STRUCTURES AND MEANING IN
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH PROVERB PLAYS
Much work on proverbs involves the
careful mapping of an individual proverb's lineage from its
earliest occurrences through the various languages and
historical periods within which it can be traced. There is
often a sense that the variant verbal forms in which a
proverb might appear are not highly significant, as long as
the 'meaning' remains broadly the same. Within
sixteenth-century English, however, not only were proverbs
in general widely used, but the nature of the proverb came
under scrutiny. In this paper I explore some of the
attitudes towards the concept of the proverb held in
mid-sixteenth-century England. Sixteenth-century texts,
especially theatrical texts, used proverbs extensively as a
way of tapping in to received wisdom, and as a way of
claiming moral validation for the position advocated. In a
number of plays from the 1570s, the idea that a proverb
contained reliable moral truth was examined.[1] Where the earlier psychomachia-morality focussed on the
battle between good and evil figures, a proverb-morality
conducts the same battle by locating it around a particular
statement. Its brief is to show that the statement has moral
implications.
The overt project of a proverb play is
to demonstrate the universality of application of its given
proverb, that is, to expound the idea that individuals share
common truths of experience. It thus attempts to establish
truth as single and absolute, a project which as we shall
see, it inevitably subverts, with considerable consequences.
This universality had previously been taken for granted in
the medieval morality plays with the construction of the
allegorical figure of mankind as a single representative
individual.[2] Establishing a single truth based on a proverb is attempted
in the plays by one of two methods. In the first method, it
is assumed that the proverb offers a true comment on the
world, and the play then follows a rondo form: a) a
statement of the proverb; b) an enacted demonstration of a
circumstance in which the proverb can be seen to apply; c) a
restatement of the proverb with enhanced credibility. Steps
b) and c) are then repeated with variations for as long as
the author wishes the play to proceed. The second method,
recognizing that a proverb may be interpreted in conflicting
ways, opposes a virtuous interpretation to a vicious one and
presents scenes which show the two possibilities in
operation. The climax then demonstrates that only the
virtuous interpretation is 'worthwhile'.
As a traditional weapon of argument,
the proverb is an obvious mode for a vice figure to
appropriate, given his renowned persuasive skills. The use
of proverbs is also very much in keeping with the fashion of
the times, evidence for which may be found in John Heywood's
collections of proverbs, and epigrams on
proverbs.[3] The proverb appears to embody wisdom based on reliable
observations of the way of the world. Its overtone of
trustworthiness is derived in part from frequent repetition,
in part from its witty, concise form. In the sense that
proverbs appeared to be true, they were and are used
seriously by 'dramatists and pamphleteers, politicians,
orators and preachers'.[4] A proverb, however, is not necessarily always true. John
Heywood knew this, and presumably so did his many readers.
Not only can circumstances alter cases, but proverbs
themselves are by nature ambiguous. Because of the pithy
form - often gnomic and usually metaphoric - the proverb's
meaning is matter for interpretation and hence also for
debate. The inherent ambiguities of semantics and syntax
make it possible to reverse a proverb's meaning
completely.[5] Proverbs, therefore, mark a craving for interpretation, and
hence a node of Derridean playfulness and hesitancy within
apparent certitude.
When Faithful Few restores
Christianity with support and encouraging words, another
version of courage is now on stage, and out of Courage's
control. Faithful then confronts Courage's creature
Greediness in debate, and matches his arguments:
G. Why I lende my money like
a friend for good will,
And thereby doe helpe men at their neede.
F. A friend thou arte in deede,
though a friend but ill,
Pithagoras thy friendship, hath playnely decreede,
There be many sayth he, who no friendes do lacke,
And yet of friendship they have but skant,
So thou arte a friend for their moneys sake
And yet thy friendship they alwayes shall want
(F iiii
v)
Having thus forced a re-interpretation
of the word 'friend', Faithful Few now clashes over the word
'riches':
G. I put case pouerty should
me assayle,
Can Gods word and fayth me anything ayde:
Pouerty agaynst riches can neuer avayle,
I am sure syr this may not be denayde.
F. We deny not, but in this world,
riches beare the sway
Yet, it not riches to be called sure:
For in Gods power it is to make riches decay,
Whereas Gods word and fayth shall euer endure.
(F iiii
v)
From this point it still seems as if
Greediness's arguments may carry the day. Significantly,
however, just as Faithful is proposing to refer the debate
to God himself (as the logocentre) for judgment, the
discussion is cut short by Courage's departure. This is one
of the rare occasions when Courage is off stage, and it is a
weak move on his part as it leaves Faithful Few in
possession of the stage, as if it were a field of battle.
Faithful Few retains undisputed control from here to the end
of the play, for by the time Courage returns he has been
much diminished by the death of Greediness.
In the verbal confrontation between
Greediness and Faithful we see selfish and selfless forms of
courage in combat, but we also see another conflict.
Courage's claim to establish an absolute meaning of 'the
tyde tarrieth no man' has been constructed throughout the
play by his behaviour as a kind of showman who has set up
each relevant plot situation. Each time he has drawn the
same moral: that one must rush in quickly, exploiting others
in order to make money. We have heard Greediness stating his
wish for independent control of meaning:
Why would you not haue me,
how to inuent,
Which way were best to bring in my gayne?
(F
iiii)
His use of 'best' suggests a moral
dimension to his decision making. This claim on behalf of
the individual is subverted by an external phenomenon: the
virtue of a Christian life as exemplified by Faithful Few.
He counters Courage's and Greediness' bid for independent
interpretation with an argument elevating the interests of
the majority:
But not in such sort, to set
thine intent
That all the world of thee should complayne.
(F
iiii)
In the example cited earlier, we found
Greediness and Faithful disputing the usage of the term
'friend', with just the same opposition of the selfish and
the social. Faithful introduces Pythagoras' authority - an
appeal to communal standards. When Christianity is ready to
give in to Greediness' arguments, Faithful makes the scene
untenable to the vice figures by introducing another social
form: that of a trial before a judge, in this case
God.
To God let us the cause
betake:
Whome I trust, when as time he doth see,
He will for us, a deliueraunce make.
In this manner, Wastefulness repeats
Faithful's words line by line through four sentences, which
drive away the 'ougly shape' (G i v) of the monster
Dispayre. Thus the 'outside' of language and meaning is
still also language, and there is no 'transcendental
referent'. Though the Prologue attempts to establish a
single supra-linguistic transcendental 'truth', the play
cannot help showing that even that must be contained within
a structure, and is part of a sign-system.
In this way, and predictably enough,
language subverts its own claims to be able to speak
unambiguously and hence to offer 'the truth'. In so doing
language also subverts the character of the subject as a
fortress-like individual, since it is only when meaning is
seen as fixed that the subject can be put forward as an
indivisible unit. What is extraordinary here is that this
struggle to define the individual takes place in precisely
the period when the humanist individual is being
constructed, and through precisely those plays which might
be viewed as precursors to the enhanced psychological
realism of the later Elizabethan stage. Crucially, then, the
characterisation of the other as a linguistic other, equated
to a verbally competent vice figure, acts in the end to
subvert the notion of the self. Such a subverted self can no
longer claim autonomy, self-determination or
extra-linguistic transcendental existence. At one moment the
escalating process of multiple characterization works
towards greater individuation of stage characters, while at
the same time it generates a fundamental attack on the unity
of that very subject it seeks to construct.
NOTES
These include W. Wager, Enough is as Good as a Feast (1560s) and The
Longer Thou Livest, the More Fool Thou Art (c.1568); Thomas Lupton, All For Money (1577); Ulpian Fulwell, Like Will To Like Quod the
Devil to the Collier (1568) (an early Wellerism); and
the anonymous The Weakest Goeth to the Wall (1600).
Examples include The
Pride of Life; Mankind; Everyman; The World and the Child; and The Castle of
Perseveraunce.
John Heywood, The
Proverbs, Epigrams and Miscellanies, ed. John S.
Farmer, EEDS (London, 1966; first published, 1906). His
work was still the subject of admiration c.1612, when
John Davies of Hereford described his own epigrams as
imitations of Heywood's.
F. P. Wilson, 'The
Proverbial Wisdom of Shakespeare', in Shakespearean
and Other Studies, ed., Helen Gardner (Oxford, 1969),
pp143-175 (p.144).
The entertainment of
Heywood's proverbs and epigrams comes from observing the
paradoxes that are generated by assuming all
interpretations of proverbs to be equally valuable.
Heywood provides many neat examples of paradoxical
interpretation, for example:
A merry man by his master
at meat set:
'Methinketh' quoth the
master, 'thou canst no drink get
'Here is enough, though there be none,' said he.
'Then art not dry?' 'Yes, so mote I thee,
And fain would drink.' 'How be thy words true then?'
'Thus: This word enough two ways we may scan;
Th'one much enough, th'other little enough;
And here is little enough.' His master
lough.
However, the servant
suffers for his wit in the end, for:
More than enough were
waste: he getteth no more.' (Number 52 of The First
Hundred of Epigrammes, 1562).
Students' Facsimile
Edition (London, 1910)
It should be noted that
we are moving between theoretical systems here. Lacanian
psychoanalysis, for all its emphasis on a three-part
system, usually functions with, and reasons through,
dualities. (This is a contentious remark, as there are
Lacanians, such as Malcolm Bowie, who feel that his
three-part structure can be sustained.) Derrida's
analyses, towards which this discussion is now moving,
delight in polarities because they lay themselves open to
deconstruction.
Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, tr Margaret Waller
(New York, 1984; first published in French, 1974),
pp.25-28.
Robert Hughes, Heaven
and Hell in Western Art (London, 1968) sees a related
philosophical difficulty for the artist who seeks for
images with which to depict the 'chaos' of Hell. 'To
paint Chaos in a chaotic manner would merely produce an
illegible picture. And so the problem was to discover a
form for the Pit without depriving Hell of its terrible
and negative formlessness', p.156. 'They evolved a set of
images which were, to a surprising degree, stable. They
were the negative images to Heaven's reality, doubling
it, parodying it, like hallucinatory reflections in black
water', p.157.
This move is wholly
within the project that the Prologue has mapped out, and
also manifestly not intended to deceive the audience. The
vice portion of the play is in collusion with the
Prologue in demonstrating one version of the Proverb's
meaning.
For I am a broker the truth
is so
Wherefore if men in me hurtfulnesse should know
There are few or none that with me would deale
Therefore this word hurtfull I never reueale
(A iii v)
The hesitation between
devilish and human motives in the late moral play (c.1576
onwards) may be understood historically, as part of the
gradual humanisation of the vice role documented by
Bernard Spivack in Shakespeare and the Allegory of
Evil (New York and London, 1958). See especially
Chapter Seven, 'Change and Decline in the Morality
Convention', pp.206-250.
Even their names are
very general ones, and also very much open to
interpretation, compared with the specificity embodied in
such earlier stage virtues as Mercy, Pity or God's
Promises, to name but a few.
Consciousness of this
difficulty is not a modern construction: it can also be
found in other plays. Sensualitas, the vice figure in Virtuous and Godly Susanna (1578, c. 1568) sees
worldly opinion opposed to spiritual credit:
For God, or his
threatninges, I passe it not a straw,
But for myne honour in
this world, is it I stand in aw.
(l.433-434)
A vice figure's opinion
is a dubious one to rely on, but one also finds the
sympathetic figure of Philologus reflecting on a
comparable dilemma in The Conflict of Conscience (1581; c. 1570):
My case indeed I see most
miserable
As was Susanna betwixt
two evils placed
Either to consent to sin most abhominable
Or else in the world's sight to be utterly disgraced
(l.1201-1204)
In considering the
play's interpretations of the proverb, one must notice
the image which Courage's first monologue plays on. His
list of the people who are to board the ship for Hell
raises the great image of the Ship of Fools. Barclay's
free translation into English (1509) of the immensely
popular Narrenschiff by Brant (1494) describes at great
length each of the huge variety of fools who are to be
loaded onto the ship. This substantial work is further
enlarged by the inclusion of a category of additional
follies at the end, and one of its principal effects is
an impression of eternity. The Ship is always about to
set sail; it is always very nearly full. Urgency to get
on board is really merely another aspect of folly, as it
is never too late to damn oneself.
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