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Content BRUNO'S DIALOGUE WAR ON PEDANTRY:
AN ELIZABETHAN DRAMATIC MOTIF
by
Sid Sondergard
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
May 1986
UMI Number: DP23115
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quirements fo r the degree of
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
The Oxford Impetus .............................. 1
The Dialogue and Drama:
the Classical Archetypes ..................... 7
Mimetic Dialogues and Speculative Drama........ 26
Bruno's War on Pedantry: the Dialogue Vehicle
and its Dramatic Assimilation.................30
Notes.......................................... 35
II. "THAT COWARDLY SECT OF PEDANTS": THE PEDANT
CHARACTER'S FUNCTION IN BRUNO'S DIALOGUE STRUCTURE
La oena de le cenevi (1584)..................... 47
Be la eausa, prinaipio e uno (1584)............. 56
Be I'infinito3 universo e mondi (1584)........ 69
Spaceio della bestia tvionfante (1584)........ 79
Cabala della cavallo Pegaseo con
I’aggiunta dell'Asino Clllenlco (1585) .... 89
Be gli eroiei furovi (1585)..................... 104
Notes............................................114
III. IL CANBELAIO: SCHEMATIC AND HERALD OF BRUNO'S
ANTI-PEDANTRY
Melpomene versus Thalia: the Faces
of Pedantry..................................... 120
The Language of the Beast.........................134
Institutional Pedantry and
Unschooled Skepticism...........................149
The Magical Art: Worthy Belief and
Unworthy Believers ........................... 158
Notes............................................166
IV. THE GENESIS OF THE MENACING PEDANT AND HIS APPEARANCE
ON THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE
Pedanti e Gvaziani,: Characterizing the
Italian Pedant ................................ 169
"None helpeth the scholar": the Vocation of
the English Pedant.............................172
iv
I suppositi and It fedelei Italian Pedants
and English Adaptations.........................179
The Emergence of the Menacing Pedant............188
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: Bruno's Disgrace
and the Dangers of Pedantry.....................195
Ramism, Anti-Ramism and Social Pedantry in
The Massacre at Faris...........................212
Notes............................................223
V. "HOW EASY IS A BUSH SUPPOS'D A BEAR!": ILLUSION,
ASININITY AND PEDANTRY IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT ’S DREAM
Bottom's Ancestry in the Literature
of the A s s ................... 236
"This is to make an ass of me": the Cabala1 s
Model for Bottom's Pedantry.....................246
The Supernatural Realm's Chain of Pedantry . . . 260
"I woo'd thee with my sword": Pedantry's
Subjugation of Freethinking.....................270
Notes............................................281
VI. "THIS BRUNO THOU HAST LATE REDEEM'D": THE DAMNATION OF
PEDANTRY AND THE FREETHINKER'S SALVATION
Faustus, the Unworthy Believer ................. 289
A Return to Oxford: Bene disserere est finis
disciplinae............ 294
The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus: the Pedant's
Damnation and the Master's Salvation
of the Damned............................... 305
Prospero, the Worthy Master.......................318
Afflicting the Wise, Encouraging the Foolish:
the Master's Dilemma ......................... 322
"With my nobler reason 'gainst my fury": the
Freethinker's Victory over Pedantry............ 332
Notes............................................340
1
I. INTRODUCTION
The Oxford Impetus
Fenit, yicZit., non profeoto vioit. Giordano Bruno's
expectations concerning the intellectual environment he
would encounter at Oxford University upon his arrival in
1583 must have been high indeed, for the disappointment he
expressed at what he actually discovered there was monu
mental. When the reactionary force of the Reformation
struck early in the sixteenth century, it swept away the
traditions of medieval logic and metaphysics for which
Oxford was renowned; replacing them was what seemed to
Bruno a discipline valuing grandiloquence over substance:
the rhetoric of the humanists. And although the Aristo
telian works studied by the scholars of medieval Oxford had
been retained, the emphasis in their study shifted to
Aristotle's style— so more attention was given to the Greek
text originals that were available, the Latin translations
inspired by Ciceronian models were refashioned ever more
elegantly, and the practice of using Aristotelian texts as
paradigms consequently caused an implicit rejection of
other, conflicting texts.'*' Bruno, who felt no binding
allegiance or abhorrence towards the Stagirite himself (his
own writings variously praise and condemn individual works
of Aristotle), quickly grew to hate these narrow-minded
Oxford Aristotelians.
Though the few specific references to Bruno's
presence at Oxford exist outside the university's records,
the facts of his sojourn there from April through June,
158 3, have been exhaustively discussed by modern scholars.^
For our purposes, two episodes during that period bear
repeating. The 1583 London publication of Bruno's memory
treatise Ars reminiscendi, which contains the ExpZicatio
triginta sigiZZorum [The Interpretation of the Thirty
SeaZs] and SigiZZus sigiZZorum [The SeaZ of SeaZs],
includes in some but not all^ editions the hyperbolic
epistle Ad exceZZentissimum Oxoniensis academiae
VrocanceZZarium3 cZarris simos doctores atque oeZeberrimos
magistros [To the ExoeZZent Vice-ChanceZZor of Oxford
University3 its Most iZZustrious Doctors and Renowned
Teachers]. Though it purports to be a letter of intro
duction, it seems more likely a sarcastic response to the
doctrinaire attitudes he encountered there. The Nolan
describes himself as
doctor of a more difficult theology, professor of
a pure and quite blameless wisdom, distinguished
in the preeminent academies of Europe, a philos
opher approved and honorably accepted, a for
eigner nowhere except among the barbarous and
ignoble . . . conqueror of the presumptuous and
recalcitrant ignorant . . . who [prefers] the
Italian no more than the British, male than
female . . . someone in a toga than someone in
armor . . . whom the propagators of foolishness
and the hypocrites detest, whom the good and
studious esteem highly, and whose mind the more
noble applaud. . . .
[magis laboratae theologiae doctor, purioris et
innocuae sapientiae professor, in praecipuis
Europae academiis notus, probatus et honorifice
exceptus philosophus, nullibi praeterquam apud
barbaros et ignobiles peregrinus . . .
praesumtuosae et recalcitrantis ignorantiae
domitor . . . qui non magis Italum quam
Britannum, marem quam feminam . . . togatum quam
armatum . . . quem stultitiae propagatores et
hypocritumculi destestantur, quem probi et
studiosi diligunt, et cui nobiliora plaudunt
ingenia. . . . ]5
In this supposed introduction, Bruno includes almost every
major element of his subsequent war on pedantry (see chap
ter two below) and brandishes the type of invective that
distinguishes his dialogue attacks, concluding the epistle
with a curse on the "floods of evil golden manure from
asses" [diluvii asinorum stercora malis aureis] who have
infiltrated the university environment, "so now any fool
and ass is allowed into our positions here and elsewhere"
[ita nunc cuilibet stulto et asino liceat in nostras
positiones hie vel alibi] (II,ii,78). The oxymoronic
"golden manure" suggests the Ciceronian ornamentation of
the Oxford rhetoricians gilding a stubborn resistance to
new or rediscovered (e.g., Hermetic) ideas, an intellectual
attitude acceptable only for a "fool and ass."
On 10 June, 1583, the Polish palatine Albertus Alasco
(a.k.a. Laskey or Laski), accompanied by Sir Philip Sidney
at the request of the university's Chancellor, the Earl of
Leicester, arrived at Christ Church, Oxford, following a
visit with Queen Elizabeth and her court which had begun in
April. During his stay at the university through 13 June,
. . _ _ 4
dramatic performances and firework displays were arranged
for his entertainment in the evenings, while tours and
g
disputations were conducted each day. And following his
highly publicized, lavishly celebrated sojourn at Oxford,
he was invited to the relative seclusion of the Mortlake
7
estate of scholar John Dee and his dubious cohort, Kelly.
Although there is no specific record among Oxford histori
cal accounts that Bruno participated in the Alasco disputa
tions, two outside sources document the occasion— one of
them Bruno's own La oena de le oeneri. George Abbot, in
The Reasons VVhioh Dootovr Ei.lt Hath Brovght, reports
When that Italian Didapper, who intituled
himselfe Philotheus Iordanus Brunus Nolanus,
magis elaborata Theologia Doctor* &o with a name
longer then his body, had in the traine of Alaseo
the Polish Duke, seene our Vniversity in the year
1583, his hart was on fire, to make himselfe by
some worthy exploite, to become famous in that
celebrious place.®
Abbot's account documents the zeal, if not the ultimate
result, of Bruno's participation in the debates: due to its
heritage as a haven of medieval freethinking, Bruno craved
recognition from Oxford for his pioneering spirit and his
syncretic approach to knowledge. According to Abbot's
report, however, any success he achieved along these lines
must have been considered minor— to wit, not worth recall
ing. Bruno's own version, naturally, awards him a
significant victory:
And if you don't believe it, go to Oxford and
make them recount to you the things that happened
5
to the Nolan when he publicly disputed with some
doctors of theology in the presence of the Polish
prince Alasco and others of the English nobility.
Make them tell you how he knew to respond to
their arguments; how he stopped that poor,
muddled doctor— who, like the master of the
Academy, was set in front of him on that grave
occasion— fifteen times by fifteen syllogisms.
[E se non il credete, andate in Oxonia, e fatevi
raccontar le cose intravenute al Nolano, quando
publicamente dispute con que' dottori in
teologia in presenza del prencipe Alasco polacco
ed altri della nobilitA inglesa. Fatevi dire
come si sapea rispondere a gli argomenti; come
restb per quindeci sillogismi quindeci volte
qual pulcino entro la stoppa quel povero dottor,
che, come il corifeo dell'Academia, ne puosero
avanti in questa grave occasione.]^
One can quickly see how fact and fancy merge in Bruno's
emotional accounts, how his bravado becomes an element of
ipersuasio. Bruno describes his performance as heroically
inspired and enacted, fancying himself an inheritor of the
tradition of Martin Luther with his ninety-five theses
tacked to the doors of Wittenberg's Castle Church, and of
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who dared scholars to debate
with him on his 9 00 theses but was prevented by the envious
Innocent VIII.
Both episodes demonstrate Bruno's volatile reaction
against what he perceives (or at least, portrays) as the
intolerant, incompetent intellectual atmosphere of Oxford.
Right or wrong, Bruno characterizes himself, the Nolan, as
a prophet of new wisdom eclectically culled from sources as
diverse as Lucretius, Hermes Trismegistus and Ramon Lull,
who defeats the cowardly opponents of his ideology whenever
6
he is allowed to confront them. Historically speaking,
this simply isn't accurate— though genuinely respected for
his phenomenal memory, Bruno never fared very well in
public debate and his life was marked by a continual pat
tern of moving to new locations when his eccentric philos
ophy exhausted his welcome as a scholar in one place after
another.
These facts, however, are overshadowed by what is
perhaps the greater reality emanating from his vernacular
dialogues published in London, conducting an active cam
paign even after Bruno had left Oxford and England, never
to return: the war on pedantry, the expose of the pedant's
"bestial" opposition to the free pursuit of knowledge. The
Nolan's wisdom always prevails in the dialogues, his trials
are depicted as heroic struggles fought in defense of
truth; his archnemeses, modeled on the Oxford doctors, deny
wretched mankind the right to explore the promise of un
limited human potential glorified in his doctrines, are
designated "gli pedanti," and must be eliminated if man
wishes to attain to divine knowledge. It is in this con
text, as literature, as fictional constructs portraying the
imaginative conflicts between men and their ideas in the
dialogues, that Bruno's beliefs have their greatest
potential for influence and transmission. This study will
pursue the influence of Bruno's war on pedantry as a
literary motif, specifically as a motif with a variety of
7
manifestations that, because of its philosophical founda
tion within a kinetic structure of character and dialogue,
is readily assimilated into the dramas of numerous
Elizabethan playwrights.
The Dialogue and Drama: the Classical Archetypes
The dialogue's relationship to the drama is psycho
logically implicit even in its first expression, as Plato
formalized the philosophical dialogue within a century of
revolutionary changes made in the form of dramatic
poetry.^ A young man when the poet Euripides was growing
old, Plato himself sought to capture the exuberant spirit
of the drama and tried his hand at tragedies— which he
burned, before turning to the dialogue.H His attempt at
dramatic poetry was not motivated by the desire for acclaim
{the affectation for which Agathon is caricatured in the
Symposium) , but by the challenge of instilling in a viva
cious, didactic form the best qualities of man, of inquir
ing into the nature of the Good and man1s potential to
attain it. Plato became a student of Socrates while in his
early twenties; this inspiration and a recognition of the
effectuality of dramatic writing led to the composition of
the dialogues variously termed Socratic or Platonic.
In the strictest sense, a Socratic dialogue is one in
which Socrates appears as an interlocutor (usually as the
dominant speaker) and employs his elenchos, or syllogistic
8
method of dialectical inquiry, achieved through a battery
of questions whose preconceived answers will serve as
premises— developed from the question/answer practice of
the Sophists— to lead his fellow interlocutors to a
different (and not necessarily clearer) understanding of
12
their discussion topic. While Socrates' ideas may be
challenged by other speakers, once he begins his cross-
examination there can be no doubt (particularly as Plato
portrays him) that his opponents will be forced to reexam
ine their ideas— even if they still don't agree in prin
ciple with him, and even if no ultimate or final truth is
discovered. In the work of the Socratics Xenophon,
Antisthenes and Aristippos (and occasionally Plato, as in
the Symposium), a Socratic dialogue is often one in which
Socrates is simply a character and does not actively per
form his elenohos. The Platonic dialogue attempts to re
create a philosophical conversation realistically and to
revive the arguments expressed in it, acting as catalyst to
encourage a continuing examination of its ideas. This is
the same awareness of the need for verisimilitude that
invests the drama with its unique power, "For to be a
dramatist means to experience the world directly as a
13
struggle of authentic forces, personalized forces.1 '
In neither the Socratic or the Platonic dialogues is
it absolutely necessary to argue to a specific conclusion:
the Socratic dialogue concentrates on the elenohos, the
9
method of argument, and the Platonic dialogue concentrates
on the didactic concerns contained in the argument and on
the structure of the argument as it relates to the enhance
ment of those concerns. Thus the Re-publ-lo, with responses
to Socrates' leading questions largely limited to "Yes, of
course," and "Certainly not," is more specifically a
Socratic dialogue in terms of its structure, while the
Phaedo, with its moving account of Socrates' final hours
and the varying reactions of his friends to his inevitable
death expresses a mimetic verisimilitude that distinguishes
it structurally as a Platonic dialogue. Of course, it is
possible to be both simultaneously, as.in the example of
the Phaedrus, which features a variation in settings, a
very distinct delineation of its two characters, and
Socrates' argument against the eloquence of Lysias'
discourse on the lover and the non-lover (which Phaedrus
considers quite good until Socrates demolishes it)— hence
the commonplace of using "Socratic" and "Platonic" as
synonymous designations for any dialogue composed by Plato.
The dramatic nature of Plato's dialogues, or the
structural elements that combine to cause the dialogues
more closely to resemble dramatic dialogue than essays
expressed in dialogue form, can be explained as the product
of two factors. There is first a deliberate sense of pur
pose and individuation in the characterization of his
interlocutors. Even in dialogues obviously accentuating
10
Socrates and his dialectical method, other speakers are
also functionally, conspicuously present— they respond to
questions, offer their own opinions, and generally are used
to pace the dialogue, to prevent Socrates' lengthier
explorations from becoming tedious. Crito's speeches of
concern over Socrates' imprisonment, for example, are
frequent and genuine enough that his presence seems both
realistic and indispensable. Like a dramatist, Plato com
poses unique characters who facilitate the transmission of
his didactic emphases: the Euthyphvo depicts a young man
who considers himself remarkably just in that he is pre
paring to prosecute his own father for the murder of a
servant— Socrates reasons with him, working to shame him
into recognition of the monstrosity of his position, and
Euthyphro leaves before he is logically obliged to admit
his error; Thrasymachus in the first book of the Republic
is a Cynic feverishly arguing the superior profitability of
unjust actions over just— and after reluctantly agreeing
with every premise Socrates outlines, Thrasymachus per
versely clings to his theory, only conceding that Socrates'
cross-examination has served as their mutual entertainment.
The range of characters appearing in the Symposium is also
diverse and well-defined, including a pretentious poet, a
drunken soldier, a comic poet (and spinner of tall tales),
a pedantic doctor, lovers and jilted lovers.
The second factor is Plato's manipulation of the
11
reported conversation to enliven a dialogue's mise-en-
sc'&ne: the narrator of a conversation can include sensory
details not directly expressed in the central interlocu
tors' words, giving an emotional subtext to those words—
like that provided in drama by stage directions which
translate into stage business, voice modulations that pro
duce asides— to stimulate the reader's imagination. The
pathos of the scene surrounding Socrates in the Phaedo is
dramatically heightened by Phaidon's descriptions of the
actions of the friends attending the philosopher. Particu
larly moving is the characterization of Apollodorus as a
man who, unlike his friends, cannot even pretend to under
stand Socrates' sublime passivity towards his impending
death: he weeps, wretchedly, uncontrollably. In the case
of the Symposium he adds many details external to the
speeches praising and analyzing love: Socrates' late
arrival due to being lost in thought, Aristophanes' hic
cups, Alcibiades' boisterous entrance, Socrates' sober
departure while the others are sleeping drunkenly. The
speeches on love could have been delivered independent of
these narrative details, yet they add immeasurably to the
dramatic sense that the dialogue is the imitation of an
actual banquet, the tableau vivant in which Plato desires
that Socrates be remembered.^
Xenophon, also a student of Socrates, was a practical
man, a soldier of fortune and a martial historian. Where
12
Plato's style seems engineered to enlighten and challenge,
Xenophon's style is more anecdotal, designed to amuse and
inform. Not coincidentally, Xenophon's dialogues seem in
general even more conversational than Plato's. The sense
of drama permeating Plato's dialogues is instead an ex
plicit accentuation in Xenophon's dialogues. His speakers
are characters, clearly developed individuals possessed of
distinctive beliefs and mannerisms: thus, when he wishes to
use Socrates in a debate on estate and domestic management
in the Oeconomicus but foresees the conflict in pretending
that Socrates the urbanite would lecture on rural culture,
he has Socrates report the discussion he supposedly held
with Ischomachus, who indeed was an established, influen-
15
tial landowner. The imaginary discussion between
Socrates and Ischomachus reported by Socrates is a concoc
tion necessitated by Xenophon's concern with realism and
with the desire to feature Socrates as chief speaker of the
dialogue, and this faithful imitation of actual characters
enhances the dialogue's dramatic effectiveness. That
Xenophon values character over dialogue convention is dem
onstrated in his unwillingness to employ Socrates as an
interlocutor when subject and setting simply do not per
mit— hence his Hiero, which discusses the interaction
between a ruler and his people that is necessary to achieve
the mutual happiness of both, is debated by Syracusan King
Hiero and the visiting poet Simonides. While Hiero does at
13
times employ a Socratic elenohos while instructing
Simonides, ^ the dialogue is non-Socratic in that Socrates
as a character (or character type) is absent.
Reflecting his dramatic emphases on characterization
and conversational verisimilitude, Xenophon writes his own
Symposium within a few years of Plato's model (Plato's
Symposium is dated circa 385 B.C., Xenophon's circa 380).
The banquet he describes is more relaxed than Plato's, and
though Socrates is present he is portrayed at leisure, not
vigorously interrogating or lecturing. And while Plato's
Symposium is premised upon Agathon's victory in the tragic
poetry competition, Xenophon's counterpart is sponsored by
Callias in honor of young Autolycus' victory in the demand
ing pancratium at the greater Panathenaic games— and be
cause Callias is enamored of the boy. Unlike the encomi
ums and declamations on love in Plato's dialogue, in
Xenophon we find "actual, ordinary disputation among men
not keyed up to any high pitch of fervor" and "we enjoy a
feeling of reality in the evening's event, seeing more
vividly than in Plato just how an Athenian banquet was con
ducted. "I? The banquet does not end in tired discussion to
all hours as Plato's does, but in men running home to enjoy
the favors of their wives after being aroused by the steamy
embraces of the actor and actress playing Dionysus and
Ariadne for an entertainment. Underscoring the dramatic
effect for his dialogues by simultaneously praising
14
realistic drama, Xenophon says of the scene that "theirs
was the appearance not of actors who had been taught their
poses but of persons now permitted to satisfy their long-
cherished desires.Drama conventionally imitates life;
here it inspires life.
Almost two hundred years later Marcus Tullius Cicero,
like Xenophon, obtains much of his intellectual stimulation
from Plato, and his dialogues are written in response to
the formal structure of his Greek predecessor: his Laws and
Republic are based on Plato's, and he translates the
Timaeus into Latin. Unlike his Greek counterparts, how
ever, Cicero did not have a native philosophical tradition
to which he could refer in order to propose certain con
cepts . When he chose to introduce Greek philosophy to
Rome, he also accepted the challenge of creating a vocabu
lary to express it. When he needed an expressive form to
communicate philosophical issues, he turned to the Platonic
dialogue's use of character delineation to reinforce the
writer's personal convictions. In Le natura deorum, Cicero
employs three primary speakers: Velleius the egotistical
Epicurean, Cotta the pragmatic Academician, and Balbus the
courteous Stoic. With this basic differentiation of char
acter, Cicero is able to express his respect for the
Academy and the Stoa while attacking Epicureanism; "Cicero
gives a dramatic form to his preference for the Academic
method by contrasting the courtesy of Cotta with the crude
15
violence of Velleius," thus making "Cotta's hesitation and
moderation seem like the attitude of a mature mind" in
condescending superiority to "the naive certainty of
* 1 g
youth.As in Socratic dialectical method, Cicero begins
with a preconceived determination of the truth concerning
his topic. However, where Socrates focuses his elenohos on
a continual stream of ideas related to the topic, Cicero
contrives to allow each interlocutor to express his point
of view before inserting a critical figure to provide a
concluding commentary. It is because of the earlier
character delineation that the reader foresees that the
ideology of the ill-mannered Velleius of course will be
condemned, Balbus1 respectfully tolerated, and Cotta's
recommended.
Cicero's Tusculanae dlsputationae responds to the
conversational style of Xenophon's dialogues with succinct,
fast-paced passages, as in this exchange between "A" and
"M":
A. To my thinking death is an evil. M. To the
dead or to those who have to die? A. To both.
M. As it is an evil it is therefore wretchedness.
A. Certainly. M. Then those whose lot it has
already been to die and those whose lot it is to
be are wretched. A. I think so. M. There is no
one then who is not wretched. A. Absolutely no
one . . . M. Tell me, prayI You are not terri
fied, are you, by the stories of three-headed
Cerberus in the lower world, the roar of Cocytus,
the passage of Acheron, and "chin the water
touching, Tantalus worn out with thirst"? . . .
A. Do you suppose me so crazy as to believe such
tales? M. You don't believe them true? A.
Certainly not. M. My word I that's a sad story.
16
A. Why so? M. Because I could have been so elo
quent in speaking against such tales.21
Of course, "A's" short answers and cautious uncertainty ("I
think so"), like the directness and syllogistic structure
of "M's" questioning makes the passage initially sound like
a perfect example of the Socratic dialogue— though the
intention of the passage is not to construct an argument,
but to portray a style of conversation that is both amusing
and not a little satiric (a Socratic speaker could, pre
sumably, "have been so eloquent" in refuting the myths of
the underworld). This effectively illustrates the subtle
distinction between the philosophical dialogue, a form for
lively discussion of speculative or instructive topics, and
the drama itself, an exchange of words and ideas between
speakers imitating some reality for the entertainment— and
edification— of its audience.
Lucian, the second-century skeptic, rejects the non-
2 2
dramatic applications of more recent dialogist Plutarch
and again employs the dialogue as a conversational form,
though providing it with a new exterior: humor. He does
this not by adding gratuitous comic elements or by confin
ing his subject matter to trivial topics, and his object is
not simply to entertain; comparison of his dialogues to
earlier examples reveals that the comic exterior is
actually a false front for skeptical criticism. Lucian
abandoned his formal study of rhetoric and chose satire as
17
the method for conveying his dialogues' content— perhaps
because satire could function as a didactic Trojan horse,
appealing to readers as amusement while concealing an argu
ment within its comic elements. Lucian's specific form of
21
social criticism, Menippean satire, is particularly per
tinent to the dialogue form in a dramatic sense, for by
aiming its barbs at the eccentricities and excesses of men
(especially philosophers) and gods it serves to character
ize them as types in the same sense that the three debating
philosophers of Cicero's T>e natura deorum are types, or
that the characters perennially employed in New Comedy
drama are types, reducing the need to stray from inter
active dialogue into narrative exposition. Personified
types such as Lady Philosophy, Frankness, or the philos
ophers/philosophies of Philosophies for Sale look ahead to
the character convention of the morality plays.
Lucian's self-conscious alteration of the philosoph
ical dialogue begins with an apparent imitation of the
symposia of Plato, Xenophon and Plutarch. The occasion for
the symposium depicted in The Carousal3 or the Lapiths is a
marriage— and the previously serious framework for dis
cussion or instruction is turned inside-out. Alcidamas the
Cynic proposes a toast to the bride in honor of his
school's patron, Heracles; when everybody laughs he pro
poses instead a curse and then exposes himself "in the most
shameless way,"^ and the drinking party (Lucian interprets
18
this quite literally) eventually ends in utter chaos. Phi
losophers are a popular topic for Lucian’s satire, espe
cially the pompous, inflexible philosophus gloriosus, so in
The Carousal he lampoons a form that is synonymous with
philosophical thought and writings, the symposium dialogue.
Many of his other dialogues continue to expose and comment
on the pedantic excesses and hybris of philosophers. In
Timony or the Misanthrope, Zeus asks Hermes about the
filthy, squalid character from Attica dressed in skins who
is complaining about the gods so vitriolically: "A mouthy
fellow and an impudent one. Very likely he is a philos
opher, otherwise he would not talk so impiously against us"
(11,333). In Philosophies for Sale, Zeus has a personifi
cation of each philosophical school auctioned off in order
to get the meddlesome characters out of his way (e.g., a
Democritean, who laughs at existence as an infinite drift
of atoms; an Epicurean who is fond of sweets; a Heraclitean
who weeps at the universe's constant flux), and manages to
parody the Socratic elenohos and logic during a prospective
buyer's examination of the Stoic for sale (11,499,501). It
seems that this dialogue caused a great deal of outrage
from philosophers of the representative schools and prompt
ed Lucian to write The Dead Come to Life3 or the Fisherman,
which begins with Socrates screaming "Pelt, pelt the
scoundrel with plenty of stones! Heap him with clods!
Pile him up with broken dishes, too!" (111,3); joining him
19
as characters are Epicurus, Aristotle, Diogenes, et. at.
Plato explains their presence is due to "those precious
dialogues of yours in which you not only spoke abusively of
Philosophy herself, but insulted us by advertising for
sale, as if in a slave-market, men who are learned . . .
Indignant at this, we requested a brief leave of absence
from Pluto and have come up to get you" (111,9). Even be
fore Lady Philosophy chastizes the philosophers,^ Frank
ness (Lucian's persona) is guaranteed victory because the
philosophers have resorted to doing battle with weapons,
not words, reflecting a confidence in his disputational
abilities quite similar to Bruno's own.
Further evidence of Lucian's self-conscious metamor
phosis of the dialogue into a more dramatic form is pro
vided by his frequent use of dramatic metaphor, references,
and terminology not as isolated images quoted in illustra
tion of other topics, but as keys to the method of his
satirical skepticism. In the Nigrinus, "B" is anxious to
have "A" report a recent discourse of Nigrinus to him, and
complains about "A's" cautious, tedious prelude to it; "A"
reminds "B" about the bad actors from both tragedy and
comedy who are hissed off the stage, and justifies his pace
through fear that "you may think that I deliver my lines
ridiculously, hurrying through some of them regardless of
metre, and sometimes even spoiling the very sense by my
incapacity; and that you may gradually be led to condemn
20
the play itself" (1,109). Hera, not a wordsmith like
Hermes and Athena, simply orders Zeus to stop his com
plaining in Zeus Rants, "seeing that I’m no hand either at
comedy or at epic . . . nor have I swallowed Euripides
whole so as to be able to play up to you in your tragedy
rSle" (11,93). After flying up to heaven in the Iaavo-
menippus, Menippus compares the confusion of human life to
the bustle of a group of players who "move at cross
purposes in the dance and agree in nothing until the man
ager drives each of them off the stage, saying that he has
no further use for them" while behind them, continuing on,
"there is the playhouse itself, full of variety and shift
ing spectacles" (11,299).
That the drama of Lucian’s dialogues was effective is
demonstrated by the defensive counter-attacks provoked in
The Dead Come to Life and The Double Indictment. In the
former, Lady Philosophy berates the angry philosophers'
objections to being lampooned when "in spite of the hard
names which Comedy calls me during the festival of
Dionysus, I have held her my friend, and neither sued her
at law nor berated her in private, but permit her to make
the fun that is in keeping and customary at the festival.
I am aware, you see, that no harm can be done by a joke"
(111,23); this is of course Lucian's perfect defense: his
dialogues are attacks disguised as jokes, philosophical
dialogues under the cover of satirical dialogues. In The
21
Double Indictment, he describes why he adopted the form of
the dialogue, its advantages, and how he has improved it.
The first "indictment" of the title is Oratory’s complaint
that the Syrian (Lucian) deserted her; the Syrian tells the
jury that Oratory had taken to dressing herself like a
whore and allowed "maudlin lovers" to serenade her; so he
went to Dialogue (a male) and asked to be received. When
Dialogue rises to state his case, he explains his approach
to testifying, and Lucian's attraction for the dialogue as
an argumentative form, in the same breath: "I should prefer
not to make you a long speech, but to discuss the matter a
little at a time, as is my wont" (111,145). Dialogue's
major complaint concerns the Syrian's application of
Menippus' example, with the result "I am neither afoot nor
ahorseback, neither prose nor verse, but-seem to my hearers
a strange phenomenon made up of different elements, like a
Centaur" (111,147). The Syrian's defense is that he took a
dour creature "reduced to a skeleton through continual
questions [i.e., Socratic dialectic]. In that guise he
seemed awe-inspiring, to be sure, but not in any way at
tractive or agreeable to the public." By "forcing him to
smile, I made him more agreeable to those who saw him," so
the Syrian paired him with Comedy, as people formerly
"feared his prickles, and avoided taking hold of him as if
he were a sea-urchin" (111,149). Naturally, the jury
awards the victory in both trials to the Syrian. And
22
Lucian, concerned with making the dialogue more attractive
(and hence effective), establishes an explicit relationship
between the dialogue and drama.
Mikhail Bakhtin discerns in The Dialogic Imagination
that the Socratic dialogue (as developed by Plato), a
"serio-comical" form, gives birth simultaneously to scien
tific thinking and to a paradigmatic literary style because
of the intellectual tension it creates in its portrait of
Socrates the wise fool— the wisest of all men because he
understands that he knows nothing— and its transformation
of even the most transcendental philosophical subjects into
contemporaneity, that is, into the world in which its
writers existed; innovations by the storytelling Xenophon,
by the analytical Cicero, and by Menippean satirist Lucian,
whose comic dialogues are really vehicles for testing the
ideologies of the philosophers, all reflect this "serio-
comical" dynamic. Before being "rediscovered" as a form
by the humanists of the fourteenth-century Italian and
sixteenth-century English Renaissance, the classical dia
logue is absorbed into the medieval disputatio, appearing
as a dialectical form simultaneously in duel-poems, or
poetic disputes, in scholastic disputation, and in sacred
drama constructed around disputationis. The Platonic dia
logue's didactic concerns are turned to religious pedagogy
m the mystical discourses of the Corpus Hermeticum and
in the catechetical (or elucidary) dialogues of the church
23
fathers from Augustine's Soliloqui-a to the hagiographical
28
dialogues of Gregory the Great. They merge with the
Ciceronian dialogue's presentation of conflicting ideas to
create the ideological structure of medieval literature's
poetic disputations (e.g. the twelfth-century A dispitison
bitwene a god man and the deuel or Desputaison de ta
* 9Q
Sinagogue et de Sainte Egl-ise), which are subjectifica-
tions of what was originally designed as an objective con
test, like the pastoral competitions requiring a judge in
the Eclogues of Cicero's contemporary, V i r g i l . ^
Included traditionally as part of the Trivium—
rhetoric, grammar and dialectic— throughout the Dark Ages,
disputatio1s institutionalization follows quickly upon the
establishment of the universities at Paris and Bologna near
the end of the twelfth century (for they specialized in
theology and law, respectively? the older institution at
Salerno emphasized medicine). Though the methodology
adopted by the institutions to govern disputation was de
signed to ensure its accuracy as a form of inquiry,3- * - it
could not prevent scholarly abuse from causing the argu
mentative form to degenerate into an exercise devoid of
intrinsic meaning. The practice of incessant disputation
at Bologna "fostered an indifference to the truth of things
fatal to progress in theology or philosophy" among its law
students, though it also "gave the pleader the indispen
sable faculty of supporting a bad case with good, and a
24
good case with the best possible, arguments. As Bruno
would later complain of university pedants, inquiry is here
rejected in favor of superficial artifice. Prior to the
establishment of the institutions at Bologna and Paris,
John of Salisbury exposes the dialectical form's corruptive
influence when studied for its own sake, and identifies it
as a potent vehicle of pedantry. In the Metalog-icon (1159)
he describes returning to visit some old classmates after
an absence of twelve years, only to discover they were
still obsessively pursuing disputation: "Thus I learned by
experience an evident lesson, that, just as dialectic fa
cilitates other disciplines, so, if studied alone, it re
mains lifeless and sterile, nor does it stimulate the soul
to bear fruits of Philosophy, unless it conceives else
where."-^ Ironically, this is precisely the kind of schol
arly stagnation of which Bruno accuses the Oxford doctors
over four centuries later.
The medieval drama's incorporation of the disputatio
is easily demonstrated. Just as the prominently catechet
ical format of patristic dialogues contributed for pedagog
ical reasons to the question-and-answer structure of the
tenth-century Visi-tatio sepulchro (or Quem quaeritis) , the
symmetry of the dialogue in a play like the twelfth-century
La Seinte Resureooion echoes the balanced responses fre
quently encountered in dispute poetry and in the structure
of formal scholastic disputation.^ The pseudo-Augustinian
25
De Altercatione Eoclesiae et Synagogae Dialogus inspires a
debate in the twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Ludus de
Nativitate from Benediktbeuren between St. Augustine and
the speaker for the Jews, Archisynagogus; in the ordo
prophetarum from the liturgical play of St. Martial of
Limoges, derived from another pseudo-Augustinian work
(Sermo contra JudeoSj Paganos et Arianos de Symbolo), the
presence of the Jews has an impact on the construction of
the pro-Christian arguments— even when their contradictory
-5 P
views are not actually spoken. The dialogue/disputatio
hence becomes more than a structure that can be adopted by
the drama: it can also serve as drama, or as the ideologi
cal and formal center around which drama can be con
structed .
The influence of the other archetypal dialogists of
antiquity runs parallel to the disputatio's many manifes
tations. Xenophon's use of the dialogue for entertainment
is adapted by fabliaux writers and poets who express their
stories and verse in dialogue form, and is present in Tudor
humanist drama which grows from the morality and mystery
traditions into the interlude, synthesizing elements of the
philosophical dialogue with dramatic presentation while
portraying increasingly secular subject matter. The satire
of Lucian, a dialogue influence in some senses as pervasive
as that of Plato,36 is most notably reflected in Rabelais'
The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel. In Book Two,
26
chapter eighteen, the ridiculous excess of public disputa
tion, a forum often more distinguished for histrionic ges
ture than for meaningful exchange of ideas, is lampooned in
the disputation of the English scholar, Thaumaste, and the
devious Panurge: they agree to dispute wordlessly, and the
supposed scholar interprets Panurge's nonsense antics as
the expression of great wisdom.37 In Book Three, chapters
twenty-nine through thirty-six, Rabelais satirizes the
perennially popular form of the symposium dialogue, as
Pantagruel invites a theologian, a doctor, a lawyer and a
philosopher to help Panurge decide whether he should marry
or not; when the time comes for Panurge to ask his ques
tions of the pedantic philosopher, he is given indirect— in
some cases contradictory, but in all cases uselessly
vague— replies. This symposium comes to an end not when
the interlocutors arrive at some kind of insight or conclu
sion, but when Panurge becomes exasperated and simply stops
38
his fruitless elenchos. Lucian's parodic dialogues are
further reflected in examples as diverse as the character
abstractions of the debats, certain of the Latin dialogue
exercises developed by Erasmus for his students in the
Cottoquia— and the Spaceio delta bestia tvionfante of
Giordano Bruno.
Mimetic Dialogues and Speculative Drama
The dialogue's kinship to the drama, as evidenced by
27
their mutually enriching exchange of elements, is estab
lished through a similarity of structure. When a writer
consciously selects the dialogue as a literary vehicle, he
is either affirming it as the formal structure best suited
to his ideas and to his audience's reception of them— or he
is rejecting the drama as a viable structure. The deciding
factor in either case is verisimilitude, imitation as a
positive or pejorative act. Plato's conception of physical
existence as an imitation of the metaphysical realm of the
Idea leads to interpretation of dramatic poetry and prose,
which seek to reduplicate phenomena of the physical world,
as a necessarily inadequate imitation of an imitation;
small wonder, then, that he burned his own dramatic arti
fice. The mimesis discussed in Aristotle's Poetics, howev
er, is instead a simulation of human reality, of specific
realistic actions that can evoke universal response by
O Q
suggesting ideas common to the experxence of all men. J
The dialogue writer, like Plato, selects the form which
facilitates a fluid verbal expression of ideas in human
terms, imitating their non-verbal existence in the realm of
the Idea, yet which because of its expository nature cannot
be performed as drama, where human agents act as the shadow
of the shadow of the Idea. The paradox that this engenders
is a commonplace in critical commentary on the dialogue:
the "dramatic" nature of many dialogues.It suggests
that the dialogue writer, consciously or unconsciously, is
28
employing dramatic dialogue as the model for his expository
exchange, choosing the illusion of extemporaneous, lifelike
speech over the static discourse of analytical prose.
Similarity of structure implies that the converse is
also true. When a writer chooses dramatic dialogue as a
vehicle for intellectual inquiry, he is either affirming it
as the formal structure through which human agents can rep-
resentationally interpret his ideas for the benefit of an
audience— or he is rejecting the non-theatrical dialogue as
an impractical ideological structure. The determining
issue for both is the interaction between author and audi
ence as it affects the transmission of ideas, for when the
playwright employs the drama to express his observations he
knows that the "characters of the story confront the audi
ence directly, hence the drama is marked by the concealment
of the author from his audience.The focus of such dis
tancing can either be to allow the writer an appearance of
objectivity while examining concepts, a Ciceronian impar
tiality that weighs all argument equally before passing
judgment,^ or to allow the writer a semblance of anonymity
in pursuing controversial or subversive ideas^ by infer
ring that the ideas portrayed are products of the fictional
world he is dramatizing and have no direct reference to the
world the audience inhabits; as Lucian (and Bruno) discov
ered, the dialogue offers no such protection of its author.
In both cases, the purpose of the dramaturgist is to
29
communicate the immediacy of a form creating human contact
between actor/interpreter and audience. When a play with
this emphasis, a drama of ideas, is viewed outside its pri
mary context— that is, on the page rather than the stage—
then its kinship to the dialogue is confirmed. Sometimes
overtly so, as in Philip the Bastard's fancy after he is
made a knight in Shakespeare's King John:
Now your traveller,
He and his toothpick at my worship's mess,
And when my knightly stomach is suffic'd,
Why then I suck my teeth and catechize
My picked man of countries: "My dear sir,"—
Thus, leaning on mine elbow, I begin,
"I shall beseech you,"— that is Question now?
And then comes Answer like an Absey book:
"0 sir," says Answer, "at your best command;
At your employment; at your service, sir:"
"No, sir," says Question, "I, sweet sir,
at yours:"
And so, ere Answer knows what Question would,
Saving in dialogue of compliment,
And talking of the Alps and Apennines,
The Pyrenean and the river Po,
It draws toward supper in conclusion so.
(I,i,189-204)44
Philip will "catechize" his imagined host, speculatively
projecting their conversation on the model of the school
boy's Absey book, this dialogue continuing until it "draws
toward supper in conclusion," a conventional way of ending
dialogues, employed many times by Bruno himself. In con
trast to King John's impulsive decisions, including the
imprisonment of Arthur and his obeisance to Pandulph, the
Pope's legate, the Bastard considers every situation care
fully before forming any conclusion. And when he makes
30
Catholic puns or condemns King John's capitulation to Cath
olic pressure, he is speaking as a character in a play— not
necessarily as Shakespeare, that play's also anti-Catholic
author.
Bruno's War on Pedantry: the Dialogue Vehicle
and its Dramatic Assimilation
Before turning to the specific details of Bruno's con
demnation of pedantry, there are three questions concerning
his method and its ramifications that we must briefly ad
dress. With the relative insulation from adverse opinion
possible through the drama, why did Bruno compose his six
London works, 1584-85, as dialogues? Why did he express
them in his vernacular Italian rather than in Latin? How
might diverse variations of his anti-pedant themes have
found their way into the plays of Elizabethan dramatists?
The rationale behind Bruno's use of the dialogue as a
form is two-fold. In Bruno's estimation, the menace rep
resented by the Oxford pedants included their negative im
pact on students, through whom they perpetuated their own
errors; and one of the pedant's favorite pedagogical tools
was the model of the philosophical (though virtually trans
formed into a catechetical device) dialogue. Walter J. Ong
explains that "Instead of carrying on a dialogue in the
give-and-take Socratic form, the university don had largely
reduced the oral component by converting it into his own
31
classroom monologue, which he produced not as the spirit
moved him but on schedule and at fixed places and hours."45
Bruno is turning this tool against the university doctors,
challenging them to respond through the same form they per
versely employ to prevent the exchange of ideas it was
originally invented to encourage. He had twice previously
used the dialogue form for mnemonic studies published the
year preceding his trip to England: in his introduction to
De umhvis i-deavum (1582) , the "Apologeticus pro umbris
idaearum ad suam memoriae inventionem" (with interlocutors
Hermes, Philothimus^ and Logifer), and in the Cantus
C-ivaaeus (1582), with four interlocutors (Dialogue One:
Circe and Moeris; Dialogue Two: Albericus and Borista).
Exploiting the dramatic potential of the dialogue form,
these dialogues transmute Bruno's convoluted, arcane mne
monic treatises into energetic investigations of the meth
odology of his memory theories, giving the impression that
they are being tested and confirmed at the same time they
are being explained. Through the form, the Nolan achieves
a liveliness of expression and an illusion of verisimili
tude .
Not only did Bruno write dialogues in Latin before
turning to Italian, he wrote still other Latin dialogues
after leaving England, including the Di-alogi duo de
Fabrioii Mordent-Ls (1586),^ a criticism of Fabrizio
Mordente1s applications of his own modified compass and an
32
exercise in gnostic geometry performed by the interlocutors
Boterus and Mordentius. Apparently he did not reject Latin
for being an impractical mode of expressing his philosophi
cal concepts, since he later returns to it. Rather, he
reserves it for a special function in the London dialogues:
Latin, especially in conjunction with Ciceronian embellish
ment, is the language of the Oxford pedants and is often
used by them in obviously inappropriate situations to dem
onstrate their erudition. Bruno has other interlocutors
speak primarily in his vernacular Italian to provide a con
trast that reveals and ridicules the pedant's indiscrim
inate use of Latin as a means of disguising the superfici
ality of his actual knowledge; this quality then contrib
utes to establishing the pedant as a character type. It is
quite possible that Bruno would have written the dialogues
in English, except that he did not know the language— a
fact for which the pedants try to berate the Nolan in La
aena de le aenevv.
The eccentric reputation of Giordano Bruno that pre
ceded him to England in reports from British citizens in
France^ must have made him a subject of no small interest,
despite the fact that his misadventures at Oxford undoubt
edly contributed to branding him the kind of individual one
would not publicly declare a friend.^ Notoriety of this
sort breeds curiosity, and curiosity about the boisterous
Italian philosopher could be satisfied for the cost of one
33
of his dialogues. As even playwrights like Shakespeare
show evidence of occasionally employing Italian sources
where no English translations of them existed,^0 one must
speculate that plot details could be transmitted by word-
of-mouth from those individuals who could read Italian— of
which there were many. Ascham, Lyly and others had written
warnings against the very popular entertainment of travel
ling in Italy; John Florio's language primer, Flovio His
Firste Fruites (1578), combines a practical Italian grammar
list with a series of English and Italian dialogues, and
its sequel, the Second Fruites (1591) , even mentions Bruno
in an example of Italian literature. One can easily imag
ine the more outrageous episodes in Bruno's dialogues being
repeated as popular anecdotes: the vehement misogyny of the
pedant Poliinnio in De la causa3 principio e uno, the ass
who is reincarnated as Aristotle in the Cabala della
cavallo Fegaseo or the ass who requests permission to enter
the Pythagorean academy in "L'Asino Cillenico del Nolano."
But while it is possible that elements of Bruno's dia
logues might have arrived by these routes to provide inspi
ration to Elizabethan dramatists, it is much more likely
that the conflict at Oxford and Bruno's dialogue extrapo
lations from it and extensions of it provided ammunition
for playwrights who were also Cambridge University gradu
ates (like Robert Greene, or Christopher Marlowe) to write
anti-pedant (and hence through Bruno's characterizations,
34
anti-Oxford) dramas that would allow them to lampoon their
Oxford archrivals by capitalizing on the Nolan's carica
tures of the learned doctors. In examining Bruno's dia
logues, we will see that while their topics vary widely, as
for example the Aristotelian distinction of matter and form
in Be la oausa3 pv'inoi.pio e uno versus the Neoplatonism of
Be gli, eroioi fuvori, one line of continuity runs through
out them: the negative characterization of the pedant.
35
Notes
Charles B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in
Renaissance England (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University
Press, 1983), pp. 18-29. J. Lewis McIntyre, Giordano Bruno
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1903), explains "What
Bruno condemned in Oxford was the undue attention it gave
to language and words, to the ability to speak in Cicero
nian Latin and in elegant-phrase, neglecting the realities
of which the words were signs" (p. 25).
2
In George Abbot, The Reasons Which Doctour Hill
Hath Brought3 For The upholding of Papistry 3 which is
falselie termed the Catholike Religion: Vnmasked3 and
Shewed to be uery weake3 and upon examination most insuf
ficient for That Purpose (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1604),
F^v-f^ [mentioned in Robert McNulty, "Bruno at Oxford,"
Renaissance News 13 (1960), 302-03]; in N.W.'s preface to
The Worthy Tract of Paulus Iouius in The Complete Works in
Verse and Prose of Samuel Daniel ed. Rev. Alexander B.
Grosart, 5 vols. (London: Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ltd.,
1896), IV, 7; in a letter from Thomas Hariot to Sir William
Lower [mentioned in Nicola Badaloni, A Filosofia di
Giordano Bruno (Firenze: Parenti Editore, 1955), pp. 300-
301; in Dorothea Waley Singer, Giordano Bruno: His Life and
Thought3 With Annotated Translation of His Work On the In
finite Universe and Worlds (New York: Henry Schuman, 1950),
pp. 67-68]; and in Gabriel Harvey, Marginalia ed. G.C.
Moore Smith (Stratford-Upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press,
1913) , p. 156 [mentioned in Frances A. Yates, Giordano
Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1964), p. 207n2].
3
Giovanni Aquilecchia, "Ancora su Giordano Bruno ad
Oxford (in margine ad una recente segualazione)," Studi
seicenteschi 4 (1963), 3-15, discusses the Harvey margina
lia; William Boulting, Giordano Bruno: His Life3 Thought3
and Martyrdom (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co.,
Ltd., 1914), pp. 81-88; Oliver Elton, "Giordano Bruno in
England," Modern Studies (London: Edward Arnold, 1907) , pp.
36
1-36; Ludovico Limentani, "La lettera di Giordano Bruno al
Vicecancelliere dell * University, di Oxford," English Histor
ical Review 94 (1979), 291-317, demonstrates the profound
difference between the Oxford Bruno expected and what he
actually found; McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, pp. 21-26;
McNulty, "Bruno at Oxford," 300-305; Yates, Lull & Bruno
ed. J.N. Hillgarth and J.B. Trapp, Collected Essays, 3
vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), I ["Giordano
Bruno's Conflict with Oxford," pp. 134-50, and "The Reli
gious Policy of Giordano Bruno," pp. 151-52, 175-78], and
"Giordano Bruno in England: The Hermetic Reform," Giordano
Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, pp. 205-34.
4
See Boulting, p. 82n2.
5
Opera Latine Conscripta ed. F. Tocco et H. Vitelli
(Florentiae: Typis Successorum Le Monnier, 1890), II, Pt.
ii, 76-77. All subsequent citations of Bruno's Latin works
will be from this edition, and will be followed in paren
theses by volume, part, and page references.
® William Gager: Oedipus (acted 1577-1592)3 Dido
(acted 1583) ed. J.W. Binns (New York: Georg Olms Verlag,
1981), pp. 7, 9; Anthony y Wood, "Appendix," The History
and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the University
of Oxford ed. and trans. John Gutch (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1786); and Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic
Tradition, pp. 206-208, 210.
7
Reported in Dr. Dee's own dialogue, A True & Faith
ful Relation of What passed for many Jeers Between Dr. John
Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King
James their Reignes) and Some Spirits: Tending (had it Suc
ceeded) To a General Alteration of most States and King-
domes in the World (London: D. Maxwell, 1659): it opens,
dated 28 May 158 3, with Dee speaking to Prince "Albertus
Lasci" when the spirit of Madini, a young girl, appears.
Alasco's name is cryptically placed in the margin of the
entry dated 2 June 158 3, next to the comment "Whom thou
sayest that thou hast not yet confirmed, confirm with good
counsel. It is said I have accepted him" (p. 4). Dee men
tions the return on 4 June 1583 of "Lord Laskie who meant
to come and refresh himself at my house, as he was wont be
fore; either this day, or within two or three days after"
(p. 30). 0n 22 September 1583, Dee records that while on a
ship with Laski, and his own wife and children, violent
winds arose causing their anchor to "come home, no man per
ceiving it, till the ship was ready to strike on the sands"
although the "great diligence used by our Marriners in
hoysing sayl, and cutting our Cable" (p. 33), along with
God's mercy, saved them.
37
g
Abbot, sig. F4V. Even Bruno's lectures at Oxford
yielded unfortunate results, as Abbot proceeds to report
two occasions on which the Nolan was allegedly caught pla
giarizing from Marsilio Ficino's De vita coelitus
comparanda.
9
Dialoghi Italiani: Dialoghi Metafisioi e Dialoghi
Morali ed. Giovanni Aguilecchia, con nota da Giovanni
Gentile (Firenze: Samsoni, 1958), p. 133.
Around 471 B.C., Aeschylus is credited with advanc
ing the drama beyond Thespis' sixth-century conception of
it as a dialogue between protagonist ("first interpreter")
and chorus, to include a second actor, or deuteragonist.
In 468, Sophocles beat the innovative Aeschylus at his own
game, adding yet a third character, or tritagonist.
Paul Friedlander, Plato: I. An Introduction trans.
Hans Meyerhoff, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1969), pp. 122, 157, 165; John Gassner,
"Plato the Dramatist," Masters of the Drama 3rd ed. (n.p.:
Dover Publications, Inc., 1954), pp. 77-78. Cf. Jonas
Barish, "The Platonic Foundation," The Antitheatrical Prej
udice (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981),
pp. 5-37; Walter M. Gordon, "The Platonic Dramaturgy of
Thomas More's Dialogues ," The Journal of Medieval and Ren
aissance Studies 8 (1978), 198-200, 212-13. Albin Lesky,
A History of Greek Literature trans. James Willis and
Cornells de Heer (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,
1966), notes that Aristotle's dialogue fragment On the
Poets claims an Alexamenus of Teos wrote dialogues prior to
Plato and the Socratics, but "This must come from some
piece of literary polemic, and we cannot tell what it is
worth" (p. 513).
12
Or at least to cause them to reconsider their pro
fessed "knowledge" of the subject; a mild humiliation is
Socrates' method as reconstructed or imaginatively depicted
by Plato, continually eroding the confidence and complacen
cy of other interlocutors in their own knowledge. See
Robert E. Cushman, Therapeia: Plato's Conception of Philos
ophy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1958), pp. xvii-xviii, 8. Charles P. Bigger, Participa
tion: A Platonic Inquiry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1968), sees Socrates' method as a kind of
tragic pattern "moving the argument from hybris and self
ignorance through a kind of suffering to knowledge and pur
gation, perhaps essentially comic in nature" (p. 18).
13 Friedlander, I, 16 7.
38
- 1 - 4 The memorable details may have even served a mne
monic function; by being easy to recall, they may have also
increased the memorability of the ideas related to them.
At any rate, the dramatic touches are presumably for didac
tic purposes, though in the later dialogues (especially in
Theaetetus, with its analysis of knowledge, and the cosmo
logical theories of the Timaeus and fragmentary Critias),
and even in certain earlier ones such as the Menexemus
(with Socrates' delivery of Aspatia's oration), Plato's
focus on the ideas of the dialogues completely overshadows
any concern with dramatic expression. Cf. Friedlander, I,
232.
Memorabilia, and Oeoonomious trans. E.C. Marchant,
The Loeb Classical Library (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons,
1923), explains that the situation was resolved thus be
cause "this other person must be a man of standing and ma
ture years, and therefore could not be Xenophon himself,
who had no established position during the life of
Socrates. Hence Ischomachus" (p. xxiv).
1 C
See for example Hiero's refutation of the common
expectation that a king's table must be strewn with exotic
condiments in Scripta Minor trans. E.C. Marchant, The Loeb
Classical Library (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 19 25), p.
11.
1 7
Anabasis3 Books IV-VII and Symposium and Apology
trans. Carleton L. Brownson and O.J. Todd, The Loeb Classi
cal Library (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922), pp. 378-
79.
18
Anabasis3 Books IV-VII and Symposium and Apology,
p. 481,
^ Margaret Young Henry, The Relation of Dogmatism and
Skepticism in the Philosophical Treatises of Cicero
(Geneva, N.Y.: W.F. Humphrey, 1925), p. 40. See also J.M.
Ross, "Introduction," The Nature of the Gods trans. Horace
C.P. McGregor (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 28.
2 0
Ross, "Introduction," The Nature of the Gods, p.
26. This means that the specific setting and specific
characters of a dialogue are not as essential for Cicero as
they are for Plato; he distinguishes his interlocutors by
type, and characterizes them in accord with his own regard
of that type. This guarantees that a foregone conclusion
will be achieved whenever Cicero deems it desirable. See
The Basic Works of Cicero ed. Moses Hadas (New York: The
Modern Library, 1951), p. 61; Moses Hadas, A History of
Latin Literature (New York: Columbia University Press,
39
1952), p. 122; and Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind:
Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama
(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), pp.
68-69.
^ Tusoulan Disputations trans. J.E. King, 2nd ed.,
The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1945), pp. 11, 13, 15. Elizabeth Hazelton
Haight, The Roman Use of Anecdotes in Cicero3 Livy 3 & the
Satirists (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), notes
that Cicero (like Xenophon) employs anecdotes because they
"enrich the dialogue though [or becauseI] they are intro
duced informally in natural conversation. They not only
adorn it, but illuminate it" (p. 12). In like manner,
Cicero also makes frequent allusion to the works of Latin
and Greek playwrights, or to dramatic terminology: see F.
Warren Wright, "Cicero and the Theater," Smith College
Classical Studies, 11 (1931), 31-93, and especially "Figu
rative Language, Drawn from Drama and Stage," 94-106.
22
In Plutarch’s Moralia trans. Edwin L. Minar, Jr.
[Table-Talk, Bks. VII-VIII], F.H. Sandbach [Bk. IX], and
W.C. Helmbold [Dialogue on Love], The Loeb Classical Li
brary, 15 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1968), IX, Minar remarks that Plutarch's dialogues
"differ widely in dramatic liveliness, and in the degree to
which they seem to be based on recollection, or on memoran
da, of actual conversations" (p. 2). This is merely a
euphemistic way of saying that dialogues like Advice About
Keeping Well, On the Control of Anger, and The Dialogue on
Love are treatises in dialogue trappings. Martha Hale
Shackford, Plutarch in Renaissance England with Special
Reference to Shakespeare (n.p.: Wellesly College, 1929),
shows that, structurally, Plutarch's dialogues have very
little influence on the drama, while conceptual elements in
the Moralia do appear.
2 1
In order to look at Menippean satire as an analyt
ical and dialectical form in Lucian, it is necessary to
isolate its rhetorical purpose [see Northrop Frye, "Rhetor
ical Criticism: Theory of Genres," Anatomy of Criticism:
Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957),
pp. 309-12], to locate the roots of Lucian's conception of
satire and its relation to his skepticism [see Lesky, A
History of Greek Literature, pp. 839-40], to examine the
criteria by which Lucian's satires can be considered
Menippean [see F. Anne Payne, "Lucian as Menippean Sati
rist," Chaucer and Menippean Satire (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1981), pp. 38-54], and to see that
Lucian's eclectic approach to the dialogue ensures no
single definition of his dialogue "style" is possible [see
40
Christopher Robinson, Lucian and his Influence in Europe
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979),
pp. 8-14] .
^ Lucian trans. A.M. Harmon, The Loeb Classical Lib
rary, 8 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1921), I, 429.
Additional sources to be consulted for Lucian's dialogues
will include Harmon's Loeb translations, volumes II [New
York: The Macmillan Co., 1915] and III [New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1921]. Volume and page references to these
editions will be included in parentheses following subse
quent quotations.
25
Because, of course, Lucian has mocked philosophers,
not Philosophy. Far worse than the ridicule of satiric
dialogue, Philosophy later suffers abandonment due to dia
logue's progeny. Letters sent from Stephen of Tournai to
the Pope (c. 1192-1203) report the Schoolmen's zeal for
disputation, preferring form over content: "Philosophy
cries that her garments are torn and disordered and, mod
estly concealing her nudity by a few specific tatters,
neither is consulted nor consoles as of old" (Lynn
Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages
[New York: Columbia University Press, 1944], p. 24).
• y c
The Dialogic Imagination ed. Michael Holquist,
trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: Univer
sity of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 20-31. Holquist writes
that in Bakhtin, "Dialogism is the characteristic episte-
mological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia [the
conditions which determine meaning] . . . there is a con
stant interaction between meanings, all of which have the
potential of conditioning others . . . This dialogic im
perative . . . insures that there can be no actual mono
logue" (p. 426) . Thus Rudolf Hirzel, Der Dialog: Ein
literar-historischer Versuch (1895; rpt. New York: Georg
Olms Verlag, 1963) and Elizabeth Merrill, The Dialogue in
English Literature (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911)
indicate that later dialogues and dialogue variants are all
related in some sense to the basic designs of these early
prototypes.
27
Unlike the wide-open forum of entertainment and
elucidation provided by dialogues like the symposium and
Lucianic types, sacred dialogues like those of the
Hermetica (a pseudonymous compilation of writers spanning
approximately 100-300 A.D.) and their patristic counter
parts tend to cultivate an intimate atmosphere conducive to
learning. This introduces a distinctive quality of many of
the sacred dialogues: because they have a pedagogical con
cern with ideas themselves, not with the method of evoking
41
those ideas (which is teaching or lecturing itself), such
dialogues commonly feature an interlocutor who acts as
pedagogue (e.g. Hermes to Tat in the Asclepius) and dissem
inates the concepts espoused by the dialogue writer; this
interlocutor controls the dialogue much as Socrates does,
but he pointedly lectures to other interlocutors rather
than attempting to draw the truth out of them (which is
precisely the opposite of the approach in Plato's dia
logues, particularly in Menos and Phaedo). The impetus for
this is to remove the possibility of false conclusions
about a specific religious point of view while maintaining
the conversational sense that implies at least two points
of view are always being examined. It is dramatic dialogue
without the drama of conflict.
28
Platonic didacticism is given secular treatment in
the question-and-answer dialogue (see William Lloyd Daly,
"The Question-and-Answer Dialogue,” The Altercatio Hadriani
Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi and the Question-and-Answer
Dialogue [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1939], pp.
25-85)— the most common examples of which in the Elizabeth
an era are the humanist schoolteacher's Absey (ABC) exer
cise books— and in the instructional dialogues so popular
in England, ranging from Roger Ascham's Toxophilus3 the
schole of shootinge conteyned in two bookes (1545) to Isaac
Walton's The Compleat Angler3 or the contemplative man's
recreation (1653).
29
And later in the Provengal tensons which also re
quire the decision of a judge to settle dispute, the Ital
ian contrasti depicting argument between opposites (like
the French d§bats, between prostitute and virgin, wine and
water), and for the trial motif in general, like the pas
sages of legal elenchos in John Foxe's The Actes and
Monuments of These Latter Perilous Days (1563).
30
In the former poem, the devil's messenger tries to
persuade a man who inattentively attended church that the
seven deadly sins cannot harm him. The good man, however,
defeats each of the devil's individual challenges with
lengthy counter-examples, e.g. against Envy:
"No mon schile grucchen: Of otheres,wel-fare,
And gif he doth, for sothe: He mispayeth god thare.
ffor god wol giue: To whom his wille is.
Whoso hath envye ther-to: ffor sothe, he nis not wys."
The false schrewe onswerde thore
And bad hym sigge so nomore.
"Thou spekest of wrahthe in thi tale
And seist hit is ageyn soule-hale.
That is not soth, but falshede;
Wrahthe was neuere synful dede"
42
{The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. ed. Carl Horstmann, The
Early English Text Society [London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner & Co., 1892], p. 338); ultimately out-argued, the
devil is sent back to hell empty-handed.
For a history and analysis of the motives present in
the latter poem (examining exemplary poems from the twelfth
through seventeenth centuries), see Hiram Pflaum, "Der
allegorische Streit zwischen Synagoge und Kirche in der
europaischen Dichtung des Mittelalters" ["The Allegorical
Dispute Between Synagogue (Synagoga) and Church (Ecclesia)
in the European Poetry of the Middle Ages"], Archivum
Romanicum 18 (1934), 243-340; the poem itself appears in
the appendix, 332-40. Rival Christian/Jewish disputants
begin being represented as Ecclesia/Synagoga during the
mid-twelfth century, as public disputations of this sort
did occur— though rarely with Ciceronian objectivity: "In
recording the most open public disputation to take place in
the Middle Ages, that of Barcelona in 1263, the Christian
account stresses that the object of the disputation was not
to question the validity of Christianity, 'which because of
its certainty cannot be subjected to debate'" ("Disputa
tions and Polemic," Encyclopedia Judaica, 1972 ed., p. 79).
The obstinacy of religious disputants is equally apparent
in Elizabethan England at the time of Bruno's visit and
immediately after, as in the many Protestant/Papist dispu
tations and dialogues. See Peter Milward, Religious Con
troversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed
Sources (London: The Scholar Press, 1977), pp. 127-56.
For an overview of the variety of medieval disputation
poems, see Hans Walther, Das Streitgedioht in der latein-
isahen Literatur des Mittelalters (Munchen: C.H. Beck'sche
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1920). The "Obersicht uber die
Streitgedichte" ["Survey of the Dispute Poems"] in the
study's second section covers Folk/Popular Sources (pp. 34-
88), Classical Sources (88-93), Theological-Dogmatic Dis
pute Poems (93-105), Theological-Moralist Dispute Poems
(105-26), Legal Disputations (126-35), Disputes Questioning
Love and Sex (135-53) , Contrasting Political Assembly
(Diet) and Monastic Order (153-70), and Political Dispute
Poems (170-84). Walther also includes an extensive appen
dix of excerpted streitgedichte.
Hiram Peri (Pflaum) , "Die scholastiche Disputa
tion," Romanica et Occidentalia: Etudes dediees U la m§m-
oire de Hiram Peri (Pflaum) ed. Moshe Lazar (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 1963), pp. 364-65, gives the disputation form
used at the University of Koln in 1480: quaestio, expositio
describing necessary major and possible minor arguments,
calculated oppositio to the anticipated responses, and the
correct responsio to each oppositio. The closed system of
the disputation is obvious here. The quaestio itself, how-
43
ever, is clearly a product of systematic inquiry: "The for
mal lectio tended to become a series of questiones raised
by the master or his hearers, and solved as he proceeded.
The questiones of Stephen Langton (before 1206) were lec
tures of this kind. As studies came to comprise the writ
ings of Aristotle and other text-books, the range and com
plexity of these questiones increased . . . The surviving
texts of the numerous questiones on the books of Aristotle
originated in this way" (Hastings Rashdall, The Univer
sities of Europe in the Middle Ages ed. F.M. Powicke and
A.B. Emden, 3 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936], I,
490). Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1960), concludes "Hence so
far as rational pro-and-con discussion of any given subject
can produce knowledge, Aristotle did provide rules, those
to be found in the Topics . . . The Schoolmen of the Middle
Ages shared Aristotle's faith that in matters not suscepti
ble of strict proof, the truth can be arrived at through
disciplined debate"; the humanists (and Bruno, understand
ably, considering his delight in disputation and his appar
ent lack of aptitude for it) challenged its use, not its
validity, "the zeal for forensic victory and for glory, so
they held, had replaced the search for truth" (p. 10).
Oxford's formal disputations are as guilty of this as those
of any institution; see the methodology reprinted from MS.
Magd. Coll. 38 (ff. 16v-48v), written about 1420, in t
Statvta Antiqva Vniversitatis Oxoniensis ed. Strickland
Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), pp. 643-47.
32 Rashdall, I, 255.
33
Thorndike, University Records, p. 14. A decree to
the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris, dated 1272,
has the effect of shifting emphasis in disputation from
content to form, warning "if anyone shall have disputed at
Paris any question which seems to touch both faith and phi
losophy, if he shall have determined it contrary to the
faith, henceforth he shall forever be deprived of our soci
ety as a heretic, unless he shall have been at pains humbly
and devoutly to revoke his error and his heresy, within
three days after our warning, in full congregation or else
where where it shall seem to us expedient" (Thorndike, p.
86) .
3^ On the evolution of dialogue in the Visitatio
drama, see O.B. Hardison, Jr., Christian Rite & Christian
Drama in the Middle Ages: Essays in the Origin and Early
History of Modern Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universi
ty Press, 1965), pp. 246-47. Hardison believes the reason
for the symmetry in La Seinte Resureccion "goes beyond the
mere desire for rhetorical display . . . The symmetry
44
reflects the dramatist's recognition of the dialectic qual
ity of dramatic speech" (p. 276).
See David Bevington, Medieval Drama (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975), pp. 178-79, and Edward
Noble Stone, A Translation of Chapters XI-XVI of the
Pseudo-Augustinian Sermon Against Jews, Pagans and Arians,
Concerning the Creed, also of the Ordo Prophetarum of St.
Martial of Limoges (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1928). In both cases, Mosh£ Lazar, "Enseignement et
Spectacle: La 'Disputatio' comme 'scfene A faire' dans le
drame religieux du moyen-Sge," Studies in the Drama ed.
Arieh Sachs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967), reveals the
conflict caused by the Jews in the debates as the disputa
tion's "sc§ne a faire," and extends the notion to the
drama, noting that the conflict of the disputation (or,
presumably, of any "dramatic" dialogue) can also serve as
the "sc&ne & faire" for the drama (pp. 132-43). Exemplary
disputation (covering topics such as Epicurean and Stoic
doctrines, Roman history, the origin of the universe and of
man, and metempsychosis) from the Myst^re St. Denis is in
cluded, pp. 144-51.
3 6
See Jan Kott, "Lucian in Cymbeline," The Eating of
the Gods: An Interpretation of Greek Tragedy trans.
Boleslaw Taborski and Edward J. Czerwinski (New York:
Vintage Books, 1974), pp. 268-73.
A.J. Krailsheimer, Rabelais and the Franciscans
(Oxford:■Clarendon Press, 1963), comments that Thaumaste
"is neither a fool nor a pedant, and he comes in all sin
cerity to learn from Pantagruel. What is ridiculed in
these chapters is the whole system of solemn disputation,
an essential feature of Scholastic instruction. The broad
farce of the episode depends largely on the assumption that
Thaumaste takes seriously the gestures which Panurge and
the reader know to be absurd" (p. 210).
38
G. Mallary Masters, Rabelaisian Dialectic and the
Platonic-Hermetic Tradition (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1969), maintains that it is Panurge's un
willingness to contemplatively examine his dilemma that
"dooms any attempt at discourse whether through divination
or philosophical dialogue to failure" (p. 48), and that
this inversion of the conventional attitude towards seeking
truth during the course of a symposium dialogue is mirrored
by the inversion of Socratic elenchos in which Panurge asks
questions of the philosopher (p. 50).
39 Madeleine Doran, Endeavors of Art: A study of form
in Elizabethan drama (Madison: University of Wisconsin
45
Press, 1954), pp. 70-72; see also Section II of the
Poetics. Cf. Torquato Tasso's Disaorso dell'arte del
dialogo (1585), Tasso's Dialogues: A Selection trans.
Carnes Lord and Dain A. Trafton (Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1982), pp. 19-33.
^ Particularly if one begins with the assumption that
the ideal dialogue is "a conversation that develops thought
through the action and reaction upon one another of defi
nitely and dramatically characterized personalities, and
that satisfies the demand for unity made by the canons of
all art" (Merrill, The Dialogue in English Literature, p.
12). Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature, declares
that the dialogue, "especially as it appears in the early
and middle period of Plato's creative activity, displays a
genius in its scenic structure, a directness and charm in
its conversation, a love of life, of drama and of philoso
phy that make it a characteristic and inimitable work of
art" (p. 513).
Alanus de Insulis (Alaine de Lille), in the tenth-
century De planetu natura, provides an analogy for the
writer's paradox of the dialogue that is also a drama in
his prologue, commenting on man's duality that "He is both
predicate and subject, he becomes likewise of two declen
sions, he pushes the laws of grammar too far. He, though
made by Nature's skill, barbarously denies that he is a
man" [The Complaint of Nature trans. Douglas M. Moffat (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1908), p. 3].
Editors and translators frequently remark about the
theatricality of a dialogue writer's work, and some find
themselves exasperated and confused by the synthesis of
forms: in his discussion of Heywood's Of Gentylnes and
Nobylyte, a verse dialogue, Robert W. Bolwell, The Life and
Works of John Heywood (New York: Columbia University Press,
1921), uses the words "play," "disputation," "debate," and
"argument" as approximately equivalent designations, con
cluding "His purpose here obviously is to urge reformation,
to drive home certain ideas proclaimed in the debate and in
general to bind the whole matter together by taking a less
personal view of the problem" (pp. 94-95; see text below).
Craig R. Thompson makes comments on the dramatic nature of
Erasmus' Colloquia throughout his translation, The
Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965), and prefaces these comments by noting that
"Situation, plot, and characterization make them more than
mere dialogues; they are incipient dramas or novels. As
such they may have contributed more than has been recog
nized to the development of drama and prose fiction.
Erasmus had the dramatist's eye; he saw everything and
could re-create scenes with his pen" (p. xxvi).
46
41 Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 249.
^ Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind, pp. 1-11.
^ Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion3 Ide
ology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contem
poraries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp.
3-28.
44
K%ng John ed. E.A.J. Honigmann, The Arden Shake
speare (New York: Methuen, Inc., 1954), pp. 14-15.
^ Ramust Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 151. See also
Ong's comments on the attacks in Ramus' Remarks on
Aristotle , pp. 174-75.
^ That is, the Greek filotimos, "loving or seeking
after honor." Cf. with the Bruno personae from the London
dialogues, Teofilo and Filoteo ("loving or seeking after
god").
47 Published in some editions with the rare Latin
dialogues Idiota Triumphans and De somnii interpretations',
see Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p.
294n2.
4 8
Such as the letter from Sir Henry Cobham, British
Ambassador in Paris, to Sir Thomas Walsingham; see Singer,
pp. 24-25.
49
Although Jessica Jean Warnlof, "The Influence of
Giordano Bruno on the Writings of Sir Philip Sidney," Diss.
Texas A&M University 197 3, pp. 55-88, seeks to defend
Sidney's friendship for Bruno.
50
See G. Blakemore Evans, "Chronology and Sources,"
The Riverside Shakespeare ed. Evans et. at. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974), cites possible commedia
dell'arte influence in Love's Labour’s Lost (p. 50), and
untranslated Italian sources for The Merchant of Venice ,
Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure
and Othello (pp. 51-54).
47
II. "THAT COWARDLY SECT OF PEDANTS": THE PEDANT CHARACTER'S
FUNCTION IN BRUNO'S DIALOGUE STRUCTURE
La aena de le aeneri (1584)
It is most appropriate that in the first of his ver
nacular dialogues, La aena de le oeneri [The Ash Wednesday
Supper], Bruno's whipping-boy of intellectual hybris , the
pedant, is allowed the first comments on the dialogue form.
Joined by Teofilo the philosopher, and students Smitho and
Frulla, Prudenzio declares that they should engage in a
tetralogue to discuss the encounter between the Nolan and
two Oxford doctors, Torquato and Nundinio, at a dinner held
by Fulke Greville on Ash Wednesday. The very topic of dis
cussion suggests that most explicit of dialogue, forms, the
symposium, so Frulla is perplexed and inquires why Pruden
zio wants to call their discussion a tetralogue. The ped
ant quickly explains that a tetralogue is quatuorum sermo,
while a dialogue is strictly duorum sermo; furthermore, the
"di" in dialogue does not etymologically derive from
diversum, suggesting a multiplicity of speakers. Teofilo
tells Prudenzio he is "troppo prudente," too prudent, and
in doing so plays on the latinate root of the name and the
adjective, prudens, "foreseeing." The scholastic obsession
with minutiae directs Prudenzio simultaneously to look for
opportunities to demonstrate his command of Latin and the
classics, and in doing this to probe their roots and expli
48
cate their "true" meanings. Although his grammatical ob
jections are technically correct, he is "too prudent" in
this response, that is, he looks past the obvious to arrive
at an absurd conclusion. By suggesting that they carry on
with their tetralogue, rather than recognizing the obvious
application of the classical dialogue form to their topos,
he betrays the superficiality of his learning; by obsti^
nately insisting that the other interlocutors share his
conclusion, he demonstrates the pedantic intolerance that
all of Bruno's Italian dialogues expressly attack. Pruden
zio is nonplussed by the logically simple explanation of
Teofilo that the four of them will share in the two-fold
processes "of proposing and replying, of discussing and
listening" [di proponere e rispondere, di raggionare e as-
coltare].! Bruno makes his purpose in the matter quite
clear by not allowing Prudenzio a rebuttal. La oena de le
oeneri is "the Ash Wednesday Supper," but for the pedants
Prudenzio, Torquato and Nundinio the dialogue is also "the
supper of ashes," a humble— and humbling— repast.
Teofilo's response to Prudenzio succinctly expresses
Ciceronian dialectic's practice of leisurely weighing argu
ments, as revised by the Italian humanist dialogues of the
fifteenth century:2 the dialogue is used to initiate and
continue arguments without necessarily resolving them. For
Bruno, this means it can be forged as a weapon against in
tolerance, depicting exchanges of ideas that otherwise
would not occur. Supporting the external dialogue struc
ture, Bruno employs a bipartite internal structure which
reappears to some degree in each of his London dialogues:
the condemnation of pedantry— emblematically representing
spiritual, intellectual and occasionally even physical in
tolerance— and the affirmation of freethinking, of examin
ing ideas without ideological bias in hopes of syncret-
ically formulating the means for man to approach the per
fect Good which is God as described in Boethius' Neoplaton-
ic De consolatio philosophiae: "The reward of the good,
then, a reward that can never be decreased, that no one1s
power can diminish, and no one's wickedness darken, is to
become gods."J In the second of La aena*s five dialogues,
Teofilo relates how Greville asked the Nolan to come to his
house on Ash Wednesday to dine and afterwards to discuss
Copernican theory with some learned opponents: the Nolan
responded that he would enjoy "showing the imbecility of
their contrary opinions through the same principles by
which they think them to be confirmed" [di mostrar la im-
becillitA di contrari pareri per i medesimi principii, co'
quali pensano esser confirmati] (50). This reveals Bruno's
real intention for the dialogue: to confront and combat re
sistance to new ideas. To achieve this, he employs ele
ments of style adapted from nearly every major dialogist in
antiquity, as well as refinements incorporated from medie
val and modern models.
50
As in Plato's Symposium, the conversation occurring at
Greville's gathering is reported in the third dialogue by
an interlocutor who did not participate in the conversa
tion. But where Apollodorus offers relatively little ex
traneous commentary (beyond a bit of dramatic exposition),
Teofilo undertakes to clarify points to Frulla and Smitho
after he has narrated the Nolan's discussion of them—
Apollodorus describes the conversation, while Teofilo actu
ally extends it. But as prologue to the reported dialogue,
Bruno has Teofilo expand the mise-en-scane, framing the de
bate of Copernican theories and the attacks on scholastic
intolerance with the context of learned men suffering at
the hands of the ignorant, by describing the misfortunes of
the Nolan and his two companions, John Florio and Matthew
Gwinne, as they set out for Greville's home on the fateful
evening. Reflecting the more anecdotal nature of Xeno
phon's Symposium, and the extended sensory description of
the dialogue's setting in Municius Felix' Octavius (c. 197
A.D.), Bruno depicts through Teofilo the languid, decrepit
boatmen who cheerlessly ferried the three dinnergoers
across the river in a boat riddled with holes; when their
anxious journey ended they gratefully leaped to shore, only
to discover they had made almost no progress from their
point of origin. Worst of all were the horrible pools of
muck through which they were consequently forced to slog,
"ever slicing through the liquid slime, we sank knee-deep
51
toward that deep and dark Avernus" [sempre spaccando il li-
quido limo, penetravamo sin alia misura delle ginocchia
verso il profondo e tenebroso Averno] (58) . Finally they
reached a point at which they could escape from the mire,
"which, although it was still a bit stingy about giving us
some of its border for a road, yet it took up treating us
more courteously, hindering our feet no further" [il quale,
benchd ancor lui fusse avaro d'un poco di margine per darne
la strada, pure ne relev5 con trattarci pid cortesemente,
non inceppando oltre i nostri piedi] (60) . This vivid .
exposition of the events leading up to the symposium itself
also serves as a metaphorical parallel to the Nolan's en
counter with the Oxford doctors, Nundinio and Torquato:
their obstinate resistance to the logic of Copernicus'
theories and the Nolan's explanation of them makes discus
sion with them something very like slogging through mud,
and in the end they choose to abandon the conversation
rather than concede defeat— freeing Bruno from the heavy
slime of their dogmatic stubbornness. This comic exposi
tion (though reported with the relative solemnity of one
who had experienced the trials) is reminiscent of Lucian's
addition to the symposium tradition, The Carousal, or the
Lapiths, which also mentions the unpleasant realities of
the conventionally idyllic situation; but where Lucian
concludes his dialogue with the attempted rape of a flute-
girl, drunken vomiting, and a brawl, Bruno's dialogue con-
52
eludes with a very pragmatic discussion of certain aspects
of Copernican theory led by Teofilo for the benefit of his
fellow interlocutors of the dialogue— not as a part of
Greville's symposium. Bruno's persona (or alternate per
sona, since Teofilo even in name expresses Bruno's views),
the Nolan, does indeed debate with the Oxford doctors, but
he does this to expose their ineptitude and pride, and to
clear the way for a serious discussion of the topicand
underscoring the intellectual egotism of the Oxford pedants
is the continued banality and sublime inappropriateness of
Bruno's token pedant, the interlocutor Prudenzio.
For Bruno, the most direct line of attack when dealing
with the intellectual intolerance or dogmatic prejudice
typified by the pedant is to lead the offending individual
into disrepute as an authority, since the real enemy is not
simple misunderstanding but conscious ignorance. In the
discussion following Greville's dinner, the Nolan inverts
the Oxford doctors' attacks so they discredit themselves
while trying to discredit their opponent. Nundinio's first
proposition in the third dialogue is accompanied by "a
delicate laugh" (85) signifying his self-confidence: he
attempts to ridicule the Nolan because he does not under
stand English; the attempt fails because the Italian speaks
other "civilized" languages (Spanish, Italian, French) in
addition to the scholar's presupposed Latin, and implies
that only Englishmen value their own language so highly as
53
to learn those of no other countries. When the discussion
turns to the World Soul as in Plato's Timaeus, Nundinio
attempts to take the place of Socrates and to employ his
dialectical elenahos, or cross-examination; whereas Socra
tes ' questions imply a syllogistic series conceived before
he ever asks his first question, thus guaranteeing him con
trol of the entire discussion, Nundinio simply hopes to
rhetorically compose and ask the one question fatal to the
Nolan's argument, more in the fashion of the pre-Socratic
Sophists. When the Nolan declares that the earth and all
stars have their own individual souls, Nundinio leaps to
the attack: "'Do you believe,' said Nundinio, 'that this
soul is sensitive?' 'Not only sensitive,' responds the
Nolan, 'but even intelligent; not only intelligent, like
our own, but perhaps even more.' Here Nundinio shuts up,
and does not laugh" [— Credete, disse Nundinio, che sii
sensitiva quest'anima?— Non solo sensitiva, rispose il
Nolano, ma anco intellettiva; non solo intellettiva, come
la nostra, ma forse anco piu.— Qua tacque Nundinio, e non
rise] (109-10).
At the conclusion of the Nolan's disarming explana
tions the doctors storm out; the other dinnergoers apolo
gize for the boorish behavior of Torquato and Nundinio, who
never concede defeat. Yet nowhere do the Oxford doctors
offer debate on the scientific theories of Copernicus after
they pose problems for the Nolan to solve (e.g., how the
54
earth can move when it is the fixed center of the universe,
around which all motion revolves), transparently revealing
the limitations of their knowledge.^ Frulla discloses the
source of the problem when he declares to his fellow inter
locutors ,
These are the fruits of England; and search for
as long as you want, in these days of ours you'll
find that they're all doctors of grammar, and in
that happy nation a constellation of pedantically
obstinate ignorance and presumption mixed with
provincial incivility reigns, that would undo
even the patience of Job.
[Questi sono i frutti d'Inghilterra; e cercatene
pur quanti volete, che le troverete tutti dot-
tori in grammatica in questi nostri giorni, ne'
quali in la felice patria regna una costelia-
zione di pedantesca ostinatissima ignoranza e
presunzione mista con una rustica incivility,
che farebbe prevaricar la pazienza di Giobbe]
(133).
Because the medieval universities, populated by great ex
perimenters like Roger Bacon, are synonymous to Bruno with
the kind of freethinking inquiry he wishes to reestablish
"in these days of ours," he directs his frustration at
their successors, the humanist grammarians. This anti
pedant declaration is a trademark of the dialogues Bruno
published in London. It is partially persuasio and par
tially invective— owing as much to the; same mix employed by
St. Jerome in his Dialogus contra Pelagianos (c. 415) as to
any earlier Greek or Roman models. Just as a reader finds
the position of the Pelagian heretic Critobulus intolerable
largely because Jerome portrays him as an intolerably un-
55
sympathetic character, Bruno depicts his Oxford opponents
as mean-spirited villains who inspire nothing so much as
our contempt.
Prudenzio is similarly treated. While Smitho and
Frulla ask Teofilo for clarifications throughout the dia
logue, Prudenzio is merely contemptuous of his wisdom. As
Augustine in De libevo arbitravio censures his friend
Evodius for his apparent lack of sincerity by telling him
not to ask any more questions if he does not wish to hear
the answers, when Prudenzio exclaims he has no use for
Teofilo's ideas, Bruno through his persona simply asks the
pedant, as one would a naughty child, not to interrupt them
any further. When Smitho inquires how to overcome the in
dividual who believes his knowledge is omniscient, Frulla
blurts a response then modified by Teofilo:
FRULLA. By uprooting that head and planting
another.
TEOFILO. By uprooting that esteem of knowing
through some method of argumentation,
and with shrewd persuasions to divest
them, if one is able, of that insane
opinion, to the end that they are re-?
stored as listeners;
[F. Con toglieri via quel capo, e piantargliene
un altro.
T. Con toglieri via in qualche modo d'argumenta-
zione quella esistimazion di sapere, e con
argute persuasioni spogliarle, quanto si pu5,
di quella stolta opinione, a fin che si ren-
dano uditori] (44);
again, this resembles Socratic dialectic, functioning to
throw into question any notion of final knowledge. In his
dialogue's characterization of the pedant, Bruno most often
implies that there is really no hope of rehabilitating
those who are ignorant, and proud of it, by choice. His
teleological purpose, then, in exposing them to ridicule is
simply to mark them as a significant nemesis to any free-
thinking man.
De la causa3 pvinaipio e uno (1584)
Bruno reveals in the first dialogue of De la causa3
pvincipio e uno [On Cause3 Principle and the One] that his
major concern in La aena was not to proclaim the theories
of Copernicus as inviolable, but merely to exercise the
freedom of discussing them openmindedly with others; in
previewing the argument for the first of De la causa's five
dialogues, he unenthusiastically terms it "an apology, or
some other I-don't-know-what, concerning the five dialogues
about La cena de le cenevi" [una apologia, o qualch'altro
non so che, circa gli cinque dialogi intorno La cena de le
cenevi] (177). Bruno had obviously faced considerable neg
ative reaction from his criticism of Oxford, its doctors,
and of obstinate people in general, so Armesso— who makes
no distinction between Bruno, the Nolan, La cena' s Teofilo
and De la causa's Filoteo— sympathetically warns the phi
losopher that in De la causa he doesn't want "these dis
courses of yours to become comedies, tragedies, laments,
dialogues, or thingamajigs like those that not long ago, by
57
being thrust out into the open for amusement, have forced
you to be locked up and withdrawn at home" [questi vostri
discorsi vegnan formate comedie, tragedie, lamenti, dia
logic o come vogliam dire, simili a quelli che poco tempo
fa, per esserno essi usciti in campo a spasso, vi hanno
forzato di starvi rinchiusi e retirati in casa] (194).
Ignoring temporarily the comments of Smitho, Prudenzio and
Frulla in La aena, Armesso asks Filoteo why he resorted to
"mixing grave and serious, moral and natural, ignoble and
noble, philosophical and comical propositions" [meschiando
propositi gravi e seriosi, morali e naturali, ignobili e
nobili, filosofici e comici] (197): he answers simply that
as at any supper, a variety of foods were served, thus ac
knowledging its eclectic form and the resonant influence of
the symposia from diverse stylists Plato, Xenophon, Plu
tarch and Lucian. He explains the dialogue was a "tipico
simposio," or symbolic dinner, archetypically represented
by Adam's fateful dinner as a joining together of the un
pleasant and the pleasant. Armesso's comments are witness
of Bruno's consciousness of his dialogue's multifaceted
style: he wishes his dialogues to appear variously comic
and serious, contemplative and satiric, didactic and dra
matic. Exploiting what Bakhtin calls the "serio-comical"
potency of the dialogue form, Bruno seeks to break through
the barriers of obstinate ignorance by concealing his di
dactic intent inside a basically dramatic vehicle.
58
Making it quite clear that he is the injured party,
Filoteo/Bruno explains that he didn't cast the first stone
at the Oxford doctors; he and his ideas were given shoddy
treatment by the university savants. La cena was therefore
in part motivated by revenge (199), though its purpose was
not to fulfill a vendetta: "I am of the frame of mind con
cerning correction, that in its exercise we are like unto
Gods” [Io son stato su la correzione, nell'esercizio della
quale ancora siamo simili agli Dei] (200).6 Filoteo ex
plains he was only acting to protect his revered philosophy
from the irreverent rhetoric and idiosyncrasies of pedants,
but this doesn't arrest Armesso's lament that Teofilo/Filo-
teo didn't meet some of his truly learned countrymen.
Bruno, however, does not allow the two speakers to maintain
these polarized views, reversing their positions in order
to keep the lines of disputation open and active in the
best tradition of the philosophical dialogue: Armesso adds
that he'd like to translate Filoteo's dialogues into Eng
lish in order to instruct the badly (i.e., poorly and erro
neously) educated (206-207), and he refuses to defend the
bumptiously ignorant, declaring they merely exist like
dung, slime, filth (208)— in fact, much like the mire that
the Nolan, Gwinne and Florio had to traverse in order to
reach Greville's house. Filoteo, on the other hand, states
that he is not denying the fine tradition of erudition or
quality of education at Oxford; on those grounds, it is
59
comparable to any schools in Europe. The focus of his con
tention is simple: "I esteem the culture of the mind, how
ever base it be, above words and languages however high-
sounding" [io stimo pi-ti la coltura dell1 ingegno, quantunque
sordida la fusse, che di quantunque disertissime paroli e
lingue] (210). Reflecting precisely this, Bruno assails
his opponents with their own weapons through his persona's
employment of alternating doses of invective and persuasio.
As prologue to the second through fifth dialogues of
De la eausa, Filoteo introduces a list of dramat-is personae
which includes further development of his characterization
of the stereotypical pedant, and demonstrates the conta
gious nature of pedantry. Armesso asks if the book under
Filoteo's arm is La eena, and he is informed that it is De
la oausa> prinaipio e uno. When he inquires if it contains
more characters like Prudenzio to contend with, Filoteo
introduces each of the dialogue's interlocutors: Alessandro
Dicsono Aurelio,^ "who the Nolan loves as much as his own
eyes" [che il Nolano ama quanto gli occhi suoi], proposes
the subject of discussion; Teofilo, "who is me" [che sono
io], explicates the subject; Gervasio, a man "neither per
fumed nor putrid" [non odora n§ puzza], is not a philoso
pher like Dicsono and Teofilo though he enjoys being pres
ent at their conferences and "takes as comedy the acts of
Poliinnio" [prende per comedia gli fatti di Poliinnio]; and
Poliinnio himself, "this sacrilegious pedant" [Questo
60
sacrilego pedante], is
one of the inflexible censors of philosophers,
through whom Momus calls attention to himself,
one who is overly excited about his herd of stu
dents (whence this love bears the name Socratic);
the perpetual nemesis of the female sex, who by
resisting what is natural esteems himself an Or
pheus , Musaeus, Tityros and Amphion.8
[uno de ' rigidi censori di filosofi, onde si af-
ferma Momo, uno affettissimo circa il suo gregge
di scholastici, onde si noma nell'amor socra-
tico; uno, perpetuo nemico del femineo sesso,
onde, per non esser fisico, si stima Orfeo,
Museo, Titiro e Anfione] (214-15).
The point of alluding to Poliinnio's misogyny and alleged
homosexuality ("Socratic love") is simply to establish that
his responses are unnatural, as, by implication, anyone is
who stubbornly persists in perpetuating old concepts at the
cost of considering new ones. In a long speech at the con
clusion of the first dialogue, Filoteo invokes the gods to
watch over De la causa (as apparently they did not, over La
cena), and he calls for Poliinnio and his ilk to cast off
their misogyny: he plays the linguist's own game by pre
senting a list of masculine words with negative connota
tions and antonymous feminine words with positive connota
tions (e.g., hate versus amity, "qual l'odio, 13. l'ami-
cizia," 222), and then tries to shame the self-aggrandizing
pedants by wondering aloud how they can proudly proclaim
their misogyny when they have Queen Elizabeth as an exem
plar of all that is good in women— but in doing so, Filoteo
succumbs to prolixity and Armesso warns him to stop before
61
he out-pedants Poliinnio. Filoteo responds by handing him
the dialogues and telling him to read them. The first dia
logue, thus, is purely extraneous to Teofilo's delineation
and contrast of cause and principle, of matter and potency,
derived primarily from Lucretius' De rerum natura, Plato's
Timaeus, and Nicolas Cusanus' De doeta ignorantia*, but it
is essential for establishing the stereotype taking shape
in Bruno's developing war on pedantry.
Teofilo's disciple Dicsono implies at the beginning of
the third dialogue that Poliinnio and Gervasio have been
arguing, for he asks them not to interrupt again. Their
response to him forms a pattern repeated throughout De ta
causa:
POLIINNIO. Flat. [So be it.]
GERVASIO. If that fellow who is the magister
speaks, without a doubt I will not be
able to pass over it in silence.
[G. Se costui, che g il magister, parla, senza
dubio io non posso tacere] (225).
In this and each of his disruptive intrusions, Poliinnio
either interrupts pointlessly in Latin and is chastised by
Gervasio for his irrelevant remarks, or he quarrels with
some point of Teofilo's on superficial semantic grounds,
with Gervasio jumping in afterwards to censor him. This
clever technique allows Bruno simultaneously to continue
the character development of his interlocutors and to vig
orously attack the grammarian pedants without damaging the
credibility or temperate wisdom of his chief speaker, Teo-
62
filo. When Teofilo discusses animism, Poliinnio demands to
know whether along with all other matter his doctor's toga
and other clothes are also animated. Gervasio sneers, "I
do believe that your toga and mantle is quite animated,
when it contains an animal such as you inside [Credo bene
che la tua toga e il tuo mantello 5 bene animato, quando
contiene un animal, come tu sei, dentro] (241): punning on
anima and animate, Gervasio (like Teofilo earlier) skewers
the pedant with his own wordplay. When Poliinnio tries to
conceptualize the metaphysical infinity of the World Soul—
and he can do so only in spatial terms, interrupting Teo-
filo's discussion of it to challenge that it must be very
big if the world itself is also infinite— Gervasio relates
the story of a minister who had a giant crucifix made for
his church to indicate Christ's omnipresence in the world,
and the comments made afterwards by two peasants: one asked
the minister how much material would be required to make
Christ's stockings since he was infinite in presence, and
the other added that all the peas and beans from Melazzo
and Nicosia wouldn't be enough to satisfy His infinite ap
petite. The peasants' objectification of the abstract,
within the context of honest ignorance, is much more moral
ly acceptable to Bruno than Poliinnio's obstinate refusal
to attempt any real intellectual participation in their
propositions. Poliinnio's ignorance is exasperating be
cause he is a supposedly learned man— incessantly reminding
63
others of this— who insists on making foolish remarks in
Latin when the vernacular would be more practical and more
natural, and certainly no more ridiculous.
Bruno does more to prove Teofilo’s expertise and to
expose Poliinnio's fraudulent fagade (the same relationship
between Socrates and the Cynic Thrasymachus in Plato's
Re-public) than simply juxtaposing wisdom and asininity; he
dramatically accentuates the difference by introducing Ger
vasio not only as a median between them, but as someone who
also needs to develop a thirst for inquiry. Concluding the
second dialogue, Gervasio replies he has understood Teo
filo 's voice. Dicsono believes Gervasio has indeed under
stood the voice, "but of the proposition, I think it went
in one ear and out the other" [ma del proposito penso che
vi £ entrato per un'orecchia e uscito per l'altra] (253).
Bruno develops the enlightenment of Gervasio gradually in
order to magnify his dramatic portrait of the unyielding
Poliinnio.
Bruno regularly infuses his dialogues with dramatic
metaphors,^ reminiscent of his own experience as a play
wright and occasionally referring to characters from II
Candelaio, but his use of the soliloquy in De la causa is
an innovative and patently dramaturgical maneuver. The
final three dialogues open with soliloquies by Gervasio,
Poliinnio, and Teofilo respectively (Teofilo's speech,
though following the pattern of dialogues three and four,
64
is actually a monologue), and their effect is that of
achieving a separation of topic and individuation of
speaker, with the discrete dialogues formally resembling
act divisions in drama. Gervasio's speech opening the
third dialogue divulges his purpose in listening to the
others: he hopes to pick up a little philosophy, though the
real amusement is Poliinnio;
while he says that he wants to judge who speaks
well, who discourses well, who commits incongru
ity and errors in philosophy, when afterwards the
time comes for him to speak his part, not knowing
what to suggest, he reaches from inside his bag
of bombastic pedantry a little jumble of bulging
proverbs, of phrases in Latin or Greek, that are
never made with respect to what the others are
saying.
[mentre dice che vuol giudicar chi dice bene, chi
discorre meglio, chi fa delle incongruity ed
errori in filosofia, quando poi S tempo de dir
la sua parte, e non sapendo che porgere, viene a
sfilzarti da dentro il manico della sua ventosa
pedantaria una insalatina di proverbiuzzi, di
frase per latino o greco, che non fanno mai a
proposito di quel ch'altri dicono] (254).
Poliinnio enters to argue (and thus validate) Gervasio's
words, and in their dispute Gervasio also attacks Peter
Ramus, "un francese arcipedante" and Francesco Patrizzi,
"un altro stereo di pedanti, italiano" (260) ; with their
pedantic overexplications, both obscure rather than eluci
date the truth. Their obsession with words instead of
ideas represents a crucial hindrance to the theme of free-
thinking, and is Bruno's focus for the third dialogue. In
its course, he condemns the Paracelsians1 reductive expla
65
nation of man as a mere composite of chemicals (263), he
defends natural philosophy (i.e., magic) as a form of medi
cine from theological and scientific attack on the basis
that if it works, it should be applied (276-77), and he
contends that man has no more achieved his divine potential
of being all things at once than a rock which "is not lime,
is not a vase, is not dust, is not a plant" [non S calci,
non § vase, non & polve, non erba] (281) . He concludes
by defending the necessity of freethinking, citing the
errors of theologians who misinterpret Plato due to their
one-sided Aristotelian training; "Therefore, opinions most
certainly must be examined before being condemned" [Per5,
prima che sienno condannate, denno essere ben bene essamin-
ate le opinioni] (286). To achieve this, to remove the
barrier obstructing freethinking and subsequent realization
of human potential, man must first remove those opinionated
individuals who resist new ideas.
Poliinnio's soliloquy at the opening of the fourth
dialogue illustrates the dangerous triviality of the ped
ant's thoughts, which to Bruno is frightening when he con
siders the impressionable students flocking around the
grammarian doctors. Since Poliinnio is a learned fool, not
a natural fool, there is a hint of ironic knowledge in his
words. After some nonsensical Latin non sequiturs, he de
clares that since "there's no one else in this Lyceum, or
rather, Anti-Lyceum" [altro non & in questo Liceo, vet
66
potius Antiliceo] (289), he must walk and discourse alone;
indeed, with Poliinnio as sole interlocutor, there is no
dialogue as occurred in the Greek Lyceum, and his resist
ance to the exchange of knowledge promoted by the dialec
tic of the classical dialogue sets him appropriately in an
Anti-Lyceum. Since the discussion of matter has been giv
ing him fits, he equates Matter with Woman (seeing chaos as
the controlling factor in the existence of each) and rein
forces the stereotypical misogyny identified earlier as
concomitant to pedantry. Wound up in the fabric of his own
rhetoric, he is unravelled by the approach of Gervasio:
"Oh, I see that colossus of sloth, Gervasio, who breaks the
thread of my high-strung oration" [Oh, veggio quel colosso
di poltronaria, Gervasio, il quale interrompe della mia
nervosa orazione il filo] (292) . Gervasio is the hero who
arrives to slay the monster of Poliinnio's misogyny. The
pattern of comment and response between the two is brought
into play again, to demonstrate that Gervasio indeed has
been contributing to the dialogue and learning from it,
while Poliinnio continues to err, insulated from wisdom by
his own stubborn beliefs:
POLIINNIO. After all, returning to our subject,
woman is nothing but matter. If you
don't know that something is woman,
due to not knowing that something is
matter, study the peripatetics a good
deal, who by teaching you that some
thing is matter, teach you that thing
is woman.
GERVASIO. I certainly do see that by having a
67
peripatetic brain, you understand lit
tle or nothing of what Teofilo said
here concerning the essence and poten
cy of matter.
[P. In fine, per ritornare al proposito, la donna
non § altro che una materia. Se non sapete
che cosa § donna, per non saper che cosa &
materia, studiate alquanto gli peripatetici
che, non insegnarvi che cosa & materia, te
insegnaranno che cosa 5 donna.
G. Vedo bene che, per aver voi un cervello peri-
patetico, apprendeste poco o nulla di quel
che ieri disse il Teofilo circa l'essenza e
potenza della materia] (296).
Bruno does not oppose Aristotle per se, but rather the
Peripatetics, Aristotle's followers who admit no other ide
as to compete with— or to complete— Aristotle's. To demon
strate his conviction that all sources of ideas should be
examined, Teofilo later in the fourth dialogue makes allu
sion to the Bible. Dicsono notes that it is inappropriate
to use sources not relevant to a topic as support for a
point of view, and Teofilo/Bruno explains the principle be
hind his allusion: "I don't allege this by reasoning and
confirmation, but by shunning qualm as much as I am able;
for I fear no less to appear, than actually to be, opposed
to theology" [io non allego quello per raggione e confirma-
zione, ma per fuggir scrupolo, quanto posso; perchd non
meno temo apparere, che essere contrario alia teologia]
(300) . Bruno does not feel compelled to employ or to avoid
the viewpoint of theology— it is simply important that he
exercise any source for the sake of its ideas, not because
of any external connotations.
68
This comes to a logical conclusion in the monologue
spoken by Teofilo to open the final dialogue, addressing
the infinity and unity of the universe (the general topic
of his subsequent book of dialogues). Bruno sees "una per-
fetta unitS" in the reciprocal position that the universe
exists in all things as all things exist in the universe:
"Those philosophers who have met their friend, Wisdom, have
discovered this unity" [Quelli filosofi hanno ritrovata la
sua arnica Sofia, li quali hanno ritrovata questa units]
(324) . Discovering truth analogically by applying geometry
to gnostic exploration (as in Cusanus' De doeta ignoran-■
tia), Teofilo provides mental diagrams to demonstrate the
simultaneity of limited (i.e., capable of measurement) and
infinite existence; Poliinnio asks for more explanation,
admitting he isn't comprehending any of this. Since we de
light in what we can easily comprehend, Teofilo explains,
Poliinnio would prefer a single gem worth all the wealth in
the world to actually having all the world's wealth in its
virtually infinite bulk. Demonstrating once more the lim
ited abstract intellectual ability of the pedant, Poliinnio
can only assent ("Optime") to Teofilo's analogy while Ger
vasio, in a summation, shows how-? he has benefited from the
explanation and has understood the point of the dialogue
(342). Gervasio's simple openmindedness has brought him
great insight; Poliinnio's linguistic knowledge has availed
him nothing— worse yet, it is the orientation of his
69
knowledge towards the rhetorical minutiae of the grammarian
that has ultimately condemned him to ignorance.
De t 3 universo e mondi (1584)
Like La cena and De la causa, De I'infinitOj univevso
e mondi [On the Infinite: the Universe and Worlds] is di
vided into five dialogues. It also shares with them the
stated intention of having a learned speaker named Teofilo
or Filoteo (the names become randomly interchanged) ex
pounding the views of the Nolan explicitly, or implicitly,
on aspects of cosmology, metaphysics, and physics. And it
features one character, Burchio,^-® who stubbornly resiists
these views, refusing (or unable) to imaginatively partici
pate in their discussion, and who remains unchanged at the
book's end while other interlocutors claim to have in
creased their knowledge significantly. At times it has
much in common with both the catechetical dialogue and the
secular question-and-answer dialogues, for it clearly means
to correct erroneous conceptions the reader may share with
certain of its Aristotelian interlocutors— because of this
concern (or central action) implicit in its five dialogue
structure, and because its characters perform unique, inte
gral functions, it also resembles a drama in five acts
whose theme is the conversion of those in error, culminat
ing in the triumph of truth.
The first dialogue opens with Elpino opposing his
70
Aristotelianism to Filoteo's freethinking views, and with
both men attempting to employ Socratic dialectic to control
the direction of the dialogue to follow:
ELPINO. How is it possible that the universe is
infinite?
FILOTEO. How is it possible that the universe is
finite?
ELPINO. Are you trying to say that it's possible
to demonstrate this infinitude?
FILOTEO. Are you trying to say that it's possible
to demonstrate this finitude?
ELPINO. What kind of expansion is this?
FILOTEO. What kind of limitation is this?
[E. Come £ possible che l'universo sia infinito?
F. Come 5 possible che l'universo sia finito?
E. Volete voi che si possa dimostrar questa
infinitudine?
F. Volete voi che si possa dimostrar questa
finitudine?
E. Che dilatazione § questa?
F. Che margine § questa?] (367-68).
The Peripatetic argues for imposing limit, Filoteo argues
for rejecting limit; the dichotomy is analogous to the gen
eral ideology of the stolid Aristotelian doctors of Oxford
and the freethinking Italian Bruno, and explains the impe
tus for Bruno's attack on Aristotelianism in De I Hnfi.ni.to i
he sees it as a foundation supporting the grammarian ped
ants ' resistance to change. Even-tempered Fracastorio
urges the two to get on ("ad rem") with the discussion, and
Burchio expresses his anxiousness to hear this "favola o
fantasia"; but when Fracastorio asks the latter about what
he'll do if he finds the views of Teofilo convincing, he
retorts that they "cannot be comprehended by my head, nor
digested by my stomach" [non & possibile che possa esser
71
capito dal mio capo, ne digerito dal mio stomaco] (368).
Though he soon (unwittingly) participates in the attacks on
Aristotelian physics (371), Burchio refuses to admit that
there is truth in Teofilo's words. Fracastorio is depicted
as a man possessing wisdom because he seeks truth, which
transcends ideology; in defense of intellectual tolerance,
he voices the ideal relationship of theologians and philos
ophers as that of men seeking truth in mutual support of
each other's efforts (386-87). Elpino is placed in the
role of willing student who at the end of the first dia
logue has already seen the logic and sincerity of Teofilo's
disputation, announcing "I surrender to the fact of your
wisdom" [io cedo a fatto al vostro giudizio] (392). Bur
chio alone is unmoved. Turning the tenative feelings ex
pressed by Gervasio at the end of De la causa's second dia
logue to mere apathy, Bruno has an unconvinced Burchio
promise Filoteo "If I do not listen to your words, I will
(at least) hear your voice" [se non intenderb li senti-
menti, ascoltarb le paroli; se non ascoltarb le paroli,
udirb la voce] (393).
The second dialogue continues the development of char
acter and argument begun in the opening dialogue, with El
pino sharing in the criticism of Aristotelianism (e.g.,
402-403, 409-10) even while exhibiting his knowledge of the
topic by quoting propositions for Teofilo to refute.
Through argument and symbolic diagramming, Teofilo proves
72
among other things that man can imaginatively share in the
infinity of the divine intellect— the highest goal of free-
thinking. At the dialogue's end, Elpino declares he has
learned much and hopes to learn more; Fracastorio continues
his function as an informed bystander (acting as "auditore
solamente"); but Burchio, after listening to impassioned,
eloquent reasoning, can manage only a feeble support: "lit
tle by little, more and more I am drawing closer to under
standing you, so that bit by bit I come to value what you
are saying as possible, and perhaps even true" [a poco a
poco, pid e pid mi vo accostando all1intendervi, cossi a
mano a mano vegno a stimar verisimile, e forse vero, quel
che dite] (432).
By asserting in the third dialogue that the distant
planets and stars are no different than those closer to us,
Teofilo seeks to correct a misapprehension that has existed
since "the misty night of the rash sophists befell the day
of the scholars of antiquity" [al giorno de gli antichi
sapienti succese la caliginosa notte di temerari sofisti]
(434) . Everyone agrees with his discourses and evidence
except for Burchio, who calls it "dolce sofisticaria,"
sweet sophistry. Conceding that perhaps Burchio is weary
of hearing his opinions and those of Elpino, Teofilo asks
Fracastorio to take up the anti-Aristotelian gauntlet.
Fracastorio1s response is to initiate an ironic reversal of
positions that will not allow Burchio to passively listen
73
to the arguments of others:
My sweet Burchio, X am putting you in the posi
tion of Aristotle, and I choose to be in the po
sition of an idiot and rustic who confesses to
know nothing, who assumes to have understood
nothing either of that which Filoteo says and
means, or of that which Aristotle and the entire
world besides means.
[Dolce mio Burchio, io per me ti pono in luogo
d'Aristotele, ed io voglio essere in luogo di
uno idiota e rustico che confessa saper nulla,
presuppone di aver inteso niente, e di quello
che dice ed intende il Filoteo, e di quello che
intende Aristotele e tutto il mondo ancora]
(446) .
The proposed role-playing emphasizes both Bruno's conde
scending mockery of pedants and the stubbornly ignorant
(Burchio1s "dolce sofisticaria" is thrown back in his face
by Fracastorio's "Dolce mio Burchio"), and the inability of
pedants like Burchio to defend themselves in a true battle
of wit.
Fracastorio immediately goes on the offensive and
overwhelms his opponent— when Burchio makes one strong at
tempt to defend his position by rhetorically demanding to
know how order (e.g., the range of descriptive distinctions
from brightest to darkest planets) can exist, if the uni
verse is unified into a single consciousness: Fracastorio
deflates the attempt by turning the Aristotelians obses
sion with what is concretely demonstrable against him, re
plying that order as a means of definition, and hence lim
itation, exists only "Among dreams, fantasies, chimeras,
madness" [Ove son gli sogni, le fantasie, le chimere, le
74
pazzie] (45Q) . When the argument degenerates into mere
sniping (Burchio snarls that Aristotle is famous while the
others' master, namely Bruno, is unknown; Fracastorio de
clares Burchio's master has fed him on wind— on insubstan
tial words, "longwindedly" expressed'— and sent him out
naked), Filoteo orders them not to waste time on "propositi
disutili e vani" (460). Burchio musters his rhetorical
powers once again when Fracastorio continues the assault of
his argument, but the only defense he can manage is to
praise the grammarian pedants as "the profound, subtle,
golden, illustrious, impregnable, indisputable, angelic,
seraphic, cherubic, and divine doctors" [i dottori pro-
fondi, suttili, aurati, magni, inespugnabili, irrefraga-
bili, angelici, serafici, cherubici e divini] (466). His
digression completely disrupts the flow of the dialogue,
and in resorting afterwards to insults again he makes him
self vulnerable to the same abuse from the others. When he
cries out in frustration that he doesn't understand them,
doesn't know who they are and why they are trying to oppose
themselves to the opinions of "tanti gran dottori," Fracas
torio replies that this should have been his major premise
in arguing. Unable to advance the cause of Aristotle,
Burchio simply unloads a curse (e.g., "son of Momus, post
boy of whores" [figol de Momo, postliglion de le puttane],
469) on Fracastorio and the others— dramatizing the intel
lectual impotence of the pedant whose only weapons, words,
75
exist in perverse independence of ideas.
For the entire span of the fourth dialogue, Burchio is
silent. The discussion of the infinity of worlds, their
motion and configuration, and even atomism (492) is unin
terrupted by the Peripatetic zealot, but the triumph is not
complete because Filoteo and his colleagues have not yet
faced an able defender of Aristotelianism. The drama re
quires this final conflict before victory can be declared
for the Nolan, so Elpino announces at dialogue’s end that
tomorrow he will bring along Albertino, who is "accomp
lished in the common philosophy" [prattico nella commune
filosofia] (495), in the belief commonly held by those con
sidered philosophers, the university doctors.
The final dialogue opens with a bang: Albertino in
credulously demands "what extraordinary brain is this" [che
cervello estraordinario & questo] (496-97) who dares to
challenge the authority of Aristotle using ideas (like
Hermeticism's belief in man's infinite potential) dead for
centuries; former-Aristotelian Elpino explains the ideas
"are amputated roots that are germinating, ancient things
that are reviving, occult truths that are discovered" [Sono
amputate radici che germogliano, son cose antique che ri-
vegnono, son veritadi occolte che si scuoprono] (498).
Since Bruno can now express himself through three personae
(Filoteo, Fracastorio, and Elpino), Elpino describes their
knowledge as Argus-like, not limited to those authors pro
76
claimed popular or famous by the masses and not concerned
with having the appearance of knowledge, content merely
with the search for truth and wisdom which requires that
everything be examined by "the mind's eye" [1'occhio de
11intelletto] (500): by freethinking. Albertino's response
is to argue the reputation, rather than the doctrine, of
Aristotle: "Many have taken up weapons and plotted against
Aristotle; but their castles are ruined, their arrows are
blunted and their bows are broken" [Molti hanno balestrato
e machinato contra Aristotele; ma son cascati i castegli,
son spuntate le frecce e gli son rotti gli archi] (502).
Albertino, quintessentially pedantic, arms himself with
martial rhetoric and images, but his words have no impact
because they provide no proof of what they allege; they are
merely intimidating boasts. He further asserts that his
own reputation as a doctor, approved "da mille academie"
(the same claim made by Bruno in his epistle to the Oxford
doctors— also addressed to unsympathetic listeners), far
outshines that of Teofilo. Elpino defends Teofilo/Bruno by
reporting the persecution he has suffered for his ideas,H
providing empirical proof of his heroism; Albertino's mar
tial rhetoric on Aristotle's behalf seems empty bombast in
comparison. Elpino also identifies precisely why the uni
versity doctors hate the Nolan: "because where there is
disagreement, there is no love" [perch£, dov'S dissimili-
tudine, non & amore] (504). Bruno believes he incurred the
77
wrath of the fonte Aristotelis because he defended his con
trary beliefs and refused to accept the Oxford status quo.
When Filoteo and Fracastorio enter (504), Filoteo
(like the seasoned Augustine confessing) admits to having
shared a similar preoccupation with Aristotle in his youth,
though his mature judgment now concludes differently. Re
peating the technique used earlier on Burchio, Filoteo al
lows Albertino the position of dialectical aggressor by
suggesting perhaps he himself has simply become weaker in
intellect over the years, and needs a good doctor to re
lease him from his misconception— inviting the pedant to
become that doctor. Albertino's failure to detect this
sarcastic double entendre virtually guarantees his failure
even before he proposes
The manner of feeling the pulse is by seeing how
you can resolve and extricate yourself from some
arguments that I will make you hear now, which
necessarily conclude the impossibility of other
worlds— much less that the worlds are infinite in
number.
[La forma di toccar il polso b di veder come vi
potrete risolvere ed estricar da alcuni argo-
menti, ch'or ora vi farb udire, quali necessar-
iamente conchiudeno la impossibility di pita
mondi; tanto manca, che gli mondi sieno infin-
iti] (505) .
Though he discourses confidently and knowledgeably, out
lining twelve Aristotelian propositions (506-13), Teofilo
essentially convinces him that if he rejects the witness of
the senses and accepts what can be constructed abstractly
by the mind, then he will cease to be limited by the re-
78
strictions of Aristotelian physics. Teofilo/Bruno success
fully "converts" Albertino because the latter is a man of
substantial intellect; although he employs many stock
grammarian devices, he has the genuine wisdom to defend his
beliefs and to seriously consider the ideas of others. Ul
timately convinced, he virtually prays to Teofilo (534-36)
in gratitude for the nobility and courage of his thought,
and pledges to follow him despite the outcries of the vain
and the ignorant.
But what of that other zealous Aristotelian? Burchio
speaks no further lines, and Elpino has the final word on
him:
FILOTEO. What does it mean, o Elpino, that Doctor
Burchio, who neither so soon, nor ever,
has been able to agree with us?
ELPINO. Only the mind that is not lazy, by seeing
and hearing little, can consider and
understand much.
[F. Che vuol dire, o Elpino, che il dottor Bur
chio n§ si tosto, ne mai ha possuto consen
ts rne?
E. £ proprio di non addormentato ingegno da poco
vedere ed udire posser considerare e compren-
der molto] (536).
Burchio is, of course, the antithesis of Elpino’s thesis.
He has refused to seriously examine Teofilo's arguments and
has exhibited a "lazy mind" incapable of assimilating the
pithy philosophical concepts discussed, without serious
concentration. Although Elpino's comment is meant to dis
miss Burchio as a fool, the fact is that Teofilo's words
failed to convert him, and even the action of the dialogue
79
does not affect him the way, for example, it affects young
Licentius in Augustine's Contra Academioos. ^ Burchio, as
a representative of the university pedant, is both blind
and deaf to the arguments of others— making unfortunate the
fact that he is not also dumb, unable to express his igno
rance. But controlling the dialogue like a dramatist de
veloping and resolving conflict, Bruno removes Burchio from
active participation and replaces him with Albertino, a
responsible scholar; thus the dialogue is allowed to func
tion as an (albeit one-sided) exchange of ideas, as in Cic
eronian dialogues. Bruno inserts the comment about Burchio
at the end, however, both to explain the disappearance of a
character whose presence in the dialogue has been crucial,
and to give the appearance of treating the problem he rep
resents as trivial. But this belies the obvious, since the
attacks continue in subsequent dialogues.
Spaocio della bestia trionfante (1584)
While in fact it is the most explicitly derivative
from classical model of all of Bruno's London dialogues,
the Spaocio della bestia trionfante [Expulsion of the
Triumphant Beast] makes significant structural departures
from the previous three dialogues: there are three dialogue
divisions rather than five, the subject is more specifi
cally moral than metaphysical, and only one of the three
interlocutors is merely human. The pattern for the Spaooio
is Lucian's The Parliament of the Gods, in which Momus the
comedian and satirist of the gods complains that Dionysus,
himself polluted by feminine characteristics, has led a
clan of man-animal half-breeds including Pan, Silenus and
numerous satyrs into the company of the immortals, tainting
their population, and must be expelled. The Momus of the
Spaocio, who had been exiled for the unrestrained accusa
tions recorded in Lucian's dialogue (and for his sardonic
slurs against the gods in general), is reinstated by Jove
in Bruno's dialogue and is empowered to censure the gods
for their vices, regardless of name or position, because
the heavens have physically deteriorated due to their cor
ruption. Thus, for example, Cupid is informed that in the
presence of the other gods he must wear clothes (at least
from the waist downwards). In Lucian, Zeus is admonished
(ostensibly for his own good and for the peace of mind of
the other gods) not to adopt further disguises for the pur
pose of seducing mortal women, for "some goldsmith may work
you up when you are gold, and instead of Zeus we may have
you turning up as a necklace or a bracelet or an ear
r i n g . " - 1 ^ Jove in the Spaocio blames his own sins in addi
tion to those of the other gods as contributing to their
moral and physical decrepitude— so he makes himself an ex
ample for the others and calls for the expulsion of the
vices which exist among the constellations of heaven (gen
erally represented by animals, reestablishing the connec-
81
tion to Lucian). Typical of his syncretism, Bruno includes
many non-Lucianic innovations. Where the dialogue in Par
liament of the Gods is delivered directly by the gods in
volved, the purging of the heavens in the Spaooio is re
ported second-hand— as Apollodorus reports Plato 1s Sympo
sium , as Teofilo reports La oena— to Saulino, a human, by
Sofia (i.e., Wisdom), a completely enlightened human, if
human at all. And the extended analysis of each of the of
fending vices being replaced in the skies by virtues is
reminiscent of the medieval catalogue and exegesis typical
of Prudentius1 Psyohomaohia. One theme persists through
every aspect of the dialogue, however: the necessity of
change. As Bruno has already led us to see, the most ob
stinate opponent of change is the pedant.
The rudimentary plan outlined by Jove for combatting
the vices in the heavens also addresses the qualities of
the pedant that inhibit free expression and exchange of
ideas:
1. Remove "the dangerous burden of errors that
holds us back" [la grieve soma d'errori che ne
trattiene] ;
2. Lift "the veil of scant attention that gets in
our way" [il velo de la poca considerazione,
che ne impaccia];
3. Reject "the self-love that retards us" [la
propria affezione, che ne ritarda];
4. Purge "all the vain thoughts that aggravate
us" [tutti que' vani pensieri che ne aggra-
vano];
5. Destroy "the machines of error and edifices of
perversity that obstruct the road" [le machine
di errori ed edificii di perversitade che im-
pediscono la strada];
82
6. Cease to respect "the triumph and trophies of
our violent exploits" [gli trionfi e trofei di
nostri facinorosi gesti] (610-11).
The "burden of errors" is dangerous because the pedant does
not acknowledge his own error: the "veil of scant atten
tion" represents the pedant's unwillingness to explore the
metaphysical nature of the world around him, preferring in
stead to dwell simply in a world of words governed less by
meaning than by sound; the "self-love" is simply the ped
ant's egotistical pride in his own knowledge; "vain
thoughts" are those accepted without questioning the be
liefs to which they are attached; certainly Bruno thought
of Oxford— his inspiration, a viperous den of pedants— as a
"machine of error" and "edifice of perversity" blocking the
advancement of freethinking for which medieval Oxford was
renowned; and indicating a new pedantic dimension for the
Spaaaio are the "violent exploits" of one specific type of
pedant, the religious pedant, who receives much of the
blame for the violent upheavals and confiscations
("trophies") in sixteenth-century England resulting from
reformation, counter-reformation and Elizabethan neo
reformation .
For Bruno, the archetypal English religious pedant—
an individual who absolutely refuses to tolerate, much less
to consider, the dogma of any religious viewpoint other
than his own— is the Calvinist, with his doctrine of the
predestination of the elect which invalidates whatever
83
works an individual might perform in this world. Of course
this is anathema to the eclectic Bruno, who believes man
approaches God through increasing his knowledge and by pur
suing gnostic studies. Momus complains to Jove about "that
cowardly sect of pedants" [quella poltronesca setta di ped-
anti] who preach that man should do good rather than evil
"though one comes to be worthy and gratifying to the gods
not by the good that is done, or the evil which is not
done, but by hoping and believing according to their cate
chism" [ma non per ben che si faccia o mal che non si fac-
cia, si viene ad essere degno e grato a* dei; ma per sper-
are e credere secondo il catechismo loro] (623). Mercury
replies that it is fruitless for those of other religious
belief to try to accept the Calvinists as good men, because
the converse opinion cannot occur: "according to their doc
trine, others do not have the freedom of choosing to change
to this faith" [secondo la lor dottrina, non £ in liberty
de l'elezion loro di mutarsi q questa fede] (624). In ad
dition, the Calvinists have benefited from the confiscated
wealth of Catholics persecuted in England who, forced into
exile, left behind goods and land— compounding the pedant's
intolerance with hypocrisy and greed.
The Calvinists are associated with the Southern Cross
(Corona Austrina) in the heavens, which is identified dur
ing the trial with Pride; in purging the constellations of
their influence, Jove proposes the Crown should belong to
84
whomever "will give them the deciding blow" [gli ar& donata
l'ultima scossa] (626), and with the sword he situates next
to the crown, he replaces the Pride of the old constella
tion with Law, to signify Universal Judgment ("il giudizio
universale"). Sofia informs Saulino that this Judgment
will later try the Calvinists to determine if it is possi
ble for them to do anything except
to prevent exchange of ideas, to dispel harmony,
to dissolve unity . . . and in conclusion, if,
while greeting with peace they carry everywhere
the knife of division and the fire of dispersion,
tearing the son away from the father, neighbor
from neighbor, resident from his homeland, and
making other schisms both horrendous and against
every nature and law.
[togliere le conversazioni, dissipar le concord-
ie, dissolvere 1'unioni . . . ed in conclusione,
se, mentre salutano con la pace, portano, ovun-
que entrano, il coltello della divisione ed il
fuoco della dispersione, togliendo il figlio al
padre, il prossimo al prossimo, l'inquilino a la
patria, e facendo altri divorzii orrendi e con
tra ogni natura e legge] (661).
Jove's final condemnation of the Calvinists relates to
their smug confidence that good works will not improve the
attitudes of gods toward men, just as wicked deeds will not
make the gods feel any more disinclined toward them.
Through this doctrine they have "placed the world in great
er vexations and torments than any other business has ever
been able to" [messo il mondo in maggior molestie e trava-
gli che mai avesse possuto mettere negocio alcuno] (746).
Bruno amplifies the importance of the trial itself in the
Spaooio far beyond the satiric mock-trial of Lucian's
85
Parli-ament which means merely to expose iniquities via sat
ire. It becomes for the Nolan a vehicle of censure as
well, and in figuratively condemning the personified vices
among the heavens, he literally condemns their human
agents— most often those obstinate creatures he categori
cally terms pedants.
While criticizing its religious counterpart, Bruno
continues his attack on secular pedantry. Sofia reports to
Saulino that one of Momus1 first decrees after receiving
his authority from Jove was that the gods could not have
servants of the bedchamber younger than twenty-five, and
Saulino asks what will become of Apollo's "dear Hyacinth"
[caro Giacinto]:
SOFIA. He has seized the resolve of sending him
to study humane letters in some reformed
university or college, and to subject him
to the rod of some pedant.
SAULINO. 0 fortune, o traitorous luck! Does he
appear to you a mouthful for pedants?
Wouldn't it be better to subject him to
the care of a poet, to commit him into
the hands of an orator, or to accustom
him to the staff of the cross?
[SO. Ha preso partito di mandarlo a studiar let-
tere umane in qualche universitade o col-
legio riformato, e sottoporlo a la vergal4
di qualche pedante.
SA. O fortuna, o sorte traditora! Ti par questo
boccone da pedanti? Non era meglio sotto
porlo alia cura d'un poeta, farlo a la mano
d'un oratore, o avezzarlo su il baston de la
croce?] (584-85).
While Bruno's Catholic bias ("reformed university") betrays
itself here, he reveals his receptiveness to certain voca
86
tions that when immoderately practiced become pedantic. He
has no inherent dislike or distrust of poets (only of ped
ants who quote, inexhaustibly, unnecessarily and out of
context), or of orators (only of pedants who hide their
lack of real knowledge behind rhetorical fagades), or of
clergymen (whose purpose is to seek God, not to impede the
same search by others). He also continues his invective as
Momus details a multifarious list of intellectual mounte
banks and frauds (744-45; ironic for reasons to be dis
cussed below), and Jove returns to the discussion of the
university as breeding-ground of pedantry, ordering the
Scales (Libra) to leave the sky and search the academies
and universities "where it can be determined if those who
teach are of just weight, if they are too light or much too
heavy" [dove s'essamine se quei che insegnano, son giusti
di peso, se son troppo leggieri o trabuccanti] (771).
These jibes, though not themselves the specific subject of
the Spaocio, form a backdrop for the trial of the vices in
heaven, and for their examination in the character portrait
of Momus, prosecutor of the gods.
The three interlocutors of the Spaocio, Saulino, Sofia
and Mercury, are stick figures as in catechetical and ques-
tion-and-answer dialogues, used simply to remind the reader
that the gods 1 legal proceedings really concern human vir
tues and vices (hence Saulino's interest), that the pro
ceedings are being narrated by a reliable figure (the en-
87
lightened Sofia) for the purpose of edification and whom
Mercury informs concerning the progress of her own legal
claims of abuse— not unlike that experienced by Bruno— at
the hands of humans; the dialogue's character emphasis is
instead placed on Momus. The most dramatic character in
the Spaocio, the most imbued with emotion, Momus is self-
righteously indignant following his exile for speaking his
mind (thanks to his sarcastically sharp tongue, perhaps
like Bruno's at Oxford), so he immediately takes advantage
of Jove's penitent emotions and proclaims himself Scourge
of the Gods. Through the dialogue's three sections, how
ever, he proves himself unworthy of this responsibility be
cause he doesn't understand two things: change (new ideas)
is necessary and inevitable, and he has many of the intol
erant qualities for which Bruno condemns the pedant. Momus
is not an effective orator, and he is always defeated by
opponents whose arguments stress content rather than form.
When he objects to Fortune's apparent favoritism of some
men over others, she applies very simple logic with some
common sense and defeats him soundly through solid reason
ing rather than rhetorical flourish (694-95). He is unable
to refute crafty Ease's Epicurean argument for being al
lowed to stay in the heavens because she expresses it as a
four-part syllogism, and Momus, having studied only the
three-element syllogisms of Aristotle, has not learned how
to deal with the extra premise (732).
88
Momus acts the intolerant pedant when he opposes all
knowledge of the ancient Egyptians by prosecuting Capri
corn— who taught the gods how to turn into animals in order
to escape their enemies during the Gigantomachy-^— for
teaching the Egyptians to honor beasts; Momus considers
this a calculated mockery of the gods. The other gods, led
by the goddess Isis, quickly come to the defense of the
Egyptians (776-78) because of their eclectic religious sys
tems, best expressed by their freethinking advocate, the
scholar-mage Hermes Trismegistus. This serves (besides in
dicating Bruno's respect for Hermeticism) to reconnect
Momus with his source in Lucian (who lashes out at the an
imal gods in the Egyptian pantheon, such as Anubis and
Apis)- 1 - 6 and to illustrate his blind idiosyncracy. Later
during the trial of Orion, the darling of Neptune whom
Momus accuses of performing miracles, Momus reveals just
how diabolically contrary he can be by calling for Orion to
be sent among men to cause chaos, making them understand
"that white is black, that human intellect, through which
they seem to see best, is a blindness; and that reason
which seems excellent, good and optimum, is vile, villain
ous and extremely bad" [che il bianco A nero, che l'intel-
leto umano, dove li par meglio vedere, A una cecitA; e cib
che secondo la raggione pare eccellente, buono ed ottimo, A
vile, scelerato ed estremamente malo] (804)— this is the
topsy-turveydom of the morality Vice figure, of the
89
eommedla dell'arte's Arlecchino. The purpose is to make
man disbelieve miracles— to keep him out of trouble by
leading him to the conclusion that although gods can per
form miracles, dabbling in the miraculous is nothing but an
exercise in frustration for men since no truth is absolute.
Momus, true to the pedant type, condemns and forbids others
from exploring what he does not understand (which is the
point of the struggle between the Skeptic sects in Bruno's
Cabala delta eavallo Pegaseo). Change is inevitable even
among the gods, however, and Jove, understanding this,
overrules Momus whenever he threatens to impede change—
Bruno's implication being that openmindedness will always
reveal the superficiality of the pedant.
Cabala della eavallo Pegaseo eon I'agglunta
dellrAslno Clllenleo (1585)
In some senses Bruno out-Lucians Lucian with his clev
er satirical dialogue Cabala della eavallo Pegaseo con
I 1 agglunta dell fAslno Clllenleo [Cabala of Pegasus the
Horse3 with the addition of the Clllenlean .<4ss] , for he en
codes a universal condemnation of his enemies the pedants
within a framework whose controlling motif seems externally
to be hyperbolic exaggeration, an absurd conglomeration of
beliefs with nonsense the ultimate result. Unfortunately
for the Nolan, portions were later taken from their satir
ical context and given a slanted interpretation which was
90
then used against him in his trial for heresy. A central
character in the dialogue, Onorio, describes to other
interlocutors his recollection of previous incarnations,
including those as Pegasus and as Aristotle. Article 189
of the Italian Inquisition's charges against Bruno reports
Being interrogated he denies that he might have
said that he held the transmigration of human
souls into beasts to be given, and in particular
he denies that he himself had ever existed in an
other world.
[Interrogatus negat dixisse, nec tenuisse dari
transmigrationem animarum humanarum in corpora
brutorum, et in specie negat se dixisse, se
alias fuisse in hoc mundo].!?
When Bruno speaks of metempsychosis, as he does occasion
ally throughout the dialogues but most particularly in the
Cabala and De gli eroiei furori, he is speaking not so much
from theological conviction (inspired by the Corpus Hermet-
ioum and Pythagorean concepts) as from the intention of
figuratively reinforcing his notion of monadism, of the
unity of existence, best represented by an immanent rather
than transcendant God. Like a Cabalist, however, he sub
merges the worthy knowledge of this unity (discussed in
both De la eausa and De I’infinito) beneath the cover of
"ignorance," the real subject of the Cabala. To decode the
dialogue's meaning, one need only employ these logical
formulae:
INNOCENT (intellectually unbiased individual):
NATURAL IGNORANCE::FREETHINKER (by cognitive
response):CONSCIOUS IGNORANCE.
91
ANIMAL (incapable of intellectual judgment):
NATURAL IGNORANCE::PEDANT (by instinctive re
sponse) :CONSCIOUS IGNORANCE.
There are, then, two distinct forms of ignorance, learned
ignorance (in all senses, especially Cusanus'), and bestial
ignorance. When Bruno praises ignorance he is referring to
the former, and when he condemns it he means the latter.
As a type variously for both, he revives a character from
medieval scholasticism: the little scholar ass. In the
Cabala, the ass signifies either a "noble" ignorance of the
pedantic ways of the modern universities, or an "ignoble"
ignorance that perpetuates, or even acts as cause of, those
pedantic ways.
The structure of the Cabala is the least conventional
of Bruno's Italian dialogues, loosely employing the example
of the Jewish Cabala— not to systematically implant a
"true" meaning beneath the superficial one, but to create
an intellectual game that discerning thinkers would recog
nize and appreciate, that readers of ordinary intellect
would find amusing,18 and that biased individuals (exempli
fied by the knight, minister, gentlewoman, pedant, et al.
of the "Epistola Dedicatoria," who successively refused to
accept the book when it was offered to them) would either
ignore or would be goaded into debating publicly. One of
Bruno's "Cabalistic" devices is to isolate and emphasize
key issues from different points of view. Bruno praises
the wisdom of the dialogue's dedicatee, the nonexistent
92
Bishop Don Sapatino of Casamarciano, admiring that "you are
able to enter into everything, because there is nothing
that can restrict you" [possete entrar per tutto, perchd
non § cosa che vi tegna rinchiuso] (837); conversely, the
learned Ass of the dialogue's final section, "The Cillen-
ican Ass of the Nolan," is denied access when he requests
entrance to the Pythagorean academy, until Mercury himself
arrives to declare the gods' will that the Ass "may enter
and inhabit anywhere, without anyone being able to bar you
the door or to give any sort of insult or impediment"
[possi entrar ed abitar per tutto, senza ch'alcuno ti possa
tener porta o dar qualsivoglia sorte d'oltraggio o impedi-
mento] (923). In another parallel, Bruno quite seriously
(despite the comic exaggeration surrounding it) phrases
references in, the "Epistola Dedicatoria" to his own person
al rebuffs in passive voice, rhetorically demanding that
the knowledge of any man (especially himself) be recognized
as his credentials: "If he is a discerning, indisputable,
and illuminated doctor, with what conscience will you not
desire that he be esteemed and held as a worthy counsel
lor?" [Se & dottor sottile, irrefragabile ed illuminato,
con qual conscienza non vorrete che lo stime e tegna per
degno consegliero?] (843); after the Ass presents his argu
ment for acceptance to the academy based on intellect rath
er than physical appearance, and the Pythagorean "Ape," or
lackey, barring the door completely ignores it, the Ass
93
cries "Do you believe that I have done this for some other
purpose than accusing you and rendering you inexcusable be
fore Jove? Jove in making me a scholar made me a doctor"
[credete ch'io abbia fatto questo per altro fine che per
accusarvi e rendervi inexcusabili avanti a Giove? Giove
con avermi fatto dotto mi fe1 dottore] (921). Freedom of
thought allows man universal access, and a true doctor of
knowledge is signified by his wisdom, not by his university
degree or other physical accoutrements.
Another game involves Bruno's usage of the verb in-
as-inive, "to become stupid," throughout the dialogue in our
colloquial sense "to make an ass of oneself," but with lit
eral and positive rather than figurative and pejorative
connotations. He enjoins his "studioso, divoto e pio"
reader to "Pray, pray God, dearest friends, if you are not
yet asses, that you do become asses" [Pregate, pregate Dio,
o carissimi, se non siete ancora asini, che vi faccia dove-
nir asini] (854); to achieve this, the Ass explains to the
Pythagorean Ape, one must study in the academy of the
asses, "where one is given the lesson of learning to make
an ass of oneself" [dove si dona lezione di saper inasin-
ire] (921). Bruno also includes three sonnets interspersed
through the dialogue, and typical of his ass wordplay in
the Cabala, all three are in the style of the sonetto oau-
1 Q
dato, or "tailed" sonnet.
The emphasis on asininity as a universal character
94
istic, with both good and evil applications, corresponds to
a de-emphasis of the individual pedant character in the
Cabala, Like his predecessors Nundinio, Torquato and Po-
liinnio, Coribante is a grammarian pedant. In his first
speech he asks the chief speaker of the dialogue, Saulino,
to express his concepts "Id est, sine fuco, plane, candide"
[That is, without paint, plain, shining white], and Saulino
immediately tags him as a pedant: "with this your gesticu
lation, toga, beard and eyebrow, you show to our eyes— as
much as candide 3 plane et sine fuco shows to the mind— the
very idea of pedantry" [con questa tua gestuazione, toga,
barba e supercilio: come, anco quanto a l'ingegno, candide3
plane et sine fuco, mostri a gli occhi nostri la idea della
pedantaria] (861). Making COribante uniquely suited as the
pedant of the Cabala, Bruno introduces him in opposition to
the noble ass praised by Saulino, though he quickly comes
to respect and laud it— pedantically, of course.
Playing upon the upheaval of the heavens described in
the Spaccio, Saulino reports that Ursa Minor has been re
placed by the abstraction Truth, while Ursa Major has been
exchanged for another, related, abstraction: Asininity.
Coribante, outraged, calls this "un sacrilegio, un profan-
ismo" (863), and cites two counter-examples: the Egyptians
in their hieroglyphics employed the ass as a type for igno
rance, and Babylonian priests used the figure of an ass'
head on a human neck and bust "to designate a human un
95
skilled and undisciplined" [designar un uomo imperito ed
indisciplinabile] (863) . However, after Saulino calls upon
the Ten Sephiroth of the Jewish Cabalists as witness to the
exemplary qualities of the ass (86 4-66), and after he ex
plicates biblical support as well (the faith of Balaam's
ass, the figuration of the twelve tribes of Israel by
beasts with Isaachar, the sixth son of Jacob, represented
by an ass: 869-70), Coribante spews forth his own rambling
list of the ass' positive characteristics (organized by no
other logic than harmonious sounds) and pronounces that
"paulatim, gradatim atque pedentim" [little by little, step
by step and foot by foot] Saulino's knowledge seems even '
greater than his own. Fed up, Sebasto interrupts,
SEBASTO. O what ampullas, o what fine-sounding
words are yours, o most learned and
thundering Sir CoribanteI
CORIBANTE. Ut Zibet. [How pleasing this is.]
SEBASTO. But permit him to proceed to the propo
sition, and don't interrupt!
CORIBANTE. Prohl [Phooey!]
[S. O che ampolle, o che parole sesquipedali son
le vostre, o dottisimo ed altritonante messer
CoribanteI
S. Ma permettiate che si proceda al proposito, e
non ne interrompeteI] (872).
Forced, or shamed, into listening, Coribante soon becomes
eager to accept the "eroici e divina condizione" (877) of
the ass. At the end of the first dialogue, he agrees (in
Latin) with all that had been said— entirely missing the
fact that Saulino has been criticizing pedantry throughout,
that his praise for the steadfast "ignorance" of the ass is
96
for its resistance to the tongues of the pedants: "he rec
ognizes his own beliefs, he holds and maintains his own
through his own, and they cannot be taken from him. 0 holy
ignorance, o divine insanity, o superhuman asininity!" [lui
conosce li suoi, lui tiene e mantiene gli suoi per suoi, e
non gli possono esser tolti] (879). To further demonstrate
his own ignorance, Coribante reports that he must leave to
dismiss his students, ironically explaining "propria re-
visant hospitia, proprios lares" [regularly revisiting
guests yields regular rewards] (881), having demonstrated
no previous interest in them, thereby supporting Bruno’s
claims of the negative influence of the grammarian doctors
on their pupils. Except for a few more Latin interruptions
in the third part of the second dialogue and his (bestially
instinctive) concern with supper at its conclusion, Bruno
has little further use for Coribante, a specific pedant, in
his general condemnation of pedantry. And for private re
venge in the short third dialogue, when Sebasto's servant,
Alvaro, appears with apologies to explain the absence of
the other three interlocutors, Bruno has him report that
Coribante is "attacked by the gout" [assalito da le pod-
agre] (911).
An unknown factor and at first glance a random ele
ment, Onorio does not fit the general pattern of Brunonian
interlocutors; he doesn't appear until the beginning of the
second dialogue, and then he speaks alone to Sebasto until
97
the second part of that dialogue. He tells the bizarre
story of his prior incarnation as an ass,^ including the
details of his death (from leaning too far over a precipice
while grazing to reach a thistle growing there), the trans-
migratory process, and the reason he can recall his previ
ous existence: while among a crowd of other souls under the
guidance of Mercury, Onorio— when ordered to drink— only
pretended to drink from Lethe's waters of forgetfulness,
convincingly moistening his mouth and chin. From there, he
and his companions were led to Mount Parnassus ("il qual
non 5 favola," 884) and to the fountain Caballinus, conse
crated by Apollo to his daughters, the Muses; here he was
again made an ass, but this time a flying ass— named
Pegasus.21 This leads Sebasto to inquire about the differ
ences between human and bestial souls, and Onorio gives the
heretical response, "That of the human is the same in spe
cific and generic essence with that of the flies, marine
oysters and plants, and anything whatsoever that one finds
is animated or has a soul" [Quella de l'uomo f e medesima in
essenza specifica e generica con quella de le mosche, os-
treche marine e piante, e di qualsivoglia cosa che si trove
animata o abbia anima] (885). Testimony that might seem
too far-fetched to even a liberal thinker is given a sense
of verisimilitude by being delivered directly "from the
horse's (or ass') mouth." Onorio, as a witness, has no
reason to fabricate; likewise, argued the Italian inquisi
98
tors during Bruno's trial, there is nothing but his own de
nial to indicate that this is not a declaration of the
Nolan's personal beliefs. It is not patently absurd if one
is open to accepting the premise of metempsychosis—
Sebasto*s response at the end of their discussion is to ad
mit that Onorio's arguments have been too convincing, and
rather than accept such unorthodox theories, he will con
sider them fables, "to maintain myself in that faith in
which I have been instructed by my progenitors and teach
ers" [mantenermi in quella fede nella quale son stato in-
strutto da miei progenitori e maestri] (891).
With the arrival of Coribante and Saulino at the open
ing of the second part of the second dialogue, Onorio re
ports that after existing as Pegasus he became by turns "or
un filosofo, or un poeta, or un pedante" (892). While
serving as pedant (teacher/tutor) under Alexander the
Great,
I entered into the presumption of being a natural
philosopher, as it is ordinary in pedants always
to be reckless and presumptuous; and thus with
the knowledge of philosophy being extinct, Soc
rates dead, Plato banished, and others in other
manner dispersed, I alone remained equivocal
among the blind; and I was able easily to get the
reputation not only of rhetorician, politician,
logician, but even of philosopher.
[entrai in presunzione d'esser filosofo naturale,
come 5 ordinario nelli pedanti d'esser sempre
temerarii e presuntuosi; e con ciO, per esser
estinta la cognizione della filosofia, morto
Socrate, bandito Platone, ed altri in altre man-
iere dispersi, rimasi io solo lusco intra gli
ciechi; e facilmente possevi aver riputazion non
99
sol di retorico, politico/ logico, ma ancora de
filosofo] (893).
That is, he became Aristotle.
I was understood— and I taught— perversely con
cerning the nature of the principles and sub
stance of things; I raved in more of the same
delirium about the essence of the soul,22 unable
to understand properly about the nature of motion
and the universe;
[intesi ed insegnai perversamente circa la natura
de li principii e sustanza delle cose, delirai
piri che l'istessa delirazione circa l'essenza de
l'anima, nulla possevi comprendere per dritto
circa la natura del moto e de l'universo] (893);
Bruno implicitly concludes that Aristotelianism was founded
on asinine ignorance, at least partially because Onorio did
not drink from Lethe and retained his memories— and in
stincts?— of the asinine state. Onorio wishes to correct
his errors, to remove the stigma of his reputation as
"protosofosso" (protosophist), but notes that he has to be
careful, following the example of those who "speak certain
ties through enigmas or through metaphor, others because
they don't want the blockheads to understand them, others
in order that the crowd doesn't despise them, others so
that pearls not be trampled by swine" [parlano certi per
enigmi o per metafora, altri perchS vuolen che non 1'inten-
dano gl'ignoranti, altri perche la moltitudine non le
spreggie, altri perchd le margarite non sieno calpestrate
da porci] (896-97); here is the challenging gauntlet of
Bruno's Cabalistic satire in the Cabala : to antagonize the
pedants and Aristotelians (especially of Oxford), taunting
100
them to discover all of the insults woven into this crazy-
quilt dialogue.
In the third part of the second dialogue, Bruno ana
lyzes the threatening solipsism of pedantic philosophers
who claim that final truth cannot be achieved. After Saul
ino declares that there is no median state between igno
rance and knowledge, Sebasto syllogistically concludes con
cerning philosophers who deny truth can be known, "if it is
possible that one does not know any truth, these same do
not know what they are saying, and they cannot be certain
whether they speak or they bray, whether they are men
[manikins] or asses" [se non si sa veritS. alcuna, essi med-
esimi non sanno quel che dicono, e non possono esser certi
se parlano o ragghiano, se son omini o asini] (902). He
surveys the conflicting views of Dogmatists, Academics, and
varieties of Skeptics (Pyrrhonians, Eclectics)2- * as fatu
ous, fruitless dogmatic struggles for "I1ultimo grado della
somma filosofia ed ottima contemplazione" by supposedly
learned men whose examples merely yield the conclusion "the
asses are the most divine animals, and asininity its sister
is the companion and secretary of truth" [gli asini sono li
pid divini animali, e l'asinitade sua sorella S la compagna
e secretaria della veritade] (906). Onorio responds with
the insightful warning that "in all and about all, things
are nothing but what they are believed" [in tutte e de
tutte le cose non esser altro che opinione] (906): this is
101
another key to the danger pedants pose. By believing some
thing is true, and teaching others that it is true, it
becomes true— like Onorio's fabrications while Aristotle.
Thus if philosophers teach that nothing can. be known, ar
gues Saulino, then it follows that nothing can be taught,
invalidating the efforts of both teacher and pupil. This
leads Sebasto to outline the schema for the final dialogue:
But I would wish to know of Saulino (that asin-
inity is magnificent to such a degree, when sci
ence and speculation, knowledge and discipline
cannot be extolled by anybody) if asininity can
take place in other than the asses themselves;
that is to say, if someone who was not an ass
could become an ass through knowledge and disci
pline .
[Ma vorrei saper da Saulino (che magnifica tanto
l'asinitate, quanto non pub esser magnificata la
scienza e speculazione, dottrina e disciplina
alcuna) se l'asinitade pub aver luogo in altri
che gli asini; come b dire, se alcuno da quel
che non era asino, possa doventar asino per dot
trina e disciplina] (909-10).
But when the third dialogue opens, Saulino alone is pres
ent. Bruno provides a powerful excuse for Sebasto's ab
sence (Alvaro reports that his wife has died), and keeps
the others out of the way (Coribante with gout; Onorio,
like his former incarnation Aristotle, has gone to the
baths) in order to allow a dramatization, rather than a
discussion, of how a human being goes about becoming an
ass. Acting as prologue to this mini-drama (he calls it a
"microcosmica" Cabala), Saulino invites his audience to
join with him as he reads it (to suggest objectivity; com-
102
pare Filoteo’s delivery of the dialogues in De la causa for
Armesso to read).
"The Cillenican Ass of the Nolan" [L1Asino Cillenico
del Nolano] has as interlocutors the Ass, the Pythagorean
Ape, and Mercury (born on Mt. Cillene, hence "Cillenican")
himself. Here is the confrontation of types expressed in
our logical formulae earlier: the Ass, though in counte
nance an animal, in token of what he perceives as his natu
ral ignorance humbly sues for entrance to the Pythagorean
academy; the Ape, human and thus only figuratively an ani
mal, ^ nevertheless instinctively refuses entrance on the
superficial basis that the Ass is not human. Though the
Ape acts openmindedly for a moment when confronted by the
talking Ass— reflecting the wonder of contact with the un
known that the freethinker constantly desires— he quickly
turns dubious: "The Ass is speaking? 0 Muses, o Apollo, o
Hercules, articulate voices issuing from such a head? Hold
your tongue, Ape, perhaps you are deceived; perhaps some
man stands masquerading beneath his hide, to make fun of
us" [1"asino parla? O Muse, o Apolline, o Ercule, da cotal
testa esceno voci articulate? Taci, Micco, forse t'ingan-
ni; forse sotto questa pelle qualch'uomo stassi mascherato,
per burlarsi di noi] (915). The Ass replies he is not be
ing "sofistico," false, and addresses the Ape and his pres-
ent-though-unseen colleagues as "O gowned, stamped, capped
professors, archprofessors and the wisdom of heroes and
103
demi-gods" [O tagati, annulati, pileati didascali, archi-
didascali e de la sapienza eroi e semidei] (916). "Didas
cali " can also mean "stage directions," and the unseen Py
thagoreans do provide a certain dramatic context, multiply
ing the obstruction facing the Ass into an overwhelming
opposition.
Oblivious to its inherent flaws, the Ape describes the
four stages of study in the academy: adjustment of body,
physiognomy (reinforcing the prejudice against the Ass),
and mind before gaining entrance; auditor ("acustico")— for
a period of at least two years the student may not speak,
even to ask for clarifications for misunderstood points;
mathematician— the student is allowed to write things down
and to express his own opinions (certainly error-ridden by
this point); physicist— the student turns to contemplation
of the world and the principles of nature, and ceases to
learn. When the Ass inquires about metaphysics, the Ape
replies, "let us abandon what is not relevant to the topic"
[lasciamo questo che non fa al proposito] (917). The Ass
tries counter-arguments: beauty is only skin deep (soft
skin does not guarantee a rigorous mind any more than a
bristlely hide guarantees stupidity), and beauty is in the
eye of the beholder (the Ass may not appear beautiful to
the Pythagorean, but a pig may not appear beautiful to a
horse). When the Ape attempts to laugh the Ass to scorn,
the animal turns the tables on the man by rhetorically com
10 4
paring the Pythagorean academy to the academy of the asses:
"How many among us are made doctors, rot and die in the
academy of the asses? How many are preferred, raised up,
magnified, canonized, glorified and deified in the academy
of the asses?" [quanti s1addottorano, marciscono e muoiono
ne 1'academia de gli asini? quanti son preferiti, inalzati,
magnificati, canonizati, glorificati e deificati nell'aca
demia de gli asini?] (921). These barbed questions are
fired at the grammarian doctors, and although the Ass is
outnumbered, Bruno as the dramaturgist here rescues his
hero by bringing in Mercury, a deus ex machinal he confirms
the Ass as "academico e dogmatico generale" by the will of
the gods, abolishes the four-stage program of the Pythago
reans and encourages all students to speak, inquire, teach,
discover, "unite, identify with everyone, master everyt-
thing, be everything" [unisciti, identificati con tutti,
domina a tutti, sii tutto] (923). To close his drama of
the triumph of the humble scholar over the vaunted pedant,
Bruno gives the last speech to the defeated Ape:
ASS. Have you heard this?
APE. We are not deaf.
[ASINO. Avetel' inteso?
MICCO. Non siamo sordi] (923) .
De gli evoici fuvovi (1585)
The last of the London dialogues, De gli evoici fuvovi
[On the Hevoic Fvenzies] continues the stylistic eclecti
105
cism of the Cabala. ^ It incorporates aspects of the Ec
logues of Virgil and his Italian imitators, as well as ele
ments of Neoplatonic literature like Dante's Vita nuova and
Marsilio Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposium, result
ing in a new variety of emblematic poem: the symbolically
philosophical sonnet, which is similar in form and content
but has little respect for its Petrarchan forebears. The
book is divided into two parts, each composed of five dia
logue segments, and beginning in the fifth dialogue of the
first part the structure turns almost exclusively to a pre
sentation of emblematic sonnets followed by explication and
commentary, until the fifth dialogue of the second part.
As with separate eclogues Virgil employs separate sets of
characters for the purpose of discussing, contemplating or
competing in verse (the characters are individuated for
Virgil's purposes, some like Menalcas appearing in a varie
ty of settings with diverse other characters), Bruno also
employs a series of different interlocutors, divided into
five pairs (Tansillo/Cicada— who appear in the first five
dialogues; Caesarino/Maricondo; Liberio/Laodinio; Severino/
Minutolo; Laodomia/Giulia). Bruno merely preserves the
ten-part formal structure of the Eclogues , however, for
only the women Laodomia and Giulia serve crucial discrete
functions (and none of the interlocutors or rejected lovers
perform a self-analysis like Corydon's in the Eclogue II);
the male interlocutors are interchangeably similar commen
106
tators, one primarily acting as questioner/ one as explica-
tor.2® The emblematic sonnets and analyses inserted into
this framework, which unlike Virgil's is not itself versi
fied, demonstrate the rewards and dangers of contemplating
the divine. And, as one should now suspect, the Nolan re
veals that the most serious obstacle to overcome is spirit
ual and intellectual blindness, exemplified and perpetuated
by the many incarnations of the pedant.
The dialogue opens with a misdirection that, if read
out of context from Bruno's other dialogues, can and has
led some readers to believe him a misogynist. Indeed, one
may ask even in terms of Gli evoici fuvovi itself, if Bruno
is going to validate in Neoplatonic terms the function of
female physical beauty as a vehicle for divine contempla
tion, why does he open with an obviously anti-Petrarchan
misogynist tirade? The explanation may be traced back to
the misogyny of Poliinnio in De la causa: it is one of the
earmarks of the pedant. Because it condemns a segment of
humanity en masse regardless of the ideas and individual
worthiness existing therein, misogyny is exemplary of the
pedant's mulish resistance to freethinking. The opening
address to Sir Philip Sidney declares "It is truly, o most
generous Knight, a base, brutish and dirty mind that is
made constantly diligent, and has fixed an obsessive
thought, about or upon the beauty of a feminine body" [E
cosa veramente, o generosissimo Cavalliero, da basso, bruto
107
e sporco ingegno d'essersi fatto constantamente studioso,
ed aver affisso un curioso pensiero circa o sopra la bel-
lezza d'un corpo feminile] (927). He turns to considera
tion of the fragility of physical beauty as a memento movi
(929-30) before clarifying that as in the Matthew 22:21
injunction to render all things their due, "I want the
women to be honored and loved as women should be loved and
honored" [Voglio che le donne siano cossi onorate ed amate,
come denno essere amate ed onorate le donne] (931). Bruno
exposes the slavish devotion of the Petrarchan lover to be
just as "pedantic" as Poliinnio's undiscriminating hatred
of all women: in both cases, the individual has ceased to
question, to explore, even to appreciate; he must simply
cling, unthinkingly, to his own unexamined belief. In De
gli evoici fuvovi, then, Bruno is not villifying romantic
love or women pev se, but is simply identifying obsessive
attachment to either as another impediment to freethinking
that must be recognized if it is to be overcome.
The pedantic restiveness of the lover, however, is not
the only intellectual nearsightedness addressed by the
Nolan in Gli evoici fuvovi. In the first dialogue of the
first part, Tansillo explains to Cicada that Aristotle's
Poetics is not a valid tool for judging other poets, as it
was composed by a writer who was not a poet himself, and
demonstrates the qualities of Homeric epic alone (957-59);
Cicada recognizes that certain "pedantacci" among the
108
Italian literary theorists/commentators have denigrated
many poets' work for not conforming to this inviolable aes
thetic, and declares that these apes of Aristotle "are none
other than vermin, who do not know to do anything good, but
are born only to gnaw, to foul, and to shit on the studies
and labors of others" [non son altro che vermi, che non san
far cosa di buono, ma son nati solamente per rodere, in-
sporcare e stercorar gli altrui studi e fatiche] (960). In
the second dialogue of the second part, Caesarino and Mari-
condo note that the laws of nature dictate that there must
exist certain base things, such as pedants, the poor and
the dishonest, to balance the good things, like philoso
phers, the wealthy and saints. It is necessary, then, to
preserve the unity of nature that pedants exist as pedants;
but Caesarino demands, "Do you not see to how much mis
fortune the sciences have come by this cause, that the ped
ants have desired to be philosophers, treating natural
things, intermingling and determining on things divine?"
[Non vedete oltre in quanta iattura siano venute le scienze
per questa caggione, che gli pedanti hanno voluto essere
filosofi, trattar cose naturali, intromettersi a determi-
nar di cose divine?] (1114).2? Grammarian doctors and ped
ants are single-minded; poets, literary theorists, and
theologians are ideally men of vision, men who look at hu
man endeavor as a complex mixture of elements. When ped
ants meddle in areas outside their own studies and train
109
ing, they cause only misconception and confusion, as proven
by Onorio/Aristotle. Bruno raises these points both to
undercut the authority of pedants28 and to imply that his
dialogue, by freely combining elements of many disciplines
and ideologies, seeks to transcend the single concerns of
any.
The heart of the potential lover is portrayed as an
impenetrable stone in Sonnet IX of the second part's first
dialogue; because it has been concerned for so long with
the merely physical and concrete, it is now resistant even
to the rays "del splendor della divina intelligenza"
(1098). But where divine beauty has failed to conquer the
lover by piercing his heart, according to the commentator
he is penetrated by the "sacred lights" [luce sante] of
divine intelligence through the eyes because they were
open, because he continued to be receptive to ideas despite
his infatuation-induced corporeal impediment, an adamantine
heart. The love of the freethinking individual for freedom
of thought demands sacrifice and perseverance analogous to
romantic love, and Bruno dramatizes this in the second
part's third dialogue, where Liberio and Laodinio narrate
the argument between the heart and the eyes of the lover,
declaring that the weeping eyes in their arguments "signify
the difficulty of the separation of the thing desired from
the one desiring it, a difficulty which cannot be recon
ciled, nor exhausted, and thus reaches out as an infinite
110
study/ which one always has and always pursues" [signifi-
cano la difficult^ de la separazione della cosa bramata del
bramante, la quale accib non sazier non fastidisca, si por-
ge come per studio infinito, il quale sempre ha e sempre
cerca] (1138). From Bruno's point of view, man exists to
pursue knowledge of how he may*- transcend the limitations of
human form and existence, in order to satisfy his yearning
to experience the unity of God as expressed in the infinite
(animistic) universe. Pedantry multiplies the "difficulty
of the separation of the thing desired from the one desir
ing it" by ignorantly obstructing this pursuit. Bruno sees
his plight as the trial of the man who looks for the light
of divine revelation while standing in the suffocating
darkness of a crowd of pedants.
The ultimate solution to this dilemma is found among
the monadist doctrines of De la oausa and De I'infinito: to
overcome finitude, find a way to participate in infinitude.
In discussing Sonnet XII in the first part's fifth dia
logue, Cicada and Tansillo repeat this conclusion:
CICADA. How can our finite intellect pursue the
infinite object?
TANSILLO. With its infinite potency.
[C. Come l'intelletto nostro finito pub seguitar
l'oggetto infinito?
T. Con l'infinita potenza ch'egli ha] (1062-63).
The cornerstone of Bruno's philosophical ideology is the
belief in man's infinite potential— like Onorio in the
Cahala, man intrinsically retains the memories of all he
Ill
has been, which the Neoplatonists and Peripatetics alike
believe could lead him to reascend to his former union with
29
the divine. J But man has to be trained to look for the
truths that will allow him to reestablish that unity, and
this kind of "training," which must be flexible enough to
include elements from any and all belief systems, can only
be attained through 'free.thinking. Pedants, those who op
pose unrestricted inquiry, do not look for such truths, and
to Bruno they are both intellectually and spiritually
blind. Hence he creates, in the fourth and fifth dialogues
of Gli evoici fuvovi's second part, the discourses of the
nine blind men.
Severino and Minutolo explain that either the nine
blind men suffer blindness because of the intensity of
their love, or their suffering due to love is multiplied by
their prior blindness.30 In each case, however, the blind
men cling to various selfish motives or vices that actually
cause their blindness, analogous to the pedant's refusal to
consider anything other than what he already believes to be
truth, figuratively blinding himself to increased or per
fected knowledge.3^
In the final dialogue, Laodomia explains to Giulia
that the nine blind men have suffered their fate because
Giulia rejected them, and they were determined to search
for someone of equal or greater beauty. In a Boethian syn
thesis of verse and prose Laodomia proceeds to tell the
112
story of the nine lovers' journey to the mount of Circe,
where Circe gives them a powerful vase and sends them on a
pilgrimmage to find someone who can open it, for it cannot
be opened until "high wisdom and noble chastity joined to
beauty will apply its hands" [alta saggezza/E nobil castita
giunte a bellezza/V1applicaran le mani] (1171); its opening
will replace the lovers' torturous blindness with rapturous
joy. The nine travel ten years until they are met in Eng
land by the nymphs of Father Thames and seek their aid— the
chief nymph (presumably Diana, one of Elizabeth's many
mythical emblems) takes the vessel and opens its the men's
eyes are opened to the supreme Good, causing them to brief
ly experience "furiosi debaccanti," or frenzied ravings
(the "eroici furori" of the title) before singing, playing
instruments, and performing the "Song of the Illuminated"
[Canzone de gl'illuminati] (1176-77). In the "Argomento
del Nolano" preceding the opening dialogue, Bruno explains
the crucial significance of Circe's "gift" and its related
mission:
When Circe says: Take another of my fateful
vases, is signified that they carry with them the
decree and destiny of their own changing;
[Dove Circe dice: Prendete un altro mio vase
fatale, § significato che seco portano il de-
creto e destino del suo cangiamento] (945);
all men have the infinite potential of sharing in the di
vine intelligence— as long as they are not inhibited in the
intellectual development that leads to the recognition of
n3
this, by themselves or by others. One must recognize,
then, that the premiere enemies of man are those who block
or deny passage to those who seek access to the truth, or
to the pursuit of it: the pedants.
We see, then, that Bruno is actively condemning the
Oxford pedants throughout the dialogues, developing a po
larized characterization of them as the antithesis of
scholarly wisdom, and employing this characterization meta
phorically to condemn other stubborn egotists (i.e., oppos
ing factions) from Calvinist preachers to Ptolemaic cosmol-
ogists. Since the root of the problem is the resistance
to, and resultant absence of, any real exchange of views
concerning the nature and pursuit of truth, we must ask
whether Bruno used the dialogue form— in classical tradi
tion a vehicle for debate as well as dogmatic dissemina
tion— in the hope that it would inspire exchanges where
none had previously occurred, reviving the spirit of in
quiry which he considered synonymous with medieval Oxford,
and indeed if the dialogue form because of its close his
torical relationship to the drama suggested its ideas to
contemporary dramatists who then used the theatre as a ve
hicle for exploring them. To get a sense of how a drama
tist might theatrically adapt the war on pedantry, we will
look at Bruno's own dramatization of the conflict in his
only play, written within two years prior to his collision
with the Oxford doctors.
114
Notes
^ Dialoghi Italians: Dialoghi Metafisici e Dialoghi
Morali ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia, con nota da Giovanni
Gentile (Firenze: Samsoni, 1958), p. 25. All documentation
of Bruno's Italian dialogues will refer to this volume;
page references will appear in parentheses following sub
sequent quotations or other specific citations of the
texts. All translations of the Italian are my own.
The general pattern of Brunonian interlocutors fea
tures a chief speaker, an informed listener or listeners—
either pupil(s) or outsider (s) willing to be instructed and
to add his (their) own supportive opinions-^-and pedant or
pedants. To demonstrate the critical emphasis on pedantry
in La cena, see the short first draft of it, "Prima Reda-
zione del Principio della Cena de le ceneri" (541-44); the
tetralogue is mentioned, and Prudenzio (called Prudentio)
speaks exclusively in Latin.
2 See David Marsh, "Cicero and the Humanist Dialogue,"
The Quattrocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist
Innovation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1980), pp. 1-23. The Ciceronian form of in utramque partem
is maintained, but its balance of argument is not.
2 The Consolation of Philosophy trans. V.E. Watts (New
York: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 124. Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola gives similar affirmation in his Oration on the
Dignity of Man (1486) : "using philosophy through the steps
of the ladder, that is, of nature, and penetrating all
things from center to center, we shall sometimes descend,
with titanic force rending the unity like Osiris into many
parts, and we shall sometimes ascend, with the force of
Phoebus collecting the parts like the limbs of Osiris into
a unity, until, resting at last in the bosom of the Father
who is above the ladder, we shall be made perfect with the
felicity of theology" (The Renaissance Philosophy of Man
ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman
Randall, Jr., trans. Elizabeth Livermore Forbes [Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1948], p. 230).
115
^ The Nolan does this by specifically submitting or
soliciting propositions to be analyzed instead of polemi
cally debating them— this plays away from the Oxford doc
tors' strength: their rhetorical training. See Dialoghi
Itallanl, p. 132.
5 Bruno's own understanding of Copernican theory is
tempered by Neoplatonism and metaphorical at best. This
point is exhaustively demonstrated in Stanley Jaki’s cos-
mologically-focused translation of La cena, The Ash Wednes
day Supper (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1975).
^ Bruno appears at times in De la causa to relax the
attitude expressed in La cena that the only remedy for the
stubborn ignorance of pedants was to discredit them; al
though that is still his dominant tone, he begins to suspect
that there is hope of correcting the pedant's misapprehen
sion of his own knowledge. Consequently, Socratic elenchos ,
Plato's tool for achieving the same end, will appear more
frequently in the dialogues (e.g., De la causa, 86).
7 Introduced in "Dialogo Secondo" as Alessandro Dic-
sono, and in "Dialogo Terzo" as Dicsono Aurelio, Alexander
Dicson was a disciple of Bruno's who was debating a Cam
bridge Ramist with much the same success as Bruno's tussle
with Oxford. For background on Dicson see Frances A. Yates,
"Conflict Between Brunist and Ramist Memory," The Art of
Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp.
266-86.
® Orpheus, whose legendary descent to retrieve Euryd-
ice became the basis of the Orphic religion, is also cited
as a legendary founder of homosexuality, since he would
have nothing to do with women after losing Eurydice. Mus-
aeus was a student of Orpheus. Tityros, an old shepherd in
Virgil's Eclogue I, praises the young man (Octavian) who re
stored him from exile. Amphion and his brother, Zethus,
caused Dirce, a woman who had mistreated their mother, to
be dragged to death by a bull.
^ See for example Teofilo's speech, De la causa, fea
turing "L'intelletto universale" as producer, director, and
actor in the "produzione di cose naturali" (232); Sofia's
description of Sonno's (Somnus1) embarrassment in front of
the other gods when "he was player and he was subject of
this comedy" [era giocatore ed egli era suggetto di questa
comedia] {Spacclo, 736-37); and the "Argomento del Nolano"
in Gil erolcl furorl (928) on the tragicomic representa
tions in the "teatro del mondo."
10 Gentile, Dialoghi Itallanl, describes the charac
116
terization of Burchio as "like the Gervasio of De la eausa,
common sense, but tainted by Aristotelian prejudices” [come
il Gervasio del De la causa, il senso comune, ma guasto da
pregiudizi aristotelici] (367-68nl). Burchio shares this
quality with the Oxford doctors, but like them also he bel
ligerently ridicules all conflicting or competitive views—
and he is not "common sense" in the same sense Elpino is,
Bruno's point being that only common sense without preju
dice will see the truth of Teofilo's words.
Cf. Introductory Epistle ("Proemiale Epistola") of
De I'infinito, dedicated to Michel de Castelnau, Bruno's
first reliable friend in England (345-47). Bruno believes
he is persecuted because he cannot tolerate ignorance, and
that the ignorant— carrying the instrument of their own
destruction, stubborn resistance to new ideas— sense this,
and desire his ruin.
■ i o •
The Writings of Saint Augustine trans. Ludwig
Schopp et. al., The Fathers of the Church: A New Transla
tion, 8 vols. (New York: Cima Publishing Co., Inc., 1948),
I: Augustine is wielding Socratic elenchos against Licen-
tius as a warm-up to debating with the more learned Alypius
when Llcentius exclaims "would that I were already van
quished . . . so that I might now hear both of you dis
cussing the subject, or— what is even better— see you doing
it . . . when our eyes are gazing at those very persons who
are actually engaged in the thrust and parry of a dialogue,
a lively disputation perfuses the mind with greater de
light, at least, if not with greater profit" (pp. 151-52).
Lucian trans. A.M. Harmon, The Loeb Classical Li
brary, 8 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1936), V, 427.
14 Likely a pun, recalling Bruno's accusations in De
la causa that the misogyny of the pedant suggests a pen
chant for pederasty.
■ * - 5 The reason for the gathering in heaven— or at
least, the one Jove uses to draw the gods together so the
real business can be conducted— is a feast to celebrate the
anniversary of the victory ending the Gigantomachy; thus
the dialogue's banquet premise also connects it with Pla
to's Symposium, whose structure it largely adopts.
16 Lucian, V, 431.
^ II Sommario del Processo di Giordano Bruno ed.
Angelo Mercati (Citta del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana, 1942), p. 99.
117
See Onorio1 s speech to this effect, concluding the
first part of the second dialogue (891).
1 < 9
J.S. Smart, The Sonnets of Milton (Oxford: Claren
don Press, 1966), explains that "After the usual fourteen
lines the poem is continued by the tail, which is composed
of a half-line and a couplet. There may be one tail, or
two, or three, or as many as the poet cares to add in the
development of his theme . . . Unlike the regular sonnet,
which is usually reserved for serious and elevated sub
jects, the Sonetto Caudato is used in verses of a humorous
and satirical kind" (p. 112). Each of the sonetti caudati
in the Cabala employs a single half-line and couplet tail.
2 0
Bruno seems to make several allusions to Apuleius'
The Transformations of Lucius, or the Golden Ass (translat
ed by William Adlington as The XI Bookes of the Golden Asse
with the Marriage of'Cupido and Psiahes [1566]) in his
characterization of Onorio and in the form of the Cabala
itself, for Lucius, like Onorio, retains the memory of his
former state (although the change is wrought by ointment
Lucius expects will turn him into an owl, rather than me
tempsychosis) and the authors make it quite clear that they
are avoiding academic Latin style in composing their works
(Bruno by writing in his vernacular Italian, Apuleius in
his "Address to the Reader" apologizing that a story which
is so "Greek" in nature could not be done justly in academ
ic Latin).
21
Of course this considerably revises the mythical
birth of Pegasus out of the bloody stump of Medusa's neck
following her decapitation by Perseus. In addition, myth
has it that Caballinus, or Hippocrene, was created when
Pegasus' hooves struck the ground. See Ovid, Metamorpho
ses, Bks. IV and V; Apollodori biblioteaa, Bk. II.
22 indeed, Sebasto remarks this is reflected in Aris
totle's writings on the subject, for he can make no sense
of the three books of Aristotle's De anima (895).
2 ^
The Dogmatists assert they have discovered the
truth; the Academicians claim that ultimate final truth
cannot be discovered; the Skeptics suspend judgment. Sex
tus Empiricus: I. Outlines of Pyrrhonism trans. the Rev. R.
G. Bury, The Loeb Classical Library, 3 vols. (New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1933), I, explains the distinctions be
tween the different sects of Skeptics (pp. xxx-xlii); see
also p. 3.
24
Bruno's character/interlocutor is named Micco,
which Salvatore Battaglia, Grande Dizionario della Lingua
118
Italiana (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese,
1978) , X (Mee-Moti), defines figuratively as "An awkward,
clumsy, foolish, silly, stupid person. -- Also: a fop, a
coxcomb" [Persona goffa, impacciata, minchione, babbeo,
stupido. — Anche: zerbinotto, bellimbusto] (p. 346). The
NED notes its figurative usage derives from apelike imita
tion of human behavior (i.e., inferior or spurious imita
tion). "God's ape" is a "natural born fool": in the logi
cal formulae given above, pp. 90-91, "God's ape" would be
included as an "intellectually unbiased individual," a
naturally ignorant person; Bruno's Micco , a mere Ape, even
though employed figuratively fits into the second formula,
acting the part of an animal "incapable of intellectual
response."
25
Including a dialogue-within-a-dialogue (part one,
second dialogue, between Fileno ["Reason"] and Pastore the
lover, printed in a descending stair-step pattern, 981-82),
and a point-of-view shift from third to first person in one
of the poems (to that of a mother lamenting her sons aban
doning her for lovers) that continues into the subsequent
analysis of the poem (1019-20).
2 6
John Charles Nelson, Renaissance Theory of Love:
The Context of Giordano Bruno's Eroici Furori (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 163-66.
9 7
For Bruno's defense that he is treating philosophy,
not theology, see 107 4-75, which also praises Hermes Tris-
megistus as a prophet of wisdom for desiring that men
should be "consorti" both of "gli demoni e dei."
2 8
See pp. 1114-17 for further explicit anti-pedant
and anti-Aristotelian remarks.
29 See pp. 1121-26.
2 n
Gentile, Dialoghi Italiani, notes that this is in
spired in part by Marco Antonio Epicuro's tragicomedy, Dia
logo di tre ciechi, or Cercaria, first published in 1525,
but widely reprinted thereafter (p. 1140nl).
0*1
They exhibit self-pity (the first man, blind from
birth, calls the other blind lovers "Felici," and wishes
only to be led to a precipice; the third demands why "am I
put in such pains for having seen the highest good?" [in
tante pene/Messo per aver visto il sommo bene?] [1146]),
jealousy (the second man doubts of finding any "magical in
cantation, nor sacred plant, nor efficacious stone" [magico
incanto,/Ng sacra pianta, ng virttt de pietra] [1144] to
cure his consuming jealousy), fear (the fourth worries
119
about falling into a hole while wandering blindly), pride
(the fifth man boasts that his endless tears have blinded
him; the seventh brags that if anyone approaches his flam
ing passion, "You will believe that winter is to be found
in the fires of hell" [Crederete che inverno/Sia ritrovars1
al fuoco de l1inferno] [1152] by comparison; the eighth
rhetorically wonders if any other men, heroes or gods have
ever suffered torments equal to his), despair (the sixth,
who rejoiced only in his tears, has nothing left to live
for now that they have dried up), and lust (the ninth man,
a mute, is said to be wracked with desire, and ashamed
seeks "A less painful and more profound death" [Di men pen-
osa e pitf profonda morte] [1153]).
120
III. IL CANDELAIO: SCHEMATIC AND HERALD OF BRUNO'S
ANTI-PEDANTRY
Melpomene versus Thalia: the Faces of Pedantry
Bruno's only drama, the ambiguously titled II Candel-
aio [The Candlemaker or Candle-bearer] (1582), is an exam
ple of commedia erudita, "learned comedy," a dramatic
"form" so widely varied that it meant little in terms of a
distinguishable genre by the time of Bruno's writing,
though it was styled initially after Terentian comedy.^
And as Terence approved of aontaminatio, the "practice of
combining elements from different Greek plays into one new
Latin play,so Bruno freely combines comic types common
in classical and Italian theatre to express the sober theme
that would later accompany a call for intellectual reform
in the London dialogues: the inevitable failure of human
beings who claim to desire the fulfillment of transcendant
goals without first acknowledging and attempting to tran
scend their human inadequacies.
Structurally, the play is composed of five acts (con
sisting of an anti-prologue, proprologue, prologue and a
total of seventy-five scenes) and nineteen dramatis person
ae.. The action evolves from three distinct subplots which
Bruno identifies as "l'amor di Bonifacio, l'alchimia di
Bartolomeo, e la pedantaria di Manfurio."^ Bruno employs a
basically comic, regenerative form because the play's three
121
central characters all seek a union with their conception
of the perfect Good, an impulse that is itself noble in
Bruno's view; hence each of the three is in one sense a
"candelaio," bearing the light of human potentiality into
the darkness of human ignorance. Bruno makes use of the
gvave aspect of oommedia evudita, however, to show that the
three fall short of their goals because they are unworthy
of them, or desire them for unworthy reasons. Bonifacio,
though married to a beautiful young woman, Carubina, finds
himself lustfully drawn to Vittoria, a courtesan, believing
her representative of a transcendant, more fulfilling kind
of love. Bartolomeo, through his own experiments and the
knavish alchemist Cencio, seeks the transcendant knowledge
of alchemy— but for purely material purposes, like his Jon-
sonian descendant, Sir Epicure Mammon.^ Manfurio, the ped
ant, commits the most heinous overreaching: he does not
seek a transcendant wisdom, but believes himself already
possessed of consummate wisdom. Thus Bruno depicts Manfur
io, like the pedants in his Italian dialogues, as the most
serious obstruction to those who seek truth which tran
scends conventional human knowledge, and equates him with
beasts who are not aware of their limitations and yet stub
bornly assert their self-importance. Yet at the end of the
play's dedication, Bruno optimistically emphasizes his be
lief that change is continual and inevitable; and "With
this philosophy my soul raises itself and my intellect
122
exalts me" [Con questa filosofia l'animo mi s'aggrandisse,
e me si magnifica 1'intelletto] (7). This conviction
points to the didactic purpose of Bruno's satire of human
foibles: to identify beliefs which contribute to self-
delusion and replace them with worthy beliefs. It also in
troduces the dynamic— representing variously change/stasis,
comedy/tragedy, form/content— with which Bruno as play
wright is constantly struggling, and which threatens to
tear the play, or the playwright, apart.
In the first dialogue of De gti ero'Loi,' s first part,
Bruno comments on the conflicting— even insidious--influ-
ences exerted on the Nolan as an artist by the comic and
tragic muses, implicitly suggesting why he did not return
to a form he viewed in such polarized terms and resorted
instead to the dialogue as a form of intellectual specula
tion :
the tragic Melpomene pulling from one side with
more subject matter than talent, and the comic
Thalia with more talent than subject matter from
the other, it happened that the one struggling
with the other left him in the middle more quick
ly indifferent and idle than bearable.
[traendolo da un canto la tragica Melpomene con
pitf materia che vena, e la comica Talia con pitf
vena che materia da l'altro, accadeva che l'una
suffurandolo a l'altra, lui rimanesse in mezzo
pitf tosto neutrale e sfacendato, che comunmente
negocioso] (956) .
The opposing forces did not create a positive, kinetic mode
of expression for Bruno; their effect was enervating, in
spiring in him nothing so much as ennui. In a surprisingly
123
honest critical assessment, Bruno admits he avoids tragic
structure because he has "more subject matter than talent"
for the genre and thus he settles upon a comic structure
for Candelaio because his satirical bent of mind ("more
talent") is more conducive to comedy. The elemental con
flict between the two Muses, however, is constantly on
Bruno's mind through the course of the play, self-con
sciously calling attention to itself through theatrical
references and dramatic metaphors. Nothing better ex
presses his attitude towards taming them to do his bidding,
using a comic form to cloak his exploration of the tragic
misdirection of human endeavor, than his opening motto, "In
tvistitia hiiavis in hilavitate tvistis."
This conflict of opposites appears immediately in the
dedication preceding the play: Bruno dedicates II Candelaio
to Lady Morgana B.5— who is deceased. Nevertheless, his
words are not elegaic; he speaks to her in an active, not
passive, tone:
By my faith, it is neither prince nor cardinal,
king, emperor nor pope who will lift this candle
from my hand in this most solemn offeratory. It
touches you, to you it is given; and you will
either assault it in your private study or thrust
it into your candlestick, my superlatively
learned, wise, beautiful and generous Signora
Morgana.
[Per mia fe, non & prencipe o cardinale, re, im-
peradore o papa che mi levarrd questa candela di
mano in questo sollennissimo offertorio. A voi
tocca, a voi si dona; e voi o 1'attaccarrete al
vostro cabinetto o la ficcarrete al vostro can-
deliero, in superlativo dotta, saggia, bella e
124
generosa mia signora Morgana] (5-6):
here the playwright demonstrates the pull of both Muses.
Reflecting the gravity of tragic Melpomene, he portrays the
drama as his own "candle," whose divine topic illuminates
the ritual of "this most solemn offeratory." The ideas
contained within it cannot be trusted to any worldly
authority— as all of them are subject to the same errors
made by Candelaio1s protagonists— so he dedicates it to
someone beyond human corruption. He advises that she can
"assault it in your private study," enjoy it merely as an
entertainment at her leisure or for personal edification;
or she may "thrust it into your candlestick":^ placing this
"candle" in her own "candlestick," the superlative Lady
Morgana may magnify its light, effecting correction of the
foibles it satirizes. Always lurking in the shadows, how
ever, is comic Thalia, providing a bawdy subscript for this
passage and for much of the entire play, alternately subtle
and brazen.
Since Morgana is dead and hence exists in a different
plane, Bruno sends the "candle" from chaotic France to her
more tranquil world for two purposes:
in this land, where I find myself, it will be
possible to clear up somewhat certain Shadows of
Ideas , the which in truth frighten the beasts
like they were Dantesque devils, making the asses
remain further behind; and in that homeland,
where you are, it will be possible to make many
contemplate my soul, and to make them see that it
is not entirely worthless.
125
[in questo paese, ove mi trovo, potr£ chiarir al-
quanto certe Ombre dell'ddee, le quali in vero
spaventano le bestie e, come fussero diavoli
danteschi, fan rimaner gli asini lungi a dietro;
ed in cotesta patria, ove voi siete, potrd far
contemplar l'animo mio a molti, e fargli vedere
che non e al tutto smesso] (6}.
The "certain Shadows of Ideas" that Bruno wishes to "clear
up somewhat" is his De umbrds idearum published earlier the
same year in Paris, one of his many works on mnemonics.^
These treatises, more admired by students of the occult for
their cabalistic couching of supposed secretive or magical
knowledge than for any practical approaches to improving
memory, never found a popular audience. Bruno’s impatience
with apathetic inquiry into his theories translates in his
work here as the bestiality of men who react instinctively
rather than intellectually to new ideas, a recurrent theme
in his Italian dialogues. His comment to Lady Morgana
means that he doesn't wish to reexplain his mnemonic
theories to "the asses"; he chooses instead to placate them
with an amusement.® His motivation for this gesture, how
ever, is to make it possible for new readers (some in "that
homeland, where you are," outside of France), through the
congeniality of comedy, "to contemplate my soul" and to
learn that the Nolan's knowledge is "not entirely worth
less." But the Muses play tug-of-war with him again. If
Bruno with these comically hopeful words was anticipating a
scholar-hero1s welcome in England, then they must appear
"tragically" ironic in light of his indifferent (in Bruno's
126
view, hostile) reception at Oxford.
Bruno continues to exhibit the conflicting pulls of
solemnity and hilarity during the "Antiprologo," when a
drunken character describes II Candelaio's author: "If you
knew the author, you would say he has a bewildered physiog
nomy: as though he is always in contemplation of the pains
of Hell . . . one who laughs only to do as others do"
[L'autore, si voi lo conosceste, dirreste ch'ave una fisio-
nomia smarrita: par che sempre sii in contemplazione delle
pene dell'inferno . . . un che ride sol per far comme fan
gli altri] (20). The drunk is a loutish clown; this comic
fagade disguises Bruno's self-conscious description of him
self as a sour, cantankerous man whose face wears the
stress of contemplating "the pains of Hell"— which he means
literally, not metaphorically— and who, due to the burden
of his self-knowledge, only laughs when others do. In the
"Proprologo," the audience is given fair warning that it is
about to witness no less than "dimming of the senses, a
plumbing of fantasy, a bewildering rambling of intellect,
unbridled honesty, crazy remedies, doubtful studies, un
seasonable seeds and the glorious fruits of insanity" [of-
fuscamento di sensi, tubazion di fantasia, smarrito pere-
grinaggio d'intelletto, fede sfrenate, cure insensate,
studi incerti, somenze intempestive e gloriosi frutti di
pazzia] (23). This is not simply an example of oommedia
dell*ante hyperbole, Arlecchino turning the world topsy
127
turvy so he can later set it right; nor is it simply a
rhetorical exercise like proaatalepsts, where "by reason we
suppose before what may be said, or perchaunce would be
said by our aduersary, or any other, we do preuent them of
their aduantage, and do catch the ball (as they are wont to
say) before it come to the ground."^ It is both. Bruno
hopes for his play to be an interactive experience: the dy
namic formed by vaguely defined portents of danger and the
play's constant low humor, like the dynamic formed by con
ventional plot action and instances of extreme violence in
Artaud's "theatre of cruelty," ensures the viewer's or
reader's attention, and consequently some degree of active
intellectual participation. The physical humor of Candel-
ai-o's comedy will extend to everyone witnessing it; a dis
cerning few will also perceive the serious subject of its
satire.
Bruno tactically wields this dynamic in his introduc
tion of each of the three central characters; he unleashes
comic types who are pitiful, yet who may exert corruptive
influences on others. The "Proprologo" informs the audi
ence that Manfurio the Latin-spouting maestro will present
"a sagacity that makes your eyes weep, curls your hair,
stupifies your teeth, makes you fart, stand up, cough and
sneeze" [un'acutezza da far lacrimar gli occhi, gricciar i
capelli, stuppefar i denti, petar, rizzar, tussir e starnu-
tare] (26). If the pedant's presence will do all this, he
128
is an elemental force to be reckoned with.; Bruno wishes him
to be recognized as a legitimate menace, despite the fact
that he is clearly a comic character. The beadle (Bidello)
enters to introduce Bonifacio, and exclaims that this aan-
dela-io is "An anomalous baboon, a natural blockhead, a mor
al simpleton, a tropological beast, an anagogical ass" [Un
eteroclito babbuino, un natural coglione, un moral menchi-
one, una bestia tropologies, un asino anagogico] (28).
Bonifacio is not merely a fool, but a complex moral problem
(tropological) camouflaged (anagogical) by a love obses
sion— like that of the nine blind men in Gli evoic-i furori.
He is a conflation of the bestial and the intellectual, the
former providing the character's comic fagade, the latter
concerned with examining the tragic valuation of veniality
as his ultimate objective. When Marta comments on the dia
bolical appearance of her husband, Bartolomeo, due to his
bending over a smoking furnace daily to conduct alchemical
experiments, she isn't just making a joke— "I believe that
mighty Satan, Beelzebub, and all those melting away down
there, will take him for an apprentice; because he would
learn from them how to stoke the fires of Hell, assisting
in roasting the damned souls" [Credo che Sautanasso, Barsa-
bucco, e tutti quelli che squagliano, sel prenderanno per
compagno; perchg saprd egli attizzar il fuoco dell'inferno,
per suffriggere e rostire l'anime dannate] (I,xiii,56).
Marta conjures up characters well known to dramatic
129
audiences: the multitude of devils which enlivened the
stages of medieval drama, confreres or servants of the mo
rality Vice. Such characters would naturally take Bartolo
meo as an apprentice because his alchemical obsession makes
him seem interested in learning to "stoke the fires of
Hell." Her sarcasm is undercut by the intimation that Bar
tolomeo may be working his way to damnation rather than to
the philosopher's stone. The comic references to his
smudged face and smoke-filled work area emphasize his un
healthy fixation in the same manner that the comic activity
of the morality devils magnifies their ineffectuality and
moral inferiority. The conflict of opposites on which
Bruno constructs II Candelaio bears more than a little re
semblance to the morality drama in this regard, for there
is a definite didactic purpose behind the play's farcical
comic activity: Manfurio, Bonifacio, and Bartolomeo un
worthily pursue unworthy goals? hence they must be foiled,
edified, or both.
Bruno continues to develop his tragic-comic dynamic
through repeated theatrical and literary allusion. Marca,
one of Sanguino's henchmen, tells Barra about a fight he
witnessed that was like "seeing comedy and tragedy togeth
er; announcing to one a victory and to one a funeral. So
that, if you wanted to see the state of the world, you need
only have wished to be present there" [veder insieme come
dia e tragedia, e chi sonava a gloria e chi a mortoro. Di
130
sorte che, chi volesse vedere come sta fatto il mondo, de-
rebbe desiderare d ’esservi stato presente] (III,viii,95);
from the tension between comedy and tragedy, a microcosmos
of "the state of the world" is synthesized. This observa
tion by the unschooled Marca seems profound when juxtaposed
to any of the pronouncements made by his supposed intellec
tual superior, the pedant Manfurio. In one example of Man-
furio's broad knowledge, Bruno employs irony to establish
the serious subtext to an otherwise comic scene. San-
guino1s henchmen, disguised as members of the watch, con
vince Manfurio that they can capture Corcovizzo— a cohort
who has just robbed the pedant— if they exchange some of
their clothing with the esteemed doctor, in order to lay a
trap. Babbling his approval of the plan in jumbled Latin
and Italian, Manfurio offers literary justification for the
scheme
in imitation of Patroclus,.who by changing gar
ments feigned he was Achilles, and of Coroebus
who appeared in the aspect of Androgeos, and of
great Jove— according to the poet's testimony—
by his designs in adapting many shapes, sometimes
laying aside his more sublime form. . . .
[ad imitazion di Patroclo che co le vesti cangi-
ate si finse Achille, e di Corebo che apparve in
abito di Androgeo, e del gran Giove,— ; poetavum
testimonio,— per suoi dissegni in tante forme
cangiato, deponendo talvolta la pill sublime
forma] (III,xiii,108).
Patroclus did pretend to be Achilles— but Homer explains in
the sixteenth book of the Iliad that he also died in this
disguise; Coroebus did take the defeated Androgeos* arms as
131
his own— but Virgil explains in the second book of the
Aeneid that soon afterwards he went mad and dove straight
into the ranks of the enemy to his doom; Jove did indeed
change his appearance, frequently abandoning his "more sub
lime form"— primarily in order to deceive defenseless mor
tal women into having intercourse with him. Manfurio be
lieves himself a learned man because he can manipulate
words with agility the way an artist deftly wields color
when creating a portrait, but he fails to understand that
without a foundation of order and a carefully planned con
struction both are false reflections of reality, superfi
cial exercises that display technique but do not demon
strate intellect. Manfurio succeeds in deceiving himself
with his faulty literary allusions because he forgets that
words signify ideas, that they must be supported by ideas
if they are to have meaning. This portrayal of Manfurio's
pedantry mirrors Bruno's approach to oommedia evudita. It
Candelaio operates on Bakhtin's "serio-comical" paradigm,
conducting a serious inquiry into the hazards of stubborn
ignorance (Bruno's working definition of "pedantry") from
within a structure that is basically comic. As in his
vernacular dialogues, Bruno dresses didacticism in the cos
tume of drama in order to convey its message.
While Manfurio and the other candelaii , Bonifacio and
Bartolomeo, fail to understand the dual nature of their
situation (they, of course, see only the "tragic" side of
132
the misfortune suffered in pursuit of their goals), the
other characters continue to perceive and exploit it.
Scaramurg the magician, after observing the suffering of
the falsely imprisoned Bonifacio and Manfurio, tells San-
guino "Your comedy is beautiful, but, from their point of
view, it is a very wearisome tragedy" [La vostra comedia e
bella, ma, in fatti di costoro, g una troppo fastidiosa
tragedia] (V,xv,166). Sensing that the drama's crucial
balance may indeed be shifting towards "a very wearisome
tragedy," Scaramurg calls for an end to the fraudulent in
carceration of the two, having already secured the release
of an exasperated Bartolomeo who had been tied to Consalvo,
the druggist. Sanguino complies, comically maintaining the
equilibrium of the dramatic dynamic; the three gulls remain
powerless to effect a change in one direction or the other.
The painter, Giovan Bernardo, asks Scaramurg if the members
of the false watch are all wearing beards, and he replies
"All; so in truth, this seems to me to be a real comedy"
[Tutti: chg in vero questa mi par essere una comedia vera];
and while the gulls can recognize each other, "they still
don't know that the others are masquerading" [non sanno che
gli altri ancora sono mascherati] (V,xxii,192). They still
fail to recognize any reality beyond the material and the
superficially apparent.
Finally abandoned by the watch after being robbed of
the last few coins he was hiding, Manfurio is found wander
133
ing about the stage by Ascanio, Bonifacio's servant, who
tells him to "open your eyes, and paying attention to where
you are, look where you find yourself I" [apri gli occhi, e
guarda dove sei, mira ove ti trovi] (V,xxvi,209). Manfurio
takes his cue from Ascanio's words rather than their mean
ing, and launches into an impromptu lecture on the mechan
ical functioning of the eye; when he puts on his glasses,
he discovers "molti spettatori" staring at him.
ASCANIO. Doesn't it seem to you that you're in
the midst of a comedy?
MANFURIO. Ita sane. [To be sure.]
ASCANIO. Don't you believe you're on stage?
MANFURIO. Omni pvoeul dublo. [Absolutely, with
out doubt.]
ASCANIO. How would you like the comedy to end?
MANFURIO. In calce3 -in fine: neque enlm et ego
rlsu Ilia tendo. [The end should re
flect the whole race: it's worthless
unless I burst my guts with laughter.]
[A. Non vi par esser entro una comedia?
A. Non credete d'esser in scena?
A. A che termine vorreste che fusse la comedia?]
(V,xxvi,209).
Ascanio informs him that he can end the play by speaking
the Plaudlte, but when the pedant decides that any random
Latin ending will serve and tries to offer a Latin bene
diction, the servant warns him to "do it right, like the
master and man of letters that you are; otherwise the other
characters will come back on stage, so much the worse for
you" [fate il tutto bene, da maestro ed uomo di lettere che
voi siete; altrimente tornarrd gente in scena, mal per voi]
(V,xxvi,209). Manfurio must learn that there is a substan
134
tial knowledge, that of a "man of letters," and a superfi
cial knowledge, that of the pedant: a dynamic in the Can
delaio similar to that represented by Bruno's warring
tragic and comic Muses. Comparing himself metaphorically
to a ship that has survived a terrible storm and has final
ly been returned to port, Manfurio expresses his relief at
coming "to the end of my being a tragic hypothesis" [al
fine del mio esser tragico supposito] and wishes "fate is
kinder than it has been so far" [meliori haotenus aoti fov-
tuna] for those who have witnessed "our wearisome and an
noying events" [nostri fastidiosi ed importuni casi] (V,
xxvi,210). Manfurio still does not acknowledge that there
is a balance— as this character, or "tragic hypothesis,"
does not understand that his personal "tragedy" has been a
component in the larger comedy of II Candelaio, so the ped
ant is not aware that he has just demonstrated the narcis
sistic, ludicrous truth of his supposed learning. It is
comically, and tragically, superficial.
The Language of the Beast
Since pedantry is a calculated pose, it is most often
cultivated to the exclusion of real knowledge; hence a
scholar with a limited knowledge of Latin and Greek, and a
small reservoir of memorized lines from classical authors,
is able to give the appearance of extensive learning— when
in fact his very manner is subterfuge, disguising his lack
135
of substantial knowledge. He projects his own inadequacy
onto others. After Sanguino taunts Manfurio's Latinizing
on one occasion, the pedant turns to his student Pollula
and demands, "how is it, Pollula, that you attach yourself
to the company of this brute?" [come sei, Pollula, adiunto
socio a questo bruto?] (I,v,40). II Candelaio contains the
roots of Bruno's anti-pedant campaign, for he has already
declared in the dedication "Alla Signora Morgana B." that
he will have his revenge on those pedants who have brutally
(i.e., irrationally) opposed his ideas and have caused "my
memory to be abused by the feet of pigs and hooves of
asses, because the asses' ears are being cropped, and the
pigs will settle with me at some December feast1 ' [la mia
memoria esser stata strapazzata a forza di pi§ di porci e
calci d'asini: perchg a quest'ora a gli asini son mozze
l'orecchie, ed i porci qualche decembre me la pagarranno]
(7). Bruno is already launching an assault on scoffing in
tellectuals— even while under the supportive, protective
influence of France's Henri III. And here, as in the dia
logues following the Oxford debacle, he will treat them
symbolically as animals because they are bestially stubborn
in opposition to ideas other than their own, a heinous ig
norance in men because it is adopted by choice.
As we noted in the Cabala della oavallo Pegaseo, Bruno
is not satisfied to treat pedants metaphorically as ani
mals— he syllogistically implies that pedants ave animals:
136
animal sensibility lacks compassion, rationality; the ani
mal is ruled by physical impulses, not by wisdom; the ped
ant professes a profound rationality and its concomitant
moral responses; the pedant, however, is moved not by wis
dom but by petty, self-serving motives; hence the pedant is
an animal.1^ Just as there are petty, self-serving non
pedants as well as pedants, there are also genuinely wise
scholars and worldly-wise non-scholars. Similarly, in the
cosmos of Bruno's work there are ignorant beasts and there
are learned beasts. Bruno's type for both, the ever-
present ass of his Italian dialogues, is introduced in II
Candela'to when Sanguino the rogue tells Vittoria the cour
tesan the bawdy tale of the lion and the ass:
Once upon a time the lion and the ass were com
panions; and travelling together, it was agreed
that in passing through rivers, just one would
cross each turn: that is to say, that one turn
the ass was to carry the lion on him, and another
turn the lion was to carry the ass. Having to go
to Rome, then, there being neither boat nor
bridge for their service, arriving at the river
Garigliano, the ass took the lion away upon him:
while swimming towards the other bank, the lion,
for fear of falling off, drove his claws ever
deeper and deeper into the ass' hide, so that
they penetrated the poor animal clear to the
bones. And the miserable creature, like someone
who makes a profession of patience, continued as
best he could, without uttering a word. Finally
coming safely out of the water, he shook his back
a little, rolled on his backbone three or four
times in the warm sand, and they went on.
Eight days later, on returning to that
place, it became the duty of the lion to carry
the ass. The latter being aboard, so as not to
fall into the water, seized the nape of the
lion's neck with his teeth; and that not suffic
ing in order to hold onto him, he thrust his
137
instrument— uh, how should we say this, the...you
understand me— to speak honestly, into the void
under the tail, where the hide comes to an end:
in such a manner, that the lion felt greater an
guish than it is possible for a woman in child
birth to feel, crying: "Hey, hey, ow, ow, ow,
yowchl Hey, traitorI" The ass, in a tone very
severe and grave, responded, "Patience, my broth
er, you see that I don't have any other claws
than this for attaching myself." And thus it was
necessary that the lion suffered and endured, un
til they had crossed the river. The moral:
"Omnio rero vec-tssi-tudo este" [Everything must
change]; and no one is such a gross ass but that
sometime they are served by occasion coming along
at the right moment.
[Era un tempo che il leone e l'asino erano com-
pagni; ed andando insieme in peregrinaggio, con-
vennero che, al passar di fiumi, si tranassero a
vicenna: com'§ dire, che una volta l'asino por-
tasse sopra il leone, ed un'altra volta il leone
portasse l'asino. Avendono, dunque, ad andar a
Roma, e, non essendo a lor serviggio n€ scafa ne
ponte, gionti al fiume Garigliano, l'asino si
tolse il leone sopra: il quale natando verso
l'altra riva, il leon, per tema di cascare, sem-
pre pill e pid gli piantava l'unghie ne la pelle,
di sorte che a quel povero animale gli penetror-
no in sin all'ossa. Ed il miserello, come quel
che fa professione di pazienza, passS al meglio
che pote, senza far motto. Se non che, gionti a
salvamento fuor de l'acqua, si scrolls un poco
il dorso, e si svoltb la schena tre o quattro
volte per 1'arena calda, e passoron oltre. Otto
giorni dopo, al ritornare che fecero, era il
dovero che il leone portasse l'asino. Il quale
essendogli sopra, per non cascar ne l'acqua, co
i denti afferrb la cervice del leone? e cib non
bastando, per tenerlo su, gli caccib il suo
strumento,— o, come vogliam dire, il ..., tu
m'intendi,— per parlar onestamente, al vacuo,
sotto la coda, dove manca la pelle: di maniera,
ch'il leone sentf maggior angoscia che sentir
possa donna che sia nelle pene del parto, gri-
dando: "Old, old, oi, oi, oi, oimb! old tradi-
torel". A cui rispose l'asino, in volto severo
e grave tuono: "Pazienza, fratel mio: vedi ch'io
non ho altr'unghia che questa d'attaccarmi". E
oossi fu necessario ch'il leone suffrisse ed in-
durasse, sin che fusse passato il fiume. A pro-
138
posito: "Omni-o vevo veciss-itudo este"; and nis-
ciuno 6 tanto grosso asino, che qualche volta,
venendogli a proposito, non si serva de
l'occasione] (II,v,71-72).
We can make two observations here: the lion's action is in
stinctive, motivated by fear, an overreaction performed by
appendages the ass does not have, precluding a later ex
change in kind; besides, the lion is a natural predator and
would defeat the ass in any exchange of force. But as San-
guino concludes, "no one is such a gross ass" not to retal
iate if given an opportunity— the ass is given such an
opportunity and executes the perfect vendetta, exaggerating
his action and employing an appendage the lion could not
use in similar manner. The ignorant pedants are just such
cowardly lions and their predatory force is the power of
their rhetoric; Bruno is the patient ass who forbearingly
waits to retaliate through drama, satire, dialogue, invec
tive, whatever means opportunity affords. The ass, then,
capable of canny cleverness or simple ignorance, subject
always to change, will be variously used— here as in the
Cabala— as Bruno's type for all irrational human beings who
refuse to listen to what the Nolan has to say, and also for
those who are "ignorant" of the affectations and fraudulent
knowledge of the pedant.
Manfurio confirms this fluctuating bestiality in that
most intimate expression of his wisdom, his poetry. It is,
in all respects, asinine: ignorant, clumsy, dull, stupid.
139
Hired in his capacity as a wordsmith, he composes a sonnet
for Bonifacio to send to Vittoria; rather than demonstrat
ing any knowledge of the form, however, he exhibits his ig
norance of poetic structure and his ineptitude with rhyme
and meter. The sonnet is fourteen lines long, superficial
ly correct, but the meter is varied randomly and defies
regular scansion. In addition, its rhyme scheme is a,a,a,
a,...a. Lucia the bawd, who reads the poem before deliver
ing it to her mistress, admits that "Personally, I don't
understand about rhyme; however, if I may make a judgment,
I'll say two things: one, that these verses are grander
than ordinary ones; the other, that they are made to sound
of bells and asinine song, the which always strike the same
note" [Io, per me, di rima non m'intendo; pure, s 1 io posso
farne giudicio, dico due cose: l'una, ch'i versi son piii
grandi che gli ordinarii; l'altra, che son fatti a suon di
campana e canto asinino, li quali sempre toccano alia me-
desima consonanza] Cl/Vi,44). Despite having confessed her
ignorance of poetry, Lucia obviously understands two things
about it that the pedant does not: his lines are not like
most poetry, and his invariant rhyme scheme sounds like a
clanging bell or braying ass.
From destroying the sonnet as a form, the thoroughly
insensitive Manfurio moves to emulating Ovidian verse,
using as his model the eighth book of the Metamorphoses,
describing the Calydonian boar; he composes a two-stanza
140
condemnation of dirty pigs (styled, however, like an enco
mium) : "O dirty pig, vile, good-for-nothing life,/You have
nothing but that silly grunting/With which you think to
acquire food” [O porco sporco, vil, vita disutile,/Ch'altro
non hai che quel gruito fatuo,/Col quale il cibo tu ti pen-
si acquirere] (II,i,62); following line after line of his
own "silly grunting" and repulsive description, the poet
concludes "You were given a soul only as salt/So you don't
spoil: do I speak badly?" [L'anima ti fu data sol per sa
le,^ fin che non putissi: dico male?] (II,i,63). The
wordplay of his verse escapes Manfurio— he fails to see
that with the word "sale" he has also given his pig its
figurative meanings, "wit" or "common sense." Ottaviano,
an observing gentleman, inquires at the end of Manfurio's
recital if the poem required a great deal of effort, time,
and revision; Manfurio's "modest" denial leads Ottaviano to
ask, in that case, if the lines were adapted, or actually
stolen, from some other author. Here, interpreting the
literal meaning of Manfurio's words, Ottaviano is the ped
ant's polar opposite. Manfurio replies that Ottaviano must
not inquire thus far into "my erudition: believe you me, I
have absorbed not a little of the Caballine fountain" [mia
erudizione: credetemi che non ho poco io del fonte cabal-
lino absorpto] (II,i,64); the mythical Caballinus created
by Pegasus, of which Manfurio has "absorbed not a little,"
makes him a spiritual relative of Onorio, the former ass
141
who became that winged horse in one incarnation, and who in
the Cabala is also found to have been the "protosofosso,"
Aristotle. Bruno's sarcastic allusions to the concept of
imbibing knowledge (or in Onorio's case, of choosing not to
imbibe forgetfulness), of superficially engaging in what
passes for proof of knowledge, anticipates his later puns
at the expense of the fonte Ar-istotelis.
The mutilation of poetic models is ended when Manfurio
is allowed to speak his own intellectual condemnation, de
livering a three-stanza ode to pedants: each stanza con
sists of five rhymed couplets (ten lines, he says, being
"il numero perfetto"). The poem begins rudely,
Man of rude and crass Minerva,
Dimmed mind, porter of ignorance,
Nothing learned, nothing sought,
At whom Pallas and each Muse weeps;
[Uomo di rude e di crassa Minerva,
Mente offuscata, ignoranza proterva,
Di nulla leczion, di nulla fruge,
In cui Pallad' ed ogni Musa lugge;]
and concludes rudely:
Lacking vision, understanding nothing,
Irrational beast, gross cowherd,
Devoid of enlightenment, son of ignorance,
Impoverished of argument and of counsel.
[Senza veder, di nulla apprensione,
Bestia irrazional, grosso mandrone,
D'ogni lum privo, d1ignoranza figlio,
Povero d'argumento e di consiglio] (III,v,87-88),
Manfurio immediately offers self-gratulation for the struc
tural mastery of his commendatory poem that describes a
contemptible, empty vessel, a scholar condemned earlier for
142
being "In nullo letterario instrutto." The final four
lines are the very anatomy of the Brunonian pedant: a
shortsighted, superficial beast who midleads the gullible
("gross cowherd"), the incarnate "son of ignorance." Far
from being ironic or self-effacing, Manfurio is completely
unaware that he is pejoratively describing himself. He is
indifferent to the meaning of words he recites— he admires
them merely for their bold, perfect shape, their noble
sound.
In describing the role of the pedant in ancient, medi
eval, and Renaissance comic theatre, Marcel Tetel explains
that "he becomes the tool for the use of deformed lan
guages, jargons, and imaginary tongues" so his "comic ef
fect results from what the listener interprets as the
clanking of strange sounds.Through Manfurio's poetry,
Bruno exposes the pedant's disregard of the meaning of lan
guage, and hence his ignorance of individual words' compat
ibility with others except in a very superficial, puerilely
imitative, fashion. To demonstrate the ease with which
language can be confused by anyone, in one scene Sanguino
mistakes Pollula's recital of the invocation, Domine, labia
mea aperies for Domino lampia mem periens (I,iv,37); fur
thermore, Pollula, the pedant's pupil, fails to correct
Sanguino's inaccurate rendering of the phrase. Sanguino,
however, has none of Pollula's patience with Manfurio's
macaronic intermixing of Latin and Italian for the purpose
143
of ornamentation rather than communication, and when the
master's outraged criticisms of his student go too far—
"Tell me, fool, when will you di.spuevasoeve yourself?"
[Dimmi, sciocco, quando vuoi dispueraseere?] - — Sanguino
intercedes in kind: "Master, with this diabolical speaking
through mouldy-grammar, or sepulcherese, or assigned-
elegance and Latrinesque, you stink to high heaven, and the
whole world ridicules you" [Mastro, con questo diavolo di
parlare per grammuffo, o aataoumbaro o delegante e latrin-
esco, amorbate il cielo, e tutt'il mondo vi burla] (I,v,
38). Manfurio, in responding that the world might indeed
ridicule him if all people were as uneducated as Sanguino,
fails to comprehend the liberties Sanguino is taking with
language, aping Manfurio's own coinage of the verb d-ispuer-
asoere (to "un-child" oneself) when he could easily have
used adolesoere or pubesoeve . Sanguino cleverly criticizes
the pedant's overuse of a "dead" language ("grammuffo" from
"grammatica," grammar, and "muffa," mould; oataoumbavum is
the language of the sepulchre), his fixation on rhetorical
embellishment ("delegante" from "delegare," to assign, and
"elegante"), and his preposterous latinate derivations
(Manfurio*s "latrinesco" stinks to high heaven because he
is fusing "latinit&," latinity, with "latrina," latrine).
The visit of Ottaviano which precedes the recital of the
pig poem shows the effect of Manfurio's "latrinesco" on
even the most tolerant and respectful of audiences: after
144
trying his best to endure the pedant's merciless onslaught
of Latin-for-Latin's-sake, Ottaviano begs "have pity on me,
and don't fling any more of these composed darts, that make
me jump out of my skin” [abbiate piet£ di me, e non mi lan-
ciate piii cotesti dardi, che mi fanno andar fuor di me]
(II,i,60). Manfurio's words are "darts," and Bruno makes
the point to illustrate that it is indeed the pedant's
words, if respected, that empower his sense of superiority
and confirm his identity, predicated upon words and his
ability to wield them.
In his soliloquy beginning Act Three, Bartolomeo in
veighs against pedants who capitalize on their nonsensical
deployment of language to cozen the rich and the gullible,
revealing themselves
truly dogs that don't know how except by barking
to obtain their bread. Where? At the tables of
the rich, of those fools, I say, where for four
inappropriate words accompanied by shaggy eye
brows, astonished looks and marvelous gestures
they obtain the bread from their basket and the
money from their purses; and they conclude with
good reason that in verbis sunt virtutes.
[veramente cani che non sanno con altro che col
baiare acquistars' il pane. Dove? a tavole di
ricchi, di que' stolti, dico, che per quattro
paroli a sproposito da quelli dette con certe
ciglia irsute, occhi attoniti ed atto di mara-
viglia, si fanno cavar il pan di cascia e danari
dalle borse; e gli fanno conchiudere con verity
che "in verbis sunt virtutes"] (III,i,80).
Bruno despises those patrons who encourage pedants in their
poses; he calls the pedants who bestially exploit people in
this manner "dogs," and complains that their most damning
145
crime against true knowledge is that they believe not in
the truth of words, but "in verbis sunt virtutes. " The
pedant receives subsistence by convincing others that there
is a value in his words (that is, in the knowledge implied
by them) in which they should desire participation. To the
characters impressed by it, that same cacophony of language
that an audience finds humorous seems a powerful tool, a
form of magic about which they have no inkling. When it
becomes necessary for pedants like Manfurio to actually
communicate, however, words fail them. Far from being able
to conjure with his words, Manfurio*s verbal raptures most
frequently leave him vulnerable to insult and trickery.
When Corcovizzo robs him of his purse, he calls for help in
stopping his assailant by shouting about the "amputator of
purses" [amputator di marsupii] in several pedantic varia
tions . Barra and Marca arrive, and upon learning the cause
of his screaming, ask Manfurio why he simply didn't cry "al
mariolo" or "al ladro": he explains "This expression you
are using is neither Latin nor Etruscan; and therefore I do
not prefer it over my own" [Questo vocabulo che voi dite,
non S latino ne etrusco; e perb non lo proferiscono di miei
pari] (III,xi,104). "Mariolo" and "ladro" are vulgar or
common terms to Manfurio, existing without discrete meaning
or assigned value; simply words he judges unworthy of his
usage because they are superficially simple, rather than
complex, constructions. He projects an implied value,
146
then, upon anyone who would understand such words in the
context in which they have meaning: a pedant would neither
use the terms nor acknowledge their usage; only an inferi
or, someone not acquainted with the pedant's sense of lan
guage as ornamentation independent of semiotic designation,
would employ them. Manfurio reacts to language as an ani
mal does, responding to sound— inflection, frequency, vol
ume— rather than meaning.
The pedant's values are seriously misplaced; though he
has no cognition of this, many of the "vulgar" thinkers
around him do. Pollula displays one of the poems Manfurio
has composed for Bartolomeo to send Vittoria, and Barra
asks to read it. Its pompous latinization and obscure
classical references lead him to demand "What devilish way
of speaking to women is this?" [Che diavolo di modo di par-
lar a donne e questo?] (II,vii,77). He continues to read,
hoping for improvement (or coherence), and finally exclaims
"To the whores with this blasted pedant . . . Bonifacio
wants to play the doctor and she isn't going to believe
this thing is his. Besides, what's contained here seems a
learned foolishness to me" [Vada in bordello questo becco
pedante . . . Bonifacio vuol far del dotto; e lei non cre-
derd che sii cosa sua. Oltre che, mi par una dotta cogli-
oneria quel che cqui [sic.] si contiene] (II,vi,77-78).
Barra sees through Bonifacio's purpose and is sure that
Vittoria will also be able to tell that the poem is the
147
work of a pedant, not a lovesick chandler. The knowledge
represented by the poem is "una dotta coglioneria," the
corrupted complement of Cusanus' learned ignorance: the
former is a cultivated nonsense, the latter an unschooled
wisdom.
Not infrequently the unschooled but canny characters
are able to turn the pedant's strength against him, reveal
ing through language his superficiality, that his fustian
is a fagade. The artist, Giovan Bernardo, unable to bear
Manfurio's pompous declensions any longer, volunteers to
recite the derivation of the word, "pedant": "Pe, pecorone,
— Dan, da nulla,— Te, testa d'asino" (III,vii,90); a pedant
is a doltish, empty-headed ass. Giovan Bernardo's closing
assessment of the pedant's value, "I give all such pedants
to the devil!" [Io dono al diavolo quanti pedanti sonol]
(III,vii,91), is indicative of the contempt that Bruno has
for creatures who pretend to knowledge they do not possess.
When the false watch takes Manfurio into custody—
"Give me your hand, Master lost sheep" [Toccatemi la mano,
Messer pecora smarrito] (IV,xvi,137)— Sanguino, Barra,
Marca and Corcovizzo immediately see through the pedant's
bravado (though he is completely fooled by their disguises)
and place him in a context that seems more appropriate for
this latinizing beast:
SANGUINO. Off to prison, then we'll see who the
real rascal is.
MANFURIO. Lead me to the house of my host, near
148
the Crutched Friars, he'll prove to you
that I'm not a criminal.
SANGUINO. We're not about to lead you to your own
house; so there. You go to the con
stabulary; later you can tell your rea
sons to someone besides the police.
MANFURIO. Hey, is this how you treat erudite
teachers? Affiaere me with such abuse?
MARCA. Speak Italian, speak Christian, in the
name of your devil, so we can understand
you!
BARRA. He speaks good Christian; because he
speaks like one speaks when he says the
Mass.
MARCA. I don't doubt but this fellow's some
overdressed monk.
[S. Va' priggione, chg si vedrd chi d stato il
mariolo.
M. Menatemi in casa del mio ospite, presso le
Vergini, chS vi provarrb, ch'i' non son mal-
fattore.
S. Non prendemo le persone per menarle in casa
sua, noi; zo, zo. Andate in Vicaria; che
dirrete vostre raggioni ad altro che a'
birri.
M. OimS, cossi trattate gli eruditi maestri?
dunque, di tanto improperio mi volete
aff-iaere?
MARCA. Parla italiano, parla cristiano, in nome
de lo tuo diavolo, chS t'intendiamo!
B. Lui parla bon cristiano; perchg parla come si
parla quando si dice la messa.
MARCA. Io dubito che costui non sia qualche
monaco stravestito] (IV,xvi,138-39).
The clergy is another entity which thrives on the power of
its words. Like the pedants, the clergy employ Latin with
the effect, if not the intent, of excluding the uneducated;
the authenticity of the clergy's benevolence is as suspect
as the pedant's ("Speak Christian, in the name of your dev
il"). Barra associates Manfurio's Latin outbursts with the
speaking of the Mass (both are obviously unintelligible to
him) and Marca finishes the connection by merging pedant
149
and clergy (in manner similar to the conflation of pedant
and beast), suggesting that Manfurio may actually be "some
overdressed monk." This connection is important to Bruno's
universal condemnation of pedantry, for it demonstrates
that pedants not only represent a potent corruptive force,
but also pose the concentrated threat of an institution
with a wide base of support from other sources of corrup
tion, especially the church.
Institutional Pedantry and Unschooled Skepticism
The concept of man requiring assistance in spiritual
matters from sources external to himself runs counter to
Bruno's affirmations of man's unlimited intellectual and
gnostic potential. Consequently, the operation of divine
salvation independent of— or even in spite of, as the
Spacoio's anti-Calvinism argues— an individual's deeds must
necessarily, from his point of view, be suspect. The ab
sence of any proof of divine agency in the world (and the
resultant chaos due to its absence) is echoed in an obser
vation made by the impious cozener, Sanguino: "It is said
that Our Lord healed all other sorts of infirmity, but that
he never drew near to madness" [Se dice che Nostro Signore
sanb tutte altre sorte de infirmitd, ma che giamai volse
accostarsi ad pazzi] (I,xiv,58). Although the comment is
being made in reference to Bartolomeo's alchemical obses
sions, Bruno's point is syllogistically clear: God does not
150
involve Himself in madness; the world is full of madness;
hence, God does not involve Himself in the world, and this
explains the pervasive presence of madness in human af
fairs. Furthermore, Bruno argues, there's no reason why
man should believe that God would even desire to manifest
Himself in this world. Vittoria enters at the beginning of
Act IV and delivers a most curious soliloquy, more tragic
than comic in content, opening with a line better suited to
a melancholy Dane than a comic courtesan: "Waiting for what
isn't coming is something like dying" [Aspettare e non ven
ire £ cosa da morire]. If this is true, then the expecta
tions of men who anticipate a God who never reveals Himself
to men must also feel like the pangs of death, according to
Vittoria.
We cannot make a distinction between the cult of
the divine and that of mortals. We are worship
ping the figures and images, and we are honoring
the reputation of the divine writing, making it
our purpose that it endures. We worship and hon
or these other gods who piss and shit, raising
similar intention and prayerful devotion to their
images and figures, because by means of these,
the virtuous are provided for, the worthy are ex
alted, the oppressed defended, their borders are
expanded, what is theirs is protected, and they
are made to shrink from the adversary's force:
[Non possiamo non far differenza tra il culto
divino e quello di mortali. Adoriamo le scul-
ture e le imagini, ed onoriamo il nome divino
scritto, drizzando l'intenzione a quel che vive.
Adoramo ed onoramo questi altri dei che pisciano
e cacano, drizzando la intenzione e supplice de-
vozione alle lor imagini e sculture, perchg, me-
diante questi, premiino i virtuosi, inalzino i
degni, defendano gli oppressi, dilatino i lor
confini, conservino i suoi, e si faccino temere
151
dall'aversarie forze] (IV,i,109-10):
Bruno laments through Vittoria the inability of people to
distinguish worship of God from worship of human agents and
the material requisites of human necessity, and the convic
tion that they should address all of their prayers and
hopes for assistance beyond their abilities and comprehen
sion to statues, holy words, and human beings like them
selves rather than directly to the gods themselves. Mira
cles are performed by gods, not by "images and figures” of
gods. The church houses some of the worst pedants of all,
protected in their haughty ignorance by the very institu
tion they corrupt.
To put it another way, Bruno has no respect for a re
ligion which has failed so many, either through corruption
or ineffectuality. He satirizes religious ritual in It
Candetaio because its purpose is not to help effect change,
but to maintain appearances— the same fraudulence he con
demns in pedants generally. Vittoria's criticism of pray
ing to "images and figures" exposes the repugnance with
which Bruno regards man's dependence on spiritual media
tion, and the legions of saints revered for this purpose
are mocked by characters who call for help from sources
like St. Cosmo and St. Giuliano (IV,x,129), St. Raccasella,
St. Apollonia and St. Lucia (IV,xii,132-34), and scores of
others real and imaginary; but as often as these names are
called upon for aid, they are cursed for their ineffectu-
152
ality. ScaramurS tries to comfort the blubbering Bonifacio
after his imprisonment by the false watch by declaring his
desire to curse a saint on the eartdelaio's account— not
just any saint, but "un di que' baroni," one of the big
wigs; and for his profane acts of the previous two hours,
he jokes that he has committed enough sin to deserve more
than "dieci milia anni" in purgatory. His reaction is con
sistent with his character throughout the play: he believes
in what is tangible and verifiable. Bonifacio, however,
finding himself in a vulnerable position, suddenly becomes
a frightened protector of the faith and warns Scaramurg
"You’re wrong to blaspheme" [Fate errore a biastemare] (II,
xvii,168), for his b l a s p h e m i n g ^ might have some additional
adverse effect on the harried and suddenly pious chandler.
Bonifacio continues to plead with the crooked watch,
finally arriving at the ultimate plea: "I demand mercy and
pardon from you. I beg that you grant me what Our Lord
Jesus Christ gave to the good Thief, to the Magdalene" [Io
vi dimando mercg e grazia. La vi supplico che mi concedi-
ate come il Signior nostro Giesu Cristo al bon Latrone,
alia Madalena] (V,xxiii,196). If Bruno had written II Can-
delaio strictly as a morality play, this would appear to be
repentance sufficient to secure Bonifacio’s release from
his torment; however, the irreverent Barra declares in an
aside, "Balls, what a good thief this fellow is!" [(Cazzo,
che buon latone 5 costui!)] (V,xxiii,196). The good
153
thief's pardon by Christ does not represent to Barra the
transcendant mercy that Bonifacio associates with it;
rather, the good thief is the perfect criminal, the man who
put one over on Christ and "stole" his way out of hell, so
Barra adds "When you are as good a thief as he and have
robbed paradise, then you will get your mercy from Our
Lord" [Quando voi sarrete buon latrone come colui che rubbb
il paradiso, come da Nostro Signore vi si farrd misericor-
dia] (V,xxiii,196). To Bonifacio, Dimas represents
Christ's infinite mercy; to Barra, Dimas' pardon is the
perfect crime. Corcovizzo accentuates the blasphemy by
comparing Bonifacio to the second figure cited in his plea
for mercy, Mary Magdalene: "You see this obliging Magda
lene! who travels with the pox and the four hundred crabs
he must have in one of his beards or the other. You see
what precious unguent this fellow is spreading around! By
my faith, all he's missing is a skirt to be the Magdalene"
[Vedete che gentil Madalena! che gli vada il cancaro a lui
e le quattrocento piattole che deve aver nel bosco dell'una
e l'altra barba! Vedete che precioso unguento va spargendo
costui! Per mia f§, non gli manc'altro che la gonna, per
farlo Madalena] (V,xxiii,196-97). Corcovizzo's crude joke
ignores the spiritual lesson represented by Mary Magda
lene's story, that the true penitent will be forgiven, and
like Barra he focuses instead on the portion of the story
that contains elements to which he can concretely relate:
154
the Magdalene was a prostitute, and that immediately con
jures up the unsavory qualities that Corcovizzo then ap
plies to the bearded Bonifacio. Soon afterwards, Sanguino
steps in and adds his voice, saying that Bonifacio should
be pardoned— only because he has suffered enough, not be
cause he happened to plead his case to the right saints or
even to the highest heavenly authority. Since men have
undertaken to chastise Bonifacio, Sanguino appropriately
makes his plea directly to those men.
Bruno seems to imply that the church and the clergy
should do precisely the same thing, that is, to act as men
in the affairs of men, and to act as representatives of God
only in the affairs of God. The respect accorded to the
clergy is abused when it is employed to subjugate, rather
than to comfort and enlighten, those who trust in it.
Thus, the failure of religion to minister adequately to its
adherents is largely due to the corruption of its human
agents, and Bruno satirizes this corruption in two ways:
by treating the agents in the papal hierarchy as greedy
usurers and misers, and by equating nuns with whores.
Reference, for example, is made to the controversial prac
tice of selling benefices and absolution from sin, prac
tices outlawed in England by Henry VIII's dissolution of
the monasteries some forty-five years earlier; by confis
cating Bartolomeo1s purse instead of taking him into custo
dy, the crooked watch according to Sanguino is performing
155
an act "Like that of a certain pope— I don't know if it was
pope Hadrian— who sold benefices more quickly, making him a
good merchant of that faith; whom every day had his bal
ances in hand, seeing if the crowns were the right weight"
[Come quella d'un certa papa,— non so se fusse stato papa
Adriano,— che vendeva i beneficii pitf presto facendone buon
mercato che credenza; il quale era tutto il di co le bilan-
cie in mano, per veder se i scudi erano di peso] (V,viii,
152-53). Hadrian is not recalled as a moral holy man, but
as an exemplary "buon mercato" whose foremost concern is
that the coins received for benefices are authentic. When
Scaramurg tries to use an analogy of bordellos to convents
in order to establish that the former is an institution in
the same sense as the latter (towards justifying Boni
facio's veniality as well), Sanguino thinks he is making an
ordinary joke concerning the reputed lasciviousness of
nuns :
SCARAMURE. Wot only, I say, are they authorized
according to civil and municipal laws,
but the brothels are even institu--
tions, as were the monks' cloisters.
SANGUINO. Ha, ha, ha, ha, this is beautiful. Now
this fellow even wants them to be one
of the four hundred major or four minor
orders; and, to provide their living
expenses, he will set you up with the
abbess, ha, ha.
[SC. Non solamente, dico, son permesse, tanto
secondo le leggi civili e monicipali, ma an-
cora sono instituiti i bordelli, come fus^
sero claustri di professe.
SA. Ah, ah, ah, ah, questa & bella. Or mai,
vorr£ costui che sii uno degli quattrocento
156
maggiori o degli quattro Ordini minori; e,
per un bisogno, vi instituirrd la abbatessa,
ah, ah] (V,xviii,176).
Not until later does Sanguino realize the effects of Scara-
murS's defense of Bonifacio, a combination of elenahos,
syllogism and sophistry; his initial reaction is to laugh
at yet another snide comparison of "i bordelli" to the
"claustri di professe." The seemingly cynical characters
of II Candelaio cannot respect religious institutions pop
ulated with human beings because they cannot conceive of
human beings uninfluenced by human appetites; Bruno's reac
tion here, in light of his own Dominican background, helps
to explain his departure from monastic life.
The characters in the play make references to reli
gious icons and institutions only in a pejorative sense,
mocking their ineffectuality or alluding to their corrup
tion: when begging for mercy, Bonifacio in his frustration
curses Vittoria and Lucia. "They wanted to make sport of
my deeds: never, never more do I wish to believe a female.
If the Virgin herself were coming...I just barely missed
saying something blasphemous" [S'hanno voluto giocar di
fatti miei: mai, mai pid voglio credere a femine. Si
venesse la Vergine..., poco ha mancato ch'io non dicesse
qualche biastema] (V,ix,153-54); his first impulse is to
curse the Virgin, exemplar of all women, in order to curse
all women. Pleading for his release, Bonifacio reminds
Sanguino that everyone is a sinner and needs the mercy of
157
God, to which the counterfeit officer replies in an aside,
"A villain like this fellow could be a preacher if he had
studied" [ (Un scelerato, come costui, sarrebbe un predica-
tore, si avesse studiato)] (V,xviii,174); Bonifacio's
rhetoric, if not his example, demonstrates his potential to
have been a clergyman— one who employs rhetoric to convince
others to do his, that is, God's, bidding— if only he'd
studied. When it appears possible that he will be released
without being made a public laughingstock, Bonifacio tear
fully thanks Sanguino and offers to kiss his feet, while
Sanguino cries "Get up, no, don't kiss my feet, not until
I'm pope" [Alzati, non, non mi baciar i piedi, sin tanto
ch'io non sii papa] (V,xviii,184); Sanguino doesn't object
because he isn't pope, but because he's not yet pope, a
sacrilegious distinction wasted on Bonifacio who has been
told he hasn't studied— human nature, that is— enough.
Ascanio tells Giovan Bernardo the story of Scipione
Savolino, who on one Good Friday confessed all of his sins
to don Paulino, the curate of a village near Nola. Every
year thereafter, "without many words and particularities,
Scipione would say to don Paulino, 'My father, the sins of
today are ones you know from a year ago'; and don Paulino
would respond to Scipione, 'Son, you know today's absolu
tion from a year ago: Vade in paoio et non amplio peoaare'"
[senza tante paroli e circonstanze, diceva Sipione a don
Paulino: "Padre mio, gli peccati di oggi fa l'anno voi le
158
sapete"; e don Paulino rispondeva a Sipione: "Figlio, tu
sai 1'assoluzione d'oggi fa l'anno: Vade in paoio3 et non
amplio peocave"] (V,xix,189). The renewable perpetuity on
don Paulino's blessing completely undercuts the concept of
confession as a ritual cleansing and their exchange is re
duced to a simple formula repeated quickly, efficiently.
What makes this corruption of religious faith possible is
the complicity of don Paulino; without his acceptance of
this arrangement, Scipione would be forced to find another
corrupt priest— or to sincerely repent and make confession.
Scipione, however, understands human nature in the canny
way that most of the characters of Bruno's Candelaio under
stand it. What their religion lacks is a mystery worthy of
their allegiance and faith, and beyond a mere condemnation
of religious corruption, Bruno uses his play to also point
in what direction such worthy mysteries may lie.
The Magical Art; Worthy Belief and Unworthy Believers
Perhaps the greatest attraction of cabalistic studies
for Renaissance thinkers was the belief that it was possi
ble to hide powerful knowledge and protect it from corrup
tion by encoding it in a protective canopy of words impene
trable to mundane or unworthy intellects. Quite simply,
what man cannot uncover, he cannot corrupt. A parallel can
be drawn between this sort of interest in cabalism, and
erudite studies of magic performed by intellectuals like
159
Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee and Giordano Bruno. As the
dialogue Daemonologie (1599) and treatise Newes from Scot
land (1591) by Scotland's King James VI, or Reginald Scot's
Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) demonstrate, diabolical
magic was associated by the late sixteenth century almost
exclusively with witchcraft, and always negatively (the
raising of demons by Comolet in George Chapman's Bussy
D ’Ambois is an anachronism recalling medieval attitudes
towards conjuring as a scholastic art). Natural magic, en
compassing mathematics (used metaphorically, or numerolog-
ically), pseudo-sciences like alchemy, even limited super
natural commerce conducted scientifically (like that re
ported in Dr. Dee's A True & Faithful Relation, .1659
[though reporting events extending back to 1583]), was in
vestigated by thinkers like Bruno as a form of intellectual
inquiry: since the nature of natural magic is inscrutable—
though presumably activated by divine agency— perhaps it
13
can yield insights inscrutable by other means. So when
Bruno praises magic, he is praising the natural variety for
its potential to assist man in his attempt to transcend his
human limitations, connecting it in his mind with cabalism,
with the ars memoria, with Copernicanism, with the concept
of the infinite universe, with all of the themes of his
Italian dialogues and his Latin poems, treatises and dia
logues— that is, with freethinking.
Juxtaposed with all of his allusions to the corruption
160
and impotence of the Christian religion, Bruno makes many
references to the potency and the potential of magic. In
the second scene of the play, Bonifacio is so moved by his
obsessive love for Vittoria that he considers consulting
"questa occulta filosofia":
It is said that the magic art is of such potency
that against nature it makes the rivers run back
wards, stills the sea, makes the mountains rum
ble, the abyss resound, forbids the sun's shin
ing, detaches the moon, unveils the stars, re
moves the day and brings the night to a halt:
[Si dice che 1'arte magica § di tanta importanza
che contra natura fa ritornar gli fiumi a die-
tro, fissar il mare, muggire i monti, intonar
l'abisso, proibir il sole, dispiccar la luna,
sveller le stelle, toglier il giorno e far fer-
mar la notte] (I,ii,3Q):
Bonifacio's naive wonder betrays his ignorance of magic be
yond its fabled or mythical reputation, even though the
playwright has him recite a "lost poem" [poema smarrito] on
magic by the "Academico di nulla academia," Bruno himself,
which concludes that everything is susceptible to change.
Bonifacio, who certainly does not understand the weight of
his own words, acknowledges the poem's message: "One could
doubt about everything" [Di tutto si potrebbe dubitare] (I,
ii,31). When Bonifacio brings his problem to Scaramurg,
the magician informs him "I want to carry out your commerce
with natural magic, leaving the superstitions of the more
profound art to better opportunity" [voglio effectuare il
tuo negocio con magia naturale, lasciando a maggior oppor
tunity le superstizioni d'arte pid profonda] (I,x,48).
161
Although Bonifacio is sufficiently gullible to accept any
thing Scaramurg tells him, the fact is that the magician
alludes to "le superstizioni profonda" of his art, to a
knowledge too powerful to be employed in mundane pursuits
like love charms, a knowledge inscrutable and inaccessible
to men like Bonifacio— who exclaims, upon seeing the sup
posed effects of Scaramurg's wax figure on Vittoria, "Now
who will number the magic art among the vain sciences!"
[Or, va1 numera l'arte magica tra le scienze vane!] (IV,
vii,121).
If magic is considered a potent force, then the words
employed in effecting magic must also be potent— unlike the
empty words of the pedant, or the corrupt and hence impo
tent words of the cleric. However, this is only true if
the magic is being practiced knowledgeably. The cozening
alchemist Cencio announces the basis of his machinations as
"la doctrina di Ermete e di Geber" (I,xi,50)14 and then
proceeds to lecture Giovan Bernardo, who sees through his
scheme, on the essentials of alchemy7 Cencio intersperses
Latin with Italian like Manfurio, doing so to give an in-
cantatory feel to his words, so when he begins to get car
ried away with his learned, professorial tone, Giovan Ber
nardo interrupts, "These dark conjurings don't taste to me
of anything intellectual" [Queste diavolo de raggioni no mi
toccano punto 1'intellecto] (I,xi,51). Giovan Bernardo
recognizes that the writers cited by Cencio (Albertus
162
Magnus, Hermes Trismegistus, et. al.) represent a legiti
mate body of knowledge, yet he determines that the content
of Cencio's "dark conjurings" reflects little actual knowl
edge of them— unlike Bartolomeo, who will be fooled by this
pseudo-intellectual fagade. Scaramurg employs Latin simi
larly in his dealings with Bonifacio, and when the chandler
is duped like Bartolomeo, Bruno mocks his complacent igno
rance about the supposed knowledge he is blindly trusting:
Scaramurg warns the servant Ascanio that no one else must
know about their wax image of Vittoria, so Bartolomeo in
terrupts in self-parody, "I don't suspect him: more secrets
than this pass between us" [Io non dubito di lui: tra noi
passano negocii pitf secreti di questo] (III,iii,83). Of
course the wax figure doesn't work (for the magician never
intended it to be effective); after Carubina has revenge on
her husband, Bonifacio tries to place the blame on Scara
murg and is absolutely helpless as the wily magician has
his own "dark conjurings" to toss back:
BONIFACIO. I am amazed; but one doubt remains.
Why did my wife— who had come in place
of signora Vittoria due to the spell
intended to make her love me— practice
the kind of torments on me that
wouldn't have been inflicted even on a
dog?
SCARAMURE. Have I not said that your wife, in
virtue of the fact that the hairs em
ployed were hers, is affected by the
spell only while in that room, but was
not able to be your lover because the
wax was not selected, formed, punc
tured and heated in her name?
BONIFACIO. Now I understand everything. At
163
first I was not well informed.
[B. Mi maraveglio; ma un dubio mi resta. Perchd
mia moglie, come & venuta in loco della si
gnora Vittoria per lo effetto che se & adim-
pito in lei e non in quella, in causa che mi
doveva amare, mi ha fatti di strazii che non
si derrebbono aver fatti ad un cane?
S. Non vi ho detto che tua moglie, in virtd de
gli capelli ch'eran sui, & stata solamente
attirata in quella stanza; ma non posseva
essere inamorata, perchg la cera non & stata
scelta, formata, puntata e scaldata in suo
nome?
B. Adesso son capace del tutto. Prima non avevo
bene inteso] (V,xvii,172).
Of course, Bonifacio understands no more about Scaramurd's
"art" after this explanation than he did before it. Like
Bartolomeo, he shares the hybris overtly manifest in Man-
furio's words that he knows everything that is humanly nec
essary; when his ignorance is irrefutably demonstrated to
him— as Bruno later believed he showed his Oxford opponents
the errors of their ways— he shifts blame to others that he
was not "well informed." The pedant never accepts his
intellectual culpability in the perpetuation of falsehood,
meaning his stubborn ignorance can never give way to
enlightenment.
Whether dealing with the world of the cozeners or of
the cozened, Bruno makes it clear that faith plays a vital
role in determining the relative efficacy of any system of
belief. Faith in magic is made possible, even promoted, by
the fact that so few people feel they understand it: it is
a genuine mystery. The kind of knowledge that Manfurio
164
espouses is not mystic; its purpose and derivation is made
obvious in almost every one of the pedant's sentences: it
is a contentless form learned from rhetorical exercises
which ignore substance and glorify appearance. Similarly,
Bruno views the church not as the institution housing God's
knowledge and ministering to His people, but as a hypocrit
ical profession and a corrupt institution to be scorned, to
be made the butt of jokes which employ blasphemy as the
poor man's revenge. In whatever crude form, magic is still
more believable in It Candetai-o because the play's charac
ters haven't seen its incompetence flaunted before their
eyes. So when Bonifacio wants his potency guaranteed after
finally being granted a liason with Vittoria, he doesn't
ask the advice of an educated man like Manfurio, he doesn't
pray to God or His saints for fertility: he goes to Marta
and asks for a charm. Marta gives him the recipe for a re
pulsive concoction derived from various bodily secretions
and guarantees success: Bonifacio exclaims, "By Saint
Fregonius, you are a matriculated mistressl" [Per S. Fre-
gonio, voi siete una matricolata maestra!] (IV,viii,125).
Once again, we come to the duality of Bruno's intentions
for II Candelaio: the comedy of this situation is that Bon
ifacio has placed his faith in yet another corrupt system,
and his own dishonest desires will be thwarted because of
that misplaced trust. The tragedy running parallel to it,
however, is the recognition that there apparently is no
165
system of belief untainted by corruption, deserving of
trust. Bruno makes it his mission after completing II Can-
delado to offer a moral alternative. Vincenzo Spampanato
writes that he finished the play "with his mind excited by
a new and grand philosophy, laughing or weeping at the
spectacle of human degeneracy, he stamped it with a person
al mark, he transfused his ideas and his feelings" [con la
mente agitata da una nuova e grande filosofia, ridendo o
piagendo alio spettacolo della degenerazione umana, v'im-
presse un'orma personale, vi transfuse le sue idee ed i
suoi sentimenti] into Candelaio, ^ and prepared to take his
vision to England.
He had already formulated his war on the world's ped
ants, with emphasis on corruption and ignorance shielded by
fagades of knowledge. Once in England, he would offer al
ternative belief systems like Hermeticism and Copernicanism
(particularly for its gnostic applications), but would also
advocate the necessity of continual intellectual investiga
tion. When the self-appointed champion of freethinking met
opposition and indifference at Oxford, the war on pedantry
received a more "personal mark," as Spampanato might call
it, a shift in emphasis towards university doctors in gen
eral, and Oxford in particular. For reasons not all that
different than Bruno's, and just as self-serving, this
anti-Oxford chant found a receptive audience and was enthu
siastically echoed.
166
Notes
Madelaine Doran, Endeavors of Art: A study of form
in Elizabethan drama (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1954), provides an example of deviation from erudita
"form" analogous to Bruno's: "Of oommedia erudita Ariosto's
I Suppositi, with an ingenious plot of disguises and mis
taken identity managed for the sheer fun of the contriv
ance, is probably more typical than Machiavelli's Mandra-
gola, with a plot no less ingenious but with its motive
force in the author's profoundly ironic conception of human
stupidity and avarice" (p. 167). Il Candelaio clearly is
also concerned with "human stupidity," and Bruno pragmati
cally employs satire to expose and condemn it. Marvin T.
Herrick, Italian Comedy in the Renaissance (Urbana: Univer
sity of Illinois Press, 1960), notes the play's relation to
contemporary dramatic influences (pp. 161-64); also useful
in following the variations in oommedia erudita is Louise
George Clubb, "Shakespeare's Comedy and Late Cinquecento
Mixed Genres," Shakespearean Comedy ed. Maurice Charney
(New York: New York Literary Forum, 1980), pp. 129-39,
especially p. 138n3.
2
Palmer Bovie, "Forward," The Complete Comedies of
Terence ed. Palmer Bovie and trans. Palmer Bovie, Constance
Carrier and Douglass Parker (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univer
sity Press, 1974), p. xiv; for Terence's own justification
of this practice in The Girl from Andros (Andria), see pp.
10-11.
^ Opere Italiane: Candelaio, commedia a cura di Vin
cenzo Spampanato, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Bari: Gius. Laterza &
Figli, 1923), III, 8. All subsequent references to II Can
delaio will be taken from this edition; where relevant,
act, scene, and page references in parentheses will follow
subsequent citations. Responding to the play's massive
number of scenes and the intrigue weaving them together,
Marcel Tetel, "Rabelais and Italian Renaissance Comedy,"
Renaissance Papers 1966 ed. George Walton Williams (n.p.:
Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1967), comments that
167
the Candelaio "has the same anatomical form as Rabelais's
books. On the surface it sprawls out; it gives the impres
sion of an accumulation of scenes with no real backbone"
(p. 28). Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, suggests that
"spatial and temporal expanses" of this sort are "deliber
ately counterposed to the disproportionality inherent in
the feudal and religious world view, where values are op
posed to a spatial-temporal reality, treating it as vain,
transitory, sinful, a feudal world where the great is sym
bolized by the small, the powerful by the meek and power
less, the eternal by the moment" (p. 168), an impulse cer
tainly consistent with Bruno's constant affirmation of hu
man potential and his desire to participate in the infinite
universe.
^ David Orr, Italian Renaissance Drama in England Be
fore 1625: The Influence of Erudita Tragedy 3 Comedy, and
Pastoral on Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1970), discourages this
relationship in his "Appendix B," under the heading "Jonson
and Bruno," pp. 123-25.
C
For speculations on the personnage 3 clef of Lady
Morgana B., see Spampanato, Candelaio,, oommedia, pp. xxvi-
xxix, and Boulting, Giordano Bruno, p. 74.
£■
Spampanato, Candelaio, oommedia, notes "l'oscenitct 5
evidente" (p. 5n6).
^ See Frances A. Yates, "Giordano Bruno: the Secret of
Shadows," The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1966), pp. 199-230, and "Giordano Bruno: First Visit
to Paris," Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, pp.
190-204.
8
Cf. the placation of the outraged public in England
following La cena de le ceneri with the fantastic "amuse
ment" of the Spaccio and the Cabala.
9
George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589;
rpt. n.p.: Kent State University Press, 1970), p. 239.
Moreover, anyone who is moved by ignoble (i.e.,
pedantically stubborn) motives is bestial in Bruno's ontol
ogy. See examples of other characters' bestial natures in
Il Candelaio: I,iii,33-35; II,v,75-76; IV,xii,133; and
V,xiii,162-64.
I 1
"Rabelais and Renaissance Italian Comedy," p. 25;
see also pp. 22-24.
______ 2 Among other blasphemies in II Candelaio, some of
168
the most interesting include a description of sexual inter
course modeled on the litany (IV,xii,134) and Lucia's bawdy
pun on Genesis 38:9-10: "Non la fate andar a terra, si non
volete la maldizion de Dio, ha, ha, ha: mi fate venir la
risa" (V,i,144).
13
Barbara Howard Traister, Heavenly Necromancers: The
Magician in English Renaissance Drama (Columbia: University
of Missouri Press, 1984), pp. 1-31; Lynn Thorndike, A His
tory of Magic and Experimental Science 8 vols. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1941), V, 13-14.
14
The charlatan alchemist may be using Symphorien
Champier's Dialogue in Destruction of Magic Arts as a
source, as Thorndike notes that Champier "repeats a state
ment already made in his life of Arnold of Villanova that
the founders of alchemy were an Arabic Hermes,., not the an
cient Hermes Trismegistus [and the first reference in Cen-
cio's speech does not mention 'Trismegistus'], and a most
inept barbarian of putrid brain called Geber. . ." (V,
125-26).
15
Candelaio., commediat pp. lii-liii.
169
IV. THE GENESIS OF THE MENACING PEDANT AND HIS APPEARANCE
ON THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE
Pedanti e Qvazdani : Characterizing the Italian Pedant
Extant Roman comic drama's first pedant, Lydus Peda-
gogus, appears in the Baaohides of Plautus sometime before
the poet's death in 184 B.C. Even this early portrait es
tablishes some of the mannerisms and stage business later
employed in dramatic characterization of schoolmasters,
tutors, and professors. Lydus is accused by his now-adult
pupil Pistoclerus of not being as wise as Thales, that is,
of not being an infallible source of wisdom (I,ii,343).^
He gives Pistoclerus good advice— though in a meaningless
situation where he has no chance of influencing his pupil—
concerning the young man's infatuation with one of the
courtesan Bacchis sisters, but declaims histrionically when
his words are ignored (I,ii,345). The master laments liv
ing in an age where pupils threaten and sometimes even beat
their teachers (I,ii,347; II,iii,371-73), and he responds
anachronistically, moralizing and trying to shame his ca
pricious student by citing virtuous exempla of his elders
(II,i,365-67; II,iii,371). Lydus means well and is re
spected by other adults, but his effectuality with Pisto
clerus, his pupil for many years, is negligible at best.
The Latin humanistic drama of fifteenth-century Italy,
derived primarily from the examples of Plautus and Terence,
170
provided the comic playwrights of the sixteenth century
with source material that was employed in a eontaminatio
synthesis with the Roman poets* work and was given a clas
sical form extrapolated from Donatus' fourth-century com
mentaries on Terentian comedy.^ in the resulting commed-ia
erudita's classically structured/ literate dramas, the pe
dantic schoolmaster appears on the Italian vernacular stage
during the first decade of the cinquecento. ^ His qualities
are revealed through characters like Polinico the preoet-
tore, or tutor, of Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena's La oalan-
dv'iai Messer Nicia, the learned dottove of Machiavelli' s
Mandragola, and dottore Cleandro in Ariosto's I suppos-iti;
Messer Piero, the pedante of Gt ’■ingannat'i, Pedante in Are-
tino's II maresaalco, and the eponymous Prudenzio (cf. Pru-
denzio in Bruno's La oena) from Francesco Belo's II pedan
te. First and foremost, the pedant is a grammarian. Fre
quently his Latin is inaccurate or ridiculously inappropri
ate, and his macaronic mixture of Latin and Italian points
not to his sophistication, but rather to the fact that he
is an undisciplined academician who desires to sound more
learned than he actually is.
Appearing for the first time in 1560,4 the character
type of the doctor (most often, Doctor Graziano) becomes a
regular fixture of the commedia dell’arte. Due to the im-
provisational nature of the milieu, his role, though shar
ing many qualities of the erudita's pedant,^ multiplies its
171
intricacies to encompass many more pejorative characteris
tics. His quotation of Greek and Latin sources is perenni
ally imprecise or even malapropistic— suggesting the ten
dency among Bruno's pedants to respond aurally rather than
logically to the stimulus of the spoken word; thus the doc
tor, obsessed like the pedant with demonstrating his erudi
tion, is prone to performing absurd etymologies (cf. the
analysis of "pedant" by Manfurio and Giovan Bernardo) with
no more prompting than another character's casual use of a
particular word. Although he is usually the foil for Pan-
talone, another "old man" character, it is also possible
for the doctor to become the straight man for other charac
ters1 misinterpretation of his accurate Latin quotations;
in one of the lazzi , or abstracts of comic routines per
formed by the eommedia dell’arte types, "Hearing the Doctor
say 'Rumpe Moras (Break off or End delay),' Pulcinella
thinks that means 'Your ass hurts.Echoing Lydus'
treatment at the hands of his pupil, the doctor is plagued
by the vicious antics of children— against which he is de
fenseless. Significantly, the fact of the doctor's educa
tion is obscured in order to emphasize his ineffectuality
in practical matters requiring common sense responses. Al
though he proudly proclaims himself a member of every con
ceivable academy of learning, the audience quickly per
ceives his essential foolishness as the doctor claims to be
learned in all things, when he has obviously succeeded in
172
comprehending virtually nothing of substantive value. The
prevalent native influence on Bruno, then, in terms of the
drama, would seem to dictate that his satiric portraits of
academicians portray them as comical buffoons whose very
claims to erudition form the bases for their ridicule.
"None helpeth the scholar": the Vocation
of the English Pedant
There was so much individual commerce between England
and Italy in the sixteenth century^ that it is difficult to
gauge precisely what portion of the comic portrait of the
pedant contained in Elizabethan drama is derived from na
tive elements found in folklore and earlier Tudor humanist
drama, and how much is dependent on models from the Italian
commedie. Consistent with classical and Italian tradition,
he is still primarily a grammarian; however, the English
comic pedant is a composite figure variously appearing as
the university scholar (who with sufficient arrogance and
vanity becomes the university doctor), the tutor, and most
commonly, the schoolmaster. The foundation of these comic
characters is a commonplace of the medieval universities
perpetuated by Tudor economics: the poor scholar. In "The
Sermon of the Plough," delivered January 18, 1548, Hugh
Latimer recalls "When I was a scholar in Cambridge myself,
I heard very good report of London, and knew many that had
relief of the rich men of London: but now I can hear no
173
such good report, and yet I inquire of it, and hearken for
it; but now charity is waxen cold, none helpeth the schol
ar, nor yet the poor."® Unlike the fellow-commoners and
pensioners, who were scholars wealthy enough to pay their
own tuition at university, a significant proportion of the
students were sizars, scholars who had to pay for their ed
ucations by performing sundry common labors for their tui
tion and board. Disproportionately, the preferred posi
tions with guaranteed income went after graduation (and of
ten after mere matriculation) to the fellow-commoners and
pensioners, rather than the poor sizars (and an even more
unfortunate division, the subsizars). ® Responding to abuse
of positions gained by university men on the basis of their
social status rather than their education and individual
worth, John Skelton condemned such scholars in no uncertain
terms: "It had ben moche better/ye had neuer lerned letter/
for your ignorance is gretter";^ the positions awaiting
their unfortunate classmates were not, on the whole, very
lucrative, and the sizar or subsizar could expect to face
the prospect of continuing a life of relative poverty de
spite his education.
One position open to the poor scholar who could dem
onstrate his honesty, dependability and competence was that
of tutor, though this occupation implied significantly more
in the sixteenth century than it does today. Acting as a
sort of personal manager to free his scholars from any dis
174
tractions interfering with their studies, the tutor often
controlled his charges' finances: "Since he usually signed
a bond to guarantee payment of his scholars' bills to the
college, he frequently made an arrangement with parents or
guardians to protect himself from loss. Some tutors re
ceived their scholars' allowance and personally supervised
how they spent them. "H The tutor assisted his scholars'
organization of study time, supplemented their studies with
suggested readings, and even advised about which books
should be read closely, and which could be scanned. In
ideal circumstances, this could be a relatively well-paid
position.
Much more commonly, however, the poor scholar was
faced with the prospect of becoming a schoolmaster. De
pending upon the individual situation, he could conceivably
be employed in a wealthy household, where his prospects
greatly improved. More likely, however, he would be hired
for a pittance to teach the unruly children of some small
village, or would be hired by gentry of modest or miserly
means; in either case he was expected to be a moral and in
tellectual exemplar for what was most often less-than-
exemplary recompense. As George Gascoigne notes in his
play, The Glasse of Government (1575), there is clearly a
need for competent schoolmasters:
FIDUS. Sir his name is Gnomatious, he dwelleth in
Saint Antlines, a man famous for his
learning, of woonderfull temperance, and
175
highly esteemed for the diligence and
carefull payne which he taketh with his
Schollers.
PHYLOPAES. Then can he not be long without enter
tainment, since now a dayes the good
wyne needeth none Ivye garland, and
more parentes there are that lacke
such Schoolemaisters for their chil
dren, then there are to be founde such
Schoolemaysters which seeke and lacke
entertainment. (I,i).l2
Unfortunately, few employers were as generous as those of
Gascoigne's play.^ Even the learned Gnomaticus is not
equal to the task for which concerned fathers Phylopaes and
Phylocalus hire him: he is expected to give their sons the
guidance of a tutor as well as to instruct them in their
lessons. The job is too much for one man, and he inevita
bly loses one of each man's sons, Phylosarchus and Phylaut-
us, to the attraction and destruction of vice. Roger
Ascham identifies the master's conglomeration of duties as
a misjudgment on the part of his employers, defying classi
cal precedent:
This discipline was well knowen, and diligentlie
vsed, among the Graeoians, and old Romanes, as
doth appear in Aristophanes, Isoorates, and
Plato, and also in the Comedies of Plautus: where
we see that children were vnder the rule of three
persones: Praeceptore, Paedagogo, Paventei the
scholemaster taught him learnyng with all ientle-
nes: the Gouernour corrected his maners, with
moch sharpnesse: The father, held the sterne of
his whole obedience: And so, he that vsed to
teache, did not commonlie vse to beate, but re
mitted that ouer to an other mans charge. But
what shall we saie, whan now in our dayes, the
scholemaster is vsed, both for Praeoeptov in
learnyng, and Paedagogus in maners.1^
Moreover, he is also expected to perform the patriarchal
176
role of disciplinarian. This, in conjunction with the lack
of prestige and the poor pay that was frequently the
schoolmaster's lot, is the foundation of the frustration
exploited in many of the Elizabethan drama's comical por
traits of the pedant.
The credo of the comic pedagogue is Proverbs 13:24,
"He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth
him chasteneth him betime" (Geneva Bible, 1560). For a
legion of frustrated schoolmasters, this may have served as
a license for revenge. The birch and the ferula were more
than instruments of discipline— they were legal tools of
torture. The latter, "applied to the palm of the out
stretched hand, was a flat piece of wood like a ruler, wid
ened at the inflicting end into a circular shape, which was
sometimes pierced with a hole for raising blisters;"^-5 they
might vary in length from ten inches to three feet. It is
not difficult to see how playwrights who recalled the re
ceiving end of such weaponry might be moved to satirize the
disciplining master as a sadist more concerned with in
flicting pain than with imparting knowledge; yet even some
who were teachers themselves considered this a not entire
ly inaccurate depiction. In his Encomium Moviae, written
down while staying at Thomas More's London house in 1509,
Erasmus has Folly describe the schoolmaster's vocation:
tending flocks of boys, they grow old in their
labors, grow deaf from the noise, waste away in
the stink and stench, and yet through my favor
177
they imagine they are the luckiest of mortals— so
powerful is their flattering delusion while they
terrify the timid band of pupils with threatening
words and scowls and beat the poor wretches
bloody with rods, switches, and straps, raging
wildly with every imaginable sort of arbitrary
cruelty, like the Cumaean ass. And all the time
that filth seems to them as neat as a pin, that
stench smells like oil of marjoram, that most
wretched slavery of theirs seems a life fit for a
king, so much so that they wouldn't trade their
tyrannical rule for the empire of Phalaris or
Dionysius.I6
A man well acquainted with the antics and potentials of
schoolboys, Erasmus was equally aware of the power he ex
erted over his students and his responsibility for their
education. In this portrait, he acknowledges the squalid
environment in which the master was expected to perform his
miracles, but comments sardonically on the man who responds
to it by making the battering of his students— rather than
his contributions, however slim, to their knowledge or mat
uration— his compensatory satisfaction. For those who were
not stoics but could not or would not exorcise their frus
trations on the hide of their pupils, there were other ways
of balancing their monumental teaching tasks with their
paltry wages. Local statutes had to be passed regarding
the attendance of schoolmasters, some of whom were fre
quently absent (and occasionally for long periods of time);
control also had to be exerted to limit extortion from pu
pils of unauthorized sums of money to supplement the
master's meager salary.^
Serving to shape the Elizabethan (and much of the
178
Jacobean) drama's comic characterization of the schoolmas
ter, these trying circumstances and desperate responses are
recalled by playwrights who then exaggerate their own ex
periences as schoolboys and essentially undermine the ide
alistic notion of the hardworking instructor. They retro
actively reconstruct the master in popular comedy as a
tyrannical pedant, a buffoon competent merely in words**-® —
ever the grammarian— whose method of counteracting his own
incompetency in instruction via the rod is either largely
ineffectual or is met by an effective retaliatory action
(usually displaying more sophistication in conception and
execution) from his students, a professional hazard la
mented even by Lydus Pedagogus. The Pedant in John
Marston's What You Will (1601) seeks to punish his pupil
Holifernes Pippo for not being able to recite one of his
Latin grammar rules, and has Nous, an older student, hoist
little Holifernes over his shoulder:
PEDANT. I say untruss, take him up Nous, des
patch: what, not perfect in as in
pvaesenti?
HOLIFERNES. In truth I'll be as perfect an as in
pvaesenti as any of this company,
with the grace of God, law; this
once? and I do so any more—
PEDANT. I say hold him up.
HOLIFERNES. Ha! let me say my prayers first. You
know not what you ha' done now: all
the syrup of my brain is run into my
buttocks; and ye spill the juice of
my wit, well— ha, sweet, ha, sweet
honey Barbary sugar sweet master.
PEDANT. Sans tricks, trifles, delays, demurrers,
procrastinations or retardations, mount
him, mount him. (II,ii,769-80).
179
Here is much of the entire schoolmaster conflict in micro
cosm: the frustrated, ineffectual master overreacts to
Holifernes' lapse and must have help from a student, Nous
(sometimes referred to in speech divisions as "Noose"), to
restrain little Pippo (whose first name ironically recalls
the pedant of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost), who
threatens to lose control of his bowels if the master in
sists on beating his exposed flesh. This fails to daunt
the fixated Pedant who redundantly declaims synonyms for
Pippo's ploy, and— reminding us of the implications of ped
erasty associated with pedantry by Bruno— he concludes with
the feverish command, "mount him, mount him."2® Pippo is
rescued by the intercession of adult characters who con
tract him to serve as a page, effectively frustrating the
Pedant even further; more importantly, the rescue is abso
lutely necessary to protect the comedy. Beyond images res
urrected from schoolboy experiences, however, there is
something vaguely menacing about the Pedant's obsession
with punishing Holifernes for not adhering to his rules, a
subtext that involves much more than sympathy for a little
boy being punished. This something is Bruno's contribution
to the characterization of the stage pedant.
I supposit-L and II fedelei Italian Pedants
and English Adaptations
The English comic pedant, whether schoolmaster, tutor,
180
or university doctor,obviously has much in common with
his Italian kindred, the pedanti and Gvaziani . The very
similarity between the two nations' types can be even more
clearly delineated by examining the subtle differences re
vealed when Italian comedies containing pedant characters
are compared with their translations and adaptations in
England. Ludovico Ariosto's I suppositi. (prose version,
1509; restructured in verse, 1528-31), and George Gas
coigne's English translation of it, the Supposes (1566),
both reveal through Pasifilo/Pasiphilo, the parasite, that
doctor Cleandro/Cleander, the advocate, is a vain man (he
refuses to divulge his true age to others) and a miserly
one (masking his stinginess, he pretends he is fasting to
avoid having the parasite to dinner). Generally speaking,
the two sources agree with each other on all points of plot
development, with Gascoigne typically exercising the liber
ties of phrasing common to Renaissance translators and mak
ing scene divisions slightly more often than Ariosto. The
two plays do differ slightly, however, in an exchange in
II,iii(Ariosto)/II,iv(Gascoigne) between Dulippo/Dulipo and
Cleandro/Cleander concerning rumors supposedly circulated
by Pasifilo/Pasiphilo which raise suspicion about the real
reason the pedantic lawyer wishes to marry Polimnestra/
Polynesta. The passage in Ariosto reads
DULIP. And that you require her because you want
to get a husband more than a wife.
CLEAN. What's he trying to infer by that?
181
DULIP. That with such bait you would desire to
attract boys to your house.
CLEAN. Boys to my house? To what effect?
DULIP. That you suffer a certain infirmity which
is aided by a suitable remedy residing
with newly-bearded young men.
[D. E che tu la domandi piCt per voglia che hai di
marito, che di moglie.
C. Che vuol per questo inferire?
D. Che con tale esca vorresti tirarti li giovani
a casa.
C. Li giovani a casa io? A che effetto?
D. Che tu patisci una certa infermita, a cui
giova et & apropriato rimedio lo stare con li
giovani di prima barba].22
Gascoigne's translation of the passage is faithful until
Dulipo's revelatory line:
DULIPO. And he saith, that you desire this yong
gentlewoman, as much for other mens
pleasure as for your owne.
CLEANDER. What meaneth he by that?
DULIPO. Peraduenture that by hir beautie, you
woulde entice many yong men to your
house.
CLEANDER. Yong men? to what purpose?
DULIPO. Nay, gesse you that.23
While in Ariosto's original version Dulippo stops just
short of declaring that Pasifilo has accused Cleandro of
being a pederast, Gascoigne's Dulipo leaves his insinuation
unspecified— though leaving no doubt in the audience's mind
about Pasiphilo's rumor, thanks to the clues Dulipo pro
vides. There is really no difference in the two versions,
save for Gascoigne's reluctance to be quite as explicit as
Ariosto, owing perhaps to the play's first production being
acted at Gray's Inn.
We can prepare for the emergence of Bruno's influence
182
in a significant variation on the stage pedant type by con
tinuing to scrutinize the slight variations between Italian
dramatic sources of the character type and their "Eng
lished" forms. Even the seemingly distinctive versions of
Luigi Pasqualigo's It fedete (1576) represented in Abraham
Fraunce's Latin translation, Victoria (1582), and Anthony
Munday's adaptation, Fedete and Fortunio (1585), upon ex
amination reveal differences in plot and emphasis rather
than any divergent or conflicting characterizations of the
pedant figures Onofrio, Onophrius, and Pedante, respective
ly. For example, we would expect the pedant's use of Latin
to be a prominent aspect of his depiction in each play.
However, it is only in Pasqualigo's original that we see
the pedant's macaronic Latin, and only Onofrio actually
speaks Latin. The Latin of Munday's Pedante is nearly al
ways accurate and is almost exclusively employed in the
quotation of classical writers rather than in conversation.
Fraunce's version of the play obscures this aspect of the
pedant's portrait, so he depends on Onophrius' citation of
a wide range of classical sources and rhetorical textbooks
to demonstrate his obsessive latinity.^ Despite the three
versions' diverse emphases on the juxtaposition of the
vernacular tongue with the language of the schools, ac
knowledgment of this traditional quality of the stage ped
ant is made in each; and, though in various ways, each of
the plays also exposes the grammarian impulse in its pedant
183
character. One of the relatively few clear differences be
tween Fraunce's translation and the original occurs in the
following exchange between Onofrio/Onophrius and Panfila/
Pamphilia in II,xiv:
PANF. Are Signor Fidele at home?
ONOF. Rash, rude, unskilled, inexpert, ignorant,
dim-witted, indiscreet, uncultivated, ill-
mannered woman deserving punishment, who
has taught you to speak in this fashion?
You have made an error in grammar, a disa
greement in number, in the Nominative mood
of the verb, because Fedele is singular,
and "are" is plural, so one must say "is
at home," and not "ave at home."
[P. II Signor Fedele sono in casa?
0. Femina proterua, rude, indocta, imperita,
nescia, inscia, indiscreta, inculta, inurba-
na, malmorigerata ignorate, chi t'ha inseg-
nato A parlar in questo modo? Tu hai fatto
un errore in grammatica, una discordantia in
numero, nel modo chiamato Nominatus con uer-
bo, perch§ Fedele est numeri singularis &
sono numeri pluralis, & si dee dire S in
casa, & non sono in c a s a ] .25
PAMP. I seek Fidele, I am the servant of
Ottaviano.
ONOP. Rash, rude, unskilled woman, who taught
you that foolish elocution? For that
Ottaviano, that is, "c," and "t," is pro
nounced "Octaviano," derived indeed from
that number of numbers, eight, which the
Greeks write by means of x and t .
[P. Fidelem quaero, serua sum Ottauiani.
0. Proterua, rudis, indocta foemina,
Quis te isto docuit more loqui?
Nam illud, Ottauiani, per, c, et, t, pro-
nunciandum est, Octauiani deriuatur enim de
numerali numero, octo quod Graeci scribunt
per x et t].26
The distinction here is merely between grammar and elocu
tion. Where Onofrio corrects Panfila's subject-verb agree
184
ment, Onophrius complains about Pamphila's careless pro
nunciation. Like his versions in Pasqualigo and Fraunce,
Munday's Pedante is also an indomitable grammarian; when he
proposes marriage to Medusa and explains he doesn't have
much to offer her, he wonders "Canst thou be content with
Lily, Linacre, and Cornucopia?" (V,iv,153): his most valu
able possessions are William Lily's Short Introduction of
Grammar (1557), Thomas Linacre's Rudimenta Grammatices
(1541), and Nicholas Perottus' Cornucopiae3 site Commen-
tarii Linguae Latinae (1489). Though specific details may
differ between the three plays, the presence of the pedant
guarantees certain expectations related to the type— e.g.,
that the pedant will demonstrate obsession with grammatical
rules and texts, the tools of his trade— will eventually be
fulfilled in each.
The pedant character in both Pasqualigo's original and
Fraunce's translation is the same: a self-serving individ
ual who pretends to be protecting Fedele's/Fidelis' inter
est in the married Vittoria/Victoria, while hypocritically
loving her himself. When she appears to be interested only
in Fortunio/Fortunius, Onofrio/Onophrius, like Bruno's
Poliinnio, counsels the young man to adopt misogyny as a
response to her apparent interest in Fortunio/Fortunius
alone. The pedant is also Fedele's tutor in Munday's adap
tation (and has been for many years, as Attilia remarks in
I,ii); but Pedante is entirely sincere about his vocation,
185
declaring happily to Medusa at the play's end "I'll set up
a great grammar school by and by;/We shall thrive well
enough, it will tumble in roundly./I'11 teach boys the
Latin tongue, to write and to read,/And thou, little
wenches, their needle and thread" (V,iv,156-59).2^ This
seemingly significant departure may be easily reconciled
with the characters of Onofrio and Onophrius: the stock
pedant figure from Pasqualigo is simply divided into his
Manichaean constituents in Fedete and Fortunio. The ideal
ized function of the pedant as a wise and honest mentor is
represented by Pedante; but the negative aspects of the
pedant, the macaronic abuse of Latin, the cowardly fustian,
the pretense of extensive knowledge through superficial
attitudes and appearances— these are combined into the
miles gloriosus character that in Pasqualigo and Fraunce
has relatively little importance, but in Munday becomes the
scheming Captain Crackstone.
Though Fraunce introduces a new character in Pegasus,
"Onophrij puer,"2® to remind the audience that Onophrius is
indeed a schoolmaster as well as tutor, Crackstone is not
so much a new character as a minor character brought into
the play's foreground to serve as the fagade of the ped
ant's pejorative qualities. When Pedante pretends to fall
in love with Attilia in order to open the way for Fedele's
attentions to her mistress, Victoria, and plans to visit
her to speak further of it, Crackstone overhears and plans
186
his own deception, desiring Victoria for himself. He dons
a pedant's gown:
Methinks this apparel makes me learned— which of
all these stars do I know?
Yonder is the Green Dog and the Blue Bear,
Harry Horner's Girdle and the Lion's Ear.
Methinks I should spout Latin before I be ware:
Arguis me cum insputare?
Cuv canis tollit popl-item
Cum ming-Ct -in pavietem? (II,i, 2-8).
Tavern signs become confused with constellations, the
schoolboy's pattern of the "invitation to dispute" is per
verted into "invitation to spit," a sophistical question is
raised concerning the reason a dog lifts its leg to uri
nate; topsy-turveydom reigns while Crackstone wears the
pedant's gown. But the fact that this is mere fagade is
made evident when Crackstone is forced to abandon his dis
guise, declaring "Nay, look for no more Latin now my gown
is gone:/My learning with my reparel goes off and on" (II,
v,63-64); the malapropism spoken after shedding the symbol
of learning confirms the superficiality of his knowledge.
Pedante comments that Crackstone "rolls in his rhetoric as
an ape in his tail;/Wind and tide at commandment, he flies
with full sail" (IV,vi,96-97), and Crackstone— who calls
Pedante "Pediculus" ("Louse")— clearly envies the school-
master-and-tutor's wisdom and skill with language: "Oh,
that I had some of Pediculus' school-butter to make me a
lip salve,/Or could but wet my tongue in his inkhorn, for
women will harken when we speak brave" (V,iii,31-32).
187
A man of ignoble action and words, Crackstone appears
in the first scene of fedele and Fortunio brazenly reciting
the cowardly origin of his name;^ the Captain character
does not appear so soon in either Pasqualigo or Fraunce.
In a play where Medusa reveals she learned her sorcery from
a "doctor," and Pamphilia, if she did not fear for her rep
utation, would become her "scholar," Crackstone reveals his
envy of Pedante's knowledge throughout the play by con
stantly pretending to be the learned man, rather than at
tempting to learn from him. Even when restrained by the
Sbirri, the captain of the watch, Crackstone desires re
venge on Pedante in the educator1s own terms: "But oh that
my hands were at liberality now to strike,/I would set my
gramariner a lesson to pike" (V,iv,29-30). Even here, the
braggart soldier melds fustian, teaching metaphor, and mal-
apropism— common qualities of the conventional comic ped
ant. But the significant distinction that must be made
here is that Captain Crackstone is also placed in the posi
tion occupied by Frangipietra ("Rock Crusher") in Pasqua
ligo, the man who is hired as an assassin by Vittoria to
murder Fedele. By rearranging qualities exhibited by
Onofrio and Onophrius in Pasqualigo and Fraunce, Munday is
able to condemn the faults of Crackstone that are also
faults common to pedants without simultaneously condemning
schoolmen in general, which obviously would not be appreci
ated by the large number of university men at Elizabeth's
188
court witnessing the play. By assigning the traditionally
negative qualities of the pedant type to the play's miles
gloviosus character who is clearly as unscrupulous as a
Falstaff, and perhaps far more menacing in that he is able
to successfully counterfeit himself as a man of learning,
Munday contributes to a new tradition that seems to origi
nate in the caustic portrayals of university-trained ped
ants from Bruno's London dialogues.
The Emergence of the Menacing Pedant
The sense of urgency in Bruno's six London dialogues
concerning the sinister threat of "pedantry" is best ex
pressed through Maricondo's warning in Gli evoioi fuvovii
"We see clearly that pedantry has never been more glorified
for controlling the world than in our own times, which cre
ates as many roads to the true intelligible species and the
qualities of the one infallible truth as there are individ
ual pedants" [Veggiamo bene che mai la pedentaria & stata
pid in exaltazione per governare il mondo, che a' tempi
nostri; la quale fa tanti camini de vere specie intelli-
gibili ed oggetti de l'unica veritade infallibile, quanti
possano essere individui pedanti] (1116). The pedant is
emblematic to Bruno of intellectual chaos, of tyrannical
ignorance; he holds a position of frightening power, "con
trolling the world," respected by the uneducated as an au
thority while he vehemently opposes the pursuit of ideas
189
not compatible with his own. In his opening barrage a-
gainst the Oxford doctors and stubbornly ignorant people in
general, La cena de le oener-i, the Nolan treats pedantry as
a monstrous plague: harmful at the least, fatal at the
worst. He introduces the two Oxford pedants Torquato and
Nundinio as "two queer old hags . . . two recurring fevers"
[due fantastiche befane . . . due febbri quartane] (10).
As a metaphor for their horrible propagation of confusion
and ignorance, he refers to pedants collectively as the
Typhons.^0 To agitate his readers, to identify pedantry as
the adversary he believes it to be, Bruno compares people
who without personal investigation accept the pronounce
ments of pedants as truth to those "who are inured to eat
ing poison, to the end that the constitution of such not
only feels no injury, but furthermore has converted it into
natural nutriment, so the antidote to that same has become
deadly" [che sono avezzati a mangiar veleno, la complession
de' quali al fine non solamente non ne sente oltraggio, ma
ancora se l'ha convertito in nutrimento naturale, di sorte
che l'antidoto istesso gli & dovenuto mortifero] (47).
Bruno's fervently negative attitude here in conjunction
with his call for reform reveals that this is not merely a
satire written against pedantry: it is a manifesto.
In his general condemnation Bruno assaults the intel
lectual and material corruption of pedants,31 but his major
point of attack is the pedant's obstruction of other
190
individuals' search for the truth— which effectively rein
forces ignorance. Torquato and Nundinio, the "dottori bar-
bareschi" of Oxford, are representative of those "who by
some credulous insanity, fearing they might change for the
worse by seeing [the truth], obstinately want to persevere
in the darkness to which they have unfortunately drawn
close" [che, per qualche credula pazzia, temendo che per
vedere non se quastino, vogliono ostinatamente perseverare
ne le tenebre di quello c'hanno una volta malamente ap-
preso] (La oena, 38): Bruno reasons that their temerity in
seeking truth should disqualify them as sources of wisdom.
Thus in the Cabala della oavallo Pegaseo he laments the un
questioning faith of people in the "holy doctors and en
lightened rabbis, the proud and presumptuous scholars of
the world in the proper genius of whom they had confidence"
[santi dottori e rabini illuminati, che gli superbi e pre-
sumptuosi sapienti del mondo, quali ebbero fiducia nel pro-
prio ingegno], for these exemplars repay such faith by
choosing to "block off the passages, fold or shrug their
arms, shut their eyes, banish every proper application and
study, censure every human thought, deny every natural sen
timent; and in the end they resemble asses" [FermSro i pas-
si, piegSro o dismisero le braccia, chiusero gli occhi,
bandiro ogni propria attenzione e studio, riprovSro qualsi-
voglia uman pensiero, riniegSro ogni sentimento naturale:
ed in fine si tennero asini] (877-78); as he points out
191
later in the dialogue, when individuals exhibiting such in
tellectual myopia are allowed to teach or to act as author
ities for the uneducated, the blind lead the blind (908—
10). The Nolan acknowledges in De la causa, pvi-nc'tpi-o e
uno that it is easier to condemn the ideas of others than
to investigate them (258-59), but emphasizes that it is in
dicative "of an ambitious and presumptuous brain, vain and
envious, to want to persuade others that there is only one
way of investigating and arriving at the knowledge of na
ture ; and it is the property of a madman and a man free
from discourse [with those truly possessed of wisdom] to
bestow such understanding on himself by himself" [da ambi-
zioso e cervello presuntuoso, vano e invidioso voler per-
suadere ad altri, che non sia che una sola via di investi-
gare e venire alia cognizione della natura; ed S cosa da
pazzo e uomo senza discorso donarlo ad intendere a se mede-
simo] (275). The pedant may even obstruct the truth unin
tentionally through his incompetence by insistently valuing
rhetoric and superficial form above content and meaning (as
in Fracastorio's example of the contentious Peripatetics
reported in De I'inf-inito, 378). Intentional or not, a vi
tal threat to freethinking exists as long as the pedant re
fuses to continually reassess his own beliefs yet is viewed
by the ignorant or the unenlightened as a paragon of
wisdom.
Bruno demonstrates through several comments in the
192
dialogues that he is not intrinsically anti-Aristotelian;
it is a simple matter then to conclude that he adopts this
opposition as the rhetorical stance most suited to attack
ing pedantry— since, in light of his reception there, he
views Aristotelian Oxford with its cantankerous doctors as
pedantry's quintessential stronghold. After praising
Aristotle in Gl% evo-vo-i fuvovi, Bruno complains about ped
ants who abuse the Stagirite's philosophy, laboring to in
stitute "nove dialettiche" (best exemplified by Ramus) that
are far inferior to Aristotle's own; it is the favorite
practice of "certain grammarians after they are long ex
perienced in the little backsides of boys and in the anato
mies of phrases and terms, [and] have desired to arouse
their mind to making new logics and metaphysics, judging
and passing sentence on that which they never studied and
do not now understand" [certi grammatisti, dopo che sono
invecchiati nelle culine de fanciulli e notomie de frasi e
de vocaboli, han voluto destar la mente a far nuove logiche
e metafisiche, giudicando e sentenziando quelle che mai
studiorno ed ora non intendono] (1115). Condemning the
self-perpetuating nature of the Oxonian pedant in the
Cabala, he declares that in order to rationalize their non
sense as wisdom, such men "s'intogano ed addottorano"
(904), that is, they "en-toga" themselves in the raiment
synonymous with wisdom, and they "doctor" themselves, or
confer academic degrees upon themselves out of desire for
193
for titles that imply wisdom, all the while refusing to al
low a new influx of ideas from outside the university. The
heinous effect of this intellectual incest is that "they
desire sooner to languish in foul and arrogant penury.and
to be buried underneath the bedding of stubborn ignorance,
than to be seen converted to a new discipline, to confess
to having been ignorant until then and to have had such as
a guide" [voglion pid tosto in sporca e superba penuria in-
tisichire, e sotto il lettame di pertinace ignoranza star
sepolti, ch'esser veduti conversi a nuova disciplina, par-
endogli di confessar d'esser stato sin allora ignorante ed
aver un tal per guida] (De I ’inf -inito ,502-503) . The issue
Bruno points to is not merely that pedants choose to wallow
in ignorance of their own creation, but that they attempt
to draw others in with them.
Consequently, it is not enough that Bruno's interlocu
tors expose the pedant's pettiness, or that they invalidate
the pedant as an authority figure: to underscore the menace
he represents, they also warn against the vindictiveness of
the pedant, against the vicious manner in which he responds
to defeat by a superior intellect. In La oena, Teofilo
describes the nonplussed reaction of Nundinio when he is
proven wrong; but Frulla reports
It is not thus with Doctor Torquato who, either
unjustly or fairly, by God or by the devil, al
ways wants to fight; even when he has lost the
shield of defense and the sword of offense; I
say, when he has no more response, nor argument,
194
he springs into the shoes of rage, sharpens the
nails of slander, grins evilly with the teeth of
insults, throws open the throat of clamors, to
the end that the contrary reason is not allowed
to speak and does not reach the ears of those
surrounding, as I have heard.
[Non f e cossi il dottor Torquato, il quale o a
torto o a raggione, o per Dio o per il diavolo,
la vuol sempre combattere; dico, quando non ha
pit! risposta, n€ argumento, salta ne' calci de
la rabbia, acuisce l'unghie de la detrazione,
ghigna i denti delle ingiurie, spalanca la gor-
gia dei clamori, a fin che non lascie dire le
raggioni contrarie e quelle non pervengano a
l'orecchie de1 circostanti, come ho udito dire]
(105).
Eliotropio supports this in De la causa, declaring that
pedants exposed to the truth or to the ridiculousness of
their own positions and beliefs actively seek revenge on
the offending individuals, most often resorting to lies as
their offensive weapons, since wit and truth are obviously
on the side of their opponents (204). Later in the dia
logue, Poliinnio reveals his tyranny when debating with
Gervasio: he dictatorially commands that Gervasio's place
must be that of pupil, while he must be treated as an au
thority whose sole purpose is "Per giudicare" (257), to
pass judgment; not to pursue inquiry, nor to encourage (or
even allow unimpeded) others in that pursuit. The pedant
is thus a dual menace: dangerous to ignore, dangerous to
offend. Reflecting this is the comic/tragic dynamic oper
ating in the structure of the London dialogues— Bruno can
neither expect a simple satire of pedantic excesses to in
spire reform from outside the universities, nor risk a
195
frontal assault with direct written attacks on the institu
tion that quickly and efficiently dismissed him from its
environs.^ He deals with the menace of pedantry, then,
within the guise of philosophy, Copernican cosmology, Her-
meticism, mathematics, and social satire. Discerning read
ers saw through these topics all the way to the heart of
his attack on Oxford. Particularly those with their own
grudges against the fonte Arlstotells.
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: Bruno's Disgrace
and the Dangers of Pedantry
Robert Greene, author of The Honorable History of
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589-91), matriculated as a
sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, either in 1573 or
1575 (there are conflicting entries in the university reg
ister) , and took his B.A. there in 1580; he then moved to
Clare Hall, where he received the M.A. in 15 73.^ There is
much evidence in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay that the Cam
bridge student not only was aware of Bruno's public embar
rassment at Oxford, but that he was intrigued enough with
the conflict there to familiarize himself with the reper
cussions of it recorded in Bruno's dialogues.^4 Although
the topic of pedantry was certainly of interest itself to
the university scholars, as demonstrated in the Trinity
College, Cambridge, production of Fedantlus (whose epony
mous character is the prototypical comic pedant and is said
196
by Thomas Nashe to represent Gabriel Harvey) sometime be
tween winter, 1580, and summer, 1582,^5 it provides Greene
a design for reproving the pertinacious academicians of
Cambridge1s rival institution thanks to the groundwork laid
by the London dialogues. Fr-iar Bacon and Fri-ar Bungay in
troduces a quintessentially obstinate pedant in Doctor
Burden, contains a detailed character portrait of Bruno
himself, shows the cause-and-effeet influence of a menacing
pedant-master on his pupils, and traces a rare failure oc
casioned by Bacon's pride to irresponsible pedantry. And
challenging the restrictions of form and genre as Bruno
does with his "dramatic" dialogues, Greene creates a stimu
lating ideological tension in the play by continually jux
taposing serious and comic themes.^
We are introduced to three Oxford doctors in the
play's second scene: Mason, Clement and Burden (not men
tioned in The Famous Hdstorie of Fryer Bacon) . Like the
guests at the Cena who apologize to the Nolan for the boor
ishness of Torquato and Nundinio, Mason and Clement are
openminded, respectful of the magical wisdom Bacon claims
to have (ii,38-42); Burden, aptly named for an opponent of
freethinking, intolerantly accuses Bacon of commerce with
dangerous knowledge (ii,22-29). Clement intercedes, ex
plaining they don't wish to condemn the friar, but to con
gratulate him for the fame he will bring to Oxford (ii,38-
42) if he is successful in his attempt to conjure a
197
talking, philosophizing brass head, and to wall England
around with brass. Envious, as Bruno writes that pedants
normally are of truly learned men, Burden retorts "Have I
not pass'd as far in state of schools,/And read of many se
crets?" (ii,78-79); concerning Bacon's great project he
scoffs "This is a fable Aesop had forgot" (ii,82). Expos
ing the pettiness of Burden's knowledge, and undermining
the pedant's competence, Bacon confirms his own superiority
by taking the position of the Socratic dialectician and
performs an elenohos on Burden:
BACON. Were you not yesterday, Master Burden, at
Henley upon the Thames?
BURDEN. I was; what then?
BACON. What book studied you thereon all night?
BURDEN. I? None at all; I read not there a line.
BACON. Then, doctors, Friar Bacon's art knows
naught, (ii,91-96).
Burden's proud denial of studying unwittingly confesses his
insincere pursuit of knowledge, and Bacon's reply may be
construed ironically since he has heard confirmation of
Burden's specious wisdom before he even employs his "art."
When he causes the Hostess of The Bell in Henley to appear,
she reveals the "book" that Burden did spend his time with:
a shoulder of mutton. This also works to Burden's dis
credit by conflicting with the image of the learned univer
sity man as a poor scholar who could hardly afford such en
tertainment (like sizar Greene). Burden, extremely angry
and embarrassed, like his brethren Torquato and Nundinio
refuses to concede defeat and stubbornly hides behind the
198
protective edifice of Oxford. When Vandermast is brought
to the university to dispute with its learned doctors, Bur
den cravenly seeks anonymity within the school environment
while striving to convince Bacon to represent the Oxford
doctors against the foreign challenger:
BURDEN. Bacon, if he will hold the German play,
Will teach him what an English friar
can do.
The devil, I think, dare not dispute
with him.
CLEMENT. Indeed, Mas Doctor, he displeasured you
In that he brought your hostess with
her spit
From Henley, posting unto Brazen-nose.
BURDEN. A vengeance on the friar for his pains;
But leaving that, let's hie to Bacon
straight,
To see if he will take this task in hand.
(vii,23-31).
As an Englishman and an Oxford man, Bacon is on the same
team as Burden, bringing renown not just to himself but
also to that institution and everyone therein. The pedant
hypocritically praises the scholar-wizard in one speech,
curses him in the next, and finally turns obsequious to
secure the assurance of Bacon's skills against Vandermast
since his own are ineffectual. Burden is the pedant about
whom Bruno cautions the readers of his Italian dialogues:
resistant to those possessing or pursuing knowledge involv
ing subjects unfamiliar to him, a mere fagade of wisdom,
petty and vindictive ("A vengeance on the friar for his
pains"). Clement refers to his colleague as "Mas Doctor"
because the vulgar form of "master" sullies that title just
199
as Burden's stubborn ignorance damages "doctor." Greene's
portrait here might be considered merely coincidental with
Bruno's dialogue war on pedantry— except that Greene intro
duces the Nolan himself into the play.
Don Jacques Vandermast, Greene's representation of
Bruno, is introduced to England's King Henry by Frederick,
Emperor of Germany:
Nay, rather, Henry, let us, as we be,
Ride for to visit Oxford with our train.
Fain would I see your universities
And what learned men your academy yields.
From Hapsburg have I brought a learned clerk
To hold dispute with English orators.
This doctor, surnamed Jacques Vandermast,
A German born, passed into Padua,
To Florence, and to fair Bolonia,
To Paris, Rheims, and stately Orleans,
And, talking there with men of art, put down
The chiefest of them all in aphorisms,
In magic, and the mathematic rules.
Now let us, Henry, try him in your schools.
(iv,41-54).
As the home of Roger Bacon, the medieval voice of experi
mental science and investigation, Oxford would be the logi
cal place for a visiting scholar to seek intellectual kin
dred. Bruno undoubtedly embraced this notion as he antici
pated his English journey, anxious to test the climate of
the university whose reputation he considered synonymous
with freethinking and the discipline of Aristotelian logic.
Reflecting Bruno's favorite trial of knowledge, Vandermast
wishes to "hold dispute with English orators" as the Nolan
did at Oxford in the public displays to amuse Alasco. Like
Bruno, Vandermast is a foreigner; though he is described
200
as a "German born," he is specifically a subject of Freder
ick Cthe historical Frederick II), who is not simply the
"Emperor of Germany" as described in the play, but more
precisely the Holy Roman Emperor whose empire consists of
Germany— and part of Italy. The visiting scholar's full
name, Don Jacques Vandermast, is a curious mixture of Span
ish, French, and Dutch. Frederick explains that Vandermast
has travelled through Italy and France; upon his arrival in
England, Bruno had already travelled widely in Italy,
France, and the Swiss Federation. By the time Greene com
posed Fri-ar Bacon and Fviav Bungay, the Nolan's travels had
led him through France and the Swiss Federation again, the
Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia and Poland.^ Vandermast, like
Bruno, desires to challenge Oxford's best scholars and "put
down/The chiefest of them all in aphorisms,/In magic, and
the mathematic rules." These three areas are precisely the
strengths of Bruno, who published treatises on all three
subjects if we equate accomplishment in aphorisms with fa
cility in mnemonics.39 when King Henry issues the chal
lenge of debating with Friar Bacon to Vandermast, he prom
ises "Set him but nonplus in his magic spells,/And make him
yield in mathematic rules" and he will be rewarded "Not
with a poet's garland made of bays,/But with a coronet of
choicest gold" (iv,61-62,64-65), reminiscent of the gener
osity of another Henry— Henri III of France— to Bruno for
coming to demonstrate his mnemonic arts, and who gave him
201
the valuable letters of introduction that established a
headquarters for him in England with the French Ambassador,
Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissi&re.^ Prefacing his con
test with Oxford's most renowned scholar, Vandermast ex
plains that the physical environment of the university is
both, "lordly" and "pleasant"; however, echoing the senti
ments of Bruno's London dialogues and particularly La cena,
the foreign scholar confides "But for the doctors, how that
they be learned,/It may be meanly, for aught I can hear"
(ix,11-12; my italics). Vandermast the dramatic character
anticipates a genuine challenge from the representative Ox
ford doctors; but Robert Greene, who has heard the contrary
conclusion expressed in Bruno's own work and who is himself
a Cambridge graduate, intrudes into his character portrait
here to express this doubt.
Vandermast, who cites Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras,
and the cabalists (also Bruno's dominant influences) as
sources of his magical knowledge (ix,28-29), prepares for
his contest with Friar Bacon by matching his conjuring
abilities against Friar Bungay. When Bungay causes the
Tree of the Hesperides and its fire-breathing guardian
dragon to materialize, Vandermast causes a spirit in the
form of Hercules to appear and orders him to begin tearing
the great tree apart while Bungay is powerless to stop the
apparition. But the foreign conjurer's pride threatens to
overpower his wisdom when he condescendingly declares
202
"Bungay is learned enough to be a friar,/But to compare
with Jacques Vandermast/Oxford and Cambridge must go and
seek their cells/To find a man to match him in his art"
(ix,104-109). Bruno, the self-proclaimed "academician of
no academy," nevertheless makes a point of pejoratively
contrasting his treatment at the hands of the Oxford
scholars with that he received from other, more enlight-^
ened, institutions (cf. the Ass1 argument with the Ape in
"Asino Cillenico"). And to protect the verisimilitude of
Vandermast, his biographical parallel to Bruno, Greene has
to prepare for the Nolan's disgrace and departure from Ox
ford; he provides an idiosyncratic justification for Van-
dermast's fall, however, by having him imply that his match
cannot be found in Oxford or Cambridge. To Cambridge
graduate Greene, this is almost sufficient cause itself for
Vandermast's defeat, but to reinforce the Bruno analogy he
has his foreign scholar recite a list of the universities
that have recognized and praised his abilities (ix,110-15;
the countries represented in the list are among those vis
ited in Bruno's travels), further signifying his arrogant
confidence. Bacon walks in upon the scene of Vandermast's
triumph and as quickly turns it to defeat when he tells
Vandermast to have his Hercules resume the destruction of
the Tree of the Hesperides:
HERCULES. I dare not. Seest thou great Bacon
here,
Whose frown doth act more than thy
203
magic can?
VANDERMAST. By all the thrones and dominations,
Virtues, powers, and mighty
hierarchies,
I charge thee to obey to Vandermast.
HERCULES. Bacon, that bridles headstrong
Belcephon,
And rules Asmenoth, guider of the
north,
Binds me from yielding unto Vandermast.
(ix,136-43).
Bacon's mere presence is enough to defeat Vandermast, albe
it that presence is predicated on knowledge, power, and
demonstrable mastery; by falling prey to a pedantic pride
in his own rhetorical bravado, Vandermast exposes a weak
ness that Bacon has not similarly revealed at this point in
the play. As in Bruno's dialogues, the pedant is defeated
and the true scholar prevails. Mirroring reality, Vander
mast returns to Hapsburg, utterly disgraced, as Bruno hur
ried to London and the refuge of Castelnau.
Despite the prodigious display of learning implicit in
Bacon's defeat of Vandermast, his haughty manner and lack
of compassion in the conquest contributes to the sense that
this is a serious misuse of knowledge— differing little
from rhetorical disputation since it achieves nothing but
the preference of one man's skills over another's due to
technical expertise while serving no practical function—
and Oxford, by supporting displays of this sort, ultimately
seems to be encouraging the self-glorification of the vic
tor. The consequence of a contest of this nature is that
there is no exchange of knowledge and opportunity for
204
mutual benefit as in a Ciceronian dialogue, but merely a
gladiatorial conflict promising the ruinous defeat of one
party. Exemplifying Bruno's greatest fear concerning the
university pedant, Greene reveals how this preference for
the spectacle, or appearance, of knowledge can extend out
ward from the academic point of origin and endanger the
world beyond, which trusts that moral.integrity and respon
sibility for knowledge are the models that the university
provides its scholars. The King of Castile remarks on the
accomplishment of the Oxford scholars "in axioms,/How to
use quips and sleight of sophistry" (ix,215-16), and the
concomitant uselessness of such learning in a civil (i.e.,
practical) context. Prince Edward displays the perversion
engendered by such learning when he rationalizes his in
tention of killing his former friend and present rival,
Lacy: "I have learned at Oxford, then, this point of
schools i/Ab tata causa3 tott-ituv effectus" (viii, 74-75) .
Ned seeks a strategy for his dilemma, recalls the adage
"removing the cause means taking away the effect," and re
flects the triviality and the harm of the university
training that forces him to memorize the Latin without pro
viding him an ethical context for its meaning. The adage
is thus twisted into justifying the murder of his rival for
the love of a country maid, though common sense (the natu
ral wisdom of a prince, which also overcomes the negative
environmental influences on Shakespeare's Prince Hal) pre
205
vails and he rejects his superficial argument to reason
through the problem and arrive at a conclusion both intel
lectually and ethically responsible.
Greene makes Friar Bacon a character with a dual func
tion, employing him as an example of what is both best and
worst about the university propagation of knowledge: Ox
ford's best scholar and its worst teacher. He places him
in the relationship of tyrannical schoolmaster to schoolboy
Miles, his "poor scholar," to demonstrate the dangers of
the menacing pedant characterized in Bruno's dialogues.
Greene inserts Miles in the wretched position of subsizar,
and proceeds to show how Bacon's violent overreaction to
Miles' deficiencies in superficial knowledge prevents him
from perceiving his student's wit and potential, how Miles*
corrupted sense of scholarship and indifference to real ed
ucation not only hinders his own intellectual development
but subverts Bacon's grand design for England as well, and
finally how Bacon's insensitivity to the repercussions of
his own knowledge results in disaster for two scholars.
The first indication of the extrinsic, grammarian orienta
tion to Bacon's instruction of Miles is displayed when Ba
con prepares to unleash his elenchos on Doctor Burden and
Miles warns, "Marry, sir, he'll straight be on you pick-
pack to know whether the feminine or the masculine gender
be most worthy" (ii,88-90), and adds that before Bacon is
done with him, he "will turn you from a doctor to a dunce,
206
and shake you so small that he will leave no more learning
in you than is in Balaam's ass" (11,100-103). Miles here
implicitly sees through the fagade of Burden's pedantry,
explicitly revealed through Bacon's cross-examination and
conjuration, and sees that the pedant, like Balaam's ass,
can speak like a wise man but cannot think like one (cf.
Numbers 22:21-33). Far from being encouraged, this kind of
witty analysis is totally ignored as Bacon beats him for
his Latin ineptitude:
BACON. Why, thou arrant dunce, shall I never make
thee good scholar? Doth not all the town
cry out and say, Friar Bacon's subsizar is
the greatest blockhead in all Oxford?
Why, thou canst not speak one word of true
Latin.
MILES. No, sir? Yes; what is this else? Ego sum
tuus homo, 'I am your man.' I warrant
you, sir, as good Tully's phrase as any is
in Oxford.
BACON. Come on, sirrah, what part of speech is
Ego?
MILES. Ego, that is 'I'; marry, nomen substan-
t-ivo.
BACON. How prove you that?
MILES. Why, sir, let him prove himself an 'a
will; 'I' can be heard, felt, and under
stood .
BACON. Oh, gross dunce I (v,22-34).
Bacon is himself in error, as Miles here can indeed speak
more than "one word of true Latin"; moreover, Bacon fails
to appreciate his subsizar's insight into Oxford's obses
sion with Ciceronian eloquence ("Tully's phrase") or the
clever logic of Miles' explanation of ego as a substantive
noun, or noun of substance, that can be "heard, felt, and
understood" (a similarly witty explanation of "noun sub
207
stantive" is given by Bacon's pupil Perce in John of Bor
deauxj or the Second Part of Friar Bacon [1590-94], lines
357-78). When Prince Edward's entourage arrives at Oxford
for the prince to consult with the learned friar, Miles is
dismissed from his studies by Bacon and told to "revel it"
in town with Ned's fool, Ralph Simnell; the result is Ralph
posing as Edward, Miles posing as Bacon, and a disturbance
at the tapster's establishment which necessitates the
roisterers' appearance before the university's doctors
(excluding Bacon) for judgment. Once again, Miles employs
his wit and his facility with Latin, defending himself in
Skeltonic verse: "Salve, Doctor Burden. This lubberly
lurdan,/Ill-shaped and ill-faced, disdained and disgraced,/
What he tells unto vobis mentitur de nobis" (vii,40-42).
Receiving no credit for his adroitness (the doctors failing
to see the ambiguity of his Latin concerning who is lying
to whom), he progresses to bolder lies in the same Skelton
ic format (maintaining that Ralph really is Prince Ned,
"Henry's white son") and exasperatedly refers to Oxford as
"the Niniversity" (vii,70). From this point forward, his
education effectively at a complete halt, Miles' wit and
natural perceptiveness deteriorate until he becomes worse
than illiterate, actively pursuing error.
Bacon ensures the failure of his seven-year magical
project by trusting its moment of success to the very
scholar he has personally ruined. He asks for vigilance
208
from the pupil he has treated like a fool, so Miles repays
him by acting the fool. Though Bacon prefaces the charge
he is entrusting to his "poor scholar" (an ironic reference
indeed) by reciting a litany of the profound puissance of
his knowledge Cxi,7-20), he is forced to admit his human
limitations: "Bungay and I have watched these threescore
days,/And now our vital spirits crave some rest" (xi,21-
22). If the enchanted brass head speaks, Miles is to awak
en his mentor immediately and is warned "If that a wink but
shut thy watchful eye,/Then farewell Bacon's glory and his
fame" (xi,35-36). Bacon sleeps, and Miles fails in his
duty because he has become, due to Bacon's abuse and neg
lect, just like the grammarian doctors who can only deal
with words as objective signifiers or ornamentation. Bacon
had stated that the brass head would discourse philosophi
cally; when it simply replies "Time is" and "Time was,"
Miles ignores it, excusing himself "Well, I will watch, and
walk up and down, and be a peripatetian and a philosopher
of Aristotle's stamp" (xi,70-71). He is a "peripatetian"
only in the literal sense that he is walking "up and down";
as a product of the degenerative educational environment of
Aristotelian Oxford he has truly become from Bruno's point
of view "a philosopher of Aristotle's stamp," and the brass
head, meant to be a symbol of Oxford's preeminent erudi
tion, crumbles into dust. Bacon rouses too late to prevent
the destruction of his project and then looks for a scape-
209
goat (blaming first the envy of the dark powers: "Fiends
frowned to see a man their overmatch" [xi,108]) without
meditating upon his own culpability. He corners Miles and
curses, "I will appoint thee fatal to some end" (xi,114).
Not only has Bacon reflected the irresponsibility and the
tyranny of Bruno's pedant interlocutors and characters, he
also shares their vindictiveness.
The relationship of Bacon and Miles is mutually corro
sive, and both suffer profound loss as a consequence. When
Bacon dismisses Miles from his service and heaps curses on
him, the ex-subsizar is ominously unmoved:
MILES. 'Tis no matter. I am against you with the
old proverb, 'The more the fox is cursed,
the better he fares.' God be with you,
sir. I'll take but a book in my hand, a
wide-sleeved gown on my back, and a
crowned cap on my head, and see if I can
want promotion.
BACON. Some fiend or ghost haunt on thy weary
steps,
Until they do transport thee quick to
hell;
For Bacon shall have never merry day,
To lose the fame and honour of his head.
(xi,118-29).
Both characters have become Brunonian pedants here: Miles
believes the physical accoutrements of the university will
prove him an educated man;^ Bacon will not believe his
control over the dark powers is waning and thinks only of
the fame and honor he has lost. Ignorant, stubborn, irre
sponsible; Greene has dramatized Bruno's anti-pedantry po
lemics and provides a logical resolution to the pedantic
210
crimes of each character. Pursued by a devil raised by
Bacon to torment his "lazy bones," Miles laments his deci
sion to become a scholar: "A scholar, quoth you? Marry,
sir, I would I had been made a bottle maker when I was made
a scholar; for I can get neither to be a deacon, reader,
nor schoolmaster, no, not the clerk of a parish. Some call
me dunce; another saith my head is as full of Latin as an
egg's full of oatmeal. Thus I am tormented that the devil
and Friar Bacon haunts me" (xv,11-16). Without any prompt
ing from the devil, Miles systematically convinces himself
that hell is not such a bad place, making it sound in fact
paradisal ("May not a man have a lusty fire there, a pot of
good ale, a pair of cards," etc. [xv,62-63]), and personal
ly speaks the most telling judgment on the level of anti
scholastic foolishness to which he has fallen: "Oh, Lord,
here's even a goodly marvel, when a man rides to hell on
the devil's back" (xv,6 2-63)— by choice.
Bacon, however, considers Miles deserving of whatever
ill befalls him (incredibly, even damnation) and feels no
remorse at his misfortune; it takes the death of two inno
cent scholars to expose the numbing effects of proud ped
antry on his own wisdom. When the sons of Lambert and
Serlsby come to consult Bacon's glass, the friar announces
"My glass is free for every honest man" (xiii,30), but
confides to Bungay that he smells "there will be a trage
dy." Rather than taking personal responsibility for the
211
welfare of the university scholars, Bacon allows them ac
cess to the glass without the slightest admonition or cau
tion. The scholars watch in horror as a fight develops be
tween their fathers, the elder Serlsby promising "And if
thou kill me, think I have a son,/That lives in Oxford, in
the Broadgates Hall,/Who will revenge his father's blood
with blood" (xiii,48-50), and Lambert Senior delivering a
counterthreat (xiii,51-53). As the action escalates, pow
erful, learned Bacon's only advice to the scholars is a
feeble "Sit still, my friends, and see the event" (xiii,
63). All too quickly, the fathers kill each other and the
scholars respond by stabbing each other. Uncharacteristi
cally astonished, the friar reasons
Bacon, thy magic doth effect this massacre.
This glass prospective worketh many woes;
And therefore, seeing these brave lusty brutes,
These friendly youths, did perish by thine art,
End all thy magic and thy art at once.
The poniard that did end the fatal lives
Shall break the cause efficiat^2 of their woes.
Breaking the glass, he cries "I tell thee, Bungay, it re
pents me sore/That ever Bacon meddled in this art" (xiii,
75-81,85-86). Unlike Marlowe's Faustus, Bacon is able to
trust in the grace of God to save himself; as a historical
figure synonymous with the advancement of medieval learn
ing, the famous friar cannot be simply villified and de-^
stroyed. But Greene's implication, and Bruno's, is that
often the menacing pedant does survive the ruin of his pu
pils to perpetuate his misdirection and perversion of
212
others' thinking.
Ramism, Anti-Ramism and Social Pedantry
in The Massacre at 'Paris
An outgrowth of medieval scholasticism, humanism may
be viewed as being born with pedantry's seed already inside
it; "impassioned admiration of the classicists, the ex
clusive and diligent study of their work, must have be
stowed, or reinforced, intellectual habits not so different
from those of pedantry, to produce a new literary supersti
tion, like all superstitions, intolerant and fallacious.
Certainly this is the attitude expressed by Bruno in regard
to Oxford and its monolithic Aristotelians, and there seems
to be support for it in the university's reactions to the
controversial Ramist revision of Aristotelian logical meth
od. Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la RamSe) challenged the effi
ciency of Aristotle's Organon as an organizational logic,
and wrote his own text, the Piaiecticae partitiones (1543?
called Pialecticae institutiones in the second edition pub
lished that year), which, though derivative of Petrus
Hispanus and Rudolph Agricola, claimed to erase the clutter
of Aristotelian categorization through extensive use of
dichotomies. Indeed, Ramus' "logic" is as cumbersome as
Aristotle's and by being more concerned with argument than
with inquiry is as much a rhetoric as it is a logichow
ever, these are not the primary arguments employed by
213
Oxford scholars in refuting it. Perhaps most representa
tive is John Case's Summa veterum inter-pretum in universam
diatectican Aristotelis (1584) , in which Ramism is attacked
by way of affirming Aristotelianism.45 Bruno makes his
criticism of Ramus, whom he calls "un francese arcipedante"
in De la causa, on the basis of the dialectician's method
and his reputation for arrogant inflexibility, believing
Ramus' systems to be just as resolutely closed to inquiry
and speculation as those of the Oxford Aristotelians. As
an advocate of freethinking, Bruno opposes both.
Ramus figures rather prominently in The Massacre at
Paris (1592-93), a dramatization of the St. Bartholomew's
Day Massacre by Christopher Marlowe— like Bruno a notorious
freethinker— who had his own reasons for opposing the Ox
ford Aristotelians. A Cambridge man like Greene, Marlowe
won a Parker Scholarship to attend Corpus Christi College
in 1580, received his B.A. in 1584 and his M.A. in 1587? as
early as the 1570's, Aristotle's Organon received much less
study at Cambridge than other works like his Poetics, and
scholars complemented their reading of Aristotle with his
torical studies and contemporary political commentaries.^
With Ramism generally accepted at Cambridge as intellectual
progress, Oxford's preference for the medieval standard of
the Organon must have seemed perverse to scholars like
Marlowe. The playwright's broad philosophical debt to
Bruno has been described in detail by James Howe, but Howe
214
does not detect any kindred sentiments in The Massacre at
Paris since it does not concern magic, and since its reli
gious issues are merely metaphors for its political con
flicts.47 However, the concept of pedantry as a menace is
an organizing motif in the play, suggesting that Marlowe
did indeed conceive of the campaign against pedantry
couched in the myriad other topics of Bruno's dialogues.
The Ramus segment of scene vii can be easily divided
into two sequences: his exchanges with Andomarus Talaeus
(Omer Talon) preceding capture by Retes and Gonzago, and
his defense against the Guise's condemnation of his ped
antic method. Marlowe's portrait of Ramus is generally in
terpreted as a Foxe-like example of protestant martyrdom4®
and is reflected even in the motto appearing on the title
page of The Rvdimentes of P. Ramvs his Latine Grammar.
Englished and newly corrected. (London: Robert Walde-graue,
1585): "God is my defender." The first Ramus sequence
would appear to support this, as Taleus declares he and
Ramus are Christians rather than specifically Catholics:
RAMUS. What fearfull cries come from the river
Sene,
That frightes poore Ramus sitting at his
book?
I feare the Guisians have past the bridge,
And meane once more to menace me.
[Enter Taleus.]
TALEUS. Flye Ramus flye, if thou wilt save thy
life.
RAMUS. Tell me, Taleus, wherfore should I flye?
TALEUS. The Guisians are hard at thy doore,
And mean to murder us:
Harke, harke they come, lie leap out at
215
the window.
RAMUS. Sweet Taleus stay. [Enter Gonzago and
GONZAGO. Who goes there? Retes.]
RETES. Tis Taleus, Ramus bedfellow.
GONZAGO. What art thou?
TALEUS. I am as Ramus is, a Christian.
RETES. 0 let him goe, he is a catholick.
[Exit Taleus. Entev Ramus.]
GONZAGO. Come Ramus, more golde, or thou shalt
have the stabbe.
RAMUS. Alas I am a scholler, how should I have
golde?
All that I have is but my stipend from the
King,
Which is no sooner receiv'd but it is
spent, (vii,361-79).49
Although the August, 157 2, massacre at Paris occurred ten
years after the death of Talaeus/Taleus, and Marlowe would
certainly have known this,50 he nevertheless integrates the
dialectician's lifelong friend and collaborator into the
scene's action. The reason behind this may be suggested by
the association of Ramus with the catechetical form of his
Rudiments, a dialogue between Magister and Discipulus. The
exchanges here seem indeed to be those between schoolboy
and schoolmaster, and upon closer inspection in fact betray
the signs of menacing pedantry against which Bruno in
veighs. Taleus enters to warn Ramus of impending danger,
and instead of responding with action, the master delivers
a rhetorical question!demanding proof of the threat; as the
dutiful pupil, Taleus stays long enough to answer Ramus—
and in so doing puts himself in mortal danger, for Ramus
delays him long enough to allow the entrance of Guise's
henchmen. Gonzago also quizzes Taleus, whose rhetorical
216
response testifies to his bravery and his wisdom: "I am as
Ramus is," implying that he will share the fate of his mas
ter and friend, "a Christian," that is, a believer in
Christ and not necessarily not a Catholic. As a reward for
this response Retes intercedes to achieve his escape; no
thanks to the pedant whose obsession with form potentially
condemned him to death, Marlowe allows this "schoolboy" to
survive his master's influence.
When Ramus seeks to adopt the same position, arguing
he is merely a poor scholar, he introduces Guise's entrance
and the consequent disputation attacking and defending
pedantry:
[Enter the Guise and Anjou.]
ANJOU. Who have you there?
RETES. Tis Ramus, the Kings professor of logick.
GUISE. Stab him.
RAMUS. 0 good my Lord,
Wherein hath Ramus been so offencious?
GUISE. Marry sir, in having a smack in all,
And yet didst never sound any thing to the
depth.
Was it not thou that scoftes the Organon,
And said it was a heape of vanities?
He that will be a flat decatomest,
And seen in nothing but Epitomies:
Is in your judgment thought a learned man.
And he forsooth must goe and preach in
Germany:
Excepting against Doctors' axioms,
And ipse dixi with this quidditie,
Argumentum testimonii est inartificiale.
To contradict which, I say Ramus shall
dye:
How answer you that? your nego argumentum
Cannot serve, sirra: kill him.
RAMUS. 0 good my Lord, let me but speak a word.
GUISE. Well, say on.
RAMUS. Not for my life doe I desire this pause,
But in my latter houre to purge my selfe,
217
In that I know the things that I have
wrote,
Which as I heare one Shekius takes it ill,
Because my places being but three,
contains all his:
I knew the Organon to be confusde,
And I reduc'd it into better forme.
And this for Aristotle will I say,
That he that despiseth him, can nere
Be good in Logick or Philosophie.
And thats because the blockish Sorbonests
Attribute as much unto their workes,
As to the service of the eternal God.
GUISE. Why suffer you the peasant to declaime?
Stab him I say and send him to his freends
in hell.
ANJOU. Nere was there colliars sonne so full of
pride. [Kill him.] (vii,380-416).
Fully aware of Ramus' reputation, Guise orders "Stab him"
as soon as the pedant is identified. Ramus presents him
self again as examiner, but also as linguistic butcher, de
manding of Guise how he has been "offencious," a bastard
ized adjective neither English (offensive) nor French
(offensant). On cue, Guise does recite his lesson to the
"Kings professor of Logick," and in so doing exposes the
universal faults of the pedant: he pretends to broad
knowledge which in fact is merely superficial; he scoffs at
the Organon as a "heap of vanities," but is so vain himself
that he accepts only those who practice Ramist dichotomies
as "learned" men; he rejects the axioms of truly learned
men and lives by the creed of the rhetorician-pedant,
"Argumentum testimonii est inartifioiale" [To argue from
proof is unskillful]. As counterproof to this latter,
Guise reports he will kill Ramus, a proof against which the
218
pedant's "nego argumentum/Cannot serve."
Awarded a brief reprieve in which to clear himself of
suspicion, Ramus quickly confirms all of Guise's charges in
a speech that initially seems to reflect careful rhetorical
strategy ("Not for my life doe I desire this pause"). He
appears ready to apologize for offense to Shekius (Jakob
Schegk, a German scholar whose Physics sold poorly after
Ramus publicly defamed it) but retracts nothing; in reply
to Guise's accusation concerning the Organon, Ramus pedan
tically boasts he improved it. Marlowe, himself a scholar,
intrudes briefly to clarify that his own anti-Aristoteli-
anism is directed at fanatical followers of Aristotle like
those at Oxford rather than at the Stagirite's philosophy
(proving his own position is not equally as pedantic as
theirs) and then allows Ramus to resume his tirade against
other thinkers ("the blockish Sorbonests") who have re
sisted his revisionist method, projecting his own stubborn
pedantry on them (as, undeniably, Bruno also does to some
extent in La oena). Guise takes the pompous defense/attack
at its face (i.e., mere rhetorical) value and refuses to
listen to any further confirmation of his charges: Anjou
delivers the death sentence and the ultimate proof refuting
Ramus' argument. The crimes for which Ramus is killed here
obviously have nothing to do with his Protestant affilia
tion; he is killed for being a university doctor who
could unconscionably pervert the education and endanger the
219
lives of others simply to protect and reinforce his own im
poverished knowledge, his pedantry.
The fatal obstinance that ensures Ramus' death is a
symptom of the disease preying upon the entire Parisian
populace in The Massacre at Tarts. The obdurate French
Catholics exhibit a religious fanaticism that is pedantic
in its superficiality and its vindictiveness (recalling
Bruno's remark in La cena that "our people regard it as
making a sacrifice to the gods when they have oppressed,
slaughtered, defeated and assassinated the enemies of the
faith" [i nostri stimino far un sacrificio a gli dei,
quando arranno oppressi, uccisi, deballati e sassinati gli
nemici de la fS nostra], 46-47). After the Lord High Ad
miral has already been shot and stabbed, Anjou orders "Away
with him, cut of his head and hande.s,/And send them for a
present to the Pope" (v,316-17). The institutions of
learning and spiritual contemplation, far from opposing
such barbarism, prove to be bastions of corrupt support as
Guise boasts "Paris hath full five hundred Colledges,/As
Monestaries, Priories, Abbyes and halles,/Wherein are thir-
tie thousand sturdy student Catholicks" all employed "To
bring the will of our desires to end" (ii,137-40,144). In
a masterstroke of irony, Marlowe concocts the destruction
of one variety of pedants through the agency of another
variety:
GUISE. And in the mean time, my Lord, could we
220
devise,
To get those pedantes from the King
Navarre,
That are tutors to him and the Prince of
Condy—
ANJOU. For that let me alone, Cousin stay you
heer,
And when you see me in, then follow hard.
{He knocketh at the door; and enter the
King of Navarre and the Prince of
Condy, with their two schotmaisters.]
How now my Lords, how fare you?
NAVARRE. My Lord, they say
That all the protestants are massacred.
ANJOU. I, so they are, but yet what remedy:
I have done what I could to stay this
broile.
NAVARRE. But yet my Lord the report doth run,
That you were one that made this
Massacre.
ANJOU. Who I? you are deceived, I rose but now.
[Enter Guise.]
GUISE. Murder the Hugonets, take those pedantes
hence.
NAVARRE. Thou traitor Guise, lay of thy bloudy
hands.
CONDY. Come let us goe tell the king. [Exeunt.]
GUISE. Come sirs, lie whip you to death with my
punniards point. [He kits them.]
(vii,425-41).
Guise wishes to dispose of the tutors because they are rep
resentative to him of Navarre's and Condi's Protestant sym
pathies, their dogmatic opposition to him; however, it is
the opposition, not the dogmatism, that he really hates.
Guise desires their deaths because they symbolize the
propagation of ideas and beliefs. This obsession with con
trolling the dissemination of knowledge in order to prevent
successful ideological defiance is central to Bruno's char
acterization of the menacing pedant, and Guise is portrayed
here by Marlowe as precisely that. His method of murdering
221
the schoolmasters is not practical, but vicious: he taunts
that he will use the master's conventional form of punish
ment, disciplining with a rod, and "whip you to death with
my punniards point," conjuring a horrific image of him
slashing and stabbing the terrified men.-^ Unfortunately,
Guise is not an isolated germ in the body politic but
rather the most visible example of a plague of pedantry
occurring on a societal scale with its goal the annihila
tion of all individuals who will not conform to its single
ideological system.
The neutralization of individual elements of social
pedantry such as the Guise does not solve the larger prob
lem; following Guise's death,Young Guise tries to re
venge his father's death by throwing a knife at King Henry
(xix,1047-52}, exhibiting the cycle of pedantic intolerance
that continually breeds discontent while causing society to
prey upon itself. Though Guise figuratively represents the
menacing pedant who is given the power to enforce his posi
tion as ideological authoritarian, his removal does not end
the threat of pedantry because the beliefs it has already
fostered throughout French society, that Catholicism is the
only true religion and that Protestants must be purged
rather than persuaded or informed, lives to be perpetuated
in the Catholic monarch on the throne. Thus Marlowe in
serts Henry III unhistorically into action that preceded
the beginning of his reign (1574) by two years, and has him
222
die seventeen years too early, in order to put an end to
the cycle of social pedantry destroying the country. The
dying Henry curses the Catholic church, gives his heir's
support to "the Queen of England specially,/Whom God hath
blest for hating Papestry" (xxii,1207-1208), and declares
France's religious pedantry at an official end as "Valoyses
lyne ends in my tragedie" (xxii,1231). A logical extension
of menacing pedants' potential for harm, Marlowe's depic
tion of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre— by examining
Ramus' representation as the microcosm of stubborn pedantry
and Guise as an element of social, macrocosmic pedantry—
convincingly supports Bruno's conviction that opposition to
freethinking is civilization's most serious threat.
223
Notes
Act, scene and page references are to Plautus trans.
Paul Nixon, 5 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1966), I.
2 Herrick, p. 60. Arturo Graf, Attraverso -it Clnque-
cento (Torino: Ermanno Loescher, 1888), notes that "formal
ization" of the pedant as a character (and character type)
occurs in Italian before spreading to other languages (p.
172). Like other character types, the pedant is "a figure
from the Latin theatre; but he is, to be precise, more o-
riginal, more autonomous than all of those, and here he
presents a multiplicity of aspects, with a variety of atti
tudes, of which the servant, the parasite, the captain have
no knowledge" [una figura del teatro latino; ma b, bisogna
tenerlo presente, pin originale, pitl autonomo di tutti cos-
toro, e ci si presents sotto una moltiplicitb di aspetti,
con una varietS di movenze, che il servo, il parassita, il
capitano non conoscono] (p. 199).
Alberto Agresti, Studll sutla Commedla Itallana del
Seaolo XVI (Napoli: Stamperia della R. University, 1871),
p. 95; Mario Apollonio, Storla del Teatro Itallano 3 vols.
(Firenze: G.C. Sansoni, Editore, 1951), II, 57; K.M. Lea,
Italian Popular Comedy: A Study In the Commedla dell*Arte,
1560-1620 with Special Reference to the English Stage 2
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), I, 39; Lorenzo
Stoppato, La Commedla Popolare In Italia (Padova: A. Draghi
Libraio - Editore, 1887), pp. 68, 74. Graf summarizes the
pedant's latinity thus: "When he can he speaks Latin, be
cause Latin, to his judgment, is the noble language, the
perfect language, the language par excellence; when he can
not speak Latin, and necessity constrains him, he speaks
vernacular; but in that case he takes revenge on the words
and the vulgar phrases, he mixes in the Latin words and
phrases, strewing what he says with latinisms, and makes a
muddle that no one understands" [Quando pub parla latino,
perchb il latino, a suo giudizio, 6 la lingua nobile, la
lingua perfetta, la lingua per eccellenza; quando non pub
224
parlar latino, e la necessity lo sforza, parla volgare; ma
allora per ricattarsi, alle parole e alle frasi volgari,
mescola le parole e le frasi latine, sparge di latinismi il
suo dire, e fa un guazzabuglio che nessuno intende] (pp.
177-78).
4 Pierre Louis Duchartre, The Italian Comedy: The Im
provisation Scenarios3 Llves3 Attributes3 Portraits and
Masks of the Illustrious Characters of the Commedla dell’
Arte trans. Randolph T. Weaver (London: George G. Harrap &
Co., Ltd., 1929), p. 196; Joseph Spencer Kennard, Masks and
Marionettes (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935), p. 52.
5
The commedla dell’arte, however, also had its share
of pedants. Mel Gordon, Lazzl: The Comic Routines of the
Commedla dell’Arte (New York: Performing Arts Journal Pub
lications, 1983), epitomizes the Doctor type as "A pompous
and Latin-spouting scholar from Bologna. His speech is
filled with malapropisms and gibberish. Often greedy with
members of his family and a great bore to the other charac
ters" (p. 62). For comparisons and commentaries on the
relation of Pedantl to Grazlanl) see Apollonio, pp. 73-74,
288-90; Lea, I, 39-41; Stoppato, pp. 67-68.
^ Gordon, p. 59. Nevertheless, the doctor's verbal
audacity and fustian conglomerations at times allow him to
intimidate or even enthrall many of his listeners. These
characteristics are summarized in Lea, I, 28-31, 41;
Duchartre, p. 196. The most useful surveys of the dottorl
appear in Allardyce Nicoll, Masks3 Mimes and Miracles:
Studies In the Popular Theatre (London: George G. Harrap &
Co., Ltd., 1931), pp. 256-60, and The World of Harlequin: A
Critical Study of the Commedla dell’Arte (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1963), pp. 55-60.
^ Comprehensively documented in George B. Parks, "The
First Italianate Englishmen," Studies In the Renaissance 8
(1961), 197-216. Studying the English obsession with trav
el in Italy and with Italian culture and fashions, Parks
traces the evolution of the term Italianate from its posi
tive through its pejorative connotations. The drama cer
tainly reflects the cultural exchange; e.g. Pietro Aretino
is mentioned at I,i,117 and I,ii,278 of The Return from
Parnassus3 or the Scourge of Simony (1601-1602), acted at
St. John's College, Cambridge, in a manner implying audi
ence familiarity with his bawdy tales.
8 Sermons ed. Rev. George Elwes Corrie, Publications
of the Works of The Fathers and Early Writers of the Re
formed English Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1844), pp. 64-65. To protect their nation, Latimer
225
enjoins his listeners "for the love of God appoint teachers
and schoolmasters, you that have charge of youth; and give
the teachers stipends worthy their pains, that they may
bring them up in grammar, in logic, in rhetoric, in philos
ophy, in the civil law, and in that which I cannot leave
unspoken of, the word of God” (p. 69).
® Johnstone Parr, "Robert Greene and his Classmates at
Cambridge,” PULA 77 (1962), 536-43.
A replycacion agaynst certayne yong scoters abiured
of tate &c. [1528?] Huntington Library Document 59202, sig.
AgV. sir Humphrey Gilbert, Queene Elisabethes Achademy (c.
1570) also complains of the quality of some scholars, la
menting "the scholasticall rawnesse of some newly Comwen
from the vniuersities" (Queene Elizabethes Achademy3 A
Booke of Precedence3 &c. 3 with Essays on Italian and German
Books of Courtesy Early English Text Society, Extra Series
[London: N. Triibner & Co., 1869], p. 2).
H Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition
1558-1642: An Essay on Changing Relations between the Eng
lish Universities and English Society (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1959), p. 79; see also pp. 107-14. Curtis notes
that the discrepancies between the poor scholars and those
who were sons of gentry became even more disparate in the
late decades of the sixteenth century; the fellowships, for
instance, that Henry VI had provided for theological stu
dents at King's College, Cambridge, went to scholars who
became "not rectors and vicars of parish churches but coun
try gentlemen living on their lands, officials in the ser
vice of the Crown, secretaries to nobles and Crown offi
cials, and even adventurers and merchants" (p. 62).
12
The Complete Works of George Gascoigne ed. John W.
Cunliffe, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1910), II, 10. Gascoigne may have been reacting to the
passages in Roger Ascham1s The Scholemaster (15 70) dealing
with "hard-witted" or extremely quick students. Ascham
complains about errant masters who are "of so crooked a na
ture, as, when they meete with a hard witted scholer, they
rather breake him, than bowe him, rather marre him, then
mend him" (English Works ed. William Aldis Wright [Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904], p. 188). When
Gnomaticus first meets his pupils, he is quite impressed
with the two hard-witted brothers, and chastises the slower
but far more diligent brothers; in IV,i, he admits he was
fooled by the formers' towardness: "marveyling at their
straunge and unaccustomed slackenesse, I searched them
uppon such suspicion as I had conceyved, and founde that
Phylosarchus had spent the time in wryting of loving
226
sonets, and Phylautus had also made verses in praise of
Marshiall feates and pollycies" (p. 60); in the case of
these prodigal brothers, sparing the rod did spoil the
child.
The disesteem of the schoolmaster's occupation is also
commented upon by Sir Thomas Elyot, The boke named the
Gouernour (1531), as one reason why learning among the gen
try has decayed: "For of those persons be some which with
out shame dare affirme that to a great gentilman it is a
notable reproche to be well lerned & to be called a great
clerke: whiche name they accounte to be of so base estyma-
tion that they neuer haue it in their mouthes but whan they
speke any thynge in derision" (The Book Named the Governor
A Scholar Press Facsimile [Menston, England: The Scholar
Press Limited, 1970], sig. F3, fol. 43). The clerk isn't
even respected by the lower classes; cf. Shakespeare's
2 Henry VI, IV,ii,81-104, where Jack Cade, encouraged by
his cronies the Weaver ("We took him setting of boys'
copies") and Butcher, condemn the poor clerk of Chartham
for being able to write his own name: "hang him with his
pen and ink-horn about his neck."
Elyot complains of employers "if they hiare a
schole maister to teche in theyr houses they chiefely en
quire with howe small a salary he will be contented & neuer
do inserche howe moche good lernynge he hath and howe a-
monge well lerned men he is therin estemed vsinge lasse
diligence than in takynge seruantes whose seruice is of
moche lasse importance and to a good schole maister is nat
in profite to be compared" (fol. 46).
English Works, pp. 202-203. John Tomkins, in V,i,
of Albumazar (1614) satirizes the effectuality of the
schoolmaster with his rebellious students in the scene
following a successful haul by the cozening astrologer and
the thieves Ronca, Harpax and Furbo: to his amazement, they
turn and rob him of the booty; when Albumazar demands if
this is his reward for training them, Ronca replies "We are
your scholars,/Made by your help and our own aptness able/
To instruct others" {A Select Collection of Old English
Plays ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, Dodsley's Old English Plays
[London: Reeves and Turner, 1875], XI, 404).
J. Howard Brown, Elizabethan Schooldays: An Account
of the English Grammar School In the second half of the
Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933), p. 24.
Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages,
declares that "The sixteenth century was the flogging age
par excellence in the English universities" (111,371).
The Praise of Folly trans. Clarence H. Miller (New
__ _ 227
Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 79. The school
master's dominion over his pupils is a metaphor for polit
ical power in Elyot, describing how "Dionyse kynge of
Licile whan he was for tyranny expelled by his people he
came in to Italy and there in a commune schole taught
grammer where with whan he was of his enemies embraided &
called a schole maister he answered them: that al though
Sicilians had exiled hym yet in despite of them all he
reigned notynge therby the authorite that he had ouer his
scholers" (sig. L3, fol. 19). In his The Lady of May,
presented before the queen in 1578, Sir Philip Sidney has
his tyrannical pedant, Rhombus, introduce himself as
"potentissima donvina, a School-master; that is to say, a
Pedagogue, one not a little versed in the disciplinating of
small fry. ..."
^ Brown, Elizabethan Schooldays, pp. 30-31.
18
A reflection of the rhetorical emphasis of the uni
versities; Elyot observes "There be many nowe a dayes in
famous scholes & vniuersities whiche be so moche gyuen to
the studie of tonges that whan they write epistles they
seme to the reder that lyke to a trumpet they make a soune
without any purpose: where vnto men do herken more for the
noyse than for any delectation that therby is meued" (fol.
47V) .
I9 what You Will ed. M.R. Wobdhead, Nottingham Drama
Texts (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press, 1980). Due
to his conflict with the Pedant, Pippo's first name recalls
the name of Gargantua's first teacher, constantly referred
to by Rabelais as "the sophist": Thubal Holofernes.
A not insignificant contribution to this character
istic of the pedant, and particularly of the English
schoolmaster, may be found in the biography of Nicholas
Udall, schoolmaster and author of Ralph Roister Roister.
While headmaster at Eton, Udall in March, 1541, was accused
of pederasty with a pupil, one Thomas Cheney, and after
confessing was sent to Marshalsea Prison for several
months— although he quickly worked his way back into the
graces of church and state, being appointed headmaster of
the Westminster school by Mary in 1554 despite his previous
record.
2- * - The English drama's treatment of the pedant's in
carnation as university doctor or "professional scholar"
will be discussed further below.
22
Opere Minori a cura di Cesare Segre, La Letteratura
Italiana Storia e Testi (Milano: Riccardo Ricciardi Edi
tore, 1954), p. 318. Supporting the homosexual insinuation
228
in Dulippo's response to Cleandro, one of the many meanings
for the suppositi of the play's title "has sodomistic con
notations" (The Comedies of Ariosto trans. and ed. Edmond
M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1975), p. 96n3.
23
Early Plays from the Italian ed. R. Warwick Bond
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), p. 36.
24
Fraunce derives his quotations "(1) from the lead
ing Latin authors (whether at first hand or through school-
books such as Lily’s Grammar and the Sententiae Pueriles),
especially (and in the order here given) Terence, Ovid,
Cicero, Vergil, Plautus and Horace, (2) a few from Diony
sius Cato, Publilius Syrus and Mantuan, (3) from books of
scholastic philosophy, logic, &c, (4) from the liturgy and
hymns of the Church (this is perhaps noticeable), (5) from
mediaeval Latin proverbs and 'tags', often in the form of
leonine hexameters (these being especially difficult to run
to ground)" (Victoria, A Latin Comedy ed. G.C. Moore Smith,
Materialien zur Kunde des cllteren Englischen Dramas
[London: David Nutt, 1906], pp. ix-x). The respective em
phasis on Latin sources may have something to do with the
audience for the versions by Munday and Fraunce: the former
was performed at court for Elizabeth just prior to its pub
lication, and Alfred Harbage, Annals of English Drama* 975-
1700 rev. Samuel Schoenbaum (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1964), conjectures that the latter was
performed under the auspices of St. John's College, Cam
bridge (p. 49 ) .
25
II Fedele Comedia del Clariss. M. Luigi Pasqualigo
(Venetia: Appresso Bolognino Zaltieri, 1576), pp. 65-66.
Smith, p. 42? lines 1149-55.
27
Richard Hosley, A Critical Edition of Anthony Mun
day ' s Fedele and Fortunio (New York: Garland Publishing,
Inc., 19 81). All act and scene references are to this edi
tion of Fedele and Fortunio and will be included in paren
theses following subsequent quotations. In trying to char
acterize Pedante, Hosley writes that "Pedante is not a
parasite in the tradition of classical comedy but a pedant
who, like Onofrio in IF, has some servantly qualities and
functions (compare 'my man' at 2.5.4 and 'my master' at
4.6.127). However, Pedante, like Onofrio, is technically
a parasite to Fedele in the literal sense of the Greek par-
asitos : 'one who eats at the table of another' (OED)" (p.
198). See Gilberto Storari, "Un adattamento inglese di una
commedia italiana del '500: Fedele and Fortunio, di Anthony
Munday," Quaderni di lingue e letteratura, I (1976), 97-
116.
229
28
A curious coincidence is represented here that can
not pass without comment. Fraunce's Victoria is dedicated
to Sir Philip Sidney, to whom half of Bruno's Italian dia
logues are also dedicated. Fraunce translates the name for
his pedant from Pasqualigo's Onorio, but he names the ped
ant's pupil, Pegasus; in the Cabala, Bruno names his quon
dam ass interlocutor Onorio— who, in a former incarnation,
was also Pegasus. The 1582 date on Victoria is somewhat
conjectural (see Smith, pp. ix, xviii-xx), but one of two
significant conclusions can be drawn from this coincidence:
either Bruno read the play dedicated to Sidney, and since
it existed only in manuscript until this century this im
plies that Bruno had more specific contact with Sidney than
has been generally accepted; or the play in its final manu
script form was not completed until after the appearance of
Bruno's Cabala, irrefutably demonstrating the dialogue's
influence.
I brought butter and cheese hither to victual the
camp a great while;
Many times I would nick them of their measure and
the soldiers beguile.
Like a crafty knave, by this means I got so much
gain
That I bought this apparel of a captain that was
slain.
And, wearing the same abroad as you see,
The soldiers all the town over make a captain of
me.
One calls me Captain Cheese, another Captain Crust,
Another brave Crackstone--take which name ye lust.
(I,i,51-58).
3 0
That is, the monstrous issue of Typhon, son of Gaia
and Tartarus, the grotesque giant with dragons for hands,
serpents growing from his thighs downward, wings covering
his entire body, and fire flashing from his eyes (Apollo-
dori bibliotheca, 1.6.3); Bruno, p. 59.
For example, an exchange between Onorio and Sebasto
in the Cabala portrays the casual, arrogant attitude of
pedants when rejecting beliefs which conflict with their
own (897-99); and Bruno focuses on the physical opulence of
the university doctors' dress in La cena, commenting on the
doctoral robes synonymous with pedantry and noting in par
ticular the gold chains on the neck of one, the twelve
rings on two fingers of the other (21).
3 2
Bruno responds in both comic (primarily ironic) and
serious (primarily condemnatory) terms to the problem of
pedantry as he perceives it. His own position is summa
230
rized by Saulino in the Spaeoiox
SOFIA. Whence chances it that some ignorant mushrooms
at times call you philosopher (which, if it is
true, is the most honorable title a man can
have) and say it to you as though to speak in
juriously or to revile you? [Onde aviene che
alcuni ignoranti porcini alle volte ti chiamano
filosofo (quale, se f e vero, fe piii onorato tit-
olo che possa aver un uomo), e te lo dicono
come per dirti ingiuria o per vituperarti?]
SAULINO. From a certain envy. [Da certa invidia.]
SOFIA. Whence chances it that some madman and fool
sometimes comes to be called a philosopher by
you? [Onde aviene che alcun pazzo e stolto tal
volta da te vien chiamato filosofo?]
SAULINO. From a certain irony. [Da certa ironia.]
(794). Irony is also apparent in the lament to the reader
contained in the "Argomento del quarto dialogo" of La eena,
which treats the ignorance of Doctor Nundinio: "And I cer
tainly regret that you are found in that section" [E certo
mi rincresse che quella parte ve si trove] (12). On the
other side of the coin, Bruno condemns outright some con
cepts commonly held by the university pedants, such as the
pedant's claim to wisdom founded upon his knowledge of lan
guages— which Bruno counters does not demonstrate investi
gative or speculative intellect (La eena,59-61). Occasion
ally he is as vindictive as the pedants: after Teofilo has
described more of the obstinate antics of Torquato at
Greville's symposium, Smitho declares "If those who were
present, as they were civil, would have been most civil,
they would have hung in place of his necklace collar a rope
at his neck, and reckoned with him forty blows in commemo
ration of the first day of Lent" [Se quelli che v'eran pre-
senti, come erano civili, fussero stati civilissimi, gli
avrebbono attaccato, in loco della collana, un capestro al
collo, e fattogli contar quaranta bastonate in commemora-
zione del primo giorno di quaresima] (132-33) [misconstrued
as a reference to the Nolan in Stanley L. Jaki's transla
tion, The Ash Wednesday Supper, p. 136].
Parr, 536; Kenneth Mildenberger, "Robert Greene at
Cambridge," Modern Language Notes 66 (1951), 546-49.
34
James Dow McCallum, "Greene's Friar Baeon and' Friar
Bungay," Modern Language Notes 35 (1920), remarks "That
Greene knew of Bruno is beyond question, since in 1583 the
dramatist had taken his Master of Arts at Cambridge. The
stir that such a character as Bruno made could not have es
caped the notice of the alert Greene" (p. 213). McCallum
suggests a parallel between the Vandermast magical debates
in scene ix and the disputations before Alasco; the connec
231
tions run much deeper, as we shall see. But McCallum1s
simplistic attempt to connect Bruno with Vandermast does
bring up a problem about what, amazingly enough, is simply
accepted as a commonplace in criticism of Greene's play:
namely, the supposed source for it, the anonymous prose
romance, The Famous Historie of Fryer Baoon. Containing
the wonderfull things that he did in his Life: Also the
manner of his Death; With the Liues and Deaths of the two
Coniurers Bungye and Vandermastt Very pleasant and de-
lightfull to be read (London: G.P., 1627). Though the
Stationer's Register alludes to another edition in 1623,
there seems little to suggest there was a text of it avail
able before 16 00, and even less that it would have been a-
vailable as early as possibly even 1587, when Greene may
have begun the play.
In Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay ed. Daniel Seltzer,
Regents Renaissance Drama Series (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1963), Seltzer mentions articles by W.F.
McNeir ("Traditional Elements in the Character of Greene's
Friar Bacon,” Studies in Philology 45 [1948], 172-79) and
Percy Z. Round ("Greene's Materials for Friar Bacon and
Friar Bungay," Modern Language Notes 21 [1926], 19-23) as
support for The Famous Historie as Greene's source, but
both articles merely beg the question, referring to the
"widely accepted" fact of the romance's influence. Seltzer
has his own difficulties trying to cite earlier specific
sources for the play (see pp. xii-xiii), apparent evidence
of The Famous Historie' s significance. In light of the
many biographical details tying Vandermast to Bruno, and
literary allusions to Bruno's dialogues in the play, this
seems less likely. When we examine the only reference to
Vandermast in The Famous Historie relevant to Greene's
play, contained in chapter seven (the magic contest), we
find it is only two pages long, and is specific only about
Vandermast's raising the images of Caesar and Hercules (in
the "Appendice" of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay / John of
Bordeaux or the Second Part of Friar Bacon ed. di Benvenuto
Cellini [Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1952], pp. 196-97). The
only other significant reference to Vandermast in the ro
mance (beyond a passing comment on the assassin Vandermast
sent to exact vengeance on Bacon for his defeat) concerns
his struggle with Friar Bungay which results in their
deaths (pp. 209-11), which of course does not appear in
Greene's play. It seems possible, then, that the issue of
influence may simply have been reversed. The romance may
in fact be an elaboration of the play, fleshed out with
folk legend and popular tales.
O C
Pedantius ed. G.C. Moore Smith, Materialien zur
Kinde des Slteren Englischen Dramas (London: David Nutt,
1905), pp. viii-xi. Smith notes that both Greene (of Clare
232
Hall) and Christopher Marlowe (of Benet's Hall) may have
witnessed the performance of Pedantius (p. xxiiin2).
3 6
Two exemplary scenes involve characters who consult
Bacon's enchanted glass: Prince Edward becomes angry when
he sees Lacy and Margaret together in the glass, so Bacon
advises "Sit still, my lord, and mark the comedy" (vi,48)
[Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay ed. J.A. Lavin, The New
Mermaids (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1969), p. 35. Scene
and line references are to this edition, and will follow in
parentheses after subsequent quotations]; when the two
scholars, sons of Lambert and Serlsby, happily enter to see
how their fathers are faring at home, Bacon confides to his
colleague "Bungay, I smell there will be a tragedy" (xiii,
36). Even Burden's declaration when the western kings
visit the university, "We must lay plots of stately trage
dies , /Strange comic shows," (vii,9-10) duplicates the
serio-comic juxtaposition present in Bruno's dialogues.
37 See the correlation of these elements in Peter
Mortenson, "Friar Baaon and Friar Bungay: Festive Comedy
and 'Three-Form'd Luna,'" English Literary Renaissance 2
(1972), 194-207 (especially 196-202).
3® Bruno's travels are described chronologically in
Singer, pp. 13-45, 133-56.
3 Q
That is, with Bruno's renowned faculties of memory,
his ability to quote accurately from a wide variety of
sources could well be construed as a kind of aphoristic
virtuosity (on Bruno's preparation and prowess in memory
arts, see Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 199-204).
Works on each topic include: aphorisms/mnemonics (see
pp. 2, 31-32 above; De aompendiosa architeatura et comple-
mento artis Lullii [1582], Reoens et completa ars remini-
soendi et in phantastioo aampo exorandi [1583], and four
more Lullist works after 1585); magic (De magia [1590],
Theses de magia [1590], De magia mathematioa [1590]); and
mathematics (pp. 31-32 above; Artiauli centum et sexaginta
adversus huius tempestatis mathematicos atque philosophos
[1588]). If one would rather equate ability in aphorisms
with rhetorical dexterity, Bruno stirred up Geneva Univer
sity in 1579 by publishing a broadsheet attacking professor
of philosophy Antoine de la Faye for making twenty errors
in a single lecture. There was more than a little of the
pedant in Bruno himself. See Singer, pp. 15, 20 4.
40 Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition,
pp. 203-204.
41
Cf. Miles' malapropistic inquiry, "mayst thou not
233
know me to be a lord by my reparel?" (v,43-44), and Crack-
stone 's similar remark in Fedele and Fortunio (II,v,64).
^ That is, "efficient" (see OED). This is one of
Greene's more specific references to Bruno's dialogues: the
operation of "the cause efficiat," or efficient cause, is
the central topic of De la causa. In perhaps another ref
erence , Margaret believes her ills are exacerbated by the
corrupted heavens (x,139-46), subject of the satire in the
Spaccio.
Graf, pp. 189-90 [L'ammirazione appassionata dei
classici, lo studio esclusivo ed asiduo dell'opera loro,
dovevano conferire, o rafforzare abiti intellettuali non
troppo disformi da quelli della pedantaria, produrre una
nuova superstizione letteraria, come tutte le supersti-
zioni, intollerante e sofistica]. Ong remarks that Ramus'
pedantic anti-Aristotelianism is expressed "in stock human
ist terms. Aristotelians are obscurantists. They foster
barbarism. They should not be clung to out of mere custom"
(p. 175).
^ Summarized in Norman E. Nelson, "Peter Ramus and
the Confusion of Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetry," Contribu
tions in Modern Philology 2 (1947), 4-5. For more exten
sive analysis, see Ong, pp. 28 4-92.
Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 210.
Charles B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Ren
aissance England, notes "It has been traditional to assume
that the advent of Ramism dealt, the death blow to medieval
Aristotelianism, already on a decline initiated by human
ism, the Reformation, and Copernicanism . . . Indeed, there
is much evidence pointing the other way, namely that in the
very decades in which Ramism began taking a foothold in
England Aristotelianism was revived and developed in a sig
nificant way . . . In short: Ramism thrived, but Aristote
lianism thrived even more" (pp. 51-52). Oxford's resist
ance to Ramism contributed to this in no small manner, and
the widespread nature of the university's anti-Ramism is
demonstrated by Oxford student notebooks dating from about
1560-1590, in which Ramism "is mentioned several times but
always disparagingly" (Hugh Kearney, Scholars and Gentle
men: Universities and Society in Pre-Industrial Britain
1500-1700 [London: Faber and Faber, 1970], pp. 63-64).
Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 15 58-
1642, p. 119.
47
Marlowej Tamburlaine and Magic (Athens, Ohio: Uni-
234
versity of Ohio Press, 1976), pp. 148-49. Howe wears the
blinders of Hermeticism, an unfortunate by-product of
Frances A. Yates' excellent Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic
Tradition (1964) and a common presence in post-Yates
studies of Bruno. For Howe's sections relating Bruno to
Marlowe, see "Tamburlaine, Magic, and Bruno" (pp. 39-85),
"Further Speculations About the Marlowe-Bruno Relationship:
Tamburlaine3 Part One" (pp. 162-76), and "The Lover, the
Eagle and the Phoenix in Bruno and Tamburlaine3 Part Two"
(pp. 177-80).
48
Ong examines the vague manifestations of Ramus'
supposed Calvinist conversion, pp. 28-29. Conventional
views of Ramus-as-martyr are reflected in Harry Levin, The
Overreaoher: A Study of Christopher Marlowe (1952; rpt.
Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1974), pp. 104-105; John
Ronald Glenn, "The Martyrdom of Ramus in Marlowe's The
Massacre at Paris," Papers on Literature & Language 9
(1973), 371-72.
^ The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe ed.
Fredson Bowers, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1981), I, 375-76. Scene and line references
for The Massacre at Paris are to this edition and will be
included in parentheses following subsequent quotations.
C A
Glenn, p. 371; Glenn also notes the "command" ex
erted by Ramus over Talon in their relationship.
Thus undercutting Glen's assessment of the charac
ter as "the independent intellectual" who dies a Christian
martyr, and in whom "there is at least a glimpse of a hope
ful Marlowe who in the most pessimistic of plays can ex
press a guarded faith in humanity" (p. 379), and making ri
diculous the conclusion of David Galloway, "The Ramus Scene
in Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris," Notes and Queries 198
(1953) : "Ramus's 'speech before death1 is certainly not a
defiant clarion-call of faith in the Huguenot cause, but
philosophers are not necessarily renowned for martyr-like
qualities" (p. 147). Galloway was obviously not aware of
Bruno.
52 The repression and torture of schoolmasters for
their reputed knowledge was unfortunately not a mere inven
tion of dramatic fiction. Queen Mary I made it very hard
for schoolmasters to give a liberal education to students,
ordering in her Proclamation 407, "Announcing Injunctions
for Religion" (4 March 1554) that the church "examine all
schoolmasters and teachers of children; and finding them
suspect in any wise, to remove them and place Catholic men
in their rooms with a special commandment to instruct their
235
children so as they may be able to answer the priest at the
mass" (Tudor Royal Proclamations: II. The Later Tudors
(1553-1587) ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, 3 vols.
[New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969], II, 38). In
James I's Newes from Scotland declaring the damnable life
and death of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer3 who was
burned at Edenbrough in Ianuary last (1591) [Daemonologie
(1597)3 Newes from Scotland (1591) ed. G.B. Harrison (New
York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 192 4)], the schoolmaster at
"Saltpans in Lowthian" is put on trial at the insistence of
some accused female witches for allegedly having shared in
a plot against Scotland's king; although James' text in
cludes a hilarious tale of how the supposed magician-
schoolmaster was tricked by another witch when he tried to
charm her daughter and succeeded in charming a heifer in
stead (pp. 21-23), the treatise ends with Doctor Fian being
placed in "the boots," an instrument of torture, till his
legs are crushed into uselessness, and then being thrown on
a cart, strangled, and burned— since he refused to confess
to the charge of witchcraft.
Which itself exhibits the arrogance typical of the
pedant, fatally asserting he cannot be harmed by his own
shortsightedness: the Third Murtherer warns Guise of assas
sins in the adjacent room, but he boasts
Yet Caesar shall goe forth.
Let mean consaits, and baser men feare death,
Tut they are peasants, I am Duke of Guise :
And princes with their lookes ingender feare.
(xix,996-99).
236
V. "HOW EASY IS A BUSH SUPPOS'D A BEAR!": ILLUSION,
ASININITY AND PEDANTRY IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 'S DREAM
Bottom's Ancestry in the Literature of the Ass
"I will move storms," he boasts, "my chief humour is
for a tyrant." The fustian of Bottom the Weaver in Act
One, scene two of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Drearn^
sounds more appropriate to a raving Lear or Richard the
Third than to a rustic mechanical, and like the two kings,
Bottom receives punishment for his hybris . Where the trag
ic monarchs suffer mental anguish and eventual death, how
ever, the overreaching clown is treated courteously, even
royally, after being partially transformed into an ass.
Yet he is used in his asinine incarnation by Oberon as a
vehicle of revenge to achieve the humiliation and abasement
of Titania. The model for Shakespeare's ambiguous manipu
lation of the "translated" Bottom is present in literature
of the ass from myths featuring theriomorphs to folk fables
projecting the characteristics of men onto story asses, for
both positive and negative aspects of the ass are repre
sented in this range of literature. An examination of
Bottom's function in A Midsummer Night's Dream in this con
text reveals a carefully constructed thematic framework
that points to the supplement of asinine literature repre
sented by Giordano Bruno's Cabala della oavallo Pegaseo,
but also explores on a societal scale the dangerous ramifi-
237
cations of pedantry expressed by the polemical attacks in
Bruno's London dialogues.
The connotations of the ass's presence in literature
are determined by the writer's interpretation of one or
both of the qualities with which it is most prominently
associated: servitude and simplicity. As a beast of burden
suffering for the benefit of others, the ass is a proto
martyr; on the other hand, this suffering may be construed
as the justifiable lot of a creature too stupid or foolish
to deserve better. In the Phaedri- Augusti. Liberty Fabu-
larum Aesopiarum [The Aesopio Fables of Phaedrus the Freed
man of Augustus], written prior to 68 A.D., the fable of
"The Ass and the Priests of Cybele" reports how the ass,
overworked and constantly beaten, eventually dies but is
not allowed respite from their thumping even in death, for
the priests strip off his hide and make tambourines from
it;^ this dull creature exhibits none of the resourceful
ness with, which Lucius escapes from similar situations in
Apulei madaurensi-s metamorphoseon [The Metamorphoses of
Apuleius of Madaura]. Both aspects of servitude are com
bined in early anti-Christian caricature, where the sacri
ficial Christ-figure is depicted upon the cross wearing an
ass's head, suggesting the ridiculous futility of his
act.^ Analogous to this is the notion of being "a fool for
Christ," of suffering religious persecution without hope of
tangible reward, sometimes represented emblematically by a
238
mock crucifix with an ass's head.4 One of the variations
of the medieval festum stultorum was the asinaria festa, or
"Feast of As£es"— a late twelfth-century innovation by the
church providing a comic celebration in response to the ex
cessively bloody festum fatuorum (Feast of the Circumci
sion) , to the failure of the fourth crusade, and to
Innocent Ill's grim advocacy of a fifth crusade— in which
an ass was physically introduced into the church, and for
which the "Prose of the Ass" lasted for centuries as part
of the permanent liturgy.^
The simplicity of the ass is portrayed positively
through the characteristics of common sense and scrupulous
ness. Examples of the ass's common sense occur in Phaed
rus' fables "The Fly and the Mule" (III,vi,267, the mule
disregards the fly's threats to bite him for pulling his
wagon too slow, because behind him the man with the whip
sets the speed) and "The Ass and the Pig's Barley" (IV,iv,
357, the ass refuses to eat the barley of a pig whose
throat the farmer has just cut; moral: "avoid profit that
involves danger"). The ass's scrupulousness is demon
strated in Sir Thomas More's A Dialogue of Comfort Against
Tribulation (1534-35), as Anthony recalls a story told to
him by old Mother Maud about an ass who went to Father
Reynart, the fox, for shrift and was informed that his pen
ance was to never allow any other beast to suffer for his
own gluttonous appetite. The pious ass was so scrupulous
239
that he not only refused to eat any of the straw on which
some pigs were lying (for fear of causing them to catch
cold), he also refused to eat any of the food he was given
for fear of depriving some other beast of it. Finally the
fox "his gostly father came & enformyd hym bettre, & than
he cast of that scruple & fell manerly to his meate, & was
a right honest asse many a fayre day after."6 Despite the
moral exemplum provided by the ass's scrupulousness, the
manner of his piety introduces in subtext the thin line
here between simple honesty and mere stupidity.
Concomitant to any positive characterization of the
ass is the portrayal of the ass's possession of human ra
tional qualities; when the portrait is reversed and humans
are represented as asses— most often because they have
demonstrated one or more of the ass's pejorative character
istics— the depiction serves as an implicit criticism of
the human exhibiting asinine characteristics. Histori
cally, the deprecation of the ass may have coincided with
the introduction of a more efficient beast of burden, the
horse, into Egypt between 1780-1580 B.C., for it seems to
have contributed to a significant reduction in the worship
of asses.^ Obviously, in comparison to the horse, the ass
is sluggish; taken out of the context of comparative muscu
lature, this attribute could be explained by stupidity, by
obstinance, by laziness, or all of these. Exaggeration of
the uncooperative ("mulish") temperament and vociferous
240
braying of the ass may have inspired its representation in
some literature as a vindictive creature (e.g., in some of
Phaedrus' tales,® undercutting the fabulist’s other por
traits of the ass as a long-suffering, rustic philosopher).
The Renaissance application of the literature of the
ass in order to expose and censure human foibles operates
on the grotesque conflation of human and asinine traits and
is generally derivative of one of three archetypal trans
formations from classical literature: Circe’s transmuta
tion of Odysseus' men into swine in Book Ten of Homer's
Odyssey (cf. Circe in Machiavelli' s L ’ Asi.no d ’oro, and the
sympathy expressed for the ass amidst the bestiary of chap
ter seven)Midas receiving ass's ears as punishment for
stubbornly declaring that Pan's music was superior to
Apollo's in Book Eleven of Ovid's Metamorphoses; and Apu-
leius' own metamorphosis (also described in the Pseudo-
Lucian account, Luo'ius3 or the Ass) into an ass after he
convinces Fotis to procure her mistress' magical cream for
becoming a bird and she delivers the wrong box. In each
case, men who become partially or completely bestial can no
longer communicate with human beings and cease being con
sidered part of human society. Erasmus' Colloquia contain
several depictions of men with asinine qualities (in "The
Abbot and the Learned Lady," Erasmus' clerical and academic
foes are designated as asses; "Things and Names" suggests
that men become asses when they stubbornly overvalue un
241
important things; in "Cyclops, or the Gospel Bearer,"
Polyphemus foolishly credits the donkey who carried Christ
with a human sense of holiness for having been so near the
Savior; "The Sermon, or Merdardus" describes a foolish
academician as "Apuleius reversed")and Folly in the
Encomium Moriae exhorts her readers to don ass's ears, sug
gesting not that they would thus be men masquerading as
asses, but precisely the opposite. The Midas prototype for
this became available in English through Arthur Golding's
translation, The. xv. Bookes of P. Oui.di.us Naso3 entytuled
Metamorphosis (1567), following William Adlington's 1566
translation of Apuleius. Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of
Witchcraft (1584) describes the enchantment of a sailor
turned into an ass by an old woman from whom he went to buy
eggs (featuring an Apuleian consciousness that allows him
to understand other humans, but prevents him from communi
cating with his shipmates), and provides a spell for cre
ating the illusion of giving someone an ass's or horse's
head.^'*' In Joseph Hall's distopia, Mundus Alter et Idem
[Another World and the Samel (1605), the inhabitants of the
land of Moronia Aspera [Melancholy Fools], foolish men who
have been transformed by the witch Melaena into lions and
asses (common iconographic representations of melancholy)
are left with human voices and faces, exacerbating their
melancholy with the perverse reminder that they are neither
human nor animal.Bruno employs this paradox each time
242
he refers to academicians as asses, implying that their
irrationally biased responses cannot be the products of hu
man intellect, while their active opposition to free-
thinking is too unnatural a reaction to be attributed to
innocently or naturally ignorant animals.
When writers like Erasmus employ the ass as a symbol
of intellectual (i.e., clerical or academic) folly, they
are participating in the tradition of the "scholar ass."
It is based ultimately, perhaps, on the biblical portrait
of Balaam's ass in Numbers 22, in which the beast sees in
the path ahead what its master cannot— the threatening
Angel of God waiting to destroy Balaam; despite repeated
beatings the faithful ass refuses to go forward, and fi
nally God projects His voice through the animal, demanding
Balaam's reasons for beating the creature that has saved
him from destruction. As the receptacle of God's voice,
the "scholarly" ass projects the illusion of wisdom— which
collapses when the divine voice ceases. The story is con
cluded with marvellous irony, as God in Numbers 23 prevents
Balaam from pronouncing a curse on His chosen people: the
ass speaks, but Balaam cannot. The tradition of the
"scholar ass" is formally established by Nigellus Wireker's
twelfth-century poem, Speculum stultorum [The Mirror of
Stupidity], which Chaucer refers to as The Boohe of Daun
Burnet the Asse. The author explains in a prose Prologue
that he offers this mirror so foolish men "may learn to
243
censure in themselves those things which they find repre
hensible in o t h e r s . " - ^ Dissatisfied with his tail, the ass
Brunellus leaves home to consult a doctor about lengthening
it: during the course of a mock-quest he decides to go to
school, reasoning that his young mind and body can endure
the hours required for university study, and since "I'll
not, like boys, be hurt by heavy whips;/From youth I've
learned to suffer many blows" (p. 73). He determines to
attend the English school in Paris since "They serve large
meals and drink without restraint./They hold gay parties,
drink, and have their girls" (p. 84). Brunellus* foolish
criterion for selecting a school reflects the bestial in
tellect that inevitably dooms his university career:
But since his mind was dull, and stiff his neck.
He failed his courses; toil and pains were
lost.
Brunellus had already spent much time,
He had completed almost seven years,
Yet absolutely nothing had he learned
Of what his master taught except "heehawI"
(p. 85) .
Despite his masters' efforts ("One pulled his ear or jerked
his crooked nose,/Another knocked out teeth or pricked his
hide"), the ass's natural ignorance could not be overcome:
"Brunellus learned as child 'heehaw'; nought else/Could he
retain except what nature gave" (p. 86). The "scholar
ass," then, is an ironic oxymoron that can be applied to
any creature pretending to knowledge it does not have or
cannot achieve.
244
Another paradoxical tradition in the literature of the
ass is the animal's connection with music and language.
Their significant historical association is demonstrated by
fragments of a Chaldean lyre dated to approximately 3000
B.C., which depict, in a shell plague on the sounding-box,
an ass sitting upright, playing a harp "decorated with a
bull's head— just like the harp to which the shell plaque
belonged."'*'4 Two separate play fragments by Menander em
ploy a phrase which translates "a jackass at a musicale,"
and which is later repeated in Boethius' De oonsolatione
phdlo sophiae and Phaedrus' fable, "The Ass at the Lyre."'*'^
The stereotypically vociferous braying of the ass renders
"a jackass at a musicale," or the concept of a music-making
ass, into an ironic oxymoron analogous to the "scholar
ass." Della Porta's De Humana phys'Lognomi-a (1593), in
characterizing voice types, disapprovingly notes that the
deep, loud voice is exemplary of "the ass, the satyr, and
the railer."-*-^ The Pope-Ass, an anti-Catholic caricature
featuring an ass's head (which "represented the pope him
self, with his false and carnal doctrines") is displayed in
a German engraving playing bagpipes, with the verse below
it sarcastically explaining "the pope can alone expound
Scripture and purge error, just as the ass can pipe and
touch the notes correctly. A vonde sung during the
French as'inar-ia festa, La Movt de I'Ane, begins
When the fool went out,
___________When the fool went out, _____________________________
245
He found the head of his ass,
That the wolf ate in the woods.
He said: Oh head, poor head,
You who sung The Magnifloat
At Vespers so loud-mouthed.
[Quand le bonhomme s * en va,
Quand le bonhomme s1en va,
Trouvit la t§te A son Sne,
Que le loup mangit au bois.
ParlS. O t@te, pauvre t§te,
Tit qui chantas si be 1{?
L 'Magnificat B . V§pres.]
The carol's emphasis is not on the quality of the ass's
musicality, but on his volume, his ability to sing "loud
mouthed." Just as the ass cannot learn because it has no
capacity to learn and simply cannot be educated, the liter
ature of the ass leads us to conclude that the ass has no
musical aptitude because its normal mode of communication,
braying, is actually anti-musical. It is the basic in
ability of the ass to communicate that provides a link be
tween it and the pedants of Bruno's dialogues, a connection
present in the very structure of the liturgical "Prose of
the Ass." As part of a service predicated on topsy-
turveydom, one would expect to find the liturgy written in
the vernacular rather than the conventional Latin; instead
it is written in a macaronic mixture of vernacular and
Latin, accentuating the stiff, grandiose formality of the
church Latin which is used for convention's sake despite
the fact that the vernacular would be more widely accessi
ble to the congregation. This parody is only a slight
246
variation on the function of macaronic language as employed
by the pedants in Bruno's dialogues and in literature gen
erally, to maintain the appearance of knowledge through a
fagade that has little intrinsic meaning. The contrast
here between obscurantist Latin and practical vernacular
parallels that between the ass's braying and music: in a
basically adversarial relation, the former appears to com
municate what the latter in fact does communicate. The
illusion that there is significant meaning in the former is
the focus of the critique of pedantry expressed by Bruno's
addition to the literature of the ass, the Cabala.
"This is to make an ass of me": the Cabala1 s
Model for Bottom's Pedantry
While Peter Quince is endeavoring to assign the parts
for the mechanicals' play in I,ii, Bottom clearly has
trouble distinguishing between illusion and reality. Vir
tually promising to out-Herod Herod, the weaver boasts of
moving storms and acting the tyrant, till he eventually
overreaches his own overreaching and threatens "I could
play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all
split" (I,ii,24-26). This boast, "to make all split," in
troduces Bottom's menacing potential within the world of
his mechanical peers, and his desire to share in the image
of Heracles/Hercules tearing apart one of his lion con
quests exposes a bestial nature that foreshadows the
247
"translation" to come. Following this outburst, timid Snug
asks Quince if his part— the lion's— has been written yet,
hoping it has been because "I am slow of study" (I,ii,63);
in contrast to Snug's modest, scholarly demeanor, Bottom
explodes into further hyperbole and promises an extraordi
nary roar if allowed to play the lion. But Quince warns
"And you should do it too terribly, you would fright the
Duchess and the ladies, that they would shrink: and that
were enough to hang us all." In unison, the other clowns
cry "That would hang us, every mother's son" (I,ii,70-73).
It would require a terrible roar indeed to frighten Hippol-
yta, Queen of the Amazons; however metaphorical or literal
Bottom means his braggadocio, his comrades interpret it
literally and demonstrate their fear that he has the
1 Q
abi-lity to deliver a "too terrible" roar. ^ They believe
his words have the power to harm them, "every mother's
son." And despite his talent for histrionics, Bottom re
veals that he has no conception of theatrical veracity, of
verisimilitude, when he offers to perform his role as the
bearded Pyramus in any variety of colored whiskers ("straw-
colour," "orange-tawny," "purple-in-grain," or "French-
crown-colour" [I,ii,86-89]). The qualities Bottom exhibits
here— bombastic rhetoric, obsession with words rather than
ideas, disregard for the potential of language to harm
others— are those condemned in Bruno's London dialogues as
symptomatic of the menace of pedantry. The scene even con-
248
eludes with a malapropistic abuse of language recalling the
macaronic Brunonian pedants: Bottom confidently assures
Quince, "We will meet, and there we may rehearse most ob
scenely and courageously" (I,ii,100-101).
Asserting the authority facilitated by his pedantic
fagade, Bottom monopolizes the clowns' production at the
beginning of Act Three. He continues to exhibit his idio
syncratic sense of the relation between reality and stage
illusion by demanding that their performance include a pro
logue explaining that they mean no real harm with their
swords and that Pyramus will not veally kill himself. De
fenseless against Bottom's onslaught of persuasive words
and faulty logic, Quince acquiesces to his demand, explain
ing the prologue will be written "in eight and six," stand
ard ballad form. Bottom's pedantic (i.e., insensitive)
aesthetics instead call for a blind continuity of form and
elaboration for its own sake, and he insists "No, make it
two more; let it be written in eight and eight" (III,i,24-
25). Bottom already exhibits the ass's anti-musicality
here, and his pedantically irrational impulse threatens to
reduce the prologue to mere cacophony. But as the Cabala's
Onorio recalls concerning his decision to become a philoso
pher during his incarnation as Aristotle, "it is ordinary
in pedants to be always reckless and presumptuous" [S or-
dinario nelli pedanti d'esser sempre temerarii e presuntu-
osi] (893).
249
Unfortunately, Bottom also shares the pedant’s capac
ity for corrupting the innocent and the gullible, and Snout
follows the example of the ebullient weaver by demanding
that a prologue also be written to explain that the lion is
not a real lion (111,1,33-34) . Acting the schoolmaster,
Bottom offers a model that the other clowns, his scholars,
all begin to imitate. Even the ordinarily careful-spoken
Quince succumbs to Bottom's influence and malapropistically
butchers language when addressing the problem of how to ar
range for the moon's presence during the play: "one must
come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern,.and say he
comes to disfigure or to present the person of Moonshine"
(III,i,55-57}. Quince uses "disfigure" to mean "figure,"
and Bottom, rather than "figuring" the role of a wise mas
ter, "disfigures" it. Saulino in the Cabala explicates the
vicious circle of the ignorant master teaching ignorance to
students who in turn become ignorant masters (909-10), and
when Prudenzio, one of La oena's pedants, complains that
Smitho's questions are "nimis ardua" [excessively diffi
cult], Smitho replies they are so "To those who don't wish
to understand, but who obstinately wish to believe false
hood" [A quelli che non le vogliono intendere, ma che
vogliono ostinatamente credere il false] (149). Bottom,
the charismatic mechanical, adopts a pedantically authori
tarian tone that the other mechanicals cannot resist. By
the time the clowns arrive at the problem of how to repre-
250
sent the wall dividing Pyramus and Thisbe, Quince is no
longer in control, and Snout turns for guidance to his
usurping comrade: "What say you, Bottom?" (Ill,i,61-62).
Following Puck's arrival and his comment "What, a play
towards? I'll be an auditor;/An actor too perhaps, if I see
cause" (III,i,75-76), Bottom commits another malapropism,
"odious" for "odorous," which serves as his cue to exit—
and as the cue for Puck to join him, sardonically confiding
that Bottom is, and certainly will become, "A stranger
Pyramus than e'er played here I" (III,i,83). Bottom's cor
ruptive influence on language lingers behind;him and Snout,
as Thisbe, misspeaks "brisky" for "briskly" or "brusquely,"
and "Ninny's tomb" for "Ninus' tomb." Quince, unable to
prevent the dialogue's deterioration, criticizes its deliv
ery instead: "You speak all your parts at once, cues and
all" (III,i,94-95]. At the midpoint of the play, Bottom
emerges from the bushes with an ass's head and participates
in perhaps the theatre's greatest comic visual irony (as he
recites, "If I were fair3 Thisbej I were only thine.").
Quince, ostensibly still in control of the situation as the
stage-manager,20 at this point screams in confused terror
("Pray, masters! Fly, masters!") while Bottom tries to make
sense of the mechanicals' response ("Why do they run away?
This is a knavery of them to make me afeard" [III,i,107-
108]), reasoning with a logic made futile by pedantic in
sulation. Bottom cannot perceive that the clowns' fear is
251
unfeigned— though the mechanicals are not good actors— be
cause he cannot objectify his situation. He is obstructed
from deducing his transformation and from being aware of
his pedantic tendencies precisely because he cannot per
ceive the difference between the illusion of his own sub
jective sense of reality and reality itself. When Snout,
already having demonstrated the negative effects of
Bottom's influence, exclaims "0 Bottom, thou art changed!
What do I see on thee?" the stubborn side of the weaver
that pedantically resists introspection, that refuses to
entertain any self-criticism, projects an acceptable illu
sion onto Snout: "What do you see? You see an ass-head of
your own, do you?" (Ill,i,109-12). As Sebasto concludes in
the Cabala, when the nature of truth is itself uncertain,
those who unquestioningly assert the infallibility of their
beliefs without scrutinizing them "do not know what they
are saying, and they cannot be certain whether they speak
or they bray, whether they are men or asses" [non sanno
quel che dicono, e non possono esser certi se parlano o
ragghiano, se son omini o asini] (902) .
Sebasto's observation is of crucial importance to un
derstanding the context of Bottom's metamorphosis.
Traditionally in the literature of the ass, when a man is
transformed partially or completely into an ass it is as a
symbolic punishment or a literally punitive action (e.g.,
for Lucius' attempt to steal arcane knowledge he is unpre-
252
pared to receive, or Midas' presumptuous challenge of the
gods' judgment); but Bruno in the Cabala offers serious
praise, not mock-encomium, for the ass. In "The Sonnet in
Praise of the Ass" [Sonetto in lode de l'asino] (8 45) he
commends the intellectual curiosity of the ass,22 and it is
through this quality that Bruno, defender of freethinking,
represents the ass as a model worthy of human emulation.
In addition, the ass can be an idyllic type for paradisal
contentment: "Remember, o faithful ones, that our first
parents at one time were pleasing to God, and they were in
his grace, in his safekeeping, content in the earthly para
dise, at which time they were asses, that is, simple and
ignorant of good and evil" [Ricordatevi, o fideli, che gli
nostri primi parenti a quel tempo piacquero a Dio, ed erano
in sua grazia, in sua salvaguardia, contenti nel terrestre
paradiso, nel quale erano asini, cio§ semplici ed ignoranti
del bene e male] (855). In "the golden age, when humans
were asses, did not know to work the earth, did not know to
dominate one another" [l'et& de I'oro, quando gli uomini
erano asini, non sapean lavorar la terra, non sapean l'un
dominar a l'altro] (855), everything was shared in common
innocence. While the ass does not know good and evil, he
nevertheless has the potential to learn them and is conse
quently susceptible to the corruptive influence of an
"evi1" teacher:
There is no one who does not know how, not only
253
in the human species, but in every genus of ani
mals the mother . . . guards the youngest child—
as he does not know evil and good, has qualities
of the lamb, has qualities of the beast, is an
ass, does not know consequently to speak, is not
able to discourse to such an extent; and as he
goes about increasing his wisdom and prudence,
always little by little he goes about diminishing
. . . the pious affection that comes brought to
him by his relatives. There is no enemy who does
not excuse, embrace, favor that age, that indi
vidual who is not yet virile, is not of the
devil, is not of man, is not yet manly, is not
yet shrewd, is not yet bearded, is not yet well-
grounded, is not yet mature.
[Non § chi non sappia qualmente non solamente
nella specie umana, ma ed in tutti gli geni
d'animali la madre . . . custodisce il figlio
minore, come quello che non sa male e bene, ha
dell1agnello, ha de la bestia, fe un asino, non
sa cossi parlare, non pub tanto discorrere; e
come gli va crescendo il senno e la prudenza,
sempre a mano a mano se gli va scemando . . . la
pia affezione che gli vien portata da gli suoi
parenti. Non § nemico che non compatisca, ab-
blandisca, favorisca a quella eta, a quella per
sona che non ha del virile, non ha del demonio,
non ha de l'uomo, non ha del maschio, non ha de
l'accorto, non ha del barbuto, non ha del sodo,
non ha del maturo] (855-56).
Of course Bruno portrays the pedant as this evil teacher,
corrupter of the ass. Where the literature of the ass pri
marily stresses the creature's suffering and foolishness,
Bruno seems here to emphasize its sublime serenity? but he
also uses the term throughout the London dialogues in its
pejorative senses, metaphorically relating its ignorance,
obstinacy and braying to qualities evinced by the pedant.^3
Thus the innocent, inquisitive ass is like man in his per
fection or man seeking perfection, while the corrupted ass,
who does not seek perfection and instead endeavors to
254
prevent others from that pursuit, is like the pedant. As
Sebasto remarks, the latter variety of individuals do not
truly know whether they are men or asses— and neither does
Bottom. Quince cries "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou
art translated," and even in his pedantic refusal to accept
the truth, despite his efforts to subvert it with subjec
tive illusion, Bottom affirms it: "I see their knavery:
this is to make an ass of me, to frighten me, if they
could" (III,i,113-16). Shakespeare does not implicitly
condemn Bottom by making him an ass (a usage which itself
runs counter to the playwright's literal and figurative
employment of the beast in his other plays)rather,
Bottom is given an opportunity unique to the literature of
the ass outside of Bruno: paradoxically, if he can objec
tively recognize he has become an ass, he will succeed in
affirming his human potential to acquire knowledge by ex
amining the nature of truth.^5 Freethinking would make his
pedantic illusion of reality obsolete.
Bottom's bravado is a natural response and his best
defense, so he declares "I will walk up and down here, and
I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid" (III,i,
117-19). As the weaver is pacing and braying, Titania
enters, subjugated by an illusion far more powerful than
Bottom's subjective, pedantically obstinate conception of
reality:
TITANIA. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:
255
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth
move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I
love thee.
BOTTOM. Methinks, mistress, you should have lit
tle reason for that. And yet, to say the
truth, reason and love keep little compa
ny together nowadays. The more the pity
that some honest neighbours will not make
them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon
occasion. (Ill,i,132-41).
The spell cast over Titania has reversed the aesthetic val
ues conventionally expressed in literature of the ass; and
unlike the simple lechery expressed by the matron towards
Lucius in Apuleius' Book Ten, Titania loves everything
about Bottom: his voice, his physical shape (denying the
Pythagorean view that the ass is the one creature con-
26
structed disharmoniously), and his "fair virtue." The
patent absurdity of the situation and the protestations of
the beautiful fairy queen begin to act on Bottom. He rec
ognizes that her reasoning is faulty ("you should have lit
tle reason for that") although love and logic seem to have
little relation to one another (cf. Theseus' comments on
lovers and madmen, V,i); he maintains her speech is just a
"gleek" (OED, a "jest" or "gibe"), and witty Bottom can
joke on occasion, too. But evidence of a real change in
Bottom's self-perception follows Titania's ironically
accurate observation that "Thou art as wise as thou art
beautiful": the weaver argues "Not so neither; but if I had
wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve
256
mine own turn" (111,1,142-44). Bottom, the overreacher of
earlier scenes, now declares he is neither wise nor beauti
ful and shows a practical wisdom in recognizing that what
he needs most is the wit to escape his present situation.
Bottom's response to the inexplicable, illusionary
world of magic he has entered is objectification. By ob
jectifying what common sense tells him must be illusion, he
can then accept it— regardless. This is asinine logic of
the variety described by Saulino in the Cabala', "if wisdom
perceives truth through ignorance, it perceives consequent
ly by asininity. Hence whoever has such knowledge, has
that of the ass, and is participant in this conception" [se
la sofia scorge la verity per l'ignoranza, la scorge per la
stoltizia consequentemente, e consequentemente per l'asin-
ita. L& onde chi ha tal cognizione, ha de l'asino, ed §
partecipe di quella idea] (874). Bruno is equating igno
rance in this context with innocence, so Bottom is exer
cising the wisdom that should be natural to all human be
ings. He practices Saulino's axiom when objectifying his
fairy "servants," so Cobweb becomes the spider's filament
he would place in a wound to staunch blood, while Mustard-
seed is associated with mustard's use on beef and its prop
erty of causing the weaver's eyes to water (III,i,172-89).
As a result, when he next appears with his servants, he has
begun to see the reality behind the illusion: "I must to
the barber's, mounsieur, for methinks I am marvellous hairy
257
about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do
but tickle me, I must scratch” (IV,i,23-26); however, he
still retains elements of that corrupted ass, the pedant,
surfacing in malapropism: "But I pray you, let none of your
people stir me:/I have an exposition of sleep come upon me"
(IV,i,37-38). Though Bottom means "disposition" rather
"exposition," Shakespeare exploits the malapropism's word
play value: Bottom's nap serves a critical expository pur
pose in the play as the transition marking reconciliation
between Oberon and Titania and between the mismatched lov
ers, and Bottom's translation from asininity to humanity
again.
When the weaver awakes, he returns to the cue he was
anticipating when Puck transformed him? calling out for his
comrades and comprehending that he has been abandoned, he
begins to analyze his recent experience:
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a
dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it
was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound
this dream. Methought I was— there is no man can
tell what. Methought I was— and methought I
had— but man is a patched fool if he will offer
to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath
not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's
hand is not able to taste, his tongue to con
ceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream
was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad
of this dream: it shall be called 'Bottom's
Dream', because it hath no bottom? and I will
sing it in the latter end of a play, before the
Duke. (IV,i,203-16).
The "most rare vision" is "past the wit of man" to inter
pret, an important observation by the man Flute believes is
258
"simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens" (IV,
ii,9-10). Furthermore, Bottom concludes that if a man were
to attempt such an interpretation he would be "but an ass."
His apparent meaning is that only a fool2^ would attempt to
express the ineffable, but just as germane is the notion
from Bruno's Cabala that only the perfected ass, that type
of innocent wisdom and curiosity, could explicate the re
ality, shrouded in illusion, of the mysteries he has en
countered. Bottom, who begins the play as a corrupted ass
and is given a chance to experience briefly the golden age
ass's perfect existence as described in the Cabala, becomes
a man— imperfect, but aware of imperfection— through his
encounter with the fairy world. As a simple weaver, he
cannot make sense of the profound secrets he has witnessed
and even garbles his attempt to quote the biblical descrip
tion of awesome wisdom recorded in I Corinthians 2 : 9 in
terms of his comprehension of it, Bottom's dream "hath no
bottom." As we will see shortly, it is ironic that this
ballad concerning the nature of true wisdom be sung "before
the Duke," Theseus.
The other mechanicals begin to realize the importance
of Bottom to their enterprise when it appears he has been
permanently transmuted. Flute despairs that "the play is
marred," and Quince agrees it cannot be done without him
("You have not a man in Athens able to discharge Pyramus
but he"). Snug voices perhaps their greatest regret: "If
259
our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men" (IV,
ii,17-18). Amidst this atmosphere of lost hopes, however,
there is evidence that the removal of Bottom's pedantic in
fluence has allowed the growth of native wit in the others:
Quince malapropistically describes Bottom as "a very para
mour for a sweet voice," and Flute quickly corrects him,
"You must say paragon. A paramour is, God bless us, a
thing of naught" (IV,ii,11-14).
Bottom's triumphant entry seems Christ-like,^9 and re
sembling a jubilant disciple Quince cries "0 most coura
geous day! 0 most happy hour I" The retranslated weaver,
however, is a mass of contradictions in his urgent enthu
siasm to organize his fellows:
BOTTOM. Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but
ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am
not true Athenian. I will tell you ev
erything, right as it fell out.
QUINCE. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.
BOTTOM. Not a word of me. All that I will tell
you is, that the Duke hath dined. Get
your apparel together, good strings to
your beards, new ribbons to your pumps;
meet presently at the palace; every man
look o'er his part: for the short and
long is, our play is preferred. In any
case, let Thisbe have clean linen; and
let not him that plays the lion pare his
nails, for they shall hang out for the
lion's claws. And most dear actors, eat
no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter
sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to
hear them say, it is a sweet comedy. No
more words. Away! Go, away!
(IV,ii,28-43).
He can recount marvels but must not be asked to; he will
report everything, but not one word, of what happened.
260
Moreover, the "most lamentable comedy, and most cruel
death" of Pyramus and Thisbe is to be considered "a sweet
comedy." Bottom still has some difficulty distinguishing
between illusion and reality, but the bombastic rhetoric of
his opening speeches, the obsession with words rather than
ideas (after efficiently directing the clowns' actions
here, he orders "No more words"), the disregard of lan
guage's harmful potential (parodistically counteracted here
by the warning against onions and garlic to ensure "sweet
breath"), his pedantic characteristics in general— these
have been replaced by a sense of wonder and of purpose that
no longer monopolizes the mechanicals' production, but uni
fies it and gives it meaning. Bottom exhorts his "most
dear actors" in the manner not of a pedantic master, but of
a good teacher whose goal is that they all may be "made
men. "
The Supernatural Realm's Chain of Pedantry
As a motif, the infection of pedantry permeates the
entirety of A Midsummer Night’s Vreamr by no means limited
to the events immediately surrounding Bottom's transforma
tion, for many of the play's characters reflect pedantic
traits or exhibit evidence of harmful pedantic influences
on them. Egeus shares the pedantic stubbornness expressed
by old Capulet in Romeo and Jutiet— which leads to tragedy
in that play— by insisting on Hermia's marriage to
261
Demetrius: "As she is mine, I may dispose of her;/Which
shall be either to this gentleman,/Or to her death" (I,i,
41-43). Lysander, a scholar of love ("For aught that I
could ever read,/Could ever hear by tale or history,/The
course of true love never did run smooth" [I,i,132-34])
compelled through arcane means to love Helena rather than
Hermia, perversely believes he has learned his lesson "in
love's richest book" (II,ii,121). Helena considers herself
unattractive and is willing to give the entire world to
Hermia "to be to you translated" for "Things base and vile,
holding no quantity,/Love can transpose to form and dig
nity" (I,i,191,232-33); but when Puck fiendishly entangles
the lovers' emotions about each other, their latent besti
ality surfaces: Helena pants "I am your spaniel; and,
Demetrius,/The more you beat me, I will fawn on you" (II,i,
203-204) and later informs her indifferent, worse-than-
bestial lover, "The wildest hath not such a heart as you"
(II,i,229) before threatening to follow him till he kills
her; Hermia awakes from a dream that "a serpent ate my
heart away," discovers she is stalked by Demetrius, and
screams "Out, dog! Out, cur!" (III,ii,65). Even though he
has not heard the ghost's tale in Hamlet, Marcellus senses
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Clearly
there is "something rotten" in Athens as well, some cor
ruptive influence fostering the spread of pedantry's nega
tive effects on its citizens. This influence is the
262
tradition of Bruno's menacing pedant pervading the struc
tures of interpersonal relationship within the play's fairy
and court worlds, particularly as developed in the pedantic
behavior of the rulers of Athens' supernatural and politi
cal realms.
The mayhem wrought by Puck is inspired by the model of
Oberon's treatment of Titania. The king and queen of
fairies allow their mutual jealousies to grow unchecked
(II,i,60-87: he is greeted as "jealous Oberon," she as
"proud Titania"), and rather than attempting to examine
their differences, they grow pedantically stubborn and bel
ligerent; the words they fling at each other are meant to
condemn, not to communicate. They focus their efforts not
on the real issue, jealousy, but on a surrogate— the Indian
changeling that Titania has and that Oberon covets. The
harm of their quarrel, however, extends far beyond the ef
fects it has on their personal relationship. Titania ex
plains that they have upset the very balance of nature.
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
• • •
The human mortals now want their winter cheer:
• • •
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Heims' thin and icy crown,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,
263
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
(II,i,93-97,101,107-17).
Although nothing has changed in the fairy world as a result
of their conflict, the human environment has been thrown
into chaos.30 In arguing over the changeling child, the
two have engendered their own "progeny of evils." As Bruno
observes in La oena, the pedant's conception of debate does
not involve exchanging ideas, but imposing his own on an
opponent; appropriately, Titania equates "our debate" with
"our dissension," for Oberon commands "Do you amend it
then: it lies in you" (II,i,118) and Titania retorts "The
fairy land buys not the child of me" (II,i,122). Oberon
does not so much reply to, as retaliate for, Titania1s
boast by threatening "thou shalt not from this grove/Till I
torment thee for this injury" (II,i,146-47). With the
juice of the magical flower, "love-in-idleness," he will
"make her full of hateful fantasies" (II,i,258); when he
casts the spell, he orders her to "Love and languish" and
to "Wake when some vile thing is near" (II,ii,28,33). Vin
dictiveness is the reigning motivation here, not jealousy
and certainly not love. Like the petty pedant who cannot
tolerate being defeated or being proven wrong, Oberon uses
his mastery of language— albeit magical rather than rhetor
ical— to create the illusion that he is right while caring
nothing for the harm it may cause others.
264
Oberon1s insensitivity is further demonstrated when
Puck describes his part in the events leading up to Tita
nia's enchantment. He recounts Bottom's translation ("An
ass's nole I fixed upon his head"), the abject terror of
his brother mechanicals (depicted as "wild geese" or "rus-
set-pated choughs" who, "Rising and cawing at the gun's re
port, /Sever themselves"), and his torture of the four lov
ers (frightened, with "Their sense thus weak, lost with
their fears thus strong," he "Made senseless things begin
to do them wrong") [III,ii,17,20-23,27-28]. Oberon, in
different, concentrates only on the delicious revenge of
having Titania fall in love with an ass, and callously de
clares "This falls out better than I could devise" (III,ii,
35). When Titania finally forfeits the Indian child— while
under Oberon*s enchantment, not of her own free will— the
king of fairies, his vendetta satisfied, orders Puck (af
fectionately but inappropriately encouraged as "gentle
Puck") to "take this transformed scalp/From off the head of
this Athenian swain," but reveals no regrets about the suf
fering he has caused, rationalizing that all involved will
"think no more of this night's accidents/But as the fierce
vexation of a dream" (IV,i,63-64,67-68). Though he plans
to correct the confusion caused the lovers by Puck, his
careless choice of words in commanding Titania to put them
to sleep has the effect of threatening more harm: "strike
more dead/Than common sleep, of all these five the sense"
265
(IV,i,811. When, near the play's conclusion, he promises
to protect the children forthcoming from the three nuptial
unions against "bestial" disfigurations ("Never mole, hare
lip, nor scar,/Nor mark prodigious, such as are/Despised in
nativity,/Shall upon their children be" [V,i,397-400]), he
is making, like the pedant, a superficial rather than a
substantial reparation that displays no true remorse for
his harmful errors.
Puck, then, is analogous to the impressionable scholar
corrupted by the pedantic master, and he reveals a penchant
for malicious mischief much more diverse than that of his
instructor, Oberon (after his sanctimonious self-introduc
tion as "that merry wanderer of the night"), in a fantasy
structured like a tazzo detailing how an old woman
"Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;/Then slip I
from her bum, down topples she" (II,i,52-53). He thrives
on disorder, frantically pursuing the frightened mechani
cals in a variety of bestial shapes after they are con
fronted by the translated Bottom, with a "neigh, and bark,
and grunt, and roar, and burn,/Like horse, hound, hog,
bear, fire, at every turn" (III,i,105-106)When Oberon
witnesses that Demetrius has fallen in love with Hermia due
to Puck's intervention he scolds "Thou hast mistaken
quite," and drops more juice in Demetrius' eye— but as soon
as Puck sees Lysander and Helena enter and realizes both
men will try to woo her, he revels in the prospect and
266
eagerly confesses "those things do best please me/That be
fall prepost'rously" (III,iir120-21). When Hermia enters
and the anticipated fray errupts, Puck afterwards counter
feits his innocence:
OBERON. This is thy negligence: still thou
mistak'st,
Or else committ’st thy knaveries
wilfully.
PUCK. Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.
(Ill,ii,345-47).
By the end of the same speech, however, Puck cannot contain
his self-gratulation, admitting "And so far am I glad it so
did sort,/As this their jangling I esteem a sport" (III,ii,
352-53). Puck, as corrupted scholar, practices the lessons
of the pedantic master's negative examples by hiding his
perverse nature behind a fagade of acceptability and re
spectability ("I jest to Oberon, and make him smile"), by
reacting bestially (literally) to subvert the truth and by
obstinately maintaining that such deception -is the truth,
and by simply lying when faced with the prospect of being
defeated by the plain truth.
Puck begins a second generation of corruption when he
assumes the role of schoolmaster (as ill-advisedly and in
competently as the Cabala's Onorio, in his incarnation as
Aristotle, acting the part of philosopher) and proceeds to
pervert pupils of his own. Lysander, the gentle scholar
who believes he has studied from "love's richest book," is
transformed into a vicious bully by Puck's intervention
267
with the juice of "love-in-idleness"; he calls his competi
tor for Helena’s attentions "thou cat, thou burr," "vile
thing," "a serpent," and Hermia in helpless amazement won
ders "Why are you grown so rude? What change is this,/Sweet
love?" (Ill,ii,262-63). No longer master of his own
thoughts and emotions, the misguided lover warns his sweet
heart, "Get you gone, you dwarf;/You minimus, of hindering
knot-grass made;/You bead, you acorn" (III,ii,328-30).
After Puck is obliged by Oberon to recast his spell, calm
ing the lovers' confusion, and Theseus finds the sworn ene
mies all together, he inquires how this is possible: love's
scholar, Lysander, can only shrug, "My lord, I shall reply
amazedly,/Half asleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear,/I
cannot truly say how I came here" (IV,i,145-47). While Ly
sander is left merely disoriented and puzzled, however,
Demetrius is more permanently affected. Puck explicitly
acts the schoolmaster with him when, pretending in the dark
to be Lysander, he taunts Demetrius "Come, recreant, come
thou child!/I'll whip thee with a rod; he is defil'd/That
draws a sword on thee" (III,ii,409-11). This "lesson," in
conjunction with other "schooling" Demetrius has re
ceived, 33 yields the fruits of cruelty displayed by the
young man during his interplay with Theseus while the
clowns perform in V,i.
That Oberon has no conception of the corruption he has
wrought is apparent in his reply to Puck's fear of ap
268
proaching daylight, complaining that the spirits of the
damned "Already to their wormy beds are gone,/For fear lest
day should look their shames upon": the king of fairies re
plies "But we are spirits of another sort" (III,ii,384-85,
388). This is certainly not the opinion Oberon's lieuten
ant— and pupil— personally entertains about himself, as he
histrionically begins a menacing epilogue, "Now the hungry
lion roars,/And the wolf behowls the moon," describing with
wicked glee that time of night when "the graves, all gaping
wide,/Every one lets forth his sprite/in the church-way
paths to glide" (V,i,357-58,366-68). Resembling a pedant's
empty rhetoric, Puck's intimidating language proves to be
bravado and elaboration, a blustery prelude obscuring the
real purpose for his reappearance— "I am sent with broom
before/To sweep the dust behind the door" (V,i,375-76). If
Puck were mortal, one would have to look no further than
this humble declaration to conclude that the malicious ped
ant has been defeated and served his just reward? however,
the imp possesses magical knowledge (he did transform
Bottom) that makes him, like Friar Bacon in his early, un
restrained pride, potent and dangerous. When, therefore,
he recites an apparent apology at the play's conclusion, he
is really delivering an ominous warning:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
269
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend. (V,i,409-16).
It seems hardly accurate to call the visions created by the
fairies "weak and idle." And after observing the trials of
the harried lovers, the suggestion that "you have but
slumber'd here" is more than a little upsetting. Puck's
insinuation that the play is "no more yielding but a dream"
is also troubling, maneuvering us into recalling Bottom's
transformations and Puck's scornful admonition upon his
awakening ("Now when thou wak'st, with thine own fool's
eyes peep" [IV,i,83])? this pedant, stereotypically unsym
pathetic and insensitive to the effect he has on others,
plants the doubt in our minds that like Bottom we have also
been manipulated and are now awakening from our own dream.
The pedant's use of illusion to distort truth is frighten
ingly extended into the real world of the audience. The
line, "If you pardon, we will mend," consequently receives
a sinister connotation. From the player's perspective, it
implies the players will improve their performance if in
dulged and encouraged by the audience; conversely, if the
audience is not approving, the play will likely be dropped
from the company's repertoire. Puck, in his subversive
function as pedant, seems rather to suggest that if the
audience forgives his offending mischief, he will repair
it; if not, we can speculate with anxious uncertainty on
the ambiguity of his reminder, "you have but slumber'd
270
here."
"I woo'd thee with my sword": Pedantry's
Subjugation of Freethinking
While Puck may be accused as the most prominent
source, and Oberon the cause, of the mischief emanating
from the fairy world, the pervasive atmosphere of pedantry
has its origins in the human realm as well— specifically in
the person of Athens' obdurate duke, Theseus. As a con
trast to Theseus' selfish attitudes, Shakespeare portrays
the conquered Amazon queen, Hippolyta, as a freethinking
champion of reason and imagination. Their dissimilar per
spectives are displayed in the speeches opening the play:
self-centered Theseus, eagerly anticipating his marriage,
moans "how slow/This old moon wanes I She lingers my desire"
(I,i,3-4), while Hippolyta, reluctant prize of Theseus'
conquest, counters "Four nights will quickly dream away the
time" until "our solemnities" (I,i,8,ll). Theseus' narcis
sistic impatience makes him oblivious to Hippolyta's as
sessment that time is all too short until she must marry
him. Although the duke shows some awareness of their
differing attitudes, he shows little sympathy or respect
for Hippolyta's hesitation:
Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And won thy love in doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.
(I,i,16-19).
271
In other words, he will lord his triumph over her with
riotous celebration— despite her feelings. Theseus' ped
antic insensitivity is further demonstrated in the hunting
scene, when he commands "My love shall hear the music of my
hounds," exhibiting the pedant's traditional love of ca
cophony in lieu of communication (cf. Bottom's singing in
III,i, and his "reasonable good ear in music" [IV,i,28]):
from the mountain's top they will "mark the musical con-
fusion/Of hound and echo in conjunction" (IV,i,105,109-10).
Hippolyta, herself a warrior, loves not the cacophony but
the "gallant chiding," the heroic contest of hunters and
quarry like the hounds of Sparta against the Cretan bear,
which caused the elements of nature to cry "all one mutual
cry; I never heard/So musical a discord, such sweet thun
der" (IV,i;116-17). This response to the aesthetics of the
hounds' cries is in diametrical contrast to the pleasure
Theseus derives from the noisy fusion of baying and rever
berating echoes; his inability to appreciate the magnifi
cence of the battle itself (and his failure to recognize
the symbolic capture and enslavement of Hippolyta being
reenacted) is reflected in his insensitive reply to the
Amazon's expression of reverence for the elemental conflict
of the hunt: he describes the genealogy and physical at
tributes of his hounds. Hippolyta praises the "sweet thun
der" created by a united purpose and presence in both human
and animal; Theseus takes pleasure from the clamorous
272
beasts not because of the potential spectacle of combat,
but because he owns them— as he also owns Hippolyta.
We have already noted Egeus1 obstinacy in regard to
his edict that Hermia marry Demetrius, the man he has se
lected for her (rather than Lysander, a perfectly accepta
ble young man of her own preference), and Demetrius' cor
ruption at the hands of Puck; both men receive reinforce
ment in their negative behavior from Theseus, Puck's human
counterpart in pedantic contamination. After hearing
Egeus’ complaint, the duke informs Hermia that since Ly
sander lacks "your father's voice,/The other must be held
worthier" (I,i,54-55). Once again the pedant values sound,
Egeus' "voice," over meaning, Helena's argument defending
Lysander's worthiness. When Hermia requests to know the
worst that can happen to her if she refuses to marry De
metrius, Theseus supports her father's thoughtless stub
bornness with an ultimatum: "Either to die the death, or to
abjure/For ever the society of men" (I,i,65-66). Theseus
tries to create an illusion of beneficence by offering Her
mia until "The sealing-day betwixt my love and me" to make
her decision, but he uncompromisingly reasserts that her
choices are Demetrius, chastity, or death. Even though Ly
sander reveals that Demetrius has "Made love to Nedar's
daughter, Helena,/And won her soul," Theseus supports De
metrius' claim on Hermia:
I must confess that I have heard so much,
273
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;
But, being over-full of self-affairs,
My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come,
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me:
I have some private schooling for you both.
(I,i,111-16).
Theseus confesses his pedantry: like the schoolmaster too
preoccupied with his own affairs to tend to his pupils, the
duke has been "over-full of self-affairs." As with the
mentally undisciplined pedant, his fagade of political wis
dom masks a lazy mind. He has given his support to Egeus'
monomania and has thereby condoned Demetrius' breach of
faith with Helena— in addition, he offers them some "pri
vate schooling." Bruno's menacing pedant has again been
given shape, and Theseus shows promise of perverting his
"pupils" just as effectively as Oberon infects his best
student.
Act Five is introduced by a mini-debate pitting an ar
gument advocating the restriction of imagination and crea
tivity against an argument affirming their importance, the
pedant debating the freethinker. Hippolyta introduces the
debate by remarking on the strange occurrences described by
the four lovers, and the duke rants
More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen hath such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact: (V,i,2-8)
Theseus reveals that, true to Bruno's portraiture of the
pedant, he has no imagination because he does not dare to
274
speculate. "Cool reason" disallows the possibility of the
"fairy toys" and "shaping fantasies" described by the lov
ers, though Shakespeare has us witness their existence.
Indeed, the fantasies "apprehended" by the audience do seem
"More than cool reason ever comprehends," if that "cool
reason" is simply the pedant's resistance to the spirit of
open inquiry. Theseus proceeds to characterize imagination
negatively: the madman and lover imaginatively refashion
everything they see or experience in terms of their frantic
obsession (the ambivalently "frenzied" response that Bruno
characterizes throughout Git erotet furort). The poet,
however, is somehow worse;
As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy:
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear! (V,i,14-22).
The pedant thrives on illusion: on the illusion of his
knowledge, of his wisdom, of his authority, of his infalli
bility. The poet threatens that illusion by inventing il
lusions that compete with the pedant's illusions and may
actually expose their lack of substance. Hence Theseus
characterizes such illusions as mere "tricks" whose purpose
should be to "apprehend some joy." He betrays his intel
lectual insecurity by denouncing imagination as fear's con
comitant, as the means by which a bush is "suppos'd a
275
bear." Hippolyta's refutation of this argument is simple
and logically sound:
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever, strange and admirable.
(V,i,23-27).
Empirically, the evidence presented by all four of the lov
ers "more witnesseth than fancy's images," and suggests
that something "of great constancy" occurred in the woods
near Athens. Hippolyta concludes, in contradiction of
Theseus' opening assertion that the lovers' stories are
"more strange than true," that they are "strange and admi
rable "; by remaining openminded enough to examine the ex
ternal nature of the lovers' reports without dismissing
them simply because they appear unlikely, Hippolyta has
discovered the truth behind the illusion of implausibility
and has demonstrated how pedantry obscures the truth while
deluding itself with its own illusion.
Theseus continues to denigrate the importance of imag
ination and to demonstrate his unwillingness (and inabil
ity) to distinguish truth from illusion during the process
of choosing entertainment to "beguile/The lazy time" till
his wedding. He rejects "the battle with the Centaurs" be
cause he has already told Hippolyta that story; a retelling
of Orpheus' destruction at the hands of the Thracian women
is vetoed because he saw it "When I from Thebes came last a
276
conqueror" (V,i,51)y he refuses a story of the Muses mourn
ing "the death/Of learning" because it is a "keen and crit
ical" satire, "Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony" (V,i,
55}. With his anti-imaginative sense of art, Theseus can
not conceive of any value in having a story he has already
heard told again, despite the manner of its retelling, and
cannot accept that any subject providing edification can
also be entertaining. When he reads the description of the
mechanicals' Pyramus and Thdsbe as "'A tedious brief
scene'" of "'very tragical mirth,1" the duke is intrigued
not by the content of the proposed play, but by its mass of
contradictions: it is "hot ice, and wondrous strange snow!"
CV,i,59}. It is the very nonsense of the proposed play
that attracts him, and when Philostrate reports that its
performers are "Hard-handed men" who "never labour'd in
their minds till now," Theseus declares "And we will hear
it" (V,i,72-73,76). He refuses to listen to Philostrate's
insistence that the play's ineptness will render it un-
watchable "Unless you can find sport in their intents,/
Extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain/To do you
service" (V,i,79-81); like Puck's insincere apology "I mis
took," Theseus disingenuously maintains that "never any
thing can be amiss/When simpleness and duty tender it" (V,
i,82-83). In the objections she subsequently raises, Hip
polyta the Amazon, a barbarian, shows herself far more civ
il and humane than Athens' duke. She does not wish to see
277
"wretchedness o'er-charg'd,/And duty in his service perish
ing," and though Theseus gives her token assurance that he
has nothing of the sort in mind, he cannot disguise his
condescending pedantry and finally admits "Our sport shall
be to take what they mistake" (V,i,90). Unfortunately for
the mechanicals' sincere attempt at creativity and imagina
tive art, they play right into the pedant's hands when
Quince declares in the prologue to their production, "You
shall know all, that you are like to know" (V,i,117).
The performance of Pyramus and Thisbe is, of course,
laughably inept, despite the inspiration of Bottom's "most
rare vision" and subsequent organization of his fellows:
Quince's prologue is disastrously mispunctuated (ironically
stating that "To show our simple skill,/That is the true
beginning of our end"), and the speeches are horrendously
alliterative C'He bravely broach'd his boi.li.ng bloody
breast”). The most embarrassing performances, however, are
those given in the audience by the pedant duo of Theseus
and Demetrius, the former setting up the latter*s punch
lines :
THESEUS. I wonder if the lion be to speak?
DEMETRIUS. No wonder, my lord? one lion may when
many asses do.
THESEUS. Would you desire lime and hair to speak
better?
DEMETRIUS. It is the wittiest partition that ever
I heard discourse, my lord.
THESEUS. A very gentle beast, and of a good
conscience.
278
DEMETRIUS. The very best at a beast, my lord,
that e'er I saw.
(V,i,151-53,164-66 ,222-23) .
Even Hippolyta cannot resist the humorous nonsense of the
clowns' lines ("This is the silliest stuff that ever I
heard"); but when Theseus goes so far as to attempt to im
pose his anti-imaginative prejudice on the others present,
pompously pronouncing "The best in this kind are but shad
ows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend
them," Hippolyta retorts "It must be your imagination,
then, and not theirs" (V,i,208-10). Again she has defeated
the pedant's argument, but again she must suffer the ped
ant's vainglorious insistence on having the final word: "If
we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they
may pass for excellent men" (V,i,211-12).
Theseus' remark is reminiscent of Berowne's opinion of
the players in Love's Labour's Lost's Pageant of the Nine
Worthies: "The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the
fool, and the boy:— Abate throw at novum, and the whole
world again/Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his
vein" (V,ii, 5 3 6 - 3 9 ) . Although Holofernes, the pedantic
schoolmaster, and Don Armado, the pedantic Spaniard, are
deserving of the ridicule they receive, the bumbling Sir
Nathaniel is cruelly received and the performance quickly
degenerates into a showcase for the acerbic, insensitive
wit of Berowne and company— who thereafter find their own
comedy overturned.
279
A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s anomalously freethinking
Hippolyta, bound to be the wife of the pedant who wooed
with sword and showed his love by the injuries he inflicted
on her, directs one last sympathetic encouragement towards
the clown actors, when Bottom/Pyramus discovers Thisbe's
torn and bloodstained mantle; yet even she has fallen vic
tim to the negative influence of the pedantic environment
around her, and taints pity with contempt: "Beshrew my
heart, but I pity the man" (V,i,277-79). Paralleling
Titania's subjugation by Oberon, Hippolyta's will has been
broken by her pedantic husband. Theseus' final comments on
the performance are his most derogatory, and he effectively
speaks the epitaph to imagination that Puck's final speech
will uneasily resurrect: "Never excuse; for when the play
ers are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if
he that writ it had played Pyramus, and hanged himself in
Thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine tragedy— and so
it is, truly, and very notably discharged" (V,i,342-47).
Theseus' enslavement and subversion of Hippolyta is a mi
crocosm of the corruption of pedantry spreading throughout
his realm. What Shakespeare gives us in A Midsummer
Night ’s Dream is another comic exploration of serious con
cepts, like those of chastity and justice in Measure for
Measure, or of duty and obligation in Alt's Well That Ends
Well.35 The pedant is naturally a comic type, and is rep
resented as such by the scene-stealing weaver; but when
280
that comic figure is placed in a position of unchecked
power, whether king of the fairies or duke of Athens,
wielding control of the thoughts of his subjects, he be
comes "translated" into a serious danger— the menacing
tyrant that Bruno attacks in his London dialogues.
281
Notes
1 A Midsummer Nighty's Bream ed. Harold F. Brooks, The
Arden Shakespeare (New York: Methuen, Inc., 1979), p. 21.
Act, scene and line references in parentheses following
subsequent quotations will be to this edition.
2
Babrius and Phaedrus trans. and ed. Ben Edwin Perry,
Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer
sity Press, 1965), p. 361. Book, section and page refer
ences in parentheses following subsequent citations will be
to this edition.
3
See Thomas Wright, A History of Caricature and Gro
tesque in Literature and Art ed. Frances K. Barasch (New
York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1968), p. 39: Plate
24, "Early Caricature upon a Christian," created "by some
pagan who despised Christianity," is inscribed in Greek and
translates "Alexamenos worships God"? Alexamenos is "stand
ing on one side in the attitude of worship" while "The
Saviour is represented under the form of a man with the
head of an ass, extended upon a cross. ..."
4
See J.E. Cxrlot, A Dictionary of Symbols trans. Jack
Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 19 62), p. 20. The
suffering of the clergy under popular contempt and overtax
ation is represented by Asinus Onustus. The Asse Overladen
(1589), in which the author/narrator, addressing himself to
Queen Elizabeth, portrays himself as an ass.
5
E.K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage 2 vols. (London:
Oxford University Press, 1903), I, 276-77, 331. See also
Wright, p. 209; Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World
trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1984), p. 78. The text of the Cathedral of Rouen's
festum asinorum is given in Karl Young, The Drama of the
Medieval Church 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933),
II, 154-65? commentary follows, 165-70.
28 2
6 The Complete Works of St. Thomas More ed. Louis L.
Martz and Frank Manley (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1976), XII, 117. An ass less modest but far more canny is
described in the fable of the horse and the ass in Book
Five, chapter seven of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel',
he concludes he would much rather eat thistles and have the
freedom of copulating to his heart's content than to have
the horse's delicious fodder and be beaten every time he
begins to feel amorously excited.
7 Helen Adolf, "The Ass and the Harp," Speculum 25
(1950), 51.
® For example, in I,xxi,217, "The Old Lion, the Boar,
the Bull, and the Ass," the dying lion is gored by the boar
and bull for old grudges; the ass, "on seeing the wild
beast maltreated with impunity, gave him a smashing kick in
the face. Then, as he died, the lion said: 'I resented the
insults of the brave; but as for you, you disgrace to Na
ture, when I put up with you, as now at life's end I must,
I seem to die a second death.'"
9
Machlavelll: The Chief Works and Others trans. Allan
Gilbert, 3 vols. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
1965), II, 768. A contemporary variation on Circe's en
chantment occurs at the end of Book Two of The Faerie
Queene : Grill resists being retranslated from a pig to a
man when Sir Guyon and the palmer break the spell of
Acrasia, so the palmer commands "Let Grill be Grill, and
have his hoggish mind." Cf. the Circe of Bruno's Latin
dialogue, Cantus Clroaeus.
The Colloquies of Erasmus, p. 467.
Excerpted and reprinted in Frank Sidgwick, The
Sources and Analogues of A Midsummer Night's Dream (New
York: Duffield and Company, 1908), pp. 135-38. The sailor
story appears earlier in Jean Bodin's Be magorum daemono-
manla (1581).
Cesare Ripa's Iconologla (c. 1593) lists "Obstina
cy" [Ostinatione] as a melancholic woman in black, her head
surrounded by a cloud, holding an ass's head in her hands:
"The head of the ass signifies that same ignorance, pre
viously determined to be the mother of obstinacy" [La testa
dell'Asino monstra la medesima ignoranza, gi& detta esser
madre dell'ostinatione] (Joseph Rosenblum, "Why an Ass?:
Cesare Ripa's Iconologla As a Source for Bottom's Transla
tion," Shakespeare Quarterly 32 [1981], 358). Oberon,
thus, is pleased with Titania's punishment in A Midsummer
Night 's Dream for her stubbornness since she is "turned
283
into the appropriate iconographic symbol of obstinacy, com
plete with an ass's head between her hands” (p. 358).
13
The Book of Daun Burnet the Ass: Nigettus Wireker's
Speculum stultorum trans. Graydon W. Regenos (Austin: Uni
versity of Texas Press, 1959), p. 23. All subsequent, ref
erences to this work are from this translation. The anti-
nomial relationship of "scholar" and "ass" are foreshadowed
in the verse prologue: "Nought with the past the present
seems to hold,/And all is in a topsy-turvy stage./Day comes
from night; from daylight darkness comes,/From fool the
sage, and nothing from the sage" (p. 29).
14 Adolf, p. 49.
15
The phrase, ovog Xv5pas> appears in Menander--The
Principal Fragments trans. Francis G. Allinson, Loeb Clas
sical Library (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1921), as part
of The Hated Man (p. 409) and The Noise-Shy Man (p. 461).
See Adolf, pp. 49, 52, and 54.
16
Audrey Yoder, Animat Anatogy in Shakespeare's Char
acter Portrayal (New York; King's Crown Press, 1947), p.
29. In Shakespeare, "beast" is generally "a term for re
proach; the man who is beastlike is unlike good men"; ani
mal analogy "is employed mainly for purposes of censure or
ridicule" (p. 61).
^ Wright, pp. 254, 258; for the origins of macaronic
verse (and the term, perhaps, from macarone , "a lubberly
fellow") and examples, see pp. 315-24.
18
Chambers, I, 232. The "Prose of the Ass" is dis
cussed and excerpted in Chambers, II, 279-82.
19
Bruno repeats physiognomial theories analyzing
man's potential for displaying beastlike qualities, in the
Spacoio (558-59) and De gti eroici furori (1023-24).
20
Discussed m terms of actual stage management m
T.W. Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shake
spearean Company (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1927), pp. 135-36. Baldwin discusses the assignment of
roles in A Midsummer Night 's Dream in terms of the charac
ter specialties of Shakespeare's company, p. 271; cf. the
revision of Baldwin's assignments in Marion A. Taylor,
Bottom3 Thou Art Translated: Political Allegory in A Mid
summer 'Night ' s Dream and Related Literature (Amsterdam:
Rodopi NV, 1973), pp. 209-33.
21 For detailed discussions of the sources of A Mid-
284
summer Night's Dream, see Brooks, pp. lviii-lxxxviii;
Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shake
speare (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), I, 367-
422; Sidwick, The Sources and Analogues of A Midsummer
Night's Dream; see also David P. Young, Something of a
Great Constancy: The Art of A Midsummer Night's Dream (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 14-15. Specific
analysis of Shakespeare's use of Apuleius is performed in
Sister M. Generosa, "Apuleius and A Midsummer Night's
Dream i Analogue or Source, Which?" Studies in Philology 42
(1945), 198-204 [extremely tenative— only suggests a "par
alleling of ideas" (p. 198]; James A.S. Me Peek, "The Psyche
Myth and A Midsummer Night's Dream," Shakespeare Quarterly
23 (1972), 69-79 [cites several parallels from Adlington's
translation]; Annie-Paul Mielle de Prinsac, "La Metamor
phose de Bottom et L'Ane D'Or," Etudes Anglaises: Grande-
Bretagne3 Etats-Unis 34 (1981), 61-71 [both Lucius and
Bottom share in "Le monde de 1'imagination, qui est aussi
celui de l’amour et du mythes," which "est h l'antipode de
celui de L*intellect et de la raison" (p. 71)].
9 9
For the Italian, see Gentile, p. 845;
Oh saintly asininity, saintly ignorance,
Sainted stupidity, and pious devotion,
That alone can make the soul so good,
Which human genius and study cannot achieve!
Not by performing a wearisome vigilance
Of art (whatever that is), or invention,
Or of sophist contemplation
Of the heavens, where the vacuousness edifies you.
Yet you value, curiously, studying it,
Desiring to know how nature works;
If the stars are really earth, fire and water.
This saintly asininity cannot be cured
But with rejoicing spirit and the desire to be kneel
ing,
Waiting on the fortune of God.
Nothing lasts,
Except the fruit of eternal rest—
That which God doesn't give until after the funeral.
For instance, when Burchio, the pedant, storms out
of an argument he has lost in De I'infinito, Fracastorio
recounts an aphorism comparing the ass's potential for
learning to the pedant's: "To wish to demonstrate the truth
with further reasons to these same is just like washing the
head of an ass more times, with more kinds of soap and
baths; washing a hundred times would profit no more than
washing once, a thousand ways no more than one, since it
remains the same thing having been washed or not" [Voler
con pid raggioni mostrar la veritade a simili, 5 come se
285
con pivi sorte di sapone e di lescia pixi volte se lavasse il
capo a l'asino; ove non se profitta pid lavando cento che
una volta, in mille che in un modo, ove £ tutto uno l'aver
lavato e non l'avere] (469-70); the same aphorism is al
luded to in La aena (36). In the Cabala, Coribante, the
pedant, claims that the Egyptians used the ass as a type
for ignorance and "the Babylonian priests completed the hu
man bust and neck with the asinine head, used to designate
a human unskilled and undisciplined" [gli Babiloni sacer-
doti con l'asinino capo compiuto al busto e cervice umana
volsero designar un uomo imperito ed indisciplinabile]
(863). Giovanni Piero Valeriano's Ieroglifici (1602) [G.P.
V. Bolzani, Les Hieroglyphiques (Lyon3 1615) trans. I. de
Montyard (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1976)] notes
significations of asses and mules primarily in ancient cul
tures (pp. 143-5 4), including the Egyptian association of
the ass with petulance (pp. 145a,d; 146c; 149c; 150a) and
its typification by "those who dream that they have an
ass's head" [ceux qui songent qu'ils ont vne teste d'Asne]
(p. 150); a later explication of ignorance is illustrated
by a woodcut featuring a man with an ass's head (p. 411).
p A
Shakespeare's most common usage for "ass" is as
"fool" (as in Twelfth Night's Sir Andrew: "'Slight! will
you make an ass o' me?" [Ill,ii,13]), though there are also
examples of its reference to the suffering of the beast of
burden (Measure for Measure, III,i,25-28; Comedy of Errors,
IV,iv,27-32; Richard II, V,v,92-94; 2 Henry IV, II,i,36-38;
Timon of Athens, III,v,47-51; Julius Caesar, IV,i,20-21;
Othello, I,i,44-48; and Taming of the Shrew, II,i,200), to
transformations derivative of the Apuleius/Pseudo-Lucian
model (Comedy of Errors, II,ii,199-202; As You Like It, II,
v,50-57), and derogatory references to the animal as ridic
ulous, lazy, sluggish, dull, or despicable (Love's Labour's
Lost, III,i,51-55; Dogberry's repeated insistence that he
be "writ down an ass" in Much Ado About Nothing; Hamlet, V,
i,56-57; Timon of Athens, IV,iii,332; and King John, II,i,
143-46).
O C
Bottom is seen as the crux of the play's "illusion-
istic and anti-illusionistic" directions in Jackson I.
Cope, The ^Theater and the Dream: From Metaphor to Form in
Renaissance Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1973), as the intersection of dream as drama and
dream as truth: the "relevance of Bottom's dream is that it
makes him precisely a 'visible metaphor,' both himself and
a symbol of himself" (p. 224). Cf. the suggestion that
Puck represents a menacing counterpart of the same duality,
above, pp. 268-70.
26 Adolf, p. 50.
286
27
The association of the ass and the fool is well-
documented. Barbara Swain, Fools and Folly During the Mid
dle Ages and the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1932), notes that the folk fool "represents the most
elementary biological wisdom, shared by men and animals a-
like" (p. 65), and William Willeford, The Fool and His
Scepter: A Study in Clowns and Jesters and Their Audience
(n.p.: Northwestern University Press, 1969), more specifi
cally identifies the significance of the ass's ears worn by
fools in the fact that in fool shows, the ass is often "the
counterpart of the human being" (p. 22; see also the dia
gram of men in the process of becoming asses, taken from
the Narrenschiff, p. 210). Chambers, I, believes the prom
inence of the ass in the various Feast of Fools celebra
tions explains the usage of its ears as fool headdress (p.
385). See also Wolfgang Frank, "The Logic of Double Enten
dre in A Midsummer Night's Dream," Philological Quarterly
58 (1979), 292.
In the Geneva Bible (1560), I Corinthians 7-11
reads: "[7] But we speake the wisdome of God in a mysterie,
euen the hid wisdome, which God had determined before the
worlde, vnto our glorie. [8] Which none of the princes of
this worlde hathe knowen: for had thei knowen it, thei
wolde not haue crucified ye Lord of glorie. [9] But as it
is written, The things which eye hathe not sene, nether
eare hathe heard, nether came into mans heart, are, which
God hathe prepared for them that loue him. [10] But God
hathe reueiled them vnto vs by his Spirit: for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. [11] For
what man knoweth the things of a man, saue the spirit of a
man, which is in him? euen so the things of God knoweth no
man, but the Spirit of God" (p. 77). Thomas B. Stroup,
"Bottom's Name And His Epiphany," Shakespeare Quarterly 29
(1978), sees the reference to verse 11 (the Tyndale Bible
referring to "the bottom of Goddes secretes") as "a source,
if not the source, of Bottom's name" (p. 80), for Bottom
becomes a "wise fool" and experiences epiphany: "Bottom has
discovered the bottom of God's secrets— has realized they
are indeed bottomless" (p. 81). The generally flippant re
ply to Stroup's article by Robert F. Willson, Jr., "God's
Secrets and Bottom's Name: A Reply," Shakespeare Quarterly
30 (1979), is nevertheless just in its assessment that "The
gods, and not God, are central characters in the play; and
it is their reality that Bottom has experienced but is un
able to articulate" (p. 408). Bottom seizes onto the most
readily available description of the ineffable, that in the
Bible, to apply to his own inexplicable experience; but
Bottom is no scholar, and even the enlightenment of his as
ininity cannot guarantee an accurate quotation of texts
never seriously memorized.
287
29
Bruno's Cabala associates Jesus with the type of
the perfected ass in "Un Molto Pio Sonetto Circa La Signi-
ficazione De L'Asina E Pulledro," based on Matthew 21:1-3,
the acquisition of the ass for Christ's triumphant ride in
to Jerusalem, and the sonnet concludes that all the faith
ful (i.e., the freethinking) will be made "Stablemates to
the angelic squadrons" [Contubernali a l'angeliche squadre]
(859). In the "Declamazione al studioso, divoto, e pio
lettore," Bruno makes reference to Mark 10:13-16, and looks
ahead to Christ's triumphant entry: he reveals "who the re
deemed are, who the predestined are, who the saved are: the
ass, the ass's foal, the simple, the impoverished of argu
ment, the little children . . . they enter into the kingdom
of heaven? that through contempt of the world and of its
pride, they trample on its dressings, they have banished
from it every care of the body, of the flesh that is
wrapped around this soul, if they have placed it beneath
their feet . . . in order to make it more glorious— for the
ass and her dear foal to pass triumphantly" [chi son li re-
demuti, chi son gli chiamati, chi son gli predestinati, chi
son gli salvi: l'asina, l'asinello, gli semplici, gli po-
veri d'argumento, gli pargoletti . . . quelli entrano nel
regno de' cieli; quelli, per dispreggio del mondo e de le
sue pompe, calpestrano gli vestimenti, hanno bandita da s§
ogni cura del corpo, de la carne che sta avolta circa
quest'anima, se l'han messa sotto gli piedi . . . per far
pid gloriosa- e trionfalmente passar l'asina ed il suo caro
asinello] (854).
OQ
If Bottom reflects Bruno's conception of the Cab
ala's ass/child, Titania, in lamenting the destruction
wreaked on the environment by Oberon's pedantic assertion
of his will over hers, foreshadows her role as a "nurturant
mother" figure following his transformation, protecting him
while he experiences the incidents contributing to his
"most rare vision"? Oberon, in contrast, as the pedant who
does not care about the well-being of the ass/child, serves
as a "bad father" figure. This relationship of Oberon to
Titania is analogous to the relationship of Theseus to
Hippolyta: the pedantic duke is symbolic father of his
realm, and in demonstrating little concern for his subjects
is also a "bad father"? Hippolyta, a freethinker, asserts
her independence as an advocate for the mechanicals, but is
ultimately infected by Theseus' stubborn dominance. See
above, pp. 270-80.
31
Like the "Lazzo of the Chair": Arlecchino or -
Pierrot "pulls the chair away from the Captain just before
he is to sit down" (Gordon, p. 18).
32
Puck, although a dangerous lord of misrule, shares
288
a special immunity with Plautine drama's slave: he is "ab
solved from what he does during the play, that is, during
his reign of misrule"; and talk concerning his punishment
"serves as a deliberate foil to emphasize what will not
happen during today's comedy" (Erich Segal, Roman Laughter:
The Comedy of Plautus [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1968], p. 147).
See above, pp. 272-73.
^ Love's Labour's Lost ed. R.W. David, The Arden
Shakespeare (1951; rpt. New York: Methuen, 198 3), pp. 162-
63. Anne Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), reasons that both the ac
tors and the spectators of the two performances "misunder
stand the nature of the play," permitting Shakespeare "a
series of reflections upon the character of dramatic illu
sion" (p. 107) .
35
Michael Taylor, "The Darker Purpose of A Midsummer
Right's Dream," Studies In English Literature 1500-1900 9
(1969), writes that the "unfestive reality" of such plays
is what makes Shakespeare's comedies "both significant and
precious: significant because we are not allowed to escape
altogether from this world of pain; precious because an
acknowledgment of this makes us so much more thankful for
the kindliness which is their benison" (p. 270).
289
VI. "THIS BRUNO THOU HAST LATE REDEEM'D": THE DAMNATION OF
PEDANTRY AND THE FREETHINKER'S SALVATION
Faustus, the Unworthy Believer
The magicians can do more by means of their
faith, than the physicians by way of their truth;
and in the most grave maladies the infirm come to
benefit more from believing what the former are
saying, than by understanding what the latter are
doing.1
Tansillo's assessment in De gli eroioi furori of the
efficacy of magic is typical of the respect Bruno always
expresses for arcane knowledge, for learning which may
yield sovrumano enlightenment and consequently defies log
ic. The "faith" of the magician— or in the serious occult
ist's idiom, of the natural philosopher2— is an affirmation
of man's potential to become more than merely human, to
harness the natural power that governs the universe, to
participate in the unity of the cosmos by exercise of his
intellect. The profound reverence Bruno exhibits towards
magia is evidence that it is a religious impulse, but it is
not characterized by religion's conventional systematiza
tion. Rather, it is epitomized by eclecticism, by the de
sire to employ any and all forms of intellectual inquiry in
order to achieve transcendence of the limitations of human
knowledge— that is, by freethinking. The pedant, as the
confirmed opponent of imagination and speculation, in ob
structing such inquiry is thus guilty of the most heinous
of crimes: the suffocation of spiritual growth. To master
290
the ability to control nature and powers of supernatural
origin, the magician must reconcile the conflicting forces
represented by the pedant and the freethinker, by intellec
tual apathy and intellectual integrity, by ignorant super
stition and wisdom. These opposing influences are given
physical realization in Marlowe's tragedy, Doctor Faustus
(1589-92), dramatizing the damnation of a pedant, and
Shakespeare's comedy, The Tempest (1611),^ dramatizing a
potential pedant's salvation via freethinking.
After rejecting other disciplines in favor of "These
Metaphisicks of Magitians," Faustus displays the simultane
ous influences of pedantry and freethinking. His attrac
tion to magic is inspired by purely hedonistic motives of
self-gratification: "O what a world of profite and de
light, /Of power, of honour, and omnipotence,/Is promised to
the Studious Artizan?" (I,i,80-82). Conversely, he seems
capable of expressing Brunonian aspiration and imaginative
ly declares that the magician's potential "Stretcheth as
farre as doth the mind of man:/A sound Magitian is a Demi
god,/Here tire my braines to get a Deity" (I,i,87-89).
Faustus does not demonstrate himself to be a "Studious
Artizan," however, nor does he "tire" his brain to "get a
Deity"; he reveals the pettiness of his obsession with
magic by requesting that Lucifer's lieutenant, Mephostoph-
ilis, "spare him foure and twenty yeares,/Letting him liue
in all voluptuousnesse" (I,iii,316-17) in return for the
291
surrender of his soul. Betraying his pedantry by revealing
that he is not attracted to magic for the sake of knowl
edge, especially godlike knowledge, Faustus aspires to no
more than profit, delight, power, honor— human omnipotence.
He disguises himself with counterfeited expertise in the
occult science and simply barters to gratify his material
desires: "Had I as many soules, as there be Starres,/I1de
giue them all for Mephostophilis"— why?— "By him, I'le be
great Emperour of the world" (I,iii,327-29; my italics).
Faustus hides behind the fagade of university doctor, but
he is guilty of intellectual sloth. He achieves his de
sires by means of purchase, not by acquisition of intellect
or by personal speculation: Mephostophilis, not Faustus*
knowledge, will make him "great Emperour." And germane to
the triviality of the pedant's commitment to scholarship,
it is not the quest for revelatory wisdom that moves Faus
tus, but mere avarice. He reaffirms the intended applica
tions for his ill-gotten puissance following the signing
of Lucifer's promissory deed:
My foure and twenty yeares of liberty
I'le spend in pleasure and daliance,
That Faustus name, whilst this bright frame doth
stand,
May be admired through the furthest Land.
(Ill,i,862-65).
Here we are allowed to glimpse the tragically limited imag
ination of Wittenberg's learned doctor. He aspires to no
more than physical pleasure and a fame that will last only
292
so long as he does— four and twenty years. Faustus is not
a demi-god, but a demagogue; the stage pedant, tradition
ally the comic tyrant who terrorizes pupils with the rod of
discipline, is once again transformed into the menacing
pedant (though on a world scale: "through the furthest
Land") who is able to dominate the impressionable, his "pu
pils," with a fagade of knowledge that masks the superfici
ality of his intellect. With the power of demonic magic at
his command, however, Faustus is, like Friar Bacon, unique
ly dangerous.
Marlowe complicates the issue of Faustus' actual eru
dition by shrouding his intellectual background in supposi
tion. Faustus is reputed to possess extensive knowledge,
yet he rarely shows evidence of it during the play. Mepho-
stophilis seems to mock the scholar for his limited mental
ity when he promises that in exchange for Faustus' soul, "I
will be thy slaue and waite on thee,/And giue thee more
then thou hast wit to aske" (II,i,434-35). Exploiting
Faustus' ignorance, the spirit can insult him with impunity
by suggesting that their bargain will make the doctor "as
great as Lucifer" (II,i,440). Faustus' deficiency of "wit"
is precisely what makes him vulnerable to Mephostophilis'
temptations: he lacks the wit, or imagination, to apply
limitless power to an intellectually self-enriching end,
and he lacks the wit, or percipience, to comprehend that in
being "as great as Lucifer," he would be merely as great as
293
the angel who fell from grace— that is, no better than the
most wretched among the damned (cf. I,iii,302-307) . The
degree and nature of Faustus* academic achievement is fur
ther called into question by the Chorus* remark that the
notoriety generated by his newfound conjuring prowess led
friends to ask the doctor questions about astrology "Which
Faustus answerd with such learned skill,/As they admirde
and wondred at his wit" (Chorus 2,940-41[A-text]).
Such assessments might lead us to conclude that Faus
tus is simply not an intellectual; however, he is more ac
curately a man reputed not for his "wit," but for his
knowledge. Following the doctor's climactic disappearance,
one of his scholars laments his un-Christian demise.
Yet for he was a Scholler, once admired
For wondrous knowledge in our Gevmane schooles,
We'll giue his mangled limbs due buryall:
And all the Students clothed in mourning blacke,
Shall waite vpon his heauy funerall.
(V,iii,2108-12).
That Faustus possessed the respect of his students is
clear. The scholar speaking this eulogy is identified in
I,ii, as one of Faustus* own pupils, and he credits his
lost master with "wondrous knowledge." Yet this is a not
unexpected response from one of the famous scholar's own
students, particularly in light of the usual indoctrination
of pupil by master. For a seemingly impartial judgment,
then, we must turn to the concluding Chorus: Faustus*
"fiendfull fortune may exhort the wise/Onely to wonder at
294
such vnlawfull things:/Whose deepnesse doth intice such
forward wits,/To practice more then heauenly power permits"
(Epil2118-21}. Marlowe exhibits his own wit here with a
double entendre that points to the conflicting forces of
pedant and freethinker. Faustus1 damnation may exhort the
"wise only to wonder at such" dangerous knowledge, or it
may exhort the "wise onty to wonder at such." The "deep
nesse" of the mystery synonymous with magic is what at
tracts thinkers like Marlowe, like Bruno, like Agrippa,
Pico, Ficino, Dee, et. at. to its study. But Marlowe's
characterization of Faustus here as a "forward wit" recalls
the previous observations by Mephostophilis and the second
Chorus on the scholar's insufficient wit. Marlowe's inti
mation that only the truly wise dare challenge knowledge
forbidden by "heauenly power" implies that Faustus' damna
tion must be the result of his unworthiness for the task.
Like the pedant, Faustus' reputation for knowledge lacks
the substance of erudition.
A Return to Oxford: Bene dtsserere est
fints disatpltnae
Just as Marlowe directs his attack in The Massacre at
Parts against Oxford and Aristotelianism rather than spe
cifically against Petrus Ramus,^ aiming it specifically at
the same elements of pedantry attacked in Bruno's dia
logues, so he continues the assault in Doctor Faustus by
295
revealing that Faustus' intellectual abilities seem limited
largely to facility in rhetoric, to the manipulation of
words rather than ideas. The Chorus reports that Faustus
"was grac't with Doctors name" because he had first en
riched the "fruitfull plot of Scholerisme" with his knowl
edge of divinity, "Excelling all, whose sweet delight dis
putes [B-text: "and sweetly can dispute"]/In heauenly mat
ters of Theologie" (Prol16-20[A-text]). Faustus is a
master dialectician, a distinction accorded heroes of phi
losophy like Socrates and Cicero, and hence not inherently
synonymous with pedantry. When, however, the doctor is re
vealed in preparation for study, he divulges the pedantic
impulses motivating him:
Settle thy studies Faustus, and begin
To sound the depth of that thou wilt professe,
Hauing commenc'd, be a Diuine in shew,
Yet leuell at the end of euery Art,
And liue and die in Aristotles workes.
Sweet Analitikes, tis thou hast rauisht me,
Bene disserere est finis Logicis . (I,i,30-36).
The subversive plan to "be a Diuine in shew" in order to
concentrate on "the end of euery Art" sounds very much like
a freethinker's commitment to camouflaging his investiga
tion of forbidden knowledge with an acceptable public
image— until Faustus declares his intention to "liue and
die in Aristotles workes." As Ramus' criticism of Aristo
telian logic in The Massacre at Paris guarantees his de
struction by the pro-Aristotelian pedant, Guise, so Faus
tus 1 reverence towards Aristotle identifies him with the
296
Aristotelians of Oxford, arch-rival of Marlowe's Cambridge
and training grounds for the pedant in Bruno's London dia
logues .
The declaration that Aristotle's works "have ravisht
me" serves to connect Faustus with the Oxford pedants and
their corruption of pupils through unyielding deference to
Aristotle; if his education has been predicated upon Aris-
totelianism, and he has been taught that rhetoric is the
most important of all disciplines, Faustus has in Bruno's
view been "ravisht" by the Stagirite's Organon and Analyt
ics. Teofilo reminds Aristotelian apologist Prudenzio in
La oena that "Before there was this philosophy . . . there
was that of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Magi, Orphics, Py
thagoreans and others of early memory . . . from which
these insane, Vain logicians and mathematicians rebelled,
not so much enemies of antiquity, as of the truth" [Prima
che fusse questa filosofia . . . fu quella degli caldei,
egizii, maghi, orfici, pitagorici ed altri di prima memoria
. . . da' quali prima si ribbellorno questi insensati e
vani logici e matematici, nemici non tanto de la antiquitA,
quanto alieni da la veritA] (41). In his most reactionary
moments, Bruno even cites the purpose of Aristotelian logic
as the obfuscation of truth. Hence when Faustus retracts
his earlier assessment and exclaims "'Tis magick, magick,
that hath rauisht me" (I,i,132)6 one must question the mo
tives of this reversal and wonder what truth is here being
297
suppressed— for the damage of Aristotelian influence has
already been done.
Faustus' rhetorical axiom that "Bene dissereve est
finis Logiais" is ironic not only because it is more accu
rately a Ramist concept than an Aristotelian,7 but also be
cause dialectic is supposedly the learned doctor's forte,
despite his repeated demonstration of incompetence, not ex
pertise, in logic. In their first debate, the Good Angel
warns Faustus to avoid "that damned booke" of demonic magic
and like a mentor advises him to "Reade, reade the Scrip
tures" to learn the danger of the other text. This advice
is shunned in favor of the Bad Angel's description of "that
famous Art/Wherein all natures treasure is contain'd:/Be
thou on earth as Ioue is in the skye,/Lord and Commander of
these elements" (I,i,101-104). The pedant impresses with,
and is impressed by, the superficial appearance or promise
of knowledge and power; similarly, he dismisses abstract
concepts because he lacks the imagination, or "wit," to
comprehend and esteem them. When Faustus asks about the
effects of contrition, prayer and repentance, the Good An
gel explains "O they are meanes to bring thee vnto heauen"
while the Bad Angel pedantically dismisses them as "Rather
illusions, fruits of lunacy./That make them foolish that do
vse them most" (II,i,406-408). Since the subjects of Faus
tus1 inquiry are intangible, the Bad Angel, pedantically
resistant to intellectual speculation, simply denies their
298
existence. Again, Faustus follows the lead of the pedantic
influence by refusing to investigate the Good Angel's coun
sel and by esteeming wealth above spiritual well-being.
While such foolish decisions do contribute to Faustus' in
evitable damnation, they merely assist what is in fact his
fatal confidence in the ability di-ssepepe bene and to em
ploy logtoa unerringly.
So inept is Faustus' logic,® that Mephostophilis has
no trouble deceiving him and rarely even guards his remarks
around the doctor. When Faustus orders his demon servant
to punish the Old Man, Mephostophilis excuses himself from
acting because "His faith is great, I cannot touch his
soule;" what torment he can inflict is hence "but little
worth" (V,i,1860,1862). Faustus cannot extrapolate the
possibility of his own salvation from this because he has
not learned to reason imaginatively; his education, like
that of Bruno's Oxford pedants, has been in how to argue,
not how to think. The two Schollers in V,ii, who try to
encourage Faustus to repent are met by the doctor's de
spair, which stubbornly resists the logic of their advice.
The Second Scholler reminds Faustus of God's infinite mer
cy, but is obstinately answered that "the serpent that
tempted Eue may be saued,/But not Faustus" (V,ii,1938-39);
Faustus informs the First Scholler that he did not reveal
his predicament to the Wittenberg spiritual community be
cause "the Diuel threatned to teare me in peeces if I nam'd
299
God: to fetch me body and soule, if I once gaue eare to
Diuinitie" (V,ii,1966-68). Falling victim to the pedant's
most potent weapon, threatening rhetoric, Faustus succumbs
to fear generated by ignorance, believing the devil's words
without contemplating their substance.
Words are both Faustus' strength and his nemesis,
source of his power and vehicle of his damnation.^ He
views them as a reinforcement of his own imagination when
he tells Valdes and Cornelius "Know that your words have
woon me at the last,/To practise Magicke and concealed
arts:/Yet not your own words onely, but mine owne fantasie"
(I,i,134-36[A-text]). However, Cornelius emphasizes knowl
edge of astrology and minerals, not imagination; it is pre
cisely an individual "Inricht with tongues" who "Hath all
the Principles Magick doth require" {I,i,161-62). Faus
tus is indeed "inricht with tongues" and is identified with
the pedant's tongue, Latin, by his pupils, one of whom re
marks early in the play, "I wonder what's become of Faustus
that was wont/To make our schooles ring, with s-io probo"
(I,ii,190-91); this is one of the same pupils, however, who
later interrogates Faustus concerning his failure to chal
lenge the devil's authority and appeal to God for mercy.
His facility in Latin is not an indication of spiritual
erudition.
Latin is itself devalued in the play's comic scenes:
to Robin the clown, Latin is synonymous with verse (l,iv,
300
35 4) and has no meaning outside of that context; it is
strictly ornamental, a parody of the pedant's rhetorical
use of it as such. When Faustus invisibly steals the
Pope's dinner and strikes the friars, they pronounce a com
ic malediction (e.g. "Cursed be he that tooke away his
hotinesse wine./MaZedicat Dom[inus]n [III,ii,1123-24]),
lampooning ritual latinization by employing it in an inap
propriate, petty context. When his final hour arrives,
Faustus experiences the futility of words unsupported by
substance: "0 lente lente currite noctis equii/The Stars
moue still, Time runs, the Clocke will strike./The deuill
will come, and Faustus must be damn'd" (V,ii,1935-37). The
"noctis equin will not gallop slowly, however, because
Faustus has put his faith in ineffectual words rather than
in God (i.e., in wisdom) and consequently "must be damn'd."
Supporting this fatal, pedantic belief in the power of
language independent of meaning is a motif running through
out Doctor Faustus: the corruptive influence of the pedant
master on his impressionable pupil. Resembling the chain
reaction of corruption depicted in A Midsummer Night rs
Dream, Marlowe creates an atmosphere of social pedantry as
in The Massacre at Paris, featuring repetitions of the pat
tern of corruption at all levels of society, based ulti
mately on the archetype of Lucifer's fall (for the pedantic
crimes of "aspiring pride and insolence,/For which God
threw him from the face of heauen" [I,iii,293-94]) and the
301
legions of angels who, as impressionable pupils, acted on
the lessons of Lucifer and were also damned.
The reality behind the apparent pedant/pupil relation
ship of the conjuring doctor and his demonic disciple is
revealed late in the play when Mephostophilis informs Faus
tus that he taught the scholar to prefer vice to wisdom:
"when thou took'st the booke,/To view the Scriptures, then
I turn'd the leaues/And led thine eye" (V,ii,1990-92).
This revelation renders ironic Faustus' condescending atti
tude towards the devil and his supposition during most of
the play that he is acting the role of master. When he
first commands Mephostophilis to alter his devilish appear
ance to that of a friar— already evincing the pedant's
emphasis on appearance and disregard of substance— he re
marks on the spirit's submissiveness, "How pliant is this
Mephostophilis?/Full of obedience and humility,/Such is the
force of Magicke, and my spels" (I,iii,257-59). Deluded
into believing his "spels," words unsupported by evidence
of substantial arcane knowledge, compel the spirit to obey
him, Faustus compounds his pedantry by condescendingly be
rating Mephostophilis for lamenting his own damnation,
boasting "Learne thou of Faustus manly fortitude,/And
scorne those Ioyes thou neuer shalt possesse" (I,iii,310-
11). He further presumes to insult Mephostophilis* knowl
edge following the spirit's cosmological explication by
pompously declaring "These slender questions Wagner can
302
decide:/Hath Mephostophilis no greater skill?" He scoffs,
"These are fresh mens questions" (II,ii,618-19,625). Meph
ostophilis * revelation in V,ii, that he has tutored the
scholar in his profligacy does not absolve Faustus of re
sponsibility for his actions; instead it confirms the ped
ant’s arrogant derision of acquiring substantial knowledge
as a mortal danger. Intellectual enlightenment could have
secured Faustus’ spiritual salvation.
Obviously this poses a hazardous enough threat to
Faustus1 own soul; however, his potential for corruption
extends far beyond himself, for he actually is the master,
both literally and figuratively, of characters other than
Mephostophilis in the play. Regardless of whatever genuine
respect his Wittenberg pupils may have for him, Faustus
proves himself a pedantic menace by projecting his own cor
ruptive desires upon his students.After his bravado of
proposing to order demonic spirits to "wall all Germany
with Brasse,/And make swift Rhine, circle faire Witten-
herge" and hence to dare even more than Friar Bacon, he
then offers to perpetuate the pedant's legacy of corruption
to his pupils: "I'le haue them fill the publique Schooles
with ski11,/Wherewith the Students shall be brauely clad"
(I,i,115-18). Like this Wittenberg master, the pupils
would thus be clothed in the appearance, rather than the
substance, of "skill," or erudition. The magnitude of this
injury is multiplied by the doctor’s vaunt that "the
303
flowring pride of Wittenberg/Swarme to my Problemes, as
th'infernall spirits/On sweet Musaeus when he came to hell"
(I,i, 136-38) : Faustus considers himself a master of argu
mentation, hence of syllogistic logic, and hence of any
thing else in which students should interest themselves.
Not only does he propose to destroy the organization of
their studies, shifting emphasis to the fagade of knowledge
in which they will be "brauely clad," but the conceit he
creates, comparing their admiration for his disputationis
to the reception of Musaeusx m hell, menacingly likens
the students to the damned, and prophetically condemns him
self to becoming one of their number.
Wagner exhibits a predictable mixture of Faustus' in
fluence. When the two Schollers arrive to inquire about
his master's whereabouts, Wagner (a sizar, perhaps?) plays
the master with them. Determining their ability disserere
unacceptable, he complains their conclusion "followes not
by force of argument, which you, being Licentiate, should
stand vpon, therefore acknowledge your errour, and be at-
tentiue" (I,ii,19 8-200). Shortly, however, Wagner betrays
the effects of lessons studied from his pedant master's
model, including macaronic Latin ("is he not Corpus natu-
rale? and is not that Mobile?") and a self-aggrandizing
arrogance before delivering the awaited description of
Faustus' location: he prefaces it, "Thus hauing triumpht
ouer you . . ." (I,ii,210). As we might now suspect, the
304
pedantic corruption extends beyond Wagner, for he in turn
unwittingly corrupts Robin the clown.
A simple character, Robin possesses the natural
fool's wisdom. When Wagner muses that the clown is so hun
gry "he would giue his soule to the deuill, for a shoulder
of Mutton, tho it were bloud raw," Robin wittily replies,
"Not so neither; I had need to haue it well rosted, and
good sauce to it, if I pay so deere" (I,iv,348-51). To his
pedantic frustration, Wagner discovers he cannot persuade
Robin to serve him, so he conjures two devils to scare the
jesting clown into submission:
ROBIN. . . . but hearke you Maister, will you
teach me this coniuring Occupation?
WAGNER. I sirra, I'le teach thee to turne thy
selfe to a Dog, or a Cat, or a Mouse, or
a Rat, or any thing.
ROBIN. A Dog, or a Cat, or a Mouse, or a Rat? O
brave Wagner.
WAGNER. Villaine, call me Maister Wagner, and see
that you walke attentiuely, and let your
right eye be alwaies Diametrally fixt
vpon my left heele, that thou maist,
Quasi, vestigias nostras insistere.
(I,iv,379-87).
Like the menacing Brunonian pedant, Wagner exults in au
thoritarian subjugation of his innocent and thereby easily
corrupted pupil. He demonstrates his unworthiness to wield
such power by suggesting that Robin employ magic to change
himself into something less than human— which recalls the
misfortune of Lucius Apuleius— thus vilifying Faustus'
grandiloquent conception of it. A fast learner, Robin is
quickly corrupted and steals Faustus' conjuring book (con
305
cerning which the doctor ironically swears to Mephostoph
ilis, "This will I keepe, as chary as my life" [II,i,556]
and which has become unnecessary since Mephostophilis1 pow
er, not Faustus1 knowledge, is the engine of his miracles),
though Dick, another innocent, recognizes Robin's unsuit
ability as a scholar and cannily sneers "'Snayles, what
hast thou got there a book? why thou canst not tell ne're a
word on't" (II,iii,730-31). When the two steal a Vintner's
cup and the Vintner arrives to collect it, Robin calls up
Mephostophilis to protect them; in anger at the ignorant
abuse of magic by "these damned slaues," however, the devil
transforms Dick into an ape, and Robin into a dog (III,
iii). As the applications for magic have degenerated to
petty theft (paralleling the triviality of Faustus' late
entertainments), Marlowe revives the connection of besti
ality to pedantry through the clown scenes, and traces the
path of mayhem that inevitably originates with the pedantic
master and the careless, corruptive education of his pu
pils. Faustus, however, is not simply a pedant.
The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus : the Pedant's
Damnation and the Master's Salvation
of the Damned
O gentle Faustus leaue this damned Art,
This Magicke, that will charme thy soule to hell,
And quite bereaue thee of saluation.
Though thou hast now offended like a man,
Do not perseuer in it like a Diuell;
Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soule,
If sin by custome grow not into nature:
306
(V,i,1813-19) .
The Old Man's plea to Faustus for repentance marks the ide
ological paradox upon which the tragedy of Marlowe's play
is founded. Faustus has "offended like a man" (i.e., as he
believes, or rationalizes, he must) but diabolically rel
ishes the offense; his "amiable soule" is endangered by
habitual sin and may eventually adopt its corrupted "na
ture. " Clearly, Faustus is not simply evil: "His tremen
dous ambition is pitted against his conscience, and ulti
mately prevails; in this respect, he has sinned. But in
other respects Faustus does much to offset his acceptance
of a devil's compact.Nevertheless, Faustus' pedantic
example has a negative influence on "pupils" from Wagner to
Robin to Dick, and he is personally condemned to hell for a
stubborn ignorance that will not entertain the conception
of God's power for good as the equal of Lucifer's power for
evil.
Paradoxically, Faustus' damnation seems at times to
evolve from principles inspired by an impulse towards free-
thinking. He vows after meeting with Valdes and Cornelius,
"This night I'le coniure tho I die therefore" (I,i,188),
heroically daring destruction for the sake of receiving
mystical power and wisdom. Faustus confides that "Within
this circle is Iehoua's Name,/Forward, and backward, Ana-
gramatis’d" (I,iii,234-35), one of the specific crimes a-
gainst Christianity for which the freethinking Marlowe was
307
accused in Richard Baines' "A Note Containing the opinion
of one Christopher Marley, concerning his damnable iudgment
of religion and scorn of Gods word," delivered to the Privy
Council on May 29, 1593. But Mephostophilis undercuts
Faustus' pursuit of an intellectual martyrdom by revealing
that spirits of the damned appear only when they hear God
cursed, "Nor will we come vnlesse he vse such meanes,/
Whereby he is in danger to be damn'd" (I,iii,276-77).
Freethinking must be more than an attitude adopted by an
aspiring intellectual, or it simply contributes to the
fagade of knowledge with which the pedant deludes himself
and others. Furthermore, Faustus' nonchalance on the sub
ject of his immortal soul (illustrated by his reference to
"these vaine trifles of mens soules") exposes his foolish
supposition that truly erudite individuals do not concern
themselves about the nature of the soul ("My Ghost be with
the old Phylosophers" [I,iii,285-86]), when in fact philos
ophers from the pre-Socratics Heraclitus and Parmenides to
Aristotle (De anima) to the Neoplatonists wrote extensively
on the metaphysics of the soul. The attempt to maintain an
aura of scholarly superiority and to disdain vital concerns
like mortality for the sake of intellectual audacity does
not make Faustus a freethinker; in fact, the transparent
superficiality of the attitude merely confirms his
pedantry.
Besides the paucity of hard knowledge that his
308
doctoral fagade helps to hide, Faustus' pedantic lack of
wit, or imagination, also assists his condemnation. After
the divertissement of Mephostophilis' dancing devils, Faus
tus scoffs
FAUS. I thinke Hel's a fable.
MEPH. I, thinke so still, till experience change
thy mind.
FAUS. Why, dost thou think that Faustus shall be
damn'd?
MEPH. I, of necessity, for here's the scrowle
In which thou hast giuen thy soule to
Luatfev.
FAUS. I, and body too, but what of that:
Think'st thou that Faustus, is so fond to
imagine,
That after this life there is any paine?
No, these are trifles, and meere old wiues
Tales. (II,i,519-27).
"Experience," empirical proof of hell's existence, will in
deed change Faustus' mind— too late. The doctor cannot
"imagine" that there is a reality beyond his present cor
poreal state, so this concept, like the concept of the
soul, becomes another "trifle." Faustus' deficient imagi
nation hinges on his self-centered view of the world; he
must conceive of ideas in experiential, tangible, personal
terms. When his demon servant informs him that heaven "is
not halfe so faire/As thou, or any man that breathes on
earth" (II,ii,575-76), Faustus responds to the first half
of the observation without considering the bias of Mepho
stophilis who, as one of the damned, would naturally at
tribute a profound value to earthly life. His mundane wit
makes nothing of the parallel he clumsily draws when Beel-
309
zebub proposes the entertainment of the Seven Deadly Sins i
"That sight will be as pleasant to me, as Paradise was to
Adam the first day of creation" (II,ii,672-73). Faustus'
conceit comparing the emblems of hell to paradise is itself
damning, indicating his inability to conceptualize the grim
reality awaiting him. He is additionally incapable of mak
ing the imaginative leap that equates his own future with
Adam's anguished loss of paradise to the allure of sin.
After the angel Michael shows Adam visions of mankind's
suffering because of his fall in Pavadise Lost, the first
father moans "O Visions ill foreseen! better had I/Liv'd
ignorant of future";14 Faustus cannot replace his diaboli
cally-influenced conception of hell-as-paradise with a
product of his own imagination, so like Milton's Adam he
will comprehend too late the fragile nature of the per
ceived paradise and the profound consequences of his irre
sponsibility.
Fear and despair finally stimulate Faustus' imagina
tion, as "his labouring braine,/Begets a world of idle fan
tasies,/To ouer-reach the Diuell? but all in vaine" (V,ii,
1908-10). When he finally tries to reach for substantial
knowledge, the knowledge that will save his soul, Faustus
cannot succeed. He makes fabulous claims for his wisdom
early in the play (e.g., I,i,47-49), but when the time
comes for erudition to rescue him he ineffectually strugr
gles for salvation, his superficial understanding of
310
magical lore availing him nothing. Lacking the scholar's
discipline, Faustus compounds his problems by refusing in
pedantic obstinacy to wholly embrace God even though he has
been taught explicitly by his education in divinity and im
plicitly by Mephostophilis' avoidance of the topic that
this is where his salvation lies: irrational fear overrules
rational knowledge as he cries "Rend not my heart, for nam
ing of my Christ./Yet will I call on him: O spare me Luci
fer" (V,ii,2050-51), and in foolish despair he begs God
"Let Faustus liue in hell a thousand yeares,/A hundred
thousand, and at last be sau'd" (V,ii,2069-70). Faustus
cannot conceive of salvation through God, through Lucifer,
through himself, or even through Pythagorean metempsychosis
(V,ii,2074-79). He clings to his scholarly fagade until
the very last moment as he is being physically dragged to
hell— condemned by his pedantic resistance to the knowledge
that would have saved him, the imagination of the free
thinker within him smothered by arrogant pedantry, the doc
tor screams with his last breath, "I'le burne my bookes; oh
Mephostophilis" (V,ii,2092).
While Faustus' impetus towards freethinking is in
sufficient to save himself from damnation, he directly and
indirectly intervenes by means of Mephostophilis' services
into the lives of other individuals endangered by sin or
pedantic corruption, and becomes the agent of their spirit
ual or physical redemption. This is the crux of Marlowe's
311
tragedy. Faustus cannot save himself from damnation be
cause he is pedantically insulated to resist introspection;
but he acts the heroic role of freethinker when he frees
others from intellectual and spiritual oppression. He be
gins with the rescue of Bruno— a Bruno very like the one
who provides the readers of his dialogues with a multitude
of pedants and freethinkers.
Appropriately, Marlowe begins this significant char
acter expansion at the play's midpoint, III,i. As Puck de
clares himself an "actor" in the mechanicals' play and be
comes the engine of both Bottom's translation and, quite
unintentionally, his self-recognition, Faustus at the
Pope's court requests of Mephostophilis, "Then in this shew
let me an Actor be,/That this proud Pope may Faustus com-
ming [Greg: "read cunning"] see" (III,i,877-78). As Mar
lowe most likely knew, the celebrated Italian philosopher
Bruno was arrested in May, 1592, by the Inquisition for a
diversity of heresies; in seeming acknowledgment of this,
the Pope in Doctor Faustus ascends to his throne by step
ping on Bruno's back (figuratively, a pedantic affirmation
of the church's victory over the eclectic philosopher) and
threatens "So shall our sleeping vengeance now arise,/And
smite with death thy hated enterprise" (III ,i ,908-909).
Bruno is accused of the crime of taking the Pope's place:
"He growes to prowd in his authority,/Lifting his loftie
head aboue the clouds,/And like a Steeple ouer-peeres the
312
Church./But wee'le pul downe his haughty insolence" (111,1,
941-44; cf. Faustus' bombastic promise to Mephostophilis,
Lucifer and Beelzebub to pull down God's churches, Sc. vi,
728[A-text]). Bruno's condemnation of pedantry was well-
known to include criticism of the clergy (Protestant and
Catholic), and Marlowe portrays the Pope as a vicious
warrior churchman (akin to the Cardinal in Webster's Duch
ess of Matfi) ; thus Faustus' vow to "Restore this Bruno to
his liberty,/And beare him to the States of Germany” (III,
i,928-29) seems to portend a heroic intention as well as
effect. Like Vandermast, Bruno's representation in Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay, Marlowe's Bruno is also a German,
and a subject of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Marlowe's endeavor to give Faustus a part in Bruno's
redemption may have more than a little personal motive urg
ing it. Marlowe was himself an irreverent wit, a quality
responsible in part for his arrest on May 20, 159 3— ten
days before being stabbed to death in a bar fight— on
charges of atheistic heresy. He would naturally identify
with the self-proclaimed enemy of pedants and pedantic
clerics, and examination of the specific heresies attrib
uted to each man reveal similar targets for their wit. Re
inforcing the accusations made in letters from Thomas Kyd,
the Baines document accuses Marlowe primarily of anti-
Christian humor and gibes, such as "He affirmeth that Moy-
ses was but a Iugler, and that one Heriots being Sir W.
313
I £
Raleighs man, can do more than he." In the records sum
marizing his trial, Giordano Bruno is reported as affirming
"he was holding and teaching that Moses was a great Magi
cian, and that the law given by him to the Hebrew race-was
created by magical art" [teneva et insegnava che Moise era
un gran Mago, e che la legge data da lui al popolo Ebreo
era fatta con arta magica].^ Employing the "art" pur
chased from Mephostophilis, Faustus disguises himself as a
Cardinal and adopts the attitude of the real church towards
the philosopher Bruno and the tolerant Emperor Rudolf II,-*-**
decreeing to the Pope "That Bruno, and the Germane Emper-
our/Be held as Lollords, and bold Schismatiques,/And proud
disturbers of the Churches peace" (III,i,985-87); with un
canny accuracy, pseudo-Cardinal Faustus declares that Bruno
"shall be streight condemn'd of heresie,/And on a pile of
Fagots burnt to death" (III,i,993-94), though the philoso
pher did not die until seven years after Marlowe's own
death. The martyr's end that Faustus predicts for Bruno
also ironically foreshadows his own death by fire, in hell.
That Marlowe means for Faustus to be partially redeemed, in
at least an intellectual sense, by his scheme is revealed
in the speech of gratitude given by Charles, the play's
Holy Roman Emperor, following Bruno's safe return (III,ii,
1017-20):
This deed of thine, in setting Bruno free
From his and our professed enemy,
Shall adde more excellence vnto thine Art,
314
Then if by powerfull Necromantick spels,
Thou couldst command the worlds obedience:
For euer be belou'd of Carolus.
And if this Bruno thou hast late redeem’d
In peace possesse the triple Diadem,
And sit in Peters Chaire, despite of chance,
Thou shalt be famous through all Italy,
And honour'd of the Germane Emperour.
(IV,ii,1239-49).
Far more than the effects themselves of the magic he has
acquired in exchange for his soul, the emancipation of
Bruno the freethinker adds "excellence" to Faustus the in-
1 9
tellectual, a deed for which the Emperor offers to make
him famous in the philosopher's homeland, "through all
Italy." In obeisance to both the philosopher worthy of
wearing the "triple Diadem" and to the ruler who recognizes
his worthiness, Faustus promises to "Both loue and serue
the Germane Emperour,/And lay his life at holy Bruno ’s
feet" (IV,ii,1252-53). This pledge is so far removed from
the pedantic tendencies and proclivities Faustus exhibits
in the first two Acts of the play, that it is difficult not
to see in it a significant new dimension in Faustus' char
acter.
This positive development in Faustus' character is
substantiated by his response towards foolish characters
who seek revenge on him for embarrassments he causes them
by means of magic: in effect, he employs sorcery to turn
their misdeeds into moral exempla. After Benvolio and his
comrades ambush the doctor in revenge for the knight's pub
lic humiliation, ineffectually stabbing and decapitating
315
Faustus1 charmed body, Faustus first considers having dev
ils throw them into hell; "Yet stay, the world shall see
their miserie,/And hell shall after plague their treach-
erie" (IV,iii,1458-59). Following the torture and the new
horns that the devils inflict upon the trio, Benvolio re
veals he has indeed learned a lesson: if they were to at
tempt yet another revenge scheme, "He'd ioyne long Asses
eares to these huge homes ,/And make vs laughing stockes to
all the world" (IV,iv,1514-15). Of course the audience al
ready has laughed at the knights, who now serve the moral
ity tradition's function of moral pedagogy, retiring to an
enforced life of contemplation, to "liue obscure/Till time
shall alter this our brutish shapes:/Sith blacke disgrace
hath thus eclipst our fame./We'le rather die with griefe,
then liue with shame" (IV,iv,1518-21).
Faustus prevents an even larger group of clown charac
ters from compounding the sins they commit when attempting
to cozen the cozening conjurer. The Horse-Courser buys
Faustus' horse for forty dollars, greedily exulting "0 ioy-
full day: Now am I a made man [A-text: "Now am I made man"]
for euer" (IV,v,1544-45). Acting the pedant, however, he
pays no attention to the meaning of the doctor's words (re
ferring to Faustus as "Doctor Fustian" in the A-text),
warning him not to ride his animal through water, and ends
up astride a forty-dollar bale of hay. In the following
scene, the Carter tells the story of how he thought to
316
cheat Faustus of three farthings before watching in awe as
the doctor paid him that amount to eat all the hay he
could, and proceeded to devour his entire cartload. Robin
and Dick join the parade of grievances by complaining that
one of Faustus' devils had turned them into beasts. En
couraged by what they drunkenly perceive as their common
wrongs, the clowns intrude upon the doctor's entertainments
for the Duke of Vanholt; the Horse-Courser obstinately
challenges the Duke's servant who grumbles about their
boldness, "I hope sir, we haue wit enough to be more bold
then welcome" (IV,vii,1685-86). Like Bottom, who tells his
bewildered fellows "No words," and then organizes them for
the opportunity they believe will "make them men," Faustus
responds to the outrage of the clowns by striking them
dumb, thus preventing them from continuing long enough to
repeat the errors of Benvolio and his peers. The pedant
appears to have learned from the earlier confrontation, and
while not actually rehabilitating the cozened clowns— who
experienced their frustrations only after committing sins
of envy and covetousness themselves— he apparently saves
them from activity likely to culminate in mortal sin.
While Faustus has not learned enough to save himself
from damnation for his pedantry, he is able to do what
Friar Bacon cannot: rescue the pupil he has personally cor
rupted, preventing him from repeating the same pedantic
patterns. Confused, Wagner reports
317
I think my Maister means to die shortly, he has
made his will, & giuen me his wealth, his house,
his goods, & store of golden plate; besides two
thousand duckets ready coin'd: I wonder what he
meanes, if death were nie, he would not frolick
thus: hee1s now at supper with the schollers,
where ther's such belly-cheere, as Wagner in his
life nere saw the like: (V,i,1777-84).
Faustus1 legacy to his pupil is to prevent him from covet
ing what is natural for the poor scholar to desire, what
led him personally to damnation: wealth. Immediately,
freed from desire, Wagner's basically sound intellect fo
cuses on the situation and perplexity is the result: he
reasons logically that Faustus seems to be preparing to
die, yet the scholar's gaiety seems to deny this conclu
sion. When he returns from his final supper, the teacher
tests his pupil to determine if he has learned the proper
lesson:
FAUSTUS. Say Wagner, thou hast perus'd my will,
How dost thou like it?
WAGNER. Sir, so wondrous well,
As in all humble dutie, I do yeeld
My life and lasting service to your loue.
(V,ii,1915-19).
Wagner does indeed give the correct response, humility, and
proves himself fortified against the pedantic desire for
undeserved knowledge or power (cf. the "schoolboy" re-r
sponses of Taleus in The Massacre at Par-ts which also se
cure his escape). And his redemption reflects favorably
upon the scholar unable to rescue himself from damnation,
rendering that profound loss tragic.
318
Prospero, the Worthy Master
Like Faustus, Prospero is drawn to "These Metaphysicks
of Magitians" as the discipline without intellectual peer;
unlike his counterpart at Wittenberg, however, Prospero de
pends upon arcane erudition derived from dedicated study
and reflection in order to practice his Art. Though his
pursuit of magical knowledge left him vulnerable to the
machinations of his usurping brother, Antonio ("Me, poor
man, my library/Was dukedom large enough" [I,ii,109-10]),
the exiled duke's devotion to sorcery (as derived from its
Latin roots, sovs , "a lot" in the sense of fate or fortune,
and severe, "to arrange, to join together") was respected
by one of the play's circumspect yet honest characters,
Gonzalo: "Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me/From
mine own library with volumes that/I prize above my duke
dom" (I,ii,166-68). Marooned with his prized volumes and
his daughter, Prospero demonstrates throughout I,ii, that
he has become an ideal teacher, dedicated to knowledge and
to the well-being of his attentive, devoted pupil, justly
informing Miranda, "here/Have I, thy schoolmaster, made
thee more profit/Than other princess' can, that have more
time/For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful" (I,ii,
171-74). Just as clearly as Faustus* invocation of dia
bolical aid betrays little confidence in man's intellectual
potential to match his highest aspirations and hence makes
319
a dubious exemplar and instructor of other scholars, Pros-
pero's learned commitment!to the avs mag-Lca qualifies him
as the ideal master, a freethinker for whom, as Bruno
writes in Be gli, evoici fuvovi, "the hope, the joy and the
delights of the superior spirit are of such earnest quali
ties, that they exhaust all the passions that can have
their origin from doubt, pain and any sadness" [la speran-
za, la gioia e gli diletti del spirto superiore siano di
tal sorte intenti, che faccian spente le passioni tutte che
possano aver origine da dubbio, dolore e tristezza alcuna]
(1091-92).
Marlowe builds Faustus’ reputation as a scholar large
ly on the doctor's own testimony (in I,i), while Shake
speare illustrates Prospero's skill and erudition through
physical demonstration of his power, through the evidence
of his study patterns, and through his mystical talent of
clairvoyance. Prospero is undeniably a powerful conjuror,
having liberated the spirit Ariel from the pine tree in
which he was imprisoned by the witch, Sycorax (recounted I,
ii,270-93), who wielded "abhorr'd commands" and "potent
ministers" at her behest. Yet so potent is Prospero's own
magic, that Sycorax' son, the surly Caliban, growls "I must
obey: his Art is of such pow'r,/It would control my dam's
god, Setebos,/And make a vassal of him" (I,ii,374-76). The
deposed duke achieves his magical mastery through continual
study of his prized books, his dedication to learning re-
320
o n
fleeting his ducal nobility. Miranda assures Ferdinand
that he can safely cease his enforced labor for a time,
since "My father/is hard at study; pray, now, rest your
self :/He's safe for these three hours" (III,i,19-21). Of
course, in this instance, Prospero is not "at study," since
he has foreseen the couple's mutual attraction and now acts
to foster its growth, confiding "So glad of this as they I
cannot be,/Who are surpris'd with all; but my rejoicing at
nothing can be more. I'll to my book;/For yet, ere supper
time, must I perform/Much business appertaining" (III,i,92-
96). Unlike the pedantic scholar Faustus, however, who de
pends solely on the self-possessed puissance of his diabol
ical servant Mephostophilis to perform his feats and per
sonally maintains only the appearance of sapience, Pros
pero, following the verification of his precognitive abil
ity, plans like a freethinking scholar to return to the
source of his knowledge, his books, to obtain guidance for
21
the forthcoming trials.
Prospero's knowledge and his scholarly dedication com
bine to substantiate his suitability as a master; his joy
in exile, like that of jolly Duke Senior in the Arden
Forest of As You Like It, makes him additionally accessible
as a paternal figure, representing security and giving
meaning to an otherwise threatening, meaningless environ
ment. Admiring in awe the masque performed by spirits un
der Prospero's control, Ferdinand forgets for a moment to
321
distinguish the loss of his father, King Alonso, from the
discovery of a new father/master:
FERDINAND. This is a most majestic vision, and
Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold
To think these spirits?
PROSPERO. Spirits, which
by mine Art
I have from their confines call'd to
enact
My present fancies.
FERDINAND. Let me live here
ever;
So rare and wonder'd father and a wise
Makes this place Paradise.
(IV,i,118-24).
Ferdinand wishes, like Miranda, to become Prospero's pu
pil— for study under such a "rare and wonder'd father and a
wise" would turn his shipwrecked exile into the "Paradise"
of being taught alongside the magician's prize and prized
student, Miranda. When Prospero recalls the plot against
him and dissolves the masque, he calms the sudden concern
this raises among his two pupils with the assurance that
what they have witnessed has been illusion, instructing
them that everything changes^ ("the great globe itself,/
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve" [IV,i,153-54]),
that in fact even their existence on the island may be un
real, for "We are such stuff/As dreams are made on; and our
little life/is rounded with a sleep" (IV,i,156-58). It is
the absence of precisely this kind of imagination that ob
structs Faustus' recognition of the inevitable result of
his pedantic tendencies; Faustus cannot perceive the hell
ish reality underlying the subjective reality he has pur
322
chased at the cost of his soul. Prospero calls into ques
tion the very substance of reality itself, acting the good
father as well as the good master by inviting his pupils to
share with him "the hope, the joy and the delights of the
superior spirit" of inquiry described by Bruno.
Afflicting the Wise, Encouraging the
Foolish: the Master 1s Dilemma
Besides the reflection of his sage tutelage in dedi
cated pupils Ferdinand and Miranda, Prospero has Ariel, a
kind of supernatural sizar, and adds Gonzalo, benefactor of
the magician's books and himself a wise counselor, to rein
force his island's environment of intellectual mastery over
bestial instinct. Although their presence does contribute
ultimately to achieve this effect, there are moments when
Prospero's manipulation of them seems either to be typified
by tyrannical pedantry or to jeopardize them through ped
antic irresponsibility. Where the spirit Ariel is in
volved, Prospero is clearly not a pedant in the sense of
Faustus, who sells his soul to receive the service of Meph-
ostophilis' diabolical knowledge; as the spirit's savior,
Prospero deserves his allegiance. Like a good pupil, Ariel
performs the tasks Prospero requires of him precisely as
they are ordered (I,ii,237-38), and reminds the magician to
"Remember I have done thee worthy service;/Told thee no
lies, made no mistakings, serv'd/Without or grudge or grum
323
blings" (I,ii,246-49); we need only think of Puck's premed
itated mischief and feigned excuse "I mistook" to compre
hend the opposing attitudes motivating the two spirits.
Though Prospero enthusiastically confirms Ariel's claims
with praise and promises of freedom (e.g., I,ii,422-24,444-
45), the liberation he so tantalizingly dangles in front of
the spirit seems perpetually, even cruelly, deferred. When
Ariel reports the chaos caused aboard the ship carrying
Alonso and his entourage, Shakespeare gives us a brief re
minder of Puck's gleeful deviltry reported to Oberon:
Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plung'd in the foaming brine, and quit the
vessel,
Then all afire with me: the King's son,
Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring,— then like reeds, not
hair,—
Was the first man that leap'd; cried, "Hell is
empty,
And all the devils are here."
PROSPERO. Why, that's my
spirit! (I,ii,208-15).
Even Prospero's response reminds us of Oberon's "This falls
out better than I could devise." The difference is that
Prospero1s joy results from Ariel's precise enactment of
his command— by which the safety of those involved would be
guaranteed— while Oberon ignores the mayhem caused by Puck
in haphazardly effecting his revenge on Titania. A note of
menace also appears initially after Ariel reminds Prospero
of his promise to release the spirit for successfully per
324
forming the tasks assigned to him:
PROSP. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an
oak,
And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till
Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.
ARIEL. Pardon, master:
I will be correspondent to command,
And do my spriting gently.
PROSP. Do so; and after
two days
I will discharge thee.
ARIEL. That's my noble master!
(I,ii,294-99).
Prospero's outrage quickly changes to compassion, his anger
turned away by Ariel's prudent modesty. Shakespeare con
tinually proves Ariel a good pupil, and the spirit recog
nizes the magnitude of Prospero1s trust when sent to pro
tect Gonzalo from Sebastian and Antonio: "My master through
his Art foresees the danger/That you, his friend, are in;
and sends me forth,— /For else his project dies,— to keep
them living" (II,i,292-94). Only an irreproachable pupil
could be entrusted with safeguarding the life of this val
ued, trusted friend, and Prospero reveals that he has ab
solute confidence in the student so intimately and faith
fully united with him that he can understand even his mas
ter's unspoken lessons ("Thy thoughts I cleave to" [IV,i,
165]),23
During the great storm at sea that brings him to Pros
pero ' s island, Gonzalo is challenged by the Boatswain, "You
are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to si
lence, and work the peace of the presence, we will not hand
325
a rope more; use your authority" (I,i,20-23); Gonzalo is
not a magician, but he is a good counselor and a good
friend. He provides Prospero with the books that in his
exile supply the knowledge that later enables him to or
chestrate a rescue. However, when Gonzalo is marooned in
the company of the Machiavellians Antonio and Sebastian, he
is endangered and seemingly rendered helpless, as his good
counsel does not affect the conspirators. He tries to cen
sor Sebastian's insensitive remarks to Alonso concerning
Ferdinand's loss, cautioning "The truth you speak doth lack
some gentleness,/And time to speak it in: you rub the
sore,/When you should bring the plaster" (II,i,132-36);
Antonio, equally insensitive, shows the pedant's lack of
imagination by ignoring the meaning of Gonzalo's "healing"
metaphor to reply instead in superficially related lan
guage, "And most chirugeonly" (II,i,132-36). Antonio and
Sebastian (with Alonso, the "three men of sin," III,iii,53)
relentlessly bait Gonzalo and the hapless Adrian (e.g., II,
i,16-21,59-65), their caustic wit resembling that of The
seus and Demetrius at the performance of Pyramus and This-
be . When the grieving Alonso calls for this pedantic
chatter to cease, the good counselor supports him:
ALONSO. Prithee, no more: thou dost talk all
nothing to me.
GONZALO. I do well believe your highness; and did
it to minister occasion to these gentle
men, who are of such sensible and nimble
lungs that they always use to laugh at
nothing.
326
ANTONIO. 'Twas you we laughed at.
GONZALO. Who in this kind of merry fooling am
nothing to you: so you may continue/ and
laugh at nothing still. (II/i,166-7 4).
Despite the outward appearances, Gonzalo is in no real dan
ger as long as he can outwit the conspiratorial duo, and
Prospero realizes this; while the old counselor refuses to
surrender to their caustic wit, defeating them at their own
pedantic game of words, he proves his superior wisdom (and
insight: see III,iii,104-106). It is precisely this wisdom
that leads him in retrospect to acknowledge the necessity
of the trials faced on the island, admiring the intellect
of the man whose vision enabled them to be reconciled, re
created an order overthrown by Antonio's treachery years
before, and led them to rediscover the individual potential
that was forfeited "When no man was his own" (V,i,213).
As a negative counterbalance to Prospero's successful
tutoring of Miranda and Ariel, Caliban's education is a
dismal failure; this "salvage and deformed slave" is yet
another example of the corrupted pupil, but his corruption
is hereditary (i.e., not pedantically induced), manifested
physically through deformity and intellectually by mis
anthropy aimed specifically at Prospero, whom he considers
an interloper on the island that is his birthright as the
son of Sycorax the witch, who lived in exile there. Cali
ban has had the opportunity to experience Prospero's nur-
turant instruction, but has remained bestial both in his
327
obstinate resistance to learning, and in his carnal
appetite:
PROSPERO. Thou most lying slave,
Whom stripes may move, not kindness I I
have us'd thee,
Filth as thou art, with human care; and
lodg'd thee
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek
to violate
The honour of my child.
CALIBAN. 0 ho, 0 ho! would 't had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled
else
This isle with Calibans. (I,ii,346-53).
Like the pedant whose desire to achieve and sustain a self-
serving glory motivates his adoption of the fagade of
knowledge and the multiplication of error through his ex
ample, Caliban desires union with Miranda in order to per
petuate his misconception of paradise. He has no desire
*
to develop any personal potential, nor even to make Cali
bans of Miranda and Prospero through his own example. Cal
iban has no wish to teach or to be taught; he simply wishes
to surround himself with more Calibans. Miranda accuses
him of being impervious to instruction, but recalls that
with patience she taught the brute language. Verifying the
axiom concerning pedants that facility in language is no
guarantee of serious intellect, Caliban responds "You
taught me language; and my profit on 't/is, I know how to
curse. The red plague rid you/For learning me your lan
guage ! " (I,ii,365-67) .
Prospero and Miranda are also unsuccessful in their
328
attempts to educate Caliban because their instruction in
language and manners does not offer him what he most spe
cifically wants, to replace Prospero as the island's rul
er. His rejection of the wise tutors is subsequently
compounded by his encounter with the two fools, Trinculo
and Stephano. Trinculo stumbles upon the cowering Caliban
who is hiding because he assumes the approaching voices
must belong to spirits controlled by Prospero (again under
scoring the limitations imposed, and ignorance reinforced,
by deficient imagination): the jester wishes he was back in
England, for "there would this monster make a man; any
strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a
doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see
a dead Indian" (II ,ii,30-34). Shakespeare recycles Snug's
lament from A Midsummer Night's Dream, "If our sport had
gone forward, we had all been made men," as Trinculo ig
nores the wonder of the unknown and greedily translates his
discovery into wealth. The drunken Stephano, however, pre
sumes to take the place of Caliban's previous tutors, pry
ing open the wretched beast's mouth with the promise "here
is that which will give language to you" (II, ii,84-85; he
ironically adds, "you cannot tell who's your friend"),
foolishly attempting with wine what the great magician
Prospero with all his wisdom has not been able to achieve:
to "make a man" of Caliban.
Caliban's new schoolmasters waste no time establishing
329
themselves as menacing pedants. Trinculo ridicules their
impressionable pupil and outlines his most probable meth
odology of instruction: "I shall laugh myself to death at
this puppy-headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could
find in my heart to beat him” (II,ii,154-56). Though he
sniggers at Caliban's sincere (albeit inebriated) worship,
he is nevertheless far more perceptive than his comrade,
noting "there's but five upon this island: we are three of
them; if th' other two be brain'd like us, the state
totters" (III,ii,5-6). Since Prospero is still in control
of the island, the state is not "tottering," even though
tottering Stephano, operating through the befuddling haze
of his wine, fancies himself the island's new ruler and
promises royal reward for Trinculo's wit (IV,i,242-43).
The butler, too, acts the pedant by beating Trinculo (so
Caliban observes and learns: "Beat him enough: after a lit
tle time,/I'11 beat him too" [III,ii,83-84]), and fore
stalls with sinister rhetoric any attempt to test his pow
er, warning "Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head: if
you prove a mutineer,— the next tree!" (Ill,ii,33-34).
The lesson Caliban learns from his foolish counselors
is that of pedantry, and hence he formulates a plan to se
cure what is in fact a pedantic obsession, dominance (in
this case over Prospero), by means that only a pedant could
believe effective: "possess his books; for without them/
He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not/One spirit to
330
command: they do all hate him/As rootedly as I. Burn but
his books" (III,ii,89-95). Caliban's plan is to make a
Caliban of Prospero, to reduce the magician to his own lev
el, believing that Prospero*s knowledge is ultimately as
superficial as the pedant's— or as Faustus'— because it is
predicated on appearance rather than substance, on knowl
edge the scholar does not truly possess; thus if he removes
the symbols of Prospero's magic, his books, he believes he
will also nullify the magician's power. He even contrives
to populate the island with pedants, informing Stephano
that Miranda "will become thy bed, I warrant,/And bring
forth brave brood" (III,ii,102-103). As his plan progress
es he becomes increasingly more vindictive, more obstinate,
so when Stephano predicts that this new realm will "prove a
brave kingdom to me," Caliban malignantly admonishes him it
will only be so "When Prospero is destroy'd" (III, ii,144).
Prospero, however, is aware of the clowns' plot (revealing
as the masque dissolves, "I had forgot that foul conspira-
cy/Of the beast Caliban and his confederates/Against my
life" [IV,i,139-41]), indicating that it, too, is part of
his master scheme. The rationale for encouraging Caliban's
plot may be found in an explanation by Teofilo in De la
causa when Dicsono inquires how what is imperfect may ever
hope to share in what is perfect:
DICSONO. What will you say of death, or corrup
tion, of vices, of defects, of monsters?
Do you wish that these then still have a
331
place in that which is the all, that can
be and is in act that which it is in
potency?
TEOFILO. These things you unfold are not act and
potency, but are defect and impotency,
because they are not all they can be,
and they strain towards that which they
can be. Therefore, not being able to be
many things all at once, they lose the
one existence in order to have the oth
er : and at any time they confuse the
former existence with the latter, they
are diminished, deficient and crippled
by the incompatibility of the former
existence and the latter, and the situa
tion of matter in both former and lat
ter.
[D. Che dirai della morte, della corrozione, di
vizii, di diffetti, di mostri? Volete che
questi ancora abiano luogo in quello che S il
tutto, che pu5 essere ed § in atto tutto
quello che in potenza?
T. Queste cose non sono atto e potenza, ma sono
difetto e impotenza, che si trovano nelle
cose esplicate, perch§ non sono tutto quel
che possono essere, e si forzano a quello che
possono essere. Laonde, non possendo essere
insieme e a un tratto tante cose, perdeno
l'uno essere per aver l'altro: e qualche vol-
ta confondeno l'uno essere con l'altro, e ta-
lor sono diminuite, manche e stroppiate per
1' incompassabilita. di questo essere e di
quello, e occupazion della materia in questo
e quello] (282-83).
Caliban is clearly "straining towards" something he is not,
although it is not clear whether he "can be" more than he
is, more than a "salvage and deformed slave." But he can
not be both bestial and human; for all of Prospero's at
tempts to civilize him, as long as he chooses to retain his
inhuman heritage, he "loses the one existence in order to
have the other." It is the conflation of being a brute
with being a man that makes Caliban "diminished, deficient
332
and crippled" and compels Prospero to treat him as a mere
beast of burden— like Brunellus the Scholar-Ass, who can
learn no more than how to bray, despite his years of
schooling. Prospero, then, seeks to bring Caliban to a
recognition of his beastliness by dramatizing once and for
all that knowledge, not treachery, translates into power.
The question is, does Prospero perform this lesson in the
guise of the wise master, or of the pedant?
"With my nobler reason 'gainst my fury":
the Freethinker's Victory over Pedantry
Prospero1s "art" seems in terms of physical accoutre
ments to have an explicit kinship with both the symbolic
garb of the university doctor and the instrument synonymous
with the schoolmaster's profession, connected by Bruno to
the character of the pedant, the former representing the
fagade of substantial knowledge, the latter serving as an
emblem of the pedant's menace. Prospero's conjuring is
performed while he is dressed in his magician's robes (e.g.
in Act Five stage directions, "Enter PROSPERO -in his magic
robes"), and when he asks Miranda to "Lend thy hand,/And
pluck my magic garment from me.— So:/Lie there, my Art" (I,
ii,23-25), he is identifying his gown with his occult wis
dom— reminding us of the pedant's university gown, which
provides an illusion of erudition by endowing him with an
authority unsupported by substantial intelligence (cf.
333
Antonio's comments to Sebastian, II,i,265-69, indicating he
is a duke in "garments" only). Prospero also employs his
conjuring staff as the schoolmaster employs the everpresent
rod, warning future pupil Ferdinand to put up his sword,
"For I can here disarm thee with this stick/And make thy
weapon drop" (I,ii,475-76). Distinguishing Prospero from
the pedant who hides behind the fagade of intellect, how
ever, is his willingness to abandon the magician's accou
trements when the time comes for him to expose himself as
the exiled Duke of Milan so the others will comprehend the
purpose of their recent adventures. He orders Ariel to
"Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell:/I will disease me,
and myself present/As I was sometime Milan" (V,i,84-86).
In the course of his lessons to Miranda in their first
scene onstage, Prospero reveals his unintentional assist
ance in the political corruption of his brother, Antonio.
Like Lear, who injudiciously divided his kingdom among his
daughters and expected to retain his royal perquisites,
Prospero reports "The government I cast upon my brother,/
And to my state grew stranger, being transported/And rapt
in secret studies" (I,ii,75-77). Rather than growing in
wisdom, however, Antonio became "perfected" in "how to
grant suits,/How to deny them, who t'advance, and who/To
trash for over-topping," preying parasitically like "The
ivy which had hid my princely trunk,/And suck'd my verdure
out on't" (I,ii,79-81,86-87). Yet Prospero does not seek
334
absolution from fault by hiding behind the veneer of abused
scholar; he acknowledges his own culpability in Antonio's
corruption:
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind
With that which, but by being so retir'd,
O'er-priz'd all popular rate, in my false brother
Awak'd an evil nature; and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood in its contrary, as great
As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,
A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,
Not only with what my revenue yielded,
But what my power might else exact, like one
Who having into truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his own memory,
To credit his own lie, he did believe
He was indeed the duke; (I,ii,89-103)
like the pedant whose neglect of his students may foster
corruption, Prospero's retirement into the comfort of iso
lated study "awak'd an evil nature" in Antonio, causing a
negative reaction against him like that of Goneril and
Regan against their father, proportionately "as great/As my
trust was." Through introspection uncharacteristic of the
pedant, however, the former duke perceives a kind of jus
tice in his banishment and recognizes that the island exile
has served as penance for his "confidence sans bound."
Though Prospero intellectually reconciles his com
plicity in Antonio's treachery with his subsequent exile,
he cannot similarly accept his failure to transform Caliban
the beast into Caliban the rational human being, and it is
his response to this labor in vain that nearly marks the
victory of irrational pedantry over the rational free-
335
thinker. When he attempts to do more than he has the
knowledge to accomplish— that is, to change Caliban's na
ture by means of an art that invokes the cooperation, not
the transmutation, of nature— Prospero is doomed to failure
as surely as Faustus, for his pedantic overreaching, is
doomed to damnation. The master cannot control his anger
when preparing to deal with the three clownish iconoclasts
stalking him, and in frustration calls Caliban "A devil, a
born devil, on whose nature/Nurture can never stick; on
whom my pains,/Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;/
And as with age his body uglier grows,/So his mind cankers.
I will plague them all,/Even to roaring" (IV,i,188-93).
Prospero is projecting the despair ("all, all lost, quite
lost") related to his own failure to reclaim the vestiges
of humanity in Caliban onto his brutish slave, as a pupil
"on whose nature/Nurture can never stick," using this to
justify pedantic vindictiveness and the satisfaction of
"plaguing them all." Like the schoolmaster, corrupted by
the power he wields over his students, who punishes out of
a frustrated need to affirm his own potency rather than a
genuine desire to correct his pupils' faults, he torments
his beastly challenger in kind with spirits shaped as "dogs
and hounds"; the magician viciously orders Ariel to also
"charge my goblins that they grind their joints/With dry
convulsions; shorten up their sinews/With aged cramps" (IV,
i,258-60). In the tempest caused by Prospero's indignant
336
rage, rivaling in its horrific effects the original tempest
staged to bring Alonso and his company to the island, the
magician is so pedantically obsessed with achieving revenge
on the beastly son of Sycorax that he neglects the humane
for whose safety he is responsible, including the innocent
25
Gonzalo. Prospero's wisdom temporarily fails him here,
and it takes an exterior manifestation of that wisdom, in
the form of a good pupil, to rescue the master, as well as
the endangered humans, from his own obstinate pedantry.
The virtue of the student well taught is introduced
early in the play, as Miranda pleads with her father to
allay the roaring waters his art has stirred, for she has
witnessed the foundering ship: "0, I have suffered/With
those that I saw suffer!" (I,ii,5-6). Assuring his daugh-'
ter that no harm has been done and that he has no self-
serving motive in his actions ("I have done nothing but in
care of thee,/Of thee, my dear one" [I,ii,16-17]), Prospero
observes the compassionate example of his most valued
pupil— in the midst of an exhibition of incredible power
that foreshadows his later, uncontrolled display. During
the later tempest, however, Miranda has retired to the
study of a new discipline, love, with Ferdinand, and cannot
come to temper her teacher's wisdom with compassion. For
tunately for all involved, another well-taught student,
Ariel, intercedes in her place.
To counteract the storm of irrational violence Pros-
337
pero has unleashed on the innocent as well as the guilty,
Ariel forces his master to recall the good counselor re
sponsible for the sources of the magician's knowledge, "Him
you term'd, sir, 'The good old lord, Gonzalo';/His tears
run down his beard, like winter's drops/From eaves of
reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em,/That if you now
beheld them, your affections/Would become tender"; he adds,
"Mine would, sir, were I human" (V,i,16-19,20). This is
the perfect argument, formulated from the premise calculat
ed to penetrate Prospero1s pedantic demonstration of domi
nance: the revenge being enacted is meant to punish the
bestial actions of other men, but in doing so the human
magician has lost his own humane perspective,2^ and must be
reminded of it by a spirit whose only sense of humanity is
that with which he has been imbued by the lessons of that
same human magician. Prospero immediately perceives the
rationale of Ariel's example:
Hast thou, which are but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am stuck to th'
quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further. (V,i,21-30).
This is the same lesson for which Friar Bacon pays dearly,
by witnessing death resulting from his own pedantic insen
sitivity. Prospero reviews the many wonders he has
338
achieved through the agency of magic, and then, like Friar
Bacon, absolutely abjures his magic (V,i,50-51); he vows to
break and bury the counterpart of the pedant's rod, his
conjuring staff, after a final charm and— unlike Faustus,
who carelessly strews his magic books where foolish "stu
dents" can find and abuse them— swears "deeper than did
ever plummet sound/I'll drown my book" (V,i,56-57). What
redeems Prospero is not the act of rejecting magic, but the
nature of the self-sacrifice involved in it: the man whose
"library was dukedom enough" surrenders his treasured
occult tomes and the power they represent because he loves
humanity more, and he is repulsed by the notion that, how
ever inadvertently, and for whatever good intention, he has
oppressed the minds of other men. Thus he rejoices when
the charms begin to dissolve and "their rising senses/Begin
to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle/Their clearer
reason" (V,i,66-68).
Prospero's freethinking victory of rational thought
over stubborn pedantry provides yet another lesson, yield
ing immediate benefits to all of his students. Joined by
all the members of the illusory shipwreck, Miranda is over
awed by the diversity of the new humans and with the ex
citement of investigating the unknown, exclaims "O, won
der 1 /How many goodly creatures are there here!/How beaute
ous mankind is! O brave new world,/That has such people in
't!" (V,i,181-84). Caliban, repentant, recognizes "What a
339
thrice-double ass/Was I" to mistake Stephano for a god, and
in the wake of Prospero's ire^? prudently pledges "I'll be
wise hereafter,/And seek for grace" (V,i,294-96). Ariel,
for faithful service as well as for his fortuitous, wise
counsel, is given his freedom (V,i,316-18— following yet
one more task, a further testimony of Prospero's steadfast
trust of his pupil and of his own teaching). Pedantry and
ignorance are banished, and as Bruno declares in the
Spaeeio, their place is consequently assumed by the con
comitants of freethinking, whether in the heavens or in the
intellectual discipline of men:
"Well then," said Jove, "from this place is
parted Bestiality, Ignorance, Worthless and Per
nicious Fable; and where the Centaur is, Just
Simplicity, Moral Fable remains. From where the
Altar28 is, Superstition, Infidelity, Impiety is
parted; and staying there, Religion That Is Not
Vain, Faith That Is Not Foolish, and the True And
Sincere Piety."
[— Or bene dunque, disse Giove, da questo luogo
si parta la Bestiality, I'Ignoranza, la Favola
disutile e perniziosa; e dove 5 il Centauro, ri-
magna la Semplicity giusta, la Favola morale.
Da ove & lAltare, si parta la Superstizione,
1'Infidelity, l'lmpietS, e vi soggiorne la non
vana Religione, la non stolta Fede e la vera e
sincera Pietade] (825-26).
Notes
"Pill possono far gli maghi per mezzo della fede, che
gli medici per via de la verit&: e ne gli pill gravi morbi
pill vegnono giovati gl1infermi con credere quel tanto che
quelli dicono, che con intendere quel tanto che questi fac-
ciono" (1035).
2
The natural philosopher’s pursuit of the divine
presence in nature is discussed in Lynn Thorndike, A Histo
ry of Magio and Experimental Science 8 vols. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1941), V, 139-58; the pantheis
tic sympathies that Bruno expresses in both De la causa and
De I'infinito in terms of the infinite One, the Brunonian
version of monadism, qualifies him as a natural philoso
pher. Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renais
sance: A Study in Intellectual Patterns (Los Angeles: Uni
versity of California Press, 1972) examines natural magic
as a practical application of natural philosophy, pp. 111-
12, while Traister, Heavenly Necromancers, further distin
guishes between natural magic and ceremonial magic, the
latter dichotomized into "goetic magic," aimed at conjuring
demonic spirits, and "theurgy," the conjuring of angelic
spirits (pp. 3-21, including a brief discussion of Bruno,
pp. 15-16). D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from
Ficino to Campanella (London: The Warburg Institute, Uni
versity of London, 1958), gives a general discussion of
natural/spiritual and demonic divisions of Ficino’s Neo-
platonic magic, pp. 75-84, noting that only transitive mag
ical operations "can be socially important; subjective mag
ic may be good or bad from the point of view of morals or
religion, but, since it does not affect other people, it is
not an instrument of power for social, political or prose
lytizing religious ends, such as were aimed at, for exam
ple, by Bruno or Campanella" (p. 82). Cf. Frances A.
Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Lon
don: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), who sees in Doctor
Faustus a contribution to the contemporary anti-witch hys
teria rather than the more conventional investigation of
the natural philosopher's heroic but doomed overreaching of
341
human limitation/ pp. 115-21.
The competing theories concerning the play’s dating
between either 1588-89, or 1592-93, are discussed in The
Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe ed. Fredson Bowers,
2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), II,
123-59. Act, scene, and line references to Doctor Faustus
will be taken from Marlowe's Doctor Faustus 1604-1616:
Parallel Texts ed. W.W. Greg (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1950), and will be included in parentheses following cited
or quoted passages of B-text (unless otherwise noted).
4
Act, scene, and line references to The Tempest will
be taken from The Tempest ed. Frank Kermode, The Arden
Shakespeare (1954; rpt. New York: Methuen, 1984), and will
be included in parentheses following cited or quoted pas
sages .
5 See above, pp. 212-2 2.
Faustus dismisses philosophy as "odious and ob
scure," while law and medicine are "for petty wits"; he re
inforces his earlier intention of being "a Diuine in shew"
by concluding that "Diuinitie is basest of the three,/Vn-
pleasant, harsh, contemptible and vilde" (I,i,141-42[A-
text]); from the man who earlier declared his "sweet de
light disputes/in heauenly matters of Theologie , " this is
abject hypocrisy. By divorcing himself from the primary
disciplines of university erudition, he is left with what
all scholars would receive training in, rhetoric, and sim
ply lacks the intellectual tools for overcoming Mephostoph-
ilis' manipulation. Supporting this, T. McAlindon, "The
Ironic Vision: Diction and Theme in Marlowe's Doctor Faus
tus, " Review of English Studies 32 (1981), makes "a dis
tinction between the books proper to a scholar (identifi
able with substance, permanence, and truth) and the books
and shows of the magician (identifiable with appearance,
change, and deceit)" (p. 135). Concerning the structure of
Faustus1 "ravishment" by demonic magic, Robert H. West,
"The Impatient Magic of Dr. Faustus ," English Literary
Renaissance 4 (1974), states that "The demonological in
dices to the meaning of Dr. Faustus fall into three divi
sions fitting the play’s three natural parts: first, Faus
tus' dangerous decisions for magic and, with his failure
there, the fatal one for witchcraft; second, Faustus'
struggle with hell's false service and fearful grip; and
finally, Faustus' long-announced fate" (p. 227), his damna
tion and conveyance to hell.
^ Bonno Tapper, "Aristotle's 'Sweet Analutikes' in
Marlowe's Doctor Faustus," Studies in Philology .27 (1930),
342
considers it a direct reference to Ramus* definition of
logic as ars bene disserendi (p. 217) , but has no explana
tion for why Marlowe would want to do this, other than to
allude to the Aristotle/Ramus controversy at Cambridge,
overlooking the authoritarian Aristotelianism at Oxford and
concluding "Marlowe was a student at Cambridge from 1580 to
1587. Does it seem likely that the revolt against Aris
totle passed by this young revolutionary unnoticed?" (p.
219) .
8 His faulty reasoning is exemplified by the syllo
gism, "If we say that we haue no sinne/We deceiue our
selues, and there is no truth in vs./Why then belike we
must sinne,/And so consequently die,/I, we must die, an eu-
erlasting death" (I,i,69-73). If we let A='we say we sin,'
~A='we do not say we sin,' B='we lie,' and ~B='we tell the
truth [we do not lie],* then the logical construct, "if ~A
then ~B = if A then B" is valid as a closed system? but ex
tending "if A then B" to mean that the truth dictates sin
as a necessary conclusion and leads therefore to "an euer-
lasting death" is embellishing the premise with illogic,
ignoring the obvious Christian premise of divine mercy.
Either Faustus is a poor logician, or he is indeed merely
"a Diuine in shew." Or both. On Faustus' false logic, or
sophistry, see A.L. French, "The Philosophy of Dr. Faus
tus," Essays in Criticism 20 (1970), pp. 127-28.
9
Mephostophilis is the most accomplished wordsmrth m
the play, and is capable of coining double entendre that
has the appearance of mere malapropism. When he arrives
with Faustus in Rome, the doctor quips "I hope his Holi-
nesse will bid vs welcome"; Mephostophilis replies "All's
one, for wee'l be bold with his Venson" (III,i,830-31), the
wordplay seeming to confuse "venison" for the Pope's wel
come, or "benison," when in fact the two interlopers will
also proceed to steal the meat from the Pope's table.
Benvolio, however, operates at the opposite (and pedantic)
extreme of refusing to allow any further exchange of ideas
concerning his plan to ambush Faustus in revenge for the
horning incident, and forbids all words: "No words: this
blow ends all,/Hell take his soule, his body thus must
fall" (IV,ii,1414-15). Faustus ensures his damnation by
alternately putting absolute faith, or no faith at all, in
words.
Cf. Peter, the Alchemist's boy, in Lyly's Gallathea
(1584-85), who describes in II,iii, the rich language of
alchemy as "Sublimation, Almigation, Calcination, Rubifica-
tion, Encorporation, Circination, Sementation, Albifica-
tions, and Frementation. With as many termes vnpossible to
be vttered, as the Arte to be compassed." In truth, how
343
ever, "such a beggarly science it is, and so strong on mul
tiplication, that the end is to haue neyther gold, wit, nor
honestie" (The Complete Works of John Lyly ed. R. Warwick
Bond, 3 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902], II, 442).
Valdes reiterates the pejorative emphasis on language asso
ciated with the pedant when he tells his pupil Faustus,
"First 11le instruct thee in the rudiments,/And then wilt
thou be perfecter then I" (I, i,183-84); and Faustus is
quick to indicate that the rudiments of magic are all he
learns and all he needs to contact Lucifer via his lieuten
ant, Mephostophilis. Phoebe S. Spinrad, "The Dilettante's
Lie in Doctor Faustus," Texas Studies In Literature and
Language 24 (1982), discusses the effects of Faustus'
flawed Latin, pp. 245-46. Spinrad uses the metaphor of the
"dilettante" to explain Faustus' pedantic superficiality.
This is one of several repetitions of the pedantic
pattern also witnessed following Bottom's translation (see
p. 251, above). Another example involves Benvolio in Act
Four and is appropriately prefaced by elements typical of
the motif of the menacing pedant. The bumptious knight,
impatiently awaiting Faustus' entertainment of Emperor
Charles, growls "zounds I could eate my selfe for anger"—
certainly a bestial (though not natural) impulse— "to
thinke I haue beene such an Asse all this while, to stand
gaping after the diuels Gouernor, and can see nothing" (IV,
i,1275-78). Following the horning incident at court which
foreshadows Benvolio's more permanent transformation, Faus
tus removes the knight's antlers and warns "hereafter sir,
looke you speake well of Schollers"; the belligerent Benvo
lio curses "Il'e [sic.] nere trust smooth faces, and small
ruffes more" (IV,i,1360-61,1364), replying in terms of
scholarly countenance, the same identification with appear
ance rather than substance that protects and supports the
pedant. This sets up the final transformations of Benvo
lio, Fredericke and Martino after their pedantically vin
dictive assault on the conjuror. The knight projects his
guilt and punishment onto his fellows:
BENVOLIO. My friends transformed thus: 0 hellish
spite,
Your heads are all set with homes.
FREDERICKE. You hit it right,
It is your owne you meane feele on your
head. (IV,iv,1504-1507).
12
Faustus' comparison of himself to Musaeus is an
ironically appropriate choice: John Lempriere, Lemprlere’s
Classical Dictionary (1788; rpt. London: Bracken Books,
198 4) , notes that Virgil honors the famous Greek poet, "son
or disciple of Linus or Orpheus," in the Aeneldt however,
there was also a Latin poet named Musaeus, "whose composi
344
tions were offensively obscene" (p. 425) . The denizens of
hell would undoubtedly welcome such a poet. Faustus is a
significant influence on Wittenberg's scholars; one ex
plains "Were he a stranger, not allyed to me,/The danger of
his soule would make me mourne" (I,ii,219-20). And Faustus
clearly is "allyed" to his pupils.
13
Robert R. Reed, Jr., T i n e . Occult on the Tudor and
Stuart Stage (Boston: The Christopher Publishing House,
1965), pp. 92-93. Reed feels that Faustus' love for his
fellow man paradoxically displays "an intense love for the
God whom he has renounced" (p. 93).
14
John Milton: Complete Poems and Mag or Prose ed.
Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: The Odyssey Press, 1957),
p. 450.
15
In the introductory section of Bruno's treatise,
Articvli centum et sexaginta adversvs hvivs tempestatis
mathematicos atque philosophos (Prague, 1588), dedicated
"Ad diwm Rodolphvm II, Romanorvm Imperatorem," Bruno sa
lutes Rudolf as "Augustissime Caesar" and praises free
thinkers while condemning shortsighted clerics. Boulting,
Giordano Bruno, notes "Bruno's ideal was the transformation
of Catholic Christianity, purged of parasitic absurdities,
into a true progressive religion" (p. 212); see pp. 210-13,
discussing Bruno's work at Emperor Rudolf's court.
^ In The Works of Thomas Kyd ed. F.S. Boas (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1901), p. cxiv. For an overview of Mar
lowe's relation to Hariot and Ralegh's intellectual circle,
see Eleanor Grace Clark, Ralegh and Marlowe: A Study in
Elizabethan Fustian (New York: Fordham University Press,
1941), pp. 311-37. For a pragmatic interpretation of
Baines' note, see Paul H. Kocher, "Marlowe's Atheist Lec
ture," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 39 (1940),
98-106; Kocher calls the document "nothing more or less
than a record of Marlowe's share in a single conversation
at which Baines or some informant of his must have been
present" (p. 98).
17
Mercati, II sommario, p. 86.
18
"Tolerant" is something of an understatement: see
J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellec
tual History, 1576-1612 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973);
"Rudolf and the Occult Art," pp. 196-242, recounts his pa
tronage of occult philosophers (see especially pp. 229-34
on Bruno).
1 9
He responds to the same rhetorical questions raised
345
on behalf of Copernicus in La aena: "notwithstanding the
age is buried in the dark caverns of blind, malignant, ar
rogant and envious ignorance; do you wish, by noting him
for what he has not been able to do, to place him in the
same number of the gregarious multitude, whose discoursing
is guided and is precipitated more by the sense of ear of
a bestial and ignoble faith; or do you wish to count him
among those who with happy mind have been able to guide and
to raise himself through the most faithful direction of the
eye of the divine intelligence?" [per tanti secoli sepolta
nelle tenebrose caverne de la cieca, maligna, proterva ed
invida ignoranza; vogli, notandolo per quel che non ha pos-
suto fare, metterlo nel medesmo numero della gregaria mol-
titudine, che discorre, si guida e si precipita pid per il
senso de l'orecchio d'una brutale e ignobil fede; che vogli
computarlo tra quei, che col felice ingegno s'han possuto
drizzare ed inalzarsi per la fidissima scorta de l'occhio
della divina intelligenza?] (29).
20 Kermode explains that "The self-discipline of the
magician is the self-discipline of the prince. It was the
object of the good ruler to make his people good by his own
efforts" (p. xlix); as writers from Erasmus to Elyot to
Castiglione emphasized, this could only follow from the
ruler's own struggle to perfect himself. Yates, The Occult
Philosophy -in the Elizabethan Age, sees a more overtly po
litical purpose in this emphasis: the representation of "a
return to the magical world of the late Virgin Queen, her
chastity and pure religion" by "Her philosopher, the white
magician Doctor Dee, is defended in Prospero, the good and
learned conjuror," for "The presence of the Dee-like magus
in the play falls naturally into place as part of the Eliz
abethan revival" (p. 160). Paul A. Cantor, "Prospero's
Republic: The Politics of Shakespeare's The Tempest,"
Shakespeare as Political Thinker ed. John Alvis and Thomas
G. West (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), of
fers the more conservative assessment that "Unlike the
power-hungry usurpers who struggle against him, Prospero
does not believe that political life is the ’be-all and the
end-all' of human existence. His original disposition to
philosophy guarantees that he will remain aware of aspects
of life beyond the political, and this larger perspective
helps to moderate whatever ambition he develops" (p. 254).
O 1
Of course, the distinction between black, or demon-
ological magic and white, or theurgic magic reinforces the
differences between the two scholars. Robert H. West,
Shakespeare & the Outer Mystery (Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, 1968), discusses Prospero's magic both lit
erally and figuratively as a thaumaturgical operation,
"Ceremonial Magic in The Tempest," pp. 80-95. David
346
Woodman, White Magie and English Renaissance Drama
(Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973), dis
cusses the church's rationalizing of white magic by posi
tively contrasting it with black magic (pp. 26-30), and ex
amines Prospero as a practitioner of white magic (pp. 73-
86); Traister, Heavenly Necromancers, makes a similar ex
amination, emphasizing characteristics of the stage magi
cian type ("He is the victor in a magical contest? he com
mands spirits; he is the director of numerous shows and
spectacles; and he assists young love"), pp. 125-49. Cf.
Karol Berger, "Prospero's Art," Shakespeare Studies 10
(1977), 211-39.
D'Orsay W. Pearson, "'Unless I Be Reliev'd by Prayer':
The Tempest in Perspective," Shakespeare Studies 7 (1974),
views Prospero as "a type of the potentially damned sorcer
er," and it is this "potentially damned state which pro
vides the most intense ironic tension in the play; out of
his own blind regard for his art and the powers it brings
him arises the hamartia which could so easily culminate in
the tragedy of a Macbeth or a Dr. Faustus" (pp. 256-57).
D.G. James, The Dream of Prospero (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1967), sees Bruno's theurgic Neoplatonism and a "Faustian
spirit" linking him to Marlowe (pp. 55-58), but makes the
distinction that in The Tempest, "Prospero initiates no
commerce with spirits; he finds Ariel on the island, as he
finds Caliban . . . The 'meaner fellows' whom Ariel employs
in his tasks are at Ariel's command and not, at least di
rectly, at Prospero's" (pp. 63-64). Cf. the deemphasis on
magic's efficacy in Barbara A. Mowat, "Prospero, Agrippa,
and Hocus Pocus," English Literary Renaissance 11 (1981),
302; and C.J. Sisson, "The Magic of Prospero," Shakespeare
Survey 2 (1958), 76.
22
Recalling Ariel's song about the supposedly drowned
Alonso, "Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a
sea-change/Into something rich and strange" (I,ii,402-404).
Robert Grams Hunter, Shakespeare and■;the Comedy of Forgive
ness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), extrapo
lates a corresponding spiritual change in the King of
Naples, explaining Alonso experiences "a psychological
death of sorrow and remorse— a kind of sinking into the
depths of his own mind. From this he will emerge regenera
ted, a new man, his psychological and spiritual substance
transformed" (p. 228).
^ W. Stacy Johnson, "The Genesis of Ariel," Shake
speare Quarterly 2 (1951), depicts Ariel "as primarily ele
mental , associated directly with the spirit-operated phe
nomenal world of Neo-Platonism, but maintaining the pecul
iar personality of a true familiar: the personality which
saves him from being a perfectly inhuman thing" (p. 210)?
347
Ariel's personality as a "true familiar" is also what al
lows him to function as an extension of Prospero and of
Prospero's wisdom.
24 Dean Ebner, "The Tempest: Rebellion and the Ideal
State," Shakespeare Quarterly 16 (1965), comments that
Shakespeare "undertakes to show— by presenting a series of
rebellions— that evil men, found inevitably in both primi
tive and civilized societies, effectively prevent the es
tablishment of an ideal political state. Seen in this
light, the play reveals itself as a direct refutation of
the cultural primitivism embodied in Montaigne's concept of
the noble savage and as an indirect refutation of other
contemporary utopian schemes based upon an example of prim
itive goodness. Furthermore . . . [change resulting in the
ideal society] must come, not through the powers of human
knowledge, but through the exercise of Christian virtue"
(p. 161).
In fact, Rose Abdelnour Zimbardo, "Form and Dis
order in The Tempest," Shakespeare Quarterly 14 (1963), de
clares that in his anger, Prospero resembles a "crusty and
irascible old pedant" (p. 55).
Leland Ryken, "The Temptation Theme in The Tempest
and the Question of Dramatic Suspense," Tennessee Studies
in Literature 14 (1969), stresses that revenge itself is
not the motivation behind Prospero's marooning of Alonso
and company? "The fact that most characters besides Pros
pero are faced with the temptations offered by the unruly
passions is significant. Not only does it reinforce the
idea that the world of the play is a world replete with
moral temptations which test man's virtue and reason, but
it also underscores the struggle which Prospero faces to
keep his passions in check" (pp. 124-25). Cf. the emphasis
on revenge as the play's structural motif in Frank David
son, "The Tempesti An Interpretation," Journal of English
and Germanic Philology 62 (1963), 501-17.
27 Robert Grams Hunter stresses that the forgiveness
of Caliban is only possible because of the demonstrable
power of Prospero: "Only a rigid and unceasing control of
the sort that Prospero has exercised over Caliban and will,
we assume, exercise over Antonio, can keep good in its nat
ural ascendency. The relaxation of such vigilance inevit
ably results in a spread of sin, hatred, and disorder.
Evil cannot, however, be finally and completely destroyed"
(p. 241).
OO
As another of those fortuitous coincidences that
continually occur when working with the writings of Gior-
348
dano Bruno, one finds that a gloss in the Geneva Bible on
Isaiah 29, explains "The Ebrewe word Ariel signifieth the
Lyon of God and it signifieth the Altar, because ye Altar
seemed to devour the Sacrifice that was offered to God"
(quoted in W. Stacy Johnson, p. 206); Ariel does indeed
"devour the Sacrifice" of Prospero's instruction, and is
thus appropriately signified in the heavens by "Religion
That Is Not Vain, Faith That Is Not Foolish, and the True
And Sincere Piety."

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