Except from Shakespeare's "The Tempest " and the The Petrarch "The father of Humanism"

Order Description Excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest PROSPERO Of the king's ship The mariners say how thou hast disposed And all the rest o' the fleet. ARIEL Safely in harbour Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew From the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid: The mariners all under hatches stow'd; Who, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour, I have left asleep; and for the rest o' the fleet Which I dispersed, they all have met again And are upon the Mediterranean flote, Bound sadly home for Naples, Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd And his great person perish. PROSPERO Ariel, thy charge Exactly is perform'd: but there's more work. What is the time o' the day? ARIEL Past the mid season. PROSPERO At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now Must by us both be spent most preciously. ARIEL Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains, Let me remember thee what thou hast promised, Which is not yet perform'd me. PROSPERO How now? moody? What is't thou canst demand? ARIEL My liberty. PROSPERO Before the time be out? no more! ARIEL I prithee, Remember I have done thee worthy service; Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise To bate me a full year. Excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest PROSPERO Dost thou forget From what a torment I did free thee? ARIEL No. PROSPERO Thou dost, and think'st it much to tread the ooze Of the salt deep, To run upon the sharp wind of the north, To do me business in the veins o' the earth When it is baked with frost. ARIEL I do not, sir. PROSPERO Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her? ARIEL No, sir. PROSPERO Thou hast. Where was she born? speak; tell me. ARIEL Sir, in Argier. PROSPERO O, was she so? I must Once in a month recount what thou hast been, Which thou forget'st. This damn'd witch Sycorax, For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible To enter human hearing, from Argier, Thou know'st, was banish'd: for one thing she did They would not take her life. Is not this true? ARIEL Ay, sir. PROSPERO This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave, As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant; And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, By help of her more potent ministers And in her most unmitigable rage, Into a cloven pine; within which rift Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain Excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest A dozen years; within which space she died And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island-- Save for the son that she did litter here, A freckled whelp hag-born--not honour'd with A human shape. ARIEL Yes, Caliban her son. PROSPERO Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st What torment I did find thee in; thy groans Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts Of ever angry bears: it was a torment To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax Could not again undo: it was mine art, When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape The pine and let thee out. ARIEL I thank thee, master. PROSPERO 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 spiriting gently. PROSPERO Do so, and after two days I will discharge thee. ARIEL That's my noble master! What shall I do? say what; what shall I do? PROSPERO Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea: be subject To no sight but thine and mine, invisible To every eyeball else. Go take this shape And hither come in't: go, hence with diligence! Exit ARIEL Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well; Awake! Excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest MIRANDA The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me. PROSPERO Shake it off. Come on; We'll visit Caliban my slave, who never Yields us kind answer. MIRANDA 'Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look on. PROSPERO But, as 'tis, We cannot miss him: he does make our fire, Fetch in our wood and serves in offices That profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban! Thou earth, thou! speak. CALIBAN [Within] There's wood enough within. PROSPERO Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee: Come, thou tortoise! when? Re-enter ARIEL like a water-nymph Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel, Hark in thine ear. ARIEL My lord it shall be done. Exit PROSPERO Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself Upon thy wicked dam, come forth! Enter CALIBAN CALIBAN As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye And blister you all o'er! Excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest PROSPERO For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging Than bees that made 'em. CALIBAN I must eat my dinner. This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first, Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me Water with berries in't, and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile: Cursed be I that did so! All the charms Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! For I am all the subjects that you have, Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o' the island. PROSPERO Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee, Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate The honour of my child. CALIBAN O ho, O ho! would't had been done! Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else This isle with Calibans. PROSPERO Abhorred slave, Which any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures Excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly confined into this rock, Who hadst deserved more than a prison. CALIBAN You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language! PROSPERO Hag-seed, hence! Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou'rt best, To answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice? If thou neglect'st or dost unwillingly What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar That beasts shall tremble at thy din. CALIBAN No, pray thee. Aside I must obey: his art is of such power, It would control my dam's god, Setebos, and make a vassal of him. PROSPERO So, slave; hence! Exit CALIBAN etrarch THE FATHER OF HUMANISM During his lifetime, Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch (1304-1374), had an as-tounding reputation as a poet and scholar¯ Often called the "father of human-ism," he inspired other humanists through his love for classical learning; his criticism of medieval Latin as barbaric in contrast to the style of Cicero, Seneca, and other Romans; and his literary works based on classical models. Petrarch saw his own age as a restoration of dassical brilliance after an interval of medieval darkness. A distinctly modern element in Petrarch’s thought is the subjective and indi- vidualistlc character of his writing. In talking about himself and probing his own feelings, Petrarch demonstrates a self-consciousness characteristic of the modern outlook. Like many other humanists, Petrarch remained devoted to Christianity: "When it comes to thinking or speaking of religion, that is, of the highest truth, of true happiness and eternal salvation," he declared, "I certainly am not a Ci- ceronian or a Platonist but a Christian." Petrarch was a forerunner of the Christian humanism best represented by Erasmus. Christian humanists combined an in- tense devotion to Christianity with a great love for classical literature, which they much preferred to the dull and turgid treatises written by scholastic philosophe.rs and theologians. In the following passage, Petrarch criticizes his contemporaries for their ignorance of ancient writers and shows his commitment to classical learning. ¯.. O inglorious age! that scorns antiquity, its mother, to whom it owes every noble art--that dares to declare itself not only equal but supe-rior to the glorious past. I say nothing of the vulgar, the dregs of mankind, whose sayings and opinions may raise a lartgh but hardly merit se-rious censure .... ¯ . . But what can be said in defense of men of education who ought not to be ignorant of an- tiquity and yet are plunged in this same dark-ness and delusion? You see that I cannot speak of these matters without the greatest irritation and indigna- tion. There has arisen of late a set of dialecti- clam [experts in logical argument], who are not only ignorant but demented. Like a black army of ants from some old rotten oak, they swarm forth from their hiding places and dew astate the rid& of sound learning. They condemn Plato and Aristotle, and laugh at Socrates and Pythagoras.* And, good God! under what silly and incompetent leaders these opinions are put forth .... What shall we say of men who scorn Marcus Tuilius Cicero,2 the bright sun of elo-quence? Of those who scoff at Varro and Seneca,3 and are scandalized at what they choose to call the IThe work of Aristotle (384--322 B.C.), a leading Greek philosopher, had an enormous influence among medieval and Renaissance scholars. A student of the philosopher Socrates, Plato (c. 427-347 t~.c.) was one of the gr~atest philosophers of ancient Greece. His work grew to be extremely influential in the West during tbe Renaissai~ce period, as new texts of his writings were discovered and translated into Latin and more Westerners could read the originals in Greek. Pythagoras (c. 582-c. 507 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher whose work in-fluenced both Soceates and Plato. 2Cicero (106~3 B.C.) was a Roman statesman nod rhetori- cian. His Latin style was especially admired and emulated during the Renaissance. 3Varro (116-27 B.C.) was a Roman scholar and historian. Seneca (4 B.C.--A.D. 65) was a Roman statesman, dramatist, and Stoic phi!osopher whose literary style was greatly ad-mired during the Renaissance. crude, unfinished style of Livy and Sailust {Ro- man historians] ? .... Such are the times, my ftiead, upon which we have fallen; such is the period in which we live and are growing old. Such are the critics of today, as I so often have occasion to lament and complain--men who are innocent of knowl-edge and virtue, and yet harbour the most ex- Chapter 1 The Rise of Modernity 5 alted opinion of themselves. Not content witi~ losing the words of the ancients, they mtkst at-tack their genius and their ash~s. They rejoice in their ignorance, as if what they did not know were not worth knowing. They give full rein to their license and conceit, and freely in- troduce among us new authors and outlandish teachings. Leonardo Bruni STUDY OF GREEK LITERATURE AND A HUMANIST EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM Leonardo Bruni (1374-1444) was a Florentine humanist who extolled both intellectual study and active involvement in public affairs, an outlook called civic humanism. In the first reading from his History of His Own Tim~s in Italy, Bruni expresses the humanist’s love for ancient Greek literature and language. In a treatise, De Studiis et Literis (On Learning and Literature), written around I405 and addressed to the noble lady Baptista di Montefeltr0 (1383-1450), daughter of the Count of Urbino, Bruni outlines the basic course of studies that the humanists recommended as the best preparation for a life of wisdom and virtue. In addition to the study of Christian literature, Bruni encourages a wide familiarity with the best minds and stylists of ancient Greek and Latin cultures. LOVE FOR GREEK LITERATURE Then first came a knowledge of Greek, which had not been in use among us for seven hundred years. Chrysoloras the Byzantine,1 a man of no- ble birth and wel! versed in Greek letters, brought Greek learning to us. When his coun-try was invaded by the Turks, he came by sea, first to Venice. The report of him soon spread, and be was cordially invited and besought and promised a public stipend, to come to Florence and open his store of riches to the youth. I was thetx studying Civil Law,2 but... I burned with !Chrysoloras (c. 1355-I415), a Byzantine writer and ~eacher, introduced the study of Greek literature to the Ital~ inns, helping to open a new age of Western humanistic learning, 2Civil Law re(~t-s to ~he Roman law as codified by Emperor Justinian in the early sixth century A,D. and studied in me-dieval law schools, love of academic studies, and had spent no little pains on dialectic and rhetoric. At the coming of ChrysoI~)ras I was torn in mind, deeming it shameful to desert the law, and yet a crime to lose such a chaoce of studying Greek literature; and often with youthful impulse I would say to myself: "Thou, when it is permitted thee to gaze on Homer, Plato and Demosthenes,3 and the other [Greek] poets, philosophers, orators, of whom such glorious things are spread abroad, and speak with them and be instructed in their admirable teaching, wilt thou desert and mb thyself? Wilt thou neglect this opportuhity so divinely of~-~red? For seven hundred years, no one in Italy has possessed Greek letters; and yet we confess that all knowledge is derived from ~Demosthenes (384-322 ~,c.) was arl Athenian statesman and orator whose oratorical s~yle was much admired by Ren-aissance humanists. 6 Part One Early Modom Europe them. How great advantage to your knowledge, enhancement of your fame, increase of your pleasure, will come from an understanding of this tongue? There are doctors of civil law every-where; and the chance of learning will not fail thee. But if this one and only doctor of Greek letters disappears, no one can be found to teach thee." Overcome at length by these reasons, I gave myself to Chrysoloras, with such zeal to learn, that what through the wakeful day I gath-ered, I followed after in the night, even when asleep. ON LEARNING AND LITERATURE ¯ .. The foundations of all true learning must be laid in the sound and thorough knowledge of Latin: which implies study marked by a broad spirit, accurate scholarship, and careful attention to details. Unless this solid basis be secured it is useless to attempt to rear an en-during edifice. Without it the great monu-ments of literature are unintelligible, and the art of composition impossible. To attain this es-sential knowledge we must never relax our care-ful attention to the grammar of the language, but perpetually confirm and extend our ac-quaintance with it until it is thoroughly our own .... To this end we must be supremely careful in our choice of authors, lest an inartistic and debased style infect our own writing and . degrade our taste; which danger is best avoided by bringing a keen, critical sense to bear upon select works, observing the sense of each pas- sage, the structure of the sentence, the force of every word down to the least important particle. In this way our reading reacts directly upon our style .... But we must not forget that true distinction is to be gained by a wide and varied range of such studies as cor~duce to the profitable enjoy- ment of iffe, in which, however, we must ob-serve due proportion in the attention and time we devote to them. First amongst such studies I place History: a subject which must not on any account be ne-glected by one who aspires to true culrivatiom For it is our duty to understand the origins of our own history and its development; and the achievements of Peoples and of Kings. For the carefid study of the past enlarges our foresight in contemporary affairs and affords to citizens and to monarchs lessons of incitement or warning in the ordering of public policy. From History, also, we draw our store of exam-ples of moral precepts. In the monuments of ancient literature which have come down to us History holds a position of great distinction. We specially prize such [Roman] authors as Livy, Sallust and Cur- tius;4 and, perhaps even above these, Julius Caesar; the style of whose Commentaries, so ele- gant and so limpid, entities them ro our warm admiration .... The great Orators of antiquity must by all means be included. Nowhere do we find the virtues more warmly extolied, the vices so fiercely decried. From them we may learn, also, how to express consolation, encouragement, dissuasion or advice. If the principles which orators set forth are portrayed for us by philosophers, it is from the former that we learn how to employ the emo-tions-such as indignation, or piry~m driving home their application in individual cases. Fur- ther, from oratory we derive our store of those el- egant or striking turns of expression which are tised with so much effect in literary compositions. Lastly, in oratory we find that wealth of vocabu-lary, that clear easy-flowing style, that verve and force, which are invaluable to us both in wriring and in conversation. I come now to Poetry and the Poets .... For we cannot point to any great mind of the past for whom the Poets had nor a powerful attrac-tion. Aristotle, in constantly quoting Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides and other [Greek] poets, proves that he knew their works hardly less intimately than those of the philosophers. Plato, also, frequently appeals to them, and in this way covers them with his approval If we 4Q. Curtius Rufus, a Roman historian and rhetorician of the mid-first century a.D., composed a biography of Alexander the Great. turn to Cicero, we find him not content with quoting Ennius, Accius,5 and others of the Latins, but rendering poems from the Greek and employing them habitually.... Hence my view that familiarity with the great poets of antiquity is essential to any claim to true educ-ation. For in their writings we find deep spec-ulations upon Nature, and upon the Causes and Origins of things, which must carry weight with us both from their antiquity and from their authorship. Besides these, many im-portant truths upon matters of daily life are sug-gested or illustrated. All this is expressed with such grace and dignity as demands our admira-tion .... To sum up what I have endeavoured to set forth. That high standard of education to which I referred at the outset is only to be reached by one who has seen many things and read much. Poet, Orator, Historian, and the rest, all must be studied, each must contribute a 5Ennius (239-169 13.C.) wrote the first great Latin epic poem, which was based on the legends of Rome’s founding and its early history. Accius (c. 170--c. 90 B.C.), also a Ro~ man, authored a history of Greek and Latin literature. Chapter 1 The Rise of Modwn~ity 7 share. Our learning thus becomes full, ready, varied and elegant, available for action or for discourse in all subjects. But to enable us to make effectual use of what we know we must add to our knowledge the power of expression. These two sides of learning, indeed, should not be separated: they afford mutual aid and distinc-tion. Proficiency in literary form, not accompa- nied by broad acquaintance with facts and truths, is a barren attainment; whilst informa-tion, however vast, which lacks all grace of ex- pression, would seem to be put under a bushel or partly thrown away. Indeed, one may fairly ask what advantage it is to possess profound and varied learning if one cannot convey it in lan-guage worthy of the subject. Where, however, this double capacity exists--breadth of learning and grace of style--we al!ow the highest title to distinction and to abiding fame. If we review the great names of ancient [Greek and Roman] literature, Plato, Democritus, Aristotle, Theo-phrastus, Varro, Cicero, Seneca, Augusrine, Jerome, Lactantius, we shall find it hard to say whether we admire more their attainments or their literary power. REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. What do historians mean by the term "Renaissance humanism"? 2. What made Petrarch aware that a renaissance, or rebirth, of classical learning was necessary in his time? 3. Why did Leonardo Bruni abandon his earlier course of studies to pursue the study of Greek literature? 4. What subjects made up the basic course of studies advocated by Bruni? 2 Human Dignity In his short lifetime, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) mastered Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic and aspired to synthesize the Hebrew, Greek, and Christian traditions. His most renowned work, Oration on the Dignity of Man, composed in 1486, has been called the humanist manifesto.