The Great Chain of Being -- Quotations

Transcription

1 The Great Chain of Being -- Quotations The roote of all is Order. - John Donne (1627) What else is order, but unity, brancht out into all the parts of Consociate bodies, to keep them intire and perfect. - Zacheus Mountague in The Jus Divinum of Government (1652). The first assumption was that the created order is tightly knit through an elaborate system of interdependent degrees which extend vertically as Samuel Ward said in The Life of Faith (1622) from the Mushrome to the Angels. There are foure sorts of Creatures in the world... The first have essence or being onely, as the earth, the water, the fire, the aire, the Sun and the Moone. The second have essence and life, which are called vegetative, as hearbs, trees, and all plants. The third have essence, life, and sence, or feeling, as fishes, foules, and all beasts. The fourth have essence, life, sence, and reason, as Man. -Gabriel Powel, The Resolved Christian (1616) The great God of nature hath tyed together all his creations, with some meane things that agree and participate with the extremities, and hath composed the intelligible, ethereall, and elementarie world, by indissoluble meanes and boundes; as betweene plantes and liuing creatures, hee hath made sponges and oysters, that in part resemble liuing things, and in part plants; betweene the creatures of the earth, and those of the water, Otters, Tortoyses, and such like; betweene those of the water and birds of the aire, flying fishes; betweene brute beastes, and those of a spirituall essence and vnderstanding, which are the Angels, he hath placed man, which combineth heauen and this elementarie world. -Sir Richard Barckley, A Discourse of the Felicitie of Man (1598) 98

2 But even more persistently Man was hailed as a microcosm, a little world whose very constitution was said to be analogous to the hierarchical structure of the universe. Dr. Helkiah Crooke in Μικποκοσμογραυία. A Description of the Body of Man (1615) endeavored to explain in precisely what sense Man may be called a Little world, and the paterne and epitome of the whole universe. The head, he wrote, resembles that supreme and Angelicall part of the world, even as the heart corresponds to the second division of the universe, the Middle and Cælestiall part. The third division, the sublunarie part of the world, is even more strikingly reflected in Man for The terrible lightning fierce flashes and impressions, are shewed in the bloody suffusions of our eyes when we are in a heat and furie... The violent and gathering rage of blustering winds, tempestuous stormes and gusts, are not onely exhibited, but also fore-shewed by exhaled crudities and by the hissing, singing and ringing noyses of the eares. The humor and moistnesse that fals like a current or streame into the emptie spaces of the throat, the throtle and the chest, resembleth raine and showers... (2nd rev. ed. [1631], pp. 6-8). The same conclusion emerges from a consideration of the structure of the Elizabethan theater, in itself a microcosmic representation of the macrocosm, and in one celebrated instance at least significantly named The Globe. The sum total of the universe, visible and intelligible both, is now argued to be a life, as it were, of huge extension, a total in which each several part differs from its next, all making a self-continuous whole (V, ii, 2; trans. S. McKenna [1962]). Its origin, by a process of emanation, is a movement from the unity of the One toward the multiplicity of the many; and its ultimate destiny, the eventual return of the many into the One. The interim history of the universe is the history of an unbroken whole which is comprised of sharply-distinguished levels of existence for ever linked (IV, viii, 6) and which depends for its sustenance on ἔρωσ, love (III, v). As Proclus was to maintain two centuries after Plotinus, love constitutes a chain, an ἐπωτικὴ σειρὰ which links heaven and earth (see Nygren, II, 352ff.), even as the universe is a hierarchy of power if not of existence (see Rosán). Since all follow on in continuous succession, degenerating step by step in their downward course, the close observer will find that from the Supreme God even to the bottommost dregs of the universe there is one tie, binding at every link and never broken. This is the golden chain of Homer which, he tells us, God ordered to hang down from the sky to the earth (trans. W. H. Stahl, 1952). It was to prove the most influential single statement of the Chain of Being. But the celebrated phrase itself did not gain wide currency until the eighteenth century. From The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, University of Virginia Library: ( 99

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4 Hamlet s Act II Scene ii Soliloquy Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! 560 Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, 565 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, 570 Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed 575 The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing; no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life 580 A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, As deep as to the lungs? who does me this? 585 Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! 590 Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, 595 Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, A stallion! Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! Hum 101

5 Hamlet s Act II Scene ii Soliloquy I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play 600 Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players 605 Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power 610 To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing 615 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. 102

6 Act IV Close Analysis Group Assignments In groups, you will be working together to look more closely at Act IV. We will be working in eight groups of about four each. Your group will be working with one of the following sections from Act IV: Group 1: All of Scenes 1 and 2 Group 2: All of Scene 3 Group 3: All of Scene 4 Group 4: Scene 5, lines 1 to 73 (Up to Exit Horatio) Group 5: Scene 5, lines 74 (After Horatio s exit) to 152 (Up to A noise within) Group 6: Scene 5, lines 153 (After A noise within) to the end Group 7: All of Scene 6 as well as Scene 7, lines 1 to 70 (Where Laertes says: That I might be the organ. ) Group 8: Scene 7, lines 70 (Where the King says: It falls right ) to the end. The line numbers listed may be slightly different from the ones in your books, so make sure you pay attention to the specifics in the parenthesis. Your task is to use your notes from the movie, and to dig deeper into your assigned lines, in order to come up with the most important concepts from your section. You will be analyzing your section based on both the lines of the play and your movie notes from yesterday. When finished, each group will present its analysis to the class. 103