humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

Bodies keep well in Stratford soil, Richard Wilson tells us, so that
if Shakespeare's remains were ever to be exhumed we could test the
likenesses offered in portraits of the Bard. Shakespeare is of course
protected by the epitaph on his gravestone, but Ben Jonson, interred
in a shaft grave in Westminster Abbey, has not been so fortunate:
James Shapiro reminds us that nineteenth-century digging disturbed his
corpse and revealed the ignoble fact that it was buried upside down.
(Anthony Parr)

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arsy-versy

adverb
Definition:

backwards: backwards or upside down ( dated informal ) ( sometimes
considered offensive )

[Mid-16th century. versa]

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Preposterous Chatterton
K. K. Ruthven
University of Melbourne

I.

This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.

-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The Oxford English Dictionary records two principal usages of the word
"preposterous" that circulated contemporaneously in the sixteenth
century. By the late nineteenth century only one was still current,
and that was the pejorative sense defined as "contrary to the order of
nature, or to reason or common sense; monstrous; irrational, perverse,
foolish, nonsensical; in later use, utterly absurd." The other usage-
listed first but rendered secondary and eventually obsolete by
modernity-foregrounds the etymology of the word to articulate a
politics of reversal: "having or placing last that which should be
first; inverted in position or order."
(snip)
he ubiquity of preposterous readings calls for a supplementary
literary history, the nuclear model for which is a rhetorical figure
known to the ancient Greeks as hysteron proteron ("the later first").
"We name it the Preposterous," George Puttenham explained in The Arte
of English Poesie (1589) when classifying hysteron proteron as a
"manner of disordered speech," exemplified in the "English prouerbe,
the cart before the horse." It is therefore treated with suspicion in
symbolic systems that conceive of time as an arrow moving always and
only from past to present. In logic, for instance, hysteron proteron
names a type of fallacy in which the conclusion is said to antecede
the premises because one of them already assumes the proof for it.

As a subversive figure of disorder, hysteron proteron makes
alternative literary histories possible by drawing attention to the
preposterousness of various literary conventions at odds with
commonsense notions of sequence.

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Preposterous Events
Patricia Parker
Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 2. (Summer, 1992), pp. 186-213.

To look carefully at the "preposterous" in Shakespeare, then, in the
midst of a context Lawrence Stone has described as "patrilinear,
primogenitural, and patriarchal,' is to see the presentation of an
order authorized as "natural" as instead rhetorically produced and to
become aware of the workings of "smooth discourse" - the histories it
forges and the authority it creates.
The contexts we have traced all form part of the background against
which we need to set the mises-en-scene of sequence, following,
"cause effective,' and processional in the plays of Shakespeare, for
the reverse of the reasons Tillyard and others in an earlier era of
Shakespeare criticism placed contemporary discourses beside the plays,
but also to caution against considerations of Shakespeare that fall
into the trap of reading such passages "straight" and hence, though
with different explicit aims, repeat some of the gestures of an older
historicism. *Shakespearean deformations of order and sequence* - in
short what I am calling the "Shakespearean preposterous" - need to be
remarked against the background of emergent discourses of order in an
age whose increasing neoclassicism and neoAristotelianism were
intimately related to the articulation of new structures of social
order and power. To read Shakespeare carefully in this sense is also
to read politically and to include within any conception of a
political Shakespeare and awareness of the language that both stages
this order and subversively dismantles it.


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According to the local tradition, he asked the King (Charles I) to
grant him a favour. "What is it?" said the King -- "Give me eighteen
inches of square ground." "Where?" asked the King. -- "In Westminster
Abbey." This is one explanation given of the story that he was buried
standing upright. Another is that it was in view to his readiness for
the Resurrection . . . . This stone [covering his grave] was taken up
when, in 1821, the Nave was repaved, and was brought back from the
stoneyard of the clerk of the works, in the time of Dean Buckland, by
whose order it was fitted into its present place in the north wall of
the Nave. Meanwhile, the original spot had been marked by a small
triangular lozenge, with a copy of the old inscription. When, in 1819,
Sir Robert Wilson was buried close by, the loose sand of Jonson's
grave (to use the expression of the clerk of the works who
superintended the operation) "rippled in like a quicksand," and the
clerk "saw the two leg-bones of Jonson, fixed bolt upright in the
sand, as though the body had been buried in the upright position; and
the skull came rolling down among the sand, from a position above the
leg-bones, to the bottom of the newly-made grave. There was still hair
upon it, and it was of a red colour." It was seen once more on the
digging of John Hunter's grave; and "it had still traces of red hair
upon it. The world long wondered that he should lie buried from the
rest of the poets and want a tomb." This monument, in fact, was to
have been erected by subscription soon after his death, but was
delayed by the breaking-out of the Civil War. The present medallion in
Poets' Corner was set up in the middle of the last century by "a
person of quality, whose name was desired to be concealed." By a
mistake of the sculptor, the buttons were set on the left side of the
coat. Hence this epigram --

O rare Ben Jonson-what a turncoat grown!
Thou ne'er wast such, till clad in stone:
Then let not this disturb thy sprite,
Another age shall set thy buttons right.

-- STANLEY, ARTHUR PENRHYN, 1867-96, Historical Memorials of
Westminster Abbey, pp. 288, 289.



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Though I cannot with all my industrious inquiry find him in his
cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child, he
lived in Harts-horn-lane near Charing-cross, where his Mother married
a Bricklayer for her second husband. . . . He help'd in the building
of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowell in his
hand, he had a book in his pocket. Some gentlemen, pitying that his
parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, did by
their bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenious
inclinations. Indeed his parts were not so ready to run of themselves,
as able to answer the spur; so that it may be truly said of him, that
he had an elaborate wit wrought out by his own industry. He would sit
silent in learned company, and suck in (besides wine) their several
humors into his observation. What was ore in others, he was able to
refine to himself. -- FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, The Worthies of England,
ed. Nichols, vol. II, p. 112.

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_Volpone_, Jonson:

To the most N O B L E and most E Q U A L S I S T E R S,

The two Famous Universities,

For their Love and Acceptance shewn to his P O E M in the P R E S E N
T A T I O N,

B E N. J O H N S O N,

The Grateful Acknowledger, Dedicates both It and Himself.


Never (most Equal Sisters) had any Man a Wit so presently Excellent,
as that it could raise it self; but there must come both Matter,
Occasion, Commenders, and Favourers to it. If this be true, and that
the Fortune of all Writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the Careful
to provide well toward these Accidents; and, having acquir'd them, to
preserve that part of Reputation most tenderly, wherein the Benefit of
a Friend is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render my self
grateful, and am studious to justifie the Bounty of your Act; to
which, though your meer Authority were satisfying, yet it being an Age
wherein Poetry and the Professors of it hear so ill on all Sides,
there will a Reason be look't for in the Subject. It is certain, nor
can it with any Forehead be oppos'd, that the too much Licence of
Poetasters in this Time, hath much deform'd their Mistris; that, every
day, their manifold and manifest Ignorance doth stick unnatural
Reproaches upon her: But for their Petulancy, it were an Act of the
greatest Injustice, either to let the Learned suffer, or so Divine a
Skill (which indeed should not be attempted with unclean Hands) to
fall under the least Contempt. For, if Men will impartially, and not
asquint, look toward the Offices and Function of a Poet, they will
easily conclude to themselves the Impossibility of any Man's being the
good Poet, without first being a good Man. He that is said to be able
to inform young Men to all good Disciplines, inflame grown Men to all
great Vertues, keep old Men in their best and supream State, or as
they decline to Childhood, recover them to their first Strength; that
comes forth the Interpreter and Arbiter of Nature, a Teacher of Things
Divine no less than Humane, a Master in Manners; and can alone (or
with a few) effect the Business of Mankind: This, I take him, is no
Subject for Pride and Ignorance to exercise their failing Rhetorick
upon. But it will here be hastily answer'd, That the Writers of these
Days are other Things; that not only their MANNERS, but their NATURES
are INVERTED, and nothing remaining with them of the Dignity of Poet,
but the abused Name, which every Scribe usurps; that now, especially
in Drammatick, or (as they term it) Stage-Poetry, nothing but
Ribaldry, Prophanation, Blasphemy, all Licence of Offence to God and
Man is practis'd. I dare not deny a great part of this, (and I am
sorry I dare not) because in some Mens abortive Features (and would
they had never boasted the Light) it is over-true: But that all are
imbark'd in this bold Adventure for Hell, is a most uncharitable
Thought, and, utter'd, a more malicious Slander. For my particular, I
can (and from a most clear Conscience) affirm, That I have ever
trembled to think toward the least Profaneness; have loathed the use
of such foul and unwash'd Bawd'ry, as is now made the Food of the
Scene: And, howsoever I cannot escape from some the Imputation of
Sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to
be bitter, and not my youngest Instant but hath come into the World
with all his Teeth; I would ask of these supercilious Politicks, What
Nation, Society, or general Order or State I have provoked? What
Publick Person? Whether I have not (in all these) preserv'd their
Dignity, as mine own Person, safe? My Works are read, allow'd, (I
speak of those are intirely mine) look into them: What broad Repoofs
have I us'd? Where have I been particular? Where Personal? Except to a
Mimick, Cheater, Bawd, or Buffon, Creatures (for their Insolencies)
worthy to be tax'd? Yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might
not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his Disease?
But it is not Rumour can make Men guilty, much less entitle me to
other Mens Crimes. I know, that nothing can be so innocently writ or
carried, but may be made obnoxious to Construction; marry, whilst I
bear mine Innocence about me, I fear it not. Application is now grown
a Trade with many; and there are that profess to have a Key for the
decyphering of every thing: But let Wise and Noble Persons take heed
how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading
Interpreters to be over-familiar with their Fames, who cunningly, and
often, utter their own virulent Malice, under other Mens simplest
Meanings. As for those that will (by Faults which Charity hath rak'd
up, or common Honesty conceal'd) make themselves a Name with the
Multitude, or (to draw their rude and beastly Claps) care not whose
living Faces they intrench with their petulant Styles, may they do it
without a Rival, for me: I chuse rather to live grav'd in Obscurity,
than share with them in so PREPOSTEROUS a FAME. Nor can I blame the
Wishes of those severe and wise Patriots, who providing the Hurts
these licentious Spirits may do in a State, desire rather to see Fools
and Devils, and those antick Relicks of Barbarism retriv'd, with all
other ridiculous and exploded Follies, than behold the Wounds of
Private Men, of Princes and Nations. For, as Horace makes Trebatius
speak, among these,
------ Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, & odit.

And Men may justly impute such Rages, if continu'd, to the Writer, as
his Spots. The Increase of which Lust in Liberty, together with the
present Trade of the Stage, in all their Masc'line Enterludes, what
Learned or Liberal Soul doth not already abhor? Where nothing but the
Filth of Time is utter'd, and that with such impropriety of Phrase,
such plenty of SolOEcisms, such dearth of Sense, so bold Prolepses, so
rack'd Metaphors, with Brothelry able to violate the Ear of a Pagan,
and Blasphemy, to turn the Blood of a Christian to Water. I cannot but
be serious in a Cause of this nature, wherein my Fame, and the
Reputations of divers Honest and Learned are the Question; when a Name
so full of Authority, Antiquity, and all great Mark, is (through their
Insolence) become the lowest Scorn of the Age; and those Men subject
to the Petulancy of every vernaculous Orator, that were wont to be the
Care of Kings and happiest Monarchs. This it is that hath not only
rap't me to present Indignation, but made me studious heretofore, and
by all my Actions to stand off from them; which may most appear in
this my latest Work (which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen,
judg'd, and to my Crown, approv'd) wherein I have labour'd, for their
instruction and amendment, to reduce not only the ancient Forms, but
Manners of the Scene, the Easiness, the Propriety, the Innocence, and
last the Doctrine, which is the principal End of Poesie, to inform Men
in the best Reason of living. And though my Catastrophe may, in the
strict rigour of Comick Law, meet with Censure, as turning back to my
Promise; I desire the Learned and Charitable Critick, to have so much
faith in me, to think it was done of Industry: For, with what ease I
could have varied it nearer his Scale (but that I fear to boast my own
Faculty) I could here insert. But my special aim being to put the
Snaffle in their Mouths, that cry out, we never punish Vice in our
Enterludes, &c. I took the more liberty; though not without some Lines
of Example, drawn even in the Ancients themselves, the Goings-out of
whose ComOEdies are not always joyful, but oft-times the Bawds, the
Servants, the Rivals, yea, and the Masters, are mulcted; and fitly, it
being the Office of a Comick Poet to imitate Justice, and instruct to
Life, as well as Purity of Language, or stir up gentle Affections: To
which I shall take the occasion elsewhere to speak. For the present
(most Reverenced Sisters) as I have car'd to be thankful for your
Affections past, and here made the Understanding acquainted with some
Ground of your Favours; let me not despair their Continuance, to the
maturing of some worthier Fruits: Wherein, if my Muses be true to me,
I shall raise the despis'd Head of Poetry again, and stripping her out
of those rotten and base Rags wherewith the Times have adulterated her
Form, restore her to her primitive Habit, Feature, and Majesty, and
render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the Great and Master-
Spirits of our World. As for the Vile and Slothful, who never affected
an Act worthy of Celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious
Natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it a high Point of
Policy to keep her in contempt with their declamatory and windy
Invectives; she shall out of just rage incite her Servants (who are
Genus iritabile) to spout Ink in their Faces, that shall eat farther
than their Marrow, into their Fames; and not Cinnamus the Barber, with
his Art, shall be able to take out the Brands; but they shall live,
and be read, till the Wretches die, as Things worst deserving of
Themselves in chief, and then of all Mankind.

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Dennis