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The Art of Rhetoric and the Art of Dylng in Tudor Recusant Prose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

John X. Evans
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Extract

For all but a handful of people, Tudor literature comprises the familiar galaxy of English authors beginning with Wyatt and ending gloriously with Shakespeare. It is generally agreed that the relative position of every writer of the period has long since been established. Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Kyd, Lyly, Greene, Gascoigne, Nash and other lesser lights all have their place in the history of English literature, in university curricula, and in standard anthologies. Any suggestion that there are other potentially significant writers yet to be recognized is received with considerable surprise, if not outright scepticism.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 10 , Issue 5 , April 1970 , pp. 247 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1970

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References

1 The Christian directory guiding men to eternall salvation … consisting of two partes, whereof the former layeth downe the motives to resolution; and the other removeth the impediments: both of them having byn lately received, corrected, and not a little altered by the author himselfe (St Omer, 1607), sigs. Gg4v–Gg5.Google Scholar

2 See Baldwin, T. W., William Shakespere's Petty School (Urbana, 1943), p. 16.Google Scholar

3 Baldwin, T. W., William Shakespere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2 vols., (Urbana, 1944), II, 17-28; 35–41.Google Scholar

4 Small Latine, I, 290-4; 405.

5 During the period 1598-1621, one of every four students entering the Venerabile had been educated at Oxford (38), Cambridge (19), or the Inns of Court (8). Beales, A. C. F., Education Under Penalty. English Catholic Education from the Reformation to the Fall of James II, 1547-1689 (London, 1963), p. 52.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 52.

7 Ganss, G. E., Saint Ignatius' Idea of a Jesuit University (Milwaukee, 1954), pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

8 Robert Schwickerath, S.J., Jesuit Education, Its History and Principles (St Louis, Mo., 1903), pp. 119–20.Google Scholar

9 Thomas Hughes, S.J., Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits (London, 1892), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

10 Hughes, Loyola, p. 235.

11 The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay, ed. by Knox, T. F. (London, 1878), p. xl.Google Scholar

12 Beales, p. 41. Douay contributed a total of 169 writers to the Catholic cause.

13 Catholic authors were not the only ones interested in the art of dying well. It is found in the works of the great Protestant writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Donne's ‘Satire III (On Religion)’, 11. 35-42; ‘Of the Progresse of the Soule: the Second Anniversary’, 11. 49-62, 387-94; Holy Sonnet V (‘I am a little world made cunningly’), Holy Sonnet XIV(‘Batter my heart three person'd God’); ‘Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward'; Jonson's ‘Hymne to God the Father’ and ‘To the World: a Farewell for a Gentle-woman, Vertuous and Noble’; George Herbert's ‘Affliction (I)’, ‘The Pearl’, ‘The Quip’, ‘Paradise’, and ‘Mortification’, the concluding lines of which read, ‘Yet Lord, instruct us so to die,/That all these dyings may be life in death'; Vaughan's ‘Distraction’, ‘The Retreate’, ‘The World’, 'The Timber’, and ‘The Search’, which ends, ‘Search well another world; who studies this,/ Travels in Clouds, seeks Manna, where none is'; MarvelPs ‘Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure'; Bacon's ‘Of Adversity'; Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and GraceAbounding. The concept appears in Milton's works also, most clearly in the temptation scenes of Paradise Regained.

14 The Art of Dying Well, tr. by C.E., 2nd ed., 1622, sigs. Alv, A3. Orig. ed. in Latin, 1620. Bellarmine's cited authorities are St John (John 15, 17), St James (Epistle 4) and St Paul (I Cor. 5; Gal. 6).

15 Ibid., sig. A7.

16 Ibid., C8V-D.

17 Scolar Press ed. (Menston, Yorkshire, 1969), sig. Aiii. Orig. ed., 1640.

18 Chambers remarks (disapprovingly) that “it has been customary of late to applaud [Fisher] as a writer altogether superior to More”, Continuity, p. cliv.

19 ‘Good Friday Sermon’, in Recusant English Literature 1558-1640, vol. 2, ed. by Rogers, D. M. (Menston, Yorkshire, 1969) sig. Ev.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., sig. Ev.

21 Ibid., sigs. Eviii-Eviiiv .

22 Ibid., sigs. Gvi-Gviiv.

23 Ibid., sig. Jvv; see also sig. Jiiij.

24 ‘Good Friday Sermon’, sig. Hviii.

25 Ibid., sig. Jv.

26 Ibid., sig. Jivv.

27 Ibid., Jv.

28 A spirituali consolation, Aviiiv -Bi.

29 Good Friday Sermon’, sigs. Fvv -Fvi.

30 Ibid., sig. Fv.

31 See sig. Hv.

32 See sig. Cvi.

33 Good Friday Sermon’, sig. Hiiiv.

34 Ibid., sig. Cviv.

35 Spirituali Consolation, sig. Dviiv.

36 Ibid., sigs, Biiiv-Biiii.

37 The Christian Directory, sigs. Xii-Yv.

38 Ibid., sigs. X7V-X8.

39 Ibid., sigs. Y2V-Y3.

40 Ibid., sig. C5.

41 Milton has an extremely perceptive discussion of the moral relationship among reason, the will, and temptation in Paradise Lost, Book IX, lines 343-63 (the crucial dialogue between Adam and Eve on human strength and weakness). See also Raphael's homily on love and passion, VIII, 561-94.

42 Christian Directory, sigs. D4-D5.

43 Ibid., sig. Y2V.

44 Ibid., sig. D6. Quoted from Confessions, lib. 1, cap. 5.

45 Ibid., sig. C11.

46 Ibid., sig. C11.

47 Ibid., sigs. C12V-D.

48 Ibid., sig. X8.

49 Ibid., sigs. X10-X10v.

50 Ibid., sig. Cc3.

51 Ibid., sig. Y5v .The Biblical citations are Luke 16 and Matthew 25.

52 Persons calls it a “Black-Sanctus”. Ibid., sig. Y5.

53 Ibid., sig. Y11v.

54 Ibid., sig. Yv.

55 Ibid., sig. V11V.

56 Ibid., sig. Y5.

57 Ibid., sig. Y4V.

58 Ibid., sig. D10.

59 Ibid., sig. Y4V.

60 Ibid., sig. X5V.

61 Ibid., sig. X5V.

62 Ibid., sig. X7.

63 Ibid., sig. Y3v.

64 Ibid., sig. Y2V.

65 Ibid., sig. CUV.

66 Ibid., sigs. Gg6-Gg6v.

67 Ibid., sig. D6V.

68 Ibid., sigs. C4V-C6.

69 The omission of a syllable for the sake of metre is called “syncope”.

70 The Poems of Robert Southwell, s.S., ed. by McDonald, James H. and Nancy, Pollard Brown (Oxford, 1967).Google Scholar

71 Ibid., lines 331, 361, 367, 397, 409, 427, 433.

72 The Epistle of Comfort was originally composed as a series of letters written to Philip Howard. When revised for publication Southwell dedicated it to all “the reverent priests and to the honourable, worshipful, and other of the lay sort, restrained in durance for the Catholic faith”.

73 Epistle of Comfort, p. 48.

74 Ibid., p. 48.

75 Ibid., pp. 48-49.

76 Ibid., p. 195.

77 Ibid., pp. 132-33.

78 Ibid., p. 62.

79 Ibid., p. 17.

80 Ibid., p. 17.

81 Ibid., pp. 59-62.

82 Ibid., p. 115.

83 Ibid., p. 134.

84 Ibid., p. 112.

85 Ibid., p. 116.

86 Ibid., p. 20.

87 Ibid., p. 20.

88 Ibid., pp. 8-9.

89 Ibid., p. 248.

90 Ibid., p. 93.

91 Ibid., p. 47.

92 Ibid., p. 88.

93 Ibid., p. 167.

94 Ibid., p. 170.

95 Ibid., pp. 170, 202.

96 Ibid., p. 134.

97 Ibid., p. 134.

98 Ibid., p. 136.

99 Ed. by Willcock and Walker (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 138-39.

100 One would be very ill-advised to rush into a discussion of imagery, for example, without taking into account Lillian H. Hornstein's ‘Analysis of Imagery: A Critique of Literary Method’, PMLA, LVII (Sept., 1942), pp. 638-53, and Wolfgang H. Clemen's caveats in the Introduction to his Development of Shakespeare's Imagery (London, 1951).

101 Thomas, Stapleton, A Fortresse of the Faith, First planted amonge us englishmen, andcontinued hitherto in the universall Church of Christ. The faith of which time Protestants call,Papestry (Antwerp, 1565) sig. A2V.Google Scholar

102 Ibid., sig. A3.

103 A True sincere and Modest Defence of English Catholiques that suffer for their faith both at home and abrode: against a false, seditious and slanderous Libel intituled, The Execution of Justice in England [Rouen, 1584], sig. A7.

104 Epistle of Comfort, p. 242.

105 It is prudent to remember what Clemen said in preparing to discuss the imagery of Shakespeare's plays: “An isolated image, an image viewed outside of its context, is only half the image. Every image, every metaphor gains full life and significance only from its context.” The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery, p. 3.

106 Christian Directory, sig. Cc3v.

107 Stapleton, Fortresse, sig. Y3V.

108 Fortresse, sigs. d3v-d4.

109 A Spirituall Consolation, sig. Aviv.

110 Epistle of Comfort, p. 61.

111 Ibid., p. 58.

112 Ibid., pp. 50-51.

113 Ibid., pp. 54-55.

114 Ibid., p. 64.

115 Ibid., pp. 50 ff.

116 Ibid., p. 61.

117 Ibid., p. 108.

118 Ibid., p. 129.

119 Ibid., p. 140.

120 Ibid., p. 126.

121 Ibid., p. 128.

122 Fortresse, sig. i3.

123 Christian Directory, sig. V4.

124 A Spirituall consolation, sig. Aviii.

125 This paper was read to the Thirteenth Conference on Post-Reformation Catholic History, at St Anne's College, Oxford, 5 August 1970.