No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
XV.—The Relation of the English “Character” to Its Greek Prototype.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The writing of “Characters” was at the same time one of the most prolific and the most significant phases of literary activity in the seventeenth century. Though many of these books of “Characters” have been forgotten, the titles of over one hundred and fifty are still remembered—enough certainly to show how popular the fashion of such writing was. Furthermore, its significance becomes apparent when we consider what prose fiction owes to it; for, through the periodical essay of the eighteenth century, the old formal “Character” passed into the novel and become a part of it.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1903
References
1 Curiously enough, modern lexicographers have ignored the meaning which the word character came to possess in the seventeenth century. The “Character” was a formal enumeration, partly individualized, of the habits and peculiarities that serve to differentiate a social, ethical, or political type.
2 Taine says (History of English Literature, vol. 2, p. 112) that in the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers Addison invented the novel without suspecting it.
3 To this Thomas Harman was indebted for most of the material for his Caveat for Common Cursitors (1567). This in turn was followed in 1592 by Robert Greene's Groundwork of Coney-Catching, which was practically a reprint of Harman's book. The same may be said of Decker's Bellman of London (1608). The last of the series was The English Rogue (1665). This contains a vocabulary, alphabetically arranged, of the cant words in use among the gypsies, which was borrowed from Harman's Caveat.
1 Only six of his plays, Pericles, Tempest, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Two Noble Kinsmen (?), and Henry VIII. are assigned to a date later than 1608.
2 To the list of dramatis personae in Every Man Out of His Humour (acted 1599) Jonson affixed “Characters of the persons.” All through his plays Jonson carries to an extreme the stage convention of making the actors who are on the stage describe those about to enter. In Cynthia's Revels (1600) he not only has each person that has any part in the action described in this way, but he even puts into the mouths of the actors characters of some who have not the remotest connection with the plot. In writing these Characters, Jonson was influenced by Theophrastus, the Greek father of “Character-writing.” See my article in Modern Language Notes, November, 1901.
1 Vol. 5, Bk. 7, c. 2.
2 Joseph Hall was at this time thirty-four years old. He had already become fairly well known through his published works. These had been: a poem contributed to a collection of elegies on the death of Dr. William Whittaker; his Satires (1597–8); and his Meditations, containing a hundred religious aphorisms and reflections. He had published also his final volume of verse, The King's Prophecy, or Weeping Joy (1603), congratulating James on his accession to the throne; and, at Frankfort (1605), he had published in Latin his Mundus Alter et Idem. This was translated into English in 1608 by John Healey under the title, The Discovery of a New World.
1 The book seems to have been known to Englishmen long before this. Thomas Nash mentions it in one of his tracts (The Anatomy of Absurdity, 1589); and Chaucer evidently had read it, for he alludes to it in the Prologue to the Tale of the Wife of Bath, line 671.
2 Some scholars consider the extant collection to be but a fragment of a longer ethical treatise.
1 A case in point is the swarm of “keys” that followed the publication in 1688 of La Bruyère's Caractères, ou Les Moeurs de ce Siècle.
1 The translation is that of Prof. R. C. Jebb in his edition of Theophrastus' Characters (Macmillan, 1870); while the text of Hall's Characterisms is that of the complete edition of his works published at London in 1747. Professor Jebb, himself, notes a few of these correspondences.
1 The full title was: A Wife, now the Widow of Sir Thomas Overbury. Being a most exquisite and singular Poem of the choice of a Wife. Whereunto are added many witty Characters and conceited News, written by Himself and other learned Gentlemen his Friends.
1 In the “Proem” prefixed to his collection of “Characters,” Hall says: “I have here done it as I could, following that ancient master of morality, who thought this the fittest task for the ninety and ninth year of his age, and the profitablest monument that he could leave for a farewell visit to his Grecians.”
1 “Character-Writing had its origin more than two thousand years ago in the Ethic Characters of Tyrtamus of Lesbos, a disciple of Plato, who gave him for his eloquence the name of Divine Speaker—Theophrastus,” Henry Morley: Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century, p. 15.
2 After the appearanse of La Bruyère's Caractères in 1688, which were imitated from Theophrastus, the writing of “Characters” became only less popular in France than in England, La Bruyère being followed by over thirty imitators.
3 A case in point is Molière's Le Misanthrope, Act V, Scene IV, where Clitandre reads a letter written by Célimène in which are satiric “Characters” of her adorers. Clitandre's comment is: “D'un fort beau caractère on voit là le modèle.” As is well known, Wycherly's Plain Dealer is adapted from this play; and it is interesting to observe that the scene just mentioned has its counterpart in the English play (Act II, Scene I), where Olivia characterizes her admirers in the manner which the “Character. writers” had made fashionable.