Page 103 [103]
THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY MODERN THEORIES OF GOVERNANCE
cradle of Security refers to a particular passage on Octavian in Polycraticus,**°
and the sermon collection of George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
which was published by Richard Field in 1600 with the title An Exposition vpon
the prophet Ionah Contained in certaine sermons, preached in S. Maries church
in Oxford, even cites some passages from John of Salisbury in English." On
the topic of chastity, the Archbishop makes the following remark: “He who
liued in a deeper time of darknesse and superstition, that is Sarisburiensis in
the fifth of his Policraticus, could see definitely and positiuely to determine
all his doubts. His words are plaine and direct, and therefore I thinke good
to cite them.”?*?
In addition to the authors and texts mentioned so far, the wording of some
of the writings of Ben Jonson suggests that he was also familiar with John
of Salisbury’s work. As Clement C. J. Webb, the person who produced the
critical edition of Policraticus, points out, even Jonson’s poem To the memory
of my beloved, the Author, which was published in the 1623 Folio, contains
set phases that the poet almost certainly borrowed from John of Salisbury.???
Leonard Barkan convincingly argues, furthermore, that the images related
to the organic conception of the state dominate the “narrative and imagistic
structure”*™* of Sejanus His Fall, Ben Jonson’s play performed in the Jacobean
court during the Christmas season of 1603 and 1604, in which, significantly
enough, William Shakespeare also acted.°# Still, any contentions concerning
the specific nature and the practical details of Shakespeare’s knowledge of
Policraticus would be mere speculation at the present stage of my research.
But Shakespeare cannot have been ignorant of the organic conception of the
state and the functions ofindividual organs, atleast as far as he relied on them
in Coriolanus, and this provides enough ground to involve this analogy in my
reading of King Lear.
In public discourses during the reign of King James I, the work that
most directly relied on this legal tradition was Edward Forset’s 1606 treaty,
380 W/. (William) Averell: A Dyall for dainty Darlings, rockt in the cradle of Securitie. A Glasse
for all disobedient Sonnes to looke in. A Myrrour for vertuous Maydes. A Booke right excellent,
garnished with many woorthy examples, and learned aucthorities, most needefull for this tyme
present, London, Thomas Hackette, 1584, sig. D2r.
George Abbot: An exposition vpon the prophet Ionah Contained in certaine sermons, preached
in S. Maries church in Oxford, 1600, 363, 368, 471.
Ibid., 552.
For a discussion of the origin of the phrase “insolent Greece,” see: Clement C. J. Webb: The
Policraticus of John of Salisbury, Church Quarterly Review 71 (1911), 312-45.
More precisely, Leonard Barkan claims that in Sejanus “the characters’ functions in the
working of the State are often expressed in terms of their anatomy, so that their identity is
reduced to the parts of their bodies which do the State’s work.” See Barkan: Nature’s Work, 90.
385 The current state of academic knowledge on the details of Shakespeare’s involvement in
Sejanus is summarized in John Astington: The Globe, the Court and Measure for Measure,
Shakespeare Survey 52 (2003), 133-142.
38:
S
383
384
- 101 +