The WISDOM of the

RENAISSANCE
ALSO BY MICHAEL K. KELLOGG

The Greek Search for Wisdom

The Roman Search for Wisdom
The Wisdom of the Middle Ages

Three Questions We Never Stop Asking

The WISDOM of the
RENAISSANCE

Michael K. Kellogg
 Published 2019 by Prometheus Books
The Wisdom of the Renaissance. Copyright © 2019 by Michael K. Kellogg. All rights reserved. No
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Cover image of Allegory of Grammar, by Laurent de La Hyre (1650), acquired by Henry Walters
with the Massarenti Collection (1902)
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For Camille,

Heavenly Rosalind! . . .
With all graces wide-enlarged.

—As You Like It, 1.2.178,

3.2.140
 CONTENTS

Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction

Chapter 1: The Three Faces of Francesco Petrarca

Chapter 2: Erasmus: The Man in the Middle

Chapter 3: Machiavelli and Political Realism

Chapter 4: Thomas More: The King’s Good Servant but God’s First

Chapter 5: Castiglione: A Gentleman in Urbino

Chapter 6: Rabelais and the Wisdom of Laughter

Chapter 7: Montaigne and the Wisdom of Experience

Chapter 8: Cervantes: Life as Literature

Chapter 9: Shakespeare

Acknowledgments
Chronology

Suggestions for Further Reading

Notes
 INTRODUCTION

W hen we hear the word Renaissance, most of us rightly turn our

thoughts to quattrocento (fifteenth century) and early cinquecento
(sixteenth century) Italian art: Fra Angelico’s Deposition from the Cross
(ca. 1432), Filippo Lippi’s Madonna and Child (ca. 1440), Botticelli’s Birth
of Venus (ca. 1485), Leonardo’s Last Supper (1495–1498), Raphael’s
School of Athens (1509–1511), or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling
(1508–1512). The vibrant colors, classical forms, and increasingly rich
details in these and so many other paintings literally changed the way we
see the world and conceive of ourselves. In Rome, Naples, and the city-
states of Milan, Venice, and, above all, Florence, a profound transformation
was taking place that was dazzlingly reflected in the art, architecture, and
even the music of the time, a transformation that quickly spread beyond the
Alps to northern Europe, down through France to Spain, and eventually
across the channel to England.
There are numerous excellent studies of these aesthetic trends by
experts in the field, complete with full-color plates and elaborate
descriptions.1 Our focus here will be different if nonetheless inextricably
related. It will be on the conception of man to be found, not in paintings and
sculptures, but in the poems, plays, letters, novels, essays, and treatises of
the time. As we will use the term, the Renaissance refers both to a period—
roughly from the death of Chaucer in 1400 to the death of Shakespeare in
1616—and to a progression in human consciousness that brought us from
the Middle Ages to the early modern era.
Our word Renaissance derives, via the French, from Petrarch’s
rinascita, which literally means “rebirth.” Petrarch claimed that, in his
work, the humanist tradition of ancient Greece and Rome was being
rediscovered and reconceived following the benighted Dark Ages. He even
arranged to have himself crowned poet laureate in Rome, reinstating a
classical tradition. But Petrarch was a self-promoter and prone to
exaggeration. As I was at pains to show in my last book, the classical
tradition was never fully lost during the Middle Ages, and powerful
stirrings of the Renaissance can be traced at least to the twelfth century, two
hundred years before Petrarch.2 There was never a sharp break. But, after
Petrarch, the pace and magnitude of change was sufficiently marked that
calling this period the Renaissance is still illuminating as well as inevitable.
Fernand Braudel, the great historian of the Mediterranean world in the
sixteenth century, downplayed the importance of specific events and
specific individuals. He focused on the longue durée, the glacial perspective
of geography, climate, food sources, shifting trade routes, and the gradual
development of cities and technology as drivers of economic and social
change.3 He is undoubtedly right, and his work is a useful corrective to the
more traditional focus on individual achievements and dramatic events.
Civilizations developed around the Mediterranean—like frogs around a
pond, as Plato once noted—as a source both of food and mobility.
Geographic features—such as mountains, plains, and rivers—determined
livelihoods and defenses. Technological developments—in navigation,
architecture, tools for farming, and drift nets for fishing—only gradually
compensated for or took increased advantage of natural features.
But correctives can be one-sided too. Indeed, they are so by definition.
As Aristotle suggested in discussing character traits, the only way to
straighten a bent stick is to bend it in the opposite direction. I have bent my
stick in the direction of extraordinary individuals: specific writers and
thinkers who both embodied and drove the dramatic expansion of
individual consciousness during the Renaissance. As Ben Jonson said of
Shakespeare, he was the “soul of the age,” and yet “he was not of an age
but for all time!”4 Perhaps the great writers of the Western tradition are just
flotsam on the tides of history. But they did not conceive of themselves in
those terms, and we can celebrate and learn from their achievements
without ignoring the longue durée that envelops and sustains them, even as
they transcend it.
In each of the chapters that follow, I try to provide sufficient historical
background to place each author in context. At the risk of some repetition,
however, I want briefly to note four broad, closely intertwined trends that
accelerated the pace of change in western Europe during the fifteenth
century and beyond.

THE RISE OF SOVEREIGN NATIONS

In 1453, the Hundred Years’ War between England and France came to a
decisive end. English pretensions to the French throne were finally
abandoned, as were English continental possessions other than a last
redoubt in and around Calais. A period of relative peace descended on
Europe that lasted close to fifty years, until the religious wars triggered by
the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. “Relative”
is still the operative word, however. Rebellious Burgundy was not brought
under the full control of France until 1477. The Wars of the Roses over
dynastic succession were waged between 1455 and 1487 by English nobles
who were disgusted with the monarchy’s expensive failure in France and
jealous of their own prerogatives. And the Reconquista (expulsion of the
Moors) in Spain was finally completed only with the conquest of Granada
in 1492. But those were largely internal struggles of consolidation. Strife
between nations was significantly reduced, allowing the material conditions
of everyday life to improve.
Europe was finally recovering from the ravages of the plague in the
fourteenth century, which had killed as many as half its inhabitants. The
absence of global warfare, a milder climate, and a longer growing season
(as well as severe labor shortages) improved the lot of the post-feudal
peasant class. Increased trade within Europe led to a new middle class of
merchants and artisans. Cities expanded as cultural, artistic, and
administrative centers. Bureaucrats and diplomats flourished. Great
merchant banking families, such as the Medicis in Florence and the Fuggers
in Germany, financed both the armies and the artistic patronage of popes,
kings, and princes. During the fifteenth century, western Europe completed
its transition from a localized, feudal society to one dominated by nation-
states ruled by more or less absolute monarchs. The map of modern Europe
was taking shape.
Yet it was in fractured and fractious Italy that the Renaissance had its
start. Italy would remain divided until the nineteenth century, when
Giuseppe Garibaldi and his thousand Redshirts began to realize
Machiavelli’s dream of a united Italy. In the fifteenth century, there were
five principal centers of influence: the Kingdom of Naples, the Papal States
surrounding Rome, and the great city-states of Florence, Venice, and Milan,
with numerous smaller cities acting as satellites and often pawns of the
larger powers.
Naples was contested and alternately controlled by Spain and France.
Rome was a shell of its former self until a trio of powerful popes—Sixtus
IV (r. 1471–1484), Alexander VI (r. 1492–1503), and Julius II (r. 1503–
1513)—restored its grandeur and enhanced its influence throughout Italy
and beyond. Florence was an off-again, on-again republic controlled largely
by the Medici family. Milan was dominated by the Viscontis for almost two
centuries, until the line of succession ran out and the condottiere Francesco
Sforza used his military expertise to establish his own dynasty in 1450. The
Republic of Venice was the most stable of the five regions, with elected
doges acting as CEOs and overseeing the phenomenal growth of the city’s
trade. One cannot but think that this constant tension and sense of
competition between the various regions of Italy contributed to the artistic
and intellectual ferment that made Italy the breeding ground of the
Renaissance.
But the lack of unity also made the Italian states an inviting target for
the growing power of the European monarchies and their professional
armies. In 1494, Charles VIII of France invaded Naples, at that time a
dependency of Aragon. His passage down the peninsula led to the
overthrow of the Medicis in Florence. A brief period of theocracy (1494–
1498) under the fanatic monk Girolamo Savonarola was followed by a
fragile democracy. Little more than a decade later, however, the Florentine
Republic—which now foolishly backed the French—was forced to
capitulate to the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, of Habsburg Spain. The
republic collapsed, and the Medicis returned to power. Pope Clement VII
also backed French claims in Naples. In 1527, unruly troops of Charles V
sacked Rome and held the pope a virtual prisoner in the Castel
Sant’Angelo. The independence of Milan was also a casualty of war,
becoming a duchy of Habsburg Spain in 1525.
If the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries belonged to
Italy, the sixteenth century was the golden age of Spain. When Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castile married in 1469, they united a Spain that
was almost as divided as Italy. They completed the Reconquista,
recapturing the last Muslim stronghold of Granada in the same year they
sent Columbus on his voyage to find a western passage to India. Through
astute marital alliances, their grandson became heir to three dynasties:
Spain, the Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands, otherwise known as
the Low Countries, and Habsburg Austria, as well as vast territories in the
New World of America. As Holy Roman emperor, Charles V attracted the
fear and envy of other European nations and strained his resources fighting
on three fronts at once: the Italian wars with France; wars to prevent
Muslim encroachments into Europe; and wars with Dutch and German
princes who supported the Reformation. His son, Philip II, continued to
fight incursions by Islam generally and the Turks in particular, culminating
in the great naval battle of Lepanto, at which Miguel de Cervantes fought,
in 1571. But Philip’s efforts to protect trade in the Mediterranean were less
successful. A series of battles in North Africa proved inconclusive. And,
despite Spain’s new dominance at sea, Islamic piracy continued largely
unchecked.
The title of emperor went to Philip’s brother Ferdinand, who now
controlled the Austrian lands of the Habsburgs. But Philip was also king of
Naples, Sicily, and Portugal, as well as the Duke of Milan. He even had a
brief stint as nominal king of England during his four-year, childless
marriage to Queen Mary I, the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII and his first
wife, Catherine of Aragon. Spain under Philip had vast resources from
American gold and silver, eastern spices, Castilian wool, and Dutch textiles.
But Philip dissipated those riches in a vain attempt to suppress
Protestantism in the Netherlands and the various principalities of central
Europe. He imposed ruinous taxes on his many subjects and mortgaged
Spain’s future to foreign bankers. The Netherlands began a revolt in 1568
that, aided by England, lasted eighty years. Philip’s efforts to invade
England, depose Queen Elizabeth, reinstate Catholicism, and put an end to
English interference in the Netherlands culminated in the collapse of the
supposedly invincible Spanish Armada in 1588. Spain went bankrupt five
times during the reign of Philip II. By the time he died in 1598, Spanish
hegemony was waning.
France’s turn to wax would be next, beginning in the latter half of the
seventeenth century and continuing well into the eighteenth. The Italian
Wars between France and Spain lasted intermittently until 1559. In the end,
France was forced to renounce all claims on Italy, but it at least managed to
consolidate its own borders, securing Provence, preserving the Alsace, and
regaining Calais from the English.
France solidified those borders just in time to see itself torn apart
internally by the wars of religion between Catholics and Huguenots. The
Huguenots, who followed the teachings of John Calvin, were decidedly in
the minority, but they had strongholds in urban areas, particularly in Paris.
The civil war is discussed at some length in the chapter on Montaigne, who
played an important role in trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution. But
that resolution came only after his death, when Henri IV, the first Bourbon
king of France (r. 1589–1610), issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which
guaranteed freedom of religion and full civil rights to the Huguenots. Henri
himself had been a Huguenot but reconverted to Catholicism—or, more
accurately, renounced his Calvinism, reputedly with the words “Paris vaut
bien une messe” (Paris is well worth a mass).
The wars of religion were not at an end, however. They soon inflamed
the rest of Europe. The Habsburg Empire at that time spanned much of
central Europe and extended into the Low Countries not controlled by
Spain. It was a highly decentralized empire with hundreds of separate
principalities, each jealous of its independence. In 1618, the newly elected
Holy Roman emperor, Ferdinand II, tried forcibly to impose Catholicism
throughout the Habsburg territories. The reaction was immediate. Bohemia,
Saxony, parts of the Netherlands, and other principalities rebelled. Spain
joined the side of the Habsburgs in an effort to control its own Dutch rebels.
Sweden entered on the side of the Protestants in 1630, turning the war into a
full-scale European conflagration. James I’s attempt to send military aid to
his son-in-law Frederick V in the Rhine was stifled by Parliament, and his
punitive reaction became a causal factor in the English Civil War that
ultimately would lead to the deposition and execution of his son Charles I.
France, though Catholic, ended up joining the anti-Spain and anti-Habsburg
forces in 1635. Eight million Europeans died in what became known as the
Thirty Years’ War, either directly from the violence or from the plagues and
famines that ensued. Various treaties known as the Peace of Westphalia
were signed in 1648. They were a formal acknowledgment of the territorial
boundaries of the sovereign states, including the newly recognized Dutch
Republic, and an informal acknowledgment of the changing balance of
power within Europe.
THE EXPANSION OF LEARNING

From the fourteenth century on, there was a steadily increasing interest in
the works of ancient Rome. Humanists, inspired by the example of
Petrarch, hunted for forgotten classics in monasteries throughout Europe,
where they had been dutifully copied and preserved throughout the Middle
Ages. Scholars labored to collate manuscripts and to provide accurate texts.
Detailed commentaries were prepared that depended on close textual
analysis. These humanists were not isolated scholars, however. There was a
widespread belief that the study of the classics made for better, more
productive citizens. Those reading Virgil, Cicero, Livy, and Seneca imbibed
practical and rhetorical skills appropriate to law, administration, and foreign
relations. They served the modern state as secretaries, speechwriters, and
diplomats. As the premier Renaissance historian, Jacob Burckhardt, would
later explain, the classical learning of the humanist “had to serve the
practical needs of daily life.”5
Yet there was still only limited knowledge of the Greek classics. The
works of Aristotle, preserved and carefully annotated by Arab scholars in
Alexandria, had already been translated into Latin. Homer and some of the
tragedians were available in poor Latin translations. But other Greek
classics were largely unknown, and the ability to read ancient Greek was
rare. That changed in 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Turks. The
Eastern Roman Empire, which had survived the fall of Rome by almost a
millennium, was at an end. Greek scholars fled to Italy and other parts of
western Europe, bringing their knowledge of ancient Greek and their
libraries with them. Classics of Greek literature, as well as scientific and
medical texts of Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy, and others, became available, and
western scholars scrambled to learn to read them in the original. Others
eagerly awaited accurate translations by an increasing cadre of philologists.
Most important, the Dialogues of Plato were translated into Latin in the
1460s by the Italian scholar Marsilio Ficino. Neoplatonism, given a
Renaissance cast by Ficino’s most brilliant student, Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola, began to rival, if not displace, the Scholasticism derived from
Aristotle among progressive theologians.
The revival of classical learning was at first thought to serve the needs
of religion as well as those of the state. These were not secular humanists,
as we use that term today. Ficino was a Catholic priest. Pico was a devout
Christian, as were Desiderius Erasmus and other proselytizers of ancient
learning. They believed strongly that humanism and religion were not only
fully compatible, but reinforced one another. That was equally true among
those who studied science. They viewed nature itself as a book consistent
with, and every bit as important as, the Bible. Both came from God.
The church, however, took a dim view of the application of philology
and close textual analysis to the Bible itself. Catholic humanists thought
there was nothing more important than ensuring that the Word of God was
stated accurately and that people could read or at least listen to scripture in
the vernacular. But the church fiercely resisted any attempt to undermine
the Latin Vulgate Bible then in standard use or to allow congregations to
form their own views as to the meaning of scripture without the mediation
of the church.
In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg was already at work on a printed version
of the Bible. It was a proper Latin Vulgate Bible. But the new technology
could not easily be kept within the bounds approved by the church.
Gutenberg’s printing press was quickly duplicated throughout Europe.
Engravings from woodcuts and copper plates allowed readers to study
illustrations, maps, diagrams, and tables, all of which were important for
many new works on astronomy, botany, geography, medicine, and other
disciplines. By the end of the fifteenth century, as many as fifteen million
volumes of forty thousand different titles and editions had been printed. Ten
times that number had appeared by 1600, including vernacular works in
Italian, German, French, Spanish, and English.6 The hunger for learning
seemed inexhaustible. Knowledge was no longer the exclusive preserve of
Latinists. The impact of any one writer could be magnified a thousand-fold,
much to the horror of the Catholic Church. Publishing’s first block-buster
best sellers were produced by Erasmus, who, even fifty years earlier, would
likely have remained an obscure former monk known to just a few scholars.
Instead, he was celebrated throughout Europe until he was alternately
blamed for, and excoriated by, the Protestant Reformation.
The publication of vernacular versions of the Bible, and the Catholic
Church’s efforts to ban them, became a core issue of the Reformation. Of
longer-term significance, however, was the plethora of literary,
philosophical, and scientific works that the Catholic Church also concluded
were inconsistent with or inimical to the Catholic faith. When Nicolaus
Copernicus (1473–1543), Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), and Galileo
Galilei (1564–1642) demonstrated that the earth revolves around the sun,
rather than vice versa, a crusade against learning was launched that the
church could not win but was unwilling to abandon. Its Index of Forbidden
Books, published in 1559, became an ever-lengthening honor roll for great
authors until its abolition in 1966. The Catholic Church turned its face
resolutely away from the new learning and back toward the Middle Ages.
The church bade time stand still, just as it insisted that the earth stood still.
“E pur si muove” (And yet it moves), Galileo would reputedly murmur,
after his forced public recantation.

THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

The Crusades—a papal-driven attempt to reclaim Jerusalem and the Holy

Land for Christianity—lasted from 1095 to 1291. Despite some early
successes, the Crusades were, in the end, a military and moral disaster. But
they did expand the horizons of western Europe by introducing to it the
spices, silks, and superior learning of the Arab world. Where once
European states sought to conquer in the name of God, they now sought to
conquer in the name of trade. Navigation and overland routes improved,
and trade expanded to India, China, and elsewhere in the Far East. A rising
middle class of merchants, bankers, and artisans grew wealthy. Commercial
arrangements were streamlined, and Arabic numbers, double-entry
bookkeeping, bills of exchange, and maritime insurance became
commonplace. Textiles, spices, coffee, tobacco, sugar, and brightly colored
dyes poured into western Europe, along with the pigments critical to the
palettes of Renaissance painters. Eyeglasses were produced for the
nearsighted as were lead pencils for the literate. The seven major guilds in
Florence—cloth finishers, wool merchants, silk weavers, bankers, notaries,
druggists/spice merchants, and furriers—give a fair indication of the
growing importance of trade in developing a new, urban middle class.
Trade, in turn, drove exploration. The so-called Silk Road connecting
the Middle East and the Far East with the Mediterranean was, in reality, a
variety of routes: up the Persian Gulf and overland across the Arabian
Peninsula; up the Red Sea and through Egypt. Heavy tolls were exacted
along the way, where the routes were not closed altogether by the growing
Ottoman Empire. A purely maritime route to the Far East became a
commercial imperative, and the Portuguese, already situated on the
Atlantic, were in an ideal position to obtain it. Prince Henry the Navigator
(1394–1460) funded explorations of West Africa and the Canary Islands.
Aided by magnetic compasses and rapidly improving navigation charts, the
Portuguese gradually worked their way down the west coast of Africa,
establishing valuable ports in Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verde
islands. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias first rounded the southern tip of Africa,
which he called the Cape of Good Hope. And in 1497, Vasco da Gama left
Lisbon with four ships and 170 men bound all the way to India and back, a
voyage celebrated in the sixteenth-century epic poem The Lusíads, by Luís
Vaz de Camões. Portugal established the first global trading empire, to
which it added Brazil in 1500. But, by the time The Lusíads was written in
the 1570s, that empire had already declined, and Spain was now the
dominant force in world trade.
It is ironic, though, that two of the most important Spanish-sponsored
explorations were led by non-Spaniards. In 1492, the Italian Christopher
Columbus convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to fund his attempt to find a
western route to the Far East. By this date, educated people had long known
that the world was round. The first extant terrestrial globe was
coincidentally produced by the German mariner Martin Behaim in the same
year Columbus set sail in his three small vessels. But cartographers had
underestimated the circumference of the world by as much as a third.7 They
also were ignorant of the fact that North and South America were situated
between Europe and the Far East. Accordingly, when Columbus finally
made landfall in the Bahamas, he mistook it for India.
Juan Ponce de León, who accompanied Columbus on his second
expedition, explored Puerto Rico, landed in Florida in 1513, and later
attempted unsuccessfully to establish a Spanish colony there. The Spanish
had greater success in South America. Vasco Núñez de Balboa reached the
Isthmus of Panama and set eyes upon the Pacific Ocean in 1513.8 And in
1519, the Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan sought to prove that a
western route to the Moluccas, the so-called Spice Islands, was still
possible. He was backed, however, not by Portugal—which rejected his
proposal as implausible—but by Spain. It took Magellan three years, and
ultimately cost him his life in a native skirmish into which he senselessly
interjected himself. But he had quelled a mutiny, reached the southernmost
tip of South America, passed through what became known as the Straits of
Magellan, and crossed the vast, uncharted waters of the Pacific Ocean. The
tiny remnants of his crew finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope and
returned, without Magellan, to Spain and glory in 1522.
Unlike the Portuguese in the Far East, the Spanish had little interest in
peaceful trade with the indigenous peoples of South America. The primary
objective of their conquistadors was exploitation. Hernán Cortés all but
wiped out the ancient Aztec civilization in Mexico between 1519 and 1521.
Francisco Pizarro did the same with the Incas in Peru between 1531 and
1533. Priests bearing crosses and intent on conversion accompanied the
troops, but in the end there were few left to convert. The indigenous
population quickly fell by more than 80 percent. Many succumbed to
smallpox and measles, diseases against which they had no natural defenses.
Indiscriminate slaughter and forced labor in the silver mines accounted for
the rest. Slaves were imported from Africa to fill the void. Gold, silver, and
other goods made the return journey to Spain. But the golden era of Spain
would also soon fade, if not as quickly as Portugal’s had.
England laid its own hypothetical claims to the east coast of North
America based on the 1497 voyages of John Cabot, an Italian mariner
employed by Henry VII. Sir Francis Drake—pirate or patriot, depending on
your perspective—performed a second circumnavigation from 1577 to
1580, seizing Spanish treasure ships and laying claim to California along
the way. Drake would play a significant role in defeating the once-
invincible Spanish Armada in 1588. His many voyages made him a rich
man and established a tradition of English maritime dominance that lasted
through the nineteenth century.
English settlements were founded in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and
in Plymouth, on Massachusetts Bay, in 1620—the first purely commercial,
the second driven by Puritan separatists. Meanwhile, French traders and
trappers spread across Canada and down into the unchartered territories
below. Conflict among the great powers was inevitable, but that is beyond
the scope of this volume. The critical point is that, by the start of the
seventeenth century, the map of the world, at least in its outlines, was
largely complete. Western Europe was spreading its influence—sometimes
benign but often baleful—throughout the world. It received two things in
return: wealth—sometimes from trade but often from theft—and
knowledge. The latter proved far more important in the development of
Western consciousness. Just as Copernicus dislodged the earth from the
center of the solar system in his 1543 book, On the Revolutions of the
Celestial Spheres, so too the great explorers made it clear that western
Europe was just a portion, and a small portion at that, of a much larger,
more varied world. Travel literature poured from the new printing presses:
accounts of voyages, descriptions of new lands and old tribal societies—
sometimes accurate but often sensationalized. This literature fed the hunger
for learning that had already been ignited by the rediscovery of classical
texts and the development of the printing press.

REFORMATION AND UPHEAVAL

The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church dominated the religious life
of western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. It was the main source of
cohesion and social stability after the collapse of the Roman Empire. At the
same time, it was also a force for rigidity and repression. By the end of the
fifteenth century, most Jews and Muslims had either converted or been
expelled from Spain, Portugal, and much of the rest of Europe. Even the
conversos (converted Jews) and Moriscos (converted Muslims) faced
constant suspicion and discrimination. Amsterdam and a few cities in Italy
provided rare safe havens for practicing Jews.
Though it showed no tolerance for other religions, the Catholic Church
was hardly a monolith. The Great Schism of 1054 had split the Western,
Roman church from the Eastern Orthodox one based in Constantinople.
And the Western church itself was divided between rival popes from 1378
to 1417, one residing at Avignon and the other at Rome; each had his own
College of Cardinals. An effort to resolve this Western Schism in 1409 led
instead to the existence of three popes before the Council of Constance
finally deposed all three and settled on Martin V (r. 1417–1431). An
attempt was made soon thereafter to unify the Eastern and Western
churches. In the face of a growing threat from the Ottoman Empire and
hoping to obtain military support from western Europe, representatives of
the Eastern Orthodox Church agreed to a decree of union in 1439. But the
decree was soundly rejected back in Constantinople, and in any event the
city itself soon fell. The Ottomans proved more tolerant than Christians—
just as the Arabs had been in the Middle Ages when they controlled much
of Spain—and allowed Christians and Jews alike to practice their faiths
during the ensuing centuries. But the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church
shifted to Russia.
The Western church, meanwhile, was rotting from within. The Council
of Constance may have guaranteed that there was only one pope at a time,
but it could not ensure that only good popes were elected by the now
unitary College of Cardinals. Alexander VI (r. 1492–1503), the Borgia
pope, bribed, murdered, and fornicated his way to power. Julius II (r. 1503–
1513), the warrior pope, drove the French from Italy and set the various
Italian states against one another so that none would gain hegemony. Leo X
(r. 1513–1521)—who reputedly said upon his election, “Since God has
given us the papacy, let us enjoy it”—spent money like a Medici, which
was to be expected since he was the second son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent. These were all secular, not religious, leaders. And the church
over which they presided reflected that. Ecclesiastical posts were openly
bought and sold, when they were not granted gratis to the “nephews”—that
is, the bastard sons—of popes and cardinals. As many as half the clergy
lived openly with women, and illegitimate children of priests were
commonplace. The sacraments were a moneymaking proposition.
Parishioners were tithed at every religious milestone in their lives, including
baptism, confirmation, marriage, and extreme unction. The church even
found a way to continue charging after death.
Purgatory—where souls worked off their sins before being welcomed
into heaven—had no basis in scripture. But it was an established and by
now extremely lucrative bit of church doctrine. Through prayer and buying
masses, it was believed one could shorten the stay of those in purgatory.
Eventually, the prayers and masses were deemed superfluous. The faithful
could buy “indulgences” directly to save themselves—and their deceased
loved ones—a long, painful sojourn in the waiting room of heaven. This
“purgatory industry” helped to build Saint Peter’s Church and filled the
Vatican Museums with priceless works of art. It also, finally, was the wedge
that split the church apart. The printing press helped spread the
Reformation. The rise of nation-states, eager to stop the outflow of funds to
Rome and greedily eyeing rich church lands, helped to protect the
Reformation. But it was the sale of indulgences that provided the initial
spark of protest.
Others had tried before Martin Luther. Jan Hus, a Czech theologian, was
burned at the stake in 1415 for criticizing the sale of indulgences, the
corruption of the clergy, and the misguided Crusades. The Lollards, led by
John Wycliffe in fourteenth-century England, argued for numerous church
reforms, including the abolition of church property, and for an English-
language Bible that would eliminate priests as intermediaries between the
people and their God. But the Lollards, too, were actively persecuted until
finally absorbed into the Church of England. Martin Luther affixed his
“Ninety-Five Theses” to the church door at just the right time (1517, when
printed pamphlets spread rapidly throughout Europe) and in just the right
place (Wittenberg, where the powerful elector of Saxony protected the
young monk).
Although he began with an attack on indulgences, Luther’s core
teachings were the primacy of scripture over church doctrine and of faith
over works. He took a dismal view of human nature. We are all sinful. We
are all condemned except insofar as God grants us the grace of salvation.
We cannot save ourselves; we can only pray and hope. Indeed, much of the
reason for Luther’s rebellion was that, as a monk, he found himself
incapable of imitating the example of Christ. Nor did he think the church
could bridge that gap. To the contrary, the church interposed itself between
man and God, preventing a more direct relationship. The faithful had to rely
on the priesthood to present and interpret a Bible that most could never
hope to read or even to have read to them directly. Luther wanted people to
listen to the Word of God in their own language, and indeed, Luther’s
vernacular translation of the Bible became the foundation of the common
German language, just as the King James Bible would determine the future
of the English language.9 His many hymns still reverberate powerfully
through churches today. Luther also wanted to do away with many of the
everyday religious rituals by which Catholics marked their passage through
life. He argued that only two sacraments have a basis in scripture: baptism
and Communion. He also rejected the isolation and hierarchy of priests.
Luther himself married a former nun and fathered six children. All
members of the community, he argued, are worshipers together; all are
flawed human beings whose salvation depends not on good works but on
faith in the grace of God.
When called upon formally to recant at the Diet of Worms in 1521,
Luther declined: “Here I stand, I can do no other,” he said. Thomas Carlyle
called it, with pardonable exaggeration, “the greatest moment in the modern
history of men.”10 By that, Carlyle—who stressed the role of “great men” in
history—meant that individual conscience was finally claiming its due. But,
in fact, the Reformation was not a humanist development in favor of
individual conscience. Luther—like the other main figures of the
Reformation, John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli, who disagreed with
Luther and with one another on doctrinal issues such as whether Christ is
really present in the Eucharist—had no intention of tolerating dissent from
his new orthodoxy.
The Reformation was as much a nationalist, economic shift as a
religious one. The reason Luther could decline to recant and escape burning
at the stake was that he was protected by Frederick the Wise, the elector of
Saxony, who had an important vote in choosing the Holy Roman emperor.
He and other German princes felt that the papacy was exploiting Germany
and usurping its wealth. Not only was the outflow of funds to Rome slowed
by the Reformation, but religion became a local affair, and rich church
properties were subject to state control. When the First Act of Supremacy of
1534 made Henry VIII head of the separate Church of England, he
immediately set Thomas Cromwell to work shuttering all the monasteries,
dissolving their orders, and selling their lands. The sale of church lands was
extremely popular with the landowning class and helped solidify the
position of the Church of England.
The iconoclasm of the Reformation was quite literal. Religious images
and artworks were destroyed. Religious rituals were abandoned. The
worship of saints and their relics was rejected as gross superstition. Church
music was simplified. Religion became an altogether grimmer but not
thereby more enlightened affair. Belief in demons was still strong. Witches
and heretics were still burned. And predestination—the belief that
everyone’s fate is determined by God and not by the will of man—was
standard doctrine.
Rome did not seriously awaken to the challenge posed by the
Reformation until 1540, when the Society of Jesus was established under
Ignatius of Loyola. The Jesuits were the shock troops of the Counter-
Reformation, establishing schools and proselytizing throughout Europe and
the rest of the world. Rome set up its own Inquisition in 1542 to combat
heresy. The ecumenical Council of Trent, meeting from 1545 to 1563,
articulated the principles of the Counter-Reformation. It reaffirmed the
authority of the pope, the critical role of priests as mediators between God
and the lay congregation, and the sanctity of all seven sacraments, including
the tran-substantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of
Christ at Communion. It also confirmed the existence of purgatory and the
veneration of saints and their relics. It even allowed the continued sale of
indulgences, though at a reduced level. Actual reforms were few and far
between. But the council did condemn the sale of church offices and
insisted that priests and nuns must observe their vows of chastity.
Italy, Spain, and Portugal remained solidly Catholic. Aside from the five
years (1553–1558) when Mary I tried to reimpose Catholicism, England
was firmly Anglican, especially after the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in
1605, when Catholic recusants tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
The Counter-Reformation was too little and too late to preserve Catholicism
in much of northern Europe. Under the Peace of Augsburg of 1555—forced
on the emperor by a military alliance of Protestant princes known as the
Schmalkaldic League—the rulers of states within the Holy Roman Empire
were allowed to choose whether their subjects were to be Catholic or
Lutheran. “Cuius regio, eius religio” (whose realm, his religion) was the
unfortunate motto. Internal dissent was not tolerated, although members of
the minority religion were granted time to migrate to other states. This
winner-take-all approach had particularly harsh consequences in France,
where it led to sixty years of brutal and destructive warfare between
Catholics and Huguenots. It was Ferdinand II’s attempt to repudiate the
Peace of Augsburg that led to the Thirty Years’ War. Only in 1648, with the
Peace of Westphalia, was Calvinism recognized, along with Catholicism
and Lutheranism, as a legitimate state religion, and the European wars of
religion finally came to an end.

TEN RENAISSANCE AUTHORS

“Nothing [is] more wonderful than man,” wrote the fifteenth-century Italian
philosopher Pico della Mirandola.11 Man stands between the physical world
of nature and the spiritual world of God and the angels. If he cultivates his
sensuality, he will become one with the beasts. But if he cultivates his
intellect and recognizes “the dignity of th[e] liberal arts,” “he will be an
angel, and a son of God.”12
This is a truly remarkable statement: man can become like a god. The
sentiment seems to come right out of the pagan, anthropomorphic
mythology of the classical world. Yet Pico never doubted that humanist
studies were fully compatible with Christian revelation. Thomas Aquinas
had attempted two centuries earlier to harmonize Aristotelian reason and
church doctrine. Whole waves of lesser scholar-theologians toiled in his
wake and brought discredit to the enterprise. Scholasticism became a term
of derision and abuse, though whether it was because reason was distorted
to serve religion or because religion was distorted to serve reason depended
on the perspective of the critic.
Pico, however, was advocating something very different. He had little
interest in doctrinal issues. He simply wanted to celebrate the capacities of
man as given by God and thereby partaking of the divine. For him, the
various schools and sects were but stepping-stones to enhanced
consciousness of man himself, “like the sun rising from the deep.”13 Pico
imagined God addressing his creation:
I have placed thee at the center of the world, that from there thou mayest more conveniently
look around and see whatsoever is in the world. Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal
nor immortal have We made thee. Thou . . . art the molder and maker of thyself; thy mayest
sculpt thyself into whatever shape thou dost prefer. Thou canst grow downward into the lower
natures which are brutes. Thou canst again grow upward from thy soul’s reason into the
higher natures which are divine.14

If we insist on a definition of the core Renaissance ideal, we could do

worse than “thou art the molder and maker of thyself.” Pico and many other
writers insisted on the essential goodness and perfectibility of man, as well
as the transformative power of art and the humanities. In the Middle Ages,
man was cast into shadows by the twin institutions of feudalism and the
Catholic Church. The rapid breakdown of that existing order—driven by the
dynamic economic and political changes noted above—brought individual
man back into the classical sunlight and irrevocably altered our
consciousness and our sense of personal identity.
Jacob Burckhardt aptly captures the transformation:
Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family or
corporation—only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an
objective treatment and consideration of the state and of all the things of this world became
possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis;
man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such.15

We can see this recognition and celebration of the individual in the

paintings of the Renaissance. We can even hear it behind the soaring,
searing harmonies of the great masters of polyphonic church music: Josquin
des Prez (ca. 1450–1521), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/6–1594),
and Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–1585), who, along with his younger pupil and
colleague William Byrd (1539/40–1623), was literally granted a monopoly
on polyphonic music by Queen Elizabeth. And it is laid plainly on the
surface in Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607), the earliest opera still in
the modern repertoire. If ever there was an art form that focuses on the
individual, in triumph and desperation, it is opera, the modern heir to Greek
tragedy.16
The ten authors we will study in this book all played important roles in
the development of the subjective side of individual consciousness. They
provided us with a new vision of men and women as makers and molders of
themselves. Simultaneously, they attempted a more or less objective
treatment of the state and worldly affairs. In the tension between those two
perspectives lies much of their most fruitful, as well as their most comic,
work.
Petrarch (1304–1374) embodies this divided consciousness, though he
is never deliberately comic. If ever there were a writer who took himself
with unrelieved seriousness, it is Petrarch. He invented the sonnet form as
an intense and condensed way to convey thoughts and emotions. His letters
to fellow scholars are a rallying cry for humanism and the study of classical
texts. And his private account of his own spiritual turmoil shows that he
recognized the inherent tension, denied by others, between humanism and
Catholicism. Although his dates would seem to situate him in the medieval
world of Dante and Boccaccio, he is in fact remarkably modern and
deserves his place in the vanguard of the Renaissance.
Erasmus (ca. 1466–1536) was a best-selling anthologizer and
popularizer of classical adages. He was a strong advocate for the power of a
humanist education in shaping Christian citizens and leaders. But he also
had a taste for satire. He may be the first writer to stress the importance, or
at least the inevitability, of folly in everyday life. That is a point his
contemporary, Martin Luther (1483–1546), should have understood but
did not. Despite his dark, counter-Renaissance view of human nature,
Luther had complete faith in his own infallibility. He took Erasmus’s
measured calls for church reform and turned them into an uncompromising
attack on the pope and the corruption of the church, seeking to remake
religion in his own image. Erasmus was caught in the middle, between a
reactionary church and a bomb-throwing Luther, and his efforts to find a
middle ground were condemned by both.
Machiavelli (1469–1527) also took a dark view of human nature. His
advice to the Medici prince who he hoped would unite Italy and drive out
foreign invaders was thoroughly pragmatic and deliberately amoral.
Although he favored a republican form of government like that of ancient
Rome, Machiavelli was willing to settle for a competent strongman, and he
thought that Christian values had no role to play in the political rough-and-
tumble necessary to obtain and retain power. If you want to be a Christian
saint, he advised, join a monastery and stay out of politics.
Thomas More (1478–1535) is more famous as a Catholic martyr than a
great writer. But he was England’s most important humanist and a close
friend of Erasmus before he set himself against Henry VIII’s divorce from
Catherine of Aragon and England’s consequent divorce from the Catholic
Church. More’s Utopia is a slight book, yet it has resonated through the
centuries and still generates strong opinions as to both the possibility and
the desirability of the society he depicts. More shared a love of satire with
Erasmus, and he deliberately suffused Utopia with a teasing ambiguity.
Castiglione (1478–1529) turned his attention away from the prince and
toward the courtiers who serve him. His imagined courtier is the perfect
Renaissance man: educated, articulate, and skilled in all the arts of pleasing
and impressing others. His most important quality is sprezzatura, a word
coined by Castiglione, which refers to an almost superhuman grace and
ease, a studied nonchalance that disguises the tremendous effort that goes
into any form of mastery. Castiglione’s courtier is truly the maker and
molder of himself. Yet Castiglione does not shrink from exploring the moral
and personal ambiguity of the courtier’s subservient position in a world of
absolute sovereigns.
Rabelais (1483–1553) is an earthy writer. At times, he borders on the
obscene. Many of his characters are the embodiment of excess; that is to
say, they are Rabelaisian. But the excess is not just of food, drink, and sex;
it is also of knowledge, experience, and humor. This former monk turned
doctor and novelist—beloved of kings and bishops if not of the theology
faculty at the Sorbonne—believed that laughter is natural to man and that,
along with our godlike capacity for knowledge and love, we received a
generous admixture of absurdity that we cannot escape and therefore might
as well embrace.
 Montaigne (1533–1592) directly challenges the Renaissance belief that
men can become like gods. “They want to get out of themselves and escape
from the man,” he writes. “That is madness: instead of changing into
angels, they change into beasts; instead of raising themselves, they lower
themselves.” Montaigne stresses man’s inherent fallibility and urges us to
find wisdom, not in abstractions, but in a close attention to experience.
Without the aspirational tyranny of absolutes, Montaigne is free to value
experience on its own terms. He teaches us how to live without the ethical,
social, and religious conventions by which most of us do live but which
falsify the human condition.
Cervantes (1547–1616) wrote the first, and many would say the
greatest, novel. Instead of the classical ideal of mimesis—art imitating life
—Cervantes adopts a more modern notion: life imitating art. Alonso
Quixano, a fifty-year-old bachelor of modest means, grows obsessed with
books of chivalry and, in a parody of Renaissance self-fashioning, decides
to remake himself in their image. As Don Quixote de la Mancha, he is
inspired to genuine acts of love and feats of courage. But his literary ideal
repeatedly clashes with a very different reality. In the heroic absurdity of
Don Quixote, we find both comedy and pathos. We come away from
reading the book with a greater sense of our common humanity and the
possibilities of being human. For each of us is, to some extent, compelled to
be the author of our own fictional universe. That is how we give meaning to
our lives in a world abandoned by God.
Shakespeare (1564–1616) excels even Homer, Virgil, and Dante as the
poet of human experience. No matter how often we read him or watch his
plays, his riches cannot be exhausted. Harold Bloom credits him with the
invention of the human. Shakespeare had more than a little help in that
regard from Montaigne and Cervantes, not to mention the twelfth-century
abbess Heloise. But there is still a profound truth in Bloom’s praise.
Shakespeare is both the culmination and the termination of the Renaissance:
the soul of his age and for all time. In Shakespeare we find, and remake,
ourselves.
 Chapter 1
THE THREE FACES OF
FRANCESCO PETRARCA

I am like a man standing between two worlds; I look both

forward and backward.1

T his dual vision is the essence of Petrarch. Indeed, it is the essence of

the Renaissance that Petrarch did so much to bring into being. The
Renaissance looked backward, beyond the Middle Ages, to the classical
tradition of ancient Rome and ancient Greece. And the Renaissance looked
forward, in an explosion of creativity, to new forms of thought and
expression freed from medieval constraints. But Petrarch also looked
within, to explore his own soul, and he was tormented by his seeming
failures and inadequacies.
Petrarch has long been called the first modern man.2 That appellation is
not necessarily a compliment. The unified medieval worldview shaped by
Augustine and Abelard, perfected by Aquinas and Dante, and leavened by
Saint Francis provided a broader context within which their thoughts and
sensibilities found expression. It anchored them as men and thinkers. We
can still discern that fading superstructure in the romances of Chrétien de
Troyes, Giovanni Boccaccio’s secular stories, and even Chaucer’s earthy
pilgrimage.3
But the medieval synthesis was irrevocably shattered in Petrarch.
Petrarch’s work was as fragmented as his Canzoniere (Songbook),
originally titled Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Fragments in the Vernacular).
Petrarch himself was a mass of contradictions, large and small. He was a
religious seeker who found rest for his troubled soul only in the study of
ancient literature. He was a devout Christian who had no patience for the
scholastic thought of Abelard and Aquinas. He was a cleric with
illegitimate children. He was an amazingly productive writer who rarely
finished projects. He was a dedicated Latinist whose most famous writings
were in Italian. He was an indefatigable traveler who praised nothing more
than a quiet life in the country. He was committed to freedom yet
voluntarily lived under tyrants. He sought the patronage of the great while
denouncing worldly ambition. He was a hypochondriac who disparaged
doctors even as he sought their advice. He was a sentimentalist who
disparaged sentiment and a lover who disparaged love. He was by turn
magnanimous and petty, generous to those who admired him while
grudging in praise of his two greatest contemporaries, Dante and
Boccaccio. He was a relentless self-publicist and a relentless self-critic,
questioning everything but his own importance.
Petrarch was a fox trying to be a hedgehog.4 He tried to be Dante in his
Canzoniere, and failed. He tried to be Augustine in his Secretum, and failed.
He tried to be Virgil in his Africa, and failed. He tried to be a combination
of Cicero and Seneca in his reflections on rhetoric and moral philosophy,
and failed.
Where Petrarch succeeded was in being himself, in all his
contradictions. He launched the discovery of the individual that is the
essence of the Renaissance. He was the first true humanist. Petrarch loved
scholarship, poetry, and philosophy, not just as ends in themselves but as
means to a greater understanding of the self, as roads to wisdom. In his
many volumes of letters, written throughout his life, he includes the reader
in this process of self-discovery. He even wrote letters to the great literary
figures of the ancient tradition: Homer, Livy, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and
Seneca, among others. He praised their virtues and in some cases,
especially Cicero, chided their shortcomings. He used the study of literature
as a means of self-examination. He thought he could discover the modern
self through the rediscovery of ancient authors. Petrarch believed that the
self was an object worthy of contemplation and study and that enhanced
self-consciousness was our desideratum. In this, he was more a precursor to
Montaigne and Rousseau than a successor to Augustine.
Indeed, we might well claim that Petrarch was the first postmodern
man.5 His constant themes were exile and fragmentation and inexorable
change through time. He was a man driven from the garden by angels
brandishing flaming swords. Even his beloved Augustine was valued more
for the dark night of his soul than for the alleged illumination that followed
his conversion. With the loss of the medieval synthesis, Petrarch sought to
reconstruct a new self from the fragments of ancient wisdom. That self was
not given; it was created. It was fashioned through the study of literature.
Petrarch sought a rebirth—a rinascita—in the act of writing.6 For Petrarch,
writing was a moral act and a personal necessity. He may not properly be
numbered among the greatest thinkers and writers of all time, but he was
the indispensable man of his own time. He was the pivot on which the
medieval world turned toward the Renaissance.

LIFE

Francesco Petrarca, known to us as Petrarch, was born on July 20, 1304, in

the city-state of Arezzo, about forty-five miles from Florence. Dating back
to Etruscan times, Arezzo is most famous today for its recently restored
fresco by Piero della Francesca and for the Casa del Petrarca.
Although he was born in Arezzo, Petrarch always considered himself a
Florentine. His father was exiled from Florence by the Black Guelfs in
1302, the same year Dante was condemned in absentia and forbidden to
return.7 Ser Petracco moved first to Arezzo in rural Tuscany and then to the
papal court at Avignon, where his wife and two sons joined him in 1312.
Petrarch accordingly grew up and spent much of his life in Provence.
Petrarch was homeschooled and, from an early age, showed a great love
of the Roman classics. His father, however, was of a more practical bent.
He sent Petrarch at the age of twelve, along with his younger brother,
Gherardo, to study law, first at Montpellier and later at Bologna. “A full
seven years I spent in that study,” Petrarch would later write. “It would be
more truthful to say I wasted them!”8 His father sought to quench his
continued interest in the classics by burning the books Petrarch had
painstakingly collected. Petrarch groaned as if he himself had been tossed
on the same fire. In response to his tears, his father snatched back two
books—a volume of Virgil plus Cicero’s Rhetoric—and handed them to the
boy. “‘Take this one, he said, ‘as an occasional recreation for your spirit,
and this one as a prop for your law studies.’”9 The story likely contains
more symbolic than literal truth, for those two authors exercised the greatest
influence on the young Petrarch. He considered them his true patrimony.
While the two boys were at Montpellier, their mother died. When their
father also died a few years later, Petrarch quickly abandoned the study of
law and returned to Avignon in 1326. Whatever money was in his father’s
estate apparently went to a stepmother, and Petrarch and his brother were
left with limited resources. Fortunately, Petrarch had a knack for attracting
patronage, and he became a favorite of the powerful Colonna family from
Rome, including the father, Stefano, and his sons Giovanni and Giacomo,
both of whom became high-ranking church officials. Petrarch also formed
close friendships with the Belgian musician Lodewyck Heyliger, whom
Petrarch called “Socrates,” and with Lello di Pietro Stefano dei Tosetti,
whom Petrarch rechristened “Laelius,” after the loyal friend of the Roman
general and conqueror of Carthage, Scipio Africanus.10 Petrarch’s collected
letters are full of epistles to, and about, these cherished friends.
But his most famous and life-altering encounter was with the elusive
“Laura” on April 6, 1327, when Petrarch was still twenty-two. Petrarch
always claimed it was Good Friday, though in fact Good Friday did not fall
on that date in 1327. He also later claimed that she died at exactly the same
hour of the same day, twenty-one years later, in 1348. The symmetry may
be a convenient fabrication for symbolic purposes, but the reality of the
meeting and its effect on the young Petrarch are generally accepted.
Petrarch saw Laura at church and was struck, like Dante for his Beatrice,
with a lifelong passion that was his greatest joy and his deepest anguish.
Petrarch recorded all his family and other milestones on the flyleaves of his
copy of Virgil. This is where he registered his first meeting with Laura, as
well as her death from the plague in 1348.
Laura was already married to someone else, and Petrarch’s love was
unrequited though nonetheless recognized and sometimes tolerated, if not
encouraged, by its object. Petrarch first obtained fame for the Italian
sonnets he began writing to Laura, love poems inspired by Dante and other
masters of the dolce stil nuovo.11 Dante had died in 1321, when Petrarch
was seventeen. But Dante nonetheless was a decisive influence and rival,
though Petrarch pretended not to have read Dante’s Commedia until 1359,
when Boccaccio sent him a copy.12 Even then, he offered at best faint praise
for the greatest of all Italian poets and only grudgingly acknowledged that,
of the “three crowns of Italian literature,” Dante held the first place, with
himself in second and Boccaccio in third.13
Petrarch became a cleric in 1328, though purely, it would seem, as a
matter of convenience. He never took holy orders or actually functioned as
a priest. But he soon received a canonry from his friend Cardinal Giovanni
Colonna, with a modest income and even more modest duties. In fact, he
became something of a collector of no-show benefices over his career from
various patrons. Although the incomes from each were small, collectively
they gave him a solid living. Yet neither his canonries nor his devotion to
Laura kept Petrarch from fathering two illegitimate children by unknown
women. His son, Giovanni, was born in 1337 and his daughter, Francesca,
in 1343. He arranged for both children to be legitimized by Pope Clement
VI.
In 1337, with assistance from his friends, Petrarch purchased a country
house in Vaucluse, a small, “closed valley” ending in a rock face, from
which a fountain provided the source of the Sorgue River. Here, with the
help of a rural couple, Petrarch sought solitude from the busy papal court at
Avignon and the freedom to write and to appreciate nature at leisure. Morris
Bishop called Vaucluse Petrarch’s Sabine Farm, after Horace’s own rural
refuge from Rome.14 And just as Horace’s farm was near Mount Soracte,
made famous in one of his finest odes,15 Petrarch’s riverside cottage was
close to Mont Ventoux, made famous in one of Petrarch’s most important
letters, in which he describes an ascent to the summit undertaken with his
brother for no other reason than to enjoy the view from the top.
Petrarch’s retreat to the countryside was shocking to his contemporaries,
who could not imagine voluntarily absenting oneself from the papal court
and its opportunities for advancement. But Petrarch was vigorous in
criticizing a city existence driven by ambition. Such a life, he wrote, is
“filled with toil, lacking in repose, directed toward others, forgetful of
oneself; the entire lives of men of affairs are wars without a truce. . . . They
are everywhere but with themselves; they often speak with others but never
with themselves.”16
In a verse letter to Giacomo Colonna, Petrarch stressed the advantages
of solitude in the midst of nature for the work he wished to do and the life
he wished to live:
I want nothing, content
with what I have. . . .
 ...
If she so wills, may Fortune keep for me
this bit of land, the small house and dear books,
and keep all else herself. . . .
...
Just let her not touch the wealth that comes
from poetry, or my free time, that misses
none of the worries of extravagance.17

It is a lovely vision. Petrarch retreated to Vaucluse to rediscover and

reinvent himself. He regarded the solitude of nature both as a soothing balm
for his unrequited love and as a contemplative space for self-knowledge, a
place to speak with himself and to be with himself.
Yet, however sincere Petrarch’s love of Vaucluse, he often left it to
travel throughout Europe, and however sincere Petrarch’s disdain of
worldly ambition, he pursued glory and influence with fierce intensity. In
1341, after a relentless lobbying campaign, he arranged to have himself
crowned poet laureate in Rome on the Capitoline Hill, the first since the fall
of Rome. He was proclaiming himself and getting others to proclaim him a
modern successor to Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Petrarch underwent a three-
day “examination” by Robert of Anjou, king of Naples, before accepting
the laurel crown in Rome on April 8. His coronation oration was a
celebration of humanistic ideals, carefully recovered from antiquity after
the dark years of medieval Europe. It was also a call to arms for cultural
renewal, for politically engaged poetry, and for the obligation of writers to
forge a renewed sense of community based on classical ideals.
Petrarch was only thirty-six when he was crowned at Rome. He was
later deeply embarrassed by the premature accolades and his own part in
calling them forth. Indeed, the people of Rome, most of whom undoubtedly
had never heard of Petrarch, must have been puzzled by the whole affair, in
which they nonetheless participated with enthusiasm. At that time, Petrarch
had only a limited body of work on which to lay such a claim, most notably
a small portion of his sonnets to Laura and the beginning of an epic poem
on Scipio Africanus. This poem, Africa, takes its conscious starting point
from Virgil’s Aeneid, with Dido’s curse hurled at the departing Aeneas and
promising “endless war” between Carthage and Rome: “No love between
our peoples, ever, no pacts of peace!”18
Africa was never finished, though Petrarch continued to work on it
intermittently until his death, sometimes thinking it the equal of the Aeneid
but mostly, and correctly, viewing it as a failure. Petrarch was a poet of the
fractured self, a poet of introspection. He lacked the prerequisites for epic
poetry: sustained narrative drive, structural coherence, and detailed
characterization. Africa is, by common consensus, tedious and pedestrian.
Even its most ardent advocate, the Italian scholar Aldo Bernardo, admires
the poem not for its epic verse but for the humanistic vision embodied in
the character of Scipio.19
Petrarch traveled frequently to Italy, often on diplomatic missions to and
from powerful figures. Petrarch met Boccaccio in Florence in 1350. He
condescended to the younger man to a certain extent, but there was genuine
affection and devotion on both sides through the years, and many of
Petrarch’s most famous letters were written to Boccaccio. In 1353, Petrarch
moved permanently from Provence to northern Italy, living under the
patronage of a succession of Italian strongmen, princes, and despots in
Milan, Venice, Parma, and Padua. He served them as secretary, ambassador,
court poet, and literary ornament. This patronage, added to his benefices,
made him reasonably wealthy. Petrarch occasionally chafed at his public
obligations and turned down the post of papal secretary on several
occasions, yet he clearly did not want to give up being a public figure. As
he explained in a somewhat defensive letter to Boccaccio, he considered
himself a combination of courtier and humanist,20 a combination Baldassare
Castiglione would turn into the ideal type of the Renaissance man.
As he aged, Petrarch shifted away from poetry to scholarship. During
his extensive travels, he always sought out ancient manuscripts in
monasteries and church libraries. His greatest find was Cicero’s Letters to
Atticus at the cathedral library in Verona, and he used those letters and the
letters of Seneca as models for his own carefully shaped and preserved
correspondence. Petrarch longed to create a sort of humanistic monastery,
with a group of like-minded friends devoted to scholarship, literature, and
friendship. But more and more of those closest to him died, many of plague,
some of violence: Laura, Giovanni Colonna, Socrates, Laelius. His letters
are full of accumulated grief and his increasing weariness with life. His son,
Giovanni, died of the plague in Milan in 1361, shortly after Petrarch had
ended his own eight-year residence there.
For a time, Petrarch re-created his Vaucluse retreat with a house and
garden outside Parma. He loved the spot dearly but was frequently absent
and perpetually restless. Around 1368, Petrarch and his daughter Francesca
(with her family) moved to the small town of Arquà, near Padua. There, he
lived an ascetic, scholarly, and pious life. “I wish that death would find me
reading or writing, or, if it please Christ, praying or weeping.”21 He had his
wish on July 18, 1374, just short of his seventieth birthday.
In his will, Petrarch granted various legacies to his brother and his
remaining friends, including fifty florins to Boccaccio “to buy a warm
winter dressing gown.” He left the house at Vaucluse to the couple who had
cared for him there for so long. His library was claimed by Padua, but the
rest of the estate went to his daughter and her family. Petrarch’s true legacy,
though, was the divided consciousness that is the hallmark of modernity.

PETRARCH IN LOVE

Petrarch first saw Laura on April 6, 1327, at the church of Sainte-Claire

d’Avignon. His instant passion for her could only be compared to (and was
clearly intended to rival) Dante’s love for Beatrice. Indeed, Petrarch, in his
poetry, is in constant dialogue with Dante as model and foil.
Some, even among Petrarch’s friends and contemporaries, suspected
that Laura was nothing but a poetic creation and not a flesh-and-blood
woman. But Petrarch insisted otherwise, and most scholars now agree.
Laura is generally identified as Laura de Noves, a member of the Avignon
nobility, who was married in 1325 at the age of eighteen and became Laura
de Sade. Her inaccessibility seems to have been part of her hold on him.
Petrarch wrote poems to his Laura over a thirty-year span. His devotion
to (or, more accurately, his obsession with) her sometimes wavers but never
breaks. He worked on the collection throughout his life, revising,
discarding, and reordering the individual poems. He put them in their final
form only in the last year of his life. The original title of the collection is
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Fragments in the Vernacular), which is
preferable to the commonly used Canzoniere because the fragmentation is a
deliberate part of the poet’s intention constantly to undermine any
straightforward narrative. Petrarch himself referred to the poems as Rime
Sparse (Scattered Rhymes), perhaps echoing Horace’s injunction to sparga
rosas (scatter roses). The poems are indeed roses scattered throughout
Petrarch’s life, and yet they fail to leave a clear trail.
 There are a total of 366 poems in the collection—one for every day of a
leap year—which Petrarch divided into two parts, corresponding roughly to
poems written before and poems written after the death of Laura on April 6,
1348. But it is not a neat division. Part one contains poems about Laura’s
death, while part two contains poems in which Laura is still very much
alive. Petrarch deliberately plays tricks with chronology, resisting even as
he invites a simple autobiographical reading.
There are 317 sonnets in the collection, as well as a variety of other
poetic forms, such as canzoni, sestinas, ballads, and madrigals. Not all the
poems are about Laura. Some are political or religious. There are even
poems about other women that Petrarch could not resist including, just as
Dante did in his Vita Nuova.
Over time, the Canzoniere became Petrarch’s most famous work, a fact
that undoubtedly would have shocked him and may well shock modern
readers, many of whom will find the poems tedious and overwrought. But
the poems were remarkably influential. Petrarch is the father of lyric love
poetry in the vernacular, more so than the Provençal troubadours or even
Dante. Petrarch offers us a changing portrait of human love through time,
not an allegorical or a religious journey. The prime subject of that portrait is
the poet himself, the lover rather than the beloved. He extols his beloved’s
beauty and goodness and decries her coldness and cruelty. But the focus is
almost always on the poet’s feelings rather than the actual object of his
affections.
We are today most familiar with Shakespearean sonnets, written in
iambic pentameter, with three four-line stanzas, known as quatrains, and a
final rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is conventional: abab cdcd efef
gg. Petrarch’s sonnets, which he derived from earlier models, also contain
fourteen lines but generally consist of two quatrains and two tercets, which
are three-line stanzas. The two quatrains have an interlocking rhyme
scheme, abba. The tercets are generally more flexible, but Petrarch often
used cde followed by cdc.
Here is the first of the Petrarchan sonnets to Laura:
Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond’io nudriva ’l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore
quand’era in parte altr’uom da quel ch’i’ sono,

del vario stile in ch’io piango et ragiono

 fra le vane speranze e ’l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.

Ma ben veggio or sì come al popol tutto

favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me medesmo meco mi vergogno;

et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è ’l frutto,

e ’l pentersi, e ’l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.22

My (relatively) literal translation makes no attempt to capture the

rhythm or rhymes of the original Italian:
You who hear in scattered rhymes the sound
of those sighs with which I nourished my heart
in my first youthful error
when I was in part another man than I am now,

for the various styles in which I wept and sang

between vain hope and vain sorrow,
from those who have traveled on the road of Love,
I hope to find pity and forgiveness.

But I see now, yes, how people

have long told tales about me, so that often
it fills me with shame;

of my vanities, shame is the fruit

and penitence and the clearest knowledge
that what pleases the world is but a fleeting dream.

Two things in particular are worth noting about this opening sonnet,
obviously written later in time to serve as an introduction to the collection.
First, it is an apologia for the poems that follow. Petrarch will present his
poems—with all their sighs and hopes and sorrows—but he recognizes that
these efforts through the years capture moods and feelings that are often far
from admirable. Taken together, these moments paint a portrait with the
infinitely variable hues of love, some beautiful, some ugly. The Lover is by
turns adoring and wounded, fatuous and petulant, hopeful and miserable,
chaste and lustful, pious and profane, naive and bitter, quickened and
prostrate. He is, as Mark Musa remarks in the introduction to his excellent
translation, the “personification of the hapless lover as antihero.”23 There is
in these poems both sincere feeling and a strong element of self-mockery.
Morris Bishop calls the Canzoniere “an autobiographical novel in verse.”24
If so, the novel has neither plot nor narrative, and the autobiography is, as
Musa point out, largely “fictional.”25 The Lover of the sonnets is every bit
as much a literary creation as Dante’s Pilgrim, and any simplistic
identification of Petrarch and the Lover will lead the reader astray.
Second, and relatedly, the poem starts with a deliberate reference to the
first of Dante’s Vita Nuova poems, which begins:
O voi che per la via d’Amor passate,
attendete e guardate
s’elli è dolore alcun, quanto ’l mio, grave.

O you who travel on the road of Love,

pause here and look about
for any man whose grief surpasses mine.26

Dante’s direct address to and engagement of the reader (voi che) is

copied by Petrarch, and I have accentuated the echoes by having Petrarch
also refer to those who have “traveled on the road of Love,” a loose if
legitimate translation of “chi per prova intenda amore” (literally: those who
have tried to test love). The reference to Dante, however, is intended by
Petrarch less as a tribute than as a challenge and a contrast. Dante offered a
coherent narrative for his Vita Nuova poems, including prose connectors to
try to draw them together. His Commedia is an even more explicitly
narrative account of how his love for Beatrice has led him to God.
Petrarch will have none of that. His scattered rhymes speak only of the
moments that occasioned them. No coherent narrative will connect those
moments. Indeed, there is no coherent narrative through time that would not
falsify the singular experiences he attempts to capture in the poems. Each
memory embodied in a poem is è breve sogno (a brief dream). But fellow
travelers on the road of love will recognize truth in these scattered rhymes.
Petrarch is writing about human love—in all its longings and frustrations.
Laura is not a proxy for the divine. There are religious poems in the
collection, but those, too, capture moments in time, rare moments of rapture
and transcendence. They do not turn Laura into a religious allegory or
provide any lasting apotheosis for the Lover. Dante’s Pilgrim and Petrarch’s
Lover are two of the most influential fictional creations in the Western
tradition. Yet, in the end, they serve very different gods and reflect very
different poets. As Petrarch makes clear toward the end of the collection,
“my faith is to the world and to my lady.”27
 Yet it is a particular kind of faith, one that expects no fulfillment and no
settled state in which desire is fulfilled. He can neither possess his lady nor
conquer the world through his poetry. He can only provide fragmentary
glimpses of each and thereby glimpses of his own fragmentary self. There is
no fixed self to order those experiences and no fixed reality to anchor them.
Petrarch captures moments and feelings that are often at odds with one
another: “Caught in contrasting winds in a frail boat / on the high seas I am
without a helm.”28
And yet, Petrarch insists, “not through a thousand turnings have I
moved.”29 What has stayed fixed and true amid time and change is his
attempt to transmute his love for Laura into poetry. Indeed, he makes the
identification explicit when he puns on Laura and lauro, the laurel that
crowns the successful poet:
I’ll chase the shadow of that lovely laurel [dolce lauro]
throughout the hottest day and through the snow
until the final day closes my eyes.30

Petrarch’s pursuit of Laura is one with his pursuit of poetic glory. There
is a complicated symbiosis between the two, as each feeds on the other.
Through poetry, Petrarch is able to capture and fix his memories of
Laura and thereby appear to pause the inexorable march of time. He wrote
fifteen anniversary poems explicitly commemorating the day he first saw
her and measuring the changes in both of them through the years. But all
the poems in the collection are such commemorations. Laura ages, but
Petrarch’s memories are fixed in poetry, brief moments captured forever.
The poems give life to Laura and to Petrarch.
Love gives me life through memory alone;
so if I see the world in youthful guise
as it begins to clothe itself in green,
it is as if I see in unripe age
that beautiful young girl who’s now a lady.31

Writing poetry is an act of meditation upon experience and past desire.

Meeting Laura created desire. Poetry is a way of rekindling that desire in
the hope of transcending loss. Yet the very act of writing reconnects the
poet with his past desires, their transitory nature and the losses he has
experienced. There is clear irony in trying to transcend time and desire by
immersing oneself in both. But poetic glory is a way of partially escaping
the flux and loss of time.32 “I hope through her to live,” he writes, “long
after people think that I am dead.”33 Conversely, even after her death, Laura
continues to live in his memory and in his poems: “ancor è in vita!” (She’s
still alive!).34
Shakespeare would take this contrast between evanescent time and
poetic immortality as a principal theme, echoing Petrarch in one of his most
famous sonnets:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O, fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.35

Shakespeare’s sonnets have eclipsed those of Petrarch, but

Shakespeare’s debt to Petrarch is undeniable. Indeed, there is something
even more elusive about Petrarch’s protean moods, and his faith in poetry as
a means of conquering time is decidedly more ambiguous.
Petrarch compares his pursuit of Laura to Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne:
So far astray is my insane desire
to chase this lady who has turned in flight,
and light and liberated of Love’s snares,
flies off ahead of my slow run for her36

Apollo never captures Daphne. Swift of foot, she flees his advances. A
human girl cannot, in the end, outrun a god, but praying for deliverance to
her father, the river god Peneus, she is turned into a laurel tree as Apollo
finally closes in. Daphne is never possessed; nor will Petrarch ever possess
his Laura. That failure is the essence and impetus of Petrarch’s poetry. What
he seeks—Laura and poetic glory—always eludes his grasp: “vivo del desir
fuor di speranza” (I live in desire beyond hope).37 His fragments will never
coalesce into a coherent narrative. He will never be finished. He will never
be satisfied. He will never reach either transcendent bliss or perfect
expression. As a human, he always falls short and yet never stops trying.
The goal of poetry is to stop time, but time cannot be stopped. “La vita
fugge et non s’arresta un’ora” (Life runs away and never rests a moment).38
Petrarch’s pursuit of Laura and of poetic glory is also a pursuit of
himself through time. The experiences embodied in the poems made him
the person and the writer he has become. But he cannot fix himself outside
of time or give his experiences a single, definitive meaning.39 He cannot
impose a clear narrative of the self and its development, while being true to
the components of his experience. In this, he is very much a modern
consciousness. Our sense of self through time, he believes, is inherently
unstable and fragmented. Petrarch can offer us only those fragments in all
their contradictions. That is the true portrait of a life, a series of such
fragments. Petrarch himself captures them and pins them in his collection
like butterflies. He imposes order of a sort, but it is a contingent order. The
narrative of transcendence eludes him.
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he deliberately rejects the
narrative of transcendence as a falsification. Dante overcame time through a
coherent and unified narrative of redemption in the perfection of desire and
poetry. Petrarch’s faith in his lady (desire) and the world (poetry) is every
bit as strong. But he sees them both in a very human and imperfect state.
Daphne, who embodies both, is always out of reach.

PETRARCH’S SECRET

In 1333, when he was twenty-eight, Petrarch was given a pocket-sized copy

of Augustine’s Confessions. The book made a powerful impression on the
young man, and he carried it with him at all times. Augustine came to rival
Virgil and Cicero in his thinking. Christianity and antiquity wrestled for his
fractured soul.
Nine years later, Petrarch wrote his own confession, Secretum meum
(My Secret), the same year his brother, Gherardo, became a Carthusian
monk. It recounts his failings as a person and as a Christian with
remarkable frankness and clarity. In 1909, Petrarch scholar Maud Jerrold
said that “it remains one of the world’s great monuments of self-revelation,
and ranks with the Confessions of St. Augustine.”40 Pardonable
exaggeration, perhaps, but nobody much reads the Secretum anymore.
Indeed, the most accessible translation dates from 1911. The high-water
mark for admiration of the Secretum was more than a hundred years ago,
whereas the Confessions increasingly has become an indispensable work.
There is ample reason for that. Augustine tells the dramatic,
autobiographical story of one man’s struggle to find virtue and God, and he
ends with a triumphant conversion and a revelation both personal and
intellectual. Petrarch neither tells a story nor ends in triumph. Augustine
describes his sins in vivid and concrete detail. The reader lives through
them and through the anguish that leads to Augustine’s final conversion.
Petrarch presents his own faults abstractly, and his self-flagellation (or,
rather, the flaying administered to him by Augustine) is painful and
embarrassing to the reader, rather than an invitation for sympathetic
identification and self-improvement.
And yet the book is well worth reading, not just for what it reveals
about Petrarch the man but for what it reveals about the sources of human
unhappiness, the lies we constantly tell ourselves, and what truly matters in
a human life, whether Christian or not. For all the talk of immortality and
God’s grace, which Petrarch himself embraces only tentatively in the end,
the Secretum is not ultimately a religious book, or at least it can be read
with profit without such an overlay. Petrarch is sufficiently honest that he
does not even pretend to follow the Augustinian way, any more than he
followed the Dantean way in his Canzoniere. However much he might like
to, he simply cannot do it. And for that recognition and his courageous
commitment to personal integrity, we must admire him.
The Secretum is an imagined dialogue in three parts between Augustine
and Petrarch. In a preface, Petrarch claims it is a private work as an aid in
his own meditations. That is not merely a literary device. He never
published the book in his lifetime, and it was not circulated until some years
after his death. Yet he surely knew that such circulation was likely if not
inevitable.
Augustine comes to Petrarch, as Virgil came to Dante, to lead him out
of his current misery and into a communion with the divine. Augustine
chastises Petrarch for succumbing to a plague of false desires when he
should be focused on God and his own mortality. Petrarch is unhappy,
Augustine claims, because he has chosen worldly seductions over virtue
and truth.
 Petrarch puts up only a mild defense at first because it is clear that he
does not take Augustine’s attack seriously. He of all people has dedicated
his life to the pursuit of virtue and truth. He has sought neither wealth nor
power. He has led a modest life of independence, reserved for writing and
scholarship. He has loved deeply and unselfishly. He is unhappy, yes, but
that is a product not of choice nor lack of virtue but of ill fortune, and in
particular his unquenchable passion for Laura. “What man exists,” he asks
Augustine, “so ignorant or so far removed from all contact with the world
as not to know that penury, grief, disgrace, illness, death, and other evils too
that are reckoned among the greatest, often befall us in spite of ourselves,
and never with our own consent?”41 We cannot will ourselves to be happy.
We must instead accept unhappiness as our common lot and deal with it as
best we can. No one is more cognizant than he of human frailty and human
mortality.
Augustine dismisses Petrarch’s easy answers as an exercise in self-
deception. We deceive ourselves and esteem ourselves more than we
deserve and in the process deceive others. He urges Petrarch to “be jealous
for truth more than for disputation.”42 There are two key steps to
overcoming the distresses of mortal life. The first is to meditate upon death
and man’s misery; the second is to develop the will to rise above one’s
current state. Petrarch has failed on both counts.
Augustine denies that Petrarch meditates on mortality. He grieves the
deaths of others and acknowledges the inevitability of his own, but he does
not feel it at the center of his being as the most important facet of life itself.
He intellectualizes it and therefore distances himself from it: “It has not
sunk down into your heart as deeply as it ought, nor is it lodged there as
firmly as it should be.”43
Augustine further denies that Petrarch has truly willed to change for the
better: “I have witnessed many tears, but very little will.”44 Augustine starts
with the Stoic premise that no one can be unhappy against his will because
happiness depends only on virtue, not external circumstances. The will is
superior even to fortune, and “the desire of virtue is itself a great part of
virtue.”45 But wishing to be better is not the same as truly willing it.
Petrarch’s desires for liberty and for an end to his misery have been too
feeble and ineffective. His mind is overcrowded, and his strength is
dissipated on trifles. Every lesser wish must be set aside so that all desire is
focused on the chief good. All other desires and passions must be
extinguished before the fetters of the world are broken and desire is free.
Otherwise, the mind will turn back upon itself in anger and loathing, and
the soul will return to its crooked paths.
With this groundwork established, Augustine, in the second dialogue,
launches a furious assault on Petrarch’s character. He begins with the
greatest sources of Petrarch’s pride: his intellect, his learning, his writing,
and his eloquence. What value is that vaunted intellect, Augustine asks,
when it is “no match in skill for some of the meanest and smallest of God’s
creatures?”46 How have you benefited from your vast reading, when you
forget more than you retain? What profit is it, in any event, to know the
courses of the stars or unravel the secrets of nature when you are ignorant
of yourself? What good is eloquence if you convince others but stand
convicted in the court of your own conscience? “What worse folly than to
go on blind to one’s real defects, and be infatuated with words and the
pleasure of hearing one’s own voice?”47 For the things that truly matter,
words are altogether inadequate. All your writing and scholarship,
Augustine tells him, are so much “vanity and gaining the empty praise of
men.”48
Petrarch is looking with brutal honesty at the pillars on which he has
built his life and his reputation. He places the words in the mouth of
Augustine, but the scrutiny is his own. He is asking himself what is truly
worthwhile in a human life and whether he has misspent his energies.
“Here, unless I am mistaken,” Petrarch has Augustine say to him, “are the
causes that inflate your mind with pride, forbid you to recognize your low
estate, and keep you from the recollection of death.”49 Petrarch as character
in the dialogue resists these points. Yet Petrarch as author, in the character
of Augustine, is relentless in pursing them.
Augustine extends the list of charges by noting that even Petrarch’s
devotion to literature and learning, misguided though it may be, is only
half-hearted. He accuses Petrarch of cupidity and ambition. He left his quiet
life in the country and took on the busyness of city life and travel for the
sake of wealth and power: “You only concede to what is Good and
Beautiful the moments you can spare from avarice.”50 Petrarch strongly
disputes this charge, claiming that no one is freer of this fault than himself.
He has never sought riches or power but instead has been content with
enough only to secure his needs and his independence. Augustine turns that
admission against him: “What greater riches can there be than to lack
nothing? What greater power than to be independent of everyone else in the
world?”51 Augustine then twists the knife still further, accusing Petrarch of
practicing “the art of ingratiating yourself in the palaces of the great, the
trick of flattery, deceit, promising, lying, pretending, dissembling, and
putting up with all kinds of slights and indignities.”52 Those who know his
biography know how much truth there is in those words and how much it
must have cost Petrarch to write them.
Finally, Augustine adds physical vanity and lust to the list of charges.
Although Petrarch claims to have asked God to free him from the latter sin,
Augustine echoes the most famous line of his own Confessions: “You have
always asked that your prayers may be granted presently,” just not yet.53 But
the most interesting addition is provided by Petrarch himself, when he
confesses to a deep-seated melancholy that sounds remarkably like clinical
depression. Petrarch notes that the passions attack him in short bursts, but
he has longer bouts with gloom and despair. “In such times I take no
pleasure in the light of day, I see nothing, I am as one plunged in the
darkness of hell itself, and seem to endure death in its most cruel form.”54
Here, Petrarch’s Secretum takes a modern turn as he provides us with
additional insight into why he not merely wallows in but appears to relish
the misery of his love for Laura. Cause and effect may be difficult to
untangle, but there is a decidedly bipolar aspect in the Canzoniere that is
distilled here in a self-diagnosis.
Oddly, though, Augustine’s proposed cure for these many faults and
troubles has nothing to do with religion. To the contrary, he urges Petrarch
to study Cicero, Seneca, and Virgil, and to commit their most important
maxims to memory so that they are always at hand to fortify his will and to
aid him against pride, avarice, ambition, melancholy, and lust. Since
Petrarch has spent his life studying those authors, Augustine’s advice seems
a validation rather than a reproach, and a validation of precisely the learning
and scholarship Augustine has just dismissed as so much vanity. But what
Augustine is really saying is that reading these authors is not the same as
internalizing their teachings. They must shape the will, not just occupy the
mind. If approached in the proper spirit, pagan literature can do much in
reconciling one to fortune, conquering passion, curing the sorrows of the
heart, and putting reason in control of one’s life.
All that may be true, but it seems a rather glib prescription for the litany
of ills that has gone before. And, indeed, at the start of the third dialogue,
Augustine acknowledges that he has “not at all as yet touched upon the
deep-seated wounds which are within.”55 Petrarch, he says, is still held in
bondage by two strong claims: love and glory. Only when those are
defeated will he truly be free.
Petrarch is deeply shocked. He considers love and glory to be “the finest
passions” of his nature.56 They are treasures rather than fetters. Thanks to
love he has gained renown as a poet. Thanks to love he has been ennobled
as a man. Petrarch insists that love is virtuous as long as the object is herself
virtuous. His love is honorable, with no admixture of the flesh or desire for
earthly rewards. He loves Laura’s immortal soul, not its physical
embodiment. She has led him to God.
“Do you mean to assert,” Augustine counters, “that if the same soul had
been lodged in a body ill-formed and poor to look upon, you would have
taken equal delight therein?”57 Of course not. The purified Beatrice who led
Dante to God is a dangerous myth. His passion for Laura has tied his heart
to worldly things—“the sight of the object, the hope of enjoying it,”58—and
detached his mind from heaven. It has led him into misery. Augustine
openly mocks Petrarch’s younger self as a pale, wasted figure who “felt a
morbid pleasure in feeding on tears and sighs,”59 a sentiment with which
any reader of the Canzoniere must concur. Augustine compels him to admit
that his deep melancholy began at the same time as his love for Laura. He
has expended sixteen years of effort and grief in loving and celebrating a
delusion. Only renouncing his love for Laura and never turning back will
provide a cure.
Petrarch accepts Augustine’s counsel “heartily and with thankfulness”
and resolves to shut his life to Laura.60 The irony is rich for a modern
reader. Petrarch finished the Secretum in 1342 or 1343. But Petrarch kept
writing sonnets to Laura until her death in 1348, which occasioned a new
outpouring of more than one hundred postmortem poems. Petrarch may
have embraced Augustine’s advice intellectually, but his heart still belonged
to Laura. No wonder Petrarch kept the Secretum as a private work in aid of
his own meditations. He never convinced even himself.
The same is true of glory. Augustine chides Petrarch for seeking too
eagerly the praise of men. Worldly glory is a small and feeble thing, quickly
passing. It is particularly perverse for Petrarch to seek the applause of the
common herd he so despises. Yet Petrarch cannot bear the thought of
leaving his Africa half-finished. Augustine responds with a killing dig: this
work, he says, “greatly excellent as you think it, has no wide scope nor long
future before it.”61 Yet Petrarch insists that there is nothing wrong with
hoping for worldly glory and seeking it here, while still making it secondary
to virtue and the more radiant glory of eternal life.62 In any event, he
concludes simply, “I have not strength to resist that old bent for study
altogether.”63 You can hear Augustine sigh: “Want of will you call want of
power. Well, so it must be, if it cannot be otherwise.”64
This is neither a satisfying nor a definitive ending. But it is an honest
one. Petrarch cannot follow Augustine in leaving all earthly desires behind
and reconstructing his life’s narrative as one of Christian salvation. He
cannot and does not wish to abandon desire and poetry. Nor, as we have
seen, can he claim to bring them to the perfection sought by Dante. For all
its medieval antecedents, the Secretum is not a medieval book. Petrarch is
unwilling to let go of this world in favor of the next. He admires virtue but
not the denuded virtue of abstract religion. Petrarch will cling tenaciously to
what he most values—love, poetry, learning, glory—and let the immortal
chips fall where they may.
I do not think to become as God, or to inhabit eternity, or embrace heaven and earth. Such
glory as belongs to man is enough for me. That is all I sigh after. Mortal myself, it is but
mortal blessings I desire.65

PETRARCH AS HUMANIST SAGE

Petrarch was an inveterate letter writer, addressing his vast correspondence

to intimate friends as well as to the important political and intellectual
figures of his day. Inspired by the philosophical letters of Seneca and by the
letters on contemporary events written by Cicero—particularly those to
Atticus that Petrarch himself had discovered in a church library and
preserved for posterity—Petrarch decided to publish his own
correspondence. He approached the task as carefully as he did his
Canzoniere, selecting, rejecting, extensively revising and polishing, and
even creating new letters after the fact to fill chronological and narrative
gaps. The letters were intended as a stand-alone work of art, not just a
miscellany. He organized his first collection, which he called the Familiares
(Letters on Familiar Matters) into twenty-four books, like Homer’s
Odyssey. Each book contains anywhere from six to twenty-two letters. He
followed this with the Seniles (Letters of Old Age) in eighteen books. He
prepared another collection of Verse Letters, as well as a set of
“uncollected” letters that did not make the cut for either the Familiares or
the Seniles but were nonetheless preserved.
Petrarch’s topics are as varied as his correspondents. He seeks to merge
the moral and philosophical concerns of Seneca with the more personal and
political reporting of Cicero. In keeping with his understanding of his
vocation as a man of letters—to gather knowledge and to dispense wisdom
—Petrarch closely follows contemporary events. He writes to emperors,
kings, princes, popes, and cardinals, offering counsel and sometimes
criticism. The scholarly Petrarch even purports to give military advice on
occasion. And he is a tireless proponent of ending the Babylonian Captivity
and returning the papacy to Rome, as reflected in a lengthy letter to Pope
Urban V.
The letters are also a running commentary on the intellectual currents of
the day, currents often driven by Petrarch himself. He wrote letters to and
about philosophers and poets. Some of his most important were written to
his younger contemporary Boccaccio, whom he called “my most loving
brother.”66 Petrarch, in a remarkable series of letters gathered at the end of
the Familiares, wrote directly to dead poets, historians, and philosophers of
ancient Greece and Rome, including Homer, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Horace,
and Seneca, among others. He treats them—as they indeed were for him—
as intimate acquaintances and daily companions.
The letters are rightly treasured as historical documents, giving us a
portrait of the troubled fourteenth century, a time of plague, war, random
violence, religious turmoil, and growing intellectual ferment. But they are
even more valuable as the self-portrait of a single, remarkable man at the
center of his age—a man with a gift for friendship, a powerful intellect
devoted to the life of the mind, curious about new places and people, in
love with nature and solitude yet fully engaged with his time, and seeking,
always, distractions from his hopeless passion for Laura. Even more than
the Secretum, the letters are Petrarch’s Confessions.
From the letters, we know Petrarch as intimately as we will come to
know Montaigne, warts and all. Petrarch himself disclaims such knowledge:
“I certainly do not know what kind of man I am,” he explains, “because we
all deceive ourselves in judging ourselves.”67 He notes that, in reading them
over, he discovered that “the letters were so different that . . . I seemed to be
in constant contradiction,” and thus “to be contradictory was my only
expedient.”68 In that respect, the letters are very much in keeping with the
widely variable moods of the Canzoniere. They are additional scattered
fragments from the mind of this infinitely complex man. Yet, as Morris
Bishop writes, taken as a whole “they reveal to us a total man, a great poet
and scholar, wise, absurd, penetrating, vain, uncomprehending, cruel,
introspective, self-conscious, enlightened, ancient, modern—one may add a
whole thesaurus of adjectives.”69
Petrarch both discovered and created himself in his letters. He sought,
through writing, to learn how to live. “I am not teaching you, dear friend,
but myself,” he wrote to one correspondent, “and in addressing you, I
admonish myself and learn by listening to myself.”70 Petrarch believed that
the study of history, particularly Roman history, rather than philosophy or
even religion, was the foundation of a moral education. Like Plutarch, he
wrote numerous biographies of Roman heroes, focused on greatness of
character and the virtues of personal discipline, self-sacrifice, courage, love
of liberty and country. His Africa is a poetic tribute to Scipio Africanus, the
hero of the final Punic War. Reading about such figures, he claimed,
supplements and shapes our experience: “There is nothing that moves me as
much as the examples of outstanding men. They help one to rise on high
and to test the mind to see whether it possesses anything solid, anything
noble, anything unbending and firm against fortune, or whether it lies to
itself about itself.”71 The study of such examples is critical to the formation
of our human identity.
In his letters, however, Petrarch seeks to turn himself into an exemplar
of a very different kind, not a warrior or political leader but a man of letters,
steeped in the learning and wisdom of his day and eager to extend the
bounds of both. In the process, he creates a new humanistic ideal, the
cultivation of the self through reading, thinking, and writing. He considers
that cultivation of the self to be our highest duty as human beings, superior
to the demands of country and even religion.
The ideal life for Petrarch is a quiet literary engagement far from the
madding crowd struggling for wealth and advancement. It is a life focused
on developing human reason, human thought, and human language. We can
neglect neither care of the mind nor the proper use of language. Each
depends upon the other.72 Petrarch considered reading and writing to be
spiritual exercises, focused on the ordering of the self and its desires.73
Reading and writing are the means of finding, forming, and realizing one’s
ideal self. In such a quest, he notes, “a scholar’s spirit knows no restraint.”74
Petrarch believes that quest is aided by solitude and communion with
nature, an idea that would have a huge impact on the poets and writers of
the romantic period. “I spend a large part of my time in the country, and
even now, as ever, I am desirous of solitude and quiet; I read, I write, I
think; this is my life, this my joy, which has been with me since youth.”75
This is not, however, the ascetic isolation of the desert fathers; it is the
solitude of the scholar in his remote hut, walking among trees and rivers,
who sits down to a simple dinner and rich conversation with a friend or two.
In his De vita solitaria (On the Solitary Life), Petrarch outlines the duties of
the man of letters:
To devote oneself to reading and writing, finding alternately labor and solace in each, to read
what the first men wrote and write what the last men may read, and since we can’t thank our
elders for their gift of learning, to show our gratitude by passing them on to posterity, to keep
fresh their names, whether unknown to the masses or fallen into oblivion, to dig them out of
time’s ruins, to transmit them clothed in honor to our children’s children, to guard them in our
hearts and keep them sweet on our lips; and in short by loving, remembering, celebrating
them in every possible way to render them the gratitude which, though not adequate to their
merits, is their due.76

In perhaps his most famous letter, Petrarch writes of his ascent of Mont
Ventoux, which he climbed one day with his brother, “led solely by a desire
to view the great height of it.”77 He could see the mountain from his hut in
Vaucluse and had long entertained the prospect of climbing it. He is
impelled to do so one day after rereading in Livy a description of King
Philip of Macedonia climbing Mount Hemo in hopes of seeing from the top
both the Adriatic and the Black Seas. Life is imitating, or at least inspired
by, literature.
Laura was a real woman whom he loved, but in Petrarch’s poems she is
also the embodiment of poetry. Mont Ventoux is a real mountain that he
climbed—indeed, an ascent of Mont Ventoux is today a regular stage on the
Tour de France—but in Petrarch’s letter it is also the embodiment of his
intellectual and spiritual quest. His climb has deliberate echoes of the
opening of Dante’s Commedia, when Dante the Pilgrim is lost in a dark
wood and cannot summon the strength to take the upward path to where the
light of heaven shines.
Mont Ventoux is just under 6,300 feet, but “it is a steep mountain with
rocky and almost inaccessible cliffs.”78 The hikers’ early enthusiasm gives
way to weariness as they make their way slowly upward. Perseverance is
all, in hiking as well as in life. But whereas his brother heads straight up
over sharp ridges, Petrarch continually searches out a more gentle access,
which just as continually eludes him. He wanders far afield, often
descending and lengthening his journey without easing his passage. In the
end, he must climb straight up to join his brother. This happens several
times, and the exhausted Petrarch, “proceeding from the physical to the
metaphysical,”79 sits down and draws the obvious moral lesson: his
experience in climbing this mountain is precisely his experience is
searching after virtue. There is a narrow road to the top, “and one must
proceed from virtue to virtue with very deliberate steps.”80 Yet he has been
constantly beguiled by what appears to be the “less impeded road of earthly
and base pleasures,” which takes him back into the valleys and away from
the summit.81
Summoning all his reserves, Petrarch reaches the top with his brother. In
a mood familiar to all future climbers, he writes, “Moved by a certain
unaccustomed quality of the air and by the unrestricted spectacle, I stood
there as in a trance.”82 He looks at the Alps, “frozen and snow-covered,
through which that wild enemy of the Roman people [Hannibal and his
Carthaginians and his elephants] once crossed,” and beyond them toward
the sky of Italy, “which was visible to my mind rather than to my eyes.”83
He even thinks back to Athos and Olympus. In effect, Petrarch surveys
from his vantage point the whole of Western history and culture, from the
Greeks onward. His awe in the face of the high mountains merges with his
awe of the human spirit, in all its nobility.
There is a strong religious component to Petrarch’s musings, but
somehow that is not what one retains from the letter. The critical moment in
the Confessions occurs when Augustine, choosing a passage from scripture
at random, abandons his worldly concerns and turns to God. Petrarch, at the
top of Mont Ventoux, opens at random the small volume of the Confessions
he carries with him everywhere. In it, he finds an apt reminder from
Augustine that too many go to admire the summits of mountains, the vast
expanses of the seas, and the revolutions of the stars but overlook
themselves. Petrarch reproaches himself for admiring worldly things, but
his thoughts turn immediately not to God but to the pagan philosophers,
who taught him to “consider nothing wonderful except the human mind
compared to whose greatness nothing is great.”84 The distant humanism of
antiquity retains its hold upon him.
Mont Ventoux is Petrarch’s mountain of purgatory, from the top of
which he surveys an earthly paradise. But, unlike Dante, who ascends from
there to the celestial sphere, Petrarch makes his long way back down the
mountain. And, like most climbers, Petrarch has stayed too long on the
summit, and he and his brother are overtaken by darkness on the descent.
Petrarch is overtaken by darkness many times in his letters as well. He
constantly stresses the uncertainty of fortune, the empty futility of the
struggle for wealth and power, and the fleeting nature of life: “O labors and
cares of men, O brief and lost time, O vanity and pride over nothing!”85 He
confronts the deaths of Laura, his closest friends Socrates and Laelius, and
various members of the Colonna family, among many others. Throughout,
he strives to follow the advice he sometimes too easily dispensed to others
in his youth: to “be in possession of one’s self ” and to not give way to
despair.86 That resolve is sorely tested on the death of his son, Giovanni, at
the age of twenty-three. “I cherish him in my thoughts,” he writes, “hold
him in my heart, embrace him in my memory, and, alas, seek him in vain
with my eyes.”87 Even more devastating is the death of his beloved
grandson, Francesco.88 “I live only for this,” he laments, “to hear daily of
the deaths of friends and dear ones.”89
And yet a kind of peace and wholeness and renewed sense of purpose is
to be found in the letters of his old age. Petrarch remained a devout
Christian throughout his life, but he separated out the questions “What may
we hope?” and “What ought we to do?” Like Marcus Aurelius, who
concluded that it ultimately does not matter whether there is a divine
providence or just the chance interaction of atoms and the void, Petrarch
believes that our task here on earth is the same under either scenario. He
dismisses scholastic disputes as a childish waste of time: “I do not love
sects,” he writes, “but the truth.”90 And he found that truth in “the wealth of
the liberally educated mind,” a mind that “possesse[s] characteristics that
result from such studies—mainly, kindness, faith, generosity, and
steadfastness.”91 Petrarch was passionate in his defense of literature and the
growth of knowledge. “We are all exiles and foreigners, with no permanent
city here,” he wrote,92 but books “speak with us, advise us and join us
together with a certain living and penetrating intimacy.”93 In his
correspondence, he sought to foster a community of such humanists.
 Petrarch’s aging friend and fellow writer Boccaccio was accosted by a
mad monk who prophesized that Boccaccio would suffer the torments of
hell if he did not repent of his literary writings and devote himself solely to
religion. Petrarch sent an encouraging letter to the deeply affected
Boccaccio, condemning the attack: “It is an ancient custom to draw the veil
of religion and sanctimony over lies and invented stories in general so that
belief in divinity covers human trickery.”94 Literature, Petrarch insists, is
critical to our spiritual and emotional development. “Literature does not
impede, but rather helps a man of good character who masters it; it
advances the journey of life, it does not delay it.”95 No one is harmed by
“the delightful, precious treasures of literature gained through study,”96 and
a life devoted to such study does not preclude but may even promote the
highest saintliness. Elsewhere, in an anthropomorphic account of the
development of religion, Petrarch writes that “poetry is not in the least
contrary to theology.” Rather, theology itself arose out of poetry, and the
first theologians were simply poets trying to make sense of their lives and
the world.97
For Petrarch, the act of writing and creating is thus critical to the
development of human consciousness. To be sure, writing is inevitably
tainted with the thirst for glory. But it is also a noble activity and our most
important tool for self-examination, self-criticism, and the search for virtue.
The self is a text in need of constant revision and emendation.98 Writing
honestly is therefore a moral act, a way of caring for the soul and learning
and conveying the art of living: “For me writing and living are the same
thing and I hope will be so to the very end.”99 That labor will only end with
his life, for “life without energy is not life but a sluggish, useless lapse of
time.”100
In an early letter, Petrarch compares his own restless travels through the
cities of Europe to the wanderings of Ulysses.101 He reinforces the analogy
by adopting for his Familiares the twenty-four-book structure of the
Odyssey. Yet surely he had most firmly in mind Dante’s Ulysses, who
refuses to temper his search for truth and virtue. In Dante’s retelling,102 the
aging Ulysses, with a small group of his most loyal comrades, sets sail in a
small boat over the Mediterranean Sea to the Gates of Hercules (i.e., the
Straits of Gibraltar), the limit of the known world. They sail on together, to
follow valor’s lure and wisdom’s quest, into the Southern Hemisphere until
they come within sight of the mountain of purgatory. There, a whirlwind
turns their tiny vessel around three times before sending it prow first down
into the darkness of the sea.
Petrarch, like Ulysses, did not recognize divine constraints on human
striving. The quest for knowledge cannot remain within limits imposed by
faith: “Never will the road to the investigation of new ideas be blocked to
keen minds.”103 Petrarch does not promise us the transcendence of an
Augustine or a Dante. He offers instead a never-ending, inherently flawed
but nonetheless noble undertaking, to understand our classical, pagan past
and to build with it “a world made new.”104
 Chapter 2
ERASMUS: THE MAN IN THE
MIDDLE

Erasmus posuit ova, Lutherus eduxit pullos.1

L ess than a century separated the death of Petrarch in 1374 from the
birth of Erasmus, probably in 1466. The two men had much in
common. Each was recognized as the most important intellectual figure of
his day. Each was a Latinist, humanist, and scholar. Each corresponded on
terms of equality with emperors, popes, kings, and princes (both secular and
ecclesiastical), as well as with writers throughout Europe. Each traveled
widely and restlessly and enjoyed a wide circle of friends and acolytes. And
each man was deeply religious, accepting the central tenets of the Catholic
religion while dismissing the arid dialectics of medieval scholasticism as at
best a distraction from, and at worst an obfuscation of, those core beliefs.
But the two men were also totally different from one another, and much
had changed in Europe and in the church between the age of Petrarch and
that of Erasmus. Petrarch was passionate in his vernacular poetry, tortured
in his religious confessions, and giddy with excitement at the rediscovery of
the classics. While always a practicing Christian, Petrarch’s thinking had a
stronger tinge of ancient, pagan Rome. Petrarch assumed rather than
reasoned that his humanism and his religion were compatible; regardless, as
we have seen, the former was in the end more important to him. Petrarch
seemed to think, or wished to think, that all would be well with the church
if the pope simply returned from Avignon to his rightful place in Rome.
 Erasmus had no such comfortable illusion. The pope was back in Rome,
but all was decidedly not well with the church. It had grown ever more
powerful, ever more magnificent, and ever more sordid in the intervening
years. The popes were secular and military leaders, fighting to expand their
wealth and their influence. The church itself had become a vast pyramid
scheme and patronage network, a sort of Renaissance Amway. The
mendicant friars of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders had long since
abandoned their vows of poverty in favor of enormous land holdings and
rich donations. Ecclesiastical posts were openly bought and sold. Even
down to the level of the parish priest, everything had its price: from baptism
through confirmation, marriage, burial, and beyond, with paid masses for
the repose of souls. Tithes were collected from the poor and then passed up
the line with the ruthless efficiency of ancient Roman tax collectors, each
intervening church official extracting his share. Purgatory—where souls
worked off their sins before being welcomed into heaven—had no basis in
scripture, but the desire to shorten one’s stay there provided a prime
opportunity for the sale of indulgences to the living and for the dead. Make
a gift to the church and save your loved ones—and yourself—a long,
painful sojourn in the waiting room of heaven.
Vast wealth flowed to Rome and to bishoprics throughout Europe.
Splendid cathedrals were built, culminating in Saint Peter’s Basilica,
designed by the noted architect Donato Bramante, with later assistance from
Michelangelo. It took more than a century to complete. The adjacent
Vatican Museums were begun by Pope Julius II, who commissioned
Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Raphael, Titian,
Botticelli, and many others were sustained at one time or another by papal
patronage. The art supported and purchased by the church was sublime. But
the morals of the churchmen were too often appalling.
As many as half the clergy lived openly with women. Illegitimate
children of priests—of whom Erasmus was one—were commonplace.
Popes regularly made bishops and cardinals of their “nephews” (that is,
their bastard sons). It is hard to pinpoint the nadir of the church’s
corruption, but certainly the reign of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, from
1492 to 1503, is a strong candidate. He poisoned rivals, kept a string of
mistresses, and even fathered a child with his own daughter, Lucrezia. The
popes were more condottieri (professional soldiers) than bringers of
Christ’s peace. They were no better, and in many instances worse, than the
Italian strongmen with whom they formed and broke alliances: Ludovico
Visconti and Francesco Sforza in Milan; the doge Francesco Foscari in
Venice; the Medicis in Florence; Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino.
Appalling violence and war spread through all of Italy, even as the ideals of
the Italian Renaissance crossed the Alps into northern Europe.
This is the world into which Desiderius Erasmus was born. He had a
northern, not a southern, temperament and was much more measured and
phlegmatic than the Italian-born Petrarch. There was no Laura in his life,
but he had a gift for friendship and effortlessly inspired loyalty in others. He
seemed to suffer no intellectual or spiritual crises, no dark nights of the
soul. He wore his faith comfortably even when the great crisis of his age
arose. He viewed Christianity not so much as a set of doctrines but as a way
of life, a life of humility, tolerance, and kindness. Except when his scholarly
ire was up, which was often, or in his later years, when he succumbed with
some justification to persecution paranoia, he did try to live by those
principles.
Erasmus lived everywhere and nowhere. Born in Holland, he resided at
various times in France and England, as well as Italy, Belgium, Switzerland,
Germany, and elsewhere. He was a citizen of Europe, but the only true
home Erasmus had was the Latin language. Latin was still the common
bond of educated Europeans, though it would soon give way before the vital
energy of the vernacular tongues. Erasmus was the last great thinker who
wrote always and only in the Latin language, fusing the classical and
medieval traditions in a prose that was lively, flexible, and elegant. He was
also the first to benefit so notably from Johannes Gutenberg’s printing
press, circa 1440, an innovation quickly copied in cities throughout Europe.
Erasmus’s works became international best sellers among the cadre of
scholars, theologians, and humanists dedicated to expanding classical
learning and rescuing Christianity from the corruption and abuses of the
church.
Erasmus’s fundamental insight was that these two goals—the expansion
of classical learning and the purification of Catholicism—were conjoined
and that the former was the means to the latter. His Renaissance became the
church’s Reformation. As the Latin quotation that begins this chapter
explains, “Erasmus laid the eggs, Luther hatched them.”
Erasmus, like Petrarch, was devoted to bonae litterae—the literature and
culture of classical antiquity. His favorites were the moral writings of
Cicero and Plutarch, the poetry of Virgil and Horace, and the dialogues of
Plato, which he cherished both for their portrait of “Saint Socrates”2 and for
their distinction between the world of transient physical phenomena and the
unchanging, intelligible realm of the spirit. Erasmus brought the entire
world of ancient thought vividly alive for his contemporaries through his
Adages, an extensive collection of excerpts and proverbs from Greek and
Roman authors, along with his own commentary.
Erasmus was also strongly influenced by the movement known as the
devotio moderna, a simplified religious practice focused on piety, humility,
and charity. He dismissed the medieval scholasticism of Aquinas, Duns
Scotus, and others as useless logic chopping. He had little patience even for
doctrinal tenets many thought essential to the faith, such as the Trinity, the
Immaculate Conception, and purgatory. Erasmus thought that all Christians
should establish a direct relationship with God through constant exposure to
the scriptures and the writings of the church fathers. Everything else—the
ceremonies and trappings of the church, the veneration of saints’ relics, the
purchase of indulgences, pilgrimages, fasting and abstinence, and even the
sacraments—was too often a substitute for that personal relationship with
God. The true church for Erasmus was not a hierarchical institution of great
wealth and power but a community of men, women, and children dedicated
to a closer relationship with God and to the imitation of Christ.
Erasmus’s love of bonae litterae reinforced the devotio moderna in
three respects. First, he used ancient writings to develop more fully the idea
of man articulated in the Gospels and in the writings of Saint Paul and the
church fathers. Erasmus believed that human nature had not changed in its
fundamentals and that the philosophical and moral writings of the Greeks
and Romans had much to tell us about how to live as Christians. Second, he
took the principles of classical philology learned in dealing with ancient
texts and applied them to the New Testament and the writings of the church
fathers. Creating proper editions by collating and correcting extant
manuscripts and engaging in close textual analyses were tools appropriate
to sacred as well as profane writings. Ad fontes (to the sources) became a
rallying cry for a reconnection with the original faith. Third, and most
important for our purposes, he combined classical models and reforming
zeal in his two satirical masterworks, the Praise of Folly and the
Colloquies.
 Erasmus’s ideals of Christian humanism swept through Europe—not
just among the intelligentsia but also among secular and religious leaders.
His widely read works might have led peacefully to significant internal
reforms in the church. But that became impossible after Martin Luther
nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of the Castle Church in
Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Erasmus was an incremental reformer.
Luther was an intransigent revolutionary, and the revolution known to us as
the Reformation became all but inevitable when the church chose to
condemn Luther, to burn his books, and to brand him a heretic. Political
resentments against Rome in northern Europe, combined with genuine
grievances with the church, fueled the break. The backlash known as the
Counter-Reformation, and its by-product, the Dominican inquisition,
seemed to leave no room for a middle ground. Yet Erasmus, soon despised
and ridiculed by both sides, sought to occupy it. “The center cannot hold,”
Yeats would later write,3 yet Erasmus held to it with a courage and wry
humor for which he is rarely given the credit he deserves.

EARLY LIFE

Erasmus was born in South Holland, the Netherlands, probably in 1466,

though the exact year is unknown. He had a brother, Peter, who was three
years older. Both boys were illegitimate. Their father, Gerard, was a
Catholic priest. Little is known of their mother except that she died of the
plague around 1483. Gerard died of the same cause the following year, and
the two boys were left in the care of three guardians.
Until their father’s death, the brothers had received excellent educations
in Latin in the ancient town of Deventer. That changed when the guardians
took over. They refused to send the boys to university but instead pushed
them to enter monasteries. Erasmus later alleged that they did so to disguise
their mishandling of the small estate the boys had received from their father.
Peter entered an Augustinian monastery near Delft. Erasmus resisted for a
time but eventually, weakened by his own bout with the plague, acquiesced.
Sometime between 1486 and 1488, when Erasmus was between twenty and
twenty-two years old, he entered a different Augustinian monastery, this
one at Steyn. Erasmus later claimed that he was only sixteen, perhaps to
accentuate his claim that he became a monk due to pressure from his
guardians rather than as a considered choice.
Erasmus was ordained a priest in 1492. But he detested monastic life.
He found the early hours, the ascetic conditions, and the scanty, barely
edible food detrimental to his health. More important, he thought that his
fellow monks had lost the connection between their faith and their
observances and rituals so that the latter had become spiritually empty and
mind-numbing. Erasmus seized what time he could to study the classics and
began a correspondence with other like-minded monks. Gradually, he made
a name for himself as a Latinist, and in that role he found his freedom.
Erasmus received a temporary dispensation to leave the monastery in
1493 to serve as a secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, who wanted to give a
humanist polish to his correspondence. The bishop was planning a trip to
Rome and enlisted Erasmus as part of his entourage. In the end, the bishop
never left for Rome, but Erasmus did not return to Steyn. Instead, with the
bishop’s permission and a small, inadequate stipend, he went to study at the
University of Paris. Long a bastion of rigid scholastic philosophy based on
Aristotle, Paris gradually was warming to Renaissance humanism. Erasmus
found a sympathetic Italian scholar with whom to study and steeped himself
in Cicero, Plutarch, Virgil, and Horace. Free of the restraints of monastic
life, moreover, his literary interests turned increasingly toward religious
reform.
Erasmus supported himself in Paris by tutoring the sons of wealthy
aristocrats. One of these, William Blount, the fourth Baron Mountjoy,
invited Erasmus to accompany him to England in 1499. There Erasmus
became lifelong friends with John Colet, a humanist theologian and dean of
Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and with Thomas More. Erasmus even met the
future King Henry VIII, then only eight years old, who would later have
More executed for refusing to accept Henry as the head of a separate
Church of England.
Erasmus made three trips to England. He even taught at Cambridge for
a time and considered staying on as a professor. But he found the climate
damp, the food poor, and the wine unpalatable. His health, always delicate,
suffered. Yet he developed many of his more important ideas in
conversations and correspondence with Colet, More, and their friends and
colleagues. By the time he left England the first time, Erasmus had found
his life’s mission: to unite learning and culture with piety and theology, to
reconcile humanism and religious reform.4
When he was not in England, Erasmus lived mostly in Paris, Louvain
(then part of the separate duchy of Brabant), Basel, and the imperial
German city of Freiburg im Breisgau. He also traveled to Italy and other
parts of Germany. He paid only brief and sporadic visits to his native
Holland. After 1501, he never returned there, and for good reason. His
“temporary dispensation” from monastic life had long since lapsed, and his
increasing fame made him an ornament his former monastery was eager to
reclaim. It was not until 1514, however, that he was officially summoned
back to Steyn. He flatly refused to go, claiming that his health would not
stand it and that he could better serve the church as an independent
theologian and scholar. In 1517, Erasmus secured from Leo X a papal
release from his vows and permission to live outside the monastery. By that
time, Erasmus was the best known and most respected scholar in Europe,
and publishers eagerly sought and often—in the absence of copyright
protection—purloined his work. It is estimated that at one point as many as
20 percent of the published books in circulation were authored by Erasmus.
Latin was still the common language among the educated, and Erasmus’s
books reached the entire Western world, from England to Italy and from
Spain to Germany. He was at the peak of his power and influence.

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY

Erasmus conceived the idea for the Praise of Folly while traveling to
England for the coronation of Henry VIII. He wrote the book quickly while
staying with Thomas More, to whom it is dedicated. The dedication is itself
a bit of folly; Erasmus notes that the project was prompted by “your family
name of More, which is just as close to Moria, the Greek word for folly, as
you are remote from the thing itself.”5 In fact, however, the point of the
satire is that none of us is remote from folly, which is an essential and
ineradicable aspect of human life, critical to human intercourse and human
relationships. The acceptance and even embrace of folly, or at least the right
sort of folly, is part of wisdom itself, and Erasmus attributes such
acceptance to More, calling him omnium horarum hominem agere, a phrase
from his Adages that means, literally, a man who is ready to act at all hours.
It is rendered in the Norton Critical Edition as one who “can get along with
all sorts of people at any time of day.”6 The phrase was felicitously
translated in 1520 as “a man for all seasons,”7 and that became the title of a
famous (and very serious) contemporary play and movie about More’s life
and martyrdom. Yet, as used by the Roman historian Suetonius, from whom
Erasmus lifted the phrase, it implies one who can drink all night and all day,
a hail-fellow-well-met type.8 Not exactly what Robert Bolt, the playwright,
had in mind, but another ironic gift from folly that Erasmus would have
appreciated.
The work takes the form of a lecture or after-dinner speech by Folly
herself. She begins by noting that no one ever praises her, since everyone
pretends, falsely, to dispense with folly. So she proposes to praise herself,
which she acknowledges is itself the height of folly. Yet, by a curious
inversion, Folly praising folly ends up looking quite a bit like wisdom, but a
joyful, tolerant wisdom that finds not bitterness but amusement in our many
human foibles.
Folly claims to be the daughter of Plutus (god of wealth), who controls
all institutions, both sacred and profane, and drives wars, lawsuits,
marriages, alliances, and even the arts. Plutus is the key to human
motivation, and not even Pallas Athena (goddess of wisdom) will be able to
help a man despised by Plutus. But it is she, Folly herself, who governs
men’s actions. Her immediate family, “with whose faithful help I maintain
dominion over all things, and rule even emperors themselves,” includes
Self-Love, Flattery, Pleasure, Laziness, Imbecility, Self-Deception,
Drunkenness, and Lust.9
Folly insists that folly is both ubiquitous and ineradicable in human life.
Indeed, our very existence depends on her because she controls that part of
the body—“so stupid and even ridiculous that it can’t be named without
raising a snicker”—necessary to procreation.10 Even a Stoic sage, she notes,
is willing to shave off his beard—“his special badge of wisdom (though in
fact he shares it with a billygoat)”—drop his lofty expression, and talk
sweet nonsense if he wants to father a child.11 As originally printed, the text
here and throughout was accompanied by woodcuts prepared by the
German-Swiss artist Hans Holbein the Younger (ca. 1497–1543). Holbein’s
sketch of the amorous Stoic, eagerly pressing his suit on a young woman,
perfectly captures Folly’s point. What a Stoic might say, in his somber
preaching, and what he will do, when in the grip of folly, are two very
different things. Folly prefers the latter to the former.
Everything joyful and pleasant, she claims, owes its existence to folly.
Folly is responsible for the ignorant, uncontrolled charms of infancy and
youth and the “second childhood” that relieves the miseries of old age. If
men spent their time exclusively in the company of Folly, they would enjoy
eternal youth rather than prematurely sapping their animal spirits in the
earnest and painful pursuit of wisdom. The pleasures of banquets—drinking
games, comic songs, and charades—“those were not invented by the seven
sages of Greece, you can be sure.”12 The more foolish, the more fun.
Amusements of this sort dispel boredom and engender fellow feeling and
friendship, which even the gravest philosophers praise and number among
life’s greatest goods.
Indeed, friendship would not be possible without turning a blind eye to
faults and flaws, and even convincing oneself that they are virtues and
attractions. Since no one is born without faults, this sort of self-deception, a
species of folly, is absolutely necessary to bind people together in mutual
pleasure. Such self-deception is even more vital to marriage, for “how many
divorces or catastrophes worse than divorce would take place if the
domestic adjustments of men and women weren’t sustained and eased by
flattery, jokes, yielding dispositions, mutual misunderstandings,
dissimulations—all of them assistants to me.”13 Even if cuckolded, a
husband is happier in his ignorance than he would be if, inflamed by
jealousy, he turned comedy into tragedy.14
Folly also helps us to shut our eyes to our own vices and faults. Without
self-love we could accomplish nothing. We could not give a speech, make
music, act in a play, or act in the play of life. Without self-flattery—without
the sense that we are playing our part well—we could not pull off any of
these things. We have to esteem ourselves before others will esteem us, and
what is self-esteem but a species of folly? Indeed, self-esteem often is
inversely proportional to actual talent and is therefore the greatest of all
gifts!15 Folly allows us to overcome diffidence, shame, and fearfulness. No
project can be undertaken, no discovery made, and no battles won without
self-esteem. By contrast, wisdom and self-knowledge hinder performance;
states were never more poorly managed than when ruled by “some
philosophaster or bookworm.”16
 The desire for praise is properly decried as foolish, but that particular
folly gives rise to cities and empires, to legal and religious systems, and to
all progress in the arts and sciences. Innovators “put long hours and
agonized efforts into the pursuit of fame.”17 Nothing could be more inane,
she admits, and yet “you can enjoy, thanks to their folly, all the good things
they produce, and you don’t even have to be as crazy as they are—which is
the best thing of all.”18
What is hope in the face of life’s endless calamities, she asks, but more
folly? Yet without hope and forgetfulness and a sprinkling of pleasure, life
would be unendurable. Without the pleasure born of folly, life would be
thoroughly gloomy, drab, and sullen. Philosophers preach the primacy of
reason. “It’s utter misery, they say, to be in the clutches of folly, to be
bewildered, to blunder, never to know anything for sure. On the contrary, I
say, that’s what it is to be a man.”19 Reason, Folly insists, has no
motivational force of its own, a contention the British empiricist David
Hume would make the touchstone of his moral theory. Emotions are critical
to the practice of every virtue and the performance of every good deed.20
The purely rational man that is the Stoic ideal “is a marble statue of a man,
insensitive and without a trace of human feeling.”21 We would prefer the
company of anyone else over such a philosopher.22 The truly prudent man
“reflects that since he is mortal himself, he shouldn’t want to be wiser than
befits a mortal, but should cast his lot in with the rest of the human race and
blunder along in good company.”23 Folly quotes the Roman playwright
Terence to seal her argument: “homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto” (I
am a man: nothing human is alien to me).24
Folly’s point is indeed profound. Folly, broadly understood, is critical to
human life. It is not only unavoidable; in its more benign forms—in which
“some genial aberration of the mind frees it from anxiety and worry while
at the same time imbuing it with the many fragrances of pleasure”25—it
should be embraced. We are men, not gods, and even the gods have their
follies. Folly is necessary to human intercourse and fellow feeling. It is
necessary to love, to friendship, and to all accomplishments. We should not
therefore judge it harshly. After all, even the Stoics acknowledge that
happiness depends not on things themselves but on our perception of things.
There is no real difference between reality and delusion except that the
latter can make one blissful at very little cost. It demands only a bit of self-
persuasion.26 Folly is an essential ingredient of true wisdom.
 The first half of the Praise of Folly is a tour de force, a delightful
inversion that has the reader looking at humanity in a new, warmer, and
more amusing light. The second half is a more traditional satire. Folly
walks through the various professions, occupations, and classes and points
out the follies appropriate to each. She begins, naturally enough, with the
foibles of orators, who pretend that carefully prepared speeches are
spontaneous and off-the-cuff and who sprinkle their talks with Greek and
Latin phrases as signs of their erudition (something Folly herself does
frequently). She follows with incompetent doctors, shyster lawyers,
grasping businessmen, pedantic teachers of grammar, would-be poets,
rhetoricians, and “halfwits who expect to achieve immortal fame by writing
books.”27
She adds to her list scholars, natural philosophers, and theologians with
their innumerable abstract quibbles, who “boast such mighty erudition and
write such tortured prose”28 and who threaten to have “up for a ‘heretic’”
anyone who does not accept their unfathomable, logic-chopping
demonstrations.29 Special scorn is reserved for monks, who “insist so
vehemently on their own ceremonies and petty traditions that they think a
single heaven will hardly be adequate reward for such outstanding merit.”30
But the church hierarchy comes in for its fair share of disdain, including
popes, who defend their position as vicars of Christ with sword, poison, and
violence of every sort, and bishops, who believe that a display of pomp and
circumstance is the full extent of their required duty. After all, “teaching the
people is hard work, prayer is boring, . . . poverty is degrading, and
meekness is disgraceful, quite unworthy of one who barely admits even the
greatest kings to kiss his feet.”31 Nor do kings and princes escape Folly’s
ridicule. They can find no one to speak truth to them and must therefore
accept flatterers as false friends. But fools can speak truth to power, even
unwelcome truth, and are greeted with laughter and presents, as if truth
itself were a species of folly.
Folly claims that she is the only divinity that embraces all men as
equals. We are a true democracy of fools. “I hardly know whether anyone
can be found in the entire human race,” she notes, “who is wise twenty-four
hours a day, and who is not subject to madness in one form or another,”32 be
it the delusion that his wife is chaste, or a mania for hunting wild beasts, or
a passion for building or alchemy or gambling or tales about miracles and
goblins. Christians have a penchant for indulgences, pilgrimages, magic
rituals, or incantations in the form of prayers, and rubbing the relics of
saints: “The whole life of Christians everywhere is infected with idiocies of
this sort.”33 “If you want evidence of this,” Folly explains, “consider first
that children, old folk, women, and simpletons are, of all people, most
attracted to the services of our holy religion and are always found in closest
proximity to the altar.”34 And those who have visions of their future life
with God are in a state very similar to madness. Yet one person’s madness is
another person’s cherished belief. Anticipating Don Quixote, Folly notes
that the madman who takes pleasure in his delusion will not thank you for
curing him of it.35
If the Praise of Folly were simply straightforward satire, however
effective, the book would leave a sour taste. Satire purports to speak from
an elevated position, both morally and intellectually. Satire is disdainful,
and the reader is invited to join in that disdain. It is a guilty pleasure at best.
But Folly freely includes herself in the laughter engendered by her self-
praise. “We fools” is the subject of the book, not “you fools.”36 Folly flatters
and thereby enlists her audience in challenging accepted notions, in
recognizing the contradictions and absurdities of everyday existence.37
“Good wits,” she notes, “have always been allowed the liberty to exercise
their high spirits on the common life of men, and without rebuke, as long as
their sport doesn’t become savagery.”38 Indeed, “it’s a kind of compliment
to be attacked by Folly.”39
Mikhail Bakhtin, a twentieth-century Russian Marxist philosopher and
literary critic, wrote an important book, Rabelais and His World, which we
will discuss in chapter 6. In it, Bakhtin describes the carnival interludes so
important to medieval and Renaissance society, in which even the most
elevated and sacred things—in fact, especially the most elevated and sacred
things—are openly mocked. In this carnival atmosphere, the laughter is
universal and all-embracing. “The people do not exclude themselves from
the wholeness of the world,” Bakhtin writes. Their satire is not delivered
from a perspective of superiority and contempt; rather, it “expresses the
point of view of the whole world; he who is laughing also belongs to it.”40
Bakhtin rightly calls the Praise of Folly “one of the greatest creations of
carnival laughter in world literature.”41 Occasionally the mask falls, and we
see the venom reserved by Erasmus for theologians, monks, and high
church officials, who he thinks have betrayed their calling. But, mostly, the
illusion is maintained, and Erasmus (in his roles as ecclesiastic, scholar,
grammarian, and writer of books) includes himself in the mockery. We
recognize in this book the folly of ourselves and all of mankind. The
laughter is cathartic. It embraces rather than excludes. Folly, we are told, is
the only remedy for life’s misery and bitterness. Folly infuses all that is
good in human life: kindness, conviviality, laughter, love, innocent
pleasure, and charity. No accomplishment would be possible without the
energy, ambition, and hope born of folly.
The great Dutch scholar Johan Huizinga finds Erasmus’s vision in the
Praise of Folly “bolder and more chilling than Machiavelli, more detached
than Montaigne.”42 We will discuss those authors in chapters 3 and 7,
respectively. But a defense of Erasmus is warranted here. His vision may be
bold, but it is hardly chilling, and it is far from detached. The warmth of his
humor embraces our common humanity. Most important, Erasmus tried to
retain that embrace even in the face of the religious disputes that would tear
apart the church and western Europe. In doing so, he was perhaps himself a
fool. But he was a fool for Christ’s sake.43

THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY

In 1501, Erasmus wrote the Enchiridion militis Christiani, a manual or

handbook for the Christian soldier. The Enchiridion did not attract much
attention when it was first published. But a revised edition in 1513 was
quickly translated into eleven languages.44 The book is Erasmus’s manifesto
for religious reform. It contains the eggs that Luther hatched. Such,
however, was Erasmus’s reputation and temperament that his book found
sympathetic readers throughout Europe, in courts, universities, and even the
highest reaches of the church. The Enchiridion had its detractors, to be sure,
particularly among the monasteries. But it did not occasion the violent
reaction and counterreaction that would soon follow the writings of Martin
Luther. Erasmus’s book was widely welcomed as an attempt to purify and
to clarify the Christian religion and to reconnect the church with its
scriptural origins.
The ostensible impetus for writing the Enchiridion was a request by the
wife of a soldier and friend of Erasmus to provide him with instruction in
Christian belief and behavior. The fact that he is a soldier holds double
significance. First, the violence of such a life is far removed from the peace
of Christ, just as the church itself, in its secular struggles for power and
wealth, has departed from Christ’s original message. Second, Erasmus
stresses that “mortal life is nothing but a kind of perpetual warfare”
between the flesh and the spirit.45 We all must therefore become soldiers for
Christ in an allegorical sense, strengthening the spirit to conquer the
temptations of the flesh and cultivating an indifference to worldly goods
and worldly glory.
Erasmus has two related objectives in the Enchiridion: to explain the
proper theory of Christianity and to outline its proper practice. In both
cases, his rallying cry is ad fontes (to the sources). Erasmus wants to sweep
aside the overlay of scholasticism and clericalism that has been interposed
between us and the scriptures. The Word of God is simple, straightforward,
and accessible to all—men, women, and children, educated and uneducated,
noble and peasant, wealthy and poor. The Christian faith is neither exotic
nor esoteric. We must focus on its most basic tenets, which unite us as
Christians, rather than on abstract, artificial, and unresolvable doctrinal
disputes that only divide us from one another.
Christ’s teaching follows human nature and was therefore accessible, in
large part, even to pagans. It accords with the best writings of antiquity, and
a study of bonae litterae is therefore an important complement to the study
of explicitly Christian works. “Literature shapes and invigorates the
youthful character and prepares one marvelously well for understanding
Holy Scripture.”46 Ancient writers sought a life in accord with the highest
and best nature of man, an ideal foreshadowed but fully realized only in the
life and teachings of Christ. Erasmus lays particular stress on the Platonists,
because “in most of their ideas and in their very manner of speaking they
come nearest to the beauty of the prophets and the gospels.”47 He even
invokes Plato’s allegory of the cave48 to illustrate the long struggle to
transcend appearances and to embrace reality. The critical Christian
distinctions between the material and the spiritual, the body and the soul,
the temporal and the eternal, the visible and the intelligible, are all to be
found in Plato.
The same essential distinction—between surface and hidden meaning—
also applies to literature. The teachings of Homer and Virgil are allegorical
rather than literal. Their wisdom lies below the surface of the stories they
tell about the anger of Achilles or the manifest destiny of Aeneas. So, too,
with the holy scriptures, which “conceal their real divinity beneath a surface
that is crude and almost laughable.”49 As for the creation story in the Bible
—Adam molded from damp earth, Eve shaped from his rib, the serpent in
the garden who tempts them to eat the fruit forbidden by God, and their
exile from the garden with an angel posted with a flaming sword—if you
take that story literally, Erasmus says, you might as well be reading about
Prometheus and his theft of fire from the gods. Many of the Bible stories
are even worse on their surface: the stolen birthright of Esau, David slaying
Goliath, Lot coupling with his daughters, Samson losing his strength and
virility from the shearing of his hair. These stories are “downright absurd,
taken literally, and if understood only at the surface level, detrimental to
morality.”50 We must penetrate to the “mystical spirit” of the Bible, Erasmus
urges.51 Christianity is a religion of the spirit, which can be purified only
through a proper understanding of the scriptures.
This viewpoint raises a number of questions, such as why Erasmus
believes that the Bible is a direct communication from God. Why, in other
words, does he privilege the scriptures over the writings of the great pagan
poets and philosophers? Why does he believe the former texts were inspired
by God whereas the latter were written by men? What limits of
interpretation are there in discerning the “mystical spirit” of the scriptures?
And how does this need for interpretation mesh with the assertion that the
Word of God is directly accessible to all persons?
The answer to these questions lies, for Erasmus, in the New Testament,
and in particular in the life and teachings of Christ. We depend upon Christ
to unlock for us the “mystical spirit” of the Bible. Christ teaches us to
understand the Word of God correctly. And the message of Christ, which is
embodied in his life, is indeed accessible to all. “Think of Christ,” he
writes, “not as an empty word, but as nothing other than love, candor,
patience, purity—in brief, whatever He taught.”52 In other words, Christ
himself is a living allegory, an assertion that did not seem to shock
Erasmus’s contemporaries, if they noticed it at all. Christ is the perfection
of human nature and the embodiment of the spirit that unites us with God.
Erasmus moves from the message (which he considers the perfection of
human wisdom) to Christ (the perfection of human nature) to God. He
believes in God because he believes in the Word of God as manifested in
Christ. The Old Testament, like the writings of the pagan poets and
philosophers, is just another way of preparing the soul for that message.
 In understanding and elaborating upon the Word of God, we can be
aided by the writings of the church fathers, as well as by careful reading of
the pagan poets and philosophers. But the scriptures themselves, and
especially those of the New Testament, when read with reverence and care
and a proper appreciation of the distinction between the flesh and the spirit,
contain all that we need to know about living our lives as Christians.
Practice, not theory, is what truly matters. That is why Erasmus chose
Enchiridion as his title, echoing the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, for whom
philosophy is not a set of doctrines but a way of life. So, too, for Erasmus,
Christianity is a way of life. It is a way of life based on a core set of beliefs
—that God exists, that the Word of God was made manifest in Christ, and
that Christ’s life and message should be our constant guide—but beyond
that simple core, doctrinal disputes are a harmful distraction.
Most of the Enchiridion, then, is devoted to articulating rules for the
true Christian life. Only one of those rules deals with faith, which he calls
“the sole approach to Christ” and which consists of opening oneself so
thoroughly to the Word of God that it permeates one’s being.53 “While He
was here in the flesh,” Erasmus writes, “Christ transmitted [God’s truth] in
His words and expressed it in His character.”54 Accepting that truth is the
essence of faith.
The rest of the rules deal with the need to follow Christ as one’s only
goal. In that quest, the clergy and theologians have no privileged status; all
are equal before Christ and are judged not by their positions or their
learning but by their hearts and their manner of life. There is no direct
connection, Erasmus believes, between the spirit of Christ and the rituals,
ceremonies, and practices of the church: “The practice of a spiritual life
consists not so much in ritualism as in the love of one’s fellow men.”55 He
has no inherent objection to prayers, fasts, and the observance of holy days.
They might well be useful in inculcating and reinforcing religious feeling.
But when performed without understanding or spiritual engagement, they
are meaningless exercises, a substitute for, rather than a path to, true piety.
An obsessive focus on ritual observance, he writes, “is the common plague
of all Christendom and inflicts a damage all the more pernicious for its
looking so very much like piety.”56
Erasmus has no patience for pilgrimages and the worship of saints’
relics. And he is especially disdainful of attempts to strike “bargains” with
God through the saying of masses, prayers for divine favor, or the purchase
of indulgences. The church itself encourages and profits from these
practices. As a result, Erasmus complains, “most Christians are merely full
of credulous wonder, not devout, and except for using the name of Christ
are not far removed from the superstition of pagans.”57 They might as well
“offer a cock to Aesculapius that they might recover from an illness, or
slaughter a bull to Neptune that they might have a safe voyage. The names
have been changed, of course, but the purpose is the same.”58
Christianity consists in imitating Christ. Going to church, reciting
prayers, or even giving alms does not make you a Christian. Those
activities must touch and renew your soul. The tree is known by its fruits.
Erasmus wants to see in all people the fruits of Christ’s spirit: love, peace,
joy, patience, goodness, kindness, mildness, faith, modesty, continence, and
purity.59 This is the essence of Christianity and is the only part that truly
matters.
These views animated Erasmus’s publication in 1516 of the Greek New
Testament with a new Latin translation on facing pages. He spent years
learning Greek thoroughly and translating Greek works into Latin to hone
his skills. He then gathered as many manuscript copies of the Greek
testament as he could (which were not many), collated them, and applied to
them the philological methods developed by humanists for editions of
Homer, Virgil, and other pagan authors, correcting copying errors, resolving
inconsistencies, and settling on as accurate a text as possible. Some thought
it a sacrilege to treat the Bible as if it were just another text, like Plato’s
dialogues or Cicero’s essays, to be “corrected” by scholars. Erasmus’s
translation—designed to replace the New Testament portion of the Vulgate,
the fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible by Saint Jerome—sparked
even more outrage. Erasmus was accused of presuming to rewrite the
Lord’s Prayer and other staples of the church.60 Critics complained that, in
pointing out the many errors in the Vulgate, Erasmus was undermining the
authority of the church.
In the foreword to the first edition, which he elaborated upon in the
third edition of 1522, Erasmus defends his scholarly approach. The New
Testament records the words and teachings of Christ. Nothing should be
more precious to us. Knowledge of the language in which it was written is
therefore the critical first step in the study of theology. Next, we must strive
to make the Greek text as accurate as possible, lest we be led astray on vital
matters by copying errors and other corruptions. The highest standards of
scholarship—honed on the Greek and Latin classics—should be applied to
the Bible above all other books. Finally, a clear and accurate translation is
needed so that those who do not know Greek can still come as close as
possible to hearing the genuine voice of God.
This last point, Erasmus realized, required the most defense. Erasmus
wanted to bring the New Testament directly to the people. Anyone who
knew Latin could read his edition. But he also urged that the Bible be
translated into “all the languages of the human race” so that it could be read
and studied by those who did not know Greek or Latin.61
I absolutely dissent from those people who don’t want the holy scriptures to be read in
translation by the unlearned—as if, forsooth, Christ taught such complex doctrine that hardly
anyone outside a handful of theologians could understand it, or as if the chief strength of the
Christian religion lay in people’s ignorance of it.62

Erasmus did not want the Bible to be like the holy of holies, the inner
temple of Jerusalem that only the high priest might enter. He did not want
theologians and foreign tongues to interpose themselves between the people
and their God. His goal, therefore, was to make his Latin version as
accurate as possible and then to encourage translation into the vernacular so
that ordinary men and women, without education in Latin, could still have a
direct relationship with the scriptures, instead of “mumbl[ing] their psalms
or recit[ing] their prayers like trained parrots in a language where they don’t
understand what they are saying.”63 He wanted the Bible to be integrated
into daily life: “I would hope that the farmer might chant a holy text at his
plow, the spinner sing it as she sits at her wheel, the traveler ease the tedium
of his journey with tales from the scripture.”64
Surprisingly enough, making the Bible accessible to all was a radical
idea at the time. Indeed, in 1536, William Tyndale was executed for heresy;
his crime, inspired by Erasmus, was preparing and publishing an English
translation of the Bible, which eighty years later became the foundation of
the King James Version. Erasmus wanted to reestablish for the faithful a
direct relationship with Christ. He wanted God to speak to them as directly
as possible without intermediation by the church. Erasmus dismissed the
elaborate scholastic theology of the Middle Ages as an arrogant attempt to
project knowledge of the unknowable, as if these theologians carried the
keys to heaven and only those who followed their views could find
admittance there. “Very few can be learned,” he stressed, “but no man is
denied permission to be a Christian, no man is forbidden to be pious, and, I
will add boldly, nothing prevents any man from being a theologian.”65
To be a “theologian” in this sense is merely to read and reflect upon the
words of God until they infuse one’s being and determine one’s character.
Give your heart to the spirit of what you read, he urged. That spirit is
simple. The apostles themselves knew nothing of the Immaculate
Conception or the Trinity or even transubstantiation (the literal
transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ during
Communion). Saint Paul wrote movingly of love in his first letter to the
Corinthians without academic quibbles or disputes over dogma.66 What we
cannot understand is not worth disputing, because we can understand all
that is truly important. “Say to yourself: ‘Things above our reach concern us
not at all.’”67
By the time he wrote the foreword to the third edition of his New
Testament, the Reformation was already underway. Erasmus included a
passionate plea that the scriptures should not become a “source of quarrels,
contentions, conflicts, hatreds, and even heresies.”68 But it was already too
late.

LUTHER AND A CHURCH AT WAR WITH ITSELF

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther tacked ninety-five theses to the church
door at Wittenberg. This act was not quite as dramatic as it might seem.
Nailing a thesis to the church door was the sixteenth-century equivalent of
posting a blog on the internet and inviting debate.69
Nor was the subject matter of the theses themselves particularly
controversial. In 1515, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull (a charter or
proclamation affixed with a lead seal, or bulla) authorizing the sale of
indulgences to pay for the building of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Erasmus already had criticized the sale of indulgences and other pay-to-
pray aspects of church life. Luther’s text was defiantly blunt, but the
substance was not new. In thesis 27, he wrote, “There is no divine authority
for preaching that the soul flies out of purgatory immediately the money
clinks in the bottom of the chest.”70 He attacked the whole “purgatory
industry”71 with vehemence. Luther argued that penitence does not apply to
the dead but only to the living. There is, therefore, nothing the living,
including the pope, can do to absolve the dead. Only God can do that. Even
for the living, the pope has no power to remit sins in exchange for money.
Again, only God can forgive, and a man who ignores his neighbor’s plight
but pays for indulgences incurs God’s wrath, not his forgiveness. Let the
pope build Saint Peter’s with his own money, Luther concluded, “rather
than with the money of indigent believers.”72
Martin Luther was born in 1483 to a middle-class family in the
Electorate of Saxony, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He received a
standard education in Latin and went on to study law at the University of
Erfurt, where he was shocked by the drinking and whoring of his fellow
students. In 1505, while riding back to the university from his home, a
fierce thunderstorm arose, and he was nearly struck by lightning. Crying
out, he vowed to become a monk if he survived the ordeal. Less than two
weeks later, Luther entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt.
He was a troubled monk. He prayed and fasted and went to confession
so often and with such minor peccadillos that he began to annoy his
confessor. But he always felt sinful in the eyes of God. Try as he might,
Luther could not realize in himself the Christian ideal. He was nonetheless
ordained as a priest, awarded a doctorate in theology, and sent to join the
faculty at Wittenberg.
Luther’s “Ninety-Five Theses” would have received little note but for
the printing press. Pamphlets containing them quickly spread throughout
Germany and the rest of Europe. Had the pope simply ignored them, the
controversy might have dissolved. But the pope instead had a heresy case
prepared against Luther and summoned him to Rome. Frederick the Wise,
elector of Saxony, advised Luther not to go and convinced the pope instead
to have Luther examined in Augsburg during a diet (general assembly) of
the Holy Roman Empire. The examination did not go well. Luther and the
papal legatee engaged in a protracted shouting match, and Luther had to be
spirited out of Augsburg at night to avoid arrest. For whatever reason,
Frederick, though a devoted Catholic throughout his life, decided to protect
Luther, and, as one of only seven electors of the Holy Roman emperors, he
had the power to do it.
Luther’s experience at Augsburg radicalized him and fed his natural
intransigence. In 1520, he published three books in quick succession. In the
first two, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation and On the
Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther not only denied the doctrine of
papal infallibility, he derided the pope as the antichrist. He urged the
German people and German princes to reject the oppressive authority and
financial corruption of the church in Rome and to exercise local control
over religion. He also dismissed the sacraments other than baptism and
Communion as having no basis in scripture. He even dismissed the doctrine
of transubstantiation as a clerical conjuring trick. Finally, in On the
Freedom of a Christian, Luther argued that good works play no part in
salvation, which depends solely on the grace of God.73 We are all worthless
in the sight of God and incapable of keeping his commandments. Only our
faith in God’s mercy, over which we have no control and no influence, can
redeem us. Our “freedom” lies in the knowledge that our salvation is
completely independent of our actions and our worth.
Unsurprisingly, the pope condemned Luther for heresy. Luther publicly
burned the papal bull. He was then summoned under a promise of safe
conduct to the Diet at Worms in April 1521. Standing in front of the
emperor and a pile of his own books, Luther was ordered to recant. He
returned the next day to give his famous answer: “Hier stehe ich, ich kann
nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen!” (Here I stand, I can do no other. God
help me. Amen!).74
The emperor, showing remarkable restraint and perhaps some sympathy
with Luther’s anti-Rome stance, honored Luther’s safe-conduct. As Luther
made his way back to Wittenberg, Frederick staged a mock kidnapping and
spirited Luther away to a remote castle where he remained in safe seclusion
for some months. But his movement, fueled by German resentment of
money sent to Italy for the support of a corrupt church, gathered momentum
in his absence. And it moved quickly out of his control. Various sects and
splinter groups arose, only loosely grouped under the heading
“Protestantisms.” Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and other theologians
differed with Luther and with one another on the very sort of dogmatic
quibbles against which Erasmus had warned. They all shared the same aim:
to re-create the true Christianity from which the Catholic Church had
departed. But with no centralized authority, there was no uniform, doctrinal
guidance. Religion truly became localized, “a geographical kaleidoscope of
opposing theologies,” as Diarmaid MacCulloch, the leading historian of the
Reformation, puts it.75 Northern Europe was pockmarked with states, cities,
and principalities, each with its own religion tolerating no dissent.
 Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, still dominant in Spain, Italy, and
most of France, launched a Counter-Reformation, aided by the Inquisition.
Spanish Catholicism was particularly militant following the expulsion of
Islam in 1491 and the murder, forced conversion, or exile of the Jews. Over
the next 130 years, countless men, women, and children would die in
religious wars and religious persecution throughout western Europe. They
killed one another over doctrinal niceties that most of them did not even
understand.

THE HUMANIST CONVERSATION

Where was Desiderius Erasmus during the early years of the Reformation?
Conspicuously silent. He was pressed by the church to take a firm stand
against Luther. He was pressed by reformers to support Luther. He did
neither. He obviously was sympathetic to Luther’s call for reform of church
practices and for making the spiritual fundamentals of Christianity directly
accessible to the people. On those issues, after all, Luther was following
Erasmus. Luther even used Erasmus’s Latin translation of the New
Testament to prepare a German translation in 1522.
But Erasmus was repelled by Luther’s militant desire to tear down a
church that was 1,500 years in the making. He foresaw, correctly, that
hatred, war, and misery would be the primary by-products of such
uncompromising intransigence. Erasmus wanted to reform the church, not
to abandon it. He also fundamentally disagreed with Luther’s view of
human nature. This is the issue on which Erasmus finally took his stand
against Luther because it went to the heart of Erasmus’s Christian
humanism.
Luther, following Augustine, did not believe in free will. He thought
that man was hopelessly sinful and could do nothing to ensure his own
salvation. That salvation, he claimed, depends entirely on the grace of God,
which lies beyond man’s comprehension. Man cannot even choose to
embrace God’s offer of grace. God alone chooses the elect and the damned.
Erasmus, by contrast, put his faith in the fundamental freedom and
dignity of man. God’s grace may be beyond our comprehension, but we can
choose to embrace it. As Pico della Mirandola exclaimed, in his influential
lecture On the Dignity of Man, “O great and wonderful happiness of man! It
is given him to have that which he chooses and to be that which he wills.”76
Though far less effusive, Erasmus embraced a comparable optimism. Our
nature is corrupted by original sin and the fall from grace. But, through
education, contemplation of the scriptures, and the application of reason, we
can work our way back, not to the perfection of Christ, but at least to a state
of receptivity to God’s grace. In his Diatribe Concerning Free Will,
Erasmus argued against Luther that God’s truth is at least partially
accessible to man. We can, by following that truth, choose to be better. On
Luther’s view, by contrast, there is no reason to strive for goodness because
we are all sinful regardless. For Luther, God’s seemingly arbitrary decision
to save some and to condemn others is cruel rather than righteous. Erasmus
found Luther’s position both theologically and morally monstrous. He also
found it sadly ironic that Luther, who had no faith in human reason to
discern God’s truth, was willing to split the church over doctrinal issues on
which he was certain he was correct.
The title of Luther’s response says it all: The Bondage of the Will. If we
believe “that God foreknows and foreordains all things,” he argues, then
there can be no free will in man.77 And if we believe that Christ redeemed
men by his own blood, “we are forced to confess that all of man was lost.”78
Otherwise, Christ’s sacrifice was superfluous or directed at the least
valuable part of man. It follows inexorably, he thought, that man cannot
choose to better himself. Luther was no Renaissance humanist. His faith lay
not in the dignity of man but in the incomprehensible mercy of God.
Erasmus made two additional attempts to combat the views of Luther
and other advocates of the Reformation, but no one was paying much
attention by that time. His essential argument was hardly inspiring for either
side: The church is imperfect, but we should remain loyal and try to make it
and ourselves better. Erasmus had no patience for doctrinal disputes that he
considered both unresolvable and wholly secondary to the core of faith. He
preached kindness and humility over dogmatism and was appalled by the
burning of so-called heretics. In a world gone mad over dogmatic disputes,
Erasmus was harshly criticized for timidity by both the church and Luther.
The only major work of Erasmus’s later years was his Colloquies. These
short dialogues originally were written in his teaching days as exercises for
his students to help with their Latin phrasing and expressions. But they
proved so popular that Erasmus added expanded dialogues on a variety of
issues and gave free reign to his humor and his acute, often sardonic,
observations of human nature. The Colloquies joined the Praise of Folly as
his most popular and enduring works.
Once again, he parodies all forms of hypocrisy, superstition, and
corruption. In “The Shipwreck,” terrified passengers make promises to the
saints that they (unlike Luther) have no intention of keeping. “How devout
men are made by suffering!” one interlocutor observes. “In prosperity the
thought of God or saint never enters their heads.”79 In “The Abbot and the
Learned Lady,” Erasmus displays the willful ignorance of monks and the
importance of learning for women as well as men.80 In “A Pilgrimage for
Religion’s Sake,” he mocks meaningless pilgrimages that take us far from
home and our responsibilities to those closest to us. Gull-ibility is another
favorite target, both those who display it and those who exploit it, whether
through exorcism, or alchemy, or a fetish for phony relics, such as an
alleged vial of the Virgin’s milk, now turned into a chalky dust.81 In one
dialogue, rival mendicant orders clamor for donations from a dying man
and engage in jurisdictional disputes with the local priest. Even when all are
paid out, they go away muttering at the money wasted on the others. In
another, excessive spending on building and decorating churches and
ostentatious funerals is contrasted with simple Christian piety. In a very
personal vein, he also condemns the pressure put upon young boys and girls
to enter a monastic life for which they feel no calling.
Erasmus’s hatred of war, especially wars of religion, is particularly
acute. In “Charon,” the ferryman of the dead is overwhelmed with the
spirits of those killed when the papacy joined forces in 1525 with the king
of France and various Italian city-states against the emperor, Charles V.
Rome itself was sacked in the ensuing bloodbath. Priests on both sides
claimed that God was with them alone and promised direct access to heaven
to those killed. Charon asks, “And people believe these fellows?” “What
can a pretense of religion not achieve?” is the answer. “Youth, inexperience,
thirst for glory, anger, and natural human inclination swallow this whole.”82
Moreover, priests and monks don’t mind the ensuing slaughter because
“they make more profit from the dying than from the living. There are wills,
Masses for kinsmen, bulls, and many other sources of revenue not to be
despised.”83
It is hardly surprising that the Colloquies met with a hostile reception
from elements within the Catholic Church. The conservative and influential
faculty of the Sorbonne formally censored the book in 1526. In the next
edition, Erasmus added a letter to his readers, of whom there were many,
arguing that the Colloquies serve religion and the church by exposing those
who cast discredit upon both. Charlatans who “play upon the credulous
minds of simple folk” are the true plague upon Christian devotion,84 and
Erasmus vows to speak out whenever and wherever “the name of religion is
used as a cover for superstition, faithlessness, foolishness, and
recklessness.”85 If that makes him “half a heretic,” as one of his own
characters announces,86 he will bear the label proudly. The half that matters
is the half devoted to the true teachings of the church.
That is the point of one of his most important colloquies, “An
Examination Concerning Faith.” In it, Aulus (who represents Erasmus)
examines Barbatius (Luther) on the tenets of the Apostles’ Creed. He finds
Barbatius to be in line with church teaching on every point. Aulus exclaims,
“When I was at Rome, I did not find everyone so sound in belief.”87 On the
key articles of Christian faith, there is no genuine difference between them.
Aulus thus asks Barbatius plaintively, “Why, then, is there such conflict
between you and the orthodox?”88 Barbatius can provide no answer. Nor,
sadly, can Erasmus.
Erasmus was driven from Louvain by Catholics in 1521. He was driven
from Basel by Reformation Protestants in 1529. He then settled in the
imperial German city of Freiburg im Breisgau. Erasmus died on July 12,
1536, one year after his dear friend Thomas More was beheaded for
refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as the head of a separate Church of
England. Erasmus was lucky to have escaped a similar fate. He was “half a
heretic” to Catholics and Protestants alike. When the Catholic Church
published its Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559, all of Erasmus’s works
were included in the ban. Over the next four hundred years, almost every
significant writer, thinker, and philosopher was added to that list. It became
an honor roll of Western thought. Erasmus wanted to unite Christianity with
humanism.89 But the church turned its back on Erasmus and, with him, on
the modern world.
Johan Huizinga, writing in 1919, notes that Erasmus is no longer read;
he has become only a name. “Erasmus is the man who is too sensible and
moderate for the heroic,” Huizinga writes. As a result, “his influence has
ceased. He has done his work and will speak to the world no more.”90 To the
contrary, we need Erasmus today more than ever. We need his carnival
laughter, his ability to pinpoint and mock all forms of hypocrisy and
ostentation. We need his emphasis on the softer virtues of kindness,
sincerity, and simplicity. We need his innate moderation and skeptical
tolerance in the face of dogmatisms of all kinds. Most of all, we need his
faith in the accessibility of truth, his faith that we can, through the
cultivation of reason and the thoughtful study of the great works and
examples of our predecessors, approach a kind of wisdom—a fallible,
human wisdom to be sure, but that is more than enough and carries with it a
touch of the divine.
 Chapter 3
MACHIAVELLI AND
POLITICAL REALISM

Tanto nomini nullum par elogium.1

M achiavelli has been avidly read and vigorously condemned for half a
millennium. His realistic analyses, and precepts for the exercise, of
power have both shocked and intrigued thinkers and would-be masters of
the universe. He is the indispensable figure in all subsequent thought about
politics. No reader can remain neutral. You are for him or against him, yet
even those who criticize Machiavelli the loudest often follow his precepts.
Frederick the Great of Prussia, assisted by the French philosopher Voltaire,
wrote a book before ascending the throne called the Anti-Machiavel, a
chapter-by-chapter rebuttal to The Prince. Voltaire himself later quipped
that the first thing Machiavelli would advise a new prince to do would be to
write a book attacking Machiavellianism.
The very word Machiavellian is a term of abuse, though sometimes, in
those who pride themselves on their cynicism, one of barbed praise.
Machiavelli is thought to license deception, brutality, and whatever is
necessary to attain and to retain power. Shakespeare called him the
“murderous Machiavel,”2 and fashioned his greatest villains, Richard III
and Iago, along what he perceived as Machiavellian lines. Elizabethan
drama is full of such characters.
Some apologists contend that Machiavelli, while accurate in his
descriptions of contemporary politics, was savagely satirical in his
prescriptions. If we accept this view, Machiavelli, though not as funny, was
rather like Erasmus in the Praise of Folly and the Colloquies, exposing the
wickedness and hypocrisy of the world around him while pretending to
praise it. Others, with more justification, claim that Machiavelli was a
closet idealist whose true love was the Florentine Republic he wanted to
preserve at all costs in a Europe full of ruthless and ambitious leaders. Still
others contend that Machiavelli was so eager to return to politics and the
good graces of the Medicis that he wrote The Prince as a job application,
saying whatever he thought might appeal to the new masters of Florence in
order to demonstrate his own indispensability as an advisor.3
There is some truth in each of these views, though least in those who
excuse, and thereby belittle, The Prince as satire. Machiavelli was a man of
his time, in which the warring principalities of Italy constantly forged and
broke alliances with one another, engaged in diplomatic feints and
deceptions, hired condottieri to wage their wars, and flirted disastrously
with foreign intervention by the great powers of France, Spain, and
Germany. Machiavelli, as a Florentine diplomat, negotiated with princes
and kings and wrote clear-eyed, incisive reports to inform and guide the
Florentine government in dangerous times. The political realities described
in The Prince he saw up close and personal, and he deplored the strategic
mistakes and the failure of nerve that led to the fall of the republic and his
own dismissal from office.
Yet Machiavelli was also a man of genius who transcended his time,
communing with the great historians and philosophers of ancient Rome.
The rise and fall of the Roman Republic—which Amsterdam professor
Dominic Baker-Smith has called “the shaping myth of western political
thought”4—was always at the forefront of Machiavelli’s thinking. But his
thoughts about it were filtered through the lens of contemporary politics.
How power is gained, exercised, and retained was the single-minded focus
of his work, and his unique combination of experience, study, and genius on
that topic has never been equaled.
Augustine, in his City of God, argued that history is cyclical. No human
civilization can endure; only the city of God provides stability and
immortality. Machiavelli—who disdained religion, except as a useful tool
of social stability—accepted the premise but not the conclusion. He wanted
to establish conditions under which a city of man could endure as long as
possible for the benefit of its citizens, even as he recognized that the wheel
of fortune would eventually turn and destroy whatever men might build.
 There is no indication that Machiavelli read Thomas More’s Utopia,
which was published in 1516, but, if he had, he undoubtedly would have
dismissed it as pious nonsense. Indeed, he even rejected the political
thought of his intellectual mentors, Cicero and Seneca, because they
transferred moral values appropriate to individuals and applied them to the
political realm, where they did not belong. Cicero and Seneca contended
that the ideal leader must, above all, be virtuous, benevolent, generous,
merciful, and honest. Machiavelli thought nothing could be more disastrous
than a polity run by philosophers according to moral principles. And,
certainly, nothing could be more false as a description of what actually
happened in ancient Rome or was happening in the Italy of his day.
Machiavelli stressed that we must write about politics out of truth rather
than idealism: “How one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live,
that [a prince] who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner
effects his ruin than his preservation.”5 Politics has its own language, its
own rules, and its own virtues. This is not to say that Machiavelli was an
apologist for tyranny maintained through brutal repression. Far from it;
Machiavelli was a lifelong and tireless proponent of republican liberty. But
the survival of a republic or any other form of government depends on skills
of leadership and strategic decisions that often have little to do with moral
virtue. The political realm is autonomous and cannot be reduced to or
judged by the standards of ancient morality, much less Christian morality,
which Machiavelli thought had made men soft and disengaged, with its
emphasis on meekness and the afterlife.
The prime quality in a leader for Machiavelli is virtù, a word from the
Latin virtus that is impossible to translate. It certainly does not mean virtue
in its contemporary sense. A leader with virtù is strong, bold, powerful,
energetic, courageous, clever, resourceful, and even, when necessary,
ruthless. The closest equivalent may be the ancient Greek term polytropia,
which is what Homer calls Odysseus. It means “skilled in all ways of
contending.” In Machiavelli, moreover, virtù can be attributed to a republic
(as in The Discourses) as well as to an individual (as in The Prince). Virtù is
what allows a polity to survive and even thrive in a dangerous world, and
thereby to provide a measure of peace, justice, and security for its citizens,
a space within which they themselves are free to thrive.
Humans everywhere join together for mutual advantage and common
defense. As Aristotle noted, only a beast or a god lives outside a body
politic.6 Yet such a collective inevitably gives rise to tensions both within
the state and with other states. These inherent tensions, Machiavelli
believed, cannot be eliminated and so must be channeled and controlled.
Men and women are, by nature, selfish and untrustworthy, but they can
also, as in the ancient Roman Republic, display the critical virtues of
citizenship: courage, discipline, and fierce loyalty to their state. We must
therefore be clear-eyed and realistic about human nature in constructing and
preserving a society. Our own founders learned that lesson well in creating
a divided government that held tensions in a dynamic equilibrium.
Sometimes one faction might emerge, sometimes another. But the prospects
for lasting damage were limited. Scholars generally attribute the founders’
insight to the Scottish Enlightenment, but in fact it traces back to
Machiavelli.
Political society is inherently problematic but absolutely critical to the
well-being of all. Thus, we cannot hesitate to counter the forces that would
destroy it. No civilization will endure forever, but civilized life can be
prolonged through a careful balancing of competing internal forces and
great skill in leadership. In our own polity, the former has so far proved
sufficient even where the latter has been lacking. But, as Machiavelli’s
Florence showed, without both, survival is a matter of fortune, and fortune’s
wheel inevitably turns.

LIFE

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence on May 3, 1469. His father,

Bernardo, was a lawyer and dedicated humanist. Bernardo was also a
member of the minor gentry, accepted in the best circles but neither wealthy
nor aristocratic nor particularly successful. In order to obtain a prized set of
Livy’s history of Rome that he could not otherwise afford, Bernardo agreed
to compile a detailed index for the printer.
Machiavelli, in keeping with his father’s humanist interests, received a
solid education in Latin, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy. He copied
verses from the Latin poets, particularly Virgil, Ovid, and Lucretius, in his
notebooks. He read the historians, especially Thucydides (in a Latin
translation), Tacitus, and, of course, Livy. He studied the political and moral
writings of Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, and was also familiar with at least
some of Plato’s dialogues. The extent of Machiavelli’s formal education is
unclear, but most scholars believe he attended the University of Florence,
where he studied with Marcello Adriani, who would later become a
political colleague.
Florence in the fifteenth century was an important commercial and
financial center. Bankers, merchants, and fine craftsmen made the city
wealthy. Florence had been a republic for more than five hundred years,
though it was often, as in the fifteenth century, dominated by prominent
families, most significantly the banking house of Medici. After a brief
tussle with the rival house of Albizzi that resulted in his exile, the patriarch,
Cosimo de’ Medici, returned to Florence in 1434. Republican formalities
were maintained, but there was little doubt that the Medicis were now in
charge: Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as Lorenzo the
Magnificent, reigned successfully as princes in all but name. A 1478 plot to
murder Lorenzo, along with his brother, Giuliano, during a High Mass at
the Duomo fell short—Giuliano was stabbed to death; Lorenzo, though
wounded, escaped. The Medicis and their supporters executed the
conspirators and tightened their grip on the city.
When Lorenzo died in 1492, however, all that changed. Lorenzo’s son
Piero was a weak and incompetent leader. He was no match for the
Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, who came to Florence in 1489 and
lived in the monastery at San Marco in the very cell occupied half a century
earlier by the painter Fra Angelico. Savonarola was an impassioned and
charismatic preacher who railed against church corruption, the repression of
freedom by tyrants (a not-so-subtle attack on the Medicis), the exploitation
of the poor, and the decadence of secular culture. He also prophesied the
coming of a foreign leader who would put the sword to Italy and reform the
church. When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy to stake a claim to the
Kingdom of Naples, Savonarola seized on the event as the fulfillment of his
prophecy. He met with Charles and convinced him to bypass the largely
defenseless Florence on his way south. The Medicis were expelled from the
city, and a revived republic of the people was declared, with Savonarola’s
Frateschi party very much in control. The republic lasted eighteen
tumultuous years before the Medicis returned in vengeful triumph;
Savonarola lasted only four.
Charles VIII met with no lasting success in Italy, the church was not
reformed, and an angry Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola
and threatened Florence with an interdiction. The people of Florence began
to tire of Savonarola, who had passed strict laws against vice and convened
various bonfires of the vanities in 1497, where thousands of books—
including beloved works by Dante and Boccaccio—secular paintings, and
other supposedly decadent objects, such as mirrors, fancy dresses, and
cosmetics, were committed to the flames. The mood turned decidedly
hostile when Savonarola balked after a rival preacher challenged him to a
trial by fire to test his allegedly divine sanction. Savonarola was arrested,
tortured, and, in May 1498, burned at the stake, all at the instigation of the
pope. His ashes were scattered in the Arno River. The Florentines were only
too glad to see the last of him, and his supporters were dismissed from the
government.
The fall of the Frateschi provided an ideal opportunity for the twenty-
nine-year-old Machiavelli. He was appointed and confirmed secretary to the
Second Chancery in 1498. The secretary to the First Chancery was his
former teacher, Marcello Adriani. It was a minor bureaucratic post, but,
through his talent and initiative, Machiavelli steadily turned it into
something more essential during the fourteen years he held it.
With a solid position to sustain him, Machiavelli married Marietta
Corsini in 1501. It seems to have been a reasonably happy union, though he
was frequently traveling in the first decade of their marriage and was
serially unfaithful throughout it. They had six children and remained
together until the end of Machiavelli’s life, despite his habit of becoming
intensely, if not lastingly, enamored of other women.
Italy, at this time, was broken into five centers of power: the Kingdom
of Naples (which generally included Sicily), the Papal States centered on
Rome, the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Milan, and the Republic of
Venice. They existed in an uneasy equilibrium with one another, sometimes
warring openly but mostly jockeying for power and influence over the
satellite cities that fell within their respective spheres of influence. Each of
the other four powers had strong, even tyrannical leaders. In Florence,
Machiavelli’s mentor, Piero Soderini, was named gonfaloniere (a chief
administrative post) for life in 1502. Soderini was dedicated to the republic
but an indecisive leader, and his weaknesses, in Machiavelli’s view,
ultimately led to the failure of the republic he was sworn to uphold.
Into this volatile mix in 1501 strode Cesare Borgia, bastard son of the
current pope, Alexander VI. The pope named his son Duke of Romagna, a
made-up title with no real territory over which to rule. Borgia, however,
was the opposite of Soderini. He was bold and decisive and, since fortune
favors the bold, or so thought Machiavelli, highly successful. With money
and troops provided by his father, he began to add city-states to go with his
title. Milan and Venice felt threatened. Borgia demanded an alliance with
Florence, and the young Machiavelli was sent to Urbino to meet with him
in October 1502. Machiavelli spent considerable time in his company, both
in Urbino and elsewhere, and was highly impressed with Borgia, who went
out of his way to overawe the young diplomat. Machiavelli’s job was to
assess Borgia’s character and his prospects for success. He sent detailed,
and mostly laudatory, reports about Borgia back to Florence, material he
later used as notes for developing his more mature political views in The
Prince and The Discourses.
Unfortunately for Borgia, his father died in August 1503, and without
papal patronage his budding empire soon collapsed. Alexander VI’s
immediate successor, Pius III, a Borgia supporter, reigned for only twenty-
six days before his death. Borgia then made the fatal mistake of allowing
Giuliano della Rovere to be elected as Pope Julius II. Rovere was a
longtime enemy of the Borgia family. Borgia controlled a large enough
block of votes to prevent the election, but he accepted Rovere’s promises of
money and continued support in Romagna, promises on which Julius II
immediately reneged. Borgia continued his colorful career as a minor
condottiere in Spain, until he was brutally murdered in 1507, but he was no
longer a factor in Italian politics. The fox (Julius II) had outfaced the lion
(Cesare Borgia), a lesson Machiavelli would take to heart.
France, England, Spain, and Germany had all built nation-states in the
fifteenth century. Italy remained fractured, riven by infighting and hence
vulnerable to outside conquest. Louis XII of France (following the lead of
his predecessor, Charles VIII) and King Ferdinand II of Aragon each laid
claim to the Kingdom of Naples, and the German emperor Maximilian
coveted northern Italy. Florence was compelled to develop its own foreign
policy. Machiavelli paid four separate visits to the French court. He also
went to Rome in 1506 to meet with Julius II and made an extended trip to
the emperor Maximilian in 1507–1508, accompanying the senior Florentine
diplomat, Francesco Vettori, who became a lifelong friend and confidant.
Machiavelli’s face-to-face encounters with the major figures of the day—to
assess their intentions, their powers, and their characters—along with the
detailed reports he sent back to Florence, proved invaluable to his later
writings. He needed to take a coldly realistic view of their likely actions and
could not afford to be duped by soft words or lofty sentiments.
Unfortunately, even Machiavelli’s astute observations could not preserve
the Florentine Republic, which insisted on forming an ill-fated alliance with
France.
The origins of that alliance lay in Pisa, a Tuscan city once controlled by
Florence, which revolted in 1502. Among the expedients Florence
employed to regain Pisa was to hire the French to take it for them, using
mercenaries. This was an unmitigated disaster. The mercenaries fled at the
first sign of resistance, and the siege of Pisa collapsed. Louis XII
nonetheless insisted on being paid, and one of Machiavelli’s trips to Paris
was an unsuccessful effort to convince Louis XII either to forgo the
payment or to make good on his promise. The fiasco with Pisa convinced
Machiavelli of the need for Florence to build up its own militia composed
of citizen soldiers rather than for-hire mercenaries.
Louis XII made additional forays into Italy and called for the overthrow
of the pope. In October 1511, Julius II forged an alliance against France
with King Ferdinand of Spain and with Venice. The emperor Maximilian
and even the king of England, Henry VIII, ultimately joined this “Holy
League.” Florence, faced with a choice of whom to support, stuck with the
French, which proved a fatal mistake. Spanish troops ousted France from
Italy and then marched on Florence, stopping to subdue the allied town of
Prato. The Florentines could easily have made a treaty with Spain and
retained at least the forms of the republic, but Soderini temporized and
ultimately declined to treat with the Spanish. They responded with a brutal
sack of Prato, and the terrified Florentines capitulated without resistance.
The Medicis returned to power in 1512 following an eighteen-year absence,
and the republic was dissolved. Giuliano de’ Medici, the third son of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, was now in charge. Machiavelli was out of a job.
Worse was to come.
The following year, Machiavelli was arrested on suspicion of
conspiracy against the new government. An abortive coup was uncovered,
and one of the hapless participants had a sheet listing potential anti-Medici
conspirators, including Machiavelli. There is no indication that Machiavelli
knew of the planned coup or the list, but he was imprisoned and tortured
regardless.
 On the death of Julius II in 1513, the Florentine cardinal Giovanni de’
Medici, Lorenzo’s second son, became Pope Leo X. Machiavelli and others
not directly implicated in the coup were freed from prison as part of a
general amnesty to celebrate the event. He nonetheless found it prudent to
remove himself from Florence. Machiavelli settled on a family farm in
nearby Sant’Andrea in Percussina. But he did not lose his interest in politics
or his desire to return to that arena. Indeed, with one Medici as pope and
another in charge of Florence, Machiavelli saw a unique opportunity for the
Papal States and Florence to consolidate their power in the center of Italy,
expel all foreign invaders, and forge a united Italy. It was a tantalizing
vision that heavily influenced his first masterwork, The Prince, initially
dedicated to Giuliano, and upon Giuliano’s death to Lorenzo’s grandson,
also named Lorenzo. But if the book was intended to impress the Medicis
with his indispensability as an advisor, it failed in that purpose. Machiavelli
sent the manuscript to his former chancery colleague, Francesco Vettori,
who was close to Pope Leo X. But Vettori proved unwilling to risk his own
position to advance that of Machiavelli. It is unlikely that the pope or
Giuliano or Lorenzo ever read the book. They did not trust Machiavelli in
any event and had no intention of employing him in any political capacity.
So Machiavelli eked out a meager living from his farm in Sant’Andrea
in Percussina. He also joined a group of humanist intellectuals meeting
regularly in the Oricellari Gardens outside of Florence to discuss literature
and politics. Mostly, though, he read and he wrote, regarding his time spent
communing with ancient thinkers and historians as something close to
sacred. After The Prince failed to secure him any patronage, Machiavelli
turned back to The Discourses, a long-planned commentary on Livy that he
turned into a detailed analysis of republican government.
In a famous letter to Vettori, Machiavelli describes a typical day on his
farm, stressing with mixed humor and bitterness the mundaneness of his
pursuits and the poverty of his estate. In summer, he sets snares for
thrushes, which he then captures with his own hands to place in cages,
presumably for sale or consumption. Come autumn, he supervises wood-
cutters in his grove and squabbles with his neighbors over the price and
quantity of the firewood. After that, he visits a spring and his aviary,
carrying always a book of poetry in his pocket, usually Dante or Petrarch,
or one of the Roman poets, such as Tibullus or Ovid. Then he repairs to an
inn to discuss the news of the village and to “note the various tastes and
different fancies of men.”7 He dines with his family, and they “eat such food
as this poor farm of mine and my tiny property allow.”8 After lunch, he
returns to the inn for games of cards and dice played for pennies but
accompanied with loud disputes and colorful insults. Having deliberately
steeped himself in vulgarity to “satisfy the malice of this fate of mine, being
glad to have her drive me along this road, to see if she will be ashamed of
it,”9 Machiavelli himself effects a transformation:
On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off
the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and
reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them
with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am
not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their
kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom. I forget every trouble, I
do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them.10

It is no exaggeration to say that his hours spent reading, writing, and

communing with the ancients gave back the meaning to his life that he lost
when his active involvement in politics ended. No longer able to meet with
emperors, popes, kings, and princes, he discourses instead with the greatest
thinkers of antiquity.11
In 1520, after completing The Discourses, Machiavelli, through the
intervention of friends, received a formal commission from the Medicis to
write a history of Florence. He spent most of the rest of his life on the work,
and he used the money he received to provide a dowry for his daughter. It is
not a flattering portrait, especially as it approached his own day.
Machiavelli is blunt about the increasing corruption, the decadence, and the
military misadventures of the city he nonetheless considered his true patria.
The Medicis never managed to unite Italy against foreign aggressors. To
the contrary, the various city-states and principalities continued to invite
foreign intervention in hopes of gaining advantage against one another.
Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici) formed another Holy League, this
time against Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman emperor. On May 6,
1527, disorganized Spanish and German mercenaries sacked Rome. The
pope shut himself up in the Castel Sant’Angelo and paid a heavy ransom to
be left alone. Ten days later, the Medicis fled Florence, and the republic was
once again restored. Machiavelli hoped for reinstatement. But it was too
late, and unlikely in any event. The Prince, though never published, had
circulated in manuscript form and made his fellow republicans wary of him.
Machiavelli died on June 21, 1527, but the influence of The Prince has
grown steadily ever since.

THE PRINCE

To understand The Prince, it is best to begin at the end, with Machiavelli’s

“Exhortation to Restore Italy to Liberty and Free Her from the Barbarians.”
In it, Machiavelli complains that foreign powers have looted and oppressed
Lombardy, the Kingdom of Naples, and Tuscany. Only a united Italy can
expel these invaders, protect itself against further incursions, and claim its
rightful place among the nation-states of Europe. The time is ripe, he urges,
to welcome a new prince in Italy—a Moses for the children of Israel, a
Cyrus to rally the Persians, a Theseus to unite the Athenians. These strong
leaders seized their opportunities and led their newfound nations to
greatness, just as Romulus did in ancient Rome. Fractured, weakened Italy
has waited too long for such a redeemer, and Machiavelli can barely restrain
his enthusiasm in describing “the deep devotion, the dedication, the tears,
that will greet him.”12 “This barbarian occupation stinks in all our nostrils!”
he insists, and, in a direct appeal to the house of Medici, concludes:
Let your illustrious house, then, take up this task with that courage and with that hope which
suit a just enterprise; so that, under your banner, our country may become noble again, and
the verses of Petrarch [from his famous canzone “Italia mia”] may come true:

Then virtue boldly shall engage

And swiftly vanquish barbarous rage,
Proving that ancient and heroic pride
In true Italian hearts has never died.13

This is laying it on a bit thick, even by the standards for dedicatory

flattery in the Renaissance. But there is no reason to believe that
Machiavelli was not sincere. The Florentine Republic had failed because of
inadequate institutions and weak leadership. Machiavelli was ready to try
something else, and he believed that only a strong leader could unite and
free Italy from foreign powers seeking spoils. Cesare Borgia had tried and
failed to unite Italy because the new pope was hostile to him. But perhaps
the Medicis, controlling both the papacy and Florence, could succeed where
he had failed. The Prince is Machiavelli’s handbook for the Medicis to
undertake such a task. Believing that “[no] time [was] more suitable than
the present,”14 Machiavelli set aside the longer work he was planning and
produced The Prince at great speed in 1513.
There is a certain irony in this sudden change in direction. The longer
work Machiavelli was planning was a set of discourses on republican
government, which he clearly favored over autocratic rule. Yet Machiavelli
was willing to sharpen the tools of tyranny in order to achieve his objective
of a free and united Italy. It was a highly pragmatic decision, a response to
circumstances of just the sort he urged on the ideal prince of his imagining.
Machiavelli could not restore the Florentine Republic, but perhaps he could
at least promote a strong Italian patria. For that to be possible, however, he
had to convince the Medicis to seize an opportunity that only he saw
clearly. He needed them to bend fortune to his will.
Machiavelli, in the tradition of ancient Rome, personified fortune as a
goddess, Fortuna, with a capricious indifference to human merit and human
wishes. The wheel of fortune lifts up and casts down. There is limited scope
for human freedom. Machiavelli nonetheless believed, as did the Romans,
that fortuna favors the bold. Fortuna presents us with the set of
circumstances with which we must deal and to which we must respond.
Machiavelli stressed that there are turning points in life and in state-
craft, when large consequences are at stake and fortune can be redirected by
forceful and decisive action. We must seize any such opportunities and
bring to bear on them the means necessary to exploit them. Shakespeare
later used that same idea to motivate the conspirators who murdered Julius
Caesar (ostensibly to restore the Roman Republic):
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.15

One such tide was presenting itself now—the opportunity to unite Italy
and to expel foreign invaders—and Machiavelli wanted the Medicis to take
it at the flood. Another such tide was simultaneously visible to Machiavelli
personally: the opportunity for him to return to politics as an influential
advisor. Machiavelli was determined not to lose either of those ventures,
which is why he wrote The Prince. It is important to keep in mind this dual
perspective, since Machiavelli’s advice to the prince is exactly what he
himself is following in writing the book.
The Prince accordingly is directed quite specifically to the circumstance
of Medici rule; it focuses on a new, rather than hereditary, principality and
the special challenges of the prince in winning the loyalty and obedience of
a people accustomed to freedom but now subject to his absolute rule.
Character, Machiavelli believes, is the key to success. But just what
character traits will work varies from circumstance to circumstance. “A
prince will be fortunate who adjusts his behavior to the temper of the
times.”16 That is why the prince must be polytropic, skilled in all ways of
contending. He must combine the traits of the lion and the fox: “As the lion
cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from
wolves, you have to be a fox in order to be wary of traps, and a lion to
overawe the wolves.”17 The prince must combine the shrewdness of Julius
II and the boldness of Cesare Borgia, with the good sense to know when
one is called for and when the other.
Machiavelli had a fascination with the role of extraordinary individuals
in shaping history, a fascination that would later be shared by the German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. “Specific occasions brought these happy
men to power,” Machiavelli notes, “and their unusual abilities [virtù]
enabled them to seize the occasion and so to make their countries noble and
prosperous.”18 New principalities are acquired and held either through the
force of arms or “through the power of others and fortuna.”19 Francesco
Sforza, the powerful warlord in Milan from 1450 to 1466, took the former
path. Cesare Borgia, who depended on his father’s position as pope to get
his start, took the latter. But the greatness of the prince, and the greatness of
his city, depends on what he does with that position once it is obtained.
The Medicis now rule Florence thanks to good fortune and the arms of
Spain. But, if they want to keep it, they cannot depend exclusively on
fortune or foreign arms. Even the resourceful Borgia fell from power when
his father died and he uncharacteristically failed to block an enemy from
becoming pope. Foreign assistance is too likely either to be fickle or to
transform itself into foreign domination. A strong Florence, therefore, needs
a strong leader who can consolidate his own and his city’s power. And a
strong leader must rely predominantly upon his own virtù.
Every new prince, Machiavelli notes, is beset with inherent, internal
difficulties. A new prince will be opposed by those doing well under the
prior regime and only half-heartedly supported by those hoping to profit
from the change, who will be quick to switch allegiance if their hopes are
disappointed.20 Thus, Savonarola’s followers helped to expel the Medicis
twenty-three years earlier, believing they would be better off. But their
economic position instead got worse, and they found themselves oppressed
by his strict religious creed. Once the people ceased to believe in
Savonarola’s divine sanction, he had “no way of keeping the backsliders in
line or of converting the doubters.”21 If the Medicis are to learn from that
lesson, they must move quickly, even ruthlessly, to consolidate their power
and to make the people dependent upon them for their prosperity and well-
being. There is no room for sentiment in politics. Only failure will result
from such weakness.
Machiavelli offers a series of lessons to the Medicis for successful rule.
One might call them the seven habits of highly effective leaders. The first is
immediately to suppress those most likely to cause trouble. The harm done
to them must be of sufficient severity that the prince need not fear their
revenge. Men will seek revenge for minor hurts, he explains, but are unable
to revenge major ones. In particular, Machiavelli advises, keep your hands
off the property of the citizens, for “men are quicker to forget the death of a
father than the loss of a patrimony.”22 Moreover, any harm done to
individuals or groups must be quick and decisive and then end, so that the
rest of the people are not constantly fearing new acts of violence or
oppression. A prolonged reign of terror will engender hatred and
desperation; a surgical neutralization of the most problematic elements will
not. In short, “when a prince takes a new state, he should calculate the sum
of all the injuries he will have to do, and do them all at once, so as not to
have to do new ones every day; simply by not repeating them, he will be
able to reassure people, and win them over to his side with benefits”
delivered slowly over time.23
This is a remarkable statement from a man who was thrown into prison
and tortured by the new Medici regime before finally being released and
retiring to his farm in Sant’Andrea in Percussina. No room for sentiment,
indeed. “A new prince,” Machiavelli admits, “cannot possibly avoid a name
for cruelty, since new states are always in danger.”24 But the prince can use
that cruelty tactically to obtain the loyalty of his people. For example, when
Borgia first ruled Romagna, he set a cruel man in charge there to pacify the
populace. But once the surrogate had served his purpose, Borgia had him
cut in half in the public square, thereby winning the approval of the people.
Such cruelty, Machiavelli insists, was “well used.”25
But, however well used, violence must be sparing, particularly if the
prince seeks honor as well as power. For “it certainly cannot be called
[virtù] to murder his fellow citizens, betray his friends, to be devoid of
truth, pity, or religion; a man may get power by means like these, but not
glory.”26 A prince seeking both power and glory will resort to cruelty only
when tactically necessary. Thus, Machiavelli condemns the expulsion of the
Moors and the Jews from Spain. He calls it “despicable.”27 But, more to the
point, it was also a political error because the Jews and Moors were
important contributors to the economy, and they posed no threat to the
ruling order, so their expulsion was wholly unnecessary. As Talleyrand
reputably told Napoleon after Napoleon executed the Duke of Enghien—
one of the few remaining relatives of the Bourbon monarchs—on dubious
charges of treason, thereby sending shockwaves through the courts of
Europe: “C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute” (It is worse than a crime,
it is a mistake).28
The second main lesson Machiavelli offers is to keep the citizens
dependent on the prince and on the state by distributing benefits to them
slowly over time—but, again, only up to a point. A prince should not be too
liberal, because the money to display such liberality has to come from the
people themselves in the form of taxation, which they will resent. It is better
to have them think you miserly than to resent your depredations. The same
is true with mercy, which can be mistaken for weakness and lead to actions
that require greater cruelty in response. Making an example of the few is
more merciful than allowing disorder that harms an entire community.
Princes need to play the long game, and liberality and mercy can be vices
rather than virtues in a leader when they lead to their opposites. As the
physician of the body politic, a prince has to catch problems early, or the
later cure will be much worse.29
A third lesson is that, while it is praiseworthy for a prince to keep his
word and live with integrity, experience shows that those who succeed pay
little heed to their promises. Thus, “a prudent prince cannot and should not
keep his word when to do so would go against his interest, or when the
reasons that made him pledge it no longer apply.”30 Such deceit is not
difficult, because “a prince will never lack for legitimate excuses to explain
away his breaches of faith.”31 In words that have plainly entered the play-
book of all modern politicians, Machiavelli writes, “You must be a great liar
and hypocrite. Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their
immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready
to be deceived.”32
The fourth, and perhaps most famous, lesson is that it is better to be
feared than loved. “I don’t doubt that every prince would like to be both,”
Machiavelli admits; but it is hard to cultivate both love and fear, and if you
have to choose, it is much safer to be feared than to be loved.33 “For it is a
good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars and
deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain.”34 If you serve their needs,
they will profess their undying devotion. But whenever their self-interest is
threatened or danger is at hand, they will forget their professed love and
turn against you unless they fear you. Thus, fear is good but must stop short
of hate. Fear will keep men in check; hatred will fester and, in the end,
overcome fear, leading to rebellion.
Fifth, a prince should appear to have every good quality, even when he
doesn’t; or, rather, especially when he doesn’t. “It is good to appear
merciful, truthful, humane, sincere, and religious; it is good to be so in
reality. But you must keep your mind so disposed that, in case of need, you
can turn to the exact contrary.”35 It is impossible for anyone to possess all
good qualities; human nature does not allow it. But it is particularly
impossible for a prince. “To preserve the state, he often has to do things
against his word, against charity, against humanity, against religion. . . . He
should not depart from the good if he can hold to it, but he should be ready
to enter on evil if he has to.”36 Nor should a prince be too worried if he
succumbs to certain vices and indulgences, as long as they do not threaten
his rule.37 A prince need only be shrewd enough to avoid disgrace.
Machiavelli clearly anticipates the modern political injunction: Sincerity is
everything. If you can fake that, the rest is easy.
Sixth, a prince should focus his own and his people’s attention on the art
of war. If the people are united against external enemies, they will be less
likely to raise any domestic disturbances. In addition, their pride in their
city will translate into honor and even love for their prince. “A prince,
therefore, should have no other object, no other thought, no other subject of
study, than war.”38 Courage, discipline, and military leadership are not
qualities a prince can dissemble; he must possess them in the highest
degree. Machiavelli decries the infighting of Italian city-states; he calls for
a fundamental restructuring of Italian military power, which relies too much
on unreliable mercenaries and not enough on homegrown infantry. The
result of such policies is that “Italy has been overrun by Charles, sacked by
Louis, raped by Ferdinand, and disgraced by the Swiss.”39 An Italian state
must be constructed from the bottom up, relying, as the Roman Republic
did in its early years, on the pride and might of citizen soldiers and the virtù
of remarkable military leaders.
The seventh lesson is the most important of all. A prince must be
decisive. He cannot procrastinate. He cannot appear irresolute. He must act
with the boldness of Cesare Borgia, for it is better to be rash than timid.40
“What makes the prince contemptible is being considered changeable,
trifling, effeminate, cowardly, or indecisive.”41 Fortuna favors the bold.
That is where the virtù of a ruler comes in, as “a kind of lucky shrewdness”
in dealing with the turns of fortune.42 An extraordinary individual,
combining the character traits of the lion and the fox, can change history
and achieve greatness as a leader.
In his famous letter to Francesco Vettori, to whom he entrusted The
Prince, Machiavelli expressed his hope that “our present Medici lords will
make use of me,” and not leave him to become “despised through
poverty.”43 They did not make use of him in any political capacity. Nor did
they make use of the advice he proffered in The Prince. They did not “take
the current when it serve[d]” and move to unite Italy. As a result, the
voyage of their reign was “bound in shallows and in miseries” until it
collapsed in 1527. Machiavelli himself, however, did take the tide at the
flood. He was afloat on a full sea when he wrote The Prince. Combining the
traits of the lion and the fox in his work, Machiavelli made himself the
indispensable figure in all subsequent political thought. Future leaders and
would-be leaders would study his work with care. Machiavelli, through his
unique virtù, became one of those extraordinary individuals he so admired
and in the process changed history.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL?

The question remains whether Machiavelli changed history for better or for
worse. His ideal prince is cruel, deceitful, dissembling, and decisive to the
point of rashness. He cultivates fear and dependency among his people and
will wage foreign wars to distract from domestic troubles. Machiavelli pays
lip service to admirable traits, admitting that it is good “in reality” to be
merciful, truthful, humane, sincere, and religious. But the prince must be
“be prepared to act immorally when this becomes necessary.”44 And it is the
prince himself who makes this determination; it is difficult not to assume
that the prince will inevitably conclude that whatever perpetuates and
enhances his own power and glory is also in the interests of the state and
therefore necessary.45
Having conjured such a monster, is Machiavelli himself, then, a monster
of immorality, the cat’s paw of tyrants? Or is he simply a realist, adopting
his own injunction that a writer about principalities, like the prince himself,
must be clear-eyed and without sentiment? Is Machiavelli merely
describing political reality, however repulsive, or is he affirmatively
prescribing a course of action?
Both and neither appears to be the answer. Politics in the sixteenth
century, especially in Italy, was as ruthless and brutal as in any time in
history. Machiavelli follows the Roman historians, Sallust and Tacitus, in
describing both the ruthlessness and the brutality with uncanny accuracy.
But Machiavelli is not a historian; he is a political thinker. He uses both
historical and contemporary examples to make his points about politics. Yet
he is not a political philosopher either. Despite his close study of their
works, in the end he has little use for Plato’s ideal state, or even the ideal
ruler of Cicero and Seneca, whom they thought must be wise, just, honest,
magnanimous, and driven by the desire to behave virtuously in all things.
Machiavelli is a political pragmatist who accepts that a state cannot exist
without the exercise of power and violence to maintain order and preserve
itself against threats both internal and external.
Machiavelli draws on Aristotle and Lucretius in describing the growth
of human society.46 Man was never in a pure and innocent state of nature. In
order to survive, humans gathered together in groups for mutual defense
and protection. But men are by nature selfish, untrustworthy, and violent.
Given the opportunity, they will prey upon one another. Men in a political
society therefore had to be protected from one another as well as from
outsiders. To govern these social groups, it was necessary to establish
customs, which became rules, which became laws. Antisocial behavior was
controlled only by the threat of collective violence.
 In some respects, Machiavelli held a very Christian vision of fallen
man, derived from Saint Augustine, who stressed that we are all born in a
state of original sin from which only God’s grace can rescue us.
Christianity, however, preaches a turning away from worldly affairs to focus
on the individual soul. The principal Christian virtues—faith, hope, and
charity—are designed to purify that soul and make it receptive to God.
Augustine thought any city of man, even one once as powerful as the
Roman Empire, was doomed to be torn apart by human strife and discord.47
He preached instead about a city of God formed by those who shun worldly
concerns and earthly pleasures and who dedicate themselves to the eternal
truths of God as revealed in the Christian religion.
Machiavelli dismisses the city of God as pious nonsense, just as he
dismissed Plato’s Republic and would have dismissed More’s Utopia had he
ever read it.
A great many men have imagined states and princedoms such as nobody ever saw or knew in
the real world, and there’s such a difference between the way we really live and the way we
ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn how to
accomplish his ruin, not his salvation. Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to
come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep
his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it,
as necessity requires.48

This is not to say, however, that Machiavelli disparages the Christian

virtues. He acknowledges them, along with the pagan virtues touted by
Cicero and Seneca, as “the way we ought to live.” But, with the examples
of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, and his successor, Julius II, fresh in his
mind, Machiavelli had a very different view of “the way we really live,”
even as professed Christians. Machiavelli was not interested in envisioning
an ideal society. He was interested in making the society in which we
actually live as secure and durable as possible.
Machiavelli was quite clear that if a man wants to embody Christian
virtues, he should stay out of politics. He can join a monastery or become a
desert anchorite. But he should not try to run a state or make himself
responsible for the political well-being of his fellows. “For a man who
desires to appear good in every respect must surely come to grief among so
many who are evil.”49 Not only will he accomplish his own ruin, but the
ruin of all those who depend on the state for their safety and security.
Political society is inherently problematic but absolutely critical to human
well-being and survival. Politics, like religion, has its own internal laws,
which are often incompatible with those of Christianity. Sometimes force
and violence are required. Sometimes morality must be transgressed. The
effective leader cannot shrink from taking such steps. Nor can the effective
thinker about politics ignore such realities. Machiavelli wants to deal with
“things as they are in real truth, rather than as they are imagined.”50 Naive
idealism is the worst flaw in a political thinker as well as in a prince.
Scholars frequently compare Machiavelli’s views to those of Nietzsche,
who also celebrated the great men of history and their willingness to
transgress moral bounds. Nietzsche coined the phrase “beyond good and
evil,” for the moral and aesthetic space in which his Übermensch
(“overman,” commonly mistranslated as “superman”) operated. And many
scholars apply that same phrase to Machiavelli’s exaltation of politics as
“an end in itself—i.e., as something beyond the realm of good and evil.”51
The comparison is misleading, however. Nietzsche had little concern
with politics, although he vigorously condemned anti-Semitism and all
forms of xenophobia (something the Nazis missed when they co-opted his
“superman” rhetoric for the Aryan cause). Nietzsche’s focus was on the
great artists and thinkers, like Machiavelli himself, who broke with tradition
to forge a new vision of human possibilities. Nietzsche was also highly
critical of Christianity, which he thought cultivated a slave morality, and
went so far as to call himself the Antichrist. In this regard, he is closer to
Machiavelli.
Federico Chabod, an Italian historian turned politician, contends:
Nothing is further from Machiavelli’s mind than to undermine common morality, replacing it
with a new ethic; instead, he says that in public affairs the only thing that counts is the
political criterion, by which he abides: let those who wish to remain faithful to the precepts of
morality concern themselves with other things, not with politics.52

This, too, is misleading if by “common morality” Chabod means the

Christian morality of Machiavelli’s day. In fact, Machiavelli thought that
Christian morality was pernicious because it made men soft and
otherworldly and, therefore, poor citizens and soldiers. Machiavelli’s point
is that Christianity is very much like the “slave morality” later criticized by
Nietzsche. Machiavelli wanted to promote a resurgence of civic virtue such
as was seen in the early days of the Roman Republic. That is the prime
focus of his later book, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius.
You cannot even be an effective citizen, he contended, much less an
effective statesman, and follow Christian morality, especially not in times of
crisis and turmoil. Machiavelli frankly preferred the pagan religion of
ancient Rome, which promoted obedience and a love of patria without
softening its adherents. Thus, Chabod is correct only if by “common
morality” he means the ancient pagan virtues touted by Cicero and Seneca,
which Machiavelli valued but was willing to sacrifice where necessary to
preserve the state.
At the same time, it is not correct that The Prince is a how-to book for
tyrants that teaches them the art of “fraud, deception, treachery, and felony,”
without interposing any moral point of view whatsoever.53 Machiavelli does
have a moral vision. He views the state as the essential superstructure
within which human life can unfold and flourish. And he wants to maintain
that superstructure even at the cost of violence and oppression because the
alternative—chaos and decay—is so much worse. Machiavelli is, one might
say, a pragmatic idealist. He clearly thinks a republic is preferable to a
principality. But, given the inherent flaws in human nature, a well-governed
principality is better than a decadent and poorly governed republic.54 And
best of all would be a strong, united Italy that could withstand the
depredations of foreign powers and restore a proud sense of patria to its
citizens. Machiavelli does not shrink from the fact (and he views it as a
fact) that in order to build and maintain such a state, a ruler “often has to do
things against his word, against charity, against humanity, against religion.”
As a matter of politics, that is the right way to act, despite its
incompatibility with virtue, as narrowly understood. Indeed, we have the
luxury of virtue only within the context of a secure state. There is no such
thing as a perfect, ideal, static society. Conflict is inevitable, but the energy
born of conflict can be directed in productive ways. This is the central point
of Machiavelli’s second great work, The Discourses on Livy.

THE DISCOURSES

Machiavelli follows Aristotle in viewing pure forms of government as

inherently unstable.55 Monarchy leads to tyranny because an absolute ruler
will be unconstrained by law. Leading citizens will eventually conspire
against the tyrant to preserve and protect their own positions. But
aristocracy will in turn devolve into oligarchy because “the few always act
in the interest of the few,” and the many will eventually move to “curb the
insolence of the nobles.”56 Yet democracy itself will descend to mob rule, as
everyone clamors for benefits, and the people are swayed by rhetoric and
false promises. A strong leader will eventually move to quell the chaos, and
the cycle will repeat itself.
Machiavelli follows the historian Polybius in believing that the Roman
Republic for a time transcended this cycle by incorporating elements of all
three forms of government.57 Rome was ruled first by a series of kings,
starting with Romulus, who were eventually replaced by two consuls
serving as chief executives. The Senate was created to serve the interests of
the aristocracy. And Tribunes of the People were finally added, as citizens
agitated for more say in their own affairs and as a buffer against the nobles.
The Roman Republic was not Machiavelli’s answer to Augustine’s City
of God. Indeed, Machiavelli accepts Augustine’s premise that no ideal state
is possible that stands apart from history and is impervious to the cycles of
growth and decay. But, with no perfect solution, we must look to where the
greatest possibilities and fewest drawbacks lie, “because an option that is
completely clear and completely without uncertainty cannot ever be
found.”58 The Roman Republic lasted for almost five hundred years before
it succumbed to the dictatorship of Augustus and his successors. The
wonder is not that it was eventually overthrown but that it thrived for so
long in the face of forces both internal and external that would have
destroyed it.
What Machiavelli depicts in The Discourses are the features of Roman
history and institutions that made such success possible. The Roman
Republic, however idealized by Livy and other historians, was an actual,
functioning state, subject to class tensions and external challenges, and yet
it persevered through well-structured institutions and sound leadership.
Machiavelli wants to understand that state, not as myth, but as it actually
was so that he can draw valuable lessons from it.
I shall boldly proclaim in an open way what I understand of ancient times and of our own, so
that the minds of the young men who will read these writings of mine can avoid the errors of
the present and be prepared to imitate the past whenever fortune provides them with the
proper occasion.59

Machiavelli studies the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire,

because he believes that “governments by peoples are better than
governments by princes.”60 That is true for at least four reasons. First,
freedom is inherently better than tyranny and will inspire the people to
become better citizens through their participation in government. Second,
no government can long function without the obedience or even consent of
the people. Third, in the right circumstances, “a people is more prudent,
more stable, and of better judgement than a prince.”61 Fourth, and perhaps
most important, a single ruler is likely to be a prisoner of his own character.
Republics can change and adapt more easily to shifting circumstances than
princes.
Machiavelli is engaged in an idealistic enterprise, the articulation of an
enduring republican form of government. But his basic premise is starkly
realistic: “It is necessary for anyone who organizes a republic and
establishes laws in it to take for granted that all men are evil and that they
will always act according to the wickedness of their nature whenever they
have the opportunity.”62 Human nature is inherently selfish; “men are driven
by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”63 Those passions, and
their consequent aggression, must be shaped and controlled in order to
make men and women into good citizens. Laws and the threat of
punishment are the principal way to do that. The success of a people, like
that of a prince, accordingly depends on bending one’s nature to and having
“respect for the laws under which one or the other lives.”64
Laws foster discipline, but the discipline must not be so rigid as to
eliminate a critical measure of freedom. A republic should fashion laws and
create institutions and a governing structure in which the many are invested
because it gives them opportunities to better their condition. Conflicts
among classes cannot be eliminated, but they can be channeled in
productive ways; “there is nothing that makes a republic so stable and
steady as organizing it in such a way that the variability of those humors
that agitate the republic has a means of release that is instituted by the
laws.”65 Nobles and plebeians are inherently at odds with one another. The
goal of the laws and institutions of a republic is to enable that tension to
find productive outlets, for “those who condemn the disturbances between
the nobles and the plebeians condemn those very things that were the
primary cause of Roman liberty, and . . . give more consideration to the
noises and cries arising from such disturbances than to the good effects they
produced.”66 The tribunes, who were born of that tension, were “the
guardians of Roman liberty.”67 In short, democracy is messy, and that very
messiness is critical to the preservation of liberty over the long term
because it provides a constructive release for energies that would otherwise
tear the republic apart.
Religion also plays an important role “in controlling the armies, in
giving courage to the plebeians, in keeping men good, and in shaming the
wicked.”68 Religion adds the sanction of divine law to that of public law.
Machiavelli calls religion “absolutely necessary for maintaining a civilized
society,”69 and concludes that “there can be no greater indication of the ruin
of a state than to see a disregard for its divine worship.”70 But make no
mistake. Machiavelli is talking not about Christianity. He is talking about
the pagan religion of ancient Rome with its many gods and public rituals.
For Machiavelli, religion should be judged by its ability to make men and
women into good citizens. It should inspire them to deeds of heroism and
civic virtue; it should shame cowardice and the placing of self before
country.
Christianity, however, does exactly the opposite:
Our religion has defined the supreme good as humility, abjection, and contempt of worldly
things; ancient religion located it in greatness of mind, strength of body, and in all the other
things apt to make men the strongest. And if our religion requires that you have inner
strength, it wants you to have the capacity to endure suffering more than to undertake brave
deeds. This way of living seems, therefore, to have made the world weak and to have given it
over to be plundered by wicked men, who are easily able to dominate it, since in order to go
to paradise most men think more about enduring their pains than about avenging them.71

Machiavelli is at his cynical best (or worst, if you prefer) in touting

ancient religion as the bulwark of the state. There is no evidence that he
believed in the pantheon of Roman gods. Instead, he believed in the
efficacy of belief itself, what Plato called a “noble lie” built into the
structure of the society, and essential to its stability.72
It is impossible to know what, if any, religion Machiavelli professed in
his heart. What is clear is that he thought religion should not be a refuge
from worldly struggle but a call to arms for civic virtue and the preservation
of the republic. Marx would dismiss religion as the “opium of the people,”
intended to make them docile. Nietzsche would dismiss Christianity as a
“slave morality,” an excuse for weakness, born of a desire to suppress
exceptional ability and to portray the exercise of strength as a species of
evil. Machiavelli combines both ideas in his critique. “Although it appears
that the world has become soft and heaven has been disarmed,” Machiavelli
concludes, “without a doubt this arises more from the cowardice of men
who have interpreted our religion according to an ideal of freedom from
earthly toil and not according to one of exceptional ability.”73
Along with the rule of law and a civic-minded religion, Machiavelli
believed that individuals of exceptional ability were critical to the formation
and success of the Roman Republic. Machiavelli deeply admired men such
as Lucius Junius Brutus, who helped to drive the Tarquins from Rome in
509 BCE and to establish the republic.74 Similar roles were played by
Lycurgus in Sparta and by Solon in Athens.75 These lawgivers helped to
organize and give coherence to the founding of a republic. They provided
leadership and guidance at critical junctures. And then they let the system
they established work as intended for the benefit of the people, not of the
founder and his heirs. As Machiavelli explains, “the salvation of a republic
or a kingdom is not . . . merely to have a prince who governs prudently
while he lives, but rather one who organizes the government in such a way
that after his death it can be maintained.”76
It is a fine line. A powerful leader is needed to establish a republic, or to
serve it in difficult times, but that very power may prove intoxicating and
corrupting. Some leaders cannot bear to cede control. Instead, they “turn to
tyranny, failing to realize how much fame, how much glory, how much
honor, security, tranquility, and peace of mind they are losing through this
choice, and how much infamy, disgrace, blame, danger, and anxiety they
incur.”77 Others, like Cincinnatus—who, after being appointed dictator to
deal with a specific threat, returned to his plow—provide a shining model
for all future leaders. The Roman Republic, Machiavelli constantly reminds
us, was blessed with an abundance of such leaders, until it wasn’t, and the
struggles for power of Marius and Sulla, of Caesar and Pompey, and,
finally, of Marc Antony and Octavian destroyed the republic.78
Machiavelli laments “how easily men may be corrupted.”79 Once Rome
obtained security against external enemies, it began an internal decline. The
institutions of government fell into disrespect, and those with ability exalted
power over patria. When men are not constrained by fear, their self-love
makes them discontented and “so restless that once the smallest door is
open to their ambition,” they will barter their current lot for an uncertain
future.80
To fight this inevitable decline, a republic must constantly renew its
institutions and return to its beginnings, striving to “retain as much of the
ancient ways as possible.”81 The same is true, Machiavelli notes, of religion.
The church became corrupt through too much secular power, and it took
remarkable individuals like Saint Francis and Saint Dominic to revitalize
the Christian religion.82 Secular governments “also need to renew
themselves and to bring their laws back to their beginnings.”83 Patriotic
fervor, like religious fervor, must be renewed in each generation. But, for
that to happen, strong and decisive leaders are required, even in a republic,
for the common people will not display virtù unless both compelled and
inspired to do so.
Machiavelli has thus come full circle. Whether called a prince or a
gonfaloniere, a strong leader is necessary. As with a principality, “the worst
defect weak republics can have is to be indecisive.”84 Machiavelli believed
all his life that the slaughter at Prato and the fall of the republic could have
been avoided by a more pragmatic and decisive leader.85 “Piero Soderini . . .
proceeded in all his affairs with humanity and patience.”86 That worked well
for a time. But, when bold action was required, “he did not know how to do
so, so that, along with his native city, he came to ruin.”87
In defense of the state, no half measures are permitted. A leader must do
whatever is necessary. A good man will prefer to live as a private citizen
rather than to obtain or maintain power through evil means, even where his
goal might be a good one. But rarely will an evil man wish to govern well.88
What is needed is that rarest of things, a good leader willing to be
“honorably bad” when the occasion requires.89 Machiavelli gives us the
following example of failure: Pope Julius II sought to oust Giovampagolo
Baglioni, the ruler of Perugia. His purpose was known to all, but Julius,
who always acted “with impetuosity and fury,”90 came in advance of his
own army and entered the city with only a small bodyguard. He was at the
mercy of Giovampagolo and could have been killed with impunity. Yet
Giovampagolo meekly allowed himself to be led away, when he could
instead have “shown these priests how little there is to value in those who
live and rule as they do, and he would have performed a deed the greatness
of which would have surpassed all the infamy and all the danger that could
possibly have come from it.”91
In the end, Machiavelli’s advice in The Discourses differs little from
that of The Prince. The context is different, but the principles of leadership
are the same. Fraud, deception, and even murder are necessary and
acceptable means of preserving the state. Romulus killed his own brother,
but “while the act accuses him, the result excuses him, and when the result
is good, like that of Romulus [who founded the Roman state], it will always
excuse him, because one should reproach a man who is violent in order to
ruin things, not one who is so in order to set them aright.”92 In other words,
the right ends successfully pursued may justify otherwise wrongful acts.
Yet everything depends on the circumstances. There is no fixed rule to
govern conduct. Sometimes more can be accomplished “by a single humane
act full of charity than an act which is ferocious and violent.”93 Other times,
as in putting down a conspiracy, cruelty is necessary. When rulers shrink
from such violence and “someone remains alive because of their lack of
prudence or negligence, then they do not deserve to be excused.”94
Machiavelli’s most consistent counsel, however, remained the same
throughout his life: “Above all one must avoid a middle course of action.”95
Act boldly and seize fortune by the throat, for “when she wants to
accomplish great deeds, she selects a man with such spirit and such
exceptional ability that he recognizes those occasions that she offers him.”96
Machiavelli was a man with such spirit and such exceptional ability.
It is not surprising that the church placed all of Machiavelli’s works on
the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) in 1557.
Machiavelli himself noted that all the great leaders of the past, including
those he most admired, would be in the Christian hell. So much the worse
for Christianity, he thought. Machiavelli made it clear that he would rather
go to hell with the ancient statesmen to talk about politics than to the
Christian heaven with the blessed and saintly.97
 Chapter 4
THOMAS MORE: THE KING’S
GOOD SERVANT BUT GOD’S
FIRST

T homas More famously declared himself “the King’s good servant but
God’s first.”1 Machiavelli would have scoffed at the juxtaposition. Any
man who tries to be good all the time, he wrote, “must surely come to grief
among so many who are evil.”2 More did indeed come to grief. He spoke
his words on Tower Hill, on July 6, 1535, as he prepared to place his head
on the chopping block for refusing to recognize Henry VIII’s marriage to
Anne Boleyn and his new title as supreme head of the Church of England.
Perhaps More should have followed Machiavelli’s advice: if you want
to serve God, join a monastery and stay as far from court life as possible.
But, although he seriously considered entering a Carthusian monastery or
leading the life of a humanist scholar like his friend Desiderius Erasmus, in
the end More’s sense of duty and filial obligation led him into public life.
He was determined, in Augustine’s words, to be of “service to the earthly
city” as well as to the city of God.3
It is ironic, therefore, that More is considered by many a woolly-headed
dreamer because his most famous work, Utopia, depicts a socialist society
in which money is abolished and all property is held in common. In fact,
More was highly pragmatic and skeptical of radical reforms, both in his life
and in his writing. He had no illusions about the earthly city, yet he was
willing to devote himself to its service. Undoubtedly, More took pride in his
steadily rising stature. Erasmus says otherwise, but pretending to view
political advancement as a burden rather than a much-sought-after reward
has long been a commonplace. Regardless, More’s ambition was leavened
with principle, which is anything but commonplace.
In 2000, More was proclaimed the patron saint of statesmen and
politicians by Pope John Paul II. It was a fitting choice of titles for one who
believed that, despite the fallen state of man, improvements could be made
in society and that every citizen had an obligation to act as a force for good.
The city of God would never be realized on earth, but the earthly city could
still be improved within the limits of human nature. As an advisor to
princes, he wrote in Utopia, “what you cannot turn to good, you may at
least make as little bad as possible.”4 Again, Machiavelli would have
scoffed, as does Raphael Hythloday, More’s principal interlocutor in
Utopia. And More did fail as a counselor. In an act of incredible
willfulness, Henry took England out of the Catholic Church and established
himself as head of the new Church of England, all to enable him to remarry
and, he hoped, father a male heir. More, realizing he could not prevent those
actions or even make them “as little bad as possible,” took a stand that cost
him his life. Yet More himself was hardly a failure. He was England’s
greatest humanist; he reached the pinnacle of earthly power as lord
chancellor; and he died a Catholic martyr and saint. For More, all three
roles were of a piece. He was indeed a man for all seasons.

LIFE

Thomas More was born in London on February 7, 1478.5 He came from a

family that was, as he himself put it, non celebri sed honesta (not
distinguished but respectable).6 His paternal and maternal grandfathers
were, respectively, a baker and a tallow chandler (a maker of candles out of
the hard fat of cattle and sheep). They were substantial merchants and
members of their respective guilds, part of a burgeoning middle class
accumulating wealth, property, and prestige.
Thomas’s father, John More, made the transition from the merchant
class into law. It was not a large jump, and he mostly represented guilds and
commercial enterprises as a private lawyer. But John More rose steadily, if
slowly, within the bar and eventually became a judge, first of the Court of
Common Pleas at the age of sixty-six and then of the King’s Bench at
seventy-two. In public, he was formidable and severe but well respected
among his peers. His son, who revered him, found him “an affable man,
charming, irreproachable, gentle, sympathetic, honest, and upright.”7 Even
after Thomas became lord chancellor of England, upon entering
Westminster Hall on the way to his place in the Chancery, he would stop at
the King’s Bench and there kneel to ask his father’s blessing.8
Thomas was the second of six children and manifested his talents at a
young age. He attended St. Anthony’s School, a short walk from the family
home. Lessons began at six in the morning, and More learned to read, write,
and converse in Latin as readily as in English.
At the age of twelve, More became a page to John Morton, the
archbishop of Canterbury and lord chancellor of England. Morton was
second only to the king in power and influence. His other pages were sons
of the nobility. More’s selection was a high honor, undoubtedly reflecting
the growing influence and connections of his father. More continued his
education in the archbishop’s house with the other pages, and they
performed light household duties such as waiting at table.
At the age of fourteen, More went to Oxford on a scholarship provided
by Archbishop Morton. He remained for two years at Canterbury College, a
predecessor to Christ Church. The medieval trivium of grammar, rhetoric,
and logic was still required, along with attendance at daily mass, a habit
More would retain for his entire life. The students were bound to speak with
one another and with their professors in Latin. But More also studied
history and moral philosophy and even began to learn Greek. It was ideal
training for a lawyer as well as a humanist, and More aspired to be both.
More left Oxford in 1494, before receiving a degree, to begin his legal
studies in London at New Inn, one of several associations responsible for
legal education. He was then sixteen. After two years, he was accepted at
the more prestigious Lincoln’s Inn, where his father was governor. Despite
this well-paved career path in law, More was pulled in two other directions.
While at Lincoln’s Inn, he forged a multiyear connection with a Carthusian
charterhouse, though whether he lived there or was simply in daily
attendance is unclear. More was deeply, if not morbidly, religious. From a
young age to the time of his death, he wore a hair shirt that chafed and
irritated his skin, and he engaged in other forms of self-mortification and
penance. His religious writings—which include personal meditations,
doctrinal explications, and attacks on heresy—number more than a million
words. He seriously contemplated becoming a monk.
 Yet More also was drawn to the “new learning” of Erasmus and other
like-minded thinkers tracing back to Petrarch. Like them, More had no
patience for medieval scholastic philosophy, which he found arid and
artificial. He rejoiced in the rediscovery of a broader range of Greek
classics, particularly the works of Plato and the second-century satirist
Lucian of Samosata, along with the more standard Latin fare of Cicero,
Seneca, and the Roman historians. More joined a circle of humanist
scholars and continued his study of Greek in their company. He formed a
close friendship with Erasmus, who first visited England in 1499.
Erasmus wrote a detailed description of the appearance and character of
More, which is worth reading in full.9 In an earlier letter, Erasmus had
already remarked on the quality of More’s mind:
I do not think, unless the vehemence of my love leads me astray, that Nature ever formed a
mind more present, ready, sharpsighted and subtle, or in a word more absolutely furnished
with every kind of faculty than his. Add to this a power of expression equal to his intellect, a
singular cheerfulness of character and an abundance of wit, but only of the candid sort; and
you miss nothing that should be found in a perfect advocate.10

On Erasmus’s initial trip to London, More took him on a casual visit to

meet the royal children, including the eight-year-old Prince Henry, the
future King Henry VIII. Together, More and Erasmus translated and
published a selection of the works of Lucian. Erasmus wrote Praise of Folly
at More’s house outside London, dedicated the work to him, and even titled
it with a pun on More’s Latin name: Morus (fool). More, in turn, sent the
manuscript of his Utopia to Erasmus, who edited the work, gave it a new,
now immortal, title,11 and saw it through the press. It was More who urged
Erasmus to attack Luther on the subject of grace and free will, while More
was penning his own polemics against the Protestant heresy. And, when he
resigned his position as lord chancellor in 1533, it was Erasmus to whom
More wrote explaining his reasons. Erasmus called More “the friend I love
best” and explained that “no one is more open-hearted in making friends or
more tenacious in keeping them.”12 The lives of the two greatest figures of
the Northern Renaissance were thus deeply, inextricably intertwined.
More did not follow a career as a humanist man of letters as others in
his circle did. His father did not support, and may have actively opposed,
Thomas’s study of bonae litterae. Yet More still wrote four important
humanistic works. In addition to Utopia and the translation of Lucian that
he did with Erasmus, More translated from Latin into English a biography
of the Neoplatonist and Christian spiritualist Pico della Mirandola. He also
wrote, in both English and Latin versions, The History of King Richard the
Third, which heavily influenced Shakespeare’s own drama of the
hunchbacked tyrant some seventy-five years later. More’s Richard, like
Shakespeare’s, is ruthless, manipulative, and murderous. When his older
brother Edward dies, Richard quickly usurps the throne, imprisons
Edward’s two young sons in the Tower of London, and eventually orders
their deaths. Yet, even so, Richard is a rounded, complex character, rather
than a cardboard villain. More retains the capacity to be shocked by evil,
even as he dissects its human origins. The many imagined but realistic
speeches in the book provided ideal fodder for Shakespeare. Though
seldom read today, More’s History was a key work of the English
Renaissance.
More also defended the humanist agenda and his friend Erasmus in an
important series of letters in 1515, the year he wrote Utopia. Unfortunately,
consumed by religious and political controversies, More produced nothing
in the humanist vein after 1520. In the end, More attained greater fame as a
Christian martyr than as a secular man of letters. Yet More never did
become a monk. He continued his association with the charterhouse for four
years. He also gave a series of lectures in 1501 on Saint Augustine’s City of
God at St. Lawrence Jewry. And throughout his life, he sometimes thought
wistfully of the small cell and ample time for prayer and contemplation he
had forsaken. Erasmus said that More’s sexual drive was simply too strong
for a celibate life. Undoubtedly, Erasmus also told More of his own bitter
experience confined to a monastery. In any event, John More expected his
son to be a lawyer, and Thomas, ever dutiful, obliged.
For More, however, becoming a lawyer was not solely an act of filial
piety. He had a passion for the law and relished his participation in public
life. He viewed the common law of England, which had evolved over time
as a result of the decisions of generations of judges, as the embodiment of
collective human wisdom and a faint reflection of the mind of God.13 Civil
law aspired to natural law. Individual practitioners and judges might make
mistakes, but “the law” was the perfection to which all should aspire. It is a
vision that inspired lawyers and judges for centuries, until the legal realist
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. dismissed it with the words “the common law is
not a brooding omnipresence.”14 Yet for More it was precisely that:
something dimly perceived but anxiously sought. More was a skilled
advocate and orator. He relished the public display and the trappings of the
law, which he considered vitally important to the stability of the state. As
one modern biographer puts it, More “embodied the old order of hierarchy
and authority at the very moment when it began to collapse all around
him.”15
More moved out of his father’s home after the death of his mother in
1499 and his father’s remarriage that same year. That was the same year
Erasmus first visited London and the two began their long friendship. In
1505, when he was twenty-six, More married Jane Colt, the daughter of a
wealthy, well-connected landowner. She was sixteen, and the couple had
four children in as many years (three girls and a boy). More provided each
of them a classical education, but Margaret, the oldest, was his clear
favorite. She was widely acknowledged as brilliant and “undoubtedly the
most learned woman of her day, at least in England.”16
Jane died in 1511, possibly in childbirth, a common occurrence in that
era. More married again a month later, seeking a mother for his children, a
wife for his bed, and order for his household. His new wife, Alice
Middleton, was a well-off widow. She was forty-one and therefore eight
years older than her new husband. She was also very different in personality
from the reserved and malleable young Jane. Dame Alice, as she was
commonly called, was outspoken and at times volatile. But they seem to
have been deeply attached to each other. As Erasmus wryly explained, they
“lived on as close and affectionate terms as if she had been a girl of the
most winning appearance.”17 She was also a devoted stepmother, and their
extended household was lively and active, filled with an assortment of
cousins and hangers-on as well as a menagerie of unusual pets, including a
monkey, a fox, a weasel, and a ferret. Margaret married More’s future
biographer, William Roper, in 1521, and they both continued to live in the
More household for another sixteen years.
Henry VIII had ascended the throne in April 1509, when he was but
seventeen. England generally, and More in particular, had great hopes for
the new king, who valued humanist learning and appeared to be a dutiful
defender of the Catholic Church. More departed from his father’s strictly
legal path of advancement and joined the king’s service. According to
Erasmus, “no man was ever more consumed with ambition to enter a court
than he was to avoid it.”18 But that seems unlikely. More’s Carthusian belief
in the emptiness of worldly affairs did not hinder his playing an active role
in them. He was eager to be of service. More filled progressively more
important roles in the Star Chamber and the Privy Council, as diplomat,
royal secretary and confidante, as a knight of the realm, Speaker of
Parliament, and, finally, lord chancellor of England.
More’s hopes in Henry VIII were disappointed, however, in two main
respects. First, like many English kings, Henry coveted the throne of
France. He joined Pope Julius II’s Holy League against France, discussed in
the previous chapter, which led to the fall of the Florentine Republic, the
renewed ascendancy of the Medicis, and the enforced leisure of
Machiavelli. But Henry wanted to conquer France itself and imitate Henry
V’s military glory at Agincourt. He fell far short of his ambitions,
succeeding only in depleting the treasury and imposing heavy taxes on the
nobility. More was instrumental in calming the waters, and he negotiated
compromises with the English nobility as well as a series of treaties with
the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, and the king of France.
The second source of dashed hopes proved far more consequential. This
was the king’s “great matter”19—his desire to set aside his marriage to
Catherine of Aragon and to marry Anne Boleyn, which led Henry to break
with the Catholic Church and to declare himself head of a separate Church
of England.

UTOPIA

We tend to approach Thomas More’s Utopia from the wrong end of history.
We have seen the dark side of socialist and communist regimes in the
twentieth century, and we project that failure onto More’s great work, as if
he were preaching a workers’ paradise that we know is more likely to
become a totalitarian nightmare. The very word utopia has in our language
come to mean both a dreamy impossibility and a cautionary tale. Its use is
laden with satire. Utopia and dystopia have become virtual synonyms.
But More’s humanist exploration of the possibilities of social reform
and the arguments for personal engagement in politics cannot be so smugly
dismissed. More merges the fanciful and the serious in a nuanced
contribution to a still-ongoing debate. Machiavelli’s own contribution to
that debate unfortunately was unknown to More, and vice versa. But a
careful, juxtaposed reading of their respective works is a useful antidote to
extreme interpretations; Machiavelli is not as cynically brutal nor More as
naively idealistic as either is generally portrayed.
In Utopia, More adopts the dialogue form, both as a tribute to Plato and
Cicero, his principal models, and as a means of dramatically exploring the
very different traditions they represent. Plato’s Republic sketches an ideal
state of the philosopher’s imagining. His goal is to change human nature
through a radical reordering of society. Cicero’s Republic, on the other
hand, presents a grounded if idealized portrait of the Roman state as it
actually existed.20 Cicero follows the Aristotelean tradition of political
thought based not on theoretical preconditions but on a close consideration
of what is possible in light of human nature and existing circumstances.21
The two speakers in More’s dialogue represent these two traditions.
Raphael Hythloday (a name that, in its Latin form, means “expert in
nonsense”) is a seasoned traveler and uncompromising radical, who
describes what he considers to be the perfect commonwealth but disdains
all practical politics. More, the other speaker (not, of course, to be fully
identified with More the author), is both pragmatic and skeptical of his
impassioned guest but willing to engage in support of sensible reforms.
More wrote the book in reverse order. Part 2 is Hythloday’s famous
description of the island nation of Utopia (a pun from the Greek ou-topos,
meaning “no place,” and eu-topos, meaning “good place”). More composed
this part first and then realized, correctly, that it was too free-floating and
fantastical as a stand-alone dialogue. He then added part 1, which deals
with the case for reforms in the England of his day. The interplay between
the two parts, and the development of the characters in each, gives depth to
the whole. The gap between the world of today and the “no place” of
Hythloday’s Utopia is so great as to raise fundamental questions. Are there
incremental reforms that would improve the human condition short of a
radical remaking of society? If so, is engagement in politics a worthwhile
endeavor for a humanist thinker? Is Utopia the ideal toward which our
reforms should be directed? Is Utopia even desirable in light of human
nature? Part 1 deals with the first two questions; part 2 with the last two.
More and Hythloday meet largely by chance in Belgium while More is
there on a diplomatic mission. More is introduced by his friend and future
publisher, Peter Giles. “The stranger had a sunburned face, a long beard,
and a cloak hanging loosely from his shoulders,” More reports; “from his
appearance and dress, I took him to be a ship’s captain.”22 And, indeed,
Giles reports that Hythloday was a regular companion of the legendary
explorer Amerigo Vespucci. C. S. Lewis aptly compares Hythloday to the
“grey-beard loon” of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” who will
fix the wedding guest with his “glittering eye” while he tells a story of lost
innocence and bitter regret.23 Hythloday has something of the charismatic,
intransigent passion of an Old Testament prophet.
Giles promises More that Hythloday will tell him of unknown lands and
peoples and their varied customs. But, in fact, they begin by discussing
contemporary England, where Hythloday had spent several months in the
house of More’s former patron, Cardinal Morton. Giles suggests that
Hythloday, with all his knowledge and experience, would be an ideal
courtier, able both to entertain and advise a prince. Hythloday scoffs at the
suggestion, insisting that he is temperamentally unsuited to such a position.
He equates service and servitude. “As it is now,” he insists, “I live as I
please.”24 Moreover, he notes, any advice he offered would be quickly
rejected.
As an example, Hythloday cites a discussion one evening at the
cardinal’s table, where one of the guests began praising the practice of
hanging thieves. Hythloday strongly objects, noting that the penalty is too
harsh and yet ineffective as a deterrent, since a starving man will not refrain
from robbery regardless of the penalty. Moreover, if a thief is punished the
same as a murderer, then “the thief will be encouraged to kill the victim
whom otherwise he would only have robbed.”25 No possession or worldly
fortune, he contends, can equal the value of a human life. Restitution and
hard labor are ample penalties for a mere property crime. More important,
society should focus on enabling each man to earn a proper living rather
than pressing him to “the awful necessity of stealing and then dying for
it.”26 By alleviating the causes of poverty, Hythloday insists, we will
alleviate the causes of crime. This thought leads Hythloday into an attack
on “enclosure,” a much debated practice of the day in which once-common
land dedicated to agriculture is fenced off to raise sheep and other livestock.
Enclosure laws allow the rich to get richer—selling wool in foreign markets
and fattening cows and pigs to sell at inflated prices—while the poor are
forced off the land that once gave them a livelihood, however meager. If
they steal to survive, they are hanged. If they wander the countryside, they
are jailed as vagrants. The greed of the few causes the misery of the many.
“Let agriculture be restored,” Hythloday urges, “so there will be useful
work for the whole crowd of those now idle.”27
Hythloday notes that his diatribe against enclosure, poverty, and harsh
punishments was met with hostility by the cardinal’s other guests. “From
this episode,” he concludes, “you can see how little courtiers would value
me or my advice.”28 Yet, in fact, even from Hythloday’s own account, it is
clear that the cardinal takes his views seriously, asks thoughtful and probing
questions, and insists on hearing out Hythloday despite the outcry of others.
More, accordingly, presses him on the issue of engagement, contending that
it is the chief duty of a good man to provide sound advice to those in power.
“If I proposed wise laws to some king, and tried to root out of his soul
the seeds of evil and corruption,” Hythloday responds, “don’t you suppose I
would be either banished forthwith, or treated with scorn?”29 His advice
would run directly counter to what the courtiers tell the king and what the
king wants to hear. They urge the king to wage foreign wars funded with
ruinous taxation. They urge him to manipulate the value of currency
depending on whether he is paying debts or collecting revenues. They urge
him to store up gold and keep his people in poverty and dependence.
Hythloday would advise the opposite of all these things. A king should let
other kingdoms alone and cultivate his own for the good of his people, not
himself. No king would listen to such advice, Hythloday insists: “There is
no place for philosophy in the councils of kings.”30
More responds that philosophy does have a place when it “adapts itself
to the drama in hand, and acts its part neatly and appropriately.”31 A wise
counselor can influence policy indirectly, through tact and skill, and “what
you cannot turn to good, you may at least make as little bad as possible.”32
Just because you cannot accomplish all you would like, More insists,
doesn’t mean you should forgo the chance to make incremental
improvements. Otherwise, idealism negates responsibility; the best becomes
the enemy of the good. But Hythloday is intransigent. In a council you will
lose your soul. You must go along with even the worst decisions and most
vicious policies or forfeit your position. You will either become as evil as
they are or “be made a screen for the knavery and folly of others.”33 The
wise man should steer clear of politics altogether, preserving both his
freedom and his philosophical purity.
The debate on the compromises of civic engagement is relevant to our
own time as well as in the context of More’s life. Within a year of finishing
the book, More decided to enter the service of King Henry VIII, where he
began his steady rise to the position of lord chancellor and his steady path
to Tower Hill. More clearly understood how difficult it might be to keep
both his soul and his head. But he was determined to enter the king’s
service and to make what he could not turn to good as little bad as possible.
Yet More sympathized not only with Hythloday’s reluctance to serve as
a courtier but also with the particular reforms and the advice he would give
to the king. Indeed, by putting such advice in the mouth of Hythloday (the
“expert in nonsense”), More allowed himself more freedom than he might
otherwise be permitted to criticize contemporary policies dear to his king
and future master.
Conversely, although Hythloday criticizes certain laws and customs, he
is ultimately no more interested in progressive reforms than he is in
servitude to the crown. As long as private property exists, Hythloday
contends, even the most enlightened new laws are just “poultices” applied
to a body beyond cure.34 Wherever money is the measure of all things,
rapacity, wickedness, and oppression will inevitably follow. The few will
enjoy wealth, status, and power, while the many struggle simply to survive.
Society will only be restored to good health when, as Plato urged, men live
on terms of equality and all property is held in common.
More, the pragmatist, scoffs at this proposal. People cannot possibly
live well, he contends, where all things are in common. Men will lose the
impetus to work, relying on others to produce. And if the productive few
“cannot legally protect what they have gained, what can follow but
continual bloodshed and turmoil,” especially if there is no respect for
authority or for law?35 Sounding like an early Adam Smith, More expanded
on these views while in prison almost twenty years after finishing Utopia:
People cannot . . . live here in this world unless some individuals provide for many others a
means of making a living. Not everyone can have a ship of his own; nor can everyone be a
merchant without a stock. Not everyone can have his own plough. But such things, as you
well know, must be had by somebody. . . . A man with only two ducats to his name would
most likely be better off if he gave them both away and left himself not a penny, if he lost
absolutely everything he had, than if the rich man who puts him to work every week were to
lose half of his money; for then the poor man would probably be out of work. The substance
of the rich is, indeed, the wellspring of the livelihood of the poor.36

Yet, Hythloday insists, there is a place where everything is shared

equally and yet everyone lives in plenty and in happiness. He has been
there; he has seen it work.
THE ISLAND NATION

Part 2 of Utopia contains no abstract discussion or philosophical debate. It

is a travelogue that purports to describe the people and customs of an actual
island nation, which just happens to be “no place.” As such, it owes as
much to Lucian’s True History—his deadpan trip to the Isle of the Blessed
in which he promises the reader “many notorious lies delivered
persuasively and in the way of truth,”37—as to anything in Plato’s Republic
or Augustine’s City of God. Yet the inspiration is both Platonic and
Christian: a community of men and women bound together by shared
beliefs, shared values, and shared goods. And the description of this
community is highly concrete; we get a vivid sense of the inhabitants’ daily
lives. The island nation of Utopia thus raises the two questions mentioned
earlier, questions we must confront on a personal and emotional as well as
an intellectual level: Could it actually work? Would we even want to live
there?
Utopia is about the size of England, separated from the continent (we
are not told which continent) by a narrow channel. It has fifty-four cities
with plenty of countryside around each. The cities are identical to one
another, accounting only for differences in geography. Each shares the same
customs, institutions, and laws. The streets are wide and clean, the houses
spacious and built on an identical plan, with large gardens behind them.
There are neither slums nor mansions, neither abject poverty nor
ostentatious wealth. Indeed, there is no money whatsoever. The houses are
randomly assigned to extended families, and every ten years they are
reassigned so that no one develops a sense of ownership. No rent is paid,
and while meals can be taken at home, everyone but the sick and infirm
dine in a common mess where the food is plentiful and fresh. Everyone also
wears the same style of clothing, except for differences between sexes and
to mark those who are married and unmarried. Each household makes its
own clothes. Other goods are held in a common storeroom from which the
head of each household may draw according to its needs without payment
or accounting.
If any household group becomes too large, some of its members are
transferred to another which has grown too small. If one city has too many
people, individuals will be moved to make up shortfalls in other cities.
When the population of the entire island grows too large, citizens chosen
from every city are sent to the mainland to establish a colony. Any natives
must join the colony and live as Utopians, or they will be driven out.
The food comes from surrounding farms, where rotating groups spend
two-year stints working the land before returning to their cities. That way,
no one has to do such hard work for long, though those who love farm life
are allowed to stay longer. The Utopians use slaves for all the dirtiest and
heaviest work. The slaves are either prisoners of war or former citizens
guilty of a heinous offense. Slaves also do any butchering or hunting
necessary so that the citizens do not lose their sense of compassion, a point
whose irony is apparently lost on Hythloday.
In the cities, every man and woman must learn a trade, with the heavier
tasks assigned to men. Boys usually learn their father’s trade, but if they
prefer another they can be transferred to and adopted by another family
practicing that trade. Only six hours a day, however, are devoted to work.
Given that no one lives off the work of others and that luxury goods are
forbidden, six hours per day is more than enough to supply what the
community needs. The rest of the day, aside from eating and sleeping, is
generally given to learning, including daily public lectures. Education is
highly valued among Utopians, and they consider a life of the mind to be
true happiness. Those “who from childhood have given evidence of
excellent character, unusual intelligence, and devotion to learning” may
become scholars, exempted from manual labor.38 Those not interested in
learning may spend additional time at their trades. Idleness and dissipation
are not tolerated.
The governance structure is simple and begins with a salutary principle:
“Any man who campaigns for a public office is disqualified for all of
them.”39 Each household is subject to its oldest member unless his mind has
begun to fail, in which case the second oldest takes his place. Every year,
each group of thirty households chooses an official called a syphogrant. The
chief job of the syphogrants is to ensure that none are idle and that everyone
works hard at his trade. The syphogrants also elect the governor, who
generally holds office for life. For every ten syphogrants there is a tranibor,
who participates in a council that meets with the governor to advise on
policy. The tranibors also handle any disputes between private parties,
which are rare and quickly resolved. The laws in Utopia are simple and
few; they need no lawyers to twist them under the guise of interpretation.
 The Utopians trade their surplus to foreign countries and receive gold
and other precious metals and gems in return. Those items serve no useful
purpose within Utopia. Indeed, they show their contempt by using them as
trinkets for children or to forge chains and fetters for slaves. But they are
useful in the conduct of foreign relations. The Utopians detest war and
engage in it only “to protect their own land, to protect their friends from an
invading army, or to liberate an oppressed people from tyranny and
servitude.”40 Once compelled to wage war, however, they seek to spare their
own soldiers as much as possible. Indeed, only with reluctance will they kill
even enemy soldiers, convinced that they go to war, not on their own
accord, but at the whim of their prince. Accordingly, the Utopians will seek
to assassinate any prince who causes an unjust war and, if that fails, will use
their gold and silver to sow division and bribe other factions to seize the
crown. Failing that, they will hire mercenaries before risking their own
citizens. They do not value martial glory.
The Utopians tolerate a variety of religions, considering it “arrogant
folly for anyone to enforce conformity with his own beliefs on everyone
else by means of threats or violence,”41 another deeply ironic remark
considering More’s later career. Their core religious beliefs are pre-
Christian, drawn from the pagan philosophy of Plato, Epicurus, and the
Stoics. They believe, first, that the universe is ruled by divine providence
rather than by chance and, second, that the soul of each man, woman, and
child is immortal and will live on after death in a realm where the virtuous
are rewarded and the evil are punished. Anyone who rejects those two core
principles may do so privately, but must not preach to or corrupt others on
pain of death.
There are few priests, but they include women as well as men; celibacy
is not required though often practiced. The priests teach the young and
preside over divine worship. But churches and services are nonsectarian,
with no images of the divine, no tendentious doctrines beyond the two core
principles noted above, and no animal sacrifice, which they consider
barbaric. “They think that the contemplation of nature, and the sense of
reverence arising from it, are acts of worship to God.”42 They value natural
beauty and the pleasures of the senses, especially music, but find their
greatest happiness in a state of bodily and mental health and harmony. They
believe it is best to “lead a life as free of anxiety and as full of joy as
possible, and to help all one’s fellow men toward that end.”43 Euthanasia is
encouraged and facilitated for those with an incurable and painful disease.
But suicides, who throw away the great gift of life, are themselves thrown
into a bog to lie unburied and disgraced.
The Utopians firmly reject austerities of the sort practiced by More and
various European religious orders. Yet Hythloday found them highly
receptive to Christianity, particularly since Christ advocated a communal
form of life for his disciples similar to their own. The Utopian way of life,
Hythloday stresses, is closer to the ideals of Christianity than any existing
European society. There are no pubs or brothels. The farms produce wine
and cider but not beer. Gambling is forbidden, as is any adornment of the
person. Citizens may travel only on a pass from the governor and must
work in whatever city they visit for as long as they are there. Anyone guilty
of premarital sex is punished severely and is forbidden from ever marrying
unless eventually pardoned by the governor. Adultery is punished by
slavery. The guilty party, upon petition by his or her spouse, may eventually
be restored to freedom, but a second offense is punishable by death. Nor
would it be easy to conceal such crimes. There are no locks on the doors to
houses. In fact, the doors themselves swing freely, “letting anyone enter
who wants to—so there is nothing private anywhere.”44 There are also no
spots for secret meetings. Because the Utopians “live in the full view of all,
they are bound to be either working at their usual trades or enjoying their
leisure in a respectable way.”45
Hythloday concludes by urging every society to imitate the Utopians.
As long as money and private property exist, he says, a commonwealth will
devolve into a “conspiracy of the rich” to advance its own interests on the
backs of common workers.46 Wealth is a burden both for those who possess
it and fear its loss, and for those who lack it and resent its absence. “If
money disappeared, so would fear, anxiety, worry, toil, and sleepless
nights.”47 Only pride—which measures its advantage by what others lack—
prevents us realizing this ideal.
It is a powerful and impassioned vision. But More is far from
convinced. Though he does not express his thoughts to Hythloday, deferring
discussion to another day, he tells the reader that he considered “not a few”
of the particular Utopian customs and laws to be “quite absurd.”48 At the
same time, he admits (without specifying) that “there are very many things
in the Utopian commonwealth that in our own societies I would wish rather
than expect to see.”49 This is an odd juxtaposition of comments, since most
of the Utopians’ practices seem to flow naturally if not inevitably from their
communal living and moneyless economy. Only this basic premise ensures
the radical transformation in human nature—the elimination of pride—that
is essential to the Utopian way of life.
Yet it is precisely the sharing of everything in common that forms
More’s chief objection, which he articulates in a single sentence of
considerable subtlety and irony: “This one thing alone takes away all the
nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty which (in the popular view)
are the true ornaments and glory of any commonwealth.”50 In the popular
view, displays of great wealth and power—by the state and by individuals
—provide a source of both pride and longing that give much of the meaning
to peoples’ lives. Utopian existence seems drab and colorless by contrast.
More is also making a deeper, if related, point. Utopia is necessarily a static
society in which departures from the norm cannot be tolerated. Much is
gained by the elimination of poverty and by living on terms of equality. But
a repression of the personal is a necessary concomitant. What is lost is the
sense of a private life separate and apart from the commonwealth. What is
lost is diversity and, with that, individual creativity and achievement.
Those, too, are “ornaments and glory” of human life. Those, too, are
outgrowths of human pride, and even if we could eliminate that pride we
would, in so doing, impoverish our lives.
Returning to the two questions with which we started this section:
Could it actually work? Would we want to live there? The answers, I think,
for More (the speaker in the dialogue) are “no” and “not so sure.” A city of
God on earth is simply not possible in our fallen condition. We cannot
eliminate the original sin of human pride. And, even if we could, the cost
might be too great.
There is no closure at the end of Utopia. The speakers remain
unreconciled.51 Utopia is a Rorschach test for all its readers. When we look
into it, do we see a socialist paradise or a totalitarian nightmare? Or perhaps
we feel some combination of longing to belong and repulsion at conformity
that are part of the human condition. The fact that we can still debate such
issues five hundred years later is a tribute to the work’s enduring interest.

THE HERETIC HUNTER

In 1517, Erasmus sent More a copy of the Ninety-Five Theses, or articles,
that Martin Luther had supposedly nailed to the cathedral door in
Wittenberg. Both Erasmus and More favored church reform, especially in
ending the sale of indulgences, so they initially were inclined to view
Luther’s complaints in a positive light. But that changed as Luther grew
increasingly hostile to the established church and as the number of his
adherents swelled. More changed as well. The Reformation radicalized him.
He dropped his satiric, reformist, humanist stance and adopted a new role as
a fierce opponent of heresy.
Lutheran tracts and other heretical works flooded into England, brought
there by German merchants. More was given a special dispensation from
the archbishop of Canterbury to possess these forbidden books so that he
could read and refute them. He helped Henry VIII prepare a Defense of the
Seven Sacraments in 1521, a book that would win Henry the papal title—
deeply ironic in light of future events—of “Defender of the Faith.” More
himself wrote a series of lengthy polemics, including Responsio ad
Lutherum (1523) and A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529). Portions of
these works make for painful reading, as More’s rhetoric spins out of
control, with scatological and other scurrilous epithets hurled at Luther and
the “new men” who want to bring down the authority of the church.
One of the books More considered most dangerous was William
Tyndale’s brilliant English translation of the New Testament, which, along
with his Old Testament, would later become the foundation for the King
James Version of the Bible. Given Erasmus’s and More’s own erstwhile
support for vernacular scripture, the opposition to Tyndale’s Bible seems
surprising. But Tyndale, who fled England in 1524, was a passionate and
uncompromising Lutheran, and he used his translation to promote Lutheran
doctrines and undermine church hierarchy by, for example, translating
ecclesia as “congregation” rather than “church,” and substituting “senior”
or “elder” for “priest.” In More’s mind, the very idea of ordinary people
reading the Bible on their own and forming opinions as to the nature and
requirements of faith without being guided by the authority of the church
became increasingly heretical. Tyndale’s New Testament was seized and
burned at every opportunity, as was Tyndale himself by agents of the church
outside Brussels in 1536.
The death of Tyndale was more than a year after More’s own death. But
More himself played an active part in combatting heresy, and not just with
words. He prepared a list of forbidden heretical works. He employed a
network of spies to seek out and destroy those works and to arrest the
people who distributed them. He even participated personally in the
interrogation, prosecution, and ultimately the murder of unrepentant
heretics, calling one such “well and worthily burned.”52 More’s defenders
note that he never engaged in torture and that a mere “half a dozen” heretics
were burned at the stake during the two and a half years he was lord
chancellor.53 But that is still six too many, and even if More neither
conducted nor ordered the torture of suspected heretics, he knew that it
occurred and took no steps to prevent it.
More defended the burning of heretics, if they would not recant, as
necessary to preserve the souls of others from eternal damnation:
For I think no reasonable person will have it that when the heretic, if he went at large, would
with the spreading of his error infect other folk, the bishop should have such pity on him that
he would, rather than allow other people to punish his body, allow him to kill other people’s
souls.54

There was also a more personal revulsion at work, as he admitted in a

letter to Erasmus after resigning as lord chancellor:
I find that breed of men absolutely loathsome, so much so that, unless they regain their
senses, I want to be as hateful to them as anyone can possibly be; for my increasing
experience with those men frightens me with the thought of what the world will suffer at their
hands.55

We can neither excuse nor defend More’s persecution of heretics. But

we can make an effort to understand how this otherwise humane man,
dedicated to peace and equality before the law, came to such an extreme, in
an age when extremes became the norm.
In some respects, More was prophetic. He feared greatly that the
protestant heresy would spread, as of course it did, and that it would lead to
an overthrow of the existing order he was sworn to defend. More believed
civil disorder was an inevitable consequence of religious disorder, a point
Machiavelli had already recognized. For More, “sowing schisms and
seditions” were one and the same.56 Heresy was by its nature an attack on
existing social and political as well as religious institutions. Wherever
heresy had reared its head, civil unrest had followed, starting a century
before with the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which was in part stirred by John
Wycliffe and the Lollards. So, too, in Germany, where that country’s own
Peasants’ War of 1524–25 was inspired by Luther’s antiauthoritarian
teachings. More considered heresy a challenge to both royal and
ecclesiastical authority. Combatting heresy was thus a “communal war” in
defense of the existing order.57
More’s conservative impulse was not, however, purely reactive. His
reverence for the church mirrored his reverence for the common law. Both
embodied what he considered the accumulated, communal wisdom of the
centuries. In the case of the church, that was the wisdom of the church
fathers in building on the teachings of Christ. That does not mean More
believed that the church as an institution, including the papacy, was
infallible. To the contrary, More was in favor of many incremental reforms
starting with the papacy itself. But he believed that the faults of individual
clergymen could not detract from the cumulative, collective truth of the
church, just as the errors of individual judges did not detract from the
collective wisdom of the common law. The church brings men and women
together in common worship and belief. More considered the church as an
institution greater than the mistakes of any priest or even pope and worthy
of our collective devotion. Without the doctrinal structure and the rituals
and sacraments provided by the church, More thought that religion was too
insubstantial and abstract a matter to unite people. A revolt against the
established church would thus lead to many untethered doctrinal variations,
as the Reformation was itself demonstrating. One common doctrine was not
being replaced by another common doctrine. Instead, the community of
believers was being splintered by doctrinal disputes driven by individual,
charismatic leaders.
More saw the essence of the Reformation as a challenge not just to the
pope or the church as an institution; each man and woman was being
encouraged to forge his and her own personal relationship with God
unmediated by the traditions and teachings of the church. The fundamental
dispute was between inner conscience, private prayer, and individual grace
and revelation on the one hand, and the formalities, rituals, sacraments, and
authorized teachings of the church on the other. In his deepest heart, More
himself recognized the importance of the former and the often artificial
aspects of the latter. But he no longer allowed himself to think in those
terms. More, the subtle ironist and gentle reformer, clung all the more
fiercely to the doctrinal consensus and to the rituals and trappings that he
thought essential to communal belief and the maintenance of order. More,
ever the dutiful son, hated disorder, anarchy, chaos, and lack of respect for
traditional institutions. Protecting the church and the existing social-
political order became the twin foci of his public life. When those two came
into conflict with each other, as they soon would, More would have to
choose between them and to accept the consequences of his choice, as the
heretics he prosecuted accepted the consequences of theirs.

THE KING’S GREAT MATTER

Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was just

fifteen years old when she came to England to marry Prince Henry’s older
brother, Arthur. Arthur died less than six months after the ceremony. It is
unclear if the marriage was ever consummated; Catherine claimed not.
Regardless, Henry received a special dispensation from Pope Julius II in
December 1503 to marry his brother’s widow. The wedding itself did not
take place, however, until 1509, shortly after the death of his father, Henry
VII.
The royal couple had one daughter, Mary, after several male children
were lost to miscarriage or stillbirth or died in infancy. Additional
miscarriages and stillbirths followed. Henry, who was serially unfaithful,
developed an obsession for Anne Boleyn, his wife’s maid of honor, after an
earlier affair with her sister, Mary. Henry decided he wanted Anne as his
new queen and mother of the next king. Anne wanted it even more. She
even obtained livery for her servants inscribed “Ainsi sera, groigne qui
groigne” (Thus it will be, grudge it who will).58 Anne was ambitious,
manipulative, and fully aware of her power over the king.
Henry sought to have his marriage to Catherine annulled so that he
could marry Anne and father a male heir. He instructed his chancellor,
Cardinal Wolsey, archbishop of York, to make it happen. Henry claimed
that his marriage to Catherine was void ab initio because the Bible forbade
marriage with a dead brother’s wife: “And if a man shall take his brother’s
wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they
shall be childless.”59
Cardinal Wolsey arranged for a papal legate to come to London and
convened a legatine court at Blackfriars in May 1529 to examine the matter.
But the current pope, Clement VII, was very much under the thumb of the
emperor, Charles V, whose troops had recently sacked Rome and virtually
imprisoned the pope in the Castel Sant’Angelo. As noted in the previous
chapter, this event led to the overthrow of the Medicis and to the restoration
of the Florentine Republic. It would also have repercussions as far away as
London. Since Catherine was Charles’s aunt, the emperor was not going to
allow the pope to dissolve the marriage. The legatine court dragged on
through the summer of 1529. Catherine defended her claims with passion
and swore (likely correctly) that she was still a virgin at the time of her
marriage to Henry. Eventually matters ground to a halt. In July 1529,
responding to a direct petition from Catherine, Pope Clement ordered the
proceedings in England to cease and the legatine court to reconvene in
Rome.
Wolsey had failed the king, who did not tolerate failure. Wolsey was
fired as lord chancellor, his possessions were seized, and he ultimately was
charged with treason. The devastated and enfeebled Wolsey died before
trial. Remarkably, the king chose Thomas More as his new lord chancellor
and delivered to him the Great Seal of England, used as a stamp for the
approval of formal state documents. Even more remarkably, More accepted.
The lord chancellor, generally a member of the clergy, was traditionally the
king’s closest advisor on both secular and spiritual matters. He was known
as the keeper of the king’s conscience. More, a layman, had already advised
the king privately that he believed Catherine’s claim that she was a virgin
when she married Henry and that her former marriage to Henry’s brother
was not, in any event, grounds for annulment. Yet Henry wanted, and
convinced, More to take the job. As More reported the conversation, Henry
assured More “that [he] should first look unto God and after God unto
him.”60
Those assurances did not last. More was lord chancellor for two and a
half years. Heretics aside, More was extremely efficient and fair in his
judicial duties. He believed that the rule of law and its impartial application
and prompt administration were crucial to a well-functioning society. But
Henry’s frustration with the lack of progress in his annulment steadily
increased. Henry arranged for a lengthy letter to be sent to Pope Clement in
1530 explaining why his marriage to Catherine was invalid. It was signed
by a large array of distinguished English clerics and scholars. Thomas More
declined to sign the letter. The pope did not bother to respond.
 In 1531, the king took matters into his own hands. He declared himself
supreme head of the Church of England and demanded that a convocation
of English bishops recognize him as such. They did so, but with the
cautious proviso “so far as the law of Christ allows,” which of course, from
the perspective of the Catholic Church, was not very far at all. Henry
stormed, bullied, and threatened. And on May 15, 1532, the cowed bishops
agreed to articles for the “Submission of the Clergy” to the crown. This act
effectively made Henry, without qualification, supreme head of the English
church and made the church subordinate to the crown. More, who
vigorously opposed the law, resigned the next day and personally delivered
the great seal to Henry. At that time, the two men reached an implicit
bargain: More would remain silent, and Henry would leave him alone.
More accordingly explained his resignation in a letter to Erasmus without
mentioning the king’s marriage or his bid for supremacy over the church:
It has been my constant wish almost since boyhood, dearest Desiderius, that some day I might
enjoy the opportunity which, to my happiness, you have always had, namely, of being
relieved of all public duties and eventually being able to devote some time to God alone and
myself; at long last this wish has come true, Erasmus, thanks to the goodness of the Supreme
and Almighty God and to the graciousness of a very understanding Sovereign.61

More pared down his household staff after finding them positions
elsewhere. Although his income was much reduced and his family’s
standard of living would have to be adjusted accordingly, he jokingly
reassured them that some standards would be maintained: “We will not
therefore descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we will
begin with Lincoln’s Inn diet,” descending as need be from there.62 More
also adjusted quickly to the lack of pomp and circumstance. When he and
Dame Alice attended church, they always sat in separate sections for men
and women. Hitherto, when More was ready to depart, a servant would go
to Dame Alice’s pew and announce, “Madame, my lord is gone.” Now,
More himself would appear at her side and state in a solemn tone,
“Madame, my lord is gone.”63
More, however, could not remain silent on issues of religion. Nor could
Henry tolerate anything less than affirmative support. He dispensed with
papal authorization and married a pregnant Anne Boleyn on January 25,
1533. Their daughter, Elizabeth, the future queen, was born less than eight
months later. Catherine’s appeal to Rome was rendered illegal by Act of
Parliament, which asserted that the pope had no jurisdiction or authority in
England. A few months later, another Act declared Henry’s marriage to
Catherine invalid and his marriage to Anne legitimate. On June 1, Anne
was crowned as queen of England. Henry’s great matter was finally
resolved without foreign interference. Henry was eventually
excommunicated by the pope, but it was a futile gesture, since Henry had
already left the Catholic Church and taken the Church of England with him.
The pope might as well have excommunicated the grand sultan or the chief
rabbi for all the effect it had.
More’s friends urged him to attend the coronation, but he declined to do
so, citing a story from Tacitus. Under the emperor Tiberius, Roman law
forbade a virgin from being condemned to death for a given crime. A virgin
committed that particular crime, and the emperor was nonplussed, since he
wanted to enforce the law in question but without violating the proscription.
One of his advisors in council offered a simple solution: “Why make you so
much ado, my lords, about so small a matter? Let her first be deflowered,
and then after may she be devoured.”64 As More explained to his friends, “It
lieth not in my power but that they may devour me; but God being my good
lord, I will provide that they shall never deflower me.”65 He might, that is,
suffer the ultimate penalty of execution, but he would keep his conscience
clear and not be seen publicly to condone, even tacitly, the annulment, the
new marriage, or Henry’s hostile takeover of the church.
More probably sealed his fate by shunning Anne’s coronation. She
nursed her grudge and inflamed Henry against him. But More made his
opposition clear in more overt ways. Throughout the course of his great
matter, Henry had received support from some Lutherans, who saw a
chance to challenge the authority of the pope. A prominent lawyer and ally
of the king, Christopher St. German, published several books in which he
attacked the ecclesiastical courts and the treatment of heresy cases. He also
argued that the common law is supreme over canon law, the state over the
church, and the king over the pope. These were all critical positions of the
king. But, implicit understanding or no, More could not remain silent. He
responded with several counterattacks of his own. St. German published his
works anonymously, which allowed More to maintain the pretense that he
did not know their authorship, but in fact it was widely known, and the
books were published by the king’s own printer. More’s dueling tracts were
thus read as direct opposition to the king, and the king would not tolerate
opposition.
 Henry had come increasingly to rely on Thomas Cromwell as an advisor
and enforcer of the king’s will. Cromwell, despite obscure beginnings, had
made his fortune on the continent and returned to London as a prosperous
merchant and banker. He married well and became a protégé of Cardinal
Wolsey. Cromwell remained loyal to Wolsey to the end, which is to his
credit, but he was ready enough to serve the king when the occasion arose.
Where Wolsey failed, Cromwell did not. He bullied bishops, maneuvered
acts through Parliament, and conducted interrogations of those suspected of
treason. Cromwell was in many respects More’s doppelganger, or
Machiavellian twin, and it is fitting that their magnificent portraits by Hans
Holbein the Younger hang opposite one another at the Frick Collection in
New York.66 Holbein’s More is thoughtful and steadfast. His Cromwell is a
man of undeniable talent but also of relentless ambition and unbendable
will.
Robert Bly’s play A Man for All Seasons and the movie based upon it
present More as a gentle man of kindly wit and profound wisdom, at peace
with himself and ready to die rather than compromise his beliefs. His
Cromwell is a lurking, devious presence, a flatterer and scoundrel, a sort of
Renaissance Uriah Heap. Hilary Mantel, by contrast, in her splendid novel
Wolf Hall, which covers the years from 1500 to 1535, makes Cromwell her
hero and offers a very sympathetic account of a gifted, complex, and
pragmatic servant of the king. Her More is a less admirable character,
vicious in his pursuit of heretics. Readers may take their choice, but viewers
of the Holbein portraits are likely to get the best sense of their respective
characters. Holbein also painted remarkably revealing portraits of Henry
VIII and Erasmus.
There was considerable underground ferment against the king and his
new queen. Many subjects remained sympathetic to Catherine and loyal to
the Catholic Church. More played no active part in these rumblings, but his
resistance helped inspire others. In 1534, More was summoned by
Cromwell and questioned about his dealings with one Elizabeth Barton,
known as the Holy Maid of Kent, who claimed divine visions and foretold
divine punishment for Henry’s sinful divorce. Barton was executed for
treason, and several alleged associates faced similar charges. More was
initially named in, but ultimately dropped from, an indictment. When his
daughter Margaret offered her congratulations, More responded, “In faith,
Meg, Quod differtur, non aufertur” (What is put off is not put aside).67
 The king, through Cromwell, sought to buy More’s acquiescence by
promising a return to riches and high position if he would publicly approve
the divorce. More refused. Cromwell, who was Anne’s ally in the divorce,
became the instrument of her revenge, just as he would become the
instrument of her own death in two years’ time, once she failed to produce a
male heir and the king’s impatient eye settled on Lady Jane Seymour.
Cromwell arranged for passage of an Act of Succession that required
subjects to swear an oath recognizing the offspring of Anne and Henry as
the legitimate heirs to the throne. All the members of Parliament and most
of the clergy duly swore the required oath. More was summoned to do so in
April 1534. He declined. More had no objection to recognizing Elizabeth
and any future children of Henry and Anne as the royal successors. He was
indifferent to such a purely political matter. But the preamble of the oath
affirmed the legitimacy of the marriage and hence of the annulment as well
as Henry’s sovereignty over the church.
More’s family urged him to swear the oath regardless, contending that
God regards the heart not the tongue. But More would accept no such
evasion. He refused to sign as a matter of conscience and took refuge in
silence, declining to explain his reasons or openly question the authority of
the king. He was arrested on April 17 and sent to the Tower of London. It
was not a strict confinement. More was at liberty to walk in the garden and
around the Tower. And he joked with Margaret that he had finally obtained
his wish for a monk’s cell and time for prayer and contemplation. But it was
still uncomfortable, and the cold, the damp, and the poor food took a steady
toll on his health. Margaret visited him there as often as she was allowed to
do so. More was also in constant contact with his fellow prisoner and future
saint, John Fisher, the bishop of London. Eventually Dame Alice was
permitted to visit as well, and she reproached him heartily for putting
himself and his family in such straits.
More remained in his Tower cell for more than fourteen months. He had
access to books and writing materials and sent out a succession of letters
and tracts containing his meditations on death, the importance of the
sacraments, the transitory nature of worldly pleasures and possessions, the
temptations of pride, Christ’s suffering and death, and the actual presence of
Christ in the Eucharist. His writings from prison have been compared to
those of Boethius, who wrote his Consolation of Philosophy from prison in
the year 523 while awaiting his execution, and to the conversations of
Socrates before he was instructed to drink the hemlock that killed him.
More was brought from his Tower cell on several occasions to be
interrogated by Cromwell and his colleagues. We have detailed accounts of
these sessions, written by More himself and given to Margaret for later
publication. The interrogators alternately cajoled and threatened More,
leading him to retort at one point, “My lords, these terrors be arguments for
children, and not for me.”68 More was steadfast in his refusal to swear any
oath legitimizing the king’s marriage or his position as head of the Church
of England. Yet More was careful never to deny those claims either. A new
Treasons Act provided that anyone who “maliciously” denied the king’s
absolute sovereignty over the church was guilty of treason and therefore to
be hanged, cut down before death, revived, disemboweled while still alive,
and then dismembered. Cromwell sought to trap More in such a denial, but
More was too good a lawyer and thwarted every such attempt. He deflected
all their efforts, noting that he had once stated his views directly to Henry as
his advisor but that now he refused to have anything to do with political
affairs.
I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this
be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live. . . . And therefore my poor
body is at the King’s pleasure; would God my death might do him good.69

Eventually the king’s patience, and that of Anne and Cromwell, was
exhausted. More was tried on four counts of treason on July 1, 1535. He
argued in his own defense, contending that his silence on the subject of
supremacy and succession could not properly be taken as treason. More
invoked the common-law presumption, Qui tacet consentire videtur (He
who is silent appears to consent). Three of the four charges against him
were rejected by the jury, even though the jury had been specifically chosen
by Cromwell to condemn him. In the end, Cromwell was forced to rely on
the perjured testimony of Richard Rich, an ambitious young lawyer in
Cromwell’s employ. Rich claimed that, when removing books from More’s
cell, he heard More state affirmatively that the king had no authority over
the church. More vehemently denied the statement and was perfectly
prepared to swear an oath that he had said no such thing. It is impossible to
believe that so careful a lawyer would have made so foolish a statement.
But he was found guilty regardless.
 At that point, knowing he was to be condemned, More dropped his
silence and directly challenged the constitutionality of any
act of Parliament directly repugnant to the laws of God and His Holy Church, the supreme
government of which, or of any part whereof, may no temporal prince presume by any law to
take upon him. . . . This realm, being but one member and small part of the Church, might not
make a particular law disagreeable with the general law of Christ’s universal Catholic Church,
no more than the City of London, being but one poor member in respect of the whole realm,
might make a law against an act of Parliament to bind the whole realm.70

In short, God’s law, as recognized by the church, is supreme over the

laws of men. More added, in a calculated dig at the hypocrisy of the entire
proceeding, that it was not because he denied the supremacy of the king that
they sought his blood: “I know well that the reason why you have
condemned me is because I have never been willing to consent to the
King’s second marriage.”71
More was taken to the scaffold on Tower Hill on the morning of July 6,
1535. The king had commuted his sentence in that he was to be beheaded
rather than suffering the full array of tortures for treason. More’s final
speech was brief. He said, echoing the promise Henry had made to him
when he became lord chancellor, that he would die “the King’s good servant
but God’s first.”72 And so he did, by his own lights and by those of the
church he loved.
 Chapter 5
CASTIGLIONE: A GENTLEMAN
IN URBINO1

M achiavelli and Castiglione were born only nine years apart. But in
some ways, they are men of different eras as well as different
sensibilities. Machiavelli came of age in an early Renaissance of brutal
power struggles throughout Italy, struggles into which popes and foreign
rulers alike readily interjected themselves. Italy was somewhat more settled
in Castiglione’s day, though the sack of Rome in 1527 by the troops of
Charles V of Spain is a notable exception. The great nation-states in France,
Spain, and England were solid, established monarchies. And even in Italy,
princes ruled as autocrats over their city-states in Venice, Milan, Florence,
Urbino, and elsewhere, and they prided themselves on the cultural as much
as the military and diplomatic accomplishments of their courts. Condottieri
—the mercenary warriors needed to maintain power—had increasingly
become courtiers. Just as Machiavelli wrote a handbook for the new or
would-be prince, Castiglione wrote his handbook for “a gentleman living at
the courts of princes.”2
The Book of the Courtier is not just a how-to manual, however, though
it was often viewed in that light over the ensuing centuries. Following in the
tradition of Plato and Cicero, Castiglione was trying to define an ideal type,
one that does not exist in the real world but to which one can nonetheless
aspire and take as a model. This dual aim gives the work its creative
tension: the vision of the courtier is ideal, but his code of behavior must
work within a system of despotic rule. His virtues must be chosen carefully
and balanced to incite the admiration, delight, and trust of his sovereign.
 There is a decided measure of calculation factored into this ideal type.
But, then, calculation is critical to all success, whether in Renaissance Italy
or in contemporary America. The techniques for making an impression and
for gaining and retaining the favor of a powerful patron have not changed
very much in the intervening five hundred years. But the most important
and lasting ideal presented by Castiglione is not courtiership per se but self-
fashioning—making oneself a work of art through education and imitation;
playing a role to perfection. That ideal of self-fashioning was a defining
feature of what is now known as the High Renaissance—the period of
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), and Raphael
(1483–1520)—and it had a profound impact on Montaigne, Shakespeare,
and many others.3 As the great Renaissance scholar Jacob Burckhardt
explained:
[Castiglione’s courtier] was the ideal man of society, and was regarded by the civilization of
that age as its choicest flower; and the court existed for him rather than he for the court. . . .
The inner impulse which inspired him was directed, though our author does not acknowledge
the fact, not to the service of the prince but to his own perfection.4

Castiglione’s portrait of the ideal courtier—a master of language,

literature, manners, art, music, and humor; a master, in short, of life itself—
is every bit a match for those of Leonardo and Raphael in its beauty,
complexity, and historical importance.

LIFE

Baldassare Castiglione was born on December 6, 1478, on the family estate

at Casatico, outside Mantua, in Lombardy. Both his father and grandfather
had been military commanders in the service of the Gonzaga family, and the
Castigliones were connected by marriage to the then-current marquis of
Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga.
Castiglione was sent to Milan at the age of twelve to live with relatives
and to pursue his education. In 1494, he also became connected with the
court of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, known commonly as
Ludovico il Moro, who was a patron of Leonardo da Vinci and
commissioned The Last Supper.
Castiglione’s father died in 1499, and that same year Ludovico il Moro
was driven out of Milan by the French. Castiglione returned to Mantua,
where he took over as head of the family and entered the service of
Francesco Gonzaga, the new marquis of Mantua. He spent five years in
Francesco’s service, going on frequent diplomatic missions and even
participating in a military campaign against the Spanish in Naples. On a
mission to Rome, Castiglione met Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the Duke of
Urbino and brother-in-law to Francesco Gonzaga.
In 1504, Guidobaldo and Castiglione prevailed on Francesco to permit
Castiglione to leave Mantua and to take up residence at the court of Urbino,
then considered one of the most sophisticated in all of Italy. Guidobaldo
was crippled and rendered impotent by gout. But the court was presided
over by his beautiful wife, the duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga, and her sister-
in-law, Emilia Pia. Distinguished courtiers from all over Italy gathered for
music, games, pageants, and, most of all, conversation. Raphael, a native of
Urbino, painted portraits of Elisabetta, Emilia, and a number of their guests
and courtiers. Raphael was one of the great Italian masters of this period,
along with Leonardo and Michelangelo—a trinity of artists to match the
three pillars of Italian literature of an earlier era: Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio.
Castiglione participated happily in the entertainments at Urbino, writing
songs and sonnets in honor of Elisabetta and even a pastoral play to be
performed at the court. But he was often absent on diplomatic missions. He
traveled to Rome in 1505, and in 1506 he was sent to England to receive the
Order of the Garter on behalf of Guidobaldo. But Castiglione was present in
Urbino when Pope Julius II, along with his substantial entourage, visited for
a week at the beginning of March in 1507. Castiglione would set the
fictional date for the first of the four successive conversations that make up
The Book of the Courtier on March 8, the day after Julius’s departure.
When Guidobaldo died in 1508, Castiglione stayed on at Urbino in the
service of Guidobaldo’s nephew and adopted son, Francesco Maria della
Rovere. He fought in a series of military campaigns with Rovere, at the
behest of Julius, between 1509 and 1512. In reward, he was made a count
and was given a castle in Novilara, near Pesaro. In 1513, he was sent to
Rome as the resident ambassador from Urbino. Castiglione greatly enjoyed
his time there, associating with numerous artists, including Michelangelo,
who was busy with the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and deepening his
friendship with Raphael, who had moved there permanently and was hard at
work on the “Raphael Rooms” in the Vatican, including his masterpiece,
The School of Athens. It was at Rome, not Urbino, that Raphael painted the
famous portrait of Castiglione that now hangs in the Louvre. It was also at
Rome that Castiglione began working on the Courtier, an undertaking that
would engage him off and on for the next two decades. The Courtier was
Castiglione’s School of Athens.
When Pope Julius died in 1513, he was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni
de’ Medici, who served as Pope Leo X. Leo, eager to install his nephew
Lorenzo as Duke of Urbino, excommunicated Rovere and exiled him to
Mantua. Castiglione, ever the loyal courtier, followed Rovere into exile. But
Mantua had its consolations. In 1516, Castiglione married the young
Ippolita Torelli, who was descended from another noble Mantuan family.
They had a son, Camillo, and two daughters, Anna and Ippolita. Castiglione
returned alone to Rome as ambassador of the new marquis of Mantua,
Federico Gonzaga. Two letters survive from Castiglione revealing the deep
love and passionate affection he felt for his wife. But she died in 1520 while
giving birth to their third child.
Castiglione remained in Rome as ambassador, and, since Lorenzo de’
Medici had died in 1519, he tried unsuccessfully to have Urbino restored to
Rovere. Battered by the death of his wife, Castiglione moved in an
increasingly religious direction. The death of Raphael in 1520 was an added
loss, and Castiglione wrote an elegy in his memory. In 1521, he received
the “first tonsure” from Pope Leo X, a ritual shaving of a portion of the
back of the head as a necessary introduction into clerical orders.
Castiglione remained in Rome until 1524, when he was appointed papal
nuncio to the court of the emperor Charles V in Spain. He was still there in
1527 when Spanish troops sacked Rome and held Pope Clement VII
hostage for a time. The pope at first blamed Castiglione for not keeping him
apprised of the emperor’s intentions. Castiglione responded, in a famous
letter, chastising the pope for his temporizing policies and provocations.
The pope, surprisingly enough, acquiesced in the criticism. Charles V soon
thereafter made Castiglione bishop of Avila.
Castiglione finished his Courtier and published it in early 1528. The
duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga had died a widow in 1526. Many other
members of the Urbino court had also died by this time, and a pall of
melancholy and nostalgia reigns over his final revisions to the work. Emilia
Pia died in 1528, shortly after she received a copy of the Courtier.
Castiglione himself was not far behind. He died of the plague the following
year in Toledo at the age of fifty. He is buried in the cathedral there. The
emperor himself attended the service and stated, “I tell you that one of the
best caballeros of the world is dead.”5 A monument designed by a pupil of
Raphael was erected near his birthplace outside Mantua. The inscription
reads:
Baldassare Castiglione of Mantua, endowed by nature with every gift and the knowledge of
many disciplines, learned in Greek and Latin literature, and a poet in the Italian (Tuscan)
language, was given a castle in Pesaro on account of his military prowess, after he had
conducted embassies to both great Britain and Rome. While he was working at the Spanish
court on behalf of Clement VII, there he drew up The Book of the Courtier for the education
of the nobility; and in short, after Emperor Charles V had elected him Bishop of Avila, he
died at Toledo much honored by all the people. He lived fifty years, two months and a day.
His mother, Luigia Gonzaga, who to her own sorrow outlived her son, placed this memorial
to him in 1529.6
THE IDEAL COURTIER (BOOK 1)

Plato’s Symposium recounts the speeches made at a drinking party that

occurred in 416 BCE, when Athens was at the height of its glory. But the
account was written many years later, after Athens had lost the
Peloponnesian War, had been stripped of its empire, and had emerged from
a brutal tyranny into a brittle democracy that condemned Socrates, the
dialogue’s principal protagonist, to death. The fictional narrator, moreover,
is someone who was not even present at the event itself but has had to
construct it from the accounts of others. The narrative frame marks what
follows as an urgent attempt to re-create a lost golden age and to recapture,
in idealized terms, the wisdom of those participants and particularly that of
Socrates, the grandfather of Western philosophy.7
The effect of the frame narrative in Castiglione’s Courtier is similar.
The conversations reported in the four books purportedly occurred over
those four nights in Urbino following the festive visit of Julius II in 1507.
But the book was not published until twenty years later. Duke Guidobaldo’s
heir has been driven from Urbino, and most of the participants, including
the beloved duchess, are dead. A golden glow suffuses the narrative that
accentuates this sense of loss. Castiglione’s announced goal is to “preserve
this bright memory from mortal oblivion, and make it live in the mind of
posterity through my writing.”8 Curiously, however, Castiglione claims to
have been in England at the time of the conversations. In fact, he had
returned from England the prior year and was definitely present in Urbino
for the papal visit. His claimed absence is merely a literary device that
allows him to restrict his own purported role to reconstructing and narrating
the conversations as accurately as possible based on accounts he has heard
from others. This conceit allows the author, in an age of absolute monarchs,
to present and explore controversial views without the hazard of voicing
them directly. Thomas More achieved the same effect in Utopia by making
Hythloday his main speaker. In the Symposium, Socrates’s final speech is
plainly intended to embrace and transcend all that went before.9 In the
Courtier, as in Utopia, definitive statements are attempted but not achieved.
We must base our understanding instead on the structure of the dialogue and
the back-and-forth among the participants.
 In a dedicatory letter to Don Michel de Silva, the bishop of Viseu,
Castiglione compares his task to that of a painter: “I send you this book as a
portrait of the Court of Urbino, not by the hand of Raphael or
Michelangelo, but by that of a lowly painter and one who only knows how
to draw the main lines, without adorning the truth with pretty colors or
making, by perspective art, that which is not seem to be.”10 In other words,
he claims his book is simple and artless; in fact, of course, it is a
consummate work of art and anything but simple. But Castiglione’s modest,
self-deprecating claim—which nonetheless manages to put himself in the
same sentence with Raphael and Michelangelo—is of a piece with his
advice to “a gentleman living at the courts of princes.” Castiglione displays
in his narration what is described in the conversations: “What manner of
man he must be who deserves the name of perfect Courtier, without defect
of any kind.”11
The participants in the conversations are all historical figures at the
court of Urbino, each intimately known to Castiglione. They have
individual personalities, but the group portrait is idealized, like the
recognizable but idealized figures in The School of Athens, and each plays
his or her part in the harmony of the whole. Castiglione, despite his
protestations, is “adorning [his] truth with pretty colors” and making “that
which is not seem to be.”
Guidobaldo assumed the throne at Urbino in 1482, when he was only
ten years old. His father, the renowned condottiere Federico da Montefeltro,
was known as “the light of Italy” for his promotion of the arts and
humanities. Great hopes were placed in Guidobaldo, and Castiglione praises
his judgment and ability. But Guidobaldo met with adversity in every
undertaking and, by the time he was twenty, was crippled and deformed. He
nonetheless gathered a distinguished court at Urbino and presided over
jousts and tournaments and hunts, distributing praise and criticism as an
observer rather than a participant.
But Guidobaldo is a factor in the conversations that make up the
Courtier only through his absence. Each evening, he retires immediately
after dinner, while everyone else repairs to the rooms of the duchess, and it
is she, with Emilia Pia as her lieutenant, who presides over the nighttime
entertainment: music, dancing, and conversation. The small group of
noblemen and noblewomen—reminiscent of Boccaccio’s brigata from the
Decameron12—gather together like brothers and sisters bound by love to
one another and to the duchess. Each is free to speak or jest or contest up to
a point, limited always by “a rule of fine manners from the presence of so
great and virtuous a lady.”13
The nighttime world of the Courtier is thus an inversion of the daytime
world, and yet the goal of each is the same. During the day, the courtiers vie
with one another in physical displays to be thought worthy of the duke and
his company. At night, the courtiers vie with one another in cultural
displays to be thought worthy of the duchess and her company. Yet both
realms are slightly off-kilter and disconnected from each other. The duke
has absolute power over his subjects but is helpless against his crippling
disease. Even the critical connection of physical intimacy between the duke
and the duchess is broken. The realm of the duchess is divorced from that of
the duke. And although Castiglione calls her rooms “the very abode of
joyfulness,”14 the confinement of the space and the “rule of fine manners”
eventually impose feelings of claustrophobia and sterility that one of the
courtiers, Pietro Bembo, tries to transcend in the final book, though with
limited success.
Thus, Castiglione’s brigata, which, like Boccaccio’s, has also separated
itself from a daytime world gone awry, is operating within a very restricted
set of circumstances. This constraint is evident even in the games they
choose to pursue. As they gather on the first evening, Emilia calls on each
gentleman present to suggest a game. Most of the suggestions prove
unsuitable because they would violate the rule of fine manners: identifying
defects in one’s beloved; confessions of individual folly; exploring the
causes of anger among lovers. All such games would probe beneath the
surface refinement and expose fault lines of cruelty, folly, self-deception,
and hostility that are better kept hidden. As we shall see, there is plenty of
aggression among the courtiers, but that aggression, for the most part, is
cloaked in fine manners and thereby rendered acceptable to social
discourse.
Emilia accordingly chooses a game proposed by Federico Fregoso:
“forming in words a perfect Courtier.”15 Emilia will designate the speakers,
but everyone has a right of objection and interjection to ensure a genuine
dialogue and exchange of views. Indeed, when she selects Count Canossa to
begin, she laughingly suggests that everyone will disagree with him, which
will make the conversation livelier. Her apparent barb is disarmed by
humor, a perfect example of the fine manners expected of the group.
 In the same spirit, Canossa declines an offer to wait until the next
evening to prepare his presentation. “I do not wish to be like the man who
stripped to his doublet and jumped less far than he had done in his great-
coat,” he explains. Speaking spontaneously, he will be excused the lack of
forethought, and “so, free of censure, I shall be permitted to say whatever
comes first to my lips.”16 He then embarks on a bravura performance,
perfectly illustrating the principal qualities of the courtier he describes.
Yet Canossa is interrupted almost before he can begin. Canossa suggests
that the ideal courtier will be noble born because the virtues of a nobleman
will shine all the brighter, and he would be ashamed not to attain a
prominence at least as great as his ancestors. Beauty of countenance and
person are inborn, Canossa insists, as well as a certain grace “we call an
‘air,’ which shall make him at first sight pleasing and lovable to all who see
him.”17
Gaspar Pallavicino, a frequent objector and controverter, counters with
some force that a noble birth guarantees neither virtue nor beauty, just as a
humble birth does not preclude them. It is an awkward truth to voice amid a
group of privileged nobles, particularly when their own duke is so ill
formed and unprepossessing. Accordingly, Canossa quickly brackets the
issue, noting that they must contend with the realities of their society, in
which a lowborn person is held in less esteem and must work harder to
make a good impression. He will thereby seem less a gentleman, for what
appears in a noble as simply assuming his proper station will be put down
to vulgar ambition in an upstart. Canossa is not going to challenge the
social and political hierarchy of Renaissance Italy.
The first concern of the courtier, Canossa explains, must be military
prowess, improved by constant exercise and the refinement of martial skills.
A courtier must never fail his prince on the field of battle. Any disgrace in
that regard, whether through cowardice or incompetence, can never be
overcome. With that said, however, Canossa quickly moves on. Although
military skills are necessary and highly valued, they form but a small part of
his portrait of the courtier. He offers no thoughts on the art of war; the
refined arts of manner and culture are more to his taste.
Indeed, Canossa quickly cautions that a courtier cannot always be
swaggering around like a mighty warrior.18 The place for ferocity is on the
battlefield or at least on the practice grounds, not at court. Canossa offers a
comic anecdote of a lady at court bidding a courtier to dance and being told
that such trifles were not his business; fighting was his business. She
responded by suggesting that when he is not in battle he should be greased
all over and stored in a closet with his armor. The true courtier must show
extreme adaptability to his circumstances: “Let the man we are seeking be
exceedingly fierce, harsh, and always among the first, wherever the enemy
is; and in every other place, humane, modest, reserved, avoiding ostentation
above all things as well as that impudent praise of himself by which a man
always arouses hatred and disgust in all who hear him.”19
Canossa does not, however, object to all self-praise. Indeed, a courtier
should have a proper sense of his own worth. But self-praise, paradoxically,
must be modest to be effective and not invite envy or disgust; it is the art of
“saying things in such a way that they do not appear to be spoken to that
end, but are so very apropos that one cannot help saying them; and to seem
always to avoid praising one’s self, yet do so.”20 One could object—though
none of the courtiers do—that self-praise under the guise of modesty makes
the courtier a hypocrite and a dissembler. But that is not quite fair. We all
want to be thought well of, especially by our peers and superiors. And it is
natural to turn the conversation to subjects that put one in a flattering light.
Those who are effective do so subtly and praise themselves by indirection,
such as through self-deprecating remarks. Again, think of Castiglione’s
comparison of his own artless portrait to the great paintings of Raphael and
Michelangelo. A man who wishes to accomplish much must presume much,
and some of that confidence will demand display.
Canossa expects his ideal courtier to accomplish a great deal indeed. He
is agile, well built, and light on his feet but strong. He is an expert rider,
hunter, and swordsman. He excels at swimming, wrestling, jumping, and
running. He even plays tennis well and dances with style. In short, he excels
in all activities of the body where a good name is to be won.
His mind and manners are as well tuned as his body. He possesses all
the conventional virtues: honor, integrity, prudence, goodness, fortitude, and
temperance. He knows Latin and Greek and all the major works of the
poets, orators, and historians in those languages. He is equally versed in the
vernacular. He draws and paints, having learned to see what is in the world
and to discern its beauty. He can read music, sing, and play various
instruments con bella maniera (in a beautiful style), and is even skilled in
improvisation.
 Signor Gaspar objects that music is unmanly and would render the
courtier effeminate. But Canossa will have none of that. Music is a sacred
thing, he insists, that “not only makes gentle the soul of man, but often
tames wild beasts.”21 A man who does not feel the richness and pleasure of
music has something lacking in his soul, like that courtier whose only
professed business is fighting.
Canossa’s courtier is by turns thoughtful and witty in conversation as
the occasion demands. He is self-deprecating and mildly ironic. In short, he
is thoroughly civilized and entertaining short of folly: “Let him laugh, jest,
banter, frolic, and dance, yet in such a manner as to show always that he is
genial and discreet; and let him be full of grace in all that he does or says.”22
This last concept, grazia (or grace), is critical. The courtier works hard
to shine in an impossible range of activities.23 But he does not let the effort
show. All of his actions and words are tempered with good judgment and
una certa grazia that make them seem natural and unstudied, as if inborn.
But if not born with such grace—and most are not—how does one
acquire it? Canossa’s advice is to keep before one’s eyes with respect to
every skill and virtue “those men who are known to be most perfect in these
matters.”24 A good pupil, moreover, seeks to imitate not only his own
master, but also to gain exposure to other masters, “taking from each the
part that seems most worthy of praise.”25 In picking and choosing what to
imitate, good judgment must be his guide. This may seem circular, but, as
Aristotle pointed out, it is exactly what we do in acquiring any form of
excellence.26 We begin by imitation, and through constant practice,
exposure to good examples, and the gradual acquisition of judgment, we
gain our own mastery and develop our own particular style. We act in the
right manner and at the right time, not according to abstract rules (as Plato
envisioned) but by internalizing and perfecting the values and norms of an
existing practice. It is a virtuous circle.
The courtier mimics and absorbs standards of conduct from others until
they become second nature (i.e., disguised art). But there is a fine, almost
imperceptible line between grace born of study, which perfects any
performance, and affectation, which spoils all it touches. In the most
famous single passage in the Courtier, Canossa explains:
I have found quite a universal rule which in this matter seems to me valid above all others,
and in all human affairs whether in word or deed: and that is to avoid affectation in every way
possible as though it were some very rough and dangerous reef; and (to pronounce a new
 word perhaps) to practice in all things a certain sprezzatura [graceful ease; studied
nonchalance], so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without
effort and almost without any thought about it. And I believe such grace comes of this:
because everyone knows the difficulty of things that are rare and well done; wherefore facility
in such things causes the greatest wonder; whereas, on the other hand, to labor and, as we say,
drag forth by the hair of the head, shows an extreme want of grace, and causes everything, no
matter how great it may be, to be held in little account.27

The cult of sprezzatura—and it did indeed become a cult after the

publication of the Courtier—is subject to an immediate objection. Like
“modest self-praise,” it seems to imply deception. One strives to appear that
which one is not. But of course one does. That is what learning every art
entails: to achieve a mastery one does not yet possess. And when one
attains that mastery, the effort that went into the process disappears into the
performance. Thus, the paradox that “we may call that art true art which
does not seem to be art.”28 It does not mean the artist is dissembling but
rather that he has fully internalized his craft. Those familiar with the art in
question know how much effort is behind the performance; but the effort
itself must not show, only the results. Mastery makes the difficult look easy
and hints at powers held in reserve, like a good actor playing Lear or
Othello.
Castiglione (and it is appropriate to substitute the author for the speaker
in this context) does not advocate an affectation of ease. Quite the contrary.
He believes that affectation is even more off-putting than a display of effort
without skill. Sprezzatura is not affectation; it is an effortless mastery by
one who appears “almost incapable of making a mistake.”29 Sprezzatura is
the perfection to which every activity aspires, whether it be writing a poem,
playing a sonata, arguing a case in court, or teaching a class. These are all
difficult activities requiring enormous preparation to be done well, but
when done well the performance itself seems effortless and natural. Think
of Roger Federer playing tennis or Joshua Bell the violin. Such ease causes
“the one who listens to believe that with little effort he too could attain to
such excellence—but who, when he tries, discovers that he is very far from
it.”30 As Horace noted, a great poet will “make it look like child’s play, /
Although, in fact, he tortures himself to do so.”31
Renaissance thinkers freely understood and embraced the idea that all
activities are performances. Today, we may resist that idea, but the reality
remains. We are all of us performing; we simply have lowered the standards
for acceptable performance. We grudgingly accept that some activities such
as playing tennis or the violin require constant practice. But in everything
else we believe we must act naturally and spontaneously, avoiding any
design in our behavior and such elitist mannerisms as refined speech and
elaborate courtesy. But what Castiglione understood was that acting
naturally and spontaneously is the most difficult performance of all. The
proper courtier must work hard to attain “that pure and charming simplicity
which is so appealing to all.”32 Our standards of affectation, like our
standards for acceptable behavior, may have changed, but Castiglione’s
fundamental insight remains. True mastery and sprezzatura are one and the
same, across the entire range of human conduct.
To be sure, standards evolve over time. Castiglione uses the example of
language to make this point. Language is not static; it is a living instrument.
Words come into and fall out of use. Petrarch and Boccaccio were masters
of the Italian language, but they used Tuscan words appropriate to their
time and location. Imitating their language in the sixteenth century would
be stilted and affected, whether in speech or in writing. We should indeed
imitate good writers and speakers, but adapted to the language of our day.
That is not to say that any sloppy usage or slang phrases now in fashion
should be adopted uncritically. Good usage comes from those “who have
talent, and who through learning and experience have attained good
judgment, and who thereby agree among themselves and consent to adopt
those words which to them seem good; which words are recognized by
virtue of a certain natural judgment and not by any art or rule.”33
Again, we follow the virtuous circle of Aristotle. We learn what is good
by imitating those who are good and by developing good judgment.
Castiglione’s brilliance lies in extending this insight to all aspects of human
life and behavior. He is crafting an educational program for the ideal
person, sound in body and mind. The goal of the courtier is to turn himself
self-consciously into a work of art, but with such mastery that the self-
consciousness drops away. He is both artist and subject, shaping his
personality and his skill set based on the various exemplars around him.34
To be sure, sprezzatura is an elitist concept. The courtier performs only for
a select group of like-minded individuals, all part of the inner circle of the
court. And he is judged by criteria of excellence that very few share or even
fully understand. But anyone, noble born or not, can, “with care and
effort,”35 seek to excel as a human being over the full range of human
activities.
THE DARKER SIDE OF COURTIERSHIP (BOOK 2)

Book 1 of the Courtier articulates a Renaissance version of the Greek ideal

of paideia (education). With proper training and good examples, a man may
become at ease with himself and his world, dignified but charming,
multitalented but unassuming, ambitious but honorable, learned but
unaffected. It is a beautiful vision of a fully realized human being—the
proverbial Renaissance man—that would exercise a strong influence on
writers and thinkers from Shakespeare to Nietzsche.
But Shakespeare and Nietzsche also saw a darker side to human nature.
And so did Castiglione. He sets a very different tone in the preface to book
2. He notes that we praise bygone times not because they were objectively
better but because we were young. The passing years have taken from us
both loved ones and vitality. The years of our early adulthood in retrospect
seem all the sweeter, and so we tend to idealize them, as Castiglione has
idealized the court at Urbino. But, he stresses, “there is no contrary without
its contrary,”36 no good without evil, no justice without injustice, no health
without sickness, no truth without falsehood, no happiness without
misfortune. We cannot escape the latter, however much we embrace the
former.
Book 2, while it purports to continue the discussion of the ideal courtier
in book 1, recasts everything in this darker light. However perfect the
courtier may seem in his own right, he depends on the favor of the prince
for his very existence.37 As Federico Fregoso, the main speaker in the first
half of book 2, explains, we can converse as if the prince and the courtier
are equals, but the reality is otherwise—one is “a lord” and the other “a
servant.”38 All the power rests with the prince, and that fact inevitably
shapes the norms of the courtier’s behavior.39
The virtues praised in book 2 are therefore carefully calculated to obtain
and retain the favor of the prince. This pragmatism cannot be acknowledged
directly, since a good courtier is never obvious in his calculation. But
Federico makes it clear where he is heading when he promises to explain
how the courtier can make the most of his good qualities “to win praise
deservedly, and a good opinion on the part of all, and favor from the prince
whom he serves.”40 Federico clings to the word “deservedly,” but, in an
autocratic world where advancement depends on the whims of the prince,
virtue and grace may not be enough. As Federico explains, “our Courtier
must be cautious in his every action and see to it that prudence attends
whatever he says or does.”41 Suddenly, the Renaissance version of the
Greek ideal begins to seem like sycophancy. Cunning and dissimulation are
necessary traits in an age of despotism.42 The virtuous circle of Aristotle
meets Machiavelli.
Federico “would have the Courtier devote all his thought and strength of
spirit to loving and almost adoring the prince he serves above all else,
devoting his every desire and habit and manner to pleasing him.”43 The
courtier must “bend himself to this,” Federico twice repeats.44 The
successful courtier must like what by nature he dislikes; he must never be
ill-humored or presumptuous or the bearer of bad news. His primary trait is
mediocritas, which means not mediocrity but balance. His qualities soften
one another so as to maintain flexibility and to accommodate the changing
moods of the prince. Aggression and ambition are concealed behind
gentleness and modesty. Youth is tempered with judiciousness, and age with
vigor. In private, he will lay aside the seriousness of daily affairs in order to
amuse his prince with pleasant conversation and to charm him with humor
and wit.
Federico has taken the courtier from merit to marketing. Aristotelian
contextualism (learning to act in the right way, in the right circumstances,
for the right reasons) receives a more calculated focus on display: “Let him
consider well what he does or says, the place where he does it, in whose
presence, its timeliness, the reason for doing it, his own age, his profession,
the end at which he aims, and the means by which he can reach it.”45 The
courtier is now concerned less with genuine excellence than with a
performance that will attract the eyes of spectators. Engage in acts of
courage, Federico advises, only when the right people are watching.
Otherwise, hold back from the fighting. Even in sport, by no means wrestle
or contend with persons of low birth at county fairs unless absolutely sure
of winning, “because it is too unseemly and too ugly a thing, and quite
without dignity, to see a gentleman defeated by a peasant.”46 Indeed, a
courtier should associate only with noble companions and should dress in a
manner to convey his station. He might, for a masquerade, adopt the attire
of a rustic shepherd to emphasize his charming simplicity, but his noble
status must never be in doubt. He may dance and sing with grace or play
tennis with skill. But, however much he prepares for such displays, it must
appear that all is done on the spur of the moment. “I would have him
dissimulate the care and effort that is required in doing anything well,”
Federico explains, “and let him appear to esteem but little this
accomplishment of his, yet by performing it excellently well, make others
esteem it highly.”47 As for matters where he doesn’t excel, Federico adds,
the courtier should avoid them or touch on them only casually and in such a
way to suggest to others that he knows more than he claims to know.
When Gaspar protests that Federico is advocating deceit, he demurs. It
is merely “circumspect dissimulation,” he insists, and then adds that, “even
if it be deceit, it is not to be censured.”48 Indeed, before we ourselves
censure Federico’s version of the courtier, we need to be honest about
contemporary strategies for gaining advancement and winning esteem. In
almost any profession—business, law, politics, teaching, art—crafting the
right impression with the right people is critical to success. A “circumspect
dissimulation” of talent sometimes works better than the real thing. And
even true talent has to be packaged and presented in a compelling way to
break through in highly competitive environments with many others vying
for favor and preferment. In social settings, the jockeying may be less
obvious but no less intense.
We don’t need Machiavelli to tell us that the reality of sixteenth-century
court life was even more ruthless than your standard faculty meeting or
Washington, DC, cocktail party. Absolute monarchs held power of life and
death over their subjects. A courtier, once entered into service, could not
easily withdraw. It was hazardous to lose the favor of the prince, and even
worse to incur his disfavor. “We must pray God,” one participant interjects,
“to grant us good masters, for, once we have them, we have to endure them
as they are.”49
Princes, no less than their modern counterparts, do not always perceive
merit. Some value flatterers. Others respond to presumptuous self-
promotion. Still others seek out those who will do their bidding regardless
of morality. To what extremes must one go to obtain and retain the good
opinion of such a prince? Is courtiership inherently corrupting?50 Such
questions are not explicitly raised or answered in book 2. But they rest just
below the surface, like dangerous reefs on which the entire enterprise might
founder. The brigata wants to explore the features of the ideal courtier, not
to call the position itself into question.
 It is not true that “the princes of our day are all corrupt and bad,”
Federico insists; “there are some who are good.”51 But that is faint praise,
indeed. For if only some are good, then many must be corrupt and bad. So
Federico cannot avoid the awkward question raised by Ludovico Pio,
“namely, whether a gentleman who serves a prince is bound to obey him in
all that he commands, even if it is something dishonorable and
disgraceful.”52 Federico quickly answers that the courtier must never do
evil, even if it appears good to his master. But that facile response simply
leads to a further challenge: how to distinguish what is really good from
what appears to be good. Federico now begs off entirely: “I do not wish to
go into that, for there would be too much to say; but let the whole question
be left to your discretion.”53 In other words, that is an issue for philosophers
to contemplate, not courtiers. Courtiers are neither philosophers nor saints,
and they must get on with their lives as best they can, making whatever
compromises they find necessary and can justify to themselves.
Not all the advice given by Federico is cynical. In a debate on the
hazards of placing too much trust in other people, Federico contends that
friendship “yields all the good that life holds for us.”54 And while he insists
that public performance is a young man’s game and that old men cannot
cantare alla viola (sing to the viola) in public without appearing ridiculous,
he adds, “let them do so in secret and simply in order to relieve their spirits
of the troubling thoughts and great vexations of which our life is full, and to
taste that something divine in music.”55 It is interesting to note that
Castiglione himself, having suffered many losses, still loved to play the
viola and sing.
But, despite these moments of grace, Federico has refashioned the
portrait painted by Canossa, or at least has added a strong element of
chiaroscuro to it. The charming sprezzatura of book 1 is replaced by the
“circumspect dissimilation” of book 2. There is no longer anything pure
about the courtier’s performance, however polished and beautiful it might
appear. But, then, life itself shares that inherent and terrible ambiguity.
Castiglione did not write a treatise; he wrote a dialogue in which the
perspectives of the various speakers sometimes harmonize and sometimes
clash with one another. That dissonance continues in book 3, where the
ideal court lady is introduced.
THE IDEAL COURT LADY (BOOK 3)

On the third night, the conversation turns away from the ideal courtier to
the ideal court lady. The Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici is the main
speaker, though there are even more interjections than usual from Gaspar,
the resident misogynist. Gaspar’s chauvinism is in part a way of teasing the
ladies and displaying his wit, but his raillery, and that of a few others, is
more barbed than usual. Women held prominent positions in every court
society, but nowhere more so than in Urbino, where the prince was infirm
and largely absent. Courtiers were already moving away from their
historical role as condottieri and into the more domestic sphere of polite
society, where the women must be served and pleased as well as the prince.
But, in Urbino, the usual hierarchy is wholly inverted in the evenings. The
duchess and her lady-in-waiting, Emilia Pia, hold sway over the courtiers.
The men may do most of the talking, but the two women control the range
of topics, select the speakers, and police the “fine manners” that set bounds
on frankness. In effect, the men are competing for the favor of the women,
as they ordinarily would for the prince, under rules set by the duchess and
Emilia. Gaspar is unusually blunt in voicing his resentment at this
emasculation. Indeed, indirect reference is made to the prince’s literal
emasculation by disease when one of the courtier’s, in praising continence,
indelicately notes that the duchess “has lived with her husband for fifteen
years like a widow.”56
The Magnifico soundly routs the misogynists in argument. His court
lady is the equal of any courtier in virtue and talent. Some qualities befit a
woman more than a man, and vice versa. She need not pursue bodily
exercise or learn to handle weapons. The courtier’s manliness is replaced in
the court lady by tenderness and sweetness. Her conversation is marked
above all by “a certain pleasing affability.”57 And beauty is more necessary
for her than for the courtier. But the virtues of the mind are similar, and
women deserve the same education as men. “I say that women can
understand all the things men can understand and that the intellect of a
woman can penetrate wherever a man’s can,”58 a proposition Shakespeare
would illustrate repeatedly in his plays. Thus, the court lady, like the
courtier, should have “knowledge of letters, of music, of painting, and know
how to dance and how to be festive.”59 Her good qualities will also balance
one another, a blending of seeming contraries such as a “quick vivacity of
spirit,” yet also “a certain gravity, tempered with wisdom and goodness.”60
The Magnifico goes beyond purely social and intellectual graces,
however, and claims that women could rule cities and command armies as
well as men do.61 This change of focus is interesting. During the first two
evenings, when describing the perfect courtier, nothing beyond the vaguest
generalities was offered about the serious business of helping the prince run
the state and fight off its enemies. But the Magnifico piles up example after
example of women whose wisdom, cunning, and courage either have
rescued a state from the defects of its male rulers or have stood up to
tyranny. Men write history, he notes; otherwise, women would play an even
more prominent role. Even so, it is beyond dispute that they “have
undertaken wars and won glorious victories, governed kingdoms with the
greatest prudence and justice, and done all that men have done.”62
The Magnifico starts with Alexandra, wife of Alexander, king of the
Jews.63 Upon his death, the people were full of rage at the dead tyrant and
threatened to kill his two children in revenge for his cruelty. Alexandra
forestalled them by having Alexander’s dead body thrown into the middle
of the town square and telling the citizens that they should take their
justified revenge on the body of the dead king but have mercy on her
children, who were wholly innocent of their father’s wrongdoing. The
crowd was so moved and appeased that it not only spared the children, but
chose them as their rulers.
The Magnifico follows with the story of Epicharis, a freed Roman slave
who suffered unspeakable tortures in silence rather than reveal a plot
against the tyrant Nero. He mentions the siege of Chios, in which the
attacking ruler promised freedom and their masters’ wives to any slaves
who would escape the city and join the attacking army. The women were so
outraged that they themselves donned armor and fought fiercely on the
walls until the besiegers were driven off. Similarly, when Cyrus routed a
Persian army in battle, so that the fighters fled toward their city, the women
met them outside the gate and so upbraided them for cowardice that they
turned and defeated the enemy.
These anecdotes, as well as others presented by the Magnifico, illustrate
Machiavellian virtù rather than the anodyne virtues of the courtier
articulated in the first two books.64 Court life may be elegant, refined, and
civilized. But that veneer cannot fully disguise the brutality necessary to
maintain it or the abuses inherent in absolute power. It would have been
impolitic to introduce such themes in the discussion of the courtier. But, by
focusing on the sometimes ruthless courage of women in historical
examples, Castiglione, through the Magnifico, can make the same point
obliquely.65 The world is a dangerous place, and in extreme circumstances
the courtier (or the court lady) must call upon Machiavellian virtù.
The Magnifico quickly steers away from such a conclusion, however,
turning back instead to the domestic sphere and a discussion of courtly love.
Yet, here, the parallels between the prince and the court lady are equally
pronounced. For the courtier must pay court to his lady in the same way as
his prince. A courtier gains favor “by loving and serving her and by being
worthy, valiant, discreet, and modest.”66 If anything, the Magnifico places
more value on the favor of the court lady than of the prince. For without
women, he insists, we find no pleasure or satisfaction, and our lives would
be devoid of all sweetness.67 In a beautiful passage, he sings the praises of
women “che detengono nel loro sguardo e parole e ogni movimento tutti
avvenenza, tutte le maniere gentili, tutte le conoscenze e tutte le grazie che
ha portato insieme—come un unico fiore composto da tutte le eccellenze
nel mondo” (who hold in their countenance and words and every movement
all comeliness, all gentle manners, all knowledge, and all the graces brought
together—like a single flower composed of all the excellences in the
world).68
The court lady, too, must behave with the greatest circumspection, like a
prince. She should not be easily persuaded that she is loved, for those who
are glib about being in love seldom are. She must be as chary of her trust as
a prince is of his. And some of her machinations are also those of the
prince. In the face of an importunate courtier, she can pretend not to
understand or take it all in jest and thus deflect requests for favors she
cannot or does not wish to grant. Most of all, before she gives any sign of
her favor, she must ensure that the courtier wishes only to serve her and to
make her wishes his own, and to find his highest happiness in such union of
desire and will.
The courtier, then, alternates between a master (the prince) and a
mistress (the court lady), to each of whom he must demonstrate his
devotion. But is there not more to being a courtier than a life of service and
subjection to the will of others? Is there not more than an endless series of
tournaments, dances, witty conversations, and even lovemaking within the
constraints imposed by “fine manners?” Signor Ottaviano Fregoso, the
brother of Federico, insists that there is, and he is charged to make good on
that promise the following night.
THE COURTIER AS PHILOSOPHER-EDUCATOR (BOOK
4)

Book 4 is intended to elevate courtly life and to avoid what Renaissance

scholar Wayne Rebhorn has aptly called “the problems of deception and
triviality” that weigh on the first three books.69 The courtier of those books
is a master of display. With his grace and his sprezzatura, he creates the
illusion of omnicompetence, of someone who will never put a foot wrong.
But to what end? To entertain and amuse, of course. And to secure his own
advancement. But, really, the display is an end in itself. That is simply what
the courtier is—a walking, talking, dancing display of perfect courtiership.
Ottaviano, for one, finds that profoundly unsatisfying. If “the Courtier were
to bring forth no other fruit than to be what he is,” he explains, “I should
not judge it right for a man to devote so much study and labor to acquiring
this perfection of Courtiership as anyone must do who wishes to acquire
it.”70 In that single sentence, the first three books are summed up and
dismissed as unworthy of a thinking, morally responsible human being.
By all accounts, however, Castiglione originally had planned to include
only the first three books. What led him, then, to add a fourth night of
conversation? His prefaces, which he wrote after the various books were
completed, contain at least a partial answer. In them, he speaks of his deep
sense of loss and longing. The court gathered at Urbino has been dispersed.
Many of its brightest lights, including the duchess, have been extinguished.
Mutability and death are the only constants.71 Castiglione, in his word
portrait, can try to recapture that lost world and rescue it from oblivion. But
if the world itself is trivial and devoted to illusion, then what is the point?
Castiglione needs to find a deeper meaning in it; he needs to explain why
that world mattered and somehow redeems “human miseries and . . . vain
hopes.”72
It is hazardous to attribute artistic decisions to personal biography, but
the death of his wife and his own religious turn, though unmentioned in the
prefaces, may well have played a part in this shift. Book 4 explores two
avenues by which courtiership might be elevated to a higher level. The first,
presented by Ottaviano, is political. The second, presented by Pietro
Bembo, is philosophical and mystical. Ultimately, neither is dispositive;
neither wholly transcends deception or triviality. But both broaden the
discussion beyond the “fine manners” that have threatened to stifle the
entire enterprise.
Ottaviano arrives late on the fourth night, after the others have given up
on him and turned to dancing. The interruption signals that something out
of the ordinary course will be discussed; and Ottaviano’s delayed arrival has
pushed the time for discussion to the late hours when, by a tradition dating
at least from Plato’s Symposium, the deepest truths will be revealed.73 It is
with some disappointment, then, that the reader realizes that Ottaviano’s
thoughts are in fact fairly pedestrian and, in a post-Machiavellian era,
strikingly naive.
Ottaviano’s central thesis is that the courtier must use his
accomplishments to win the favor and trust of the prince in order to educate
him about his responsibility to rule for the benefit of his people. If the
courtier has gained the affection and goodwill of the prince, he can dissuade
him from unjust actions and keep him on the path of virtue. He can show
the prince how much honor and profit is to be won by justice and liberality
rather than by selfish despotism. He will then fulfill his true role as a
courtier, for “it is certain that a man aims at the best end when he sees to it
that his prince is deceived by no one, listens to no flatterers or slanderers or
liars, and distinguishes good from evil, loving the one and hating the
other.”74 He can, in short, speak truth to power, and power will listen.
Erasmus presented a similar argument in his Education of a Christian
Prince. In a hereditary monarchy, he noted, the prospects for reform are
limited. There is no power to select the next prince, but that simply means
that the man who is to educate the prince must himself be selected with the
greatest care. Plato had contended that men will be governed justly only
when philosophers become kings. Erasmus was willing to settle for having
philosophers educate kings, and he offered himself as an ideal candidate.
He thought he could convince a future ruler to govern justly and
benevolently by means of a classical, liberal education and a deep
grounding in philosophy, history, and Christian thought. Erasmus’s
educational program could not have been more different from Machiavelli’s
Prince. It is ironic, therefore, that both works were written as respective
bids for employment, and both failed utterly in that regard. Each in his own
way was ready to speak truth to power, but power wasn’t interested.
 Yet Ottaviano’s courtier faces an even tougher problem than did
Erasmus. Courtiers take their princes as they find them. They don’t get to
mold them from a tender age and to build a long relationship of trust and
respect. They must stand out from the crowd of sycophants through a
dazzling array of talents that the prince will find both an ornament to his
court and grounds for his trust. A courtier must, in short, be someone like
Thomas More: an ornament to the court of Henry VIII, with his deep
learning, and a sound advisor who, by special dispensation of the king, was
allowed always to advocate for the right course of action. And where did
that get Thomas More? It got him to Tower Hill on July 6, 1535.
Sometimes, to be frank, power will not tolerate truth. Ironically,
Ottaviano—ostensibly speaking in 1507—cites “Henry, Prince of Wales,”
as a future monarch of the greatest promise, just the sort of ruler his courtier
is intended to advise and keep on the path of virtue. The murderous
example of Henry VIII is not necessarily a repudiation of Ottaviano’s
passionate plea for a courtiership that transcends flattery and complicity.
But it certainly fits better with Machiavelli’s darker view of the world. Even
Ottaviano rather plaintively admits at one point that, if he were to speak
freely to most princes, he would lose whatever favor he had with them.75 He
advocates out of hope rather than experience.76
The little group continues the debate, discussing standard Renaissance
questions initially posed by Plato and Aristotle, such as whether virtue can
be taught, whether men do wrong knowingly or through ignorance of the
good, and whether monarchy is a better form of government than a
republic. But there is, at this point in the evening, a certain pro forma
stating of respective positions without any real prospect of their resolution.
The energy has definitely gone out of Ottaviano’s attempt to raise
courtiership to a higher level through political engagement.
Pietro Bembo, then, tries a different tack, focusing on the individual
courtier and building upon the discussion of courtly love from the night
before. Here, he echoes Socrates’s speech from the Symposium about the
ladder of love.77 Love, he contends, is a longing to enjoy beauty. It initially
takes the form of a desire for physical intimacy with another individual,
particularly among the young. But such sensual desire eventually leads
either to tedium and even disgust or to an endless cycle of yearning and
anguish. It is inherently unstable and unsatisfying because it remains
focused on the body rather than the soul. External beauty is but a reflection
of internal goodness. The lover who values beauty only in the body misses
the happiness of a union of souls and inevitably suffers loss when his love is
absent.
In order “to escape the torment of this absence and to enjoy beauty
without suffering, the Courtier, aided by reason, must turn his desire
entirely away from the body and to beauty alone, contemplate it in its
simple and pure self, in so far as he is able, and in his imagination give it a
shape distinct from all matter.”78 That is quite a statement; for what does it
mean, we might ask, to give beauty “a shape” that is “distinct from all
matter?” Pietro is advocating a mystical vision of the divine light that
“holds sway over material nature” and gives all things the “gracious and
sacred beauty” that is their supreme adornment.79
Just as we can move from loving the physical beauty of an individual to
love of that person’s soul, he insists, so can we move from the beauty of the
physical world to love of the divine goodness that is at the center of all that
exists, for “beauty springs from God and is like a circle, the center of which
is goodness.”80 The lover must ascend from the particular to the universal,
from contemplation of the beauty of a single person to the beauty of all that
exists and ultimately to the source of that beauty in God. Dazzled by this
greater light, he will no longer hold in esteem what he first prized so
greatly.81 It is an inward turn, as well as an ascent, for the lover will learn to
contemplate beauty with the eyes of his mind alone. In the highest stage of
perfection, this beauty will guide his soul “from the particular intellect to
the universal intellect” and from there to “a very keen perception of
heavenly things.”82 The beauties of the everyday world will drop away like
the faintest of shadows before the light of the highest good. Pietro ends his
rapt monologue with a prayer:
Accept our souls which are offered to thee in sacrifice; burn them in that living flame which
consumes all mortal ugliness, so that, being wholly separated from the body, they may unite
with divine beauty in a perpetual and most sweet bond, and that we, being outside ourselves,
may, like true lovers, be able to become one with the beloved, and, rising above the earth, be
admitted to the banquet of angels. . . .83

Pietro falls silent, with his eyes turned toward heaven, until Emilia
shakes the hem of his robe and cautions him not to let his soul, along with
his thoughts, forsake his body. It is gentle raillery and a reminder that they
are not yet admitted to the banquet of angels but still exist very much in the
physical world. However exalted the discussion may get, it will not
fundamentally change their lives. Indeed, they are already planning the next
topic of discussion for that very evening, for when they open the windows
they see that a beautiful dawn has arisen over Mount Catria in the distance.
It was also dawn when Socrates left the drinking party at which all the
other revelers had drifted off to sleep. Socrates performed his ablutions and
then proceeded with his day. Plato was making the point that only the lover
of philosophy is truly awake to the realm of truth and goodness. Pietro
makes a similar assertion—that only one who contemplates the spiritual and
intellectual life is “wakened from deepest sleep” and opens his eyes to a
true image of heavenly things.84
Yet as dawn breaks, our courtiers and court ladies return to their
chambers to sleep. Pietro has not transformed them into Platonic
philosophers. But he has, like Ottaviano, expanded the scope of their
discourse and concerns. There is something profoundly reassuring in this
lack of transcendence. Castiglione does not promise what he cannot deliver.
But what he delivers is a growing consciousness of self and the roles one
plays in the world. The little brigata, through its evening conversations,
seeks to know itself, to live an examined life. But while that effort in self-
understanding may push the boundaries of “fine manners,” ultimately it
reaffirms those boundaries as a necessary condition of civilized discourse
and social interaction.85
Machiavelli thought that human aggression could not be suppressed or
channeled in less destructive directions. As a result, every society is
inherently unstable and dangerous.86 Thomas More, or at least his main
speaker, Hythloday, thought it possible to extirpate human aggression
through the suppression of individual freedom. Whether the result of such
suppression is utopia or the gulag continues to be debated. But Castiglione
takes us in a third, more optimistic direction. Aggression and ambition
don’t have to be endured or extirpated; they are a vital force that can be
channeled by law, by custom, and by mutual respect and affection.87
Wisdom need be neither cynical nor transcendent.
Within the confines of polite conversation, there is a place for the
idealism of Canossa, the cynicism of Federico Fregoso, the contentious
interjections of Gaspar Pallavicino, the feminist defense of the Magnifico
Giuliano de’ Medici, the earnestness of Ottaviano Fregoso, and even the
philosophical heights reached by Pietro Bembo. None of them breaks the
circle. The lasting lesson of the court at Urbino is that social discourse and a
growing level of self-consciousness can make civilization both possible and
delightful. Like a Bach fugue, beauty is born from constraint. Even in a
world ruled by tyrants and despots, there is room for grace and sprezzatura.
As Virginia Woolf would later write, “This is our triumph; this is our
consolation.”88
 Chapter 6
RABELAIS AND THE WISDOM
OF LAUGHTER

Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre,

Pour ce que rire est le propre de l’homme.1

T he second book of Gargantua and Pantagruel opens with a prologue

from its putative author, Alcofribas Nasier (an anagram of François
Rabelais). Alcofribas cites Plato’s Symposium, in which Alcibiades
compares Socrates to a statue of Silenus, companion of Dionysus—a statue
ugly on the outside but inside filled with tiny gold figurines of the gods.
Socrates was notoriously ugly, rustic in manners, and comic in bearing. But,
inside, he was a man of “superhuman understanding, miraculous virtue,
indomitable courage, unparalleled moderation, assured contentment, perfect
confidence and an unbelievable contempt for all those things for which
human beings wake, run, toil, sail and battle.”2
My books are just like that, Alcofribas insists. They may appear to be
full of crude jests and wild fictions. They may seem frivolous and ugly. But
the reader must “scrupulously weigh what is treated within.”3 Like a dog
patiently and painstakingly cracking open a marrowbone in order to savor
its contents, these books require “careful reading and frequent meditation”
in order to reveal “the highest hidden truths and the most awesome
mysteries touching upon our religion as well as upon matters of state and
family life.”4
Having seduced the credible reader with this plea for deeper
understanding—a reader he has just compared to a dog—Alcofribas
immediately makes fun of him. You don’t really think Homer had in mind
all the allegories that have been attributed to him by overly enthusiastic
interpreters, he asks, or that Ovid was anticipating the Gospels in his
Metamorphoses, as some idiots have tried to prove? Of course not,
Alcofribas insists, and so too here: “I was no more thinking of such things
when I wrote them than you were.”5 My books, he claims, smell more of
wine than of midnight oil. That is, they are the product of inspiration, not
scholarly toil. Make of them what you will and “enjoy yourselves . . .
happily reading what follows for your bodily comfort and the good of your
loins.”6
The prologue is of a piece with the work itself. Rabelais’s books really
do contain treasures of wisdom about religion, matters of state, and family
life, among other topics. And his principal character, Pantagruel, does
develop over time the virtues of a Socrates. But there is no esoteric message
hidden beneath a comic exterior. The serious and the comical are both on
the surface, inextricably intertwined with each other. The message, to the
extent one exists, is the intermingling of the serious and the comical, the
lofty and the grotesque, for such is the human condition.7 Thus, Rabelais
often seems at his most comical when he is most serious, and the reader—
like Gargantua on the death of his wife, Badebec, and birth of his son,
Pantagruel—does not know whether to weep out of grief or to laugh out of
joy. Gargantua does both. But the laughter ultimately dominates, for
laughter is le propre (in the sense both of what is natural and what is best)
for man.8
Rabelais—a monk turned doctor, turned author, who was ultimately
condemned by the church—wrote his books between the initial phases of
the Reformation in the 1520s and the French Wars of Religion, which began
in 1562, a decade after his death. He was heavily influenced by Erasmus’s
writings on the value of a humanist education, the need for religious reform,
and the moral imperatives of statecraft. Rabelais’s succession of giants—
Grandgousier, Gargantua, and Pantagruel—grow through multiple volumes
from cardboard cutouts into embodiments of classical and Christian wisdom
on these issues.
Rabelais was a Neoplatonist in the manner of the great Christian
philosopher of the Renaissance Marsilio Ficino. Ficino believed in a
hierarchy of being, guided by a divine intelligence. Man is close to God in
that hierarchy by virtue of his immortal soul. Thus, Ficino stressed the
centrality of religion to human experience.
But Rabelais was even more strongly influenced by the comic works of
Erasmus, his Colloquies and his Praise of Folly, as well as by their shared
love of the Greek satirist Lucian. Despite his Christian Neoplatonism,
Rabelais was not one to ignore the material and materialistic side of human
experience. As a doctor and the father of three illegitimate children, he
understood that man’s pressing need for food, drink, and sex is also central
to his humanity. If we ignore those needs, we attain no self-knowledge.
And, if we suppress them, we distort our own natures. Rabelais chose
instead to celebrate the body. He wanted to embrace the world in all its
variety, free from religious and doctrinal restrictions. He also realized, of
course, that bodily functions are an endless source for jokes and humor.
Rabelais delights in pulling back the curtain on humankind at its most
private business; his comedy is broad and frequently crude, sometimes
hilariously and sometimes, for the modern reader, uncomfortably so.
“Nothing is sacred and no one is spared,” as one scholar notes.9 Or perhaps,
more accurately, nothing is either too sacred or too profane for laughter and
no one too lofty or too lowly to be the butt of fun.
Thus, the spiritual and the material are uniquely conjoined in Rabelais’s
work. He can be high-minded and in the gutter in the same sentence. The
health of the spirit and the health of the body are both to be cherished and
enjoyed, for they are both part of the human condition. Life is not an illness
from which we hope to be cured, as many Neoplatonists taught. Life is a
gift to be savored and relished in all its manifold and glorious absurdity. A
rich and full life should acknowledge no limits, hence our term Rabelaisian,
ordinarily (if misleadingly) applied only to orgies of food, drink, and sex,
but properly extended to learning and friendship as well. Above all,
Rabelais thought that life should be full of laughter and joy, triumphing
over tears and grief. Not even death can block the endless regenerative
power of life. Rabelais, for all his celebration of excess, strikes a
remarkable balance between the bestial and the divine. As the English
novelist and critic John Cowper Powys concluded, “Rabelais is the sanest
of all the great writers, perhaps the only sane one.”10

LIFE
François Rabelais was born in Chinon, a town in the Loire Valley that
played an often pivotal role in the Hundred Years’ War between France and
England, though it is known today mostly for its medieval castle and its
Cabernet Franc wine. Rabelais likely was born in 1483, the same year as
Martin Luther. His father, Antoine, was a prominent lawyer and modest
landowner.
Rabelais and his two brothers must have received a good education,
though little is known of the specifics. His school friends, Jean and
Guillaume du Bellay and Geoffroy d’Estissac, achieved considerable
prominence—Jean and Geoffroy as bishops, and Guillaume as a statesman
—and they would prove invaluable patrons in his later life.
Rabelais studied law at some point before joining the Franciscan
monastery in Fontenay-le-Comte in 1510 or 1511. It was an odd choice for
one who—despite his protestations—burned a great deal of midnight oil
studying Latin and Greek and eventually Hebrew so that he could read the
Bible and the classics in their original languages. The Franciscans—a
mendicant order founded by Francis of Assisi—were indifferent if not
actively hostile to education. They favored the spirit and were suspicious of
intellect as inclined to lead one astray.11
While Rabelais toiled in the monastery, François I became king of
France in 1515. He continued the “Italian Wars” of his predecessors, even
capturing and controlling Milan for a time. But the cultural conquest ran the
other way, with ideas from the Italian Renaissance pouring into France,
starting, of course, with Petrarch and continuing through the three-year
residence of Leonardo da Vinci at the court of François I in Amboise.
François was an active patron of Renaissance artists and writers. It is said
that the king himself cradled Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died.
Horace’s words about Greece and Rome could readily be applied to Italy
and France: “Captive Greece took its Roman captor captive, / Invading
uncouth Latium with its arts.”12 Without this prolonged invasion of Italian
arts and letters into France, neither Rabelais nor Montaigne—the twin
crowns of the French Renaissance—would have been possible.
Yet it was a northerner, Erasmus, who exercised the most direct
influence on Rabelais. In a famous letter, Rabelais wrote to Erasmus:
“Whatever I am and am worth, I have received from you alone.”13 In
religion, Rabelais advocated the same significant reforms urged by
Erasmus. His sympathies lay with a group known in France as the
Evangelicals, who believed in the primacy of the scriptures, which should
be read whenever possible in their original languages but otherwise in
accurate vernacular translations. The Evangelicals rejected the Latin
(Vulgate) Bible and the authority of the Catholic Church in matters of
biblical interpretation. Each man and woman, they urged, should read and
meditate directly upon the word of God without the mediation of clerics.
Rabelais and the Evangelicals were also hostile to the sale of
indulgences, monasticism, the worship of saints and their relics, and the
making of pilgrimages to the shrines of saints. They believed only in the
sacraments mentioned in the Gospels (baptism and the Eucharist) and
discarded the other five, including confession, the ordination of priests, and
even matrimony, as anything other than a secular ceremony of no religious
significance (the last quite convenient for the father of three illegitimate
children).14 They were also antipapists, particularly insofar as the pope
claimed divine authority to dictate specific articles of faith. The
Evangelicals believed in the goodness and power of God, the obligations of
charity and love, and very little else. They wholly rejected the vast and, in
their view, arid constructions of medieval scholastic theology. They also
adamantly rejected the use of force in matters of religion, something that set
them apart from the Catholic Church and its often equally authoritarian
opponents.
Rabelais, like Erasmus, nevertheless remained a Catholic. In particular,
he rejected Luther’s belief that man lacks free will and can play no part in
his own salvation, which depends solely on the grace of God. Yet he was
constantly at war with the conservative theology faculty of the University of
Paris at the Sorbonne, which harshly condemned his books for departing
from the faculty’s approved orthodoxy. It was a time of rapidly growing
religious intolerance in which people, including friends of Rabelais, were
hanged, burned, or both for alleged heresies. Rabelais, like Erasmus, was
fortunate to escape such a fate.
In 1523, the Sorbonne banned the study of Greek in France precisely so
that citizens could not read the New Testament in the original language.
Rabelais’s library of Greek books was temporarily seized. In 1524, he was
allowed by papal dispensation to transfer, along with his books, from the
Franciscan to the Benedictine order, which was less rigid and encouraged
scholarship. Eventually, however, Rabelais left monastic life altogether. He
studied medicine at Paris and Montpellier from approximately 1526 to
1530. The pope gave his retroactive approval to this unusual arrangement in
1536, permitting Rabelais both to practice medicine and to remain a
nominal member of the Benedictine order. The patronage of the du Bellay
family and of Bishop Geoffroy d’Estissac was critical in obtaining both
these dispensations.
While he was studying in Paris, Rabelais fathered two children,
François and Junie, likely by the same woman. A third child, Theodule, was
born in 1535, the same year Rabelais’s father died. But Theodule died in
infancy, and Rabelais took the loss very hard. The other two children were
eventually legitimized by the pope in 1540.
Rabelais was appointed as physician at the Hôtel-Dieu in Lyons in
1530. He began to lecture and translate Greek medical texts. He published
his first book, Pantagruel, in 1532. The prequel, Gargantua, followed two
years later. Although he was accomplished in Latin and an admirer of
Erasmus, Rabelais chose to write in everyday French, though always with a
heavy sprinkling of neologisms derived from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. His
writings, and those of Montaigne, were critical in the development of
modern French prose.
Rabelais’s first two books were censured by the faculty of theology at
the Sorbonne. This is unsurprising, since Rabelais ridicules the Sorbonne,
its logic-chopping scholastic theology, and its outmoded gothic education in
both books. Aside from the Sorbonne’s condemnation, however, there was
no serious short-term consequence to Rabelais’s evangelical and humanistic
challenge to conservative thought. It helped that the king himself, François
I, was a fan.
François I was, of course, a Catholic king and aspired (unsuccessfully)
to be crowned as Holy Roman emperor, losing out to Charles V of Spain in
1519 and eventually spending a year as the latter’s prisoner after the ill-
fated battle of Pavia in 1525, in which the French were routed by the
Spaniards in Italy. But François was sympathetic to moderate religious
views. His sister, Marguerite of Navarre, to whom Rabelais dedicated his
Third Book of Pantagruel, was a pronounced Evangelical. Such sympathies
almost cost François his life and his crown at the hand of hard-line Catholic
reactionaries. Yet he still read Rabelais—or, rather, had Rabelais read to
him by the bishop of Macon—with the greatest enjoyment. As M. A.
Screech remarks in his exhaustive study of Rabelais, “It is a nice conceit to
imagine Rabelais’s Chronicles read aloud to his king by a bishop.”15
 That easy tolerance began to change after the so-called Affair of the
Placards on the night of October 17, 1534, when Huguenot posters
attacking papal authority and the Mass appeared in Paris and several other
French cities. One such poster was even affixed to the bedchamber door of
the king in Amboise. The posters were apparently inspired by the views of
the Protestant reformer Ulrich Zwingli, whose heresies included rejecting
transubstantiation, the literal transformation of the bread of the Eucharist
into the body of Christ during communion. From that time forward,
François I began to align himself more and more with conservative
orthodoxy and to remove his protection from Protestant reformers. It was
also in 1534 that Thomas More was confined to the Tower of London; that
Luther finished his German translation of the Bible; and that the Society of
Jesus, known commonly as the Jesuits, was founded by Ignatius of Loyola
as a vanguard of the Counter-Reformation, though not formally approved
by Pope Paul III until 1540.
Rabelais waited twelve years before publishing another book. He taught
and practiced medicine, ministered to plague victims, and traveled several
times to Rome and other parts of Italy, remaining there for extended periods
as part of the entourage first of Jean and, later, of Guillaume du Bellay.
When Rabelais published the Third Book of Pantagruel in 1546, he had the
king’s express permission do so. He published the book under his own
name. But neither the king’s blessing nor the royal dedication to Marguerite
of Navarre saved the book from immediate and harsh condemnation by the
increasingly reactionary Sorbonne, and Rabelais found it prudent to leave
the country, settling first in Metz, in what is now northeast France, and later
traveling again to Rome.
In 1547, François I died, and his son Henri II succeeded to the throne.
Through the intercession of another patron, Cardinal de Châtillon, Henri II
granted Rabelais a royal privilege to reprint his earlier books, providing him
with a degree of copyright protection. Thus emboldened, Rabelais revised
the earlier books and published a Fourth Book of Pantagruel in 1552.
Despite the royal privilege, the book was promptly condemned by the Paris
Parliament at the behest of the Sorbonne. But Rabelais, who had less than a
year to live in any event, was unmolested, despite widespread rumors that
he had been imprisoned.
In 1553, Rabelais resigned two benefices at Meudon and Saint-
Christophe-du-Jambet that he had obtained in 1551 with the help of
Cardinal de Châtillon. He died in early April and was buried in the
cemetery of Saint Paul’s Church in Paris. In 1562, the Council of Trent
listed Rabelais among “heretics of the first class.” A supposed Fifth Book
was published under his name in 1564, though how much, if any, of it was
actually written by Rabelais is a matter of scholarly dispute. Rabelais’s vast
reputation rests on the four books published during his lifetime.

PANTAGRUEL

Rabelais did not invent his family of giants. He was preceded by a popular
chapbook (an inexpensive, illustrated volume—the Renaissance equivalent
of a penny dreadful) called The Great and Inestimable Chronicles of the
Great and Enormous Giant Gargantua. There of course had always been
folktales of giants, dating back to Goliath in the Bible, the titans of Greek
mythology, and the Cyclops of Homer’s Odyssey. But the giants of the
Gargantua Chronicles were comic rather than frightening figures, and, as
Rabelais’s anagram author notes in the prologue to Pantagruel, “the printers
have already sold more of them in two months than bibles will be bought in
nine years.”16 Scholars once speculated that Rabelais himself was their
anonymous author, but most reject that view today. Rabelais seems simply
to have capitalized on the popularity of the chronicles and, in the process,
transformed them in ways that likely surprised even Rabelais himself.
Rabelais’s Horrifying and Dreadful Deeds and Prowesses of the Most
Famous Pantagruel, King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant
Gargantua, was published in 1532. It, too, was immediately popular. As
noted, Rabelais chose to write in the French vernacular, which restricted the
book’s initial circulation to French speakers but, among those, made it
accessible to a much broader cross section than the community of scholars
and clergymen who still knew Latin. The book was read by or to wide
audiences. Even today, Pantagruel is the most accessible of Rabelais’s four
volumes. Despite its episodic structure, the narrative is coherent, and
modern readers will find it funny even without understanding the numerous
references to scripture, to Latin and Greek works, to contemporary political
events and religious controversies, and to the entire gamut of Renaissance
learning that his books increasingly incorporated. Nothing kills a joke more
quickly than an explanatory footnote.
 Pantagruel opens, as tales of heroes generally do, with a lengthy
genealogy. It begins with Chalbroth and proceeds through fifty-nine biblical
“begats” before it reaches Pantagruel, son of Gargantua and grandson of
Grandgousier. One of these early giant ancestors, Hurtaly, lived through the
great flood, and the narrator, eager to establish the credibility of his account,
explains how it is that Hurtaly survived in addition to Noah and the handful
of others in the ark. Hurtaly was not in the ark, Alcofribas admits. He was
too big. Instead, he sat astride it, like a child on a hobbyhorse, with his legs
dangling on either side. And a good thing he did, because without Hurtaly
propelling the boat with his legs and using his foot as a rudder, the boat
would surely have foundered. Those inside, recognizing the help he
provided, sent up food to him through a funnel.
This opening chapter sets the tone for what follows. The author makes
deliberate fun of biblical/heroic genealogies and the scriptural account of
Noah’s ark. He offers a deadpan recital of wholly absurd events. In his
hands, the ridiculous will become mundane and the mundane ridiculous.
Small wonder that conservative reactionaries hated the book and that the
general populace loved it. As the Soviet scholar Mikhail Bakhtin pointed
out in a highly influential study, Rabelais capitalizes on the “culture of folk
carnival humor,” in which all that is official and somber—particularly
ecclesiastical dogmatism and rigid social hierarchy—is turned upside down
and transformed by laughter.17 The only law of the carnival is joyous
freedom, which mocks pomposity and celebrates the abundance of earthly
existence. Rabelais’s first two books are just such carnival feasts.
And yet, that is not to say that Rabelais is not serious. As we shall see,
even in Pantagruel, he writes passionately on the subject of humanist
education, the limitations of language, and the proper mode of prayer. Over
several volumes, Pantagruel himself will become a model of the Christian-
Stoic sage and ideal ruler. But the seriousness is never narrow-minded,
authoritarian, or dogmatic; it is always broad enough to embrace humor and
to accommodate doubt. The laughter crowns rather than undercuts the
serious. Bakhtin explains that, in contrast to the modern viewpoint
according to which “that which is important and essential cannot be
comical,”
the Renaissance conception of laughter can be roughly described as follows: Laughter has a
deep philosophical meaning, it is one of the essential forms of the truth concerning the world
as a whole, concerning history and man; it is a peculiar point of view relative to the world; the
 world is seen anew, no less (and perhaps more) profoundly than when seen from the serious
standpoint. Therefore, laughter is just as admissible in great literature, posing universal
problems, as seriousness. Certain essential aspects of the world are accessible only to
laughter.18

We saw such profound, life-embracing laughter in the plays of

Aristophanes, in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and
Erasmus’s Praise of Folly. We will see it again in Cervantes’s Don Quixote
and the comedies of Shakespeare before it largely dissolves into satire and
domestic comedy during the rational, enlightened, neoclassical eighteenth
century. It will rise again in James Joyce’s Ulysses. But Rabelais was the
apotheosis of philosophical laughter.
After these genealogical preliminaries, Rabelais begins his first book by
intertwining death and birth. That remains his theme throughout the four
volumes. In keeping with the carnival atmosphere, images of destruction,
dissolution, and decay are always countered with those of fertility,
generation, and renewal. Badebec dies giving birth to the enormous
Pantagruel. Gargantua is full of miserable doubt: should he weep for his lost
wife or laugh out of joy for his son? He notes that he has good dialectical
arguments for both sides. On the one hand, he reproaches God for
Badebec’s death, for leaving him alone, and for not taking him in her place.
On the other, he praises God for giving him a son so big and fair, so happy,
so laughing. But the pro et contra of scholastic debate, he knows, is useless
and never leads to resolution or any form of wisdom. Our reactions to the
contradictory unity of life and death cannot be worked out syllogistically.
Having swept away the whole of medieval scholasticism, Gargantua affirms
life without ignoring, or blaming God for, its pain. He simply cannot help
himself because of his abundance of vital spirits and love for his son. It has
always been thus. It will always be thus. No quantity of tears will break this
cycle. He composes an epitaph for Badebec’s tomb noting her virtues and
concluding, “She died on the day death came: That is all.”19 Then he
embraces his newborn child, as well as an array of other women.
Like all legendary heroes, Pantagruel performs remarkable feats while
still in his cradle. These feats are actually just a function of his enormous
size and even more enormous appetite, but, like all good fathers, Gargantua
finds them remarkable. Pantagruel’s education, mimicking Rabelais’s own,
is both eclectic and peripatetic. Gargantua’s kingdom is known as Utopia—
a somewhat satirical tribute to Thomas More and a nod to political,
educational, and religious reform—but the first two books are clearly set in
Rabelais’s own France.
Pantagruel goes to Montpellier to study medicine but finds it too
tedious. Besides, the physicians stink of enemas. After being drawn away
by his tutor from Avignon (too many loose women) and Angers (the
plague), he settles for a time to read law, first in Bourges and then in
Orléans. He loves his Roman law books, which seemed to him “like a
beautiful golden robe, triumphant and wondrously precious, which had been
hemmed with shit.”20 That is, he finds intolerable the medieval glosses that
befoul the pure classical texts.
Pantagruel learns to play bowls and royal tennis and to carouse with his
fellow students. But he does not tax his brain by overmuch studying lest it
weaken his sight, especially after seeing one fellow with “scarcely more
learning than he could lug,” who made up for it by being very good at
tennis and dancing and thus received his academic hood.21 When Pantagruel
arrives in Paris, the state of education is, if anything, worse. He finds those
who ape learning by so liberally sprinkling their French with bastardized
Latin that they are all but incomprehensible. He visits the library of the
Abbey of Saint-Victor, famous for its collection of medieval books of
scholastic philosophy and theology. Rabelais pillories the library
mercilessly with a five-page listing that includes the following titles:
The Apparition of Saint Geltrude to a Nun of Poissy during her Child-birth;
On the Art of Discreetly Farting in Company;
Nine Enneads on Profits to be Milked from Indulgences;
The Comforts of the Monastic Life;
The Shackles of the Religious Life;
The Manacles of Devotion;
On the Deposability of a Pope by the Church.22

It is clear from the list and from the descriptions of Pantagruel’s

education to date, that Rabelais saw little virtue in medieval scholasticism
and much to reform in the current church. His own program for reform—
passionately advocated but suitably exaggerated for comic effect—is set
forth in a letter from Gargantua to his son.
Gargantua makes three points in the letter: one dynastic, one humanist,
and one evangelical. All three owe their debt to Erasmus. First, Gargantua
extols God’s blessing in allowing men and women—despite the sin of
Adam and Eve—to obtain a species of immortality through their lineal
descendants: “what was lost to the parents remains in their children and
what perished in the children remains in the grandchildren.”23 Thus, life will
overcome death until the final judgment, when all generation and corruption
will cease. This line of succession imposes on parents, particularly rulers,
an obligation to see their children “fully perfected in virtue, honor and
wisdom,”24 an injunction earlier laid down by Erasmus in his Education of a
Christian Prince. One of the most important tasks of the king is to produce
a suitable heir, a basic necessity that—as Mark Hansen demonstrates in his
remarkable and fascinating book, The Royal Facts of Life: Biology and
Politics in Sixteenth-Century Europe—proved beyond the power of most of
the royal houses, leading to war and chaos.
Second, Gargantua urges Pantagruel to take advantage of the new
humanist learning that was unavailable in Gargantua’s own youth:
The times were still dark, redolent of the disaster and calamity of the Goths, who had brought
all sound learning to destruction; but, by the goodness of God, light and dignity have been
restored to literature during my lifetime: and I can see such an improvement that I would
hardly be classed nowadays among the first form of little grammar-schoolboys, I who (not
wrongly) was reputed the most learned of my century as a young man.25

Gargantua’s thirst for knowledge and appetite for learning are nothing
short of gargantuan. Pantagruel must acquire a perfect command of Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew, as well as Chaldean and Arabic. He must mold his
Greek style after Plato and his Latin after Cicero. “Let there be no history
which you do not hold ready in memory,” Gargantua continues.26 Master
geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy, but leave astrology and
scholastic debate alone as “abuses and vanities.”27 In a rush of enthusiasm,
Gargantua enjoins Pantagruel to apply himself with curiosity to all natural
phenomena: “let there be no sea, river or stream the fishes of which you do
not know. Know all the birds of the air, all the trees, bushes and shrubs of
the forests, all the herbs in the soil, all the metals hidden deep in the womb
of the Earth, the precious stones of all the Orient and the South: let none
remain unknown to you.”28 Study also the texts of civil law and the ancient
medical writers, “and by frequent dissections acquire a perfect knowledge
of that other world which is Man.”29
“In short,” Gargantua concludes, “let me see you an abyss of
erudition.”30 It is a course of study suitable for a giant or a new Aristotle.
Yet it is the course of study that Rabelais himself largely followed, and he
incorporated as much of it in his books as he could. Rabelais’s excitement
at the vast horizons of humanist learning available to his generation is
palpable. It is the spirit of the Renaissance itself.
Yet Rabelais does not forget religion. His humanism is secular and freed
from the restraints of religious dogmatism, but his faith is unswerving. That
is the third point of Gargantua’s great letter. Knowledge without conscience,
he writes, is but the ruin of the soul. Thus, Pantagruel should love and serve
God, place all his hopes in him, and “by faith informed with charity,” live a
life conjoined with God and never cut off from him by sin.31 That faith must
be “informed with charity” is an important emendation of Luther, who
thought faith alone was required and that sinful man could not hope to win
God’s grace through good works. Rabelais wanted man to meet God more
than halfway. It is the only doctrinal item on which Rabelais insists. He
otherwise shows his evangelical leanings by urging Pantagruel to study the
scriptures—the Gospels and Epistles in Greek and the Old Testament in
Hebrew—for several hours each day.
Rabelais refined and expanded upon his three principles but never
swerved from the basic outline established in Gargantua’s letter to his son.
Pantagruel, struck to the heart by his father’s advice, studies with renewed
dedication, and “his mind was so tireless and keen among his books that it
was like a flame among the heather.”32 He vows to preach the Gospel purely
and simply without the doctrinal accretions imposed upon it by “a load of
bacon-pappers and false prophets.”33 Most important of all, he becomes a
wise and benevolent king who seeks peace and prosperity for his people.
Once Pantagruel’s education is complete, however, the focus of the
book shifts to a new character named Panurge. Panurge is a classic trickster.
He is cunning, boastful, amoral, and linguistically facile. When Pantagruel
first encounters him, Panurge has recently escaped from Turkish captivity
and is battered and starving. But Panurge perversely asks for help in
thirteen separate languages (three of them wholly invented) before finally
making his needs known in his native French. He is the embodiment of the
Shrovetide (i.e., pre-Lent) carnival spirit, with his constant pranks, his
overflowing energy, and his self-proclaimed sexual and martial prowess. He
exists to make Pantagruel, and Rabelais’s audience, laugh. The modern
reader must judge for herself whether his antics are still funny.
One Panurge episode warrants special mention, however, both because
even the modern reader—in fact, especially the modern reader—will find it
genuinely funny and, separately, because it connects with Renaissance
concerns about the limitations of language in communicating matters of the
greatest importance. Pantagruel becomes famous for his erudition on all
manner of subjects after he posts, at the crossroads of Paris, 9,764 theses
dealing with the greatest controversies in all the disciplines. He is even
called upon to resolve a legal dispute so obscure and so buried in pleadings
and cross pleadings that no one can understand it. He dismisses the
mountains of paper as “nothing but subversions of justice and ways of
prolonging the process,”34 which shows that the legal system has not
changed much in over four hundred years. After hearing directly from the
incoherent parties, Pantagruel renders a judgment that satisfies both sides
and leaves the assembled counselors and doctors of law in a rapture of
amazement.
Pantagruel’s reputation for wisdom attracts from England a great
scholar named Thaumaste, who searches out Pantagruel to discuss certain
texts of philosophy, magic, alchemy, and the Kabbalah (ancient Jewish,
mystical interpretations of the Bible) about which Thaumaste is in doubt.
But Thaumaste does not want to debate pro et contra as “the scoundrels” at
the Sorbonne do, because such scholastic debates are not a search for truth
but a pointless matching of thesis and antithesis. Nor does he want to
proceed by rhetorical declamation, which is merely a means of showing off.
“I want to dispute by signs alone with no talking,” Thaumaste insists, “for
the matters are so arduous that no words of Man would be adequate to settle
them to my satisfaction.”35
Renaissance thinkers were fascinated by the distinction between
conventional signs (assigned their meaning by custom) and natural signs
(which conveyed their inherent meaning). In particular, scholars sought
biblical sanction for certain esoteric signs that could convey mystical
meanings that eluded mere words. Thaumaste is such a scholar, and
Rabelais’s portrayal of him is sympathetic. But, as always, Rabelais does
not shrink from finding comedy even in what he admires. Panurge presents
himself as Pantagruel’s disciple and offers to debate Thaumaste. But
whereas the earnest Thaumaste employs signs from the esoteric tradition,
Panurge responds with a series of obscene and vulgar gestures, such as
forming a circle of his index finger and thumb and repeatedly thrusting into
it the index finger of the other hand, or making absurd faces by pulling his
mouth apart with his fingers and his eyelids down with his thumbs.
Thaumaste, like the doctors of law after Pantagruel’s judgment, is utterly
vanquished. He extols Pantagruel’s virtue before the assembled company:
You have seen how one sole disciple of his has satisfied me, telling me more than I ever asked
for, and has in addition both revealed and solved for me other incalculable doubts. In that way
he has, I can assure you, broached for me the true well and abyss of the encyclopedia of
erudition—of such a sort that I, indeed, never thought I could find any man who knew merely
the first elements of it—namely when we disputed by signs without uttering one word, nay,
half a word.36

Thaumaste promises to write a treatise documenting and explaining the

entire exchange—itself a comical notion since the meaning of the signs is
supposed to lie beyond words—and Pantagruel takes him off to dinner
where they drink “guts to the ground” until they are slurring, a fitting end to
a trial of the limits of language for conveying the profoundest truths.37 The
Thaumaste episode—with its charitable humor and comic wisdom—is
Rabelais at his best.
Pantagruel departs Paris when he learns that Utopia has been invaded by
the neighboring Dipsodes. A similar incident is developed more fully in
Gargantua, and we will deal with issues of war and peace in discussing that
book. But one particularly famous episode warrants mention because it
perfectly illustrates Rabelais’s genius for making the familiar seem
grotesque and the grotesque familiar. The episode is known as “The World
in Pantagruel’s Mouth” after the essay of that title in Erich Auerbach’s
Mimesis. Pantagruel is of course a giant. But the reader—and seemingly
Alcofribas—often forgets that fact as Pantagruel studies medicine, meets
with doctors of law, and entertains visiting scholars. Yet his giant stature is
always available for comic exaggeration. Thus, Pantagruel, given a diuretic
by Panurge, pisses so copiously that he drowns the enemy camp, and their
king escapes only by being carried away on the shoulders of his own giants.
Pantagruel then—after a perfectly serious evangelical prayer commending
himself to God—kills the largest of those giants, Loup Garou, in single
combat, and uses his body to batter the others. It is a mock-heroic epic of
gross proportions.
Pantagruel then decides to invade the land of the Dipsodes with his
army to put an end to their aggression. But they are confronted with a
deluge of rain. Pantagruel, of course, can see above the clouds. He realizes
that it is only a passing shower and, gathering his army at close quarters,
puts out his tongue—“only half-way”—to shelter them from the downpour.
Alcofribas, who interjects himself into the narrative, finds it too close
packed under Pantagruel’s tongue. “I therefore clambered up as well as I
could,” he explains, “and journeyed for a good two leagues over his tongue
until I entered his mouth.”38 There he finds an entire land, bearing a distinct
resemblance to France, with mountains, wide meadows, great forests, and
spacious cities. He meets peasants planting cabbages or trapping pigeons to
be sold at market. Alcofribas considers it a new world, but the peasants
insist it is certainly not new, though they have heard rumors of “some new-
found earth outside, with a sun and a moon, and full of all sorts of fine
things.”39 Alcofribas enjoys himself so much—despite a plague caused
when Pantagruel consumes too much garlic sauce—that he stays there for
four months. When he finally climbs out, passing through Pantagruel’s
beard to his shoulder and then sliding to the ground, the land of the
Dipsodes has been conquered and peace restored. Pantagruel asks
Alcofribas how he survived there, and Alcofribas explains that he “exacted
a toll on the most delicate morsels that passed through your lips.” “But
where did you shit?” Pantagruel asks. “In your gorge, my Lord,” is the
answer, which causes Pantagruel the greatest merriment.40
As Auerbach explains, “everything goes with everything” in Rabelais.41
The natural and the fantastic, the familiar and the grotesque, the comical
and the serious, all flow seamlessly together; coarse jokes are conjoined
with great erudition, obscene stories with philosophical insight, adolescent
pranks with spiritual elevation. Man—with his bodily functions and
physical dissolution—is comical in comparison with his ideals, but the
ideals can be held no less deeply for all that. A good Pantagruelist, as
Rabelais notes, lives “in peace, joy and health, always enjoying good
cheer,”42 yet nonetheless fixes his thoughts on God and, “by faith informed
with charity,” is never to be cut off from him.

GARGANTUA

Gargantua was published in 1534, a mere two years after Pantagruel,

which is a tribute both to the popularity of the first book and to its author’s
productivity. With this prequel—for although Pantagruel was written first,
Gargantua obviously precedes his son Pantagruel—Rabelais established the
first blockbuster franchise. The next two installments were called, in
essence, Pantagruel III and Pantagruel IV; there was even a fifth, largely
ghostwritten volume that appeared ten years after the author’s death.
Gargantua has the same basic plot as Pantagruel. We learn about the
giant’s childhood and education; a secondary character, or sidekick, is
introduced for comic relief and to propel the plot; and the giant ultimately
takes his rightful place as a good Christian king and defender of his people.
Both books are even located for the most part in the same area near Chinon
where Rabelais was born, and they share the same frank treatment of those
basic bodily functions that connect the Platonic spirit with the world in a
constant cycle of regeneration and decay: eating, drinking, farting,
defecating, urinating, expectorating, and copulating, to name a few. The
Florentine Neoplatonism derived from Marsilio Ficino and carried over into
Castiglione’s Courtier still wallows happily in the muck of the family farm
at La Devinière. Rabelais will not let the reader forget that man—to his joy
and sorrow—shares more with the beasts than with the angels.
Despite the parallels in subject matter, the treatment is sufficiently
different in each volume to retain the reader’s interest. Rabelais espouses a
more direct humanistic and evangelical message in Gargantua, and sharply
satirizes the Sorbonne and monasticism. That sense of intellectual and
satirical freedom would change in late 1534 when the Affair of the Placards
led to a conservative backlash and a re-ascendant Sorbonne. It would be
twelve years before Rabelais—busy in any event with his medical career
and extensive travels in the entourages of the du Bellays and Geoffroy
d’Estissac—felt comfortable publishing another volume; even then, the tone
of the work would change significantly from the innocent, carnivalesque
humor of the first two.
We will skip over Gargantua’s childhood—in which he demonstrates his
remarkable abilities in a search for the perfect ass wipe—as well as his
initial “gothic” education, which leaves him ignorant, dirty, lazy, and
boorish. Ultimately, as outlined in chapters 21 and 22, Gargantua casts off
the “Sorbonagres” and “Sorbonists” and receives a humanist education fit
for a Renaissance prince or even a courtier from Urbino. We will also skip
the delightful incident in which he takes the great bells from the Cathedral
of Notre-Dame in Paris and hangs them around the neck of his mule. We
will limit ourselves instead to discussing two episodes: the Picrocholine war
and the founding of the Abbey of Thélème, both of which are set in or near
La Devinière.
 The Picrocholine war occupies the bulk of the book, from chapter 23
through chapter 49. It starts innocently enough. Local shepherds are
guarding the vines to prevent starlings from eating the grapes when a group
of bakers from a nearby town pass by with cartloads of freshly baked
fouaces (flat cakes). Since there is no better breakfast than fresh fouaces
and grapes, the shepherds politely ask to buy some of the fouaces at the
market price, but the bakers rudely decline. A scuffle ensues, and the
shepherds, along with some nearby peasant farmers, thrash the bakers and
help themselves to a few dozen fouaces for which they pay the going rate.
The shepherds and their shepherdesses then enjoy a bucolic breakfast,
while the bakers repair to the neighboring capital to complain to their king,
Picrochole. Picrochole (whose name means “bitter bile”) flies into a rage,
launches a surprise attack on the shepherds, and lays waste the surrounding
area. His disorganized troops even attack the vines of the nearby abbey at
Seuilly. The monks huddle in the chapter house and offer up utterly useless
prayers for relief; all but one, that is—Frère Jean—who is “young, gallant,
lively, lusty, adroit, bold, daring, resolute, tall, slim, loud-mouthed,
endowed with an ample nose, a galloper through of matins, an unbridler of
masses: in short, a true monk if ever there was one since the world first
monked-about.”43 Frère Jean casts off his habit, grabs a cross, and rushes to
the defense of the grapes, crying out: “Harken to me, Gentlemen: He who
loves wine, by God’s body let him follow me! For bluntly, may Saint
Anthony’s fire burn me if any of those taste the wine who never succoured
the vine. Guts of God! It’s church property!”44 Frère Jean lays about so
lustily with the shaft of the cross that he kills or scatters the attackers. Some
of the wounded are confessed by the other monks before Frère Jean
dispatches them straight to paradise.
Grandgousier does his best to calm the enraged Picrochole. As he
explains in a letter to his son, Gargantua, “My intention is not to provoke
but appease; not to attack but defend; not to make conquests but to protect
my faithful subjects as well as my hereditary lands.”45 He sends Picrochole
five cartloads of fouaces as well as money for the most seriously injured of
the bakers. But Picrochole takes Grandgousier’s overtures as a sign of
weakness: “By God, Grandgousier is shitting himself, the poor old soak.”46
He seizes the money, the fouaces, the carts and oxen, and resolves on a war
of conquest. Grandgousier, concluding that “there was no hope of bringing
them to make peace save by war, quick and strong,”47 calls Gargantua and
his men home from Paris.
The resulting Picrocholine war unfolds on a number of levels: comical,
philosophical, religious, and historical. It parodies the chanson de geste, a
medieval “song of heroic deeds,” of which the Song of Roland is the most
notable surviving example.48 It also mimics the typical carnival pageant of
the uncrowning, thrashing, and debasing of the king, here Picrochole.
But Grandgousier is not a comic figure. He represents the ideal
Christian prince praised by Erasmus and More who seeks peace but will
fight a just war when no other choice remains. The bread (fouaces) and
wine (grapes), as well as the cross with which Frère Jean defends the latter,
place Grandgousier on the side of Christ. Picrochole, by contrast, indulges
his own passions and spreads misery among his own subjects and beyond.
Bread is not sacred to Picrochole; it is merely a casus belli, an excuse for
war.
On an historical level, Grandgousier is clearly intended to represent
François I, the wise and just Christian ruler of France. Small wonder he
enjoyed the book! Picrochole represents the notoriously choleric emperor
Charles V of Spain, who constantly sought to encroach on France and who
fancied himself a modern Alexander the Great. Picrochole’s advisers
counsel him to divide his army, throwing one part at Grandgousier while the
other part rolls up towers, towns, and cities on both sides of the
Mediterranean (soon to be renamed the Picrocholine Sea), from Majorca to
the Pillars of Hercules. They acknowledge no possibility of setback or
reversal and treat the planned conquests as already accomplished and as
bases for further expansion of the Picrocholine empire. Picrochole quaffs it
all like vintage wine.
But Picrochole’s army can no more withstand Gargantua, Frère Jean,
and their companions than the Dipsodes could stand up to Pantagruel,
Panurge, and company in the first book. This time, however, it is
Gargantua’s mule who pisses so copiously as to drown numerous of the
enemy. And Gargantua fashions a staff of his own out of a large tree with
which he razes the Picrocholine towers and fortifications. He is no more
bothered by the enemy’s cannon balls, which he brushes from his hair, than
he would be by grape seeds. Picrochole tries to steal a miller’s mule to
make an escape, but he is beaten by the millers, who take his fine clothes
and leave him with only a smock. He ends up as a penny laborer in Lyons.
 In sharp contrast to the example set by Charles V—who imprisoned
François I, exacted a huge ransom, and kept François’s children as surety
for its payment—Grandgousier treats the defeated Picrocholines with
Christian mercy, sending the soldiers home with a protective escort and
money in their pockets, and leaving the kingdom in the control of
Picrochole’s young son, with “the older princes and scholars of his realm as
regents and tutors.”49 “The time has passed,” explains Grandgousier cum
Erasmus, “for such conquering of kingdoms to the harm of our Christian
brothers and neighbors.”50 Any attempt to imitate Alexander the Great and
other ancient heroes—as Charles V wished to do—“is contrary to the
teachings of our Gospel, by which we are each commanded to guard, save,
rule and manage his own realms and lands, and never aggressively to
invade those of others.”51
As a reward for Frère Jean’s service, Gargantua decides to build him a
monastery. But it will be an order “flat contrary to all others,”52 for
Gargantua has nothing but contempt for monks, at least the lazy ones. A
monk “never ploughs like the peasant, never guards the land like the
soldier, never cures the sick like the physician, never expounds sound
doctrine like the good evangelical preacher and tutor, never transports
goods and commodities vital to the kingdom like the merchant.”53 The
monk is utterly useless and lives off the labor of others. Grandgousier
mildly interjects that monks do pray to God for us. But the well-educated
Gargantua will have none of it. He insists that their mumbled prayers are
not for us but “for fear of losing their wheaten loaves and thick bread-and-
dripping”; they are a “mockery of God.”54
It is a harsh condemnation but not atypical of humanistic and
evangelical views in this period. The great monasteries—built and sustained
by donations from the rich hoping to store up their treasure in heaven—
were under both intellectual and physical attack, particularly in England,
where they were looted and closed by Cromwell at the bidding of Henry
VIII. But Frère Jean, of course, is exempted from Gargantua’s
condemnation. He is good company, works hard, drinks copiously, and is
loyal to his friends and not afraid to fight when called upon, in the tradition
of Archbishop Turpin from the Song of Roland.
Frère Jean’s monastery will therefore be the antimonastery. It will have no
walls or gates. It will not be ruled by Hours, to which the inhabitants are
called by the sound of bells. Women as well as men will be welcome in
equal numbers, and all will be handsome, well formed, and well-endowed
by nature. They are free to leave and marry if they wish; no one is
constrained by vows to remain. The building is to be magnificent and richly
furnished, and both the men and the women will dress elegantly and
colorfully. Education and enjoyment are their primary pastimes. Most
important of all, the traditional monastic virtues—poverty, chastity, and
obedience—are replaced by their opposites. There is but one clause in the
rule of the abbey: Faictz ce que vouldras (Do what you will), for people are
basically good, and, with proper education, training, and examples, will
naturally choose the good.
People who are free, well bred, well taught and conversant with honorable company have by
nature an instinct—a goad—which always pricks them towards virtuous acts and withdraws
them from vice. They called it Honor.55

The monastery of Thélème reminds, and is intended to remind the

reader, of the country estates of the brigata from Boccaccio’s Decameron or
the elegant court of Urbino from Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. It is a
Renaissance Utopia, yet far removed from the drab and colorless island of
Thomas More. It is a beautiful vision, reflecting Rabelais’s optimism about
human nature, an optimism that will be sorely tested in the years to come.
Indeed, even at the end of Gargantua, a darker tone is sounded. Among the
foundations of the new abbey is discovered a huge bronze plaque with an
enigma inscribed upon it. That enigma appears to foretell a coming time of
persecution and darkness for those who uphold God’s truth.
Yet nothing is ever exactly as it seems in Rabelais, and even serious
forebodings become fodder for comedy. Frère Jean, cherry-picking words
and phrases, interprets the “enigma” in a wholly different and lighthearted
manner:
“By Saint Goderan,” said the Monk, “I think it is the description of a tennis-match and that
the ‘round globe’ is the ball; the ‘guts’ and the ‘innards’ of the ‘innocent beasts’ are the
rackets; and the folk who are het up and wrangling are the players. The end means that, after
such travails, they go off for a meal! And be of good cheer!”56

With that injunction, the book ends. Why be depressed, it seems to ask,
when only God knows the future and good cheer is ready to hand?

THE THIRD AND FOURTH BOOKS

The Third Book of Pantagruel, commonly known as Le Tiers Livre, was
published in 1546, twelve years after Gargantua. Unlike the prior volumes,
the listed author is not an anagram; “Maître Franç. Rabelais, Doctor of
Medicine,” is proudly noted on the title page. The new book is dedicated to
the king’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre, and is accompanied by a “King’s
privilege,” which calls the first two volumes “no less useful than
delightful,”57 and awards Rabelais sole rights to reprint those volumes and
any subsequent ones for a period of six years.
Yet, despite the royal patronage and the protection it appeared to offer,
the Third Book is considerably more sober than its predecessors. The tone
struck in the prologue and throughout the volume is less an irreverent romp
than an earnest, and at times didactic, display of Christian Stoicism. In part,
this is surely a reflection of a more troubled religious climate. But one must
also recognize that Rabelais was now sixty years old. Le Tiers Livre and its
companion volume, Le Quart Livre, are still funny but without the
uninhibited exuberance of the first two books. Pantagruelism is redefined in
their respective prologues as never taking badly anything that “flows from a
good, frank and loyal heart,”58 and as “a certain merriness of mind pickled
in contempt for things fortuitous.”59 The message is clear: enjoy what you
can, endure what you must.
Pantagruel and Panurge are once again the principal characters. But they
have little in common with their namesakes from the first volume.60
Pantagruel is no longer portrayed as a giant, except in moral and religious
authority. Nor will he play the straight man for Panurge’s antics. He is a
wise, sober, Christian monarch and, as a consequence, rather boring and at
times censorious. Panurge has changed even more dramatically. He is never
boring, but his frenetic energy is now channeled into distorted rhetoric and
specious reasoning to advance his own selfish interests. He has become not
only a hypocrite but a pious one as well, who frequently hurls the epithet
“heretic” at others. As a measure of how far he has fallen, Panurge actually
invokes the Sorbonne as authority! It is such a relief when Frère Jean
appears toward the end of the volume that the reader happily ignores the
chronological incongruity that Frère Jean was a contemporary and
companion not of Pantagruel but of Pantagruel’s father, Gargantua. Indeed,
even Gargantua himself—who had been translated to the land of the fairies
at the end of the first book—reappears in the Third Book no worse for the
wear.
 Following the war with the Dipsodes, Panurge has been given charge of
a wealthy estate that he quickly dissipates on banquets and women and
foolish investments. He is already deeply in debt when he is counseled by
Pantagruel on the virtues of thrift. In response, Panurge launches a
fantastical tribute to debt, misciting both classical and scriptural sources in
defense of the indefensible. He distorts Ficino’s Platonic/Christian theme of
mutual love as binding the universe and its inhabitants in harmony by
claiming that it is actually mutual obligation (i.e., borrowing and lending)
that binds us together. God and nature alike created men to depend on and
to help one another, and thus Panurge is performing his Christian and moral
duty by allowing others to lend to him.
Always owe somebody something, then he will be forever praying God to grant you a good,
long and blessed life. Fearing to lose what you owe him, he will always be saying good things
about you in every sort of company; he will be constantly acquiring new lenders for you, so
that you can borrow to pay him back, filling his ditch with other men’s spoil.61

Pantagruel silences Panurge’s fatuous display of rhetoric and dialectic

by properly citing the scriptures: “‘Owe no man anything,’ said the holy
Apostle, ‘save mutual love-and-affection.’”62 Panurge is advocating a form
of self-love that is destructive of civil society and religious obligation alike.
The main conceit of the Third Book, which extends over almost forty
chapters, is Panurge’s indecision about whether to marry. He very much
wants to and yet fears it will end badly, with him cuckolded, beaten, and
robbed. Much of the book involves Panurge’s search for an authoritative
answer to his doubts. Pantagruel will offer no such comfort. In standard
Stoic fashion he advises that the only thing we control is our own will: “All
the rest is fortuitous and dependent on the destined dispositions of
Heaven.”63 Matrimony is a personal choice as to which no assurance is
possible. Once Panurge makes it his will to marry, he should do so without
trying to foretell the future but simply by commending himself to God.
Yet Panurge insists on subordinating his own will to some external
authority. And so they embark on a quest for revealed wisdom. Panurge
tries Homeric and Virgilian lots (i.e., opening volumes of Homer and Virgil
to random passages); he casts dice; he seeks divination from his dreams; he
consults, among others, a sybil, a poet near death (and hence at the apogee
of his inspiration), a master of the occult, and a deaf-mute who
communicates with signs. In each case, the forecast seems clear: he will be
cuckolded, beaten, and robbed. Yet in each case, Panurge distorts the
prediction into its opposite.
A theologian offers a more optimistic view. Find a woman from a good
family, he instructs, one who fears God, is well instructed in virtue, is
schooled by moral company, and will be inspired by the wise and loving
example of her husband. Never saw such a person, is Panurge’s only
response. So he continues his quest, consulting a misogynist physician, a
judge (who, after the most careful and exhaustive study, decides his cases
by throwing dice), a skeptical philosopher (“I’d as soon undertake to get a
fart out of a dead donkey as a decision out of you,” Panurge quips.),64 and a
fool (who proves far wiser than Panurge).
At one point, when the conceit is growing rather thin, Frère Jean
reappears and ratchets up the energy and the comedy. For a brief period, we
are back in the bawdy world of Pantagruel. Of course you should get
married, Frère Jean tells Panurge. Come the day of judgment, “do you
really want them to find you with your balls full?”65 Just make sure you
plough the field regularly. “I’ve seen it experienced by many a man,” he
added. “They wouldn’t when they could, so couldn’t when they would. As
the law clerks say: All privileges are lost by non-usage.”66
When Panurge reiterates his fear that he will be cuckolded, Frère Jean
scoffs. If you marry a young and beautiful wife, of course you will be
cuckolded, since eventually you will not be able to satisfy her. Everything
grows soft in time. “Even if you’re not there yet, in a few years’ time I shall
hear you confessing that some folk we know have balls dangling down for
lack of a game-pouch.”67 He then, in the abundant fashion of the early
volumes, offers over 150 different synonyms for “wilted bollock.”68
Anyway, what of it? Frère Jean concludes. “If you are a cuckold, ergo your
wife will be beautiful; ergo she will treat you well, ergo you will have many
friends.”69 And if you are lucky, you will never even know. The only way to
avoid cuckoldry for sure, Frère Jean explains, is to wear the ring of Hans
Carvel, to whom the devil appeared in a dream and promised to appease his
jealous torments by giving him a ring that, as long as it remained on his
finger, would guarantee his wife was never known carnally by another man.
Hans Carvel awoke full of joy, only to find “his finger up his wife’s
thingummy.”70
In essence, what Frère Jean is saying in his Rabelaisian way is that we
all, eventually, become carnival figures of fun: uncrowned, mocked, and
debilitated. Panurge’s desire to avoid such a fate is a desire to avoid the
human condition, which means eschewing its joys as well as its sorrows.
The Third Book is a thoughtful as well as humorous meditation: Who
has moral authority? How is truth to be determined? How are we to make
decisions? Law, medicine, philosophy, divination, and even the Bible
cannot answer Panurge’s question. In such a choice, as Pantagruel explains,
“each man must be the arbiter of his own thoughts and seek counsel from
himself.”71 That sentence encapsulates the new Pantagruelism and the spirit
of the late Renaissance. Only God knows the future, but he isn’t talking, or
at least his signs are themselves subject to interpretation. Man must meet
him more than halfway. The Third Book thus ends with an ode to human
ingenuity and all that can be accomplished, with even the simplest of
materials, through hard work and creative thought.
In the Fourth Book of Pantagruel, Pantagruel, Panurge, and Frère Jean
embark on a voyage of discovery to seek the word of the Dive Bouteille
(Divine Bottle). Their adventures echo the fantasy voyages of Lucian’s True
History and channel the Renaissance fascination, evident in More’s Utopia
and Montaigne’s Essays, with newly discovered lands and their strange
inhabitants and varied customs. Like good Renaissance explorers, they even
gather specimens of new animals, plants, birds, stones, and other curiosities,
which Pantagruel sends back to his father. But there is also a deeper
resonance with Dante’s Ulysses, who urged his men to visit “lands beyond
as yet by none surveyed” and thus “to follow valor’s lure and wisdom’s
quest.”72 Ulysses’s desire to go beyond the bounds of human knowledge,
without acknowledging the limits imposed by faith, ended in disaster. But
Pantagruel’s voyage will end in triumph of a sort.
The Fourth Book was first published in a truncated and probably
unauthorized version in 1548, but reached its final form in 1552, with a
renewed royal privilege signed by King Henri II (François I having died
while Rabelais was in Metz). We will spend very little time on the Fourth
Book. It is heavy with literary, philosophical, religious, and political
allusions, most of which will be lost on a modern reader without detailed
footnotes or the exhaustive exegeses of M. A. Screech and Donald Frame.73
Undoubtedly, most readers of Rabelais’s own day were equally at a loss, but
almost all of the episodes are enjoyable on their own terms. At the island of
Medamothi (meaning “nowhere,” like More’s Utopia), the three travelers
buy paintings of Plato’s ideas and the atoms of Epicurus. They visit an
island of those who live only on wind (which is surely true of many
politicians, lawyers, and pundits today). They encounter a storm of frozen
words that crash upon the deck, releasing the voices of men and women
from long ago (surely a reference to the power of writing to conquer time,
for what is a book but a collection of words frozen in time and space,
awaiting a reader to thaw them out and let them speak again). In a direct
attack on papal authority—typical of evangelical reformers—Rabelais has
them visit the land of the Papimanes, who make an idol of the pope and
worship not the Bible but the sacred Decretals (papal decrees). And, in a
moving episode, Pantagruel retells the story, from Plutarch, of the death of
the great god Pan, which he interprets as an allusion to the Savior: “for in
Greek he can rightly be called Pan, seeing that he is our All, all that we are,
all that we live, all that we have, all that we hope, is in him, of him, by
him.”74 When he finishes the story, Pantagruel remains in silent
contemplation, shedding tears the size of ostrich eggs. Suddenly, Pantagruel
is a giant again. It is a comical image but a moment of genuine pathos. In
Rabelais, the one never excludes the other.
It is this simple faith, moreover, that allows the voyagers to survive the
storm that eventually descends on all epic heroes at sea, from Odysseus to
Aeneas to Dante’s Ulysses. While Panurge cowers in fear and makes
promises to God that he never intends to keep, Pantagruel, Frère Jean, and
others face the danger with prayer and action. They meet God halfway and
are “workers together with him.”75 Rabelais’s faith is not, as in Dante, a
limited horizon beyond which man’s search for knowledge must not
venture. It is a sturdy vessel running before the wind that sustains and
supports any and all forms of humanistic inquiry.

RABELAISIAN WISDOM

Rabelais died in 1553. A Fifth Book of Pantagruel was printed in 1564.

How much of it was actually composed by Rabelais or derived from his
detailed notes is unclear. Screech declines to discuss the Fifth Book at all in
his otherwise comprehensive book. Frame, by contrast, accepts twenty-six
of the forty-seven chapters as authentic or at least “largely so.”76
We will focus here only on the ending, which, as Frame notes, is too
wonderful not to be by Rabelais.77 Our explorers eventually make it to the
island of La Bouteille, where they meet the high priestess Bacbuc (derived
from the Hebrew word bacbuc, meaning bottle or pitcher). She leads them
through a magnificent temple to a fountain whose waters taste of whatever
wine the drinker has in mind. Ultimately, Panurge alone is led to the oracle
itself, which consists of a single word, Trinck (drink). The prologue to
Gargantua proclaimed that to laugh is proper to man (rire est le propre de
l’homme). That is no longer adequate; as Bacbuc explains, “icy main-
tenons que non rire, ains boyre est le propre de l’homme” (here we maintain
that it is not laughing which is the property of man, but drinking).78
Yet the word drink has to be understood in a special sense. All words
require a gloss, Bacbuc explains. Here, to drink is “to flood the mind with
all truth, all knowledge and philosophy.”79 It is to drink in the wonders of
the world—physical, spiritual, and intellectual—in all their richness and
variety.80 It is Gargantua’s “abyss of erudition,” the Renaissance ideal
encapsulated in a silver book shaped like a demijohn that even Panurge
eagerly quaffs.
But this ideal is inherently personalized. Like the waters of the fountain
that taste of whatever wine the drinker is thinking of, the world will appear
to each individual according to his or her own lights. “Be ye yourselves the
interpreters of your enterprise,” Bacbuc enjoins.81 There is no set path that
absolves us of the need for thought, for choice, and for exploration. In other
words, we must liberate human consciousness from medieval categories
and strictures that preclude a frank and free encounter with the world.82 And
yet, Bacbuc concludes, at the same time we act “under the protection of that
Intellectual Sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference
nowhere, whom we call God.”83 A paradox to be sure, but the essence of
Rabelaisian wisdom is that religious belief imposes no limits on human
inquiry or human responsibility, just as a spiritual life is not incompatible
with the full physical enjoyment of our earthly existence, however absurdly
grotesque that existence might sometimes appear in comparison to our
spiritual ideals.
We can embrace life even as we embrace God, Rabelais seems to say.
Indeed, the one is in keeping with the other, for life itself is the
manifestation of God. “As a part of nature,” Auerbach explains, Rabelaisian
“man rejoices in his breathing life, his bodily functions, and his intellectual
powers, and, like nature’s other creatures, he suffers natural dissolution.”84
Rabelais affirms the inevitable cycle of birth, fertility, decay, and
regeneration, even if at times he doesn’t know whether to laugh with joy or
shed tears in sorrow.
Panurge, finally shaken out of his self-love, recognizes his need for a
mutual connection with others in order to live a full life. Setting all doubts
aside, he resolves to marry and have children, as does Pantagruel. Only
Frère Jean is blocked from full humanity by his monkish vows. Celibacy—
like asceticism or self-mortification—is an affront to, and a repudiation of,
nature and hence of God and man alike. The all-embracing, all-enduring,
life-affirming wisdom of Pantagruelism triumphs in the end.
Mikhail Bakhtin rightly places Rabelais among the creators of modern
European writing, along with Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and
Cervantes.85 But, as we will see in the next chapter, Bakhtin should have
added to the list that most un-Rabelaisian of men, Michel de Montaigne,
whose largely unacknowledged debt to Rabelais pervades the Essays.
 Chapter 7
MONTAIGNE AND THE
WISDOM OF EXPERIENCE

It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book, in some

former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and
experience.1
Read him in order to live.2
The fact that such a person has written has truly enhanced
the joy of living in this world.3
This talking of oneself, following one’s own vagaries, giving
the whole map, weight, color, and circumference of the soul
in its confusion, its variety, its imperfection—this art
belonged to one man only: to Montaigne.4

T he list of major figures in philosophy and literature offering such praise

for Michel de Montaigne could be extended indefinitely. His influence
as a thinker and a writer is incalculable. Unfortunately, though, Montaigne
is taught today neither in philosophy departments nor in classes on creative
literature. Some precious few colleges and universities still offer Western
civilization sequences, and he will be found there, albeit greatly excerpted.
Otherwise, he is left to upper-level French courses or to the private reading
of inquisitive students.
This is, or should be, a scandal.5 Montaigne is a pivotal figure in the
history of Western thought. He has a better claim than Petrarch to be called
the first modern man. In him, the last vestiges of medievalism,
Scholasticism, and all forms of religious and philosophical dogmatism are
shed in favor of a direct, unimpeded encounter with the world. Yet neither
the self that experiences nor the world that is experienced is treated as
something fixed and absolute. Both are known, fitfully and imperfectly,
only through their changing interactions over time. In the stream of his own
consciousness, Montaigne finds a wisdom that eludes abstractions, a
wisdom that cannot be condensed into precepts. Paradoxically, Montaigne
teaches us how to live by deliberately undermining the ethical, social, and
religious structures by which most of us do live but which falsify and
thereby disguise la condition humaine.6
In the Republic, Plato presented his own celebrated allegory of the
human condition. We are like prisoners in a cave, with legs and neck
fettered, observing only the shadows of things cast upon the wall by a weak
fire. The philosopher is the one who can break those fetters, stand up and
turn around, and recognize that what he has been seeing, what he has taken
for reality, are mere images and shadows. Yet he must go farther, up the
steep path and out of the cave, where he will at first be blinded by the
dazzling light but will gradually come to know not the images of things
dimly perceived, but the things themselves and even the sun itself, the
eternal form of the Good. And he will then recognize how inconsequential
are the shadow images known to the prisoners.
Montaigne accepts the allegory but rejects the solution. There is no way
to break our fetters and exit the cave in which we exist. We cannot know
things in themselves. There are no fixed, eternal forms that cast their
shadows on the world. Indeed, the very concept can have no meaning for us
since our words (even our abstract words) derive their meaning from the
experience of our senses, and we have no experience of the absolute. We
have no knowledge of a metaphysical essence that underwrites the outer
world. Montaigne extends that insight to religion. We can have faith in
divine providence, but we can know nothing about God. All the deadly
disputes between Catholics and Protestants that led to civil war in
Montaigne’s France are but dueling illusions. Even the soul is a problematic
concept. We have no direct knowledge of our own metaphysical essence.
We know ourselves only imperfectly, through the passing and ever-
changing array of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Without the aspirational tyranny of absolutes, however, Montaigne is
free to value experience on its own terms. As Virginia Woolf puts it, in a
deliberate paradox, for Montaigne “movement and change are the essence
of our being.”7 That is to say, there is no essence for the philosopher or the
theologian to discover. We can know only movement and change. If we
cannot know things in themselves, but only the appearance of things, then
we should dedicate ourselves to the appearances, celebrating what we can,
lamenting what we must. Appearance is our only reality. And so Montaigne
dedicated himself to such ephemeral knowledge, seeking to enrich everyday
experience through close attention and to maintain his balance through the
exercise of an admittedly all-too-human judgment. In the process, he
learned to know himself. It is not an exaggeration to say that the whole
literature of self-exploration, from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Proust and
Joyce, finds its greatest predecessor in Montaigne.

LIFE

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born on February 28, 1533, at the family
château outside Bordeaux. The Château de Montaigne had only been in the
family for three generations. It was purchased by Michel’s great-
grandfather, Ramon Felipe Eyquem, a wealthy merchant. The family name,
d’Yquem, would become—and still is—famous for its magnificent
Sauternes. But Michel dropped that name in favor of the honorific title “de
Montaigne.”
Montaigne was the third of ten children, but the two oldest died, leaving
him as the principal heir. There were wide age gaps among siblings.
Montaigne was twenty-seven when the youngest, Bertrand, was born.
Montaigne’s father, Pierre Eyquem, was a gentleman soldier who fought
briefly in Italy and later became the mayor of Bordeaux. Along with the
château, Montaigne would inherit the kidney stones that plagued his father
for years.
Montaigne’s mother was Antoinette de Louppes de Villeneuve. Her
father’s family were likely Spanish Jews, driven out of Spain in 1492 by
Ferdinand and Isabella. The Jews were not particularly welcome in France
either. Most converted to Christianity and tried to assimilate as
inconspicuously as possible. Michel’s maternal grandmother was a French
Catholic from Gascony. Some conversos (converted Jews) managed to
remain in Spain at the fringes of society. Miguel de Cervantes may have
descended from that group. It is interesting to contemplate that these two
great figures of the sixteenth century, both revered today as national
treasures by their respective countries, may have shared the same outcast
Marrano origins.
The Guyenne region where Montaigne was born had been an English
province from 1154—when Eleanor of Aquitaine married the soon-to-be
King Henry II of England—until the end of the Hundred Years’ War in
1453 when it was annexed by France. It was by and large a Catholic region,
but there were many Protestants, and the civil wars of religion that would
devastate France were particularly acute here. The Eyquem family itself had
its share of Protestants, and Montaigne himself was broadly tolerant in an
era and area of intolerance.
Montaigne had a highly unusual upbringing. His father, Pierre, received
only a basic education but revered learning and consulted the greatest
humanists of his day on the proper upbringing of his son. Three aspects of
this Renaissance-inspired education stand out. First, Montaigne was sent to
live with peasants while he was still nursing and even beyond. His father
wanted to give him a familiarity with, and empathy for, “the humblest and
commonest way of life.”8 The result, or so Montaigne would claim, was a
natural compassion that inclined him always to the side of the poor and
lowly. Yet anyone schooled in modern theories of child rearing cannot but
wonder if the bond with his own parents suffered in the process. Although
Montaigne revered and felt immense gratitude toward his father, he
remained aloof from his mother, and they had a fraught relationship in later
years when Montaigne inherited the family estate.
Second, once he was back in the château, Montaigne was treated with
remarkable gentleness. His father believed (or his advisors convinced him)
that knowledge should be freely acquired, without rigor or restraint, in the
form of amusement and exercise. The same advisors assured Pierre that “it
troubles the tender brains of children to wake them in the morning with a
start, and to snatch them suddenly and violently from their sleep.”9 As a
result, Montaigne was awakened each morning by music played on one
instrument or another. Montaigne extols the goodness and affection of a
father who took such pains for his son.
Third, and perhaps most remarkable, Montaigne’s first language—his
mother tongue, so to speak—was Latin. His father hired a German tutor
with excellent Latin, and no French, who spoke with Montaigne exclusively
in that language. Other servants were specifically hired for their ability to
speak Latin. The rest of the household, including his parents, either learned
Latin words and phrases or stayed silent in his presence. As a consequence,
Montaigne spoke Latin with a native fluency no scholar could match, at a
time when Latin was still common in the law and the civil service, and
when a facility with Latin and an intimate knowledge of the great Latin
authors was considered the pinnacle of humanistic education.
In 1539, however, when Montaigne was six, Pierre had run out of
newfangled ideas and sent him to the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux. It
was a prominent school, though the teachers were overawed by
Montaigne’s command of Latin. He acted in Latin plays and, through the
connivance of an understanding tutor, was given the freedom to read the
Latin classics at his leisure. “He went about it cleverly,” Montaigne later
explained. “Pretending to see nothing, he whetted my appetite, letting me
gorge myself with these books only in secret, and gently keeping me at my
work on the regular studies.”10 Montaigne devoured Ovid, Terence, Plautus,
and Virgil, among others. But for all that, Montaigne concludes, it was still
school, and his Latin had sorely degenerated by the time he left there at the
age of thirteen in 1546 or perhaps early 1547.
François I, the king of France and patron of Rabelais, died in 1547 and
was succeeded by his son Henri II. Henri II would rule for twelve years—
continuing the Italian Wars of his father and trying unsuccessfully to
suppress the rapid growth of the Huguenots (French followers of Calvin)—
before he was killed in a freak accident at a jousting tournament.
Montaigne’s father was mayor of Bordeaux when, in 1548, the city
rioted over stricter enforcement of a salt tax that had long been evaded
through smuggling. Twenty tax collectors were killed before the riots were
harshly repressed by French troops. The city was disarmed, fined, and had
its parliament suspended by a furious Henri II. More than a thousand people
were sentenced to death. But the salt tax was quietly dropped and an
amnesty declared the following year, by which time an attack of the plague,
though fortunately limited, had further sobered the city.
Montaigne appears to have been still in Bordeaux for these events. But
little is known of his life during the next decade. He presumably studied
law, but where and for how long is unclear. In 1557, at the age of twenty-
four, he became a member of the restored Bordeaux parliament. This was
not a legislative position. He was a magistrate in a lower chamber helping
to decide an array of civil and criminal cases. He spent thirteen years in that
position, gaining the respect of his colleagues but no particular renown.
It was a difficult time in France. Henri II was succeeded seriatim by his
three young sons, François II (r. 1559–1560), Charles IX (r. 1560–1574),
and Henri III (r. 1574–1589). All were weak leaders who died without
direct heirs. The first two were dominated by their mother, Catherine de’
Medici. A series of wars of religion (often called simply “the troubles,” a
term adapted to the Irish Catholic and Protestant struggles of the twentieth
century) began in 1562, after the slaughter of dozens of Protestants at Vassy
by the Catholic firebrand François de Guise. De Guise himself was
assassinated in 1563. The civil wars blazed intermittently through the rest
of Montaigne’s life and beyond. It was a time of brutality, treachery, and
intolerance. While Spain and, later, England were building empires in the
New World, France was busy tearing itself apart.
Montaigne offers little insight into these political events. But he does
record a series of personal shocks closer to home. The first was the death of
his dear friend Étienne de La Boétie, who died of dysentery in 1563 at the
age of thirty-two. As colleagues in the parliament and fellow literary
aspirants, they had formed a deep friendship that made up in intensity what
it lacked in longevity. That friendship was both celebrated and mourned by
Montaigne throughout his life, and immortalized in the Essays.
In 1568, Montaigne’s father died at the age of seventy-two, probably
from complications caused by kidney stones. Montaigne took over the
estate, which needed a great deal of work to complete improvements begun
by Pierre. His siblings received their respective shares without complaint.
But Montaigne’s own inheritance created friction with his mother, who
complained bitterly that the terms governing her marital property had not
been properly observed. After some jockeying, they reached a legal
settlement in August of that year that spelled out in somewhat chilling
detail their respective rights and the terms on which they would coexist.
The following year, Montaigne’s brother Arnaud died after playing
tennis. It was a shocking event. He was struck in the head with a tennis ball,
suffered no apparent ill effects, went home, and promptly died, presumably
as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. The fragility of life and the suddenness
of death were further impressed on Montaigne when he himself was almost
killed in a riding accident.
 More happily, in 1565 Montaigne married Françoise de La Chassaigne,
from an established Catholic family. The marriage seems to have been
content enough if not passionate. Indeed, as we shall see, Montaigne
decidedly disapproved of passion in marriage. Despite that, the couple had
six children, all of them girls. Five, however, died in their first few months
of life. Only one, Léonor, lived to adulthood. She died in 1616, at the age of
forty-five. Montaigne’s wife lived until 1627, surviving her husband by
almost thirty-five years.
Buffeted by these changes, tired of the religious and political disputes
that were growing increasingly deadly, and blocked from a promotion to the
highest chamber of parliament, Montaigne seized on that rebuff as an
occasion to retire in 1570. He sold his magistracy and retreated to the
Château Montaigne, which formed a courtyard with twin towers at the front
corners. He turned the top floor of one of the towers into a library and
study. The library had a thousand volumes held in curving wooden shelves.
Six months after his retirement, in celebration of his birthday, Montaigne
had a Latin inscription placed outside the library:
In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary
of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public
employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and
freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run
out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has
consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.11

Montaigne added numerous quotes from classical authors that were

burned into the crossbeams of his library. The tower, the library, and the
inscriptions still exist in their original form, though the rest of the château
had to be rebuilt after a fire in 1885.
Time began to hang heavy on Montaigne’s hands. He did not truly share
his father’s zeal for estate improvements. He began many projects but
finished few. Instead, he preferred the company of the muses (the “learned
Virgins” of his inscription). He had already translated a lengthy theological
work by Raymond Sebond at the behest of his father, finishing it just as his
father died. He now edited and published several works of La Boétie. Yet he
still found his mind wandering and his thoughts darkening. As he explained
in an early essay, with a characteristic mixture of candor and false modesty:
Lately when I retired to my home, determined so far as possible to bother about nothing
except spending the little life I have left in rest and seclusion, it seems to me I could do my
 mind no greater favor than to let it entertain itself in full idleness and stay and settle in itself,
which I hoped it might do more easily now, having become weightier and riper with time. But
I find . . . that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more
trouble than it took for others, and gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters,
one after another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their ineptitude and
strangeness at my pleasure, I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make my
mind ashamed of itself.12

Montaigne rounds out this account in a later essay:

It was a melancholy humor, and consequently a humor very hostile to my natural disposition,
produced by the gloom of the solitude into which I had cast myself some years ago, that first
put into my head this daydream of meddling with writing. And then, finding myself entirely
destitute and void of any other matter, I presented myself to myself for argument and
subject.13

These two passages provide invaluable insights into the origins of the
Essays and the character of their author. Montaigne sought refuge in
solitude. But, beset by melancholy and aimlessness, he took up writing in
order to better understand himself and how to live. Yet he was almost
embarrassed to be seen as a professional man of letters. A nobleman, after
all, practiced arms, rode at horseback, and tended to his estate. Even
Castiglione advocated, at most, a general patina of learning and polish for
his ideal courtier. Thus Montaigne, at least at first, affected a casual disdain
for his own work and the deep learning he displayed. Initially, he sought his
answers on how to live in precepts and examples from classical sources.
But he quickly found that traditional approach unsatisfying. He was not
content to regurgitate Plutarch or Seneca. Moreover, he found that every
precept could be met with its opposite, seemingly as wise. The very titles of
his chapters show that everything depends on context: “By diverse means
we arrive at the same end” (1.1); “One man’s profit is another man’s harm”
(1.22); “Various outcomes of the same plan” (1.24); and the highly
Rabelaisian “How we cry and laugh for the same thing” (1.38).
Eventually, Montaigne devised an entirely new method of writing in
pursuit of self-understanding. He coined the term essais (attempts) to
capture the tentative nature of his explorations. He tried out various ideas
and approaches, making a series of sketches rather than a finished painting.
Montaigne started writing these essays in 1572. The first edition (consisting
of books 1 and 2) was published to wide and immediate acclaim in 1580.
Even the then-current king, Henri III, read them. Montaigne continued to
revise the first two books through the years, rarely deleting but instead
interpolating substantial additional material: a few words here, a sentence
there, at times whole paragraphs. He eventually added a third book as well,
generally considered his most mature work. The essays were written and
revised over a twenty-year period, from 1572 to 1592.
Following the publication of the first edition, Montaigne set out from
home in June 1580 on what would prove a seventeen-month trip to
Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Italy. He traveled with his youngest
brother, a widowed brother-in-law, two friends, and several servants.
Montaigne had many motives for the journey: he wanted to escape the civil
wars; he was bored with domestic life; at the many baths and spas he
visited, he hoped to find relief if not a cure for the kidney stones that had
begun to plague him in 1578; and, most important, he had a restless desire
to see Rome and Venice and to experience other cultures, customs, and
climates. According to the calculations of his principal biographer, Donald
Frame, Montaigne and his small entourage covered close to three thousand
miles on horseback, traveling between twenty and twenty-five miles per day
on average. That is the equivalent of riding his horse across the United
States. He kept a journal, though often his valet wrote the entries. Even
Frame admits that the travel journal, which was not discovered until 1774,
“is neither polished nor profound.”14 But it is highly revealing of Montaigne
the man and his sheer love of travel. Montaigne was something of a
celebrity at this point, welcomed by officials and literary figures in the
cities he visited. Yet he also made a point of spending time with common
people, sharing their food and following their customs. The trip reinforced
his views on both the mutability of human nature and the importance of
habit in forming character. Amusingly, Montaigne’s own copy of the Essays
was seized by the authorities when he first entered Rome and finally
returned with various suggestions for improvements, some editorial and
some religious. He politely ignored them all.
The trip was cut short in November 1581 when Montaigne was notified
in Rome that—in his absence—he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux.
Montaigne may have been pleased with the honor. His government career to
date had been rather lackluster, and he was now being asked to fill the post
his father had held. Nonetheless, he was inclined to say no, until he learned
that the king, Henri III, wished him to take the job. So Montaigne made his
way back to France and to duty. He was reelected to a second term, and thus
served as mayor from 1581 to 1585.
 During these years and beyond, Montaigne was swept up in national
events. He served as a mediator during what historians call the “War of the
Three Henris”:

Henri III, the Catholic king, who tried to chart a middle course, made
complicated by the shifting allegiances of his mother, Catherine de’
Medici
Henri of Navarre, a Protestant and closest heir to the throne of France,
whose 1572 marriage to the king’s sister, Margaret of Valois, sparked
the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which almost five thousand
Huguenots were murdered in Paris alone
Henri de Guise, son of the assassinated François, who controlled the
radical Catholic faction known as the Holy League

The three Henris, hovered over by the queen mother, all maneuvered,
and Montaigne was often in the middle as a go-between. He was once
kidnapped and imprisoned by Henri de Guise before being promptly
released at the behest of the queen mother. As Montaigne later explained, “I
incurred the disadvantages that moderation brings in such maladies. I was
belabored from every quarter; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, to the
Guelph a Ghibelline.”15
Henri III finally had Henri de Guise killed, and he himself was
assassinated by a radical monk not long after. Montaigne helped to
convince Henri of Navarre to embrace Catholicism in order to succeed to
the throne as Henri IV in 1589. Henri IV was finally able to end the
religious wars, after Montaigne’s death, by reuniting France in opposition to
Spain in 1595. His Edict of Nantes in 1598 guaranteed freedom of
conscience and loosened restrictions on Protestant worship. Henri IV was
assassinated in 1610 by a Catholic fanatic. Montaigne himself had died
quietly in his bed at the château on September 13, 1592, at the age of fifty-
nine.

STOICISM

There are very few personal revelations in Montaigne’s early essays.16

Often, they are simply glosses on his extensive reading. Montaigne offers
propositions from philosophers (such as Seneca and Cicero) or poets
(especially Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace) and then, like a good lawyer, uses
“case studies” drawn from historians (Livy, Tacitus), biographers
(Plutarch), and even natural philosophers (Pliny) to build up his evidence
for or against them. Occasionally, he will cite his own experience or what
he has been told by others, but not in the form of personal revelations. His
goal—the traditional goal of the Hellenistic philosophers and their Roman
counterparts—is to develop and refine a set of general precepts and moral
exemplars to serve as guides to life.
Montaigne’s method is in keeping with Renaissance humanism, which
seeks wisdom through a careful reading of classical authors, while shunning
the logical abstractions of medieval Scholasticism. “Away with all those
thorny subtleties of dialectics,” he urges, “by which our lives cannot be
amended.”17 Montaigne’s matter, however, is a rather conventional
Stoicism.18 He wants to cultivate indifference to fortune, a condition known
in the Stoic literature as ataraxia. Fortune is neither good nor bad,
Montaigne writes. It merely provides the raw material “which our soul,
more powerful than she, turns and applies as it pleases, sole cause and
mistress of its happy or unhappy condition.”19 It is up to us how we react to
the twists and turns of everyday life, of which there were many in sixteenth-
century France. We are as well-off or as badly off as we choose to think.
“Let us no longer make the external qualities of things our excuse; it is up
to us to reckon them as we will. Our good and our ill depend on ourselves
alone.”20 Given the vicissitudes of fate, we cannot rule events. We can only
rule ourselves. The sovereign good, accordingly, lies in tranquility if not
active indifference to the material and social conditions of life. “The worth
and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honor.”21
This cultivation of ataraxia is nowhere more evident than in
Montaigne’s treatment of dying, which he calls “the greatest task we have
to perform.”22 He suggests, in standard Stoic fashion, that to philosophize is
to learn how to die. Our existence is preceded and succeeded by
nothingness.23 To fear death is to presume to know something we cannot
know. Peasants meet death with brave indifference; philosophers should do
no less. Indeed, death can even be welcomed as a release from the ills of the
world, a useful reminder that itself breeds indifference to those ills. “It is no
great thing to live—your valets and the animals live—but it is a great thing
to die honorably, wisely, and with constancy.”24
 It is a rather bleak message, in keeping with the “melancholy humor”
that led Montaigne into writing. But, over time, he will write himself into a
more optimistic mind-set. And, although Montaigne never wholly abandons
his emphasis on self-reliance and tranquility, he will come to view the rigid
Stoicism of his early essays as emotionally impoverished and intellectually
untenable. Ideals of heroic constancy and stability will give way to a more
nuanced perception of man’s inherent fallibility in the face of a changing
world. The encapsulated wisdom of the ancients and the potted biographies
of past figures can provide only so much guidance. Indeed, as often as not,
Montaigne will conclude, the “heroic” actions of Stoic exemplars were
driven by delusion, insensibility, and fanaticism rather than virtue. He will
likewise conclude that fixed precepts are inadequate to govern our lives.
Circumstances are too varied and change too rapidly. Man is not one thing
but an ever-shifting amalgam. There is no single path to virtue. Knowledge
is never certain. Judgment and experience will become his new lodestars.
Living, not dying, is our greatest task.

SKEPTICISM

Montaigne’s growing dissatisfaction with Stoicism is paralleled by a

growing fascination with skepticism. A central tenet of traditional Stoicism
was that the natural world is governed by divine providence and that,
through the application of reason alone, man can both determine and live a
life in accordance with the divine intention manifested in nature.
Montaigne, however, came to doubt that reason can unveil divine intention
or anything else beyond the scope of human experience. Montaigne thus
bracketed and dismissed with a sweep of his pen much of philosophy and
all of theology. Metaphysics, Scholasticism, and even the standard Catholic
doctrines challenged in the Reformation are not suitable subjects for
dispute. One might have faith, but knowledge in such matters is beyond our
powers.
In 1568, at the request of his father, Montaigne translated a lengthy
work of natural theology by Raymond Sebond, a Catalan scholar and
theologian. The work was written in a sort of bastardized Catalonian Latin
that his father found difficult to read, and Montaigne dutifully worked on a
translation whose eventual publication unfortunately coincided with his
father’s death. Sebond’s central premise—derived from traditional Stoicism
but going well beyond its original scope—was that all the truths of the
Christian religion about God, about man, and about their relationship to one
another can be deduced by the application of reason to nature. In Sebond’s
view, natural reason and faith are perfectly compatible because the proper
use of the former leads to the latter.
It seems clear that working on the translation helped Montaigne to
define his own thinking in opposition to that of Sebond. Montaigne’s most
substantial essay, which occupies almost half of book 2, is called the
“Apology for Raymond Sebond.” It purports to defend Sebond, but, as one
scholar aptly puts it, Montaigne supports Sebond “‘as the rope supports the
hanged man.’”25 Montaigne’s central premise is the opposite of Sebond’s:
that through the application of natural reason, we cannot learn any truths
about God, about the world, or even about ourselves. “Que sçay-je?” (What
do I know?) asks Montaigne.26 And his answer: not very much at all.
Montaigne starts from the premise that “all knowledge makes its way
into us through the senses; they are our masters.”27 We are dependent upon
what they tell us. Yet the knowledge they impart is itself uncertain. “The
first consideration that I offer on the subject of the senses,” Montaigne
explains, “is that I have my doubts whether man is provided with all the
senses of nature.”28 In many respects, we are inferior to animals in their
perception of and adaptation to the external world. Our senses readily
mislead us; we are easily deluded by the appearance of things. Indeed, “our
senses are not only altered, but often completely stupefied by the passions
of the soul.”29
Regardless of their fallibility, the senses provide the only raw material
on which our knowledge is based. “The senses are the beginning and the
end of human knowledge.”30 They circumscribe the scope of human
knowledge. Reason can help us to make general statements, but only
statements grounded in the particulars that we experience through our
senses. That is the ultimate touchstone. “Whoever can force me to
contradict the senses has me by the throat; he could not make me retreat any
further.”31 Divorced from that context, reason is worse than useless because
it leads us to think we know things that we cannot know. The pro and contra
of medieval disputation does not attain knowledge. “It is a two-handled pot,
that can be grasped by the left or the right.”32 At that level of abstraction
from human experience, one proposition is as good as another. “There is no
reason that does not have its opposite.”33 There are as many opinions as
there are people. “I think my opinions are good and sound; but who does
not think as much of his?”34 Confidence and even certainty are marks of
dogmatism, not guarantors of correctness.
In short, man cannot raise himself above his own humanity, “for he can
see only with his own eyes, and seize only with his own grasp.”35
Montaigne’s thinking on this issue is astonishingly modern and anticipates
the great eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who
sought to chart the limits of human knowledge from within. Kant, too,
would argue that all knowledge begins with the senses. We can construct
images of God and the metaphysical essences that underlie all things,
including the self. But these are man-made metaphors and are limited as
such. They are in no sense the truth. Or, rather, we have no idea wherein the
truth lies. We do not know essence, only accident. We do not know things in
themselves, but only the appearance of things. In Kantian terms, having
reached the limits of knowledge, we must turn back to the world of
appearances. We cannot transcend our own limitations.
This is the background assumption that circumscribes Montaigne’s
essays: “man can be only what he is, and imagine only within his reach.”36
Our very language is tied to and derives its meaning from the senses.
“Philosophy,” he concludes, to the extent that it seeks to transcend those
bounds, “is but sophisticated poetry.”37 And the same must be said of
religion. “Reason does nothing but go astray in everything, and especially
when it meddles with divine things.”38 God is inaccessible to us. We cannot
grasp his essential being. It is beyond our powers.
Our overweening arrogance would pass the deity through our sieve. And from that are born
all the delusions and errors with which the world is possessed, reducing and weighing in its
scales a thing so far from its measure.39

Understandably, though, Montaigne is somewhat guarded on the subject

of religion. He does not expressly dismiss theology as “sophisticated
poetry.” That would have been dangerous to state too explicitly. But it is the
clear implication of what he has to say. Montaigne claims, as Kant would
do in all sincerity, that he denies knowledge to make room for faith. His
skepticism is designed to counter dogmatism, not to undermine faith. And
Montaigne, rather blandly and ambiguously, asserts that faith: “We must
either submit completely to the authority of our ecclesiastical government,
or do without it completely. It is not for us to decide what portion of
obedience we owe it.”40 In other words, if we are going to believe, we
should simply accept the traditional tenets and practices of the Catholic
Church. The doctrinal disputes raised by Luther, Calvin, and others—
disputes over which men were furiously killing one another—have no basis
in knowledge. They are simply assertions countering assertions, and there is
no reason to adopt them in place of the status quo. It is a deeply
conservative approach; not quite the rope with which he supports Sebond,
but not so very different either, as the Catholic Church would itself
conclude when it placed Montaigne’s Essays on the index of forbidden
books in 1676, where it remained until the list was finally abolished in
1966.
The basis for Montaigne’s religion is at most a general fideism not far
from pagan Stoicism: a belief in some sort of divinity underlying the world.
The rest is poetry, and, while poetry is important, it is not worth killing one
another over it. Those who profess religion “should avoid all contentions
and dialectical argumentations and fall back purely on the prescriptions and
formulas of faith established by the ancients.”41 Montaigne has nothing to
say about Christ, the afterlife, or redemption. Indeed, he shows flashes of
hostility to any such doctrines, though thinly masked as a dismissal of other
religions:
Is there any opinion so bizarre—I leave aside the gross impostures of religions, with which so
many great nations and so many able men have been seen to be besotted, for since this matter
is beyond the scope of our human reason, it is more excusable for anyone who is not
extraordinarily enlightened by divine favor to be lost in it; but of other opinions is there any
so strange—that habit has not planted and established it by law in the regions where she saw
fit to do so?42

We adopt our religion the way we adopt the many other customs and
practices of our time and place. “We pray out of habit and custom, or to
speak more correctly, we read or pronounce our prayers. All in all, it is only
an act.”43
By the end of the “Apology,” as the great French scholar Jean
Starobinski notes, “Montaigne leaves man at the center of an unknowable
universe, confronting an inaccessible divinity about which nothing at all can
be asserted.”44 But, paradoxically, for Montaigne this absence of knowledge
is a source of liberation and even optimism. With God distant and
inaccessible, with knowledge limited to the world of experience, he has
been freed to explore and embrace the richness and variety of that
experience, just as Rabelais wallowed happily in the muck of the family
farm at La Devinière.
No essential reality warrants denigration of mere appearance. That is
not to say that no such essential reality exists. We cannot say definitively “I
know” or “I do not know.” We must doubt even our doubt, for we cannot
partake of the absolute. We must accept our innate limitations. In this sense,
skepticism validates appearance. It grants it legitimacy. Thus, Montaigne
brackets and dismisses all metaphysical and theological questions in his
essays. They are irrelevant to his project of learning how to live. Any form
of dogmatism distorts experience and therefore keeps us from wisdom.
Montaigne, like Rabelais, will not let the reader forget that man—to his joy
and sorrow—shares more with the beasts than with the angels.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

In Rabelais’s Third Book of Pantagruel, Panurge wants to learn how to live

—more specifically, he wants an answer to the question whether he should
marry. He seeks guidance from multiple sources to which he hopes to
subordinate his will. But all external authority fails him. As Pantagruel
finally explains, “each man must be the arbiter of his own thoughts and
seek counsel from himself.”45
Montaigne makes a similar turn in the Essays. He has found wanting the
claims to knowledge made by philosophy and theology. The precepts of the
Stoics, toward which he has a natural affinity, have proved too simplistic to
match the complexity of actual experience and too harsh and life-denying to
allow human nature to flourish. Even Stoic exemplars—those great moral
figures from the past—must be handled with care. We know too little of
their actual circumstances and motivations, and their heroics are too
extreme to make them reliable models for our own behavior.
Montaigne thus turns inward to become the arbiter of his own thoughts
and to seek counsel from himself. “I would rather be an authority on myself
than on Cicero,” he explains. “In the experience I have of myself I find
enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar.”46 Thus begins what
Erich Auerbach rightly calls “the first work of lay introspection.”47
Montaigne wants to be at home in the world but recognizes that he must
orient himself “without fixed points of support.”48 That means he must start
with himself. Just as all knowledge begins with the senses, all wisdom
begins with the self. “I study myself more than any other subject. That is
my metaphysics, that is my physics.”49
But, just as we cannot perceive whatever metaphysical reality underlies
appearances, we cannot study the self or the soul directly. The self is not a
fixed mark. It is an elusive Proteus, subtle and ever changing.50 It can be
observed only obliquely in the constant tumble of our thoughts, beliefs,
sensations, emotions, and actions. We cannot grasp its essence, but only
describe its passing existence. We must lie in wait for ourselves, observing
and overhearing, in order to know ourselves. Self-knowledge is a process of
peripheral investigation that never ends. “I have no business but with
myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste
myself.”51 Montaigne offers no abstract definition of man but only an ever-
shifting portrait of one particular man.
I cannot keep my subject still. It goes along befuddled and staggering, with a natural
drunkenness. I take it in this condition, just as it is at the moment I give my attention to it. I
do not portray being: I portray passing. Not the passing from one age to another, or, as the
people say, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.52

The pitfalls in such an approach are many. The two most significant—to
which Jean-Jacques Rousseau will often succumb in his Confessions—are
mawkish self-absorption and artful dissimilation. Montaigne largely avoids
them both. He neither sentimentalizes his subject nor seeks to make himself
appear more admirable than he is. “Now, I am constantly adorning myself,”
he admits, “for I am constantly describing myself.”53 Description is
inherently adornment since the self can never be displayed directly.
Montaigne recognizes and respects the gulf between a man’s inner self and
what he projects to the world. He constantly strives for unvarnished honesty
about the former. Yet his object is not confession but self-knowledge. He
writes to know himself in all his variety and inconstancy. He will not
impose on his narrative a false consistency and stability beyond the reach of
man. Since the self is ever changing, so too is his description.
This is a record of various and changeable occurrences, and of irresolute and, when it so
befalls, contradictory ideas: whether I am different myself, or whether I take hold of my
subjects in different circumstances and aspects. So, all in all, I may indeed contradict myself
now and then; but truth . . . I do not contradict.54
 Montaigne recognizes that the record of one person’s truth—his account
of his changing passions and beliefs—will be a jumble of contradictions.
But truth is more important than consistency. As Walt Whitman would say,
echoing Montaigne: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict
myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.).”55 Nothing about the human
condition is unambiguous. Since Montaigne is constantly changing, his
description of himself must change as well. Movement in time becomes the
elusive “essence” he seeks to know.
It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as
that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and
immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.56

All he can do is be as faithful and as accurate as language will allow in

describing himself as he appears at each moment in time. Montaigne is not
making progress toward a finished portrait of some Stoic or other moral
ideal. He does not hold himself out as an exemplar but simply as one man.
“Others form man,” he explains. “I tell of him, and portray a particular one,
very ill-formed.”57
To accommodate his subject, Montaigne adopts a style as fluid and
fluctuating as the self he seeks to understand. Digressions are not
digressions; they are an essential part of the enterprise as the mind flows
seamlessly from topic to topic. “If my mind could gain a firm footing, I
would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in
apprenticeship and on trial.”58 Montaigne is never finished but constantly
evolving, and the book is part of that process. He is thus liberated from the
rhetorical restraints and established standards of finished prose. That is why
Essais (attempts) is such a perfect title for his enterprise.
I take the first subject that chance offers. They are all equally good to me. And I never plan to
develop them completely. For I do not see the whole of anything; nor do those who promise
to show it to us.59

Montaigne lets his mind wander from topic to topic, rarely following a
single thread. He speaks directly to us, like an intimate friend. Montaigne’s
free-flowing conversations with the reader are some compensation for his
lost conversations with his friend La Boétie. As Auerbach notes, you can all
but hear Montaigne’s voice and see his gestures in his prose.60 “Cut these
words, and they would bleed,” Ralph Waldo Emerson says admiringly;
“they are vascular and alive.”61
 Montaigne comes to exist most truly in his book, in the stream of his
recorded consciousness, in his judgments and interpretations, and in his
efforts to make sense of his life and the world around him. The only unity is
provided by the “I” that is both present and absent in experience and that
provides the voice that marks change and passing. It is a tenuous unity
because this “I” changes over time, from day to day and even minute to
minute. But the very process of chasing it through all the vagaries and
digressions of life gives it a stronger, firmer shape.
And if no one reads me, have I wasted my time, entertaining myself for so many idle hours
with such useful and agreeable thoughts? In modeling this figure upon myself, I have had to
fashion and compose myself so often to bring myself out, that the model itself has to some
extent grown firm and taken shape. Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self
with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has
made me—a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part
of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.62

Yet Montaigne’s focus is neither selfish nor self-absorbed. He attempts

to understand human experience directly from his own life, the only life to
which he has such privileged access. But in the process, he is seeking to
understand humankind more generally, since we all share a common form.
Montaigne is presenting a particular life, but one that contains the seeds of
man’s estate.
I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral
philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man
bears the entire form of man’s estate.63

“Chaque homme porte la forme entière de l’humaine condition.”64 That

is the justification for Montaigne’s entire enterprise. A common, ordinary
life can become an exemplary life, a mirror into which others can look. That
is why Montaigne seems so remarkably close to us. He offers us a
representative life, not in the sense of the heroic Stoic exemplars, but
because each and every life is representative of what it means to be human.
A word of caution is in order, however. Despite Montaigne’s frequent
tone of self-deprecation, his pretense that his prose artlessly follows his
thoughts, and his insistence that he is not teaching but merely reporting, the
Essays reflect enormous intelligence, are carefully crafted, and are full of
hard-won wisdom. In a famous aside, Montaigne asks, “When I play with
my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?”65
The reader requires similar caution, for Montaigne is often playing with us,
despite his moral seriousness. I would not go as far as Barbara Bowen, who
suggests that “Montaigne’s whole attitude to himself, his book, and his
reader is tongue in cheek.”66 But there is some truth to her claim that
Montaigne loves ambiguity for its own sake and relishes the spell he casts
over his readers.67
T. S. Eliot complained that Montaigne was impervious to
counterargument: “You could as well dissipate a fog by throwing a hand
grenade into it.” It is a nice touch that Eliot, in his early poem “The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” compares fog to a cat slinking through “Streets
that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent.”68 Both Eliot and
Bowen see a sort of “insidious intent” in the fact that Montaigne offers us
not a fixed self or clear, refutable arguments, but an ungraspable fog that
curls around us and lulls us to sleep. What I see instead is an author who
refuses to falsify experience through simplifications and who is content to
live “without fixed points of support.” Moreover, like Pantagruel, he often
finds reason both to laugh and to cry, but largely and courageously chooses
laughter over tears. He considers constant cheerfulness the surest sign of
wisdom.69
I, who boast of embracing the pleasures of life so assiduously and so particularly, find in
them, when I look at them thus minutely, virtually nothing but wind. But what of it? We are
all wind. And even the wind, more wisely than we, loves to make a noise and move about,
and is content with its own functions, without wishing for stability and solidity, qualities that
do not belong to it.70

THE SELF AND OTHERS71

Montaigne’s study of the self does not preclude a focus on other people. To
the contrary, the self cannot be studied in isolation. Our interactions with
family, friends, lovers, colleagues, and even strangers help to define us,
albeit always in a fluid, rather than fixed, manner. If we want to know
ourselves, we must understand ourselves in relation to others. For “he who
lives not at all unto others, hardly lives unto himself.”72
There is, perhaps, in this turn to others, a flavor of the old joke,
“Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?” But
such relationships, Montaigne insists, not only help to define us, they are
essential to human happiness. “There is nothing to which nature seems to
have inclined us more than to society.”73 We have a pressing need to interact
with and to care about other people. Such communication is vital both to
our mental and moral well-being. Montaigne calls conversation “the most
fruitful and natural exercise of our mind,”74 and adds that “no pleasure has
any savor for me without communication.”75
As a consequence of this need for communication in order to forge
connections with others, Montaigne has an aversion to lying, which he calls
“an accursed vice.”76 Truth is critical both to public life and to personal
identity. Language cannot fix anything in place and is an imperfect
instrument of communication, but it is the only such instrument we have.
Whether speaking or writing, we must constantly strive to reveal rather than
to conceal, to describe rather than to adorn, even as Montaigne
acknowledges that every description is necessarily, to some extent, an
adornment. Complete communication with others, like complete knowledge
of ourselves, may lie beyond the reach of language, but the aspiration is our
most urgent moral imperative.
As a politician and critical go-between during the civil wars, Montaigne
knew the dangers of deliberate falsehood. Even on a more personal level,
we cannot connect with others if we dissimulate.
Since mutual understanding is brought about solely by way of words, he who breaks his word
betrays human society. It is the only instrument by means of which our wills and thoughts
communicate, it is the interpreter of our soul. If it fails us, we have no more hold on each
other, no more knowledge of each other. If it deceives us, it breaks up all our relations and
dissolves all the bonds of our society.77

Communication will never be perfect. Truth will never be absolute. But

the case for both has never been more powerfully stated.
That said, as always in Montaigne, there is a balance to be struck. We
should not give ourselves wholly to others. For if we disappear into a tangle
of familial, social, and political connections with others, we will lose
ourselves. “We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which
to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.”78 While
we may lend ourselves to others, “we must husband the freedom of our soul
and mortgage it only on the right occasions; which are in very small
number, if we judge sanely.”79
There is, then, a deliberate distance in Montaigne and at times a chilling
reserve, or at least a reserve at odds with our modern sensibilities. This is
perhaps most apparent in his discussion of his own family. In an early
remark, from his Stoic phase, he negligently comments on the death of his
infant children with apparent indifference: “I have lost two or three (but
while they were still nursing), if not without grief, at least without repining.
Yet there is hardly any accident that touches men more to the quick.”80 Did
the losses, which he says he bore without repining, nonetheless touch him
to the quick? He seems to imply as much, but it was an era in which infant
mortality rates were extremely high, and parents were cautious of too great
an attachment.
Less understandable, perhaps, is Montaigne’s reserve about marriage.
“Of my own choice,” he explains, “I would have avoided marrying Wisdom
herself, if she had wanted me.” But choice has little to do with marriage, for
“the custom and practice of ordinary life bears us along.”81 Montaigne, in a
Rabelaisian moment, quotes Socrates on whether it is preferable to take or
not to take a wife: “Whichever a man does, he will repent it.”82 Yet he says
that if one marries well and takes it rightly, “there is no finer relationship in
our society.”83 Again, there is deliberate ambiguity here because life itself is
ambiguous. We taste nothing pure, as the title of one middle essay
announces. “Whoever supposes,” Montaigne adds, “to see me look
sometimes coldly, sometimes lovingly, on my wife, that either look is
feigned, is a fool.”84
Although Montaigne does not believe that good marriages are built on
amorous desire, he is quite frank on the subject of sex. “What has the sexual
act,” he asks, “so natural, so necessary, and so just, done to mankind, for us
not to dare talk about it without shame and for us to exclude it from serious
and decent conversation?”85 In his anti-Platonic late essay “On some verses
of Virgil,” he argues that sexual attraction is not a step on the ladder of love
that must be surmounted and sublimated in favor of a purely intellectual
and spiritual passion. Sex is highly pleasant in its own right. Man is a
mixture of mind and body, and neither should be sacrificed to the other,
since both are necessary to good health, high spirits, and a balanced life.
But he qualifies this remark by suggesting that sex with one’s spouse should
be approached more soberly and “circumspectly.”86
The only relationships Montaigne discusses without ambiguity are those
with his father and with his friend Étienne de La Boétie. Montaigne clearly
loves and admires his father. But the father-son relationship is not one of
equals or of unfiltered disclosures. Montaigne’s love for his father, however
deeply felt, is formal rather than intimate. Only with La Boétie did
Montaigne achieve, at least in retrospect, what he considers a pure and
perfect connection. “In the friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend
with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them,
and cannot find it again.”87
Montaigne offers us perhaps the most powerful tribute to friendship
ever written. His treatment is schooled by earlier writers, particularly
Aristotle and Cicero, but is more moving than either because it is filtered
through his personal experience with La Boétie. Most of what we call
friendships, he notes, are merely acquaintances formed by chance for our
advantage and convenience. Such relationships are natural and pleasurable,
but true friendship is not a matter of convenience or self-interest; it is a
relationship that fulfills the self in union with another. Despite the inherent
imperfections of language, Montaigne and La Boétie achieved a connection
in which their innermost selves were shared and became one. Each cared
for the other more than himself, or rather as an extension of himself. “All
associations that are forged and nourished by pleasure or profit, by public or
private needs, are the less beautiful and noble, and the less friendships, in so
far as they mix into friendship another cause and object and reward than
friendship itself.”88 True friendship is a relationship in and for itself. It lies
beyond the power of language to explain. “If you press me to tell why I
loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed, except by answering:
Because it was he, because it was I.”89
The death of La Boétie was certainly the single most devastating event
of Montaigne’s life. As we have discussed, much of the impetus of the
Essays is as a substitute for his conversations with his friend. He discloses
himself to his readers as he once disclosed himself to La Boétie. In his
travels, moreover, Montaigne increasingly sought out others for social
engagement and the pleasures of conversation. But a deep loneliness hovers
behind the later essays. The compensation Montaigne found in writing and
in social interactions was no substitute for the loss of his friend.
For in truth, if I compare all the rest of my life—though by the grace of God I have spent it
pleasantly, comfortably, and, except for the loss of such a friend, free from any grievous
affliction, and full of tranquility of mind, having accepted my natural and original advantages
without seeking other ones—if I compare it all, I say, with the four years which were granted
me to enjoy the sweet company and society of that man, it is nothing but smoke, nothing but
dark and dreary night.90

LIVING WITH IMPERFECTION

Philosophy fails to provide us with any knowledge beyond experience. We
have no insight into the metaphysical underpinnings of this world, much
less into some other world that will succeed it. But, along with vain hopes
for such knowledge, we can shed the “philosophical scorn for transitory and
mundane things.”91 Appearance is our only reality, and muddling through as
best we can is the only sensible response to that reality. With no determined
end, the journey becomes the goal. “Life should be an aim unto itself, a
purpose unto itself.”92
Montaigne is adamant, moreover, that we cannot live that life according
to abstract principles. We have no more knowledge of moral absolutes than
we do of metaphysical ones. Even tentative moral precepts too often ignore
context and nuance. “There is no way of life so stupid and feeble as that
which is conducted by rules and discipline.”93 Where reason fails, we fall
back on experience. We must rely on our own judgment in making sense of,
and navigating through, a changing world. But our judgment is inherently
fallible, and the better part of wisdom lies in understanding that fact. Here,
the influence of Erasmus as well as Rabelais comes to the fore. “Our life is
part folly, part wisdom. Whoever writes about it only reverently and
according to the rules leaves out more than half of it.”94
We are often vain, frivolous, wayward, and absurd. Learning to live
with such imperfection—in ourselves and in others—is part of the human
condition.
All contradictions may be found in me by some twist and in some fashion. Bashful, insolent;
chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; tough, delicate; clever, stupid; surly, affable; lying,
truthful; learned, ignorant; liberal, miserly, and prodigal: all this I see in myself to some
extent according to how I turn; and whoever studies himself really attentively finds in
himself, yes, even in his judgment, this gyration and discord.95

Understanding our shortcomings allows us to strive to improve our

minds, our bodies, and our characters within the limits of human nature. It
also permits us to be tolerant of, and to have compassion for, others.
Montaigne professes a morality cut to the cloth of human nature. Its
catchwords are kindness, flexibility, sociability, curiosity, and acceptance.
If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of
inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in
it, one as much as another; but those who are aware of it are a little better off—though I don’t
know.96
 The tentative, skeptical note—“though I don’t know”—remains. There
are no guarantees, no fixed points of support. But Montaigne tries to find a
way of living that will enrich his experience and that of others.
Among Montaigne’s cardinal virtues are moderation and mindfulness.
Moderation, or mediocritas, as Rabelais termed it, is the ability to exist
within the limits of our needs and our strength. The happiest life is an
ordinary one: a life of order, consistency, and tranquility, both in our
thoughts and in our actions. “Greatness of soul,” Montaigne writes in a
seeming contradiction, “shows its elevation by liking moderate things better
than eminent ones.”97 Anyone can summon the resolve to shine on the
public stage; but imposing order on our thoughts and emotions, and on our
private and personal actions, is far more difficult.
Order is a dull and somber virtue. To win through a breach, to conduct an embassy, to govern
a people, these are dazzling actions. To scold, to laugh, to sell, to pay, to love, to hate, and to
deal pleasantly and justly with our household and ourselves, not to let ourselves go, not to be
false to ourselves, that is a rarer matter, more difficult and less noticeable.98

Like the Stoics or religious fanatics, we seek extremes that we cannot

sustain. But those who attempt to rise above human nature invariably fall
below. “They want to get out of themselves and escape from the man. That
is madness: instead of changing into angels, they change into beasts; instead
of raising themselves, they lower themselves.”99 Our only business is living
appropriately within the limits of human nature.
Prosochē, the Greek word for mindfulness or attention, signifies an
attempt to be present in experience, to observe closely and feel keenly the
passing array. Too often, fear, desire, and hope lead us to anticipate the
future or regret the past and thus steal us from the present. “We are never at
home,” Montaigne warns, “we are always beyond.”100 We always reach for
more than we can hold and are rarely content with what we have. We
sacrifice rest, health, and life to phantoms such as wealth, power, and
reputation. We thereby lose ourselves in trivialities that do not engage our
being. “Among our customary actions there is not one in a thousand that
concerns ourselves.”101 We are already richer than we think, if only we
savor the pleasures and joys in everyday life. In one of many beautiful
passages in his final essay, “Of experience,” Montaigne writes:
When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful
orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time,
for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this
 solitude, and to me. Nature has observed this principle like a mother, that the actions she has
enjoined on us for our need should also give us pleasure; and she invites us to them not only
through reason, but also through appetite.102

OLD AGE AND DEATH

Montaigne was thirty-nine when he retired to his library and began to write.
He already considered himself old, with his best days behind him. His early
essays show a standard Stoic preoccupation with death, personalized by the
deaths of his infant children, his father, his brother, and his dear friend La
Boétie, as well as by the riding accident that left Montaigne himself in the
anteroom of death for some days. But it is understandably in the great
essays of his third book, particularly “On some verses of Virgil,” “Of
vanity,” “On physiognomy,” and his masterpiece, “Of experience,” that
Montaigne truly comes to grips with old age and the prospect of death. By
then, he has firmly rejected the Stoic idea that life is but a preparation for
death. “Death is indeed the end,” he writes, “but not therefore the goal, of
life; it is its finish, its extremity, but not therefore its object. Life should be
an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself; its rightful study is to regulate,
conduct, and suffer itself.”103 The wisdom of these late essays may be the
wisdom of autumn, but, with the possible exception of his beloved Horace,
no one has ever written more beautifully and profoundly about the last
phase of life than Montaigne.
Montaigne’s account of old age is not sugarcoated as in Cicero, his main
prose rival on the subject.104 Montaigne frankly admits that body and soul
alike decay with age, however gradually and imperceptibly at first. The
mind grows less supple, the body begins to break down, and amorous
passion justly becomes an object of ridicule. Old age would be a cause for
celebration if it occasioned an increase in wisdom. But, too often, the
opposite is the case.
Besides a silly and decrepit pride, a tedious prattle, prickly and unsociable humors,
superstition, and a ridiculous concern for riches when we have lost the use of them, I find
there more envy, injustice, and malice. Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our
faces; and we never, or rarely, see a soul that in growing old does not come to smell sour and
musty. Man grows and dwindles in his entirety.105

Yet Montaigne has neither tears for the past nor fears for the future. Old
age is natural and inevitable. “I have seen the grass, the flower, and the
fruit; now I see the dryness—happily, since it is naturally. I bear the ills I
have much more easily because they are properly timed.”106 Indeed, life is
to be cherished even in old age as long as some semblance of health can be
preserved. Montaigne’s painful but steadfast battle with kidney stones
underscores this point.
Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, which deserves that we employ in its
pursuit not only time, sweat, trouble, and worldly goods, but even life; inasmuch as without it
life comes to be painful and oppressive to us. Pleasure, wisdom, knowledge, and virtue,
without it, grow tarnished and vanish away; and to the strongest and most rigorous arguments
that philosophy would impress on us to the contrary, we have only to oppose the picture of
Plato being struck with a fit of epilepsy or apoplexy, and on this supposition defy him to call
to his aid these noble and rich faculties of his soul.107

There are pleasures available to each phase of life. Those appropriate to

old age include, first and foremost, companionship. Montaigne, the
reclusive sage, increasingly descended from his tower to enjoy the
conversation and company of people from all walks of life. “The sweetness
of harmonious and agreeable company cannot be bought too dearly.”108
Montaigne knows he will never recapture the intense friendship he had with
La Boétie. He is now content with more superficial, yet still pleasurable and
enriching, connections. In his old age, Montaigne cultivated what Samuel
Johnson would later call a disposition to be pleased. “I love a gay and
sociable wisdom,” Montaigne writes, “and shun harshness and austerity in
behavior, holding every surly countenance suspect.”109 Particularly in the
calamity of old age, we should, as Horace advised, mingle a dash of folly
with our wisdom.110 Indeed, the happiest and most adventurous among the
elderly have more than a dash.
Reading is another consolation dear to his heart. Montaigne rejects the
Renaissance assumption that all wisdom is to be found in the books of
classical authors. He does not worship books or slavishly absorb their
contents. He retains from them only what he has made his own, the
thoughts and ideas by which his judgment has profited.111 But reading is
nonetheless “the best provision I have found for this human journey.”112
Books are always at hand and ready to serve. They provide consolation in
old age and solitude; they banish boredom and divert us from sorrowful
thoughts. And they never object to being set aside or sought out “only for
want of those other pleasures, that are more real, lively, and natural.”113
 Travel is yet another profitable exercise for mind and body. Exposure to
new lands and unknown customs keeps us flexible and alert. It takes us out
of the narrow world in which our own habits have imprisoned us. “I know
no better school, as I have often said, for forming one’s life, than to set
before it constantly the diversity of so many other lives, ideas, and customs,
and to make it taste such a perpetual variety of forms of our nature.”114
There is also the sheer joy of movement, of trying different foods, and of
meeting new people. Travel gives us a more acute awareness of the passing
days.
So too, of course, does death, which paradoxically may be the greatest
consolation of old age. Death need not cast its shadow over life. It can
instead heighten our awareness and joy in each day of life. “My plan is
everywhere divisible,” Montaigne explains; “it is not based on great hopes;
each day’s journey forms an end. And the journey of my life is conducted in
the same way.”115 As we age, we relinquish desires—for riches, for
reputation, for power—that interposed themselves between us and life.
Montaigne’s attitude toward death is neither Stoic nor Christian. He
does not consider death the great event of life for which we must constantly
steel ourselves. “If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry,” he wryly
explains. “Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately.
She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.”116
Yet neither does Montaigne view death as a passage to another, better life.
Those who resort to prayer and piety are simply distracting themselves from
the reality of death instead of facing it. “They avoid the struggle; they turn
their consideration away from death, as we amuse children while they are
being lanced.”117
Death is something individual to each of us, and Montaigne wants to
face his death in his own way, as he led his life in his own way. “Death is
frightful to Cicero, desirable to Cato, a matter of indifference to
Socrates.”118 Montaigne came agonizingly close to death as a young man
and found it far from frightful. But neither does he consider it desirable.
Suicide throws away our most precious gift to hurry a death that is, of all
events, the most inevitable. Nor does Montaigne treat death as a matter of
indifference; he even chides Socrates for choosing death over banishment,
as if one could enjoy life only among the “community of climate or of
blood” into which one is born.119
 Montaigne treats death with acceptance but not resignation. It is part of
the natural order of things. Attempting to flee death is pointless. We must
use our awareness of death to enhance life. We live on borrowed time, but
that time is all the more to be cherished. “I want a man to act, and to
prolong the functions of life as long as he can; and I want death to find me
planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished
garden.”120 Montaigne wants to die as he has lived: without heroics. He is
neither an angel nor a beast. He is a human being, and in Montaigne’s case
that is saying a great deal.
The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern,
with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity. Now old age needs to be treated a
little more tenderly. Let us commend it to that god [Apollo] who is the protector of health and
wisdom, but gay and sociable wisdom:

Grant me but health, Latona’s son,

And to enjoy the wealth I’ve won,
And honored age, with mind entire
And not unsolaced by the lyre.
Horace121

I would only add “and not unsolaced by Montaigne’s Essays.”

 Chapter 8
CERVANTES: LIFE AS
LITERATURE

M ontaigne, echoing Horace, enjoins his readers to mix a little folly

with their wisdom. Montaigne is already post-Renaissance. He does
not worship classical learning, perhaps because his own is so extensive.
Books are no substitute for experience and may lead us astray as often as
not. He also lacks the Renaissance faith in the perfectibility of man. A
cheerful acceptance of our flawed humanity is, for him, the beginning of
wisdom. Those who aspire to be angels, he warns, frequently end as beasts.
The excesses of neither the Reformation nor the Counter-Reformation are to
his taste. He does not aspire to tragedy.
Cervantes is also post-Renaissance. He mocks the follies of his age. But
his irony is, if anything, gentler and even more humane than Montaigne’s. It
is sweet, never bitter, despite the fact that few men had more cause for
bitterness than Miguel de Cervantes. The publication of Don Quixote—
which the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno has called “the Spanish
Bible”—was contemporaneous with the first performance of King Lear,
another work about self-delusion in a godless world. Harold Bloom claims
that “Cervantes, like Shakespeare, gives us a secular transcendence.”1 Yet
the two works could not be more different. Lear is unrelievedly bleak:
“All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly.”2 In a world abandoned by God, human
ties are too fragile, too fraught with misunderstanding, and human goodness
too ineffective to keep us from tearing each other apart for the sheer joy of
exercising power and asserting dominance. “Humanity must perforce prey
on itself, / Like monsters of the deep.”3 I find no transcendence in Lear
aside from the language in which our lack of transcendence is presented;
that is to say, only the art is transcendent. When the loyal Kent exits the
stage to commit suicide—
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls me. I must not say no.4

—it is a judgment upon the universe. We, as spectators, are devastated, not
inspired to acts of love or feats of courage.
Cervantes makes no such judgment. He mingles more than a dash of
folly into his noble knight. Don Quixote speaks wisely on every subject but
one: he believes that the novels of chivalry he reads so obsessively are
historically true and that it is therefore possible and necessary for him to
take up the abandoned mantle of knight errantry and to right the wrongs of
the world. Instead of the classical ideal of mimesis—art imitating life—
Cervantes adopts a more modern notion: life imitating art. The Don is
inspired to genuine acts of love and feats of courage by what he has read.
His literary ideal repeatedly clashes with a very different reality. Therein
lies the humor of the book. But therein lies more than humor. Erich
Auerbach, in a rare blunder, finds in Don Quixote only farce and comedy.
But Auerbach does not appreciate pathos. He wants the greater notes of
tragedy.
Cervantes, like Montaigne, does not aspire to tragedy. The human
comedy in all its pathos is enough for him, and we as readers mingle tears
with our laughter. We come away from reading the book with a greater
sense of our common humanity and the possibilities of being human. Don
Quixote bears more resemblance to Shakespeare’s late romances than to his
middle-period tragedies. That seems appropriate given that Cervantes was
fifty-eight when he published part 1 of Don Quixote, ten years older than
Shakespeare was when he wrote The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, in
which anger and bitterness have given way to gentle tears. Don Quixote is
saved by his love, his courage, and, above all, his friendship with his squire,
Sancho Panza. In the end, we are all inspired to add a bit of folly to our
wisdom and to find transcendence in our connections with one another.
Like all great works of literature, Don Quixote should be read at least
three times: first, in the bloom of idealistic but untested youth; second, amid
the successes and setbacks of adult engagement; and, third, in old age, a
time when one disengages from the concerns of the broader world and
focuses on the memory—or, if one is lucky, the continuation—of essential
human connections. The exact mix of laughter and tears will change over
those three readings. But both are present at every point. Therein lies its
claim to be not only the first modern novel, but the greatest as well.

LIFE

Miguel de Cervantes, as one biographer has noted, led a “harassed and

vagabond life.”5 He fled Spain as a young man to evade arrest; enlisted as a
marine and was badly wounded at the famous Battle of Lepanto; was
captured and held for ransom for more than five years by Barbary pirates;
and, when he returned finally to Spain, was unable to secure any preferment
in recognition of his service. He met with little success as a poet and
playwright and even less as a procurement officer for the Spanish Armada.
He moved frequently and was jailed at least once for debt, once on
suspicion of embezzlement, and once as part of an errant murder
investigation. His family circumstances were irregular to say the least. That
he became the father of the modern novel at the age of fifty-eight and, by
consensus, wrote the greatest of all novels seems nothing short of a miracle.
Yet he was the right person at just the right place and time. His Don
Quixote sits astride his horse Rocinante, lance in hand, at the crossroads
where the clarity of the Renaissance faded into the chiaroscuro of the
Baroque; where Cervantes’s own youthful ideals met with the harsh reality
of an indifferent world; and where the euphoria of the golden age of
Ferdinand and Isabella gave way to widespread desengaño—an
untranslatable Spanish word that means not so much disengagement,
disappointment, or even disillusion as it does awakening to a more sober
reality.
Miguel was born in September 1547 in Alcala de Henares, a university
town about twenty-five miles from Madrid. That was the same year in
which two powerful monarchs, François I of France and Henry VIII of
England, both died. Charles V was the Holy Roman emperor. He ruled over
much of Spain (including Castile and Aragon) and parts of Italy and France,
as well as the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands), Bohemia, and
Austria. Spanish conquistadors had already pushed aggressively into the
New World.
 Miguel’s grandfather, Juan de Cervantes, was a prosperous attorney for
the Inquisition who settled in his native Córdoba. Miguel’s father, Rodrigo,
did not fare so well. He was partially deaf, and his education was limited,
particularly after his own father, Juan, abandoned the family for a mistress.
Suddenly forced to make a living, Rodrigo became a surgeon in Alcala. In
those days, a surgeon was one step up from a barber and indeed sometimes
shaved his customers as well as bled them. It was frequently a Jewish
profession, a fact which, along with Miguel’s inability to find favor in the
rigid Spanish social order, has led scholars to speculate that Miguel, like
Montaigne, had converso roots.6 Ferdinand and Isabella had expelled the
Jews from Spain in 1492, but many converted, whether nominally or in
reality. These conversos were allowed to remain but were definitely a
disfavored group in an increasingly orthodox Catholic country. Also in
1492, the Reconquista was completed with the fall of Granada. Any Moors
who wanted to stay in Spain also had to convert. These Moriscos were even
more disfavored and were banished altogether between 1609 and 1614. The
expulsion of the Jews and Moors, many of whom were active in trade and
finance, proved to be an economic disaster for Spain, exacerbated by
crippling taxation, rampant inflation, drought, famine, and outbreaks of
plague.
Rodrigo married Leonor de Cortinas in 1542. It appears that Leonor’s
parents, who were rural landowners, considered the marriage a mistake and
shunned the young couple. Rodrigo’s mother, who received no support from
her former husband, was in no position to help either. Six children survived
infancy: three daughters (Andrea, Luisa, and Magdalena) and three boys
(Miguel, Rodrigo, and Juan). The young and growing family spent fifteen
years moving from place to place, barely making a living. Their household
goods were seized, and Rodrigo was jailed for debt at one point, just as his
own father had once been jailed in a political dispute. The Cervantes men,
despite their hidalgo (minor nobility) status, were all acquainted with
Spanish prisons.
Juan de Cervantes finally provided financial support and a house to the
family in Córdoba. Undoubtedly, the fact that the youngest child, born in
1554, was named after his grandfather reflects this rapprochement. But the
elder Juan died in 1556, the same year that Charles V abdicated in favor of
his son Philip II and retired to a monastery, where he himself died two years
later.
 Miguel began his formal education in Córdoba, probably at the hands of
the Jesuits. But the family moved to Seville in 1564—the year Shakespeare
was born—and on to Madrid in 1566, five years after Philip II made that
fledgling city the capital of Spain. Miguel’s formal schooling was limited,
and though he learned Latin, he was largely self-taught through his wide
and deep reading.
In Madrid, Miguel developed a fascination with the theater. He also
developed a fascination for a young barmaid, but their planned elopement
was blocked by the girl’s father, who forbade her to see the impecunious
student from such a dubious background. In any event, Miguel was forced
to flee Spain in 1569 after he wounded another young man in a duel. To
avoid arrest, he traveled first to Seville and then to Italy. He was sentenced
in absentia to ten years of banishment and to have his right hand publicly
severed. The sentence proved uncannily prophetic in light of subsequent
events.
Miguel entered into the service of various church officials in Italy. To do
so, he had to obtain a purity-of-blood certificate indicating that none of his
ancestors were Jews, Moors, or converts. The fact that he could readily do
so, however, is apparently no indication that the certification was true. It
was more a formality than a searching inquiry into his background. Miguel
made the most of his time in Rome, reading widely in Italian literature.
In 1571, Pope Pius V called for a “Holy League” to counter the
Ottoman Empire’s aggressive expansion in the Mediterranean. The key
members of the League were the Venetian Republic, the Papal States, and
the Spanish Empire, whose ruler, Philip II, relished his title as “Most
Catholic King” and his role as a defender of the faith against Muslim
incursions. The Spanish Empire provided most of the money. Venice, whose
dominance of Mediterranean trade was at risk, provided most of the ships.
The pope mostly provided prayers and blessings. The fleet was led by Don
Juan of Austria, in whose service both Miguel and his brother Rodrigo
enlisted.
The crucial encounter occurred in the Gulf of Lepanto on October 7,
1571. It was the last great battle of ships powered entirely by rowers. The
hitherto invincible Turkish fleet was soundly defeated, and that glorious
victory has been compared to the Greek defeat of the Persian Empire at
Salamis in 480 BCE, another sea battle that preserved the independence of
Europe. Miguel fought with great courage as his ship grappled with and
boarded a Turkish galleon. He was wounded three times, twice in the chest,
followed by a harquebus shot that forever cost him the use of his left hand.
Despite his wounds, he relished the memory of his service. The intensity of
a comparable capstone military experience would be beautifully captured
by Shakespeare in the speech Henry V gives before the Battle of Agincourt
on the feast of Saint Crispin in 1415:
He that shall see this day and live old age
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
...
This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered.7

Alas, as we shall see, Miguel’s service was largely forgotten in Spain,

but it was a source of fierce pride for a writer who praised a life of arms
over one of letters.
After a long convalescence, Miguel returned to active service and took
part in at least two subsequent engagements, despite his useless left hand.
He spent a total of four years as a soldier in the uniform of the Spanish
Empire before deciding to return home with letters from Don Juan and
another officer testifying to his exemplary service. Miguel hoped to parlay
those letters into a comfortable sinecure in Spain, but they played a very
different role in his life.
The flotilla in which he was returning was scattered by a storm.
Miguel’s ship was in sight of his homeland when it was assaulted and
captured by Barbary pirates. Miguel and others, including his brother
Rodrigo, were carried off to Algiers. His letters of recommendation served
only to convince his Moorish captors that he was a man of importance, and
they demanded a large ransom for his freedom. The downside of this was
that his impoverished family could not possibly raise such a sum. The
upside was that he was treated as a valuable commodity rather than being
enslaved and sent off to work under harsh conditions. Algiers was at this
time a city of 150,000, whose wealth depended largely on piracy. As many
as twenty-five thousand captives were there awaiting ransom or serving as
slaves.
 Miguel was held in Algiers for five years before finally being able to
arrange a ransom. He tried four times to escape, and throughout showed
great courage and leadership. When one of his plots to free more than a
hundred captives was betrayed at the last minute, he took full responsibility.
Luckily, on this and other occasions, he escaped severe punishment. He
later arranged for his brother Rodrigo to be ransomed first, despite Miguel’s
own rights as the eldest son.
Miguel was finally freed in October 1580, ransomed by a group of
Trinitarian monks. He returned to Spain after an eleven-year absence and
without a functioning left hand. Recall the sentence he had received in
absentia. It took some doing, but in honor of his service the warrant for his
arrest was finally annulled. The sentence, after all, had already been carried
out by adverse fortune.
Miguel’s attempts to find a comfortable sinecure in his home country
were met with indifference. He repeatedly stressed his “Old Christian”
background and his military service in letters seeking preferment. It was a
time of growing religious intolerance. The Inquisition was in full swing.
Perhaps a converso background explains his lack of patronage. More likely,
the great Battle of Lepanto was now a distant memory. Miguel had missed
his moment. And it was a time of economic collapse, which made
opportunities scarce. Miguel’s brother Rodrigo had returned three years
earlier and, unable to find any employment, rejoined the military in
Flanders. The Spanish Empire was still intact but had already begun its
steady decline. As historian J. H. Elliott explains, “The crisis of the late
sixteenth century cuts through the life of Cervantes as it cuts through the
life of Spain, separating the days of heroism from the days of desengaño.”8
Miguel tried to make a living both as a poet and as a playwright. His
pastoral romance, La Galatea, attracted favorable attention when it was
published in 1585. He also wrote a number of plays that met with modest
success. But Lope de Vega was the wildly popular playwright of his day,
and Miguel disdained what he viewed as de Vega’s modern, slapdash style.
His own plays were more formal and classical, which seems ironic in light
of the stunning innovations in Don Quixote. Unable to attract patronage or
to support himself with his pen, Miguel all but abandoned writing for
almost two decades.
In 1584, at the age of thirty-seven, Miguel fathered an illegitimate child
with Ana Franca de Rojas, a Morisco who ran a tavern with her much older
husband. That same year, about two months after the birth of his daughter
Isabel, he married Catalina de Salazar y Palacios, a young woman not yet
twenty who had just lost her father. Her family had a small estate in the
village of Esquivias, near Toledo, in the region of La Mancha; the estate
was encumbered with debts, but it appeared to support the widowed mother,
her three children, and even her new son-in-law at first. For reasons
unknown, however, the restless Miguel left this home and his young wife
after three years. The opening of Don Quixote reads: “Somewhere in La
Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember . . .” One
biographer has suggested that Esquivias is the place he no longer wanted to
recall.9
Over the next ten years, Miguel filled a variety of minor government
posts in Andalusia, mostly in the areas around Seville and Córdoba. He
started as a requisitions officer for the Spanish Armada. Later, after the
disastrous collapse of the seemingly invincible Armada, Miguel served as a
tax collector, an equally unpopular position. He was an honest official but
not very good with the accounts, which he sometimes mistook to his own
disadvantage. Twice he was excommunicated for perfectly legal
requisitions of church property, though both sentences were ultimately
overturned by the archbishop of Seville. He was also jailed briefly at one
point until his accounts were reconciled. He was imprisoned again in
Seville for as much as six months, in 1597–1598, following the bankruptcy
of a financier to whom he had entrusted state funds. Philip II ordered him
freed before his own death in September 1598. Philip also signed a peace
treaty with Henri IV of France and restored the autonomy of the Low
Countries (where Miguel’s brother Rodrigo had died in the fighting). Spain
still had a substantial empire in the New World, but its empire in Europe
was crumbling fast.
While he was in prison, Cervantes conceived the idea for Don Quixote
and may even have begun writing it there. He had reconciled with his wife,
Catalina, at some point, and they began living together again, first in
Seville, and later in Valladolid and Madrid. Miguel’s household included
two of his sisters, Magdalena and Andrea. Upon the death of Ana Franca,
Magdalena adopted Miguel’s daughter, who took the name Isabel de
Saavedra. For unknown reasons, Miguel had taken Saavedra, the name of a
distant cousin, as his second surname and bestowed that name on his only
child. It was an irregular household to say the least. Magdalena and Andrea
had multiple affairs, generally with nobles who falsely promised to marry
them; in each instance, cash settlements were made. Some suitors may have
skipped the promises and proffered only cash. Miguel’s daughter Isabel and
Andrea’s daughter Constanza would largely follow the same pattern.
Indeed, shortly after Isabel married, she gave birth to a daughter who was
not her husband’s. And when that husband died soon thereafter, Cervantes
arranged another marriage for her with the help of a substantial dowry paid
by her lover.
Out of this turmoil and chaos, Don Quixote emerged. Published in 1605,
the book quickly spread throughout Spain and was translated into English,
French, and other European languages. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was
suddenly famous, though not rich, having sold the manuscript for a flat fee.
We have no reliable portrait of Cervantes. But, in the prologue to a book
of Exemplary Stories he later published, Cervantes offers his readers a
verbal self-portrait and brief autobiography. Imagining a frontispiece
portrait that the volume lacked, he tells the reader what it would have
shown:
The man you see before you, with aquiline features, chestnut-colored hair, smooth,
unwrinkled brow, bright eyes, and curved though well-proportioned nose, silver beard that not
twenty years ago was golden, large moustache, small mouth, teeth neither large nor small—
since he boasts only six of them, and those he has are in poor condition and even worse
positions, for not one of them cuts against another—of medium build, neither tall nor short, a
healthy color in his cheeks, fair rather than dark complexion, slightly stooping, and not very
light on his feet. This, then, is a description of the author of La Galatea and Don Quixote of la
Mancha . . . and other works which have gone astray, perhaps without their owner’s name
upon them. He is commonly known as Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. He was for many years
a soldier and a prisoner for five and a half after that, during which time he learned to cultivate
patience in adversity. He lost his left hand in the naval battle of Lepanto to a blunderbuss
shot, and although the injury is ugly he considers it beautiful because he incurred it at the
most noble and memorable event that past centuries have seen or future generations can ever
hope to witness, fighting beneath the victorious banners of the son of that thunderbolt of war,
Charles V of happy memory.10

THE FIRST SALLY

Don Quixote, the most famous of all novels, begins and ends quietly.
Alonso Quixano is a fifty-year-old hidalgo of modest means. He lives with
his niece and housekeeper in a small, unnamed village somewhere in the
region of La Mancha, in southcentral Spain. The aging bachelor leads an
uneventful and celibate existence. His two friends are the village priest and
the barber. To while away the many hours of leisure, he reads books of
chivalry. They become his obsession. He reads day and night and even sells
off acres of arable land to buy more books.
Quixano, like most of us, longs to step outside the drab conventions that
define and confine him. He dreams of himself as another person altogether,
a heroic man of arms like those about whom he reads. He wants to live in
the world of Amadís of Gaul, Orlando, and other celebrated knights. He
wants to remake himself and his world according to his longings.
The Renaissance ideal, as Stephen Greenblatt reminds us in his
groundbreaking work, is all about self-fashioning, about reinventing oneself
in accordance with classical ideals.11 Machiavelli prepared a handbook for
the prince. Castiglione urged his ideal courtier to turn himself into a work of
art. Renaissance painting idealized its subjects. Even the skeptical
Montaigne, though with more irony and self-deprecation, thought we could
remake ourselves through close attention to experience.
It is perhaps natural, therefore, that Alonso Quixano believes he can
reinvent himself as Don Quixote de la Mancha, a knight errant dedicated to
truth and justice and the righting of wrongs. Accordingly, the book does not
begin with the birth of Alonso Quixano. We know nothing of his early life
and experience. It begins with his rebirth, literally his renaissance, as Don
Quixote. The Don renames his horse Rocinante and reenvisions the tired,
skinny nag as a warhorse of great stamina and blazing speed. And, in a
remarkable bit of sublimation, he reenvisions a robust, sexually charged
peasant girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his lady love, the imperious and peerless
Dulcinea del Toboso.
We all spin fantasies. As passionate readers, we enter vicariously into
the lives of fictional characters and place ourselves at the heroic center of
their stories. And we all project on loved ones virtues that a more
dispassionate observer might find wanting. As Montaigne noted, each man
and woman interprets the world differently depending on background,
status, experience, and desire. The stories we read, and the stories we
invent, are part of that process. Everyone has their own narrative, which
they impose on the world. That is how we give meaning to our lives in a
world abandoned by God, once thought to be the omniscient narrator of our
individual destinies. We are each of us, to some extent, compelled to be the
author of our own fictional universe.
 The key words, of course, are “to some extent.” For at what point does
fantasy turn into madness, or playacting into outright schizophrenia? That is
a question raised throughout the book, and it is one that can never clearly be
resolved since the line between the two is blurry at best. Certainly, though,
Alonso Quixano seems to cross that line when he patches together an
ancient set of armor with a pasteboard helmet held together with ribbon,
mounts his horse, picks up his lance, and sets off in search of adventure. As
he rides along, the freshly minted Don Quixote even begins to narrate his
own story, as he imagines a future historian will do, adopting the language
of chivalric romances:
“No sooner had rubicund Apollo spread over the face of the wide and spacious earth the
golden strands of his beauteous hair, no sooner had diminutive and bright-hued birds with
dulcet tongues greeted in sweet, mellifluous harmony the advent of rosy dawn, who,
forsaking the soft couch of her zealous consort, revealed herself to mortals through the door
and balconies of the Manchegan horizon, than the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha,
abandoning the downy bed of idleness, mounted his famous steed, Rocinante, and
commenced to ride through the ancient and illustrious countryside of Montiel.”12

“And it was true that this was where he was riding,” the actual narrator
(which is, as we shall see, a complicated story in its own right) wryly
remarks.13
The Don continues riding all day, dreaming of the day when his great
deeds will win him immortal fame and letting Rocinante determine their
direction, for therein he thinks lies the essence of adventure. Finally, hungry
and tired, he comes upon a ramshackle inn, which in his mind is a
magnificent castle complete with towers and a deep moat. He greets two
whores standing in the courtyard as if they were noble ladies, provoking
gales of laughter. He mistakes the innkeeper for the lord of the castle, and
the inn-keeper—who is a bit of a rogue but not unkindly—decides to play
along with his mad guest, even to the point of offering to dub him a knight;
for Don Quixote has realized, to his horror, that he cannot legitimately
engage in adventures until he receives the official order of knighthood.
What follows, of course, is a parody of the ceremony of knighthood, as
Don Quixote stands watch through the night over his armor (which is
hanging on a trough in the courtyard because, inexplicably, the castle has no
chapel), does battle with two muleteers who cast aside the armor to water
their mules, and receives his knighthood from the innkeeper-cum-castellan,
who strikes him on the shoulders with a sword, murmuring prayers while
pretending to read from an old account book. The two whores assist at the
ceremony, dress the new knight in his armor, and graciously accept his
offers of service.
The entire scene is undeniably and even riotously comic. But it is not
only comic. There is considerable pathos in the account of the dignified, if
deluded, Alonso Quixano pacing beside his armor and, through an
incredible act of creative will, transforming everything and everyone he
encounters into what he dreams and wishes them to be. His collisions with
reality simply make him cling all the more fiercely to his fantasy, for
“everything that our adventurer thought, saw or imagined seemed to him to
be done and to happen in the manner of the things he had read.”14 The two
whores and the innkeeper are amusing themselves, but not at Don Quixote’s
expense. They are pulled, despite themselves, into Don Quixote’s
imaginative orbit. One man, with a strong enough narrative, however
fantastic, can alter the trajectory of other narratives. And this is what Don
Quixote de la Mancha does throughout part 1. In the new Copernican
universe, he becomes a sun around which others revolve.
In the sixteenth century, it was still commonplace to find humor in those
who were mentally and physically disabled. Dwarfs were kept at court as
objects of fun. The scales for us tip more toward pathos; but we can still
appreciate the comedy, just as Cervantes’s original readers must have felt an
ache in their hearts for the would-be Don Quixote. As Rabelais and
Montaigne were at pains to remind us, both laughter and tears are essential
to the human condition. The Don is sublime as well as ridiculous. He is
Miguel de Cervantes, clinging to the glory of Lepanto and dreaming of
literary fame and fortune. He is Spain itself, clinging to its golden age and
dreaming of an expanded Catholic empire even as its Invincible Armada is
decimated by bad weather, bad planning, and the long-range guns of the
English. He is all of us. And the person he dreams himself into being is
admirable. He is committed to truth and justice and shows great courage
and perseverance even though the results of his endeavors are so often
slapstick failures.
The last adventure of his first sally is a case in point. He accosts a group
of merchants on the road and demands that they confess that in the entire
world there is no one more beautiful than Dulcinea del Toboso. One of the
merchants—who, like the innkeeper, appreciates a good joke—responds
that they have never seen the woman in question and that the Don should
first show her to them and then they would be happy to do what he asks. “If
I were to show her to you,” he responds, “where would the virtue be in your
confessing so obvious a truth? The significance lies in not seeing her and
believing, confessing, affirming, swearing, and defending that truth; if you
do not, you must do battle with me, audacious and arrogant people.”15
The merchant then makes a common mistake with Don Quixote, which
is to push the joke too far. He asks at least to see a portrait of the lady in
question and promises that, even if she is blind in one eye with discharge
flowing from the other, they will praise her as much as he wishes. Infuriated
at this blasphemous insult, Don Quixote lowers his lance and charges. It
would have gone badly for the merchant, except that Rocinante trips and
falls, and the Don is cast to the ground where, due to the weight of his
armor and other accoutrements, he cannot stand. One of the mule drivers,
incensed by the insults hurled by Don Quixote, beats him soundly with his
own lance until it shatters.
In this scene, as in most of part 1, comedy conquers over pathos at first,
despite the beating. Somehow the reader knows that the Don is never in
serious danger. And the setbacks he suffers are merely physical; his spirit is
undaunted: “And still he considered himself fortunate,” the narrator
explains, “for it seemed to him that this was the kind of mishap that befell
knights errant, and he attributed it all to his horse’s misstep, but his body
was so bruised and beaten it was not possible for him to stand.”16
When he is left battered and bruised and unable to stand, the scales
shift, and one sees on the ground not Don Quixote but Alonso Quixano,
helplessly spouting the chivalric ballad of a wounded knight from one of his
books. And it is Alonso Quixano who is discovered, still lying there, by a
kindly neighbor, Pedro Alonso, who lifts him up, puts him gently on his
own donkey, and leads him and Rocinante home. Pedro tries gently to
convince Quixano that he is not a hero from one the books of chivalry, but
the would-be Don will have none of it. “I know who I am,” he replies, “and
I know I can be not only those I have mentioned but the Twelve Peers of
France as well, and even all the nine paragons of Fame, for my deeds will
surpass all those they performed, together or singly.”17 In a nice touch of
delicacy, Pedro waits until dark to bring his neighbor home, “so that no one
would see what a poor knight the beaten gentleman was.”18 Thus ends the
first sally.
SANCHO AND THE DON: THE SECOND SALLY

A number of scholars believe that Cervantes’s initial conception did not

extend beyond the return home of Alonso Quixano. There is a very funny
scene in which the priest and the barber, urged on by the niece and the
housekeeper, make a bonfire of the books of chivalry that turned Quixano’s
brain and, at the niece’s urging, even add to the pile certain pastoral works,
lest Quixano, cured of knight errantry, will “want to become a shepherd and
wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing, and, what
would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and
contagious disease.”19 In a parody of the Inquisition—the niece even calls
the books “heretics” that must be burned—the priest and the barber debate
the virtues and vices of the various books, sparing some and condemning
others. Cervantes’s own Galatea barely escapes the flames after the priest
notes that the author is “better versed in misfortunes than in verses.”20 But
they decide to withhold judgment pending an expected second part of a
book that, so far, “proposes something and concludes nothing.”21
Significantly, there are no religious books in the library: no books of
devotion or pious biographies of saints. Alonso Quixano may be a devout
Christian, but God plays no part in the world of Don Quixote.22
Perhaps Cervantes did intend the Don’s first sally, with or without the
book burning, to be a stand-alone novella, like those in his sadly neglected
Exemplary Stories. Indeed, with Don Quixote as the sole focus, it is hard to
see what else Cervantes could have done with the tale without it becoming
tedious, as the Don suffers one collision after another with a nonchivalrous
world. Like La Galatea, it would propose something and conclude nothing.
But, in an act of pure genius, Cervantes decided to give his woeful
knight a companion, a neighboring farmer named Sancho Panza, “a good
man—if that title can be given to someone who is poor—but without much
in the way of brains.”23 The “buddy movie” was thus born out of the
greatest, funniest, and most moving friendship in all of literature. The two
are, of course, polar opposites. The Don is a hidalgo; Sancho is a peasant.
The Don is well-off; Sancho is poor. The Don is educated; Sancho is
illiterate. The Don is tall and thin; Sancho is short and round. The Don can
live on “sweet memories”24 of the golden age of chivalry; Sancho requires a
steady diet of sausage and wine. The Don is an idealist, full of books and
classical learning; Sancho is a realist, who can spout commonsense
proverbs until the proverbial cows come home.
Don Quixote, while still on his sickbed, talks to Sancho at such length
about the world of chivalry and the life of adventure that Sancho agrees to
go with him and serve as his squire. Despite the combined efforts of the
priest, the barber, the niece, and the housekeeper, the Don has not given up
his belief “that what the world needed most were knights errant and that in
him errant chivalry would be reborn.”25 The greatest lure for Sancho is Don
Quixote’s assurance that one day the Don might have an adventure that
would gain him an insula (the Latin word for island used in books of
chivalry) and that he would make Sancho its governor. The governorship of
this hypothetical insula becomes an idea fixed firmly in Sancho’s brain.
The presence of Sancho adds variety and complexity to the adventures.
Sancho and the Don see the world completely differently. They embrace
conflicting narratives that are in constant dialogue with one another. Don
Quixote sees a number of giants ready to do battle; Sancho sees windmills.
Don Quixote sees the famous helmet of Mambrino; Sancho sees a barber’s
basin. Don Quixote sees two warring armies and narrates the course of their
battle, even to the point, in Homeric fashion, of reciting the names, arms,
and standards of the various famous knights; Sancho sees nothing but the
dust cloud stirred up by two flocks of sheep. Don Quixote is the
imagination run amok; Sancho is the bellwether of reality.
Repeatedly, of course, the Don’s imagination collides with Sancho’s
reality, often to the detriment of both. Such incidents are a constant subject
of dispute between them. Yet Sancho’s reproaches are always met by the
Don’s insistence that their setbacks are contrived by an evil enchanter who
is worried that the Don’s deeds and fame will eclipse those of some other,
more favored knight. Sancho receives these explanations—which by
definition can never be refuted—with a delicious combination of skepticism
and credulity.
Their “adventures” are all variations on a theme, but they continually
expand our understanding of and affection for the two characters, just as
they expand Sancho’s and the Don’s understanding of and affection for each
other. They grow together over the course of the novel. The Don is the
dominant member of the pair, to be sure, at least in part 1; but they are a
pair. Starting with the second sally, the entire focus of the novel is on the
two of them, as opposed to the single hero of the chivalric tradition or the
antihero of the picaresque novels then sweeping Spain. It is as if their world
is indeed shaped by an enchanter—which of course it is, by the benign
enchanter Miguel de Cervantes—to test and deepen their relationship, a
tendency that will become even more pronounced in part 2, when other
characters literally become the planners and authors of adventures for the
pair. Over the course of the novel, they reach terms of more or less equality
based on their common humanity. Their relationship transcends barriers of
rank, fortune, and education. Sancho transforms the Don as much as the
Don transforms Sancho. Indeed, without Sancho, Don Quixote would be
just a madman and a fool. Sancho’s belief in him, qualified as it is, makes
him something more. “No doubt about it,” Sancho says to himself when the
Don routs a group of men carrying torches, “this master of mine is as
courageous and brave as he says.”26 The Don has to be validated in the eyes
of at least one other. It is perhaps true that no man is a hero to his valet, but
in his own way Don Quixote is a hero to his squire, Sancho Panza. The
Don, too, insists that despite Sancho’s flaws, “I would not trade him for any
other squire.”27
Sancho and the Don do not idealize one another. They quarrel like an
old married couple, yet they love and are loyal to each another. One
complaint to which Sancho frequently reverts is that he was tossed in a
blanket by a group of ruffians, and the Don did not intervene—that evil
enchanter again had rendered him powerless. The Don’s most frequent
complaint about Sancho is that he is “not well-versed in the matter of
adventures”28 and regularly presumes beyond his proper role as squire.
Their conversations are invariably ironic. The reader sees the limitations on
both sides. But the irony is always gentle. Their respective views of the
world are totally incompatible, yet they coexist. They expand the realm of
each other’s thoughts and hence the realm of their discourse. And they both
become better human beings as they learn from one another.
Obviously, their friendship is not on the high intellectual plane of
Montaigne and La Boétie. There is even a fair amount of toilet humor that
owes much to Rabelais. Yet Sancho’s own explanation as to why he stays
with the Don sounds not so different from Montaigne’s “because it was he;
because it was I.”29
“If I were a clever man, I would have left my master days ago. But this is my fate and this is
my misfortune; I can’t help it; I have to follow him: we’re from the same village, I’ve eaten
his bread, I love him dearly, he’s a grateful man, he gave me his donkeys, and more than
 anything else, I’m faithful; and so it’s impossible for anything to separate us except the man
with the pick and shovel.”30

FROM THE ROMANCE TO REALISM

It is a commonplace that Don Quixote is a book about books. Its ostensible

purpose, Cervantes claims, is to warn against books of chivalry, which tell
the most outrageous lies under the guise of truth and thus poison the minds
of those who read them, as they poisoned the mind of his eponymous hero.
Yet the critique is also a form of homage, for, like any good parody, Don
Quixote adopts the conventions of the genre even though, as Don Quixote
himself admits, “all things having to do with knights errant appear to be
chimerical, foolish, senseless, and turned inside out.”31
Cervantes purports to be merely the editor of a history of the adventures
of the Don and his squire compiled by a Moorish scholar, Cide Hamete
Benengeli. This fact is dramatically revealed in the middle of Don
Quixote’s epic battle with a Basque mule driver, when each has raised his
sword, intent on striking a fatal blow. But they sit there frozen in time atop
their mounts, for “at this very point and juncture,” Cervantes reports, “the
author of the history leaves the battle pending, apologizing because he
found nothing else written about the feats of Don Quixote other than what
he has already recounted.”32 Confident that so great a knight would not lack
a wise man to record not only his great deeds but also his “slightest
thoughts and fancies, no matter how secret they might be,”33 Cervantes
devotes himself to finding the rest of the history. And, of course, he does,
when he comes across a boy in the market in Toledo hoping to sell some
notebooks and old papers. Among them is a lengthy work in Arabic, and,
after Cervantes prevails on a Morisco to read it for him, translating on the
fly, he quickly realizes that it is the lost history of Don Quixote. Cervantes
buys the notebooks and sets the Morisco the task of preparing a proper
written translation into the Castilian language.
The history of Don Quixote is thus written by a Moor, translated by a
Morisco, and edited, with narrative commentary, by a Castilian. Cervantes
vouches for its truth, with the caveat that Arabs “are very prone to telling
falsehoods” and are also “great enemies of ours,” which might lead Cide
Hamete Benengeli to understate the virtues of so good a Castilian knight.34
Truth, Cervantes stresses, is the ultimate touchstone of value:
 Historians must and ought to be exact, truthful, and absolutely free of passions, for neither
interest, fear, rancor, nor affection should make them deviate from the path of the truth, whose
mother is history, the rival of time, repository of great deeds, witness to the past, example and
adviser to the present, and forewarning to the future.35

It is an idealized Renaissance view of history, as applied to a work of

complete fiction. But what Cervantes is implying is that fiction has its own
standards of truth that are every bit as rigorous as those of history.
Don Quixote, of course, is not really a cautionary tale about the
pernicious absurdity of books of chivalry. Although such novels were
popular under Charles V, they were already out of fashion by the time
Cervantes was writing, and there was no pressing need to discredit them
further. Pastoral novels—combining prose and verse like Cervantes’s
Galatea—were more in vogue, and picaresque novels—the episodic
adventures of a clever rogue interspersed with moralistic sermons—were
the latest rage for their colorful portrayal of the lower, seamier side of life:
they could titillate and condemn all at once.
In Don Quixote, Cervantes combines elements of all three genres in a
deeper meditation on the uses and abuses of fiction. He is striving for
something new. Chivalric idealism, pastoral romance, and the picaresque
underworld are all present at the birth of the modern novel. But each has its
own set of conventions that define and confine it. Cervantes wants to go
beyond those conventions and, in the process, reenvision the novel as a
more flexible tool for understanding reality. Cervantes is indeed dedicated
to truth: not the truth of history but the higher truth of fiction, fiction that is
faithful to experience and even to the “slightest thoughts and fancies, no
matter how secret they might be.” Cervantes views the novel, as Montaigne
did his Essays, as a means of exploring experience and obtaining a new
level of self-knowledge and self-understanding. Cervantes, like Montaigne,
seeks wisdom as well as entertainment, and he provides both in his
characters’ encounters with the world and with one another.
Yet Cervantes, again like Montaigne, understood that the written word
creates, as well as describes, the world. Fiction doesn’t just imitate reality;
it transforms reality through the act of representing it. No single
representation can ever claim to be definitive. The novel, like the essay, is
never through with its work of redescribing and re-creating. Our attempt to
understand is never at an end. We are never frozen in place like the Basque
and Don Quixote, waiting to deliver their final blows.
 All knowledge may come from experience, but reading is part of our
experience. It changes us. It transforms us. It creates new ideals and new
longings, which are then tested in the crucible of experience as the Don’s
chivalric visions are tested. Reality can be a harsh teacher, but we cannot go
back to a preliterary experience. Auerbach suggests that, in Don Quixote,
reality is always right, and the Don’s ideals are repeatedly exposed as
absurd, even mad. But that is too simplistic a dichotomy. Reality is not
totally intractable; ideals and desires are essential to life itself, and the key
question is to what extent we can shape reality to accord with those ideals
and desires. We might even say that every attempt at realism is a new form
of romanticism; indeed, that seems a perfect description of Don Quixote.
Part 1 of Don Quixote contains a number of interpolated novels. One of
them is found in a traveling bag left behind at an inn and is read aloud to the
other characters by the priest. Another is delivered by a former prisoner of
the Moors, like Cervantes himself, who recounts his life and adventures to
the assembled company at the same inn. A pastoral novella about a
beautiful, well-off young woman who decides to become a shepherdess and
shuns all contact with men is integrated somewhat better in the story,
although still at odd angles from the main plot. Cervantes also briefly hints
at the picaresque adventures of Ginés de Pasamonte, one of the galley
slaves the Don frees from captivity.
It is worth noting that the encounter with the galley slaves is one of the
few incidents in part 1 where the Don does not misperceive what is
happening. Indeed, it marks a turning point in the first volume. The Don
does not transform the situation in his mind into an adventure from the
books of chivalry. He understands that these men are convicted criminals
sentenced to serve as rowers in the king’s ships, where they will be chained
to their oars, whipped, underfed, and as likely as not die before tasting
freedom. The Don carefully questions each man to understand “the
particular reason for each one’s misfortune.”36 Most of them are more
pathetic than venal, at least according to their own accounts. One has only
“confessed” under torture. Another was convicted because he had no money
to bribe the judge. But Ginés, who is weighed down with double the usual
shackles, has allegedly “committed more crimes than all the rest
combined.”37 He has also written his own history, which he predicts will
overshadow the most popular of picaresque novels because it is true.
 “What I can tell your grace is that it deals with truths, and they are truths so appealing and
entertaining that no lies can equal them.”
“And what is the title of the book?” asked Don Quixote.
“The Life of Ginés de Pasamonte,” Ginés replied.
“And is it finished?” asked Don Quixote.
“How can it be finished,” he responded, “if my life isn’t finished yet? What I’ve written
goes from my birth to the moment when they sentenced me to the galleys this last time.”38

Cervantes is again parodying a popular genre of his day. But he is also

insisting that the best books are true to life, because such “truths [are] so
appealing and entertaining that no lies can equal them.” Ginés notes that he
will finish his book, and by implication his life, in the galleys of Spain. But
the Don, sounding like a modern civil rights activist, decries the severity of
the punishment, the perversion of justice, and the oppression of the weak.
He spurs Rocinante to the galley slaves’ defense and, with the help of the
slaves themselves, routs the four guards escorting the convicts. Instead of
expressing gratitude they shower him, Sancho, and their mounts with stones
after the Don seeks to compel them to carry their chains to Toboso, where
they can deposit them at the feet of Dulcinea and tell of his great deeds. The
galley slaves then scatter, and, in a passage of great pathos, the picaresque
interlude concludes:
The donkey and Rocinante, Sancho and Don Quixote, were left alone; the donkey, pensive,
with bowed head, twitching his ears from time to time, thinking that the tempest of stones had
not yet ended and was still falling around his ears; Rocinante, lying beside his master, for he
too had fallen to the ground in the shower of stones; Sancho, in his shirt sleeves and afraid of
the Holy Brotherhood; Don Quixote, grief-stricken at seeing himself so injured by the very
people for whom he had done so much good.39

The most extended and important of the novels within the novel are the
intertwining stories of Cardenio and Luscinda and Dorotea and Don
Fernando. The Don and Sancho first encounter them in the Sierra Morena,
where the Don has gone to imitate Amadís of Gaul and other knights who
went mad and lived in a remote wilderness after being rejected by their
beloveds. Sancho points out that Don Quixote, unlike Amadís and the
others, had not been rejected and has no reason to do penance. But the Don
will not be deterred from his preplanned bout of madness. He explains as he
sends Sancho away with a plaintive letter for Dulcinea del Toboso that “a
knight errant deserves neither glory nor thanks if he goes mad for a reason.
The great achievement is to lose one’s reason for no reason, and to let my
lady know that if I can do this without cause, what should I not do if there
were cause?”40
In the mountains, Don Quixote encounters someone who has truly gone
mad for love, one Cardenio, a wealthy young noble secretly betrothed to
Luscinda but betrayed by the man he thought was his best friend. Don
Fernando, the younger (and therefore impecunious) son of Duke Ricardo,
has already seduced Dorotea, the daughter of wealthy peasants, with false
promises of marriage. He then convinces Luscinda’s father—who is dazzled
by the prospect of an aristocratic son-in-law—to require Luscinda to marry
him instead of Cardenio. The intertwining plots are intricate and drawn out.
Yet, once again, Don Quixote plays a clear-eyed role in helping to reconcile
Don Fernando and Dorotea and thereby free Cardenio and Luscinda to
fulfill their earlier vows to each other. But, as Jane Austen would perfectly
appreciate, the denouement owes as much to class and money as to
romance. Dorotea, as she herself admits, succumbed to Don Fernando
because she was ambitious to rise “from a humble to a noble estate”;41 Don
Fernando just as surely recognizes that her family’s fortune will cure his
primogeniture problem. Social and economic forces were also present at the
birth of the novel.
Cervantes was clearly hedging his bets with these interpolated novels,
uncertain whether a steady focus on Sancho and the Don would retain his
readers’ interest. He had many diversions in the traveler’s bag of tricks he
left at that inn. Yet he insists that the stories added to the history of Don
Quixote are “no less agreeable and artful and true than the history itself.”42
Cervantes remains faithful in his commitment to verisimilitude, just as his
knight remains faithful to the ideals and principles of chivalry. That
commitment transcends the conventions of individual genres.
These stories also highlight a change in Don Quixote himself. He is no
longer the author of his own fiction. His individual perceptions are more
grounded in reality; he himself seems more solid and real than the fictions
that swirl around him. And on all subjects but one he speaks sanely, even
soundly, befitting his rank and education. The Don is now deluded not so
much because he sees giants where others see windmills; he is deluded by
the machinations of other characters who play upon his belief that books of
chivalry have the truth of history and provide an accurate description of
events in the world. The priest and the barber, aided by Dorotea and
Cardenio, develop an elaborate fiction regarding a princess and the evil
giant who threatens her kingdom in order to trick Don Quixote into
returning to his own village. “Isn’t it strange,” asks the priest, “how easily
this unfortunate gentleman believes all those inventions and lies simply
because they are in the same style and manner as his foolish books?”43
But who is mad and who is sane? The priest and the barber have also
left their village and their responsibilities to go in search of Don Quixote in
order to playact in his fantasies, as they conceive them. These characters
don ludicrous disguises, assume outlandish identities, and profess utter
nonsense—all, ostensibly, in order to lure a madman back to his home. The
various intertwining stories—of, among others, Dorotea and Don Fernando,
Cardenio and Luscinda, and the captive and the Moorish beauty who saved
him—reach their largely happy denouement in a single raucous evening at
the inn when Don Quixote, in a dream, successfully slays the evil giant in
the form of several large wineskins hanging in his room. He then does battle
with the Holy Brotherhood, which has a warrant for his arrest for having
freed the galley slaves.
The men of the Holy Brotherhood are convinced by the others that
arresting a madman is futile. But left still with the problem of what to do
with Don Quixote, the assembled characters disguise themselves as
phantoms sent by an enchanter and lock Don Quixote in a cage.
Accompanied by prophecies of Don Quixote’s future greatness and his
impending marriage to Dulcinea del Toboso, they place the cage in a cart
and drive the Don home, accompanied by Sancho on his mule. The novel
ends (for, at the time, no second part was planned) with Don Quixote at
home, lying in his bed and staring uncomprehendingly ahead of him. Yet
before he lapses into this state, he reaffirms the value of books of chivalry
that improve the spirits and drive away melancholy:
For myself, I can say that since I became a knight errant I have been valiant, well-mannered,
liberal, polite, generous, courteous, bold, gentle, patient, long-suffering in labors,
imprisonments, and enchantments, and although only a short while ago I saw myself locked
in a cage like a madman, I think that with the valor of my arm, and heaven favoring me, and
fortune not opposing me, in a few days I shall find myself the king of some kingdom where I
can display the gratitude and liberality of my heart.44

These are truths so appealing and entertaining that no lies can equal
them.

THE ENCHANTMENT OF LITERATURE

The publication of Don Quixote in 1605 made its author famous, even if it
did little to alleviate his poverty. The work circulated widely in Spain and
beyond. Shakespeare read an English translation in 1612 and even cowrote
a lost play about Cardenio, one of the pastoral characters in what is now
part 1. The popularity of part 1 becomes a plot device in part 2 of the novel
as Don Quixote and Sancho repeatedly encounter people who have read of
their earlier adventures. This fiction within the fiction, paradoxically, makes
the pair seem all the more substantial.
Cervantes, however, initially had no intention of writing a sequel. He
worked on various novellas, plays, and long poems. But Don Quixote and
Sancho were not destined to remain back in their unnamed village in La
Mancha for long. The Don retained his determination “to revive and bring
back to the world the forgotten order of chivalry”;45 Sancho still dreamt of
his promised governorship; and surely Cervantes himself hoped finally to
translate his talents into ready cash, something his contemporary
Shakespeare was so adept at doing.
Cervantes began work on a sequel in 1611 and spent four years on it. He
was forestalled, however, by a bogus sequel published in 1614 under the
pseudonym Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. The imposture is by all
accounts tedious: its Sancho is never more than a gluttonous, drunken
buffoon, and its Don Quixote never rises above slapstick. Worse, the
“author,” in a prologue, mocks Cervantes himself for his old age and his
useless left hand.
But Cervantes deftly and definitively disposes of Avellaneda.
Addressing his readers in his own prologue, Cervantes ostensibly declines
to engage in the expected reprisals: “You would like me to call him an ass, a
fool, an insolent dolt, but the thought has not even entered my mind: let his
sin be his punishment, let him eat it with his bread, and let that be an end to
it.”46 But Cervantes does take offense at the disparagement of his wounds,
acquired at the Battle of Lepanto, “the greatest event ever seen in past or
present times.”47 As for his age, he retorts that “it should be noted that one
writes not with gray hairs but with the understanding, which generally
improves with the years.”48
In the course of part 2, Don Álvaro Tarfe, a character in Avellaneda’s
book, encounters the real Sancho and Don Quixote and recognizes at once
that Avellaneda’s characters were gross imposters. He even signs a
testimonial to that effect and apologizes to the knight and the squire for his
mistake. It is a comic masterstroke of dismissal. Don Quixote, too, having
learned of the false news published by Avellaneda, changes the course of
his travels to give the lie to his ersatz historian.
But the role of Avellaneda’s book in part 2 is tiny compared to the role
of part 1. Don Quixote has not even risen from the bed to which he has been
confined before he learns from a local student—Sansón Carrasco,
honorifically titled “Bachelor” in recognition of his learning—that a history
of his adventures has already been written by a Moor, translated from the
Arabic into Castilian, and widely distributed. Many of the characters in part
2 are readers—if often misreaders—of part 1. They have their own
expectations about how Don Quixote and Sancho ought to behave, and they
are eager to play a part in driving the narrative. They are drawn out of their
own lives and into the ever more powerful orbit of Don Quixote and
Sancho.
Most critics find part 2 to be superior to part 1.49 But, along with
Thomas Mann, I miss “the happy freshness and carelessness” of the first
part,50 even as I recognize the literary brilliance of the second. Part 2 is an
extended meditation on the role of imaginative literature in shaping life. As
Roberto Echevarría aptly explains, “in Part II, Part I plays the role that the
romances of chivalry play in Part I.”51 Don Quixote is so intoxicated with
the romances of chivalry that he “can almost say I have seen Amadís of
Gaul with my own eyes.”52 Don Quixote and Sancho have become as real to
the readers of part 1 as Amadís of Gaul is to Don Quixote. We can quite
literally say that we have seen them with our own eyes.
Statues of Don Quixote and Sancho stand in the Plaza de España in
Madrid. Picasso’s line drawings are instantly recognizable. These two
characters have become part of the history of their country. They are as
important as, if not more important than, Charles V or Philip II in Spain’s
developing identity. We have nothing quite comparable in the United States,
despite statues of Mary Richards in Minneapolis and Rocky in Philadelphia.
Even Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, or Melville’s Captain Ahab, the darker
cousin of Don Quixote, have not etched themselves in our collective
consciousness to the same extent. But the point remains: fiction is part of
our history, both personal and collective.
As we have seen, a key theme of part 1, echoing Montaigne, is that we
are all, to some extent, the authors of our existence. We impose our
imaginative will upon the world. The comedy and pathos of part 1 is that
the world is not as malleable a material as we might wish. We can only go
so far in our fantasies before we run smack into an intransigent reality. In
part 2, Cervantes introduces the additional complexity of how the dreams
and imaginings of other people intersect with our own, particularly when
those dreams and imaginings are themselves the product of fiction. If
everyone is a character in the fiction we create or the fictions we have
absorbed, we are also characters in other people’s fiction. In part 2, Don
Quixote and Sancho have become so absorbing to the people who read part
1 that those readers become mini-Avellanedas and attempt to construct new
narratives for the pair of their own devising. Yet, just as reality formed a
check in part 1, so too the fictional reality of Don Quixote and Sancho
constantly confounds the expectations and manipulations of the would-be
authors in part 2.
This process begins with the Bachelor Sansón Carrasco, who is eager to
play along with, and even encourage, Don Quixote’s madness, greeting him
as the “flower of errant chivalry” and the “honor and paragon of the
Spanish nation.”53 He offers some common criticisms of part 1, particularly
of the interpolated novels that have nothing to do with the story of Don
Quixote. And, like a typical scholar, he fastens on some inconsistencies in
the narrative, which Sancho dismisses as errors by the historian or the
printer. Mostly, though, Sansón praises the work, if somewhat
condescendingly, as “the most enjoyable and least harmful entertainment”
ever seen:
Children look at it, youths read it, men understand it, the old celebrate it, and, in short, it is so
popular and so widely read and so well-known by every kind of person that as soon as people
see a skinny old nag they say: “There goes Rocinante.”54

When it is clear that Don Quixote is determined to set forth again,

Sansón decides that he himself should be the author and hero of the next
sally. He plans, with the connivance of the priest and the barber, to confront
Don Quixote on his journey disguised as another knight and to challenge
him to a joust, with the loser bound to do the bidding of the winner. Sansón,
after defeating the elderly knight, will require Don Quixote to return home
and give up knight errantry for a full year. In his guise as the Knight of the
Mirrors, Sansón is going to show Don Quixote who he really is and cure
him, once and for all, of his fantasies.
 But, as with Avellaneda, Sansón’s planned sequel goes awry. He stops
his horse midfield because Don Quixote is not yet ready. And, what with
trying to get his recalcitrant mount restarted and fumbling to secure his
lance in its socket, Sansón is helpless in the face of Don Quixote’s own
furious charge. The Don knocks Sansón backward over the haunches of his
horse, and he crashes to the ground. Sansón learns in part 2 what he should
have learned from reading part 1: when fantasy encounters reality, the one
nursing the fantasy is likely to end up battered and bruised. The reality
Sansón encounters here is the true Don Quixote, who knows very well who
and what he is—the “flower of errant chivalry” and the “honor and paragon
of the Spanish nation.” Sansón goes off to plaster his broken ribs after
making a solemn promise to travel to Toboso and, there, to place himself at
the service of the Lady Dulcinea—a promise, it is worth noting, he does not
keep. Sansón, despite his playacting, is no Don Quixote.
Sancho, too, shapes the narrative of part 2 by relying on Don Quixote’s
credulity. Recall that, in part 1, Sancho pretended to travel to Toboso to
deliver a letter to Dulcinea. He tells Don Quixote that he found her sifting
wheat, all sweaty and smelling sour. She received him gracefully enough,
however, accepting the proffered devotion of Don Quixote and
commanding that the Don present himself before her. Naturally, therefore,
Toboso is the first place to which Don Quixote turns his horse in part 2,
directing Sancho to bring him before his Lady Dulcinea.
Sancho, having made up the story, is now in a dilemma: he has no idea
even where Aldonza Lorenzo lives, much less Dulcinea del Toboso. He
therefore resorts to the explanation that Don Quixote so often invoked in
part 1 when reality intruded on illusion: enchantment. Sancho picks out
three peasant girls coming toward them on jackasses and tells Don Quixote
that it is Dulcinea and her two ladies-in-waiting coming to greet him, richly
dressed, adorned with jewels, and riding the finest palfreys. Don Quixote,
like Sancho in part 1, insists on the banal reality before them, while Sancho
insists just as fiercely that this round-faced, snub-nosed peasant girl, who
smells strongly of garlic and greets them with coarse oaths, is a peerless and
elegant beauty. The crestfallen Don Quixote accepts that malicious
enchanters have deprived him of the greatest happiness in seeing his lady in
her rightful person. He now begins to live within the fiction created by
Sancho, and the need to rescue Dulcinea from her enchantment remains a
motif throughout part 2.
 Sancho at least feels guilty about his deception. As he explains to the
squire of the Knight of the Mirrors, who has admitted that his own master,
the disguised Sansón Carrasco, is a scoundrel:
“Not mine,” responded Sancho. “I mean, there’s nothing of the scoundrel in him; mine’s as
innocent as a baby; he doesn’t know how to harm anybody, he can only do good to
everybody, and there’s no malice in him: a child could convince him it’s night in the middle
of the day, and because he’s simple I love him with all my heart and couldn’t leave him no
matter how many crazy things he does.”55

The tables are truly turned when Sancho loves the Don for being simple.
The master-squire relationship has been replaced by a purely human and
equal one based on love and friendship, particularly when the Don becomes
dependent on Sancho to counter the enchantment. Indeed, Sancho, though
the inventor of the fiction, comes close to believing it himself in the end.
The characters in part 2 have varying reasons for creating new fictions
for Don Quixote to act within. Sancho is trying to avoid being caught in one
lie by telling a greater one. Sansón, despite his ostensible desire to “cure”
Don Quixote, is really playing out his own fantasy. Ginés de Pasamonte,
who reappears in part 2 disguised as the puppet master Don Pedro, sweeps
Don Quixote into his tale of a gallant knight rescuing his wife from her
Moorish captors simply as an unfortunate by-product of his theatrical
verisimilitude.
Only the duke and duchess, into whose clutches Sancho and Don
Quixote innocently wander, manipulate the pair purely for their own
amusement. Although they resolve outwardly to treat Don Quixote “like a
knight errant with all the customary ceremonies found in the books of
chivalry,”56 they instruct their butler to contrive a series of further
“adventures” for the pair that are often distasteful in their cruelty and
always cruel in their mockery. The duke and duchess live in extravagant
luxury; their idle and frivolous existence is propped up by loans from a
wealthy peasant upon whom they are dependent. They stand in sharp
contrast to the various low-life characters in parts 1 and 2, who—at least
when they are not provoked into delivering blows—treat Don Quixote and
Sancho with innate kindness and consideration, even as they enjoy the joke
of playing along with Don Quixote’s madness. The one saving grace of the
duke and duchess is that they give Sancho, briefly, the governorship he has
long coveted and in which he surprises all concerned with his wisdom and
compassion. Sancho’s display of natural reason—uninfected by the
corruption of the aristocracy—prefigures the Enlightenment.

THE MADNESS OF DON QUIXOTE

Before he encounters the duke and duchess, Don Quixote has an adventure
that Thomas Mann considers the climax of the novel for “its peculiarly
moving, magnificently ridiculous contents.”57 Sancho has wandered off to
buy curds from a group of shepherds when his master calls urgently to him.
Sancho quickly places the curds in the helmet he has been carrying and
rushes back. He no sooner arrives than Don Quixote seizes the helmet and
places it firmly on his own head, causing the whey to drip down the sides of
his face and into his beard. Don Quixote—at first concerned that his brains
are melting—soon discovers the curds. Sancho, of course, blames
enchanters, noting that if the curds were his own they would be in his
stomach, not in Don Quixote’s helmet. It is, somehow, the perfect setup for
what follows.
Don Quixote, after returning the now smashed curds to Sancho, wipes
his face, calls for his sword, grasps his lance, and steadies himself in his
stirrups as he awaits an approaching wagon bearing royal banners. In the
wagon are two cages, each containing a lion. The lions have been sent from
Oran as a present for the king. Don Quixote insists that the lion keeper open
the cages and release the lions so that he may test his might and his courage
against them. The lion keeper protests, noting that the lions are hungry
because they have not yet eaten. So does Sancho, who peeks into one of the
cages and assures Don Quixote that there is no enchantment here: it is a real
lion, large and fierce, with huge claws. A local gentleman, Don Diego, who
had recently fallen into step with Don Quixote and Sancho as they were
traveling in the same direction, also tries to dissuade him, but to no avail.
The wagon owner unyokes his mules and flees, as does Sancho on his
donkey and Don Diego on his horse, all convinced that Don Quixote will be
torn to pieces.
Don Quixote dismounts to confront the lions on foot, tossing away his
lance and standing before the wagon with his sword in one hand and a
shield in the other. The lion keeper then unlocks the first cage and throws
open the door. The male lion stretches, yawns, unsheathes his claws, and
puts his head out of the cage to look around, “with eyes like coals, a sight
and a vision that could frighten temerity itself.”58 But the lion proves
indifferent to Don Quixote’s bravado, shows the Don his hindquarters, and
placidly returns to his cage. Don Quixote calls upon the lion keeper to hit
the lion and provoke him into coming out. But the lion keeper, fearing for
his own life, assures Don Quixote that this is unnecessary:
The greatness of your grace’s heart has been clearly demonstrated: no brave warrior, to my
understanding, is obliged to do more than challenge his opponent and wait for him in the
field; if his adversary does not appear, the dishonor lies with him, and the one left waiting
wins the crown of victory.59

Don Quixote’s perceptions of reality may be distorted by his literary

infatuation, but his courage is real. So is his kindness, his sense of honor,
and his devotion to justice. In part 2, he performs a number of genuinely
good deeds, including defending the honor of a widow and her daughter and
protecting a young couple in love. Even in his failures, Don Quixote never
loses his innate dignity. Even with curds in his helmet and whey streaming
down his face, he retains a certain nobility if not a touch of the sacred. He
somehow transcends the absurdity of his circumstances. And the
remarkable thing is that we, as readers, can both enjoy the absurdity and be
awed by the transcendence. If either were missing, it would be a lesser
book.
As long as Don Quixote is facing a reality at odds with his ideals, he is
unwavering. He will hold to those ideals, however humiliating the setbacks.
“Find strength in weakness,” he advises Sancho, “and I shall do the
same.”60 Yet, when reality is not pushing back, when Don Quixote can give
free rein to his imagination, doubts begin to creep in and undermine the self
he has chosen to present to the world. As Sancho earlier said to him,
“Maybe you go looking for one thing and find another.”61
What Don Quixote goes looking for is the famous Cave of Montesinos.
In the spirit of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Dante, Don Quixote undertakes a
journey to the underworld to encounter death and ultimately his own self. It
begins and ends prosaically enough. He is lowered by ropes into the depths
of the cave and is pulled out less than an hour later profoundly unconscious.
When he finally is brought back to the world, he tells of his several-day
encounter with the chivalric heroes of Spain’s golden age and how he was
honored there and took his rightful place among them, somewhat as Dante
took his rightful place in the ante-room of the underworld among the great
poets of antiquity.62
Don Quixote describes his vision in vivid if sometimes banal detail. He
even claims to have encountered his Lady Dulcinea in her still enchanted
state as a peasant girl. At this point, he loses a crucial member of his
audience. Sancho, who “had been the enchanter and had invented the story,
. . . recognized beyond the shadow of a doubt that his master was out of his
mind and completely mad.”63 Yet that is not what we take away from this
episode. To the contrary, it is the beginning of Don Quixote’s unfortunate
return to sanity. The world he encounters in the cave is exactly what he
dreams. And yet he himself begins to doubt it even as he first recounts it.
Paradoxically, the Don needs his clashes with reality to confirm his fantasy.
In the cave, he encounters nothingness. There is no check on his
imagination. As one critic correctly notes, “The novel’s entire machinery,
built on the opposition between fantasy and reality, is suspended on this
sole occasion.”64
Don Quixote desperately wants to believe that his dream vision is true,
but doubts remain, calling into question his entire enterprise. He knows how
to combat giants and knights and enchanters. But he doesn’t know how to
combat his own doubts. His descent into the Cave of Montesinos is more
corrosive and sobering than any other adventure. Don Quixote begins to
lose his grip on his fantasy. He seeks reassurance from others, even
absurdly from the soothsaying monkey of Don Pedro and the talking bust of
Don Antonio Moreno. He now needs others to believe in him as Don
Quixote de la Mancha in order to validate his own belief. Most of all, he
needs Sancho. So when Sancho narrates his own fantastic journey aboard
the flying horse, Clavileño, the Don is prepared to cut a deal. “Sancho,” he
whispers, “just as you want people to believe what you have seen in the sky,
I want you to believe what I saw in the Cave of Montesinos. And that is all
I have to say.”65
But it is too late. Desengaño has already taken root in his soul. And
when he encounters the Knight of the Moon—Sansón Carrasco in a fresh
disguise—this time the outcome is inevitable. Don Quixote, knocked
ignominiously from his horse, is compelled by the laws of chivalry to return
to his village and to give up arms for a full year. Sansón believes it is a cure.
But, of course, it is a death sentence. As the great Spanish philosopher and
critic José Ortega y Gasset notes, Don Quixote lives in the gap between
heroic ideals and earthly reality.66 When that gap closes, Don Quixote is no
more. “May God forgive you for the harm you have done,” Don Antonio
tells Sansón.67
Is it mad to want to play a noble part in life and to pursue that ideal with
great courage and persistence in the face of a hostile reality? Is it mad to
want to pass beyond a dreary and uneventful life into a world of adventure
and glory? If so, Don Quixote is mad, but his very madness is sublime.
Sancho calls him “the conqueror of himself; and, as he has told me, that is
the greatest conquest anyone can desire.”68 We all do battle with
nothingness, and nothingness always wins in the end. “Thou art an O
without a figure,” the Fool says to Lear; “thou art nothing.”69 The fiction of
life closes with life itself, but, as Sancho wisely insists, “Everything’s life
until we die.”70 And something of what we built remains. We are not
“nothing,” and our enemies are not enchanters. Our enemies are
disenchantment, disillusion, and desengaño.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.71

By the time Cervantes came to write his masterpiece, Spain had lost the
high ideals of its golden age. The Battle of Lepanto was a distant memory.
Setbacks against the Turks, the French, and in the Low Countries were the
new reality. What more Quixotic act could there be than sending the
Invincible Armada to circumnavigate England to its own destruction,
without inflicting any genuine harm on anyone but itself. Did Spain
recognize itself in Don Quixote? Clearly it did, even as it laughed at his
misadventures. Catharsis can be found in comedy as well as tragedy.
Cervantes, of course, recognized himself as well in his famous hero.
The reality of his life was often shabby after Lepanto and was riddled with
failures as a writer, as a husband, and even as a protector of his sisters, his
daughter, and his niece. And yet he pursued his own ideals with courage
and persistence. He refused to relinquish his grasp on glory and adventure.
He wrote at the end of his great work: “For me alone was Don Quixote
born, and I for him; he knew how to act, and I to write; the two of us alone
are one.”72
Cervantes died in Madrid on April 22, 1616, one day before
Shakespeare. He has been revered ever since as the “flower of errant
chivalry” and the “honor and paragon of the Spanish nation.”
 Chapter 9
SHAKESPEARE

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!

. . . He was not of an age but for all time!—Ben Jonson1

“T here can be little doubt,” wrote the eighteenth-century critic and

essayist William Hazlitt, “that Shakespear was the most universal
genius that ever lived.”2 Stephen Greenblatt is somewhat more modest in
his claim, suggesting that the thirty-six plays preserved in the First Folio
constitute “the most important body of imaginative literature of the last
thousand years.”3 Even so qualified, that assessment would place the
histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances of Shakespeare above Dante
and on a par with the greatest works of antiquity. Harold Bloom boldly
contends that Shakespeare invented what it is to be human. Extravagant,
perhaps, but we can hardly dispute that, together with Montaigne and
Cervantes—both of whom he read—Shakespeare created our modern
consciousness and opened the way to Goethe, Austen, Dickens, Proust, and
Joyce, among others. Rankings may be pointless, but however short a list
one might make of the greatest figures in Western thought, Shakespeare is
surely on it. I would follow Hazlitt in placing him at the top.
At the close of Plato’s Symposium, as the other revelers drop off to
sleep, Socrates attempts to demonstrate that the most skilled tragic
dramatist should also be a comic poet, thus capturing the full range of
human experience. Shakespeare is that dramatist, and trying to assess the
measure of his achievement is both an immense joy and an impossible
challenge. The critical literature is larger than any ten scholars could read in
a lifetime. And the quality of that criticism—from Hazlitt and Samuel
Johnson, through Harold Goddard and G. Wilson Knight, to A. D. Nuttall
and Harold Bloom—is unmatched. Yet I can safely say, quoting Prospero,
that Shakespeare’s creative genius still lies “deeper than did ever plummet
sound.”4 In the pages that follow, we will make our own attempt, however
inadequate, to sound one play each among the histories, comedies,
tragedies, and romances of William Shakespeare.

LIFE

Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, a

smallish market town about a hundred miles northwest of London. We do
not know the exact date of his birth, but it was likely on or around April 23,
which is also the date on which he died, fifty-two years later. He is lucky to
have survived at all. Stratford’s already small population of about two
thousand was ravaged in 1564 by the plague, which would play a decided if
intermittent role throughout Shakespeare’s life. Almost two-thirds of the
babies born in Stratford that year died before their first birthdays.
Shakespeare was baptized a Protestant, a member of the Church of
England, but thereby hangs a tale. He was born thirty years after the break
with Rome precipitated by Henry VIII’s “great matter.” There had been a
brief, and bloody, return to Catholicism under Mary I, the child of Henry
VIII and his first wife, the pious Catherine of Aragon. Mary succeeded her
younger half brother Edward VI—the only son of Henry VIII and Jane
Seymour—in 1553 and promptly married Philip II, the Catholic king of
Spain. But the marriage was childless, despite a well-publicized and much
mocked false pregnancy. So, when Mary died in 1558, she was succeeded
by her half sister, Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
England reverted to Protestantism, this time for good, during the forty-four
years of her reign.
Many adherents of the “old faith” remained, however, including,
apparently, Shakespeare’s father, John. They were known as recusants
because they declined to attend Protestant services, and they often
celebrated Catholic Masses in private and retained Catholic books and
relics. Elizabeth, unlike Mary, was at first inclined to tolerance: video et
taceo (“I see but say nothing”) was her motto. But, after Pope Pius V
purported to release her subjects from obedience in 1570 and Pope Gregory
XIII openly invited her assassination in 1580, she understandably began to
see plots and conspiracies everywhere. Catholicism and treason became
virtually synonymous, and remaining Catholics burrowed deeper into their
closets. Priests and Jesuits coming from the continent to minister to the
faithful were hunted down and executed as would-be assassins. Some
scholars have suggested that William Shakespeare was himself a hidden
Catholic, and they scour his plays and poems for hints to that effect. But
that is only speculation, with no basis in the known facts of his life, and his
writings demonstrate no particular faith beyond what Aristotle termed the
higher truth of poetry.
Shakespeare’s father, John, made and sold gloves. He was born in 1531,
the son of a tenant farmer in nearby Snitterfield. His wife, Mary Arden
(born 1540), was the daughter of the owner of the land John’s father had
farmed. She came from the lesser branch of a more distinguished family,
which owned the nearby “Forest of Arden,” to be immortalized as the
pastoral setting of As You Like It. Mary’s father left her both money and his
choicest farm. By the time Shakespeare was born, the couple had a fine
double house on Henley Street; one portion was used for the glove shop, the
other was reserved for the family. They also owned and leased out farmland
in surrounding areas. John sold wool on the side, though he was not
licensed to do so, and may have been a moneylender, which was also
illegal. But, in addition to his private ventures, John had a successful public
career. He started as an ale taster, to ensure the quality of the brews.
Successively, he served as constable, affeeror (one who fixes fines for
offenses), burgess, chamberlain, alderman, and finally bailiff, the equivalent
of the mayor. He even applied, although unsuccessfully, for a coat of arms,
which would have conferred on him the status of a gentleman. The
Shakespeares were one of the handful of families that ran Stratford.
John and Mary had eight children, five of whom, four boys and one girl,
lived into adulthood. Shakespeare, who came third, was the oldest of the
surviving children and was the more precious on that account. He attended
an excellent local grammar school, named the King’s New School after
Edward VI. There, he received an immersive education in Latin and the
Latin classics. The students even performed Latin plays. Various traveling
companies of players visited Stratford and nearby locales while
Shakespeare was young. Given his father’s position as bailiff—who had to
grant licenses and arrange payments for the performances—it is likely that
the young Shakespeare attended many of these plays. Presumably he
showed great promise in school and was marked out for further education at
Oxford.
But in the late 1570s, about the time Shakespeare would have finished
grammar school, things began to go awry for John Shakespeare and his
family. He was absent from meetings of the aldermen starting in 1576. He
was kept on the rolls, which suggests he was well liked, despite his
struggles. He was also exempted from various levies and assessments. But,
after years of nonattendance, he was finally dropped in 1586. By then, his
financial condition had deteriorated greatly. He had mortgaged lands left to
his wife and couldn’t repay the loans, leading to the loss of the property. He
was charged at least two times each for illegal wool sales and for usury
(which probably stemmed from selling wool on account with interest for the
delayed payment). One biographer, Stephen Greenblatt, speculates that John
Shakespeare, like his son’s beloved character Sir John Falstaff, was too
fond of beer and other hard liquors. But we really don’t know the cause of
his economic and social collapse or its psychological effect on the young
Shakespeare.
What we do know is that there is a several-year gap in the record of
public documents for Shakespeare between the late 1570s, when he would
have left school, and 1582, when he had to be present in Stratford in time to
have impregnated his neighbor, Anne Hathaway. Some suggest, on tissue-
thin evidence, that he spent time as a private tutor in Catholic Lancashire.
Others believe he studied law, based only on the fact that he shows
considerable facility with legal concepts and arguments in his plays. Most
plausibly, he stayed at home and tried to help his father straighten his
tangled financial affairs. Regardless, we do know that, in late November or
early December 1582, the eighteen-year-old Shakespeare married the
twenty-six-year-old, already pregnant Anne Hathaway. It was a hurried
affair, with a special dispensation to allow a license before all the typical
banns were read on three successive Sundays. Anne was recently orphaned
and likely illiterate but was left with independent means. Two of her late
father’s friends posted a substantial bond against any legal impediments,
and they presumably rode herd on the young Shakespeare to secure his
acquiescence, if not enthusiastic participation, in the nuptials. In Much Ado
About Nothing, there is a reference to “wooing, wedding, and repenting.”5
Whether that was an accurate digest of Shakespeare’s own experience is
anyone’s guess. Snippets from the writings are a hazardous substitute for
biographical facts.
Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, in May 1583. Twins Hamnet
and Judith followed in early 1585. The couple had no further children,
perhaps due to complications from the birth of the twins or perhaps the
result of some estrangement. We simply do not know. They were married
for thirty-four years, but Shakespeare spent much of that time in London,
where he had moved sometime in the mid-to-late 1580s.
Just why Shakespeare moved to London, like most else about his life, is
unclear and therefore the subject of speculation based on questionable
evidence. He may have been caught poaching deer from a local lord’s park.
He might have had a more serious involvement with Catholic recusants. Or
he may simply have seized on an opportunity to fill in with a traveling
troupe of actors who lost one of their players in a brawl. Perhaps all three.
What we do know is that in the late 1580s, Shakespeare was employed
in London—a crowded, smelly, frenetic city of two hundred thousand—as
an actor and writer with a troupe known, after their patron, as Lord
Strange’s Men. It was the beginning of the greatest age of London theater,
ushered in with the two parts of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the
Great in 1587 and 1588. Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker, was the same
age as Shakespeare and was also born in a provincial town. But he managed
to attend Cambridge on a scholarship and also worked as a spy for the
Queen’s secret service. In addition to Tamburlaine, he wrote The Jew of
Malta and Doctor Faustus. His premature death in a barroom brawl at the
age of twenty-nine has led to endless, if idle, arguments as to whether his
mature works would have equaled those of Shakespeare.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was a pivotal event in
English history, perhaps as critical—though not as unlikely—as the
Athenian defeat of Persia at Marathon in 490 BCE, and more so than the
Spanish-led rout of the Turks at Lepanto. It inspired an outpouring of
patriotic pride and made English history plays a good bet in attracting
audiences. Shakespeare, at first in collaboration with others, quickly penned
three plays on Henry VI, which were received with great acclaim. This
series covered the Wars of the Roses and culminated in a fourth play,
Richard III, in which the competing claims of the House of York and the
House of Lancaster were finally resolved when the Machiavellian,
hunchbacked, nephew-murdering Richard III was defeated at the battle of
Bosworth Field in 1485, and the first of the Tudors took the throne as Henry
VII. The tetralogy not only was good business, it was smart politics as well,
since it promoted what became known as the “Tudor myth,” which
confirmed the royal status of Elizabeth I, granddaughter of Henry VII. As
we saw, Thomas More was an early propagator of that myth, when he wrote
his darkly colored biography of Richard III under the patronage of
Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII.
Shakespeare also contributed two early comedies, Two Gentlemen of
Verona and The Taming of the Shrew, as well as an apprentice Roman
tragedy, Titus Andronicus. He even played minor parts as an actor. But this
promising beginning to his stage career was interrupted when the theaters
were shut down for almost two years from 1592 to 1594, first due to a riot
over labor conditions and permissive immigration, and later by a virulent
outbreak of the plague, which killed almost 14 percent of the population of
London.
It is unclear whether Shakespeare remained in London during these two
years or whether he retreated to the relative safety of Stratford. He was not
idle, however. He wrote two narrative poems for publication. The first was
Venus and Adonis, developed from a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses; the
second was The Rape of Lucrece, which had as its sources both Ovid and
Livy’s History of Rome. Both poems were dedicated to the Earl of
Southampton, the first rather cringingly so, the latter with more confidence
after the great success of Venus and Adonis, which quickly went through six
editions. During this period, Shakespeare may also have started the early
group of sonnets, which are likely addressed to that same Southampton,
urging him to marry and produce an heir. Shakespeare may have written
these sonnets at the behest of Southampton’s guardian, Lord Burghley, who
was insisting that Southampton marry Burghley’s granddaughter. If so, they
failed in their desired effect. But the world has been enriched by their
composition even if Shakespeare was not.
When the theaters reopened in the summer of 1594, Shakespeare joined
with many of his former colleagues to form the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. It
was a joint stock company, and Shakespeare was an original shareholder, a
reflection of his already perceived value to the company as its chief
playwright. He would remain with this same troupe, despite occasional
changes of patron and once of theater, for almost twenty years and would
write all of his greatest plays with them. They performed at first in
Shoreditch at a venue known simply as The Theatre. It was open to the
elements, and plays were performed in the afternoon to take advantage of
natural light. “Groundlings,” who stood in the pit, paid a penny to attend
and got soaked if it rained. For another penny, the better-off could sit on
benches under cover, and one penny more even bought them a cushion to sit
upon. The actors—all of whom were male, with boy apprentices playing the
female parts—were protected from the rain by a painted astronomical
covering known as “the heavens.” The authorities were suspicious of
theaters as potential breeding grounds of dissension as well as plague. The
so-called Master of Revels had to approve and license all plays. But it was a
wildly popular form of entertainment, which was fortunate, since the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men, like other troupes, needed to attract as many as two
thousand people a day in order to turn a profit.
While in London, Shakespeare lived in a series of temporary lodgings.
How often he visited Stratford is unknown. It was a long two days on
horseback, or four on foot. Surely he returned for the burial of his son
Hamnet, who died at the age of eleven in 1596. It is generally believed that
he made the journey at least once a year. He may have returned for longer
periods, since the theaters were closed in 1603–1604, briefly again in 1605,
and then for almost four years from 1606 to 1610, with a brief hiatus in
1608. Throughout this time, however, Shakespeare continued to write plays
for royal and other private performances. It is possible that he moved back
to Stratford more or less full time as early as 1606. We know from cast lists
that his last part as an actor was likely in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus in 1603. So
a constant presence in London was not required, and he could have written
his greatest tragedies from home, traveling to London every six months or
so with a new script to be produced.
Anne and the children apparently lived with his parents until 1597,
when Shakespeare purchased and refurbished a large residence known as
New Place. Unlike his father, Shakespeare “knew how to put money in his
purse and to keep it there.”6 He continued through the years to make
substantial investments in land and farm buildings in the Stratford area.
Shakespeare even completed an unfinished bit of business for his father,
reviving his application and securing the Shakespeare coat of arms in 1596.
The design shows a falcon and spear with the motto Non sanz droict (Not
without right).7 Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s other great rival in the theater,
gently mocked this bit of pretention. A character in one of his plays, written
in 1599 for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, acquires a coat of arms depicting
a boar without a head and the motto Not without mustard.
Shakespeare’s theatrical career encountered a bump in December 1598,
when the Puritan landowner, who did not approve of such frivolous
pursuits, declined to renew the lease on the Theatre in Shoreditch that was
the home of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Taking matters into their own
hands, the entire troupe went to the theater in the dead of night, pulled
down the building, loaded the timbers on wagons, and drove them across
the frozen Thames to their new home, which would become the Globe
Theatre. It could hold three thousand spectators. Julius Caesar was the first
play put on there on September 21, 1599. Over the next twelve years, As
You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, King
Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Shakespeare’s late romances
were all performed there. As Bill Bryson has noted in his brief biography,
“no theater—perhaps no human enterprise—has seen more glory in only a
decade or so than the Globe during its first manifestation.”8
Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men ran into trouble of a
different sort in 1601, when they were commissioned by followers of the
Earl of Essex to put on a command performance of Richard II, in which the
rightful but ineffectual king is deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, who seizes
the throne as Henry IV. The following day, Essex, who was out of favor
with the queen, tried to provoke an uprising to “rescue” her from bad
advisers. The incipient rebellion was met with indifference by the populace
and failed miserably. Essex slunk back to his home, where he was arrested
and soon thereafter executed as a traitor. Southampton was caught up in it
as well and spent two years in the Tower of London. An inquiry fortunately
determined that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men bore no responsibility for the
uprising and played an unwitting role. But their favor at court waned
decidedly until James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots,
and cousin of Elizabeth, took the throne two years later as James I. His
mother had been championed by Catholic England and ultimately executed
on suspicion of treason by Elizabeth I, thus precipitating the war with
Spain. But James I was a solid member of the Church of England and even
became the patron of what became known as the King James Bible, one of
the greatest feats of translation and the foundation of the modern English
language. He also turned the Lord Chamberlain’s Men into his own
company, the King’s Men. An attempt by Guy Fawkes and other Catholic
fanatics to blow up the King, his court, and Parliament was exposed and
thwarted on November 4, 1605. The failure of the Gunpowder Plot marked
the end of Catholic attempts to retake England.
The Globe burned down in 1613, when a prop cannon set the roof
thatch on fire. A “New Globe” was constructed by the troupe at the same
location,9 but by then Shakespeare had stopped writing, and he sold his
shares to avoid having to pay for the reconstruction. If this was a planned
retirement, he had only three years to enjoy it. Shakespeare died, probably
of typhus, on April 23, 1616, the same week, if not the same day, as Miguel
de Cervantes. His three younger brothers had all predeceased him, as had
both parents. Shakespeare’s will famously gave to his wife only his “second
best bed,” along with the linens and hangings. Most everything else went to
his beloved daughter Susanna and her issue, with separate, smaller
provisions made for his other daughter, Judith—which he attempted to
secure from her ne’er-do-well husband—and his sole surviving sibling,
Joan.10
A folio edition of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and
Tragedies was published in 1623. This labor of love by two longtime
friends and theater colleagues, John Heminges and Henry Condell,
collected thirty-six of his plays, many of which would otherwise almost
certainly have been lost. Less than twenty years later, the English Civil War
led to the execution of Charles I and to the rise of the Puritans under Oliver
Cromwell. They shut down the theaters as a godless and unholy form of
entertainment. Bearbaiting and public executions, however, continued.
London theaters would not reopen in earnest until the Restoration in 1660,
by which time Shakespeare was out of fashion.

THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE

Shakespeare’s initial historical tetralogy consisted of the three parts of

Henry VI and Richard III. The first three plays were largely prentice work,
but the fourth showed flashes of his later genius in characterization, and the
entire series was popular enough to establish him firmly with Lord
Strange’s Men. His second tetralogy was even more popular and reflected
his growing mastery. It begins with the deposition and subsequent murder
of Richard II. The two middle plays cover the reign of the usurper, Henry
IV, and his efforts to solidify his rule. But their real focus—to the extent
they are not altogether hijacked by the comic character of Falstaff—is
Prince Hal, the heir apparent and future Henry V, whose stirring, if
ephemeral, conquest of France forms the subject of the final play.
The two tetralogies fit together snugly enough, covering nearly a
century of English history and two civil wars. Peter Saccio, in his
indispensable book Shakespeare’s English Kings,11 explores the actual
history behind the stage history of Shakespeare’s plays. But, frankly, it is
the dramatic history that remains in our minds and has conquered our
hearts: the feckless but hauntingly eloquent Richard II; the brittle grip on
power of Henry IV; the wayward youth and galvanizing kingship of Henry
V; the saintly but ineffective Henry VI; and the twisted yet charismatic
villainy of Richard III, whose defeat by Henry VII at Bosworth Field in
1485 began the Tudor dynasty that continued in Shakespeare’s day with
Elizabeth I.
It may well be that the first-composed-but-later-in-time tetralogy was
intended to promote the Tudor myth and to curry favor with the Queen.
Indeed, any counter-narrative would have been extremely dangerous. But
those who see an overall arc and theory of historical development running
through all eight plays are imposing a confining structure that the stand-
alone plays simply will not bear. We don’t know Shakespeare’s political and
historical views, any more than we know his religious views. It is evident
from the plays that he thought very deeply about history, religion,
philosophy, and morality, among other topics. But, as the poet John Keats
noted, Shakespeare in his work displayed “negative capability”—that is, an
openness to experience without the distortion of a preconceived ideological
framework. That is precisely what Montaigne advocated in his most famous
late essays. Shakespeare’s characters express and embody an astonishing
variety of perspectives and philosophies. But Shakespeare himself, in
Keats’s words, seems to have been “capable of being in uncertainties,
Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”12
Shakespeare gives authentic voices to all his characters, but none can claim
to be the authentic voice of Shakespeare.
This is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the acknowledged masterpiece
of his English history plays, Henry IV, Part 1. Prince Hal stands between
three other characters: his father, the insecure and easily angered king; his
rival, the honor-drunk Hotspur; and Falstaff, the mentor and companion of
his youthful follies. He survives and transcends each of them to become a
successful king; he has “mastered there a double spirit / Of teaching and of
learning instantly.”13 Yet no one would suggest that Hal is Shakespeare’s
ideal of a human being, even if Henry V is, as one scholar suggests, a
“machiavel of goodness” and therefore an ideal king for the times.14
Erasmus wrote his Education of a Christian Prince, at least in part, as a
rebuttal to Machiavelli’s The Prince. According to Erasmus, a solid
classical education infused with Renaissance, humanist values and imparted
by a Christian scholar such as himself is the best guarantor that a future
king will put the interests of his people before those of himself. Prince Hal
has a very different upbringing and imbibes (quite literally) a very different
set of lessons. But he cannot escape the power politics articulated by
Machiavelli and exercised by Hal’s father.
With the deposition and murder of Richard II, the myth of the divine
rights of kings is necessarily shattered. Richard cannot quite believe,
despite his flaws as a leader, that he will be deposed—as if an army of
angels might descend to prevent such sacrilege. Yet providence proves
indifferent to majesty. “Time is broke,” says an imprisoned Richard.15
Without the linear succession of kings and hence the linear progression of
history, nothing is left of majesty but an endless jockeying for power and
advantage. Richard, unkinged, has lost his identity. I “am nothing,” he
complains.16 But Henry IV is not thereby made something. In Richard’s
view, a counterfeit king has assumed the throne, and those who helped him
to it will demand more than he is prepared to give them.17 The usurper has
delegitimized kingship itself and must suffer the consequences. “Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown,” Henry admits.18
But what about the future heir to that ill-gotten crown? Does he carry
the burden of his father’s guilt? Does he feel the precariousness of his own
position? Or will the passage of the crown from Henry to his firstborn son
—this “lineal honour” due from “thy place and blood”19—enable the prince
to establish his identity as a rightful king? Henry has his doubts. He envies
the rebel Northumberland, whose son, Hotspur, “is the theme of honour’s
tongue.”20 He even fantasizes that Hotspur and his son were exchanged at
birth. For “riot and dishonour stain the brow / Of my young Harry.”21 Prince
Harry, or Hal, compensates for the burden of expectations by carousing
with a dissolute knight, Sir John Falstaff, and his companions.
 The tavern scenes in Henry IV, Part I, are a festival of language, wit,
and irreverence. The eating, the drinking, and the whoring are decidedly
secondary, at least from the playgoer’s perspective. William Hazlitt felt
obliged to caution, not altogether convincingly, that “the heroic and serious
part of these two plays . . . is not inferior to the comic and farcical.”22 The
Boar’s Head Tavern in the Eastcheap section of London is set apart from
the time that Richard II considered “broke.” It is set apart, like the Forest of
Arden in As You Like It, from affairs of state and all such sober concerns.
Hal and his companions, as Hotspur dismissingly notes, have “daffed the
world aside / And bid it pass.”23 When Falstaff asks the time of day, Hal
responds with mock fury:
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack, and
minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and
the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou
shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.24

Falstaff is on permanent holiday. He is, or claims to be, “the true and

perfect image of life” in all its untrammeled vitality.25 He is the embodiment
of fellowship, freedom, and outrageous excess. “I live out of all order, out
of all compass,” he boasts.26 He also lives happily outside any moral
compunctions. Falstaff doesn’t just admit his vices, he revels in them.
Indeed, he exaggerates them for the sake of humor. Samuel Johnson is
appropriately censorious: “He is a thief, and a glutton, a coward, and a
boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify
the timorous and insult the defenseless.”27 Falstaff is all those things, and he
freely confesses it. And yet, even Dr. Johnson has to admit that “his
licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth.”28
Falstaff is rendered not merely tolerable but delightful “by the most
pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting
laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid
or ambitious kind, but consists in easy escapes and sallies of levity, which
make sport but raise no envy.”29 We embrace Falstaff because he views
himself and everyone else in a humorous light. But we also embrace him,
contrary to what Johnson claims, because his wit is both splendid and
ambitious. His goal is nothing less than subversion of the established order.
He is the Lord of Misrule.
Harold Bloom calls Falstaff “the Socrates of Eastcheap.”30 It is a
brilliant and telling sally. Socrates was himself a highly subversive figure.
He exposed those with power and authority as frauds. They claimed to be
virtuous but, under his questioning, could not even give a coherent account
of piety, or courage, or justice, or temperance. They threw such words about
in a pompous display of their righteousness without ever sounding their true
meaning. Socrates revealed the emptiness of their rhetoric to the delight of
his young followers. But these Socratic dialogues were aporetic—that is,
they ended in doubt and uncertainty. No positive knowledge replaced the
deflated claims of his interlocutors. Socrates corrupted the young by
teaching them to question received social norms. He could also drink them
under the table.
Falstaff, too, punctures the pretension of high rhetoric. His weapon is
not logic but wit. He exposes the absurdity and hypocrisy of so much of our
speech. He mocks piety, courage, honor, the law, and all the trappings of
state. He even mocks war and death. The Socrates of the early dialogues
was a nihilist, but with a purpose: to clear the ground of false claims about
virtue in order to make way for true knowledge. Falstaff, too, is a nihilist
with a purpose: to clear the ground of platitudes and make way for life. It is
a nihilism without pessimism, a nihilism in the service of life.
No wonder Hal delights in his company. The Boar’s Head is a necessary
tutorial. If the old values no longer hold and there is no discernable
providence to guide us, then where is meaning to be found? In public life
and the obligations of time and power? Or outside time in the free exercise
of the imagination and the appetites? For Falstaff, meaning lies in life itself.
He is the embodiment of play—irresponsible, spontaneous, and full of a
humor that acknowledges no bounds and no restraints. He says what we
often think but cannot publicly admit. Hazlitt rightly called Falstaff “the
true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the stuff we are made
of.”31 As Erasmus, Montaigne, and Cervantes each taught in turn, wisdom
requires a significant admixture of folly, though perhaps none had in mind
so gross an admixture as embodied in Falstaff.
But Hal is the heir apparent. He is destined for the world of time, and
there is only so much folly he can tolerate without sacrificing his position
and becoming another Richard II. He therefore plays a double game.
Despite the appearance of dissolution, he has himself under control and is
fully calculating:
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humor of your idleness.
 Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.32

Hal steps out of time to revel with Falstaff and to learn the ways of
common men. “I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me,” Richard II
bemoaned.33 But Hal will redeem his seemingly wasted time and even turn
it to his advantage. Indeed, as king he “weighs time / Even to the utmost
grain.”34 Part of life may be play, but it cannot be the whole, and already the
rebels are gathering. Richard accurately predicted that those who helped
Bolingbroke to power would turn on him when he was king, unsatisfied by
their share of the spoils.
Owen Glendower, Harry Hotspur, and Lord Mortimer, Richard’s
appointed heir, now plot their own rebellion. But they fall to quarreling over
the future division of the kingdom, as if Henry IV were already defeated.
The scene has a delicious parallel at the Boar’s Head, where Falstaff and his
companions decide to rob some travelers carrying gold coins, and Hal and
Poins elect to hang back and, in disguise, rob the robbers simply to hear
“the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we
meet at supper: how thirty at least he fought with, what wards, what blows,
what extremities he endured; and in the reproof of this lives the jest.”35 And
so it plays out: the robbers are robbed, and Falstaff returns with a tale that
grows ever more fantastic in the telling of being set upon by fifty men in
buckram, with whom he fought at least two hours before giving way and
leaving the coins behind. He even shows the sword thrusts in his clothes
and the hack marks on his sword—all of which he counterfeited before
returning to the tavern. Yet, when Hal confronts him with the lie, Falstaff
deftly turns the joke around:
By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear you, my masters: was it for me
to kill the heir apparent? Should I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest I am as
valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince; instinct is a
great matter. I was now a coward on instinct.36

The Boar’s Head crew never divides their projected spoils; Hal has the
crowns returned to the travelers, or so he says. Neither will the rebels divide
England; Henry IV retains his unitary crown.
 The culmination of the play lies in the encounter between Hal and
Hotspur at the battle of Shrewsbury to determine the rightful heir of the
usurper king. Hotspur is a remarkably compelling character. He is the
embodiment of feudal honor, quick to quarrel and eager to shine. Even
Prince Hal acknowledges his virtues:
I do not think a braver gentleman,
More active-valiant or more valiant-young,
More daring or more bold, is now alive
To grace this latter age with noble deeds.37

Hotspur is no courtier and no diplomat. He displays a gruff, if genuine,

affection for his wife, Kate. But he cannot forbear insulting even his ally,
the Welshman Owen Glendower, who boasts of his magical powers and
claims that the earth shook and the heavens were on fire at his birth:
GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man,
But will they come when you do call for them?38

The rebels are heavily outnumbered. Glendower sulks in Wales,

claiming he cannot gather his troops in time to join the coalition. And
Hotspur’s father, Northumberland, “lies crafty-sick” at home with his
forces.39 But Hotspur is undaunted. His cause is just, or so he believes, and
the poor odds will simply add a greater luster to the enterprise:
An if we live, we live to tread on kings;
If die, brave death when princes die with us.40

Falstaff again provides a deliberate contrast. He leads a ragtag group of

pressed men into battle. Originally, he recruited sturdy yeomen but let them
buy themselves out of service. What remains are pitiful rascals, nothing but
“food for powder,” he admits. Still, they will “fill a pit as well as better.”41
In his famous speech on honor—the most memorable prose soliloquy in all
of Shakespeare—Falstaff questions, in a mock Socratic dialogue with
himself, the values that have led both sides to Shrewsbury:
FALSTAFF: I would ’twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.
PRINCE: Why, thou owest God a death. [Exit.]
FALSTAFF: ’Tis not due yet. I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so
forward with him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but
how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or
an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery,
 then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word “honour”? What is that
“honour”? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’Wednesday. Doth he feel it?
No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with
the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a
mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.42

We can admire Hotspur’s ebullient courage and yet sympathize with

Falstaff ’s counterargument. Why, after all, should Falstaff give his life in a
sordid struggle over the spoils of kingship? Arguably, Falstaff even does
England a service by preserving its sturdy yeoman. And he certainly does
himself (and all playgoers) a service by counterfeiting death to preserve his
life. “Die all, die merrily,” says Hotspur, and so he does. “Give me life,”
cries Falstaff, and grants his own wish.
Prince Hal can permit himself no Socratic doubts about the demands of
duty, honor, and patriotism. When he saves his father’s life and later kills
Hotspur in single combat, he will prove himself his father’s true heir. The
crown will pass to him by rightful succession. “You won it, wore it, kept it,
gave it me,” Hal will say with chilling clarity. “Then plain and right must
my possession be, / Which I with more than with a common pain / ’Gainst
all the world will rightfully maintain.”43
Indeed, Hal will rightfully maintain the crown even against Falstaff. In
the world of time that Hal has rejoined, there is no place for the fat, jolly,
irreverent knight. A ruler must impose order and project majesty and
legitimacy with ceremonies “creating awe and fear in other men.”44 Hal is
no more concerned for morality than Falstaff or Hotspur or Henry IV. But
he will hold to power.
Before Shrewsbury, at the Boar’s Head, Hal is summoned to a
reckoning with his father. He prepares with a mock interview: “Do thou
stand for my father,” he tells Falstaff, “and examine me upon the particulars
of my life.”45 But Falstaff does not speak like a king, and Hal quickly
switches places, excoriating Harry for keeping company with “a devil [that]
haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man.”46 Falstaff, as Hal, seeks to
defend himself in a tone of pleading desperation:
FALSTAFF: No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardoll, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more
valiant being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not
him thy Harry’s company. Banish plump Jack and banish all the world.
PRINCE: I do; I will.47
 The foreshadowed repudiation of Falstaff awaits a second play. Clearly,
Shakespeare (and his audience) could not bear to part with him sooner. But
part with him we must, for Falstaff ’s role as surrogate father to the
scapegrace prince could no longer be tolerated for the new, now fatherless
king.
Indeed, once crowned, Henry V turns the repudiation of Falstaff into a
public ceremony of sorts, announcing to the world and not just to Falstaff:
Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.48

To make himself an effective king, Hal must sacrifice much of his own
humanity. As Henry V, Hal has become his father, invading France to “busy
giddy minds / With foreign quarrels,” and thus to unite his subjects and
“waste the memory of the former days,”49 meaning both his own youthful
excesses and, even more important, his father’s unjust seizure of the crown.
Whether Henry V is a “machiavel of goodness” is debatable, but he is
certainly a successful king, and the country will thrive under his leadership
without civil war.
One hopes he feels more than a twinge of regret for his old companion
and teacher. Harold Bloom dismisses any such suggestion, but Bloom
detests the hypocritical and calculating Prince Hal and has effectively
commingled Falstaff ’s image with Bloom’s own. The fact is that Hal must
reject both Hotspur and Falstaff in order to become his father’s son and
rightful heir. In their charismatic attraction, both men are shoals that the
young king avoids.
Death in battle is the apotheosis for Hotspur, the only form of
transcendence he knows. Falstaff finds transcendence in life itself but
cannot survive his rejection by Prince Hal, whom he truly does love as a
son. Socrates, convicted of corrupting the young, chose death over
banishment. So does Falstaff. As his companion Pistol notes, “his heart is
fracted” by Hal’s rejection.50 Socrates drank hemlock, and the poison
worked its way up his body, turning each part cold and numb in turn. So,
too, Falstaff. The bile of his rejection steadily robs him of the life he so
cherished. Mistress Quickly reports in her inimitable fashion:
A bade me lay more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed, and felt them, and they
were as cold as any stone. Then I felt to his knees, and so up-peered and upward, and all was
 as cold as any stone.51

Falstaff reveals us all as counterfeits in our many comings and goings

through time. We all, more or less, sacrifice humanity to calculation. In the
process, we counterfeit life itself. Falstaff may not be “the true and perfect
image of life,” but he embodies its disordered freedom and vitality. As
Bardolph laments for us all: “Would I were with him, wheresome’re he is,
either in heaven or in hell.”52

HEAVENLY ROSALIND

As You Like It is the purest and most sunlit of Shakespeare’s comedies. But
it is not less profound on that account. Indeed, in that regard, it will not
yield even to Hamlet, which it immediately preceded. As Nietzsche said of
the Greeks, they were superficial—out of profundity:
They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the
fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus
of appearance.53

As You Like It is a play of forms, tones, and words; and Rosalind, who
keeps bravely to the surface, may lay better claim than Falstaff to be “the
true and perfect image of life.” Certainly, she has a better claim than the
melancholy Prince Hamlet, who disdains life because it does not accord
with his ideals.
The time is out of joint in Denmark, and Hamlet is charged to set it
right. The time is also out of joint in As You Like It. But Rosalind, daughter
of the banished duke, resolves to “show more mirth than I am mistress
of.”54 And when she and Celia flee the court for the Forest of Arden, they
step aside from time every bit as much as Falstaff and Hal did at the Boar’s
Head—but to very different purpose. Rosalind will test whether it is
possible to be wise and happy; whether it is possible to be wise and neither
melancholy nor cynical; most of all, whether it is possible to be wise and in
love, that greatest of all follies and yet the most essential. For without love,
life is a bleak and barren thing. Rosalind chooses to be foolishly in love,
and therein she is wise. Hamlet, like Jaques, chooses otherwise, and life
delights him not.
 Charles, the usurping duke’s wrestler, refers to the Forest of Arden as a
place where young gentlemen flock to Ferdinand, the true duke, and “fleet
the time carelessly as they did in the golden world.”55 We are meant to think
of Arden, sight yet unseen, as a new Eden, far from the intrigues of court.
“Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,” claims Ferdinand.56 Arden also
calls to mind the pastoral Arcadia of Greek and Latin poetry, where
shepherds wooed shepherdesses with sophisticated verses celebrating the
simple life, and the Tuscan villas where Boccaccio’s brigata retreated from
plague-ridden Florence to entertain and distract one another with stories.
Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell even finds echoes of Arden in the
Connecticut countryside of films such as Bringing Up Baby. And, indeed,
those echoes are faithful to Shakespeare’s play, in which the pastoral
tradition is both gently mocked and richly embraced.
Arden is far from idyllic. The duke and his men know “the icy fang /
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind.”57 They frighten the animals and
kill them “in their assigned and native dwelling-place.”58 And they bring
their courtly artfulness to bear on artless nature, purporting to find “tongues
in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in
everything.”59 “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” claims the duke, for they
“persuade me what I am.”60 That is to say, they reduce him to his essentials.
The forest is not cosseting, but it is nonetheless a place for restoration and
reconnection with the natural order of things and with our place within it. In
the end, all the characters are drawn to it, even Orlando’s brother, Oliver,
who seeks to kill him for no other reason than that Orlando is “of all sorts
enchantingly beloved.”61
Rosalind and Orlando make their separate ways to the Forest of Arden,
already infatuated on the slightest of acquaintance and yet unaware of each
other’s movements. Rosalind is disguised as a young man and takes the
name Ganymede, after the cupbearer beloved of Jupiter. The cross-dressing
and gender fluidity of the lead character, who was of course played by a boy
actor, nearly derail Orlando, whose attraction to Ganymede would seem
unfaithful to Rosalind were Ganymede not in fact Rosalind. The
shepherdess Phoebe also falls for the “peevish boy” who chides her.62 And
Celia, well before Rosalind dons manly dress, acknowledges a bond dearer
than sisters:
We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learned, played, ate together,
 And whereso’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.63

Rosalind, as boy and as girl, is enchanting to all. She “conjure[s]” men

and women alike,64 and the ensuing complications—which rival those of the
forest scenes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but without any need for
fairy magic beyond that provided by Rosalind/Ganymede themselves—
seem very modern indeed.
Another highly modern touch is the exploration of multiple
perspectives, as in Kurosawa’s now-classic film Rashomon. Each character,
even the native inhabitants, reacts to the golden world of Arden in his or her
own way. Only Rosalind maintains a clear-eyed consciousness of the whole,
though always colored by her love for Orlando. She has the wit,
intelligence, and spirit to encompass and transcend the others.
Silvius, a shepherd, loves the shepherdess Phoebe. His love is both
shaped by and expressed in conventional verses from the pastoral tradition,
which he adopts without a hint of irony:
If thou rememb’rest not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,
Wearing thy hearer in thy mistress’ praise,
Thou hast not loved.
Or if thou hast not broke from company
Abruptly as my passion now makes me,
Thou hast not loved.
O Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe!65

Silvius is enslaved by his passion for Phoebe. The extravagant language

is comical, but the pain of love unrequited is no less genuine for being
artificially induced. Silvius has learned that love is abject devotion. He is in
love, ergo . . . This is the love sentimental.
Touchstone, the court fool who has accompanied Celia and Rosa-lind to
the Forest of Arden, is the epitome of urban sophistication and courtly
corruption. “I have trod a measure,” he boasts; “I have flattered a lady; I
have been politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy; I have undone
three tailors; I have had four quarrels and like to have fought one.”66 He is
out of place in Arden and compares himself to Ovid, the sophisticated court
poet, banished to live among ignorant Goths. “When I was at home I was in
a better place,” he announces.67 Touchstone carries a small sundial, thereby
introducing the element of time’s decay into the timeless world of the
pastoral:
from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rotand rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.68

But even Touchstone is not immune to sexual attraction. The

shepherdess Audrey is the object, not of his admiration exactly, but,
certainly of his lust. In a send-up of pastoral poetry, he wishes that she were
“poetical” because poetry is dishonest, and her claims to chastity might then
be feigned. But Audrey does not even understand the term, so Touchstone
will marry her—at least in a dubious ceremony. “Come, sweet Audrey,” he
says. “We must be married, or we must live in bawdry.”69 He calls all the
various pairs of lovers—including himself and Audrey—“country
copulatives.”70 This is the love cynical.
Jaques, companion to none but often found in the company of
Ferdinand and his men, is disappointed in, and has become only a spectator
of, life and love. He has traveled widely, experienced much, and, like Faust
—though Goethe’s more than Marlowe’s—has found nothing worthy of
bidding stay. “I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs,”
he explains,71 underscoring a bitterness that is life destroying. In his famous
“all the world’s a stage” speech, in which he ruminates on the seven ages of
man, there is only misery, pointless longing, posturing, pomposity, and
inevitable oblivion. This is the love negated.
Rosalind makes short work alike of Touchstone’s cynicism and Jaques’s
melancholy. Turning his own words around on him, she tells Touchstone,
“You’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe.”72 But she does not reject the strongly
sexual element of love, as her many double entendres make clear. As for
Jaques, when he claims, “’Tis good to be sad and say nothing,” she retorts,
“Why then, ’tis good to be a post.”73 And when Jaques insists that his
experience was enriching, she responds, “And your experience makes you
sad. I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me
sad—and to travel for it too.”74 Rosalind is not immune to melancholy; yet
her male dress and the freedom of the forest allow her to exercise an
abundance of high spirits. Both Touchstone and Jaques seem dull and
limited beside Rosalind. Not only does she have a wit to silence theirs, but
her wit is deployed in the service of life and love, not cynicism and sadness.
“Give me life,” she could easily say with Falstaff.
Rosalind bears a more complicated relationship with Silvius. She calls
him a “foolish shepherd,”75 yet acknowledges that his passion “is much
upon my fashion!”76 After all, Orlando’s own love for Rosalind veers
strongly toward the sentimental and conventionally pastoral, and finds its
expression in some very bad verses deftly parodied by Touchstone. Yet she
would have love be clear-eyed and without too much illusion. In the guise
of Ganymede, s/he tells Phoebe she has no more beauty “than without
candle may go dark to bed.”77 Phoebe is beautiful only in the eyes and
imagination of Silvius, Ganymede explains, and then advises her not to
squander such an opportunity through self-delusion:
’Tis not her glass but you that flatters her,
And out of you she sees herself more proper
Than any of her lineaments can show her.
But, mistress, know yourself; down on your knees,
And thank heaven fasting for a good man’s love.
For I must tell you friendly in your ear:
Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.78

Desentimentalizing love, without sacrificing its intensity and enchant

ment, or giving way to cynicism, is the lesson that Ganymede undertakes to
teach Orlando. S/he begins by mocking Orlando for his rude and ruddy
health, and for not showing the marks of a man in love:
A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; an
unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not. . . . Then
your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe
untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such
man. You are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself than seeming the
lover of any other.79

Ganymede’s portrait is of the stock lover, and s/he resolves to playact

the misogynist’s vision of the elusive beloved: proud, fantastical, ever-
changing, alternately encouraging and rejecting, smiling and scolding. This
is Silvius and Phoebe squared. Such love is madness, Ganymede tells
Orlando, and the only way to be cured of it is to mimic its most extreme
manifestations. But, as the lessons progress, Ganymede exposes Orlando to
a more and more sober view of love to test the strength of his vows.
Womankind is inclined to be wayward, s/he insists, and yet will “make her
fault her husband’s occasion.”80 Conversely, of the tales of men dying for
love, s/he tells him: “These are all lies. Men have died from time to time
and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”81
By this point in the play, Orlando—who is far from thick-headed—has
apparently seen through the Ganymede disguise.82 In a mock marriage
ceremony performed by Celia with some reluctance—since it would in fact
be civilly binding if both partners consent with knowledge of the other—
Orlando earnestly responds, “I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.”83 But, when
Orlando promises to love his Rosalind “for ever and a day,” she responds:
Say “a day” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December
when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are
wives.84

Between the cynical and the sentimental, something deeper emerges.

Love may all too often find its expression in bad verses and false promises.
But, even stripped to its essentials by winter and rough weather, love can
transform life. Love can make life seem transcendent, which is, of course, a
form of madness. But “I would not be cured, youth,” says Orlando.85
Neither would Rosalind. She can be ironic about love while still embracing
it. She can recognize its folly without forgoing its joy. Indeed, the folly
itself is a large part of the joy. If we are not foolish in love, we are not in
love, as even Touchstone recognizes:
TOUCHSTONE: We that are true lovers run into strange capers. But as all is mortal in nature,
so is all nature in love mortal folly.
ROSALIND: Thou speak’st wiser than thou art ware of.86

The Forest of Arden persuades us what we are. It reduces life to its most
basic form. When Touchstone chides the shepherd Corin for his lack of
sophistication, Corin accepts the charge:
Sir, I am a true labourer. I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s
happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to
see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.87

Touchstone jokes that Corin is a bawd living on the copulation of cattle,

but the joke falls flat, even though it sets up his later, truly funny remark
about country copulatives. Corin has the simple wisdom of a natural
philosopher. He knows “that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn;
that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night is lack
of the sun.”88 Corin is what he is, and thereby stands immune to the
distorting refinements of court life.
Yet in Rosalind alone, refinement is no distortion. She is “poetical”
without being false, and poetry, despite its artifice, is the truest expression
of life and love. Rosalind is more joyfully alive, physically, spiritually, and
intellectually, than any other character in Shakespeare. She is endowed with
such heavenly grace that she can o’er leap irony and happily accept the
absurdity of love. As Harold Bloom notes, “if Rosalind cannot please us,
then no one in Shakespeare or elsewhere in literature ever will.”89 Her
appeal is universal.
Stephen Greenblatt has rightly identified self-fashioning (i.e.,
refinement) as a critical theme of the Renaissance. But self-fashioning can
become rather a grim and calculating business in Petrarch, Machiavelli, and
even Castiglione. The embrace of folly is a necessary counterpart in
Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, and Shakespeare. Without it,
there is neither joy nor true wisdom.
Life stands before us in its infinite variety and absolute simplicity. We
can take it cynically (Touchstone), gloomily (Jaques), sentimentally
(Silvius), or triumphantly (Rosalind). Life, like love, is As You Like It.

THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION

Suppose Hamlet’s love interest were Rosalind rather than the passive, easily
led Ophelia. An idle thought, to be sure, but an interesting one nonetheless
and in keeping with the various thought experiments essayed by Hamlet
himself. Rosalind, of course, would not be deterred by a brother’s warning
to safeguard her “chaste treasure” or a father’s injunction not “to give words
or talk with the Lord Hamlet.”90 We could never imagine Rosalind agreeing
to “keep . . . in the rear of [her] affection / Out of the shot and danger of
desire.”91 Yet Ophelia does. She promises to hold her brother’s lesson “as
watchman to my heart” and meekly acquiesces to her father: “I shall obey,
my lord.”92 Rosalind, we can be sure, would respond to brother and father
alike with greater spirit, and she would assay the professed love of the
prince with her own devices, rather than returning his letters and denying
him access to her person.
 But would it make a difference? Would the active love of a Rosalind
rescue Hamlet from his despair? Of the three blows that descend upon the
apparently once happy student—the sudden death of his father, the
immediate remarriage of his mother, and Ophelia’s withheld affection—
would transforming the third be enough to change Hamlet’s course? Could
Rosalind tease him out of his funk and teach him to show more mirth than
he is master of? With Rosalind by his side, would Hamlet take arms against
a sea of troubles and play his assigned part as his father’s avenger? Or
would the two of them trip off to Wittenberg together, leaving the out-of-
joint time to right itself, and thereby transform Hamlet into a comedy?
More likely than either, Hamlet would shrink from a woman who is his
rival in wit and spirit, a woman he is unable to reduce to the proportions of
his bitter irony.
Rosalind in Hamlet would of course be in the wrong play. She is crafted
for sunlit happiness. As Harold Goddard aptly put it, Rosalind is a
“feminine Hamlet over whom the cloud never fell.”93 She does not feel
Hamlet’s compulsion to root about in the darkest shadows of the soul. Her
emotions lie close to the surface. Hamlet, like the melancholy Jaques,
would be equally out of place in the Forest of Arden. Yet there is something
tender and lost in Hamlet to which Rosalind could respond. His early love
poems to Ophelia are every bit as sincerely bad as those of Orlando to
Rosalind. One feels he could, perhaps, in other circumstances, have been
educated in love and thereby steeled against the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune. But it is, as I said, an idle thought. Hamlet’s
melancholic despair is less circumstantial than existential.
Even before he meets his father’s ghost, and well before Ophelia’s
counseled rebuff, Hamlet is already disgusted with life:
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t, ah fie, ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. . . .94

With the death of his father, and the prompt remarriage of his mother,
Hamlet the student is forced to confront his own adult identity. “Who’s
there?” Barnardo cries from the battlements to open the play.95 Hamlet
looks within and doesn’t like the answer. He looks without and likes what
he sees even less. He has idealized his father as a warrior, a king, and a
husband: “Take him for all in all, / I shall not look upon his like again.”96
He is correspondingly disgusted that his mother has so quickly and easily
transferred her affections from “so excellent a king, that was to this /
Hyperion to a satyr.”97 Literally, he sees his father as a divinity and
Claudius as less than human. Yet his mother readily exchanged one brother
for the other. “O God,” Hamlet moans, “a beast that wants discourse of
reason / Would have mourn’d longer.”98
Such a double blow would send moral shock waves through any
sensitive young man and lead him to question where once he loved and
revered. Yet Hamlet is experiencing more than nausea at his mother
“post[ing] / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!”99 The poet and critic
T. S. Eliot dubbed Hamlet an “artistic failure.”100 He thought the play was
too long, with “superfluous and inconsistent scenes” and “variable”
versification.101 It is a deliberately—and ludicrously—provocative
judgment, akin to Henry James’s dismissal of War and Peace and Anna
Karenina as “loose, baggy monsters,”102 and made for much the same
aesthetic reasons. But Eliot is right on one point. Gertrude is not an
adequate basis for the cosmic disgust felt by Hamlet: “His disgust envelops
and exceeds her.”103 There is more going on here than a son’s dismay at his
father’s death and his mother’s hasty remarriage.
That something more is found necessarily in the character of Hamlet
and the times in which he lived and whose ideals he had internalized before
sounding their hollowness. Hamlet had long shown the promise of
Castiglione’s perfect courtier. As Ophelia describes him with retrospective
despair: “O, what a noble mind . . . / The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s,
eye, tongue, sword, / Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of
fashion and the mould of form, / Th’observ’d of all observers. . . .”104 By all
indications, Hamlet as a student was open and candid; he endeared himself
to friends and was beloved of the people. Even Claudius calls him “most
generous, and free from all contriving.”105
Hamlet articulates the Renaissance ideal in stirring terms: “What a piece
of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and
moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in
apprehension how like a god.”106 And yet, he adds, this “quintessence of
dust” delights him not.107
By the time he wrote Hamlet, Shakespeare had certainly read
Montaigne, perhaps in a prepublication draft of his friend John Florio’s
English translation. Montaigne’s skepticism corrodes the lofty sunlit edifice
of the Renaissance. Man is an imperfect creature, Montaigne taught. He is
full of contradictions and vices that parade as virtues. Those who attempt to
rise above human nature invariably fall below. “They want to get out of
themselves and escape from the man. That is madness: instead of changing
into angels, they change into beasts; instead of raising themselves, they
lower themselves.”108
Hamlet repeatedly echoes these sentiments. “I am myself indifferent
honest,” he explains to Ophelia, “but yet I could accuse me of such things
that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud,
revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts
to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What
should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are
arrant knaves all. . . .”109 For Montaigne, it was a basic premise of his
enterprise that each man bears within himself the seeds of man’s estate.
Hamlet recognizes that he bears within himself the seeds of the violence,
treachery, and lust he sees around him. Hamlet the student, having forged a
godlike vision of man, falls all the harder when forced to confront the
bankruptcy of that vision. It is precisely because he was so high that he falls
so low. He hardens his heart against those who disappoint him, such as his
mother, Ophelia, and his erstwhile friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
but particularly against himself. He has become the polar opposite of
Rosalind. He is dark where she is light; he is dissembling where she is
candid (for Rosalind is candid even in her disguise as Ganymede); he is
bitter where she is loving. And yet we are still drawn to the gloomy but
charismatic prince.
It is a commonplace that Hamlet is in the wrong play. An earlier, lost
play on the same subject, the so-called Ur-Hamlet, was probably written by
Thomas Kyd, an important figure in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Kyd’s version was a straightforward revenge play, so full of melodrama as
to have become an object of mirth. “Hamlet, revenge,” the ghost would
creak periodically. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is not crafted for such a stock
role, teetering between comedy and tragedy. It is not that he is incapable of
acting the avenger. As he cautions Laertes: “Though I am not splenative and
rash, / Yet have I in me something dangerous, / Which let thy wiseness
fear.”110 When the occasion calls for it, Hamlet will act decisively and even
impulsively: following the ghost on the darkened ramparts; boarding the
pirate ship; and leaping into Ophelia’s grave to grapple with Laertes. Nor, in
the end, does he shrink from violence: stabbing Polonius through the arras;
casually sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths; and running
Claudius through with his sword and then prying his lips apart to force
poison down his throat.
So why does Hamlet hesitate? Why does he recoil from his role as
avenger even after the play within the play reveals the conscience of the
king and Hamlet knows to a moral certainty that Claudius did indeed
murder his father? He asks himself this question repeatedly and, despite his
many soliloquies, never hits upon a satisfactory answer. “I do not know /
Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do, / Sith I have cause, and will, and
strength, and means / To do’t.”111
There are as many answers to that question as there are readers and
spectators of the play. Two of Shakespeare’s greatest interpreters give
diametrically opposing answers. According to A. C. Bradley, Hamlet has a
moral obligation to avenge his father and shrinks from it only because
mental illness, in the form of melancholia, has rendered him too depressed
to act.112 When he finally snaps out of his lethargy in act 5, it is too late. The
tragedy of Hamlet is that, due to his indefensible delay, eight people die—
Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, Gertrude,
Claudius, and Hamlet himself—rather than just the one who deserved it.113
According to Goddard, Hamlet has a moral obligation not to avenge his
father. The cycle of such violence traces back at least to Pyrrhus avenging
the death of his father, Achilles, by brutally dismembering the elderly Priam
at his household altar. It was set in motion again when Hamlet senior killed
the father of Fortinbras and usurped his lands. It seizes young Fortinbras,
who, in the name of honor, will sacrifice twenty thousand men to win a tract
of land too small to bury them in. And it possesses Laertes, who will
avenge his father even by underhanded and despicable means, thereby
becoming a cat’s-paw of Claudius. The tragedy of Hamlet is that, in the
end, he abandons his moral scruples and engages in indiscriminate slaughter
in a sinful cause.
The interesting thing is that each of these diametrically opposed views
—which are presented here in only slightly exaggerated form—enjoys
ample textual support. Indeed, Hamlet himself acknowledges that he is
“prompted to [his] revenge by heaven and hell.”114 And those who
pronounce Hamlet’s epitaph take similarly contrary views. Fortinbras
claims Hamlet as one of the warrior class, noting that, as king, he would
have “prov’d most royal” and deserves to be borne by four captains
accompanied by “the soldier’s music and the rite of war.”115 Horatio bids
him adieu in softer tones: “Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest.”116
Hamlet is caught between two contradictory cultural paradigms.
Renaissance ideals of the noble use of reason, aesthetic refinement, and the
peaceful arrangement of the social order clash with a warrior culture older
than Homer. They clash within Hamlet himself. How is he to reconcile his
artistic, moral, and spiritual longings with the rage, lust, and ambition he
finds in himself and others? How is he to integrate the god and the beast
into a coherent human being, with the grace and sprezzatura of
Castiglione’s courtier? He cannot do so, and he is disgusted and paralyzed
by the disjunction between what man is and what he ought to be.
As Emily Dickinson beautifully put it, “Hamlet wavered for all of
us,”117 echoing William Hazlitt, who wrote, “It is we who are Hamlet.”118
Every thoughtful, self-reflective person, after Montaigne, recognizes the
gap between the values we profess and the reality in our hearts, between
“actions that a man might play” and “that within which passes show.”119
Hamlet has no faith in heroic action, either to perfect the inner man or to
right the external world.120 He has no faith that what we call greatness is
anything more than rank ambition, which will reveal itself in time as empty
and futile.
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake.121

What we call greatness will find quarrel in a straw simply to manifest

itself as greatness. Thus, Fortinbras “fight[s] for a plot / Whereon the
numbers cannot try the cause.”122 Alexander conquered the entire world but
to no greater effect. His “noble dust” may now be “stopping a bung-
hole.”123 Greatness of being—to which Hamlet has always aspired—finds
no validation either in heaven or on earth. It is simply a word disguising a
sordid reality, a sentiment with which Falstaff would surely concur.
In an earlier book on the eternal questions of philosophy, I wrote, “We
live in a post-Wittgenstein age with Platonic longings.”124 By that I meant
that Plato established our aspirations and expectations for human thought
and language. He held out the promise of a comprehensive understanding in
which every piece of the puzzle falls into place, and terms like “beauty,”
“courage,” and “goodness” have an absolute, fixed meaning discernible to
human reason. We can then gauge our conduct by those fixed standards.
Wittgenstein, by contrast, showed us nothing but fragmentation and
dismissed the false comfort of ideas that oversimplify and distort our messy
everyday lives. There are no fixed standards. As Hamlet explains, “there is
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”125 Hamlet is already
post-Wittgenstein. He dismisses the products of human reason as “words,
words, words”126 that offer no coherent account of what it should mean to
be a human being crawling between earth and heaven. Fine words hint at
ideals that life constantly undermines. We cannot live up to our own speech.
Everything we say is a lie. “The rest is silence.”127
Friedrich Nietzsche may be the most incisive interpreter of Hamlet. He
wrote that “action requires the veils of illusion,” whereas Hamlet has
“looked truly into the essence of things,” and the resultant nausea inhibits
action.128 When the ghost first beckons Hamlet to follow, Horatio is
horrified:
What if it tempt you . . .
to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.129

The ghost has indeed tempted Hamlet to the dreadful summit, and
throughout the rest of the play he teeters on the edge of that abyss. The
constantly churning sea is nothing but blind, striving will, which can
manifest itself equally in the most refined and polished works of art and
thought and also in the basest and most despicable acts.
Hamlet loves the theater precisely because it maintains the veils of
illusion so essential to life. It focuses on forms, tones, and words, and
thereby purports “to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue
her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his
form and pressure.”130 The theater is essentially Platonic. It distills
characters and concepts to their essence. It reveals us to ourselves and to
one another. And yet it is an illusion, however beautiful, a step removed
even from the play of shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. Beneath this
surface representation, what we hear, if we listen with the morbid sensibility
of a Hamlet, is the undifferentiated roar of the constantly churning human
will. Indeed, the sharper our perception, the greater the roar, as George Eliot
so wonderfully noted:
That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself
into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If
we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass
grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side
of silence.131

Much is made of Hamlet’s suggestion in act 5 that “there’s a divinity

that shapes our ends.” But it is hardly a Christian vision; for the ways of
providence are utterly unfathomable. Indeed, the only certainty is that our
“deep plots . . . / Rough-hew them how we will,” will end in our
annihilation.132 In the face of nothingness, in the face of the abyss shown to
him by his father’s ghost, Hamlet in act 5 effects an almost Buddhistic
calm. Returning from his aborted trip to England, he knows that Claudius
will make another attempt on his life. But he seems not to care.
If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will
come. The readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is’t to leave
betimes? Let be.133

The readiness is all. There is a mode of being—aware, alert, resigned—

that may not be intrinsically better than not being but is the best we can
attain on this earth. It is the stance of the artist on whom nothing is lost.
Hamlet’s actual death is messy due to the clumsy contrivances of
Claudius. And Hamlet finally wreaks his long contemplated revenge in an
impulsive act of rage. His will asserts itself even in death as he commands
Horatio to “report me and my cause aright.”134 Why does he care about his
“wounded name” if readiness is all and only nothingness awaits? It is the
ultimate paradox of this most paradoxical character, who can never
integrate the array of conflicting thoughts and impulses that constitute man.
Hamlet, as Harold Bloom notes, “has no center.”135 He finds himself, like
the cosmos, hollow at the core:
Had I but time—as this fell sergeant, Death,
 Is strict in his arrest—O, I could tell you—
But let it be.136

It is Hamlet’s final tantalizing hint as he gazes into the abyss and hears
the roar of the untamed human will. The rest is silence.

OUR REVELS NOW ARE ENDED

In Christopher Marlowe’s last play, the eponymous Dr. Faustus undertakes

to master all of human knowledge. Logic, medicine, law, and divinity are
sounded in turn and found wanting. Of each he asks: “Affords this art no
greater miracle? / Then read no more; thou hast attained that end. / A
greater subject fitteth Faustus’ wit!”137 Having exhausted the liberal arts, he
turns to necromancy in hopes of becoming “on earth as Jove is in the sky”:
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command. Emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds,
But his dominion that exceeds in this
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.
A sound magician is a demi-god.138

Faustus pledges his soul to the devil in order to gain such power for
twenty-four years on earth, confident that there is no afterworld in which
his debt will become due. His familiar, Mephistophilis, accordingly lets him
“try the utmost magic can perform.”139 But Faustus gains no true knowledge
and wastes his powers on vain pleasures and empty displays. When the
twenty-four years have passed, it is too late to repent. Even his final plea
—“I’ll burn my books!”140—cannot prevent him from being dragged to
eternal damnation.
Prospero, too, has attained the powers of a demigod, both through his
own study and with the help of his familiar, Ariel. Together they raise the
wind and rend the clouds to set in motion the tempest that delivers the king
of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and others to Prospero’s remote island in
Shakespeare’s The Tempest. “These mine enemies,” Prospero exults, “now
are in my power.”141 But what he will do with that power, and whether he
has sold his soul to the devil to attain it, remains to be seen.
Twelve years earlier, Prospero explains to his daughter, Miranda, he was
himself Duke of Milan. There, Prospero made “the liberal Arts . . . all my
study.”142 He was so “transported / And rapt in secret studies” that he
neglected worldly ends and turned the daily business of government over to
his brother, Antonio.143 For Prospero, his library was “dukedom large
enough.”144 But Antonio wanted to be “Absolute Milan,”145 duke in name
and ceremony as well as substance. He therefore opened the gates of the
city to Alonso, the king of Naples and longtime enemy of Milan, who, in
exchange for annual tribute, contrived to exile Prospero along with the
three-year-old Miranda, setting them adrift miles from shore in a leaky boat
with no sails. Only the love of the people for the exiled pair stayed Antonio
and Alonso from killing them outright. A faithful retainer, Gonzalo, secretly
furnished father and daughter with food, water, and other necessities, and
“from mine own library with volumes that / I prize above my dukedom.”146
“By Providence divine,” Prospero concludes, they were brought safely to
the island they now inhabit.147
For twelve years, then, Prospero has nurtured his daughter along with
his grievance. Their only companions are the half-beast, half-man Caliban,
and the airy spirits Prospero commands. Caliban’s mother, the witch
Sycorax, was banished to the island for her black magic, her life preserved
only because of her pregnancy. She died before Prospero and Miranda
arrived, leaving the misshapen Caliban without language or learning. She
also left behind Ariel, her ethereal servant, “too delicate / To act her earthy
and abhorr’d commands,”148 and thus painfully imprisoned by Sycorax in a
cloven pine from which Prospero finally freed him.
Caliban was at first extravagantly grateful for the attention of Pros-pero
and Miranda, and he showed them “all the qualities o’ th’ isle, / The fresh
springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile,”149 so that they could distinguish
between the two, just as they in turn “endow’d [his] purposes / With words
that made them known.”150 But education did not temper Caliban’s natural
urges, and when Miranda grew older he tried to rape her. Confined to a rock
by Prospero and forced to do menial chores, Caliban nurses his own
grievance. He was once king of this island. He had inherited it by right from
his mother, Sycorax, just as Prospero had his dukedom by succession. He
would people it with Calibans. But now he is a servant, and the gift of
speech avails him nothing.
You taught me language; and my profit on ’t
Is, I know how to curse.151
 Ariel is wholly different from Caliban. He—or one might as easily say
she, for Ariel is often played by a woman in performance—is a pure,
sexless spirit, who can move with the speed of thought and weave spells
and enchantments over foolish mortals. Yet Ariel, too, is servant to
Prospero and longs for the freedom to “fly / After summer” and to live
“merrily, merrily . . . / Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.”152 Ariel
is also the demiurge of the music that fills the island and moves even
Caliban to eloquence—or, rather, especially Caliban, who, in his state close
to nature, seems more attuned to it than anyone else:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d,
I cried to dream again.153

The Tempest lends itself to allegorical interpretations. And it invites

commentary on New World colonialism, servitude, political violence, and
the varied promptings of nature and nurture. There is endless fodder here
for committed scholars and directors. But if ever there was a play that
called attention to forms, tones, and words—all of which lie dazzlingly
upon the surface—it is The Tempest. As Hazlitt noted, “it is full of grace
and grandeur,”154 and it must be appreciated first and foremost on that level.
The play is also, as critics have long recognized, “Shakespeare’s farewell
piece.”155 He cowrote a few other plays after this one, but The Tempest
marks his valedictory. A simplistic equation of Prospero and Shakespeare
may be indefensible, but it is nonetheless enriching to recognize that, in key
passages, Shakespeare cum Prospero is speaking directly to his public in a
way he has not done previously.
Prospero is the maestro who sets the stage and puts the characters in
motion. His will constructs and controls three separate plot lines. First,
Ferdinand, the son of Alonso, and Miranda fall in love. Ferdinand is alone
and bereft, believing that his father and all their companions perished in the
storm that stranded him on the island. When Ariel guides his heavy steps to
Miranda, he is struck with wonder and is prepared to make her queen of
Naples before they have exchanged a dozen words. Miranda, in turn—since
the only men she has ever seen are her father and Caliban—would “call him
/ A thing divine; for nothing natural / I ever saw so noble.”156 “They are
both in either’s pow’rs,” Prospero rejoices, “but this swift business / I must
uneasy make, lest too light winning / Make the prize light.”157 He is
accordingly severe with Ferdinand and sets him to work on onerous, menial
tasks. But the course of true love does not deviate from its appointed path.
For a prize so precious—“she will outstrip all praise, / And make it halt
behind her”158—Ferdinand will happily endure any hardship.
The second subplot concerns Sebastian, the brother of Alonso. Antonio,
believing Ferdinand to be dead, urges Sebastian to kill the grieving Alonso
and himself become king of Naples, just as Antonio became Duke of Milan.
Indeed, Antonio offers to kill the king himself in satisfaction of the tribute
Milan owes to Naples. Sebastian all too readily agrees. The biblical
violence of brother against brother is prepared to repeat itself yet again.
But, although Prospero will give Sebastian and Antonio the freedom in
which to develop their plot, he directs Ariel to prevent its completion.
In the third subplot, Caliban encounters two drunken sailors. After
tasting their “celestial liquor,” Caliban immediately pledges his allegiance
and—eager to trade one tyrant for another, as if that were “freedom, high-
day, freedom!”159—he proposes that they join together to kill Pros-pero and
take over the island. “Burn but his books,” he urges (echoing Faustus’s own
offer), “for without them / He’s but a sot, as I am.”160
Prospero fosters the first subplot and thwarts the second with equal
ease. The third subplot is also readily countered; indeed, the drunken sailors
themselves have no real appetite for violence and are readily distracted
from Caliban’s aims. Yet Caliban’s aborted revolt disturbs Pros-pero deeply,
as if he feels guilt for his failure to educate and civilize Caliban and for
effectively displacing him as lord of his own island, while robbing him of
what W. H. Auden calls his “savage freedom” and his “savage
innocence.”161 There are at least tonal hints here, already found in
Montaigne’s essay “Of Cannibals,” of a new myth of the natural man that
Rousseau would seize upon more than a century later to usher in
Romanticism. But Prospero, unlike Rousseau, is not sentimental.
With Ariel’s help, Prospero’s enemies are “all knit up” and in his
power.162 He can destroy them or torment them as he pleases. He can wreak
his long-contemplated revenge. But Ariel reminds him of their common
humanity in a deeply moving exchange. He describes the prisoners:
distracted, mourning, and “brimful of sorrow and dismay”; and particularly
the good lord Gonzalo, dear to Prospero, whose tears run down his old
beard “like winter’s drops / From eaves of reeds.”163
ARI . . . Your charm so strongly works ’em,
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
PROS. Dost thou think so, spirit?
ARI. Mine would, sir, were I human.
PROS. And mine shall.
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier mov’d than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick,
Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel:
My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore,
And they shall be themselves.164

Prospero renounces revenge as unworthy of nobler reason and tender

affection. He embraces Gonzalo. He reunites Alonso with the son he
thought was dead, and Alonso immediately blesses Ferdinand’s proposed
marriage to Miranda. Antonio must surrender his ill-gotten dukedom to
Prospero. And Prospero himself abjures the magic that separated him from
his fellow men:
I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fadoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.165

“My book” refers to his accumulated esoteric wisdom. Man is not

meant to be a demigod. Such aspirations will overthrow the tender
affections necessary for human connections. So Prospero gives up godlike
control and will become again, for better or for worse, a man. He is
redeemed by his love for Miranda: “O, a cherubin / Thou wast that did
preserve me. Thou didst smile, / Infused with a fortitude from heaven.”166
Prospero includes even Caliban within his affections and promises to
assume responsibility for him—“this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge
mine.”167 Caliban, in turn, makes his own promise: “I’ll be wise hereafter, /
And seek for grace.”168
The play ends in a remarkable moment of reconciliation, forgiveness,
and mercy. But the moment is not untinged by ambiguity and sadness.
Antonio and Sebastian are not redeemed; nor do they seek forgiveness.
They simply escape punishment. Miranda may be filled with wonder and
optimism:
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!169

But Prospero’s response is more sober: “’Tis new to thee.”170 Pros-pero

is not naive about the failings of mankind. He knows that Miranda will
suffer disappointments and perhaps even betrayal. At best, and with grace,
she will know the future Ferdinand predicts for them both: “quiet days, fair
issue and long life.”171 That is as close to paradise as one might hope in an
imperfect world.
Prospero’s caution—“Let us not burthen our remembrance with / A
heaviness that’s gone”172—itself serves to recall that heaviness. He will
“retire . . . to my Milan, where / Every third thought shall be my grave.”173
It is impossible not to substitute, in our minds, “Stratford” for Milan. For
twelve years—from 1599 to 1611—Shakespeare has worked his own magic
on the stage at the Globe, like a demigod whose dominion “stretcheth as far
as doth the mind of man.” He is ready to bid farewell.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack beyond. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.174

Surely “the great globe itself ” is a reference to his theater, as is the

charmed “circle which Prospero had made,” and into which the assembled
cast is drawn and then dispersed.175 Fortunately, Shakespeare did not drown
his book or “bury it certain fadoms in the earth.” But he did nothing to
preserve it. That task was left to others, and we thankfully possess the
inexhaustible riches of the First Folio. Yet Shakespeare himself still lies
deeply hidden within those pages. His characters shine forth. They strut and
fret their hour upon the stage, revealing to us the full range and depth of
human thought, human passion, and human ambition. But Shakespeare
himself is not to be found among them; or rather, he is so fully dispersed
among them all as to melt into thin air, leaving only tantalizing hints.
Shakespearean wisdom does indeed lie “deeper than did ever plummet
sound.”
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have not attempted to document every source for the ideas in this book.
But my extensive debt to generations of Renaissance scholars and
translators will be obvious to those in the field. I have tried to list the books
and articles on which I most relied, as well as those from which general
readers would most benefit, in the section on Suggestions for Further
Reading. I also cite there, and in the notes, the many excellent translations
from which the quotations in the text are derived.
Oxford historian Emily Winkler read the chapters as they were written
and made numerous helpful suggestions and corrections. My brother Peter
—a distinguished playwright—read the chapter on Shakespeare and
provided several key insights and comments, as did my daughter, Camille,
to whom this book is dedicated.
Several of my colleagues played critical roles in putting this book in
final form. Darrin Leverette scrupulously worked through the entire
manuscript, checking the cites, the facts, and the prose, and saving me from
numerous errors. His intelligence, attention to detail, willingness to track
down obscure sources, and sensitivity to the nuances of language were all
indispensable. So, too, was the work of Susan Cohen, who carefully and
thoughtfully read each chapter. My longtime assistant, Marilyn Williams,
without whom I would never accomplish anything, kept the entire project
on schedule and put the manuscript in its final form.
Denise Roeper was my freelance editor from Prometheus Books. She
has a wonderful ear for language and a sharp eye for imprecision. The book
is much improved thanks to her efforts. She was also a delight to work with.
I would also like to express my gratitude and pay tribute to Steven L.
Mitchell, the longtime editor in chief of Prometheus Books, who just retired
after almost forty years. During that time, he helped make Prometheus
Books into a model for independent publishers, offering serious books for
thoughtful readers on a range of subjects. I am especially grateful that he
was willing to take a chance on an unknown, previously unpublished author
and that he stayed with me through five books.
My greatest joys are my wife, Lucy, and my three children—Baird,
Cole, and Camille—who have sustained, encouraged, and inspired me
throughout the writing of the books in this series.
 CHRONOLOGY

Petrarch 1304–1374
Avignon Papacy (“Babylonian Captivity”) 1309–1377
Boccaccio 1313–1375
Hundred Years’ War 1337–1453
Western Schism 1378–1417
Henry the Navigator (Portugal) 1394–1460
Henry IV (England) r. 1399–1413
Henry V (England) r. 1413–1422
Council of Constance 1414–1418
Battle of Agincourt 1415
Marsilio Ficino 1433–1499
Gutenberg Printing Press ca. 1440
Christopher Columbus 1451–1506
Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519
Wars of the Roses 1455–1487
Vasco da Gama ca. 1460–1524
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 1463–1494
Erasmus ca. 1466–1536
Machiavelli 1469–1527
Nicolaus Copernicus 1473–1543
Isabella I (Castile) r. 1474–1504
Cesare Borgia 1475–1507
Vasco Núñez de Balboa ca. 1475–1519
Michelangelo 1475–1564
Spanish Inquisition Established 1478
Castiglione 1478–1529
Thomas More 1478–1535
Ferdinand II (Aragon) r. 1479–1516
Ferdinand Magellan ca. 1480–1521
Raphael 1483–1520
Martin Luther 1483–1546
Rabelais 1483–1553
Huldrych Zwingli 1484–1531
Battle of Bosworth Field 1485
Thomas Cromwell ca. 1485–1540
Hernán Cortés 1485–1547
Completion of Reconquista in Spain 1492
Girolamo Savonarola (Florence) r. 1494–1498
Louis XII (France) r. 1498–1515
Henry VIII (England) r. 1509–1547
John Calvin 1509–1564
Protestant Reformation 1517–1648
Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) r. 1519–1556
Diet of Worms 1521
German Peasants’ War 1524–1525
Luís Vaz de Camões 1524/5–1580
Troops of Charles V Sack Rome 1527
Montaigne 1533–1592
First Act of Supremacy 1534
Thomas More Executed for Treason 1535
Henry VIII Excommunicated from Catholic Church 1538
Society of Jesus (Jesuits) 1540
Sir Francis Drake ca. 1540–1596
Council of Trent 1545–1563
Counter-Reformation 1545–1648
Cervantes 1547–1616
Peace of Augsburg 1555
Philip II (Spain) r. 1556–1598
Elizabeth I (England) r. 1558–1603
Index Librorum Prohibitorum Published 1559
Christopher Marlowe 1564–1593
Shakespeare 1564–1616
Galileo Galilei 1564–1642
Battle of Lepanto 1571
Johannes Kepler 1571–1630
St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 1572
Ben Jonson 1572–1637
Spanish Armada Defeated 1588
Edict of Nantes 1598
Gunpowder Plot 1605
Jamestown Colony Founded 1607
Globe Theatre Destroyed by Fire 1613
Thirty Years’ War 1618–1648
Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Emperor) r. 1619–1637
Plymouth Colony Founded 1620
English Civil War 1642–1651
Peace of Westphalia 1648
 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER
READING

INTRODUCTION
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the
Age of Philip II (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), translated by Siân
Reynolds.
Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005).
Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (London:
Folio Society, 2004), translated by S. G. C. Middlemore with an
introduction by Anthony Grafton.
Luís Vaz de Camões, The Lusíads (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), translated with an introduction and notes by Landeg White.
J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (1963; repr., London: Penguin
Books, 2002).
Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to
Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York:
Atheneum, 1994).
Mark Hansen, The Royal Facts of Life: Biology and Politics in Sixteenth-
Century Europe (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1980).
Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin
Books, 2005).
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).
Peter Pesic, Polyphonic Minds: Music of the Hemispheres (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2017), chaps. 1–9.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man (1965; repr.,
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998), translated by Charles Glenn Wallis
with an introduction by Paul J. W. Miller.
J. H. Plumb, The Italian Renaissance (New York: American Heritage,
1985).
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (New York:
Dell, 1968), edited by Edmund Fuller, translated by A. B. Hinds.
Robin W. Winks and Lee Palmer Wandel, Europe in a Wider World, 1350–
1650 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

PETRARCH
Primary Sources:
The Essential Petrarch (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010), edited and
translated by Peter Hainsworth.
Petrarch, Canzoniere (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996),
translated by Mark Musa.
Petrarch, Letters of Old Age, 2 vols. (New York: Italica, 2005), translated by
Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernardo.
Petrarch, Letters on Familiar Matters (New York: Italica, 2005), translated
by Aldo S. Bernardo.
Petrarch, Petrarch’s Secret: The Soul’s Conflict with Passion (1911; repr.,
New York: Hyperion, 1978), translated by William H. Draper.
Secondary Sources:
Aldo S. Bernardo, Petrarch, Scipio and the “Africa”: The Birth of
Humanism’s Dream (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962).
Morris Bishop, Petrarch and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1963).
Maud F. Jerrold, Francesco Petrarca: Poet and Humanist (1909; repr., Port
Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1970).
Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2009), edited by Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi.
Gur Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism and the Care of the Self (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2013).

ERASMUS
Primary Sources:
The Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965),
translated by Craig R. Thompson.
Erasmus, Enchiridion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963),
translated with an introduction by Raymond Himelick.
Erasmus: The “Praise of Folly” and Other Writings (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1989), edited and translated by Robert M. Adams.
Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther: Discourse on Free Will (London:
Bloomsbury, 1989), edited and translated by Ernst F. Winter.
Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (Garden City, NY: Anchor
Books, 1961), edited with an introduction by John Dillenberger.
Secondary Sources:
Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence (1991; repr.,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), translated by J. C.
Grayson.
Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (Mineola, NY:
Dover, 2001), translated by F. Hopman.
Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in
Print (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
James McConica, Erasmus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

MACHIAVELLI
Primary Sources:
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003), translated with an introduction and notes by Julia
Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992),
edited and translated by Robert M. Adams.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992),
translated by W. K. Marriott.
The Portable Machiavelli (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), edited and
translated with an introduction by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa.
Secondary Sources:
Peter E. Bondanella, Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance History
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973).
Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000).
Maurizio Viroli, Niccolò’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli (New York:
Hill and Wang, 2002), translated by Antony Shugaar.

THOMAS MORE
Primary Sources:
Thomas More, Utopia, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), edited and
translated by George M. Logan.
Saint Thomas More: Selected Writings (New York: Vintage Books, 2003),
edited by John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne.
A Thomas More Source Book (2004; repr., Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2008), edited by Gerard B. Wegemer and
Stephen W. Smith.
Secondary Sources:
Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (New York: Anchor Books, 1999).
Richard Marius, Thomas More (London: Fount, 1986).
James Monti, The King’s Good Servant but God’s First: The Life and
Writings of St. Thomas More (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997).
Thomas More (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), edited by
George M. Logan.
CASTIGLIONE
Primary Sources:
Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2002), edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by Charles S.
Singleton.
Secondary Sources:
Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1983), edited by Robert W. Hanning and
David Rosand.
Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in
Castiglione’s “Book of the Courtier” (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1978).

RABELAIS

Primary Sources:
The Complete Works of Rabelais: The Five Books of “Gargantua and
Pantagruel” (New York: Modern Library, 1944), translated by Jacques
Le Clercq.
François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (London: Penguin Books,
2006), edited and translated with an introduction and notes by M. A.
Screech.
Secondary Sources:
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), chap. 11,
translated by Willard R. Trask.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1984), translated by Hélène Iswolsky.
Barbara C. Bowen, The Age of Bluff: Paradox and Ambiguity in Rabelais
and Montaigne (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972).
The Cambridge Companion to Rabelais (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), edited by John O’Brien.
Donald M. Frame, François Rabelais: A Study (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1977).
M. A. Screech, Rabelais (London: Duckworth, 1979).

MONTAIGNE

Primary Sources:
The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1965), translated by Donald M. Frame.
Montaigne’s Travel Journal (San Francisco: North Point, 1983), translated
with an introduction by Donald M. Frame.
Secondary Sources:
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), chap. 12,
translated by Willard R. Trask.
Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne (New York: Other
Press, 2010).
Donald M. Frame, Montaigne: A Biography (San Francisco: North Point,
1984).
Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2010), edited with an introduction by Philippe Desan, translated by
Dawn Eng.
Jean Starobinski, Montaigne in Motion (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1985), translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

CERVANTES
Primary Sources:
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (New York: HarperCollins, 2005),
translated by Edith Grossman with an introduction by Harold Bloom.
Miguel de Cervantes, Exemplary Stories (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998), translated with an introduction and notes by Lesley
Lipson.
Secondary Sources:
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), chap. 5.
Jean Canavaggio, Cervantes (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), translated
by J. R. Jones.
Cervantes: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, 1969), edited by Lowry Nelson Jr.
Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”: A Casebook (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2005), edited by Roberto González Echevarría.
Roberto González Echevarría, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2015).
William Egginton, The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered
in the Modern World (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).
Donald P. McCrory, No Ordinary Man: The Life and Times of Miguel de
Cervantes (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2006).
José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote (New York: W. W. Norton,
1963), translated by Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín with an introduction
and notes by Julián Marías.

SHAKESPEARE

Primary Sources:
The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (New York: Odyssey, 1963),
edited with and introduction and notes by Irving Ribner.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It (2006; repr., London: Bloomsbury,
2016), edited by Juliet Dusinberre.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1982; repr., London: Routledge, 1993),
edited by Harold Jenkins.
William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I (2002; repr., London:
Bloomsbury, 2016), edited by David Scott Kastan.
William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2 (London: Bloomsbury, 2016),
edited by James C. Bulman.
William Shakespeare, King Henry V (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), edited by Andrew Gurr.
William Shakespeare, King Richard II (2002; repr., London: Bloomsbury,
2016), edited by Charles R. Forker.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1954; repr., London: Routledge, 1988),
edited by Frank Kermode.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), edited
by Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman.
Secondary Sources:
W. H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2001), edited by Arthur Kirsch.
Jonathan Bate, Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William
Shakespeare (London: Penguin Books, 2008).
Harold Bloom, Falstaff: Give Me Life (New York: Scribner, 2017).
Harold Bloom, Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (New York: Riverhead Books,
2003).
Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York:
Riverhead Books, 1998).
A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on “Hamlet,” “Othello,”
“King Lear” and “Macbeth” (London: Penguin Books, 1991).
Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage (New York: Harper
Perennial, 2008).
Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, 2 vols. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became
Shakespeare (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).
William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, in The Collected Works
of William Hazlitt, vol. 1 (New York: McClure, Phillips, 1902), edited
by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover with an introduction by W. E.
Henley.
Park Honan, Shakespeare: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998).
Johnson on Shakespeare: The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson,
vol. 7 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), edited by Arthur
 Sherbo with an introduction by Betrand H. Bronson.
G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearian
Tragedy (1961; repr., New York: Routledge, 1998).
Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1986), edited by Robert Sandler.
A. D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2007).
Peter Saccio, Shakespeare’s English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
James Shapiro, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2006).
Twentieth Century Interpretations of “As You Like It” (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), edited by Jay L. Halio.
Twentieth Century Interpretations of “Henry IV, Part One” (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), edited by R. J. Dorius.
 NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. See, for example, Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art

(7th ed.). My own favorite book on the art of the Renaissance—albeit
generally produced without illustrations—is Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the
Painters, Sculptors and Architects. For a brilliant, synoptic account of the
development of music through the Renaissance and beyond, see chapters 1–
9 of Peter Pesic’s Polyphonic Minds: Music of the Hemispheres.
2. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Wisdom of the Middle Ages (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2016), chap. 5.
3. See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds (New York:
HarperCollins, 1992).
4. Ben Jonson, “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William
Shakespeare,” preface to the First Folio, reprinted at
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44466/to-the-memory-of-my-
beloved-the-author-mr-william-shakespeare.
5. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans.
S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Folio Society, 2004), p. 108.
6. Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 48–49.
7. Eratosthenes of Cyrene had provided a far more accurate estimate in
the third century BCE. But, although he was aware of Eratosthenes’s
calculations, Columbus chose instead to follow an inaccurate map created
in 1474 by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli.
 8. In searching for an analogy for his own feelings on first encountering
the “wide expanse” of Homer, John Keats mistakenly gives this honor to
Cortés:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” reprinted at

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44481/on-first-looking-into-
chapmans-homer. Regardless, Keats beautifully captures the moment of
exhilaration as explorers encountered new lands and new seas.
9. We require extensive notes when we read Shakespeare to explain
archaic words and phrases. The King James Bible, written roughly in the
same time frame, is transparent to all readers of modern English.
10. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History
(New York: A. L. Burt, [1840?]), p. 160.
11. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, trans. Charles
Glenn Wallis (1965; repr., Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998), p. 3.
12. Ibid., pp. 5, 13.
13. Ibid., p. 23.
14. Ibid., p. 5.
15. Burckhardt, Civilisation of the Renaissance, p. 103.
16. It is a delicious irony, therefore, that opera arose from the mistaken
belief that the individual speeches in Greek tragedy were sung, just like the
chorale odes. Donald Jay Grout, A Short History of Opera, 3rd ed. (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 11–15.
CHAPTER 1: THE THREE FACES OF FRANCESCO
PETRARCA

1. Petrarch, Rerum memorandarum libri, 1.2, quoted in Morris Bishop,

Petrarch and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963), p.
374.
2. See, for example, Maud F. Jerrold, Francesco Petrarca: Poet and
Humanist (1909; repr., Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1970), p. 324.
3. For a full account of medieval thought, see Michael K. Kellogg, The
Wisdom of the Middle Ages (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2016).
4. See Andrew M. Miller, trans., Greek Lyric: An Anthology in
Translation (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996), p. 9 (“The fox knows many
things, the hedgehog only one.”) (quoting Archilochus of Paros).
5. Gur Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism and the Care of the Self (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 9.
6. Petrarch, Familiares, 6.2, in Letters on Familiar Matters, trans. Aldo
S. Bernardo, vol. 1 (New York: Italica, 2005), p. 295.
7. For an account of the events leading up to Dante’s exile, see Kellogg,
Wisdom of the Middle Ages, pp. 228–29.
8. Petrarch, Seniles, 16.1, in Letters of Old Age, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo,
Saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols. (New York: Italica, 2005),
2:600–601.
9. Ibid., 2:601.
10. Bishop, Petrarch and His World, p. 88.
11. See Kellogg, Wisdom of the Middle Ages, pp. 225–28.
12. Petrarch, Familiares, 21.15, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 3, p.
203.
13. Petrarch, Seniles, 5.2, in Letters of Old Age, 1:160.
14. Bishop, Petrarch and His World, p. 144; see Michael K. Kellogg, The
Roman Search for Wisdom (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), p.
138.
15. Kellogg, Roman Search for Wisdom, pp. 143–44.
16. Petrarch, Familiares, 13.4, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 2, p.
181.
 17. Peter Hainsworth, ed. and trans., The Essential Petrarch
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010), p. 213.
18. Virgil, Aeneid, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Books,
2010), 4.774–84.
19. Aldo S. Bernardo, Petrarch, Scipio and the “Africa”: The Birth of
Humanism’s Dream (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962), pp. vii-viii.
20. Petrarch, Seniles, 17.2, in Letters of Old Age, 2:648–52.
21. Ibid., 2:654.
22. The Italian text is from Petrarch, Canzoniere, trans. Mark Musa
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 1.
23. Ibid., p. xiii.
24. Bishop, Petrarch and His World, p. 71.
25. Petrarch, Canzoniere, p. xiii.
26. Dante, Vita Nuova, trans. Mark Musa (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), chap. 7. Musa comments on the reference to Dante in his
introduction to the Canzoniere. Petrarch, Canzoniere, p. xiv.
27. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 334.4.
28. Ibid., 132.10–11.
29. Ibid., 118.14.
30. Ibid., 30.16–18.
31. Ibid., 127.18–22.
32. See Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism, pp. 26–27.
33. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 119.14–15.
34. Ibid., 336.7.
35. William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 65,” in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and
Poems, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2011).
36. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 6.1–4.
37. Ibid., 73.78.
38. Ibid., 272.1.
39. Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism, pp. 24, 62.
40. Jerrold, Francesco Petrarca, pp. 149–50.
41. Petrarch, Petrarch’s Secret: The Soul’s Conflict with Passion, trans.
William H. Draper (1911; repr., New York: Hyperion, 1978), p. 12.
42. Ibid., p. 16.
43. Ibid., p. 32.
44. Ibid., p. 18.
 45. Ibid., p. 24.
46. Ibid., p. 50.
47. Ibid., pp. 51–52.
48. Ibid., p. 11.
49. Ibid., p. 55.
50. Ibid., p. 69.
51. Ibid., p. 71.
52. Ibid., p. 73.
53. Ibid., p. 79.
54. Ibid., p. 84.
55. Ibid., p. 107.
56. Ibid., p. 109.
57. Ibid., p. 125.
58. Ibid., p. 132.
59. Ibid., p. 133.
60. Ibid., p. 148.
61. Ibid., p. 172.
62. Ibid., p. 177.
63. Ibid., p. 192.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., p. 172.
66. Petrarch, Seniles, 6.2, in Letters of Old Age, 1:192.
67. Petrarch, Familiares, 1.6, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 1, p.
34.
68. Ibid., 1.1, p. 9.
69. Bishop, Petrarch and His World, p. 280.
70. Petrarch, Seniles, 2.3, in Letters of Old Age, 1:61.
71. Petrarch, Familiares, 6.4, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 1, p.
314.
72. Ibid., 1.9, p. 47.
73. Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism, p. 78.
74. Petrarch, Seniles, 16.3, in Letters of Old Age, 2:612.
75. Ibid., 13.8, 2:493.
76. Quoted in Bishop, Petrarch and His World, p. 231.
77. Petrarch, Familiares, 4.1, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 1, p.
172.
78. Ibid., p. 173.
 79. Ibid., p. 174.
80. Ibid., p. 175.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid., pp. 175–76.
83. Ibid., p. 176.
84. Ibid., p. 178.
85. Ibid., 24.12, vol. 3, p. 344.
86. Ibid., 8.1, vol. 1, p. 390.
87. Petrarch, Seniles, 1.3, in Letters of Old Age, 1:6.
88. Ibid., 10.4, 2:377.
89. Ibid., 13.1, 2:476.
90. Petrarch, Familiares, 6.2, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 1, p.
290.
91. Ibid., 8.9, p. 422.
92. Petrarch, Seniles, 4.5, in Letters of Old Age, 1:148.
93. Petrarch, Familiares, 3.18, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 1, p.
157.
94. Petrarch, Seniles, 1.5, in Letters of Old Age, 1:16.
95. Ibid., 1:23.
96. Ibid., 1:25.
97. Petrarch, Familiares, 10.4, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 2, p.
69.
98. Ibid., 7.16, vol. 1, p. 378.
99. Ibid., 1.1, p. 13.
100. Petrarch, Seniles, 17.2, in Letters of Old Age, 2:651.
101. Petrarch, Familiares, 1.1, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 1, p. 8.
102. See Kellogg, Wisdom of the Middle Ages, pp. 242–44.
103. Petrarch, Familiares, 1.9, in Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. 1, p.
49.
104. Petrarch, Triumphus Eternitatis, 20–21, quoted in Armando Maggi,
“You Will Be My Solitude: Solitude as Prophecy,” in Petrarch: A Critical
Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 183.
CHAPTER 2: ERASMUS: THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE

1. “Erasmus laid the eggs, Luther hatched them.” See H. R. Trevor-

Roper, “Desiderius Erasmus,” in Erasmus: The “Praise of Folly” and
Other Writings, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams (New York: W. W. Norton,
1989), p. 276.
2. Erasmus, “The Godly Feast,” in The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans.
Craig R. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 68.
3. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in The Collected
Poems of W. B. Yeats (Ware, UK: Wordsworth, 2008), p. 158.
4. Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence, trans. J.
C. Grayson (1991; repr., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), p. 38.
5. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 3.
6. Ibid., p. 4 and n. 3.
7. Clarence H. Miller, “Thomas More, a Man for All Seasons: Robert
Bolt’s Play and the Elizabethan Play of Sir Thomas More,” Moreana 27, no.
104 (Dec. 1990): 101–10.
8. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 4, n. 3.
9. Ibid., p. 11.
10. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
11. Ibid., p. 12.
12. Ibid., p. 20.
13. Ibid., p. 21.
14. Ibid., p. 22.
15. Ibid., p. 23.
16. Ibid., p. 25.
17. Ibid., p. 27.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., p. 32.
20. Ibid., p. 29.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 30.
23. Ibid., p. 29.
24. Ibid., p. 30; see Michael K. Kellogg, The Roman Search for Wisdom
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), p. 34.
 25. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 39.
26. Ibid., p. 47.
27. Ibid., p. 54.
28. Ibid., p. 58.
29. Ibid., p. 57.
30. Ibid., p. 63.
31. Ibid., p. 70.
32. Ibid., p. 39–40.
33. Ibid., p. 43.
34. Ibid., p. 82.
35. Ibid., p. 39.
36. Ibid., p. 9.
37. See James McConica, Erasmus (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1991), p. 63.
38. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 5.
39. Ibid.
40. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Medieval and Renaissance Folk Humor,” trans.
Hélène Iswolsky, in Adams, “Praise of Folly” and Other Writings, p. 315.
41. Ibid., p. 317.
42. Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, trans. F.
Hopman (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2001), p. 71. Huizinga’s most renowned
work, The Waning of the Middle Ages, entered popular culture in the movie
Love Story, when the character played by Ryan O’Neal goes to the
Radcliffe College library and asks the student working there, played by Ali
MacGraw, if they have a copy of The Waning of the Middle Ages, which he
needs for a paper due the next day. Again, Folly would appreciate the irony.
43. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 80 (quoting 1 Cor. 4:10).
44. McConica, Erasmus, p. 49.
45. Erasmus, Enchiridion, trans. Raymond Himelick (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1963), p. 38.
46. Ibid., p. 51.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., p. 133.
49. Ibid., p. 105.
50. Ibid., p. 106.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., p. 94.
 53. Ibid., p. 85.
54. Ibid., p. 86.
55. Ibid., p. 125.
56. Ibid., p. 114.
57. Ibid., p. 101.
58. Ibid., p. 99.
59. Ibid., p. 116.
60. Augustijn, Erasmus, p. 92.
61. Erasmus, “Paraclesis: or, An Exhortation,” in Adams, “Praise of
Folly” and Other Writings, p. 121.
62. Ibid.
63. Erasmus, “Foreword to the Third Edition,” in Adams, “Praise of
Folly” and Other Writings, p. 134.
64. Erasmus, “Paraclesis,” in Adams, “Praise of Folly” and Other
Writings, p. 121.
65. Ibid., p. 123.
66. Augustijn, Erasmus, p. 68.
67. Erasmus, “Foreword,” in Adams, “Praise of Folly” and Other
Writings, p. 132.
68. Ibid., p. 133.
69. Scholars still debate whether Luther actually nailed the theses to the
church door; regardless, the incident is now firmly fixed in our collective
consciousness. See, for example, Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation:
A History (New York: Viking, 2004), p. 123.
70. Martin Luther, “Ninety-five Theses,” in Martin Luther: Selections
from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books,
1961), p. 493 (thesis 27).
71. MacCulloch, Reformation, pp. 14–15.
72. Luther, “Ninety-five Theses,” in Dillenberger, Martin Luther, p. 499
(thesis 86).
73. Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, in Dillenberger, Martin
Luther, pp. 56–57.
74. Again, there is substantial doubt whether Luther in fact spoke those
words. But they have passed into history, and no better answer could be
imagined.
75. MacCulloch, Reformation, p. 160.
 76. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, trans. Charles
Glenn Wallis (1965; repr., Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998), p. 5.
77. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, in Dillenberger, Martin
Luther, p. 203.
78. Ibid.
79. Erasmus, “The Shipwreck,” in Thompson, Colloquies, p. 142.
80. Erasmus, “The Abbot and the Learned Lady,” in Thompson,
Colloquies, p. 219.
81. Erasmus, “A Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake,” in Thompson,
Colloquies, p. 296.
82. Erasmus, “Charon,” in Thompson, Colloquies, p. 392.
83. Ibid.
84. Letter from Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus to the Reader, in
Thompson, Colloquies, p. 630.
85. Ibid., p. 626.
86. Erasmus, “The Young Man and the Harlot,” in Thompson,
Colloquies, p. 156.
87. Erasmus, “An Examination Concerning Faith,” in Thompson,
Colloquies, p. 188.
88. Ibid.
89. Augustijn, Erasmus, p. 104.
90. Huizinga, Erasmus, pp. 188, 190.
CHAPTER 3: MACHIAVELLI AND POLITICAL REALISM

1. “No epitaph can equal so great a name”—inscription on the tomb of

Machiavelli. See Felix Gilbert, “Fortune, Necessity, Virtù,” in Niccolò
Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams, 2nd ed. (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1992), p. 155, n. 3.
2. Michael Hattaway, “The Shakespearean History Play,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael
Hattaway (2002; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 8
(quoting Henry VI, Part 3, 3.2.193).
3. For a concise summary of more than a dozen different interpretations
of Machiavelli’s work, see Isaiah Berlin, “The Question of Machiavelli,” in
Machiavelli, The Prince, pp. 207–209.
4. Dominic Baker-Smith, introduction to The Prince, by Niccolò
Machiavelli, translated by W. K. Marriott (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1992), p. ix.
5. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 15, p. 70 (Marriott translation).
6. Aristotle, Politics, 1.1253a, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Complete
Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2
vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
7. Machiavelli to Vettori, 10 December 1513, in The Prince, p. 127.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 128.
10. Ibid.
11. Maurizio Viroli, Niccolò’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli, trans.
Antony Shugaar (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), p. 152.
12. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 26, p. 72.
13. Ibid. (quoting Petrarch, canzone 128).
14. Ibid., p. 70.
15. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul
Werstine (New York: Washington Square, 2005), 4.3.249–55.
16. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 25, p. 68.
17. Ibid., chap. 18, p. 48.
18. Ibid., chap. 6, p. 17.
 19. Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 27.
20. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 3, p. 5.
21. Ibid., chap. 6, pp. 17–18.
22. Ibid., chap. 17, p. 46.
23. Ibid., chap. 8, p. 27.
24. Ibid., chap. 17, p. 45.
25. Ibid., chap. 8, p. 27.
26. Ibid., p. 25.
27. Ibid., chap. 21, p. 61.
28. Quoted (with a slightly different translation) in Ernst Cassirer,
“Implications of the New Theory of the State,” in Machiavelli, The Prince,
p. 160.
29. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 8, p. 27.
30. Ibid., chap. 18, p. 48.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., chap. 17, p. 46.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., chap. 18, p. 48.
36. Ibid., p. 49.
37. Ibid., chap. 15, p. 43.
38. Ibid., chap. 14, p. 40.
39. Ibid., chap. 12, p. 37.
40. Ibid., chap. 25, pp. 68–69.
41. Ibid., chap. 19, p. 50.
42. Ibid., chap. 9, p. 27.
43. Machiavelli to Vettori, 10 December 1513, in The Prince, p. 129.
44. Skinner, Machiavelli, p. 43.
45. Cassirer, “New Theory of the State,” in Machiavelli, The Prince, p.
159.
46. See generally Michael K. Kellogg, The Greek Search for Wisdom
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012), chap. 10; Michael K. Kellogg,
The Roman Search for Wisdom (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014),
chap. 3.
47. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Wisdom of the Middle Ages (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2016), pp. 86–87.
 48. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 15, p. 42 (emphasis added).
49. Federico Chabod, “Machiavelli’s Method and Style,” in Machiavelli,
The Prince, p. 187.
50. David Morrice, Philosophy, Science, and Ideology in Political
Thought (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), p. 135.
51. Chabod, “Machiavelli’s Method and Style,” in Machiavelli, The
Prince, p. 186; see also Berlin, “Question of Machiavelli,” in Machiavelli,
The Prince, p. 213.
52. Chabod, “Machiavelli’s Method and Style,” in Machiavelli, The
Prince, p. 189.
53. Cassirer, “New Theory of the State,” in Machiavelli, The Prince, pp.
158, 168–69.
54. Berlin, “Question of Machiavelli,” in Machiavelli, The Prince, p.
219.
55. Kellogg, Greek Search for Wisdom, pp. 278–81.
56. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Julia Conaway
Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (New York: Oxford University Press,
2003), 1.3, 1.7.
57. Kellogg, Roman Search for Wisdom, pp. 247–50.
58. Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.6.
59. Ibid., p. 152 (preface to book 2).
60. Ibid., 1.58.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., 1.3.
63. Ibid., 3.21.
64. Ibid., 1.58.
65. Ibid., 1.7.
66. Ibid., 1.4.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 1.11.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid., 1.12.
71. Ibid., 2.2.
72. Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic
Books, 1991), 414c.
73. Machiavelli, Discourses, 2.2.
74. Kellogg, Roman Search for Wisdom, pp. 13–14.
75. Kellogg, Greek Search for Wisdom, pp. 19–20.
76. Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.11.
77. Ibid., 1.10.
78. Kellogg, Roman Search for Wisdom, pp. 235–41.
79. Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.42.
80. Ibid., 3.21.
81. Ibid., 1.25.
82. Ibid., 3.1.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid., 1.38.
85. Ibid., 3.3.
86. Ibid., 3.9.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid., 1.18.
89. Ibid., 1.27.
90. Ibid., 3.9.
91. Ibid., 1.27.
92. Ibid., 1.9.
93. Ibid., 3.20.
94. Ibid., 3.6.
95. Ibid., 2.23.
96. Ibid., 2.29.
97. Viroli, Niccolò’s Smile, p. 258.
CHAPTER 4: THOMAS MORE: THE KING’S GOOD
SERVANT
BUT GOD’S FIRST

1. There is some dispute as to whether More used the word and rather
than but in the sentence, stemming from an account of his words in the
Paris Newsletter. The Paris publication was in French, however, and More
spoke in English. Mistranslation or not, most biographers and historians
follow the version in text, which is more in keeping with More’s overall
stance toward public life and, frankly, more dramatic. See, for example,
Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (New York: Anchor Books, 1999),
p. 405; James Monti, The King’s Good Servant but God’s First: The Life
and Writings of St. Thomas More (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997), p. 449;
Richard Marius, Thomas More (London: Fount, 1986), p. 514. Compare
Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith, eds., A Thomas More Source
Book (2004; repr., Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2008), pp. xv, 355.
2. Federico Chabod, “Machiavelli’s Method and Style,” in Niccolò
Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams, 2nd ed. (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1992), p. 187.
3. Saint Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London:
Penguin Books, 2003), p. 213.
4. Thomas More, Utopia, ed. and trans. George M. Logan, 3rd ed. (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2011), p. 34.
5. Details of More’s life are taken largely from original sources
contained in the Thomas More Source Book and Selected Writings,
including The Life of Sir Thomas More, by More’s son-in-law William
Roper. I also found helpful the biographies by Ackroyd and Monti.
6. Wegemer and Smith, Source Book, p. 307.
7. Ibid., p. 308.
8. William Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More, Knight, in Wegemer
and Smith, Source Book, p. 37.
9. Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten, 23 July 1519, in Wegemer and Smith,
Source Book, pp. 3–13.
 10. Erasmus to Richard Whitford, 1 May 1506, in Monti, King’s Good
Servant, p. 27.
11. More’s original title used the Latin word nusquam, meaning
“nowhere.” See More, Utopia, p. 5, nn. 1, 3.
12. Erasmus to von Hutten, in Wegemer and Smith, Source Book, pp. 4,
6.
13. Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, pp. 57, 63.
14. Southern Pac. Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222 (1917) (Holmes, J.,
dissenting).
15. Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, p. 66.
16. Ibid., p. 147.
17. Erasmus to von Hutten, in Wegemer and Smith, Source Book, p. 9.
18. Ibid., p. 10.
19. Roper, Life of Sir Thomas More, in Wegemer and Smith, Source
Book, p. 40.
20. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Roman Search for Wisdom (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), pp. 64–69.
21. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Greek Search for Wisdom (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2012), pp. 281–85.
22. More, Utopia, p. 10.
23. Excerpt from English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding
Drama, by C. S. Lewis, in More, Utopia, p. 201; see Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” ll. 13–20, in Selected
Poetry, ed. William Empson and David Pirie (New York: Routledge, 2002),
p. 120.
24. More, Utopia, p. 14.
25. Ibid., p. 22.
26. Ibid., p. 17.
27. Ibid., p. 21.
28. Ibid., p. 27.
29. Ibid., p. 28.
30. Ibid., p. 33.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., p. 34.
33. Ibid., p. 35.
34. Ibid., p. 36.
35. Ibid., p. 37.
 36. Excerpt from The Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, by
Thomas More, in Wegemer and Smith, Source Book, p. 250.
37. Lucian’s True History, trans. Francis Hickes (London: A. H. Bullen,
1902), p. 4.
38. More, Utopia, p. 58.
39. Ibid., p. 74.
40. Ibid., p. 77.
41. Ibid., p. 86.
42. Ibid., p. 88.
43. Ibid., p. 60.
44. Ibid., p. 42.
45. Ibid., p. 53.
46. Ibid., p. 95.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., p. 96.
49. Ibid., p. 97.
50. Ibid., pp. 96–97.
51. Excerpt from More’s “Utopia,” by Dominic Baker-Smith, in More,
Utopia, p. 258.
52. Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, p. 303.
53. See, for example, George M. Logan, ed., Thomas More (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 93.
54. Excerpt from A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, by Thomas More, in
Wegemer and Smith, Source Book, p. 286.
55. More to Erasmus, June 1533, in Wegemer and Smith, Source Book, p.
307.
56. Excerpt from Dialogue Concerning Heresies, in Wegemer and Smith,
Source Book, p. 288.
57. Ibid., p. 289.
58. Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, pp. 322–23 (my translation).
59. Lev. 20:21 (KJV).
60. More to Thomas Cromwell, 5 March 1534, in Wegemer and Smith,
Source Book, p. 358.
61. More to Erasmus, 14 June 1532, in Monti, King’s Good Servant, pp.
308–309.
62. Roper, Life of Sir Thomas More, in Wegemer and Smith, Source
Book, p. 42.
 63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., p. 44.
65. Ibid.
66. The original of Cromwell’s portrait is lost, but three good copies
remain, the best of which is at the Frick Collection.
67. Roper, Life of Sir Thomas More, in Wegemer and Smith, Source
Book, p. 50.
68. Ibid., p. 48.
69. More to Margaret Roper, 2/3 May 1535, in Wegemer and Smith,
Source Book, pp. 345–46.
70. Roper, Life of Sir Thomas More, in Wegemer and Smith, Source
Book, pp. 59–60.
71. Wegemer and Smith, Source Book, p. 354.
72. Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, p. 405.
CHAPTER 5: CASTIGLIONE: A GENTLEMAN IN URBINO

1. Count Alexander Rostov, the hero of Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in

Moscow, is the modern embodiment of Castiglione’s ideal courtier.
2. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, ed. Daniel Javitch,
trans. Charles S. Singleton (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 1.1.
3. See Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to
Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
4. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans.
S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Folio Society, 2004), p. 297.
5. Muriel C. Bradbrook, Collected Papers Volume 4—Shakespeare in
His Context: The Constellated Globe (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books,
1989), p. 50.
6. June Osborne, Urbino: The Story of a Renaissance City (London:
Frances Lincoln, 2003), p. 168.
7. For a detailed discussion of the Symposium, see Michael K. Kellogg,
The Greek Search for Wisdom (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012),
chap. 9.
8. Castiglione, Courtier, 3.1.
9. See Kellogg, Greek Search for Wisdom, chap. 9.
10. Castiglione, Courtier, p. 4.
11. Ibid., 1.1.
12. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Wisdom of the Middle Ages (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2016), chap. 9.
13. Castiglione, Courtier, 1.4.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 1.12.
16. Ibid., 1.13.
17. Ibid., 1.14.
18. Ibid., 1.17.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 1.18.
21. Ibid., 1.47.
22. Ibid., 1.22.
23. Ibid., 1.21.
 24. Ibid., 1.25.
25. Ibid., 1.26.
26. See Kellogg, Greek Search for Wisdom, chap. 10.
27. Castiglione, Courtier, 1.26.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 1.34.
31. Michael K. Kellogg, The Roman Search for Wisdom (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2014), p. 162.
32. Castiglione, Courtier, 1.27.
33. Ibid., 1.35; see generally Wayne A. Rebhorn, “The Enduring Word:
Language, Time, and History in Il Libro del Cortegiano,” in Castiglione:
The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Robert W. Hanning and
David Rosand (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), chap. 5.
34. Robert W. Hanning, “Castiglione’s Verbal Portrait: Structures and
Strategies,” in Hanning and Rosand, Castiglione, p. 134.
35. Castiglione, Courtier, 1.14.
36. Ibid., 2.2.
37. Daniel Javitch, “Il Cortegiano and the Constraints of Despotism,” in
Hanning and Rosand, Castiglione, p. 18.
38. Castiglione, Courtier, 2.18.
39. Javitch, “Il Cortegiano,” in Hanning and Rosand, Castiglione, p. 18.
40. Castiglione, Courtier, 2.7.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 2.18.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 2.7.
46. Ibid., 2.10.
47. Ibid., 2.12.
48. Ibid., 2.40.
49. Ibid., 2.22.
50. Thomas M. Greene, “Il Cortegiano and the Choice of a Game,” in
Hanning and Rosand, Castiglione, p. 10.
51. Castiglione, Courtier, 2.22 (emphasis added).
52. Ibid., 2.23.
53. Ibid.
 54. Ibid., 2.30.
55. Ibid., 2.14.
56. Ibid., 3.49.
57. Ibid., 3.5.
58. Ibid., 3.12.
59. Ibid., 3.9.
60. Ibid., 3.5.
61. Ibid., 3.10.
62. Ibid., 3.13.
63. Ibid., 3.32.
64. Dain A. Trafton, “Politics and the Praise of Women: Political
Doctrine in the Courtier’s Third Book,” in Hanning and Rosand,
Castiglione, pp. 39–42.
65. Ibid., p. 38.
66. Castiglione, Courtier, 3.70.
67. Ibid., 3.51.
68. Ibid., 3.59.
69. Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in
Castiglione’s “Book of the Courtier” (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1978), p. 183.
70. Castiglione, Courtier, 4.4.
71. Greene, “Choice of a Game,” in Hanning and Rosand, Castiglione, p.
14.
72. Castiglione, Courtier, 4.1.
73. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, p. 181.
74. Castiglione, Courtier, 4.5.
75. Ibid., 4.26.
76. Ibid., 4.42.
77. See Kellogg, Greek Search for Wisdom, pp. 255–58.
78. Castiglione, Courtier, 4.66.
79. Ibid., 4.59.
80. Ibid., 4.57.
81. Ibid., 4.67.
82. Ibid., 4.68.
83. Ibid., 4.70.
84. Ibid., 4.68.
 85. Greene, “Choice of a Game,” in Hanning and Rosand, Castiglione, p.
9.
86. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, pp. 132–33.
87. Ibid., pp. 133, 148.
88. Virginia Woolf, The Waves (Ware, Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth,
2000), p. 91.
CHAPTER 6: RABELAIS AND THE WISDOM OF
LAUGHTER

1. Jacques Le Clercq, trans., The Complete Works of Rabelais: The Five

Books of “Gargantua and Pantagruel” (New York: Modern Library, 1944),
p. xxxiii (“Better to write of laughter than of tears, / For laughter is the
essence of mankind.”).
2. François Rabelais, prologue to Gargantua, in Gargantua and
Pantagruel, ed. and trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin Books, 2006),
p. 206.
3. Ibid., p. 207.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 208.
6. Ibid.
7. Donald M. Frame, François Rabelais: A Study (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1977), p. 199 (“I know of no writer, with the possible
exception of Aristophanes, who has so successfully combined the serious
and lofty with the comical and grotesque.”).
8. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 68 (“‘Of all living
creatures only man is endowed with laughter.’”) (quoting Aristotle, De
Anima, 3.10).
9. Floyd Gray, “Reading the Works of Rabelais,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Rabelais, ed. John O’Brien (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), p. 17.
10. John Cowper Powys, Visions and Revisions: A Book of Literary
Devotions (London: Macdonald, 1955), p. 30, quoted in Le Clercq,
Complete Works, p. xxvii.
11. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Wisdom of the Middle Ages (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2016), pp. 204, 207.
12. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Roman Search for Wisdom (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), p. 9.
13. Quoted in Frame, Rabelais, p. 12.
14. The remaining two sacraments were confirmation and anointment of
the sick and dying (formerly called extreme unction).
 15. M. A. Screech, Rabelais (London: Duckworth, 1979), p. 29.
16. Rabelais, prologue to Pantagruel, in Gargantua and Pantagruel, p.
13.
17. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 4.
18. Ibid., pp. 66–67.
19. Rabelais, Pantagruel, chap. 3.
20. Ibid., chap. 5.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., chap. 7.
23. Ibid., chap. 8.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., chap. 19.
34. Ibid., chap. 9.
35. Ibid., chap. 13.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., chap. 22.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1968), p. 278.
42. Rabelais, Pantagruel, chap. 23.
43. Rabelais, Pantagruel, chap. 25.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., chap. 27.
46. Ibid., chap. 30. The words are spoken by Captain Braggart but
endorsed by Picrochole.
47. Ibid.
 48. See Kellogg, Wisdom of the Middle Ages, chap. 6.
49. Rabelais, Gargantua, chap. 48.
50. Ibid., chap. 44.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., chap. 50.
53. Ibid., chap. 38.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., chap. 55.
56. Ibid., chap. 56.
57. Rabelais, Third Book of Pantagruel, in Gargantua and Pantagruel, p.
401.
58. Ibid., prologue, p. 410.
59. Rabelais, prologue to Fourth Book of Pantagruel, in Gargantua and
Pantagruel, p. 650.
60. Screech, Rabelais, p. 224.
61. Rabelais, Third Book of Pantagruel, chap. 3.
62. Ibid., chap. 5 (quoting Rom. 13:8).
63. Ibid., chap. 10.
64. Ibid., chap. 36.
65. Ibid., chap. 26.
66. Ibid., chap. 27.
67. Ibid., chap. 28.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid., chap. 29.
72. See Kellogg, Wisdom of the Middle Ages, p. 244.
73. See Screech, Rabelais, pp. 293–461; Frame, Rabelais, pp. 66–84.
74. Rabelais, Fourth Book of Pantagruel, chap. 28.
75. Ibid., chap. 23.
76. Frame, Rabelais, p. 89.
77. Ibid., p. 100 (“The conclusion seems to me so superb and appropriate
that I believe Rabelais must be at least the principal author.”).
78. Rabelais, Fifth Book of Pantagruel, chap. 45.
79. Ibid.
80. Frame, Rabelais, p. 102.
81. Rabelais, Fifth Book of Pantagruel, chap. 45.
82. Auerbach, Mimesis, p. 276.
83. Rabelais, Fifth Book of Pantagruel, chap. 47.
84. Auerbach, Mimesis, p. 276.
85. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 2.
CHAPTER 7: MONTAIGNE AND THE
WISDOM OF EXPERIENCE

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Montaigne; or, the Skeptic,” in Essays &

Lectures, ed. Joel Porte (New York: Library of America, 1983), p. 697.
2. Gustave Flaubert, quoted in Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, or, A Life
of Montaigne (New York: Other Press, 2010), p. 221.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne, ed.
Philippe Desan, trans. Dawn Eng (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2010), p. 2.
4. Virginia Woolf, “Montaigne,” in The Common Reader, ed. Andrew
McNeillie (1925; repr., San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1984), p. 58.
5. That scandal has been only partly ameliorated by the welcome
success of Sarah Bakewell’s 2010 book, How to Live, or, A Life of
Montaigne.
6. Friedrich, Montaigne, p. 3.
7. Woolf, “Montaigne,” in Common Reader, p. 63.
8. Donald M. Frame, trans., The Complete Essays of Montaigne
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), 3.13, p. 844.
9. Ibid., 1.26, p. 129.
10. Ibid., p. 130.
11. Donald M. Frame, Montaigne: A Biography (San Francisco: North
Point, 1984), p. 115.
12. Frame, Complete Essays, 1.8, p. 21.
13. Ibid., 2.8, p. 278.
14. Donald M. Frame, trans., Montaigne’s Travel Journal (San Francisco:
North Point, 1983), p. xxvii.
15. Frame, Complete Essays, 3.12, p. 798.
16. The essays are not presented in the precise order in which Montaigne
wrote them. He himself chose their placement in the first edition. For
example, the first essay of book 1 may have been written as many as eight
years after the second essay. See Frame, Montaigne, pp. 324–26. A
chronological reading of Montaigne is further complicated by the many
interpolations he later added to the first edition of 1580, passages from
which are marked by an a in Frame’s translation. The letter b indicates
additions made in 1588, and c, those of 1589 to 1592. Since the earliest
essays were composed in 1572, a single sentence thus may contain material
written more than two decades apart. Despite these difficulties, a general
pattern of evolution in Montaigne’s thought and method can be discerned.
But see Barbara C. Bowen, The Age of Bluff: Paradox and Ambiguity in
Rabelais and Montaigne (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), p. 138
(“The a text contains by implication everything that is in the final
version.”).
17. Frame, Complete Essays, 1.26, p. 121.
18. Although this is the standard view of Montaigne’s early essays, it is
not without controversy. Compare Friedrich, Montaigne, p. 66 (denying
there was any “Stoic phase” in Montaigne), with Jean Starobinski,
Montaigne in Motion, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985), p. 27 (claiming Montaigne’s “first hope” was to live
up to the “moral imperative” of Stoicism).
19. Frame, Complete Essays, 1.14, p. 46.
20. Ibid., 1.50, p. 220.
21. Ibid., 1.31, p. 157.
22. Ibid., 2.6, p. 267.
23. Ibid., 1.20, pp. 56–68.
24. Ibid., 2.13, p. 461.
25. Frame, Montaigne, p. 170 (quoting Louis Cons).
26. Frame, Complete Essays, 2.12, p. 393.
27. Ibid., p. 443.
28. Ibid., p. 444.
29. Ibid., p. 450.
30. Ibid., p. 444.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., p. 438.
33. Ibid., 2.15, p. 463.
34. Ibid., 2.17, p. 499.
35. Ibid., 2.12, p. 457.
36. Ibid., p. 387.
37. Ibid., p. 401.
38. Ibid., p. 386.
39. Ibid., p. 393.
40. Ibid., 1.27, p. 134.
 41. Ibid., 1.56, p. 233.
42. Ibid., 1.23, p. 79.
43. Ibid., 1.56, pp. 230–31.
44. Starobinski, Montaigne in Motion, p. 95.
45. François Rabelais, Third Book of Pantagruel, chap. 29, in Gargantua
and Pantagruel, ed. and trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin Books,
2006).
46. Frame, Complete Essays, 3.13, p. 822.
47. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1968), p. 308.
48. Ibid., p. 311.
49. Frame, Complete Essays, 3.13, p. 821.
50. Emerson, “Montaigne,” in Essays & Lectures, p. 694 (“Why pretend
that life is so simple a game, when we know how subtle and elusive the
Proteus is?”).
51. Frame, Complete Essays, 2.17, p. 499.
52. Ibid., 3.2, pp. 610–11.
53. Ibid., 2.6, p. 273.
54. Ibid., 3.2, p. 611.
55. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” sec. 51 (quoted in Bakewell, How
to Live, p. 7).
56. Frame, Complete Essays, 2.6, p. 273.
57. Ibid., 3.2, p. 610.
58. Ibid., p. 611.
59. Ibid., 1.50, p. 219.
60. Auerbach, Mimesis, p. 290.
61. Emerson, “Montaigne,” in Essays & Lectures, p. 700.
62. Frame, Complete Essays, 2.18, p. 504.
63. Ibid., 3.2, p. 611.
64. Michel de Montaigne, Essais III (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), 3.2, p. 45.
65. Frame, Complete Essays, 2.12, p. 331.
66. Bowen, Age of Bluff, p. 127.
67. Ibid., pp. 118–19, 127.
68. T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in Collected
Poems, 1909–1962 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1991), p. 3.
69. Frame, Complete Essays, 1.26, p. 119.
 70. Ibid., 3.13, p. 849.
71. See Friedrich, Montaigne, pp. 239–57.
72. Frame, Complete Essays, 3.10, p. 769.
73. Ibid., 1.28, p. 136.
74. Ibid., 3.8, p. 704.
75. Ibid., 3.9, p. 754.
76. Ibid., 1.9, p. 23.
77. Ibid., 2.18, p. 505.
78. Ibid., 1.39, p. 177.
79. Ibid., 3.10, p. 767.
80. Ibid., 1.14, p. 42.
81. Ibid., 3.5, p. 648.
82. Ibid., p. 647.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid., 1.38, p. 173.
85. Ibid., 3.5, p. 644.
86. Ibid., p. 646.
87. Ibid., 1.28, p. 139.
88. Ibid., p. 136.
89. Ibid., p. 139.
90. Ibid., p. 143.
91. Ibid., 3.9, p. 728.
92. Ibid., 3.12, p. 805.
93. Ibid., 3.13, p. 830.
94. Ibid., 3.5, pp. 677–78.
95. Ibid., 2.1, p. 242.
96. Ibid., 3.9, p. 766.
97. Ibid., 3.13, p. 852.
98. Ibid., 3.2, p. 614.
99. Ibid., 3.13, p. 856.
100. Ibid., 1.3, p. 8.
101. Ibid., 1.39, p. 177.
102. Ibid., 3.13, p. 850.
103. Ibid., 3.12, p. 805.
104. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Roman Search for Wisdom (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), pp. 79–82.
105. Frame, Complete Essays, 3.2, p. 620.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., 2.37, p. 580.
108. Ibid., 3.9, p. 750.
109. Ibid., 3.5, p. 641.
110. Ibid., p. 640.
111. Ibid., 2.17, p. 494.
112. Ibid., 3.3, p. 628.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid., 3.9, p. 744.
115. Ibid., p. 747.
116. Ibid., 3.12, p. 804.
117. Ibid., 3.4, p. 632.
118. Ibid., 1.50, p. 220.
119. Ibid., 3.9, p. 743.
120. Ibid., 1.20, p. 62.
121. Ibid., 3.13, p. 857.
CHAPTER 8: CERVANTES: LIFE AS LITERATURE

1. Harold Bloom, introduction to Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes,

trans. Edith Grossman (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. xxiii.
2. William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul
Werstine (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 5.3.351.
3. Ibid., 4.2.60–61.
4. Ibid., 5.3.390–91.
5. Manuel Durán, “Cervantes’ Harassed and Vagabond Life,” in
Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”: A Casebook, ed. Roberto González Echevarría
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 23.
6. Compare Echevarría, “Don Quixote” Casebook, p. 13, with ibid., p.
32, and Jean Canavaggio, Cervantes, trans. J. R. Jones (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1990), p. 20.
7. William Shakespeare, King Henry V, ed. T. W. Craik (New York:
Routledge, 1995), 4.3.44–59.
8. Roberto González Echevarría, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 174.
9. Donald P. McCrory, No Ordinary Man: The Life and Times of Miguel
de Cervantes (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2006), p. 126.
10. Miguel de Cervantes, Exemplary Stories, trans. Lesley Lipson (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 3.
11. See generally Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning:
From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
12. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1.2, p. 25.
13. Ibid.
14. E. C. Riley, “Literature and Life in Don Quixote,” in Echevarría,
“Don Quixote” Casebook, p. 125.
15. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1.4. p. 39.
16. Ibid., p. 41.
17. Ibid., 1.5, p. 43.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 1.6, p. 50.
20. Ibid., p. 52.
21. Ibid.
 22. Echevarría, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” p. 40.
23. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1.7, p. 55.
24. Ibid., 1.8, p. 61.
25. Ibid., 1.7, p. 55.
26. Ibid., 1.19, p. 137.
27. Ibid., 2.32, p. 674.
28. Ibid., 1.8, p. 58.
29. Donald M. Frame, trans., The Complete Essays of Montaigne
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), 1.28, p. 139.
30. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.33, pp. 678–79.
31. Ibid., 1.25, p. 195; see Echevarría, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” p.
127.
32. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1.8, p. 64.
33. Ibid., 1.9, p. 66.
34. Ibid., p. 68.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 1.22, p. 164.
37. Ibid., p. 168.
38. Ibid., p. 169.
39. Ibid., p. 172.
40. Ibid., 1.25, p. 194.
41. Ibid., 1.28, p. 234.
42. Ibid., p. 227.
43. Ibid., 1.30, p. 257.
44. Ibid., 1.50, p. 430.
45. Ibid., 2.2, p. 271.
46. Ibid., prologue, p. 455.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. See, for example, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, “The Genesis of Don
Quixote,” in Echevarría, “Don Quixote” Casebook, p. 86; Harold Bloom,
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 144; Echevarría, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” p.
179.
50. Thomas Mann, “Voyage with Don Quixote,” in Cervantes: A
Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Lowry Nelson Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 53.
 51. Echevarría, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” p. 185.
52. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.1, p. 466.
53. Ibid., 2.7, p. 500.
54. Ibid., 2.3, p. 478.
55. Ibid., 2.13, p. 536.
56. Ibid., 2.30, p. 655.
57. Mann, “Voyage with Don Quixote,” in Nelson, Cervantes, p. 62.
58. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.17, p. 563.
59. Ibid., p. 564.
60. Ibid., 1.15, p. 107.
61. Ibid., 1.16, p. 111.
62. See Michael K. Kellogg, The Wisdom of the Middle Ages (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2016), pp. 237–38.
63. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.23, p. 611.
64. Pidal, “Genesis of Don Quixote,” in Echevarría, “Don Quixote”
Casebook, p. 92.
65. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.41, p. 727.
66. José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, trans. Evelyn Rugg
and Diego Marín (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), p. 163.
67. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.65, p. 889.
68. Ibid., 2.72, p. 928.
69. Shakespeare, King Lear, 1.4.197–99.
70. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.59, p. 843.
71. T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in Collected
Poems, 1909–1962 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1991), p. 7.
72. Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2.74, p. 939.
CHAPTER 9: SHAKESPEARE

1. Ben Jonson, “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William
Shakespeare,” preface to the First Folio, reprinted at
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44466/to-the-memory-of-my-
beloved-the-author-mr-william-shakespeare.
2. William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, in The Collected
Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, vol. 1 (New
York: McClure, Phillips, 1902), p. 238.
3. Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became
Shakespeare (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 12.
4. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode (1954; repr.,
London: Routledge, 1988), 5.1.56.
5. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1.60, quoted in
Greenblatt, Will in the World, p. 134.
6. Greenblatt, Will in the World, p. 210.
7. The oddness of the motto might indicate that the original application
was denied with the notation Non, sanz droict (i.e., that the applicant, who
was not a gentleman, had no right to a coat of arms). When the application
was later granted, the new clerk simply copied the phrase without the
comma, thus turning it into a “motto” for the coat of arms.
8. Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage (New York: Harper
Perennial, 2008), pp. 126–27.
9. The reconstructed Globe Theatre, which opened in 1997, is not in the
same location as the Globe of Shakespeare’s day, but it is close and
provides a wonderful sense of what it must have been like to see a
performance there, especially as a groundling.
10. The significance of Shakespeare’s odd bequest to his wife is unclear.
In general, in 1616, a wife had a default dower right to one-third of her
husband’s estate, but it is possible that the specific bequest of the bed was
meant to displace that right. Shakespeare presumably knew that his
daughter and her husband would take care of Anne regardless, but he seems
to have wanted, for whatever reason, to keep control of the estate out of her
hands. See Park Honan, Shakespeare: A Life (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998), pp. 396–97. It is also possible that the “second best bed” was
their marital bed and that he bequeathed it to Anne as a sentimental gesture.
11. Peter Saccio, Shakespeare’s English Kings: History, Chronicle, and
Drama (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). Dr. Saccio’s wonderful
lectures on Shakespeare are available from The Teaching Company.
12. Keats to George and Tom Keats, December 1817, in Letters of John
Keats, ed. Robert Gittings (1970; repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988), p. 43.
13. William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I, ed. David Scott Kastan
(2002; repr., London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 5.2.63–64.
14. Excerpt from Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of “King
Lear,” by John F. Danby, in Twentieth Century Interpretations of “Henry IV,
Part One,” ed. R. J. Dorius (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p.
93.
15. William Shakespeare, King Richard II, ed. Charles R. Forker (2002;
repr., London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 5.5.43.
16. Ibid., 5.5.38.
17. Ibid., 5.1.55–65.
18. William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, ed. James C. Bulman
(London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 3.1.31.
19. Ibid., 4.3.173, 4.3.177.
20. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, 1.1.80.
21. Ibid., 1.1.84–85.
22. Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, in Waller and Glover,
Collected Works, pp. 283–84.
23. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, 4.1.95–96.
24. Ibid., 1.2.5–11.
25. Ibid., 5.4.118.
26. Ibid., 3.3.19–20.
27. Johnson on Shakespeare: The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel
Johnson, ed. Arthur Sherbo, vol. 7 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1968), p. 523.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York:
Riverhead Books, 1998), p. 275.
 31. Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, in Waller and Glover,
Collected Works, p. 283.
32. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, 1.2.185–93.
33. Shakespeare, King Richard II, 5.5.49.
34. William Shakespeare, King Henry V, ed. Andrew Gurr (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2.4.138–39.
35. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, 1.2.176–80.
36. Ibid., 2.4.259–64.
37. Ibid., 5.1.89–92.
38. Ibid., 3.1.52–54.
39. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, induction, l. 37.
40. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, 5.2.85–86.
41. Ibid., 4.2.65–66.
42. Ibid., 5.125–40.
43. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, 4.3.349–52.
44. Shakespeare, King Henry V, 4.1.220.
45. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, 2.4.366–67.
46. Ibid., 2.4.435–36.
47. Ibid., 2.4.461–68.
48. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, 5.5.55–58.
49. Ibid., 4.3.342–44.
50. Shakespeare, King Henry V, 2.1.99.
51. Ibid., 2.3.18–22.
52. Ibid., 2.3.6–7.
53. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New
York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 38.
54. William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Juliet Dusinberre (2006;
repr., London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 1.2.2–3.
55. Ibid., 1.1.112–13.
56. Ibid., 2.1.5.
57. Ibid., 2.1.6–7.
58. Ibid., 2.1.62–63.
59. Ibid., 2.1.16–17.
60. Ibid., 2.1.11–12.
61. Ibid., 1.1.157.
62. Ibid., 3.5.111.
63. Ibid., 1.3.70–73.
 64. Ibid., Epilogue, ll. 10–11.
65. Ibid., 2.4.31–40.
66. Ibid., 5.4.44–47.
67. Ibid., 2.4.15.
68. Ibid., 2.7.26–28.
69. Ibid., 3.3.88–89.
70. Ibid., 5.4.55–56.
71. Ibid., 2.5.10–11.
72. Ibid., 3.2.116.
73. Ibid., 4.1.8–9.
74. Ibid., 4.1.24–26.
75. Ibid., 3.5.50.
76. Ibid., 2.4.57.
77. Ibid., 3.5.40.
78. Ibid., 3.5.55–61.
79. Ibid., 3.2.359–69.
80. Ibid., 4.1.163.
81. Ibid., 4.1.97–99.
82. See James Shapiro, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), pp. 212–13.
83. Shakespeare, As You Like It, 4.1.127.
84. Ibid., 4.1.135–39.
85. Ibid., 3.2.407.
86. Ibid., 2.4.50–53.
87. Ibid., 3.2.70–74.
88. Ibid., 3.2.24–27.
89. Bloom, Shakespeare, p. 204.
90. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins (1982; repr.,
London: Routledge, 1993), 1.3.31, 1.3.134.
91. Ibid., 1.3.34–35.
92. Ibid., 1.3.46, 1.3.136.
93. Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 385.
94. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2.133–37.
95. Ibid., 1.1.1.
96. Ibid., 1.2.187–88.
97. Ibid., 1.2.139–40.
 98. Ibid., 1.2.150–51.
99. Ibid., 1.2.156–57.
100. T. S. Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems,” in Selected Essays (New
York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), p. 123.
101. Ibid.
102. Henry James, The Tragic Muse (London: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 4.
103. Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems,” in Selected Essays, p. 125.
104. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.1.152–56.
105. Ibid., 4.7.134.
106. Ibid., 2.2.303–306.
107. Ibid., 2.2.308.
108. Donald M. Frame, trans., The Complete Essays of Montaigne
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), 3.13, p. 856.
109. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.1.122–29. Compare Frame, Complete Essays,
2.1, p. 242.
110. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5.1.254–56.
111. Ibid., 4.4.44–46.
112. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on “Hamlet,”
“Othello,” “King Lear” and “Macbeth” (London: Penguin Books, 1991),
p. 109.
113. Ibid., p. 133.
114. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.580 (emphasis added).
115. Ibid., 5.2.403–404.
116. Ibid., 5.2.364–65.
117. Quoted in Goddard, Meaning of Shakespeare, p. 331.
118. Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, in Waller and Glover,
Collected Works, p. 232.
119. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2.84–85.
120. Shapiro, Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, p. 291.
121. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 4.4.53–56.
122. Ibid., 4.4.62–63.
123. Ibid., 5.1.197–98.
124. Michael K. Kellogg, Three Questions We Never Stop Asking
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), p. 21.
125. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.249–50.
126. Ibid., 2.2.192.
127. Ibid., 5.2.363.
 128. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic Writings of
Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library,
1968), p. 60.
129. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.4.69–78.
130. Ibid., 3.2.21–24.
131. George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, vol. 1, in The
Complete Works of George Eliot (Boston: Colonial, 1890), p. 268.
132. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5.2.9–11.
133. Ibid., 5.2.216–20.
134. Ibid., 5.2.344.
135. Bloom, Shakespeare, p. 406.
136. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5.2.341–43.
137. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, 1.1.9–11, in The Complete
Plays of Christopher Marlowe, ed. Irving Ribner (New York: Odyssey,
1963).
138. Ibid., 1.1.57–63, 1.1.77.
139. Ibid., 1.3.15.
140. Ibid., 5.2.187.
141. Ibid., 3.3.89–90.
142. Ibid., 1.2.73–74.
143. Ibid., 1.2.75–77.
144. Ibid., 1.2.109–10.
145. Ibid., 1.2.109.
146. Ibid., 1.2.167–68.
147. Ibid., 1.2.159.
148. Ibid., 1.2.272–73.
149. Ibid., 1.2.339–40.
150. Ibid., 1.2.359–60.
151. Ibid., 1.2.365–66.
152. Ibid., 5.1.91–94.
153. Ibid., 3.2.133–41.
154. Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, in Waller and Glover,
Collected Works, p. 238.
155. W. H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, ed. Arthur Kirsch (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 296; see also, for example,
excerpt from The Pleasures of Exile, by George Lamming, in William
Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 149 (“the poet’s last will and testament”).
156. Shakespeare, Tempest, 1.2.420–21.
157. Ibid., 1.2.453–55.
158. Ibid., 4.1.10–11.
159. Ibid., 2.2.186–87.
160. Ibid., 3.2.90–93.
161. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 300.
162. Shakespeare, Tempest, 3.3.89–90.
163. Ibid., 5.1.14–17.
164. Ibid., 5.1.17–32.
165. Ibid., 5.1.54–57.
166. Ibid., 1.2.153–54.
167. Ibid., 5.1.275–76.
168. Ibid., 5.1.294–95.
169. Ibid., 5.1.182–83.
170. Ibid., 5.1.184.
171. Ibid., 4.1.24.
172. Ibid., 5.1.198–99.
173. Ibid., 5.1.310–11.
174. Ibid., 4.1.148–58.
175. Ibid., p. 116 (stage direction). See John Drydren, altered prologue to
The Tempest (“Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be, / Within that circle
none dared walk but he.”), quoted in Shakespeare, The Tempest, p. 121
(Norton edition).