Antiquity Forgot: Essays on Shakespeare, Bacon and Rembrandt

166 Pages·1978·5.317 MB·English

by  Howard B. White (auth.)

ANTIQUITY FORGOT
ARCHIVES INTERNA TIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
90
HOW ARD B. WHITE
ANTIQUITY FORGOT
DIRECTORS: P. Dibon (Paris) and R. Popkin (Washington Univ., St. Louis)
Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); J. Collins (St. Louis Univ.); P. Costabel (Paris);
A. Crombie (Oxford); I. Dambska (Cracow); H. de la Fontaine-Verway (Amsterdam);
H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); T. Gregory (Rome); T. E. Jessop (Huli);
P.O. Kristeller (Columbia Univ.); Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles);
S. Lindroth (Upsala); J. Orcibal (Paris); I.S. Revaht (Paris); Wolfgang Rod (Miinchen);
J. Roger (Paris); G.S. Rousseau (Los Angeles); H. Rowen (Rutgers Univ., N.J.);
Ch. B. Schmitt (Warburg Inst. London); G. Sebba (Emory Univ., Adanta); R. Shacklcton
(Oxford); J. Tans (Groningen), G. Tonelli (Binghamton, N. Y.).
ANTIQUITY FORGOT
ESSA YS aN SHAKESPEARE, BACON, AND REMBRANDT
by
HOW ARD B. WHITE
•
MARTINUS NIJHOFF ITHE HAGUB/BOSTON /1978
©
1978 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
Sojicover reprinl oflhe hardcover IsI edition 1978
AII rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereoj-in any form
ISBN-13: 978-94-009-9665-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-9663-2
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9663-2
(( . As the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known . ... "
Hamlet IV, v, 101-2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction 1
IL Politics in Shakespeare 5
III. Macbeth and the Tyrannical Man 31
IV. Bastards and Usurpers 44
V. "Ciphers to this Great Accompt" 74
VI. "The English Solomon" 88
VII. Bacon's "Wisdom of the Ancients" 109
VIII. Rembrandt and the Human Condition 137
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
It was probably Rousseau who first thought of dreams as ennobling
experiences. Anyone who has ever read Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire
must be struck by the dreamlike quality of Rousseau's meditations.
This dreamlike quality is still with us, and those who experience it find
themselves ennobled by it. Witness Martin Luther King's famous "1
have a dream." Dreaming and inspiration raise the artist to the top
rung in the ladder ofhuman relations. That is probably the prevailing
view among educated people of our time. Rousseau made that view
respectable and predominant. Yet in another sense, the problem is
much older. It is the problem of political philosophy and poetry, the
problem of Socrates and Aristophanes, of Plato and Homer. Yet,
while antiquity usually gives the crown to philosophy, since Rous
seau, the alternative view tends to prevail. The distinction is not,
however, a formal one. Sir Philip Sidney enlisted Plato on the side of
poetry. The true distinction is between imagination and reason.
If reason is to rule, as Aristotle points out,l the most architectonic
of the sciences, that is political science, should rule. It is political
philosophy which must determine the nature of the arts which will
help or which will hinder the good of the city or the polity. That does
not mean that a mere professor should stand in judgment of Shake
speare, Bacon, and Rembrandt. It means that ifhe studies these three
great artists, he is not over-stepping disciplinary limits.
Plato, or the Platonic Socrates, spoke frequently on the subject of
philosophy and poetry. A resolution of the differences in various
passages would be required to understand Plato's view of art. It is
sufficient for our purposes to observe that Plato wanted to replace the
Homeric Grecks with the Socratic Greeks. That does not mean that
1 Niehomaehean Ethies 1094 a, 27 ff
2 INTRODUCTION
every Athenian would be a Socrates any more than every Athenian
was a Homer. It means that Plato se1ected a poet as his principal rival.
It means that the guidance by philosophy, and particularly that part of
philosophy that deals with the human things, would replace the
guidance by Homer. Plato did ha ve a following. Some centuries of
musicologists, for example, se1ected Plato as a guide. Of late, how
ever, art has turned away from Plato and towards Rousseau.
Whoever writes a good nove1, even a good mystery, or writes a fine
tragedy, or essays, as Bacon did, or paint a portrait, like Rembrandt,
reflects necessarily on the human condition. The vehic1e is of secon
dary importance. It may depend on an artist's personal talents. It may
reflect an historical moment. Shakespeare wrote when the EngHsh
theater was at its height. Rembrandt painted when Dutch painting was
at its height. Do we expect that, as in Browning's "One Word More,"
Shakespeare might otherwise have painted a pic ture, and Rembrandt
might have written a tragedy? We have no way of knowing. The
problem ofp hilosophy and poetry is the problem ofu nderstanding, as
well as presenting, the human condition. But the human condition is a
dualism. It inc1udes the good (virtue) of a person and the good (virtue)
of a polity.2 For example, Hamlet, far from setting the time right,
contributes to the capitulation ofDenmark. Fortinbras takes Denmark
without striking a blow. People speak of the tragedy of Hamlet or
Claudius or Laertes, but the greatest tragedy is public rather than
private. It is the Danish people who suffer the most by foreign rule.
When Horatio lists the misfortunes of Denmark, the central one is
"accidental judgments" (V, ii, 368). Accidental judgments radically
affected the politicallife, and for the worse. The virtue of man and the
virtue of the polity may be the same, as Aristot1e suggests, but the
virtue of the polity is greater.3
In considering the connection which the three great men who are
the subject of this work had with one another, we must mention two
quarre1s: the quarre1 between philosophy and poetry and the quarre1
between antiquity and modernity. In some way or other our three
subjects stand on the side of poetry. Bacon was not a poet. He was a
philosopher and a teacher of the scientific method. Yet, he did write a
book of essays, and a book interpreting ancient fables, a book which is
discussed in one of the seven essays contained herein. In the United
2 Ibid., 1094 b 10-12.
3 Ibid., 1094 b 8-11.
INTRODUCTION 3
States, departments ofEnglish Literature consider Bacon as belonging
to their preserves, almost as much as Shakespeare. Rembrandt also
was not a poet. Plato, who first made clear this quarrel, thought and
spoke much less of pictorial representation than of poetry. However,
Rembrandt did one of the things watched over by the Muses.
What I have said telIs us nothing of the larger issue of reason and
imagination. In an understanding of the human condition reason and
imagination have to be joined. The genuine poet, like the genuine
political philosopher, is a seeker after virtue. A good illustration is
Bridges' "Low Barometer":
On such a night, when air has loosed
Its guardian grasp of blood and brain,
Old terrors then of God or ghost
Creep from their caves to light again;
And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their squalid lease of sin
With earlier title than his own. ...
It is reason that is here defended, not imagination.4 I think that Plato
would have admired this poem.
What about the other quarrel? The three subjects were roughly
contemporaneous: Bacon (1561-1626), Shakespeare (1564-1616),
Rembrandt (1606-1669). AlI three carne after Machiavelli. AlI three
belong to a period when the question of modern and pre-modern
thought was in scarcely concealed debate. Hence the title of this book,
taken from Hamlet:
And as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known. ...
(IV, v, 101-102)
Of none of these three men is it literally true that antiquity was
forgotten. Bacon certainly wished to discard Plato and Aristotle. But
he pretended to find a profound truth in an earlier time, in the fables
that separate history from oblivion. Yet, elsewhere he tells us that he
does not realIy care whether the most important things, like the eros of
matter and form, were really known in pre-Homeric times, or had
been recently discovered.
Yet, it can be said of Bacon, more than ofthe others, that he wanted
antiquity forgotten, that he wanted to do to Aristotle what he claimed
4 See Ivor Winters: Forme if Discovery, SwalJow, 1967, p. 196.
4 INTRODUCTION
Aristode to have done to his predecessors, to replace him and consign
him to oblivion. Shakespeare, on the contrary, had no desire to forget
antiquity. His frame of reference is essentially Platonic, as 1 understand
it. Far from forgetting antiquity, he followed it, or one part of it. For
Rembrandt too, antiquity is not forgotten. Here is a strong Christian
heritage, though he seems to have rejected the classical-Christian
cosmos, an order which the High Renaissance accepted.
Why then the tide? The answer is that, though antiquity was not
forgotten, it was, in some sense, overpassed. The world was "to
begin." Bacon saw himself as founding a new science. Whether, in
fact, Bacon founded a new science, and the point is stiU debated, he
considered himself to be doing so. Shakespeare certainly had forerun
ners, but in both comedy and tragedy, he began again. If antiquity was
Sophocles and Aristophanes, antiquity was forgotten. Moreover, in
his late plays, Shakespeare invented a new genre, which was neither
comedy nor tragedy. Rembrandt also had predecessors, but he was the
great painter oflight and air, and in this he left antiquity behind him.
One of the recurrent problems of political science is the problem of
conformity and non-conformity. Political philosophy is radical intel
lectually, whether it is politically conservative or not. Bacon's pro
visional politics were conservative, supporting crown, church, and
empire. His definitive teaching was the rule chiefly of science, or an
alliance of young science with patriarchal power. Shakespeare's
attachment to the Tudors is well known. Yet, Shakespeare knew that
the conventional is not the natural. In Timon of Athens, for example,
the servants are more virtuous than their masters. Rembrandt turned
beggars into Biblical characters. The three men had in common an
understanding of the difference between appearance and reality.