Of Ovid's influence in minor English verse, some lines of Tom Nash, quoted by Mr. Sidney Lee, are suggestive1: Thus hath my penne presum'd to please my friend. Oh mightst thou lykewise please Apollo's eye. No, Honor brookes no such impietie, Yet Ovid's wanton muse did not offend. He is the fountain whence my streames do flow. Mr. Barrett Wendell concludes a discussion of Ovid's influence in the time of which we are writing in these words 2: At first it would seem as if the great popularity of Ovid were due half to his erotic license, and half to the fact that he wrote easy Latin. On further consideration, the question looks less simple. The liking of Renascent Europe for the later classics is very similar to the liking of our grandfathers for the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de' Medici, for Guido Reni and Carlo Dolci. Freshly awakened artistic perception is apt to prefer the graces of some past decadence to the simple, pure beauty of really great periods. So, not only in the literature of the great imaginative period of the English Renaissance, but in the art of the Italian Renaissance, apparently for much the same reasons, we find the influence of Ovid in subject-matter, point of view, and manner of treatment. Well, Jonson took material from Ovid's amatory treatise, with its pagan point of view and its impudent shamelessness, and fused it with the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, no less pagan in view-point, but redeemed by its severely satiric purpose. Of the Sixth Satire one critic has said: If it is desirable that such a subject should be treated in the spirit in which Juvenal has treated it, it may be regarded as fortunate that it has been done once for all with such power, with such freedom from restraint imposed either by modesty or humanity, and with, apparently, such intimate knowledge, that no writer of later ages has attempted to rival it. And when Jonson dared to make use of such a satire, it was because he found in it material which suited exactly what he had to say, and the way he desired to say it: some of Juvenal's bitterness, Ovid's immodesty, and the inhumanity of both have been lent to Epicane, which does A Life of William Shakespeare, p. 386. 2 Barrett Wendell, William Shakespere, p. 53. not exhibit among the four women characters and the man masquerading as a woman a single redeeming feminine attribute. But in which of his greater comedies has Jonson ever created a woman actuated by virtuous motives, unless it be Celia in Volpone, who does not act at all, but is a victim of tragic circumstance? The wife of Francis Fitzdottrel in the Devil is an Ass is too inconsistent a person to stand as an exception. Though it may not be said of Jonson, as of Juvenal, that women hold the most cherished place in the poet's antipathies', yet the qualities with which he endows his women, and his ungracious description of his own wife, curtly quoted by Drummond as 'a shrew yet honest', show his usual attitude towards women to be supercilious and unsympathetic, and to be marked by an inherent love of detraction and exaggeration worthy the elder satirist. Two sources for satiric dialogue could not in the original be more diverse in spirit and purpose than the satire of Juvenal, in which the saeva indignatio is directed against women in general and marriage in particular, and the Ars Amatoria of Ovid, in which is taught the art corrumpere et corrumpi. Yet Jonson has fused both stuffs in the same crucible, and they have come out undifferentiated material for comic satire. Ovid. On the Ars Amatoria are based Epicone 1. 1 and 4. 1, 3. In the first of these scenes the material quoted literally is interpreted satirically, and is levelled against the ridiculous vanity of women-especially their pride in appearance, extravagance in dress, and lavish use of cosmetics. In 4. True-wit instructs the bashful Dauphine how to court the ladies-collegiates' in a truly Ovidian manner. In 4. 3 the ladies are inclined to thrust themselves conspicuously into conversation, in which Daw, La-Foole, True-wit, and Clerimont are taking part; so Jonson takes occasion to make them the subject of some of the most disparaging remarks in Ovid against the sex. In quoting from Ars Amatoria it is necessary to follow the order in which the material is used in the comedy, for Jonson has culled his lines from wheresoever he pleased, adhering not at all to the order of the Latin text. In 1. 1. 104 True-wit begins a disquisition on womankind with a statement of the fact that there may be many sorts of beauty in a woman, as Ovid says Ars Amatoria 3. 135: Nec genus ornatus unum est; quod quamque decebit, Eligat; et speculum consulat ante suum. Longa probat facies capitis discrimina puri: Exiguum summa nodum sibi fronte relinqui, True-wit believes that it is in private that a woman should study her ' genus ornatus', and the manner of improving it, in order to deserve admiration later. Some of the original lines are 3. 217 ff.: Ista dabunt faciem; sed erunt deformia visu : Multaque, dum fiunt turpia, facta placent... Cur mihi nota tuo causa est candoris in ore? 231 Aurea quae pendent ornato signa theatro, Inspice, quam tenuis bractea ligna tegat; Sed neque ad illa licet populo, nisi facta, venire; Jonson's adaptation of 3. 231-2 is particularly worthy of note. Instead of Aurea quae pendent ornato signa theatro, Inspice, quam tenuis bractea ligna tegat; he asks, I. I. 123, 'How long did the canuas hang afore Aldgate? were the people suffer'd to see the cities Loue and Charitie, while they were rude stone?' True-wit's story, I. 1. 130, of the lady with the 'reuerst face' comes from A. A. 3. 243: Quae male crinita est, custodem in limine ponat, Orneturve Bonae semper in aede Deae: Dictus eram cuidam subito venisse puellae, Turbida perversas induit illa comas. Passing to Act 4, Sc. 1, we find the whole of this scene taken from the first and third books of the Ars Amatoria. True-wit is again spokesman, 4. 1. 35, and enlarges on the fact that, 'An intelligent woman, if shee know by her selfe the least defect, will bee most curious, to hide it.' So Ovid, 3. 261: Rara tamen mendo facies caret; occule mendas, Quamque potes, vitium corporis abde tui. Cui digiti pingues, et scaber unguis erunt. Si niger, aut ingens, aut non erit ordine natus True-wit objects to the loud laugh of some women, 4. 1. 47. And to the 'estrich '-like gait of others, 4. I. 49. A. A. 3. 289 ff.: Illa sonat raucum, quiddam inamabile stridet, Est et in incessu pars non temnenda decoris: Haec movet arte latus, tunicisque fluentibus auras True-wit's list of places where one might find women who had come thither out of curiosity, for display, or in search of adventure, includes 'court, tiltings, publique showes, feasts, playes, and church' (4. 1. 59 ff.); he finds the suggestion in the first book of the Ars Amatoria, which devotes some 262 lines to describing the places in which to look for Roman women-the temples of Isis and Venus, the forum, or A. A. 1. 89 : Sed tu praecipue curvis venare theatris; Illic invenies quod ames, quod ludere possis, Or better still, the games of the circus or arena, A. A. 1. 97: Sic ruit ad celebres cultissima foemina ludos, Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae; He assures Dauphine, 4. 1. 64, that 'a wench to please a man comes not downe dropping from the seeling, as he lyes on his backe droning a tobacco pipe'. Ovid's lines are, I. 42: Elige cui dicas, Tu mihi sola places: Haec tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras; Some lines of the Latin poet's, I. 477, are adapted, 4. I. 75: ... Penelopen ipsam, persta modo, tempore vinces, Capta vides sero Pergama, capta tamen, 'Penelope her selfe cannot hold out long. Ostend, you saw, was taken at last.' Penelope, the universally recognized type of patient fidelity, Jonson repeats without change, but Pergamus, and its siege, forgotten or never known to his audience, he omits, and gives a touch of realism to his satiric scene by referring to the recent siege of Ostend. Despite Clerimont's endeavour to stem the tide of Truewit's classic arguments, 4. 1. 85, the former pursues Ovid point by point from 1. 673 ff.: Vim licet appelles, grata est vis ipsa puellis, When True-wit enumerates, 4. I. 98 ff., the varieties of taste that might exist in feminine minds regarding essential attributes to masculine charm, and when with pseudogravity he considers how such tastes should be met and gratified, he is following Ovid, 1. 755 ff. But quotation to |
