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4 - The Elizabethans in Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Jean-Pierre Maquerlot
Affiliation:
Université de Rouen
Michèle Willems
Affiliation:
Université de Rouen
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Summary

Italy, the Paradice of the earth and the Epicures heaven, how doth it forme our yong master? It makes him to kis his hand like an ape, cringe his necke like a starveling, and play at hey passe repasse come aloft, when he salutes a man. From thence he brings the art of atheisme, the art of epicurising, the art of whoring, the art of poysoning, the art of Sodomitrie. The onely probable good thing they have to keepe us from utterly condemning it is that it maketh a man an excellent Courtier, a curious carpet knight: which is, by interpretation, a fine close leacher, a glorious hipocrite. It is nowe a privie note amongst the better sort of men, when they would set a singular marke or brand on a notorious villaine, to say, he hath beene in Italy.

This expatiation on Italy as perceived by an Elizabethan Englishman is characterized by, shall we say, a certain extremity. It begins with an image of the place as an earthly paradise, but quickly modifies it into a decadent one – for epicures only. It then descends into making Italy a kind of hell, associated with false religion or no religion, with villainy and sexual transgression. Is it a place where you educate yourself in the qualities of a courtier or the characteristics of a flatterer, insinuator and hypocrite? Or is it where you learn that to be a courtier and an insinuator are one and the same thing?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

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