivalesque 90–1
Barnard, T. 241 Cairncross, John 89
Barnett, Louise Calvinism
on women in Gulliver's Travels 218, 220, 221–23 and Charles I 10–11
Barry, Elizabeth 360 Calvino, Italo 176
Becket and De Hondt (Dutch publishers) Campion, Thomas
publication of Montagu’s Letters 285 ‘My sweetest Lesbia, In Imitation of Catallus’ 31,
Beckford, William 176 43, 45, 319–20
Beeckman, Daniel canon of literature
A Voyage to and from the Island of Borneo in the and the Arabian Nights 177, 178
East Indies 252, 253, 266 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 160
Beggar's Opera (Gay) 203, 214–16 Captain Singleton (Defoe) 252, 267
Behn, Aphra 22, 313 Carew, Thomas 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 321–9, 346
background 313 portrait of 40
‘The Disappointment’ 59, 314–18 ‘A Rapture’ 36–7, 39, 41, 43, 324–9
Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave 313 ‘Song: Persuasions to Enjoy’ 322–3
Berkeley, George 217 ‘The Spring’ 322
Bible ‘Upon a Ribband’ 323
and the Arabian Nights 177 Carleton, Sir Dudley 321
Bill of Rights (1689) 12 ‘Carmen 5’ (Catullus) 42–3
Blackfriars Theatre 121 carnivalesque world
blazons in Petrarchan love poetry 31, 33 and Tartuffe 90–1
parody of, in Marvell's ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47– car pe diem poetry 44
8 ancient Rome 42–3
Boccaccio, Giovanni Herrick’s Hesperides 41, 334
Decameron 160 Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47–50, 58, 65–8,
Bohls, Elizabeth 293, 294 357–59
Bolingbroke, Henry St John, Viscount 200 Carter, Angela 176
bookselling 18 Catullus
Borges, Jorge Luis 176 Campion’s ‘My sweetest Lesbia, In Imitation of
Borneo Catullus’ 43, 319–20
Beeckman's description of orang-utans in 252, ‘Carmen 5’ 42–3
253, 266 Catholicism
Brant, Clare 282, 286, 288, 290, 291 and James II 11, 12
Bray, René 76 and Tartuffe 19, 88, 90, 102

396
 Index

Cavalier poets 38–9, 41, 47, 52 carnivalesque 90–1

and car pe diem poetry 43–4 comedie-ballet at the French court 80–1
see also Carew, Thomas; Herrick, Robert; commedia dell'arte 78–9, 96, 98, 110
Lovelace, Richard The Country Wife as a libertine comedy 122–3
censorship and Molière 93, 94, 106, 122
banning of Tartuffe 75, 90, 92, 96 New Comedy of ancient Greece 95
and Gulliver's Travels 197–8 Restoration 115–48
chapbook editions of the Arabian Nights 166 Common Sense: or, the Englishman's Journal 203
Charles I, King 9, 10 Commonwealth 11
and the Cavalier poets 36, 39, 323, 348 Confessions (Rousseau) 275
execution of 12 Congreve, William 283
and festivities 44 Constantinople
Charles II, King 9, 11–12, 42 and Montagu’s Letters 292–3, 296, 297–9
court 14, 51, 52, 75 and Orlando 275
and Herrick’s Hesperides 41 Conti, Abbé 284
portrait of 15 copyright 18
and Restoration theatre 75, 121 and the Statute of Anne 172–3
and Rochester 359 ‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’ (Herrick) 20, 44–6, 48,
Rochester’s ‘Satire on Charles II’ 19, 54–5 339–42
Chaucer, Geoffrey Corneille, Pierre 79, 94
Canterbury Tales 160 Le Cid 85, 95
Chauveau, François 103 Nicomède 79
Christianity corruption
Church of England 10–11, 14 and eighteenth-century politics 202, 230–1
marriage and the church service 21 in Gulliver’s Travels 218, 219, 249
and the Restoration 14–15 Cortés, Hernando 260
satire on 19 The Country Wife (Wycherley) 17, 19, 115–48
and sex and seduction poetry 52, 67–8 Act 1, Scene 1 126–31
and women 21–22 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane 122
see also Catholicism; religion banquet scene 143
Civil War see English Civil War china scene 17, 138–41, 143
class cuckoldry in 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 142
and letter-writing 284 dénouement 145
and Restoration theatre 121–2 double entendres in 137–8, 139
and seventeenth-century marriage 20–21 as a libertine comedy 122–3
Cleland, John masculinity in 142–3
Memoirs of a Coxcomb 300–1 New Exchange scene 133, 134–5, 136
clothing Pinchwife plot 122
costume and fashion in Tartuffe 87–8, 102–4 plot lines and erotic triangles 132–41
in Montagu’s Letters satire in 19
and nakedness 296–7, 298 Theatre Royal production of (2007) 144
Turkish dress 298–300, 301–2 type-names of characters 124–5, 132
veiled women 296–7, 298–9 courtship 18–19
in sex and seduction poetry 34, 35, 41 Couton, Georges 81, 102, 103
coffee-houses 203, 251 The Craftsman (Amhurst) 203
colonialism Craven, Lady Elizabeth
and Gulliver's Travels 239, 260–1 Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople 292–3
comedy Crawford, Patricia 20, 21

397
index

Creaser, John 41, 46 Dryden, John

Cromwell, Oliver 11, 13 ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ 19
cuckoldry Dublin, Swift in 241, 244
in the Country Wife 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 142 Dumont, Jean
Curll, Edmund Nouveau Voyage au Levant 292
publication of key to Gulliver's Travels 212–14, The Dunciad (Pope) 203
215 Dutch traders
in Gulliver's Travels 250
Dampier, William
A Voyage around the World 207, 208–9 ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online)
Danson, Ted 262 the Arabian Nights in 166–70, 180
Davis, Mary ‘Moll’ 42 and Gulliver's Travels 207, 212
death EEBO (Early English Books Online) 207
and car pe diem poetry 43 Ehrenpreis, I. 239
Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 48–9, 50, 63, Einstein, Albert 217
67 elegiac couplets 33
Foucault on writing and 183–4 Eliot, T.S.
and libertinism 51 ‘Andrew Marvell’ 356
in Rochester’s ‘From Seneca’s Troades’ 52 Encyclopédie 288
and sex and seduction poetry 60 English Civil War 9, 10, 11, 201
Decameron (Boccaccio) 160 and Cavalier poets 38–9, 39, 41–2
Defoe, Daniel and the theatres 121
Captain Singleton 252, 253, 267 Enlightenment 9, 14–15
Review 201 defining 9
Robinson Crusoe and Laputa’s intelligentsia in Gulliver's Travels
and the Arabian Nights 169, 170 246–9
and Gulliver’s Travels 207–9, 211 literary culture 18–19
‘Delight in Disorder’ (Herrick) 41, 338 and Montagu’s Letters 287, 288, 289, 292–3, 303
Destouches, Paul-Émile and trade 16–17
Scheherazade 160, 161 Epicurus 51
deus ex machina in Tartuffe 97, 112–13 An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (Berkeley)
Diderot, Denis 288 217
‘The Disabled Debauchee’ (Rochester) 57, 368–70 Etherege, Sir George
‘The Disappointment’ (Behn) 59, 313, 314–18 The Man of Mode 121
divine right of kings 10 European colonisation 16–17
Dock, Stephen Examiner (Swift) 203
Costume and Fashion in the Plays of Jean-Baptiste Exclusion Crisis 11–12, 19, 313
Poquelin Molière 88, 102–4 eyewitness authority
Donne, John 9 and Montagu’s Letters 286, 287, 290
Elegies 34, 36 Ezell, Margaret 281
Elegy 19 (‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’) 34–
5, 41, 324, 330–2 Faerie Queene (Spenser) 42
‘The Flea’ 35 Faithorne, William
double entendres John Milton 16
in The Country Wife 137–8, 139 Faulkner, George
dramatic irony publication of Swift's Collected Works 206
in The Country Wife 130 The Female Traveller (anonymous engraving) 298
Drapier’s Letters (Swift) 204, 241–45 feminine rhymes

398
 Index

in Herrick's Hesperides 45 Gerhardt, Mia 156, 157

festivities Gillray, James
May Day celebrations 20, 44–5 The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver 222, 223
Fiorelli, Tiberio see Scaramouche (Tiberio Fiorelli) Gilpin, Sawrey
Fisk, Deborah Payne 122–3 Gulliver Taking his Final Leave of the Land of the
‘The Flea’ (Donne) 35 Houyhnhnms 259
formal patterning Globe Theatre 121
in the Arabian Nights 157, 159 Glorious Revolution (1688) 12, 200, 201
Foucault, Michel Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 176
‘What Is an Author?’ 173–5, 180, 183–90, 281, Grant, Richard E. 166
303 Guibbory, Achsah 35
frame narration Gulliver’s Travels (Swift) 15–16, 17, 197–225
of the Arabian Nights 156–61, 178 and the Arabian Nights 159
France colonial contexts of 239, 260–1
Académie Française 94–5 ending of 262
Bibliothèque nationale de France, catalogue Faulkner edition 206
holdings of the Arabian Nights 165 film versions of 262
theatres 75, 79, 80 first-person narration 204
Friedman, Donald M. genre of 18, 207–9
on Marvell's ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 49–50, 63–4 Gulliver Captured by the Lilliputians (engraving)
Furetière, Antoine 103 213
historical contexts of 200–202
Galland, Antoine Motte’s first publication of 197, 204–6
translation of the Arabian Nights (Les Milles et and the oriental traveller 292
une nuits: contes arabes) 162–5, 166, 167, 169, paratexts of 203–5, 206
172, 174, 176 Gulliver’s letter to Sympson 204, 206, 207,
Gay, John 208, 219, 220
Beggar’s Opera 203, 214–16 Pope’s five ‘Verses on Gulliver’s Travels’ 206
gender relations Sympson’s ‘The Publisher to the Reader’ 204
in Montagu’s Letters 298–9 Part I (Lilliput) 210–16, 218, 240
in sex and seduction poetry 60 Part II (Brobdingnag) 217–24, 218, 222, 225, 240,
Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’ 59 249, 256
Carew’s ‘A Rapture‘ 36–7 Part III 15, 240–50
Donne’s Elegy 35 Balnibarbi 240, 245, 246
Marlowe’s translations of Ovid’s Amores 33 Glubbdubdrib 249
Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47–8, 63 Japan 240, 249–51, 251
Rochester’s The Imperfect Enjoyment 57 Laputa 240, 245–9, 250
Genette, Gérard 204 Lindalinian rebellion 240, 242, 245–6
genres of literature 18 Part IV (Houyhnhnms) 240, 251–61
and the Arabian Nights 166, 167, 169, 176 reason and the Houyhnhnms/Yahoos 16, 255–
Gulliver’s Travels 207–9 60
see also letter-writing; travel-writing as satire 15–16, 19
geographical separation sequence of composition (Part III and Part IV)
and Montagu’s Letters 286, 290 239
George I, King 13, 212, 225, 245 Swift’s ambitions for 197–8
George III, King Gwyn, Nell 42, 376
in Gillray’s cartoon of Gulliver as Napoleon 222,
223 Habermas, Jürgen 203

399
index

Hamlet 98
Ḥannā Diyab 165, 172 iambic tetrameter couplets
Hanoverian succession 13 in Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47, 48
Harding, John 204 imagined communities
Haroun Alraschid (caliph) 159 Swift and Anglo-Irish Protestants 245
Hawker, Thomas (attributed) ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’ (Rochester) 57–8, 59,
King Charles II 15 371–4
Hawkins, Sir Thomas The Impromptu at Versailles (Molière) 80, 82, 97
The Odes of Horace the Best of Lyric Poets 43, 333 inserted stories
Haywood, Eliza 22, 291 in Arabian Nights 157
Hazlitt, William 321 Ireland
Heffernan, T. 284 Irish politics and Gulliver’s Travels 239, 240–45
Hero and Leander (Marlowe) 352 Swift’s life in 200, 240–45
heroic couplets irony
in erotic poetry 33, 34, 55 in Gulliver’s Travels 211
Herrick, Robert 36 in Swift’s Irish pamphlets 242
background 335 Irwin, Robert 177
Hesperides (Herrick) 41–46, 334–44 Italian actors in Paris 79
‘The Argument of His Book’ 41, 45, 335–6 and Tartuffe 83, 90–1
‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’ 20, 44–9, 338–41 Italian commedia dell’arte 79, 96, 98, 110
‘Delight in Disorder’ 41, 337
‘Julia’s Petticoat’ 338 Jacobites 12
‘To Daffodils’ 344 James I, King 10, 44, 333, 335
‘To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses’ James II, King (formerly Duke of York)
341–3 Exclusion Crisis 11–12, 19, 313
‘To the Most Illustrious...’ 335 and the Glorious Revolution 12, 200
‘To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time’ 42, Japan
343–4 in Gulliver’s Travels 240, 249–51, 251
‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’ 344 Jataka tales 160
‘Upon the Loss of his Mistresses’ 337 Jervas, Charles
‘The Vine’ 41, 336 Jonathan Swift 199
Hill, A. Portrait of a Lady (called Lady Mary Wortley
A Full and Just Account of the Present State of the Montagu) 298
Ottoman Empire 292 Jesuits
Hobbes, Thomas and Molière’s Tartuffe 19, 88, 102
Leviathan 51–52, 53, 54, 123, 131 Johnson, Dr Samuel 285, 360
Hodge, Patricia 144 Jonson, Ben 124, 335
Holland, Norman 136 ‘Julia’s Petticoat’ (Herrick) 339
Homer Juvenal 18
Odyssey 160
homosocial desire Kabbani, Rana 178
in The Country Wife 142–3 Kent, Jonathan 144
honnête homme characters Kerrigan, John 321
in Molière's plays 94, 98 King, Stephen 176
Horace 18, 43 King, William, Archbishop of Dublin 240
Hawkins' translation (The Odes of Horace the Best kingship
of Lyric Poets) 43, 333 divine right of kings 10
Hudibras (Butler) 18–19 Rochester’s satire on 19, 54–6

400
 Index

Knapton, George Lovelace, Richard 38, 43, 65, 345–50

Portrait of a Lady (called Lady Mary Wortley ‘Gratiana Dancing and Singing’ 348–9
Montagu) 298 Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, Etc. 346
Knolles, Richard ‘Song: To Aramantha, That She Would Dishevel
The History of the Turks 292 Her Hair’ 347–48
‘Song: To Lucasta, Going Beyond the Seas’ 346
La Grange (actor) 89 ‘Song: To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’ 347
Lane, Edward ‘To Althea, from Prison: Song’ 345, 349–50
translation of the Arabian Nights 169 Lowenthal, Cynthia 297
L’École des femmes (Molière) 122 Lucretius 51
L’École des maris (Molière) 122
Leguat, François McCarthy, Gerry 86
A New Voyage to the East-Indies 252, 253, 265 McGough, Roger
Lely, Sir Peter ‘retelling’ of Tartuffe 82
portrait of Mary ‘Moll’ Davies 42 Mack, Robert L. 166, 172
Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée (‘The Pleasures of the Madagascar
Enchanted Isle’) 80–81, 102 in Defoe’s Captain Singleton 252, 267
letter-writing 275, 279–5 magazines
and authorship 281 and coffee-house culture 203
manuals 282 Malet, Elizabeth 360
materiality of 279–81 The Man of Mode (Etherege) 121
private and public letters 283–4 Manley, Delarivier 22, 291
published letters 282–3 Marcus, Leah 44
sending and receiving a letter 280–1 Marlowe, Christopher 351–4
Lettre sur la comedie de L’Imposteur 96–7 background 351
Lettres persanes (Persian letters) (Montesquieu) 292 Dr Faustus 351
Leviathan (Hobbes) 51–53, 53, 123, 381 Hero and Leander 351
libertinism Tamburlaine 351
libertine plays 122–3 translations of Ovid’s Amores 34–5, 35, 351, 352–
and Rochester’s poetry 51–58 4
L’Imposteur (Molière’s reworking of Tartuffe) 92 marriage
literary culture 18–20 and class in the seventeenth century 20–21
literary history in The Country Wife 126–9
Foucault on authorship 173–5, 180–7 and libertinism 51
London and May Day celebrations 45
coffee-houses 203 Marvell, Andrew 355–58
Restoration theatres 121–23 ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's return from
Royal Society 14, 15, 207, 246 Ireland’ 355
Longman, Thomas background 355
publication of the Arabian Nights 167, 168 ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47–50, 58, 356–8
Louis XIV, King of France 55–6, 75, 80, 81, 82, 90, critical studies of 49–50, 65–8
92, 113, 121, 375 Marx, Groucho 77
court entertainments 80–81 masculinity
and Rochester’s ‘Satire on Charles II’ 55–6 in The Country Wife 142–3
and Tartuffe in sex and seduction poetry 60
banning of 75, 90–1, 92, 96 masquerade
intervention in 96–7, 108–11 and veiling in Montagu’s Letters 288
Molière’s petitions for 88, 90, 92, 94, 98 May Day festivities 20, 44–5

401
index

Medbourne, Matthew violation of gender norms 300–2

English adaptation of Tartuffe 82, 89 and Woolf ’s Orlando 275
Mendelson, Sara 20, 21 see also The Turkish Embassy Letters (Montagu)
Metamor phoses (Ovid) 33 Montague, Charles 207
metaphors Montesquieu, C. de
in Donne’s Elegy 19 35 Lettres persanes (Persian letters) 292
in Tartuffe 112–13 Motte, Benjamin
Mexico, Spanish conquest of 260 publication of Gulliver’s Travels 197, 204–6
Middle East Mottraye, Aubry de la
and Montagu’s Letters 291–4 Travels through Europe, Asia and into Part of
Milton, John 356 Africa 292
Paradise Lost 14–15 Mrs Baldwin in Eastern Dress (Reynolds) 301
portrait of 16 multimedia adaptations
The Misanthrope (Molière) 95, 98 of the Arabian Nights 170
misogyny ‘My sweetest Lesbia, In Imitation of Catullus’
in The Country Wife 133–4, 136, 143 (Campion) 43, 319–20
in Gulliver's Travels 218–22
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 75–81 Napoleonic Wars
adoption of a stage name 77 and Gillray’s cartoon of Gulliver 222, 223
and comedy 94, 95, 106, 122 nature
death of 98 in Herrick’s Hesperides 41, 44–5
French court entertainments 76, 80–81 and society, in The Country Wife 126
and the French stage 76, 77–81 Neill, Michael 136
Italian actors 79 neo-classical drama 94–5, 96, 98
The Imaginary Invalid 98 New Comedy of ancient Greece 95
The Impromptu at Versailles 81, 82, 97 Newton, Sir Isaac 14, 15
La Princesse d’Elide (‘The Princess of Elis’) 81 Norman, Larry 76, 82
L’École des femmes 122
L’École des maris 122 Observator (Tutchin) 203
The Misanthrope 95, 98 ODNB (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
moustache as a theatrical mask 77 entry for Walpole in 212, 214–16
and neo-classical theatre 94–5 Odyssey (Homer) 160
Preface to Tartuffe 93–4, 96, 105–9 O’Quinn, D. 284
in the role of Sganarelle 78–80 orang-utans
The School for Wives 80 Beeckman’s description of 252, 253, 254, 266
wife of (Armande) 81 Orientalism
see also Tartuffe (Molière) and the Arabian Nights 177–8
Molière in the Role of Sganarelle (Simonin) 78 and Montagu’s Letters 291–4
Monsiau, Nicolas-André Orlando (Woolf) 275, 285
Molière lisant Tartuffe chez Ninon de Lenclos 93 Ottoman Empire 17, 275
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley 20 and Montagu’s Letters 277, 291, 292
early life 277 Ovid 33, 41, 55
journey to Constantinople and back 277, 278 Amores 316, 345
and letter-writing 275, 280–6 Marlowe’s translations of 34–5, 35, 352, 353–5
portraits of in Turkish dress 298–9 Metamor phoses 33
reputation 302
and smallpox inoculation 300 pamphlets
and the Twickenham Circle 277 Swift’s pamphlets on Irish politics 239–44

402
 Index

Panchatantra tales 160 Irish politics 239, 240–45

Paradise Lost (Milton) 14–15 Lilliput 212–16
Paris theatres 79–80 Part III 245–50
Comédie-Française 75 and sex and seduction poetry 60
Italian actors 79 Pope, Alexander 12, 13
Palais Royal 79, 92 The Dunciad 203
Grand Salle 79 and Montagu’s Letters 277, 286, 287, 291
tennis-court theatres 79 Swift’s letters to 197, 202
Parliament ‘Verses on Gulliver’s Travels’ 206
and Charles I 9, 10 Popish Plot 313
and Charles II 11 Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste see Molière (Jean-Baptiste
Pascal, Blaise Poquelin)
Pensées 65 Potocki, Jan 176
‘Paston, George’ poverty in Ireland 240
biography of Montagu 285 Swift’s pamphlets on 241–42
patronage system Protectorate 11
and literary culture 18 Protestantism
Pepys Ballads and Swift's Irish pamphlets 244
Formal and Informal Courtship 21 Proust, Marcel 176
perception public sphere 203
in Gulliver’s Travels 217 Puritans 11, 44
periodicals Pushkin, Alexander 176
and coffee-house culture 203
Persian stories quill-pens 279
in the Arabian Nights 162
Persuasion (Austen) 275 Rabelais, François 91
Pétis, François de la Croix ransom frames
Les Mille et un jours: contes persanes 275–6 in the Arabian Nights 158, 160
Petition of Right (1628) 10 ‘A Rapture’ (Carew) 36–7, 39, 41, 43, 324–9
Petrarchan love poetry 31–32 Rawson, Claude
blazons in 31, 33 on women in Gulliver’s Travels 218–19, 220–21
parody of in Marvell's ‘To His Coy Mistress’ reason
47–8 and the Enlightenment 9, 15
Piozzi, Hester Thrale 285 in Gulliver’s Travels, satire of 13–14, 246–8, 255–
Pitt, Christopher 60
‘On the Masquerades’ 289 and religion 14
Pittock, Malcolm in Swift’s Irish pamphlets 240–4
on Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 49, 50, 66–8 Reflections upon Marriage (Astell) 22
The Plain Dealer (Wycherley) 141 ‘Régime de vivre’ (I rise at eleven) 57, 372
Plautus 95 religion 9, 14–15
Plumb, J.H. and Charles I 10–11
on Walpole and English politics 201–202, 228–9 Church of England 10–11, 14
Poe, Edgar Allen 176 French Catholicism and Tartuffe 19, 90–1, 98,
Pointon, Marcia 298, 300 102–6
politics 10–13 and May Day celebrations in Herrick’s Hesperides
and coffee-house culture 203 44, 45
and Gulliver’s Travels and Milton 14–15
historical contexts of 200–201

403
index

religious discourse, in Donne’s sex and seduction Rushdie, Salman 176

poetry 35 Ruskin, John 176
religious register, in Herrick’s Hesperides 44–5 Rycaut, Paul 292, 293
see also Catholicism; Christianity
repetitive designation Sackville-West, Vita 275
in the Arabian Nights 156–7, 159–60 Said, Edward 291
Restoration 14–17 sanders/sand-boxes 279
defining 9 Sandys, George
literary culture 18–19 A Relation of a Journey Containing a Description of
and religion 14 the Turkish Empire 292
theatres 75, 121–22 satire 18–19
Review (Defoe) 203 and The Country Wife 19, 132
Reynolds, Dwight 165 in Gulliver’s Travels 15–16, 214, 223
Reynolds, Joshua on Laputa’s intelligentsia and scientific elite
Mrs Baldwin in Eastern Dress 300, 301 240, 246–9
rhetoric Rochester
in the Arabian Nights 158 ‘A Satire Against Reason and Mankind’ 54,
Richardson, Jonathan 361–9
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 298, 299 ‘Satire on Charles II’ 54–7, 375–6
Richardson, Samuel travel-writing and the east 293
Sir Charles Grandison 300 Scaramouche (Tiberio Fiorelli) 79
Richelieu, Cardinal 79, 94 Scaramouche the Hermit 93–4, 109
Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) Scaramouche Teaching Elomire, his Student (Weyen)
and the Arabian Nights 169 78
and Gulliver's Travels 169, 207–9, 211 The School for Wives (Molière) 80
Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of 14, 19, 51–58, 359– science
77 and the Enlightenment 9, 14
and Aphra Behn 313 and satire in Gulliver's Travels 240, 246–9
background 360 Scotland 11, 12
and the development of Restoration drama 121 Scott, Virginia 92, 96
‘The Disabled Debauchee’ 57, 368–70 Scott, Walter 177
‘From Seneca’s Troades 52–4, 368 seals/sealing wax 279
‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’ 57–8, 59, 371–4 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky
Poems on Several Occasions 314 on homosocial desire in The Country Wife 142–3
‘Régime de vivre’ (I rise at eleven) 57, 371 Seneca
‘A Satire Against Reason and Mankind’ 54, 360–8 Rochester’s translation of a speech from Troades
‘A Satire on Charles II’ (‘Verses for which he was 52–4, 369
banished’) 54–7, 374–5 Senior, Nancy 84
‘A Song’ 376 sex and seduction poetry 21, 25–68
‘Upon his Leaving his Mistress’ 375–6 Campion’s ‘My sweetest Lesbia’ 31, 43, 45, 319–
Roundheads 20
and Cavalier poets 38, 39 Carew’s ‘A Rapture’ 36–7, 39, 41, 43, 324–9
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques classical models of 33
Confessions 275 Herrick’s Hesperides 41–46, 335–45
The Roxburghe Ballads Marlowe’s translations of Ovid’s Amores 34–5, 35,
‘A Married Man’s Miserie’ 125 351, 352–4
Royal Society 14, 15, 207, 246 Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47–50, 58, 356–8
royalists see Cavalier poets and Petrarchan love poetry 31–32

404
 Index

see also car pe diem poetry; Donne, John; Spenser, Edmund

Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of The Faerie Queene 42, 44
sexuality Spingler, Michael
in Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’ 59 on Tartuffe 86, 96, 97, 110–1
in car pe diem poetry 45, 49 ‘The Spring’ (Carew) 322
in The Country Wife 126–7, 132–4, 136–9, 140–1, stability
143 and eighteenth-century politics 201, 228–9
and the east, in Montagu’s Letters 288, 289, 291, Steele, Richard 203
293, 294–5 Stephens, Toby 144
and marriage 21 Stevenson, Robert Louis 176
in Rochester’s libertine poetry 56, 57–8 Sturridge, Charles 262
Shakespeare, William Suckling, Sir John 38, 43, 346, 377–83
and the Arabian Nights 177, 178 ‘Against Fruition I’ 381–2
As You Like It 86, 94, 133, 145 The Constant Lover 383
Hamlet 98 sonnets 378–2
theatres 121 ‘Why so pale and wan fond lover?’ 382–3
Sharpe, Kevin 321 sugar trade 17, 251
Shelley, Mary 176 Supple, Tim 179, 180
ships Swift, Jonathan
sending letters from Constantinople to England biographical details 200
by ship 280–1 Collected Works 206
Shorter, Catherine 212, 245 Drapier’s Letters 204, 241–5
Silvestre, Israel A Short View 241–42
engraving of the performance of The Princess of Examiner 203
Elis 81 in Ireland 200, 240–1
similes Irish pamphlets 239–44
in sex and seduction poetry 35, 36, 58 and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 277
Simonds, P. Muñoz ‘Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin, Concerning
on Tartuffe 90 the Weavers’ 253
ending of 96–7, 112–13 portrait of 199
Simonin, Claude see also Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
Molière in the Role of Sganarelle 78, 79 Sympson, Richard
Slater, Maya Gulliver’s letter to 204, 206, 207, 208, 219, 220
translation of Tartuffe 74, 82 ‘The Publisher to the Reader’ (preface to
slave trade 17, 251 Gulliver's Travels) 204
smallpox inoculation Syria
and Montagu 300 and the Arabian Nights 162, 163, 164, 172
Smith, Maggie
in The Country Wife 135 Tartuffe (Molière) 17, 75, 82–98
Smollett, Tobias 285 Act 1 82–4
social authorship Act 2 84–6
letter-writing as 281 Act 3 86–9
Sokol, B.J. 47 Act 4 89–91
on Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ 47, 49, 65 Act 5 96–7, 110–1
Sonderegger, Lori 89 appearance of Tartuffe 87–8
sovereignty banning of 75, 90, 92, 96
in Hobbes’ Leviathan 53 characters 82
The Spectator 203 and The Country Wife 132

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and French theatre 75 ‘To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time’ (Herrick)
Jesuits in 19, 88, 102 42, 344
Molière’s petitions for 88, 90, 92, 94, 98 Tolstoy, Leo 176
Molière’s preface to the published edition of 93– Tories 11–12, 19
4, 96, 102–6 Swift and the English Tory elite 240
performances trade
at court 75 Atlantic slave trade 17, 251
first performance at Versailles 80, 82, 89 Dutch traders in Gulliver's Travels 250
as L'Imposteur 90, 94, 100–1 and the Enlightenment 16–17
private 92 sugar trade 17, 251
and ‘plays-within-plays’ 86–7, 112 travel-writing
private readings of 92 and Gulliver’s Travels 207–9
quarrel of 92–5 and Montagu’s Letters 276, 286–91, 293–4
reworking of 75, 90–1 A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
and spectatorship 85–7 Knowledge (Berkeley) 217
translations of 75, 82, 84 Turkey 17
versions of 75–6 The Turkish Embassy Letters (Montagu) 17, 18, 275–
The Tatler 203 305
Taylor, Stephen 214–16 and the Arabian Nights 275–6, 293
Taylor, W. culture of circulation 282–5
publication of Robinson Crusoe (1719) 207–8 the east and the female traveller 292–5
Temple, Sir William 200 manuscript book of 284
Tennyson, Alfred 176 and Orientalism 291–4
Terence (Roman playwright) 95 private and public 284–5
theatres publication 275, 285–6
Greek and Roman theatre 94 reading the letters 278–9
Jacobean and Caroline court theatres 121 sending the letters to England 280–1
neo-classical drama 94–5, 96, 98 on the status of women 288–90
performances of the Arabian Nights 166 and travel-writing 276, 286–91, 293–4
Restoration 75, 121–23 women in 288–90, 296–7
see also Paris theatres Tutchin, John 203
thematic patterning
in the Arabian Nights 158, 159 ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’ (Herrick) 338
Thompson, E.P. ‘Upon his Leaving his Mistress’ (Rochester) 376–7
on Walpole and English politics 201–202, 230–2 ‘Upon the Loss of his Mistresses’ 338
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous
(Berkeley) 217 Vanmour, Jean Baptiste
time see car pe diem poetry Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her Son 299
time-gaining frames Varin, Jean (style of)
in the Arabian Nights 157–8, 160 Thomas Carew 40
‘To Daffodils’ (Herrick) 345 veiled women
‘To His Coy Mistress’ (Ayton) 66 in Montagu’s Letters 291–95, 296–7
‘To His Coy Mistress’ (Marvell) 47–50, 58, 356–8 Versailles, Palace of
critical studies of 49–50, 65–8 Les Plaisirs de l'île enchantée entertainments 80–
‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ (Donne, Elegy 19) 81, 102
234–5, 41, 324, 330–2 performances of Tartuffe at 80, 81, 82, 89
‘To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses’ ‘The Vine’ (Herrick) 41, 337
(Herrick) 342–4 Voltaire

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and the Arabian Nights 176, 177 The Plain Dealer 141
and Montagu’s Letters 285 see also The Country Wife (Wycherley)
A Voyage around the World (Dampier) 207, 208–9

Walker, Robert
Oliver Cromwell 13
Walpole, Horace 277, 303–4
Walpole, Sir Robert 13
entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography 212–14
and Gulliver’s Travels 225, 245
historians on 201–203, 228–31
Warner, Marina 170–1
Weesop, John
An Eyewitness Representation of the Execution of
Charles I 12
Wentworth, William
2nd Earl of Strafford 300
Weyen, Laurent
Scaramouche Teaching Elomire, his Student 78
Whigs 11, 12, 13, 19, 230
Whit Sunday 20
Wilbur, Richard
translation of Tartuffe 82
William III, King (William of Orange) 12, 200
wit
in The Country Wife 127–30
women 20–2
actresses 121
as cross-dressed heroines 133
challenges to patriarchy 21–2
in The Country Wife 127–9, 132–6, 139–40, 141,
142
courtship and marriage 21–22
in Gulliver’s Travels 218–22
in Montagu’s Letters 288–90, 291–5, 296–9
Montagu's violation of gender norms 300–2
and Petrarchan love poetry 31–2
writers 22
see also gender relations; sex and seduction poetry
Wood, Anthony 346
Wood, William
Swift and the controversy over 241, 242, 243,
244, 246
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando 275, 285
writing desks and equipment, eighteenth-century 279
Wycherley, William

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