By far the greater part of Gascoigne's treatise is devoted to metrics and to style. One can use, he says, the same figures or tropes in verse as are used in prose. It is noteworthy that in this treatise on making verses Gascoigne restricts himself to externals of form and style. When he does discuss the subject-matter of poetry, instead of emphasizing the seriousness of content, he talks about his mistress' "cristal eye."
What has been said about Gascoigne applies almost equally well to the Schort Treatise (1584) of James VI which was modeled on it. Like Gascoigne's Notes, it is rhetorical and concerned with only the externals of poetry. The treatise is almost entirely a metrical study, although the author does call attention to three special ornaments of verse, which are comparisons, epithets, and proverbs. The other figures of rhetoric which are so appropriate to poetry James says may be studied in Du Bellay. In both these writers, poetry is treated in the categories of the middle ages. Poetry to them is composed of subject-matter and style. The characteristic structure and movement of poetry is not considered at all.
2. The Influence of Horace
Thus far there had been no fundamental criticism of poetic in England, no attempt to arrive at the basis of critical theory. Horace had been known long before, but not until Drant's translation of the Ars Poetica into English in 1567 is its influence seen to be definite and extensive in England. One of the earliest published evidences of this influence is George Whetstone's Dedication to Promos and Cassandra (1578). The passage is short, but contains two very important points in the creed of classicism. Whetstone inveighs against the English dramatist who "in three howers ronnes throwe the worlde, marryes, gets children, makes Children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder Monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven, and fetcheth Divels from Hel."[[198]] This is the earliest record in England of an insistence on unity of time and place. Then he urges the claims of decorum in comedy. The poet should not make clowns the companions of kings, nor put wise counsels into the mouth of fools. "For, to worke a comedie kindly, grave olde men should instruct, yonge men should showe the imperfections of youth, Strumpets should be lascivious, Boyes unhappy, and Clownes should speake disorderlye."[[199]]
It is interesting that this conception of the characters in a drama should ultimately trace back through many perversions to Aristotle's rhetorical theory. There are three kinds of proof, says Aristotle in the Rhetoric: the character of the speaker, the production of a certain disposition in the audience, and the argument of the speech itself. The last kind of proof is derived from logic; the first two, from psychology.[[200]] Consequently, Aristotle devotes almost a third of his Rhetoric, the second book, to an elaborate exposition of the passions (πάθη) of men, so that the orator may know how to excite or allay them according as the necessities of his case demand, and a full explanation of the character (ᤦθος) of men, that the speaker may know how to impress upon his audience his own trustworthiness, and adapt his arguments to the character of the particular audience which he is addressing. Varieties of character in an audience depend upon its passions, its virtues and vices, its age or youth, and its position in life.[[201]] Aristotle's generalizations on the character of young people and old, of the wealthy, noble and powerful, display penetrating acumen. That flesh and blood character realizations in drama or story could be attained by this method Aristotle never intended. He is talking of public address. But the study of characterization as part of the education of an orator became fixed in the curriculum of rhetoric schools. The boys were supposed to study certain types of persons and then write character sketches to show their sharpness of observation. Theophrastus, Aristotle's favorite student and successor as head of the school in Athens, wrote his Characters to show how it was done, and did it with such ability as to elevate the school exercise to a literary form. These "characters" were epitomized in the Latin rhetorics and the school exercises continued. The rhetoric Ad Herennium calls them notatio,[[202]] Cicero, descriptio,[[203]] and Quintilian, mores.[[204]]
Quintilian furthermore makes interesting comments on the use of the character sketches by the poets. Character (ᤦθος) in oratory, he says, is similar to comedy, as the passions (πάθος) are to tragedy.[[205]] Professor Butcher calls attention to the early influence of the character sketches on the middle comedy. Here the "humours," to anticipate Ben Jonson, give names not only to the characters of the play, but to the plays themselves.[[206]] As adopted by the drama, the orator's view that people of a certain age and rank are likely to behave in certain fashions was perverted to the dramatical law of decorum, that people of certain age or rank must on the stage act up to this generalization of what was characteristic. This law of decorum was formulated by Horace in his Ars Poetica,[[207]] whence it was derived by the renaissance. Thomas Wilson, in his Arte of Rhetorique, gives a Theophrastian character sketch as an illustration of the figure descriptio.
As in speaking against a covetous man, thus. There is no such pinch peney on live as this good fellowe is. He will not lose the paring of his nailes. His haire is never rounded for sparing of money, one paire of shone serveth him a twelve month, he is shod with nailes like a Horse. He hath bene knowne by his coate this thirtie Winter. He spent once a groate at good ale, being forced through companie, and taken short at his words, whereupon he hath taken such conceipt since that time, that it hath almost cost him his life."[[208]]
In 1592 Casaubon edited Theophrastus in Latin. Thereafter the character sketch became a literary form, as in Hall, Overbury, and Earle, instead of remaining merely a rhetorical exercise.[[209]] In the theory of the drama the rhetorical method of characterization, fixed as the law of decorum, flourished throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In England from Whetstone on it was made much of. Thus a rhetorical tradition of classical pedagogy, derived ultimately from Aristotle, and a poetical tradition of later classical drama, derived from Horace, coincide in the English renaissance.
In The Epistle Dedicatory to the Shepheards Calender (1579), for instance, E.K. praises Spenser for "his dewe observing of decorum everye where, in personages, in seasons, in matter, in speach."[[210]] The archaisms are defended in the first place, indeed, because they are appropriate to rustic speakers, but in the second because Cicero says that ancient words make the style seem grave and reverend. Further praise E.K. grants the author because he avoids loose sentence structure and affects the oratorical period. "Now, for the knitting of sentences, whych they call the ioynts and members thereof, and for all the compasse of the speach, it is round without roughness."[[211]] The "ioynts and members" are the cola and commas of the oratorical prose rhythm. Stanyhurst in the Dedication to his translation of Virgil (1582), like E. K., is concerned with style rather than matter, and of course primarily with the revival of classical meters, a subject already so thoroughly investigated that it need not be gone into here.[[212]] Stanyhurst's praise of Virgil is largely concerned with formal and rhetorical excellences.
Our Virgil dooth laboure, in telling as yt were a Cantorburye tale, too ferret owt the secretes of Nature, with woordes so fitlye coucht, wyth verses so smoothlye slyckte, with sentences so featlye ordered, with orations so neatlie burnisht, with similitudes so aptly applyed, with eeche decorum so duely observed, as in truth hee hath in right purchased too hym self thee name of a surpassing poet, thee fame of an od oratoure, and thee admiration of a profound philosopher.[[213]]