Mare's nest
A.L. Rowse
Astraea. The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century Frances A. Yates (Routledge and Kegan Paul £6.95) Miss Yates is a scholar about whom it is difficult to make up one's mind and arrive at a balanced estimate. On one side she has done good work in writing the biography of John Florio, and original work in exploring Renaissance spectacles and imagery. On the other side, she devotes a great deal of learning to such subjects as Rosicrucian rubbish and Hermetic nonsense. One never knows when it is going to topple over from one into the other. Of course any historian must be aware that the history of nonsense is almost as important as that of sense in men's minds. Myself I have a preference for the history of sense; I am rather allergic to that of myths and phantoms (her word) and mirages. To give an example of how easy it is to confuse counsel and step over the edge into nonsense. Many years ago, on the quite inadequate basis of a mere phrase in Love's Labour's Lost Miss Yates invented a "School of Night," to which Chapman and Ralegh were supposed to belong. Now there was no School of Night, the whole thing was a mare's nest. Or, perhaps I should say a mares' nest; for on this basis Miss Bradbrook proceeded to write a whole book on the non-existent School of Night. She must now repent of ever having written up this nonsense.
In the present volume Miss Yates admits in a footnote: "The existence of a 'School of Night,' of which Ralegh, Chapman and others were members and which was opposed by Shakespeare, the Earl of Southampton and others, is based, perhaps rather insecurely, on a phrase in Love's Labour's Lost." "Perhaps rather insecurely" is rather good when there was no evidence at all! Yet in the text above we still read: "the so-called Elizabethan 'School of Night,' with its worship of Cynthia and its devotion to intellectual contemplation, might have been drawing on the 'imperialist' tradition, not only in the political, but also in the religious, philosophical, and poetic sense." Here is an example of the way in which, with Miss Yates, conjecture becomes suggestion, and suggestion well-nigh fact, when there is nothing in it. This is what the ordinary factual historian means by mare's nest, or mares' nest.
This volume is not well described by its title: it is a collection of essays which have appeared over the years, mostly in connection with the Warburg Institute. The most useful is that on 'Elizabethan Chivalry,' in which Miss Yates illuminated for us the character and purpose of the Accession Day Tilts, which Sir Henry Lee created as a knightly champion of the Queen. Though it was his one significant contribution to Elizabethan culture, his imperceptive biographer, Sir Edmund Chambers, totally missed its significance. This is where Miss Yates's odd perceptiveness was valuable, and all the better for belonging to the realm of fact, rather than fantasy.
Another well-known essay is that on the cult of Queen Elizabeth as Astraea. This kind of thing was useful to the poets for tricking out their poems or to the creators of pageants and spectacles; but one must not exaggerate its role in the real world — even as propaganda it had nothing like the importance of the teachings of the Church, or the effectiveness of religion. Though it has some place in literature, particularly in so mythological a work as Spenser's Faerie Queen — not precisely an 'epic,' by the way — it is merely a piece of decoration in drama. To say that "this world of the 'imperial theme' is surely the world in which Shakespeare's imagination operates and the route followed here may indicate a historical opening towards a new understanding of Shakespeare's religion" strikes me as silly. We are promised a whole "New Approach" to Shakespeare's Last Plays on these lines: I tremble to think of it.
We are still treated to a good deal of mixed-up nonsense about Love's Labour's Lost. We are told that "the liveliest courtier, Berowne, might perhaps be speaking with the accents of Giordano Bruno, whose memorable visit to England had been associated with messages from the French monarchy," It has always been realised that the accents with which Berowne spoke were those of Shakespeare himself, and to this I have added the perception that in Berowne he was presenting a laughing self-portrait. The visit of Bruno — crazy megalomaniac — had not the slightest real importance.
But Miss Yates goes on indefatigably, "the mixed French names indicate that Shakespeare has absorbed the conciliatory meaning of French academic and court festival tradition; his French king and courtiers pass through the Henri III phase in which Pleiadist poetry and music merge into Familist charity." How far-fetched! What the names indicate is that Shakespeare was reading the French pamphlets that his printer and publisher Richard Field was issuing at the time.
But again, when emphasising the point about the peace that Henri IV achieved by the surrender of Paris to him in 1594, Miss Yates misses the very reference of Shakespeare to it that supports her argument — the famous lines in the needlessly debated Sonnet 107:
Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
In discussing the Emperor Charles V and the idea of universal monarchy, Miss Yates allows that "it is not concerned with political realities, nor with straight political history, but with the idea of empire, or the imperialist hope." It was, of course, a mirage; and so far from being a factor making for peace, the very claim was an incitement to the French to make war on him. We see why, when his election as Holy Roman Emperor is hailed by a German chronicler' as "proof of the divinely ordained superiority of the German people. God has chosen the Germans to dominate the nations and to have sovereignty over the whole world. And he has chosen wisely, for are not the Germans the most sincerely noble, the most just, the most prolific, the strongest and most tenacious in war of all peoples?" It is true that the Germans fall for this kind of nonsense in history more readily, and more dangerously, than any other people — this declaration is as early as 1516, contemporary with Luther, who in fact divided both Germany and Europe.
"The portentous figure of Charles V. devout Catholic though he was, may be discerned looming behind the Elizabethan imperial theme." For me he does not loom there at all: I see no significant continuity. Nor can 1 subscribe to the judgement that Elizabeth's "one-ness staggers the universe." Miss Yates is at her best in explaining the symbolism of Renaissance potentates' portraits. Even so it is possible that the little dog in a portrait of Elizabeth may not "indicate Astraea under her name of Erigone, whose little dog symbolised her piety to her father's memory," but may be just a little dog.
A great deal of absurd learning is devoted to these esoteric themes: Flacius (surely either Flaccus or Flavius?) Illyricus and Nigidius Figulus are cited, though 1 miss my favourite Julius Obsequens.
Though there is a place for this sort of thing
in the interpretation of Renaissance poetry, I much prefer my poetry neat. Enough is enough, and Shakespeare has said it — "but one halt penny worth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack."
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