is the object of memory, as the body is of sight. Too vast oppresseth the eyes, and exceeds the memory; too little scarce admits either. What the utmost bound of a fable.- Now in every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost 5 bound, how far with fitness and a necessary proportion he may produce and determine it; that is, till either good fortune change into the worse, or the worse into the better. For as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no more can the action, either in comedy or tragedy, without 10 his fit bounds. And every bound, for the nature of the subject, is esteemed the best that is largest, till it can increase no more; so it behoves the action in tragedy or comedy to be let grow till the necessity ask a conclusion; wherein two things are to be considered: first, that it 15 exceed not the compass of one day; next, that there be place left for digression and art. For the episodes and digressions in a fable are the same that household stuff and other furniture are in a house. And so far form the measure and extent of a fable dramatic. 20 What [is meant] by one and entire. - Now that it should be one and entire. One is considerable two ways; either as it is only separate, and by itself, or as being composed of many parts, it begins to be one as those parts grow or are wrought together. That it should be 25 one the first way alone, and by itself, no man that hath tasted letters ever would say, especially having required before a just magnitude and equal proportion of the parts in themselves. Neither of which can possibly be, if the action be single and separate, not composed of parts, 30 which laid together in themselves, with an equal and fitting proportion, tend to the same end; which thing out of antiquity itself hath deceived many, and more this day it doth deceive. So many there be of old that have thought the action 35 of one man to be one, as of Hercules, Theseus, Achilles, Ulysses, and other heroes; which is both foolish and false, since by one and the same person many things may be severally done which cannot fitly be referred or joined to 5 the same end: which not only the excellent tragic poets, but the best masters of the epic, Homer and Virgil, saw. For though the argument of an epic poem be far more diffused and poured out than that of tragedy, yet Virgil, writing of Æneas, hath pretermitted many things. He To neither tells how he was born, how brought up, how he fought with Achilles, how he was snatched out of the battle by Venus; but that one thing, how he came into Italy, he prosecutes in twelve books. The rest of his journey, his error by sea, the sack of Troy, are put not as the argu15 ment of the work, but episodes of the argument. So Homer laid by many things of Ulysses, and handled no more than he saw tended to one and the same end. Contrary to which, and foolishly, those poets did, whom the philosopher taxeth, of whom one gathered 20 all the actions of Theseus, another put all the labors of Hercules in one work. So did he whom Juvenal mentions in the beginning, "hoarse Codrus," that recited a volume compiled, which he called his Theseid, not yet finished, to the great trouble both of his hearers and 25 himself; amongst which there were many parts had no coherence nor kindred one with other, so far they were from being one action, one fable. For as a house, consisting of divers materials, becomes one structure and one dwelling, so an action, composed of divers parts, may 30 become one fable, epic or dramatic. For example, in a tragedy, look upon Sophocles his Ajax: Ajax, deprived of Achilles's armor, which he hoped from the suffrage of the Greeks, disdains, and, growing impatient of the injury, rageth, and turns mad. In that humor he doth 35 many senseless things, and at last falls upon the Grecian flock and kills a great ram for Ulysses: returning to his sense, he grows ashamed of the scorn, and kills himself; and is by the chiefs of the Greeks forbidden burial. These things agree and hang together, not as they were done, but as seeming to be done, which made the action 5 whole, entire, and absolute. The conclusion concerning the whole, and the parts. Which are episodes · For the whole, as it consisteth of parts, so without all the parts it is not the whole; and to make it absolute is required not only the parts, but such 10 parts as are true. For a part of the whole was true, which, if you take away, you either change the whole or it is not the whole. For if it be such a part, as, being present or absent, nothing concerns the whole, it cannot be called a part of the whole; and such are the episodes, 15 of which hereafter. For the present here is one example: the single combat of Ajax with Hector, as it is at large described in Homer, nothing belongs to this Ajax of Sophocles. * You admire no poems but such as run like a brewer's 20 cart upon the stones, hobbling: Et, quæ per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt, Actius et quidquid Pacuviusque vomunt. NOTES. 1. Gifford : Tecum habita, etc. Persius, Satires, 4. 52. Thus translated by To your own breast in quest of worth repair, 66 Silva rerum et sententiarum, etc. 21. Silva, the raw material of facts and thoughts, üλŋ, wood, as it were, so called from the multiplicity and variety of the matter contained therein. For just as we are commonly wont to call a vast number of trees growing indiscriminately a wood" (timber); so also did the ancients call those of their books, in which were collected at random articles upon various and diverse topics, a wood (timber-trees). Cf. Jonson's Underwoods. Preface to the Reader: "With the same leave the ancients called that kind of body sylva, or vλn, in which there were works of divers nature and matter congested; as the multitude called timber-trees promiscuously growing, a wood or forest, so I am bold to entitle these lesser poems of later growth by this of Underwood, out of the analogy they hold to the Forest in my former book, and no otherwise." See also The Alchemist, 3. 2: "The whole family or wood of you." Sylva is often opposed to supellex. See the quotation from Persius, above, and the following of Bacon: "Minds empty and unfraught with matter, and which have not gathered that which Cicero (Orator, 80) calleth sylva and supellex (stuff and variety) to begin with those arts,” etc. (Advancement of Learning, Bk. II. p. 72, ed. 1819). 35. As. That. As is used for that after so in Elizabethan English. Cf. 13 32, 26 1, 27 8, 34 18, 36 25, 36 28, 37 25, 41 26, 49 29, 57 6, 69 20, 72 15, 81 24, and 83 21; and see Shakespeare Grammar, § 109. Occathat, as in modern English, 7 10 and 72 34; and even the pleonastic as that, but there after such, 71 17. sionally Jonson uses so 3 14. Casus. Change. 3 18. Consilia. Advice. counsel. 89 |