Sidney's Speaking Pictures and The Theater

Sidney's Speaking Pictures and the Theater
Author(s): S. K. Heninger, Jr.

Source: Style, Vol. 23, No. 3, Texts and Pretexts in the English Renaissance (Fall 1989), pp.
395-404
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945805
Accessed: 26-04-2019 19:32 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Style
This content downloaded from 77.111.247.227 on Fri, 26 Apr 2019 19:32:48 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
S. K. Heninger, Jr.
Sidney's Speaking Pictures and the Theater
Philip Sidney played an important role in the development of drama in

England. He introduced into the mainstream of English letters a new concept
of poetry as a verbal system which produces images, what he called "speaking
pictures," and by privileging the visual element in poetry he made the theater
the natural place for its display. Following Aristotle, Sidney prescribed a sort
of mimetic poetry that was to be read, but was also to be visualized in the
mind's eye. In consequence, it was but a short step to carry forward this poetics
and write poetry for stage presentation, offered not merely to the mind's eye,
but to the actual eyes of a theatrical audience. Such drama, according to Ar-
istotle, remained a species of poetike , poetical making. In the parlance of the
next century, after Aristotle dominated literary theory in England, it was "dra-
matic poesy."1
Sidney himself wrote no plays for public performance and generally dis-
approved of plays because in his protopuritanical view the theaters nurtured
vice. In The Defence of Poesie , although he argues that comedy may be turned
to moralistic purposes, he acknowledges that "naughty play-makers and stage-
keepers have justly made [it] odious" (95.30-3 1).2 But Sidney nevertheless
reveals an abiding interest in the stage. His first sustained literary endeavor
was a masque-like entertainment for Queen Elizabeth now called The Lady of
May , which presents a lively exchange between clearly defined characters in
a specific setting. His long narrative, the old Arcadia , is divided into five "books
or acts" as though it were a five-act drama in the traditional mold; and the
new Arcadia , if it were completed, would presumably have the same structure.
In the Defence Sidney includes comedy and tragedy in his list of eight sorts
of poetry, along with epic, lyric, satiric, iambic, elegiac, and pastoral (81.18-
19).3 And in his stringent survey of English letters near the end of the Defence ,
Gorboduc is one of the very few works that come in for praise (113.1-5), as
well as "the tragedies of [George] Buchanan" (116.19). In truth, given the
paucity of commanding works for the stage, Sidney shows an uncommonly
serious interest in dramatic poesy.4
Although Sidney never overcame a nostalgic fondness for the neoplatonic
esthetic of proportion and harmony that had prevailed in the early Renaissance
(his poet does create a golden world), he nonetheless modified that esthetic
and combined it with the new concept of poetry as mimesis found in the
recently recovered Poetics of Aristotle (see Heninger, Sidney and Spencer , ch.
5). Sidney's sensitivity to the potential of dramatic poesy, in fact, derived
Style: Volume 23, No. 3, Fall 1989 395
396 S. K. Heninger, Jr.
directly from his clearly anno

As the central proposition of
Poesy therefore, is an art of imitatio

is to say, a representing, counterfeiti
picture, with this end to teach and delight.5 (79.35-80.2)
The invocation of Aristotle as authority for this definition of p

a radical shift from a neoplatonic esthetic to an incipiently emp
Sidney's professed allegiance to Aristotle aligns him with a new
made the production of images rather than the formal proper
be the identifying feature of poetry. This shift from the old dispen
harmony and proportion had been the criteria of excellence, to
pensation, where poetry competed with history for particularity an
ing for verisimilitude, must be seen within the broadest cultu
All the arts, not merely poetry, felt an increasing need to mak
to our faculties of sense as empiricism gained ground in institut
and religion.
A new breed of scientists, soon followed by others, placed ultimate reality
among the objects of physical nature, so a new poetics was required to relate
the world of poetry to the phenomenal world, to relate the worlds of fiction
and of fact. In the previous neoplatonic esthetic, the poem embodied some
anterior truth, most inclusively called "heavenly beauty" (witness Spenser),
and the task of the poet was to relate the world of his poetry to the unchangeable
realm of essences. The poem made knowable a transcendent reality that would
otherwise remain ineffable. With the rise of empiricism, however, the poem
was cut loose from any dependence upon an absolute world of essences. And
unless it could be anchored in the phenomenal world of actual occurrence, it
would remain adrift without a basis in any reality, with no claim to truth:
wholly "fictitious" fiction. Actually, in this new relationship between art and
palpable reality, the artifact proved to be the stable member. It was supposed
to make some sense of the transient phenomena of actuality, to give form to
what was otherwise haphazard. The fiction verbalized, defined, and contained
phenomenal reality.
In this radical shift from a neoplatonic to an empiricist poetics, Aristotle
and his theory of universais served a handy purpose. Just as the new scientist
observed nature, gathered his data, and by inductive reasoning arrived at hy-
potheses, which he proffered as laws of nature, so the empiricist poet surveyed
the sources of his information (mythology, history, literature, his own expe-
rience) and arrived at the universal, the typical. As Sidney puts it aptly, "The
poet bringeth his own stuff, and . . . maketh matter for a conceit" ( Defence
99.7-9). The "matter" made by the poet from his own "stuff' (his experience,
both literary and personal) is the rhetorician's res , the "invention" of the poet:
that very "thing", which Gascoigne insists is the essential upon which a poem
Sidney's Pictures and the Theater 397
is grounded (47). This is that " idea or fore-conc

antecedes the poem; and we should judge the
embryonic form rather than by the extende
C Defence 79.6-8).
To implement this neo- Aristotelian poetics,
what he thought might be or should be accordin
and he then used this universal as the object of
that exemplified the probable or the necessary
mental construct, arrived at by a process of ab
of data; but like the scientific hypothesis, it has va
in actual cases, and it may be applied in a gene
a new poetics was devised which accommodates
occurred during the sixteenth century with the
based in a Platonist-Christian heaven to a realit
of physical nature. Conceptually, the poem enj
idea; pragmatically, it exhibits the immediacy
Since the universal must be embodied in the
artifact, Aristotle's notion of mimesis came to
duction of images, the production of concrete
any imputation that their concrete examples la
itated a universal arrived at by a mental proce
something "real," poets after Sidney increasingl
had actually occurred. The predictable result w
poem" as Dryden describes it in the preface
1:10-12). The poem becomes a versified accou
such as a naval battle or the great fire of Lond
movement, of course, was utter realism, literat
the late nineteenth century, many took art to b
Aristotle, however, had already prepared fo
Echoing a passage in book 3 of Plato's Republic
Poetics had differentiated three modes of m
First, a poet may speak in his own voice like an
a poet may relate a narrative by having the char
as if independent of an immediate narrator as i
a poet may choose to alternate between the fir
of authorial narrative are interspersed with pas
epics of Homer are prominent examples of thi
Significantly, Aristotle prefers the dramatic
realizes the potential of poetic mimesis. Imitatio
a visible component (what he called opsis or
imitation more objective, more lifelike. Since t
tation and since drama to a greater degree than
an objective imitation, then drama is more esse
in the poeťs own voice. This

preference for tragedy over ep
The requirement of objectiv
images to the highest status a
tude. Increasing emphasis up
action indicates an increasing d
of empiricism, which require
world, found in Aristotle a r
refutation of the prevailing n
necessary, for the rise of dram
What I am writing, of cours
as opposed to its descriptive h
velopment of drama in Englan
itis , the miracle plays, the m
sixteenth century. We are alr
are much less clear, however,
and so brilliantly at the end of
spaces before Sidney can hard
The affluence of Elizabethan
but economic conditions alone cannot account for its remarkable achieve-
ments. Therefore a speculative history is called for, not a history of chrono
logical fact or of financial system, but rather a synoptic overview that tries t
identify the broad cultural imperatives leading to the rise of drama in England
It is worthwhile to pause for a moment and ponder the word drama itself
It derives, as Aristotle notes, from the Greek dran , "to do or act," and it gained
currency through his Poetics , which proposes that poetry should imitate the
actions of men (1448a29-30). Drama , like mimesis , is a technical term from
the Aristotelian vocabulary, meaning a species of poetry that imitates the ac-
tions of men. In the familiar descriptive history of drama, which begins with
the Quem quaeritis , we put a grab bag of disparate items in this category,
extrapolating backwards from the great Elizabethan dramatists to what we ca
point to as their earliest forebears. But most of this material was not availabl
in the last quarter of the sixteenth century; and while it may have persisted
as a cultural memory, there were many more direct influences to affect the
poets of the time.
It is, in fact, a gross anachronism to speak of "pre-Shakespearean drama."
Tellingly, we do not find the word drama or any of its derivatives in the writings
of the Elizabethans, including Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare. The wor
did not exist in English because the concept did not exist. There were "plays"-
miracle plays, morality plays, university plays- but until the success of Aris-
totle's notion that poetry should imitate the actions of men, there was no such
thing as "drama." The concept of drama does not begin in England until Sidne
advocates the Aristotelian poetics of mimesis, imitating the actions of men.
The descriptive history of drama that now h

us has had what seems to me an unfortunate co
has been assigned its own origins, distinct from
autogenesis. The detailed chronology of English
the notion that drama is an independent genre,
poetry. Although the word drama can only be
it denies its Aristotelian context as a species of
grown not only to deny its parent, but even to obli
as in most departments of English, the course
period are grouped in two categories: "Drama of
"Nondramatic Literature of the English Renaissa
manage to find their place in the curriculum no
only by means of negative definition as "non d
The speculative history of the drama I am w
its own identity and restores to it the ground us
To borrow from Sidney's words, drama is "an u
a bad education," and she "causeth her mothe
in question" {Defence 116.24-26). Of course, I
what we need, clearly, is a reassessment of the
drama in the sixteenth century, not to denigrate dr
it in the culture. Actually, we shall enhance i
kinship to the poetry that humanists claimed
endeavors. In Aristotle's terminology, comedy a
and lyric- are species of the venerable genus poe
"excelling parts of poesy" {Defence 1 16.22). Sha
ognized the qualitative difference between his s
that we profess to see: to him, both were poems
privacy and the other to be performed in a the
early to the masque and later developing the dra
his career with a closet drama.
In my speculative history of the drama, then, I shall point to those de-
velopments in poetic theory that made possible the unexpected blossoming of
drama in the 1590s, which many think of as the supreme achievement of
Elizabethan poets. And I shall argue that Sidney is that literary theorist who
radically revised the nature of poetry, turning it into a primarily image-making
activity and thereby preparing the way for later poets who wrote plays ad-
dressed to the bodily eye rather than the mind's eye alone.
The touchstone of Sidney's Defence of Poesie is the passage with which
I began: "Poesy therefore, is an art of imitation: for so Aristotle termeth it in
the word mimesis ." For the first time Aristotle is mentioned; and although
Sidney makes repeated concessions to the antique esthetic of harmonious pro-
portion, the Aristotelian theory of mimesis serves as baseline for the ensuing
discussion. Since Robortello's heavily annotated edition of the Poetics in 1548,
Aristotle had been an increasi

theory, and after the treatise
to dominate literary studies on
had become a notorious focus
motes the radical redefinition
artifact which imitates the actio
which echoes in its measure
beauty.
It was Sidney, though, who introduced his countrymen to the Poetics of
Aristotle. Before Sidney, no one in England had seriously broached the question
of Aristotelian mimesis (Herrick 1 3-24). Sidney therefore felt the need to gloss
this strange term with three gerund phrases: mimesis is "a representing, coun-
terfeiting, or figuring forth to speak metaphorically." Mimesis is a technical
term in the critical lexicon. It is a representing of something that the poet has
witnessed. Or it is a counterfeiting of some object of imitation which the poet
emulates by producing some counter for it, some image that projects its li-
keness. Finally, and most complex, it is a "figuring forth to speak metaphor-
ically."
To understand the full implications of this gerund phrase, we must rec-
ognize that "metaphor" also is a technical term in the critical lexicon. It first
appears in Aristotle's Poetics (1457b5) in the section dealing with lexis , diction,
and there it is defined as one of the more prominent means whereby the poet
achieves mimesis. Aristotle offers an extraordinary discussion of metaphor,
carefully analyzed into four distinct sorts and amply illustrated by examples
of each. He returns to the topic in the Rhetoric (1405a2ff.), again giving it
extensive treatment, and from there it passed into the mainstream of the rhe-
torical tradition. When Sidney glosses mimesis as a "figuring forth to speak
metaphorically," he seems to be thinking of it as a sort of rhetoric, as an art
of discourse, and he could have read about Aristotelian metaphor in (among
others) Cicero, Quintilian, Erasmus, and Thomas Wilson.7 It was a mainstay
of the rhetorician who wished to speak effectively. In any case, the important
point is that metaphor, like mimesis, is a technical term, and the locus classicus
for both is Aristotle's Poetics. Therefore when Sidney redefines poetry as an
art of imitation according to Aristotle's explanation of mimesis, he quite nat-
urally turns to the term metaphor as a major means of achieving this imitation.
For Aristotle, metaphor was characterized by a quality which he called
energeia , the quality of forcefulness ( Rhetoric 141 lb23-25). Sidney also uses
this technical term late in the Defence ( 1 1 7.9) when he castigates the sonneteers
for their effeteness; they lack energeia , he says. According to Aristotle, energeia
is that quality of forcefulness which gives a metaphor the liveliness to appear
as an image before us. In Aristotle's exact words, the metaphor appears as an
image "before our very eyes" ( Rhetoric 1405b 12). In the rhetorical tradition
a number of figures were assigned this quality of energeia ,8 so that an orator
by speaking metaphorically can describe someth

materialize before the eyes of his audience. It b
with palpable effects. It was Cicero who expl
faculty, the mind's eye, for the , processing of suc
followed the lead of this revered master. The op
a given in any discussion of verbal discourse. It
Aristotelian energeia with another term, enarg
that those who practised the ars dicendi had a re
forceful and lifelike images. And it was Erasmu
an ability equal to the orator's for "figuring for
Sidney follows directly in this well-establishe
is an art of imitation as Aristotle had termed it in the word mimesis. It is a
figuring forth, a producing of visible images, in order to affect an audience, as
an orator does, by means of a verbal discourse employing enargeiac metaphors
directed to the mind's eye. Such a definition of poetry recalls another com-
monplace: it is therefore "a speaking picture," an artifact with semantic content
coded in language, but also with the palpability of a painting. Since the mid-
sixteenth century this topos from Plutarch, pietura loquens, had been confirmed
by another Latin tag from Horace, ut pietura poesis, to align poetry with paint-
ing as a depictive art. A speaking picture, of course, is something of a paradox.
That which is directed to the ear is usually discrete from that which the eye
perceives. But in faculty psychology the common sense accepts data indis-
criminately from both ear and eye, amalgamating the linguistic and the visible.
The common sense then presents these data in some homogenized form to
the imagination, the human faculty for producing images: that is, the mind's
eye. The result is an image which is visualized but which yet retains semantic
content.
That Sidney adopted these principles can be readily demonstrated from

several passages in The Defence of Poesie. Immediately after asserting tha
poetry is an art of imitation, a speaking picture- immediately after announcin
his allegiance to Aristotelian mimesis and metaphor- Sidney rejects metrifi-
cation as a necessary attribute of poetry. "It is not rhyming and versing tha
maketh a poet" (81.33-34), he declares pointedly. Although, he concedes, "the
greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical inventions in that num-
brous kind of writing which is called verse," nonetheless verse is "but an
ornament and no cause to poetry" (81.22-25). What Sidney rejects is the an-
tique esthetic of the neoplatonists, who saw metrification as an intrinsic featur
of poetry necessary for reflecting the harmonies and proportions of heavenly
beauty. Instead, Sidney replaces the orthodox esthetic with a new poetics base
upon Aristotelian mimesis and metaphor: "It is that feigning notable images
of virtues, vices, or what else . . . which must be the right describing note to
know a poet by" (81.36-82.1).
Shortly thereafter, when argu

Sidney confirms poetry as an
to the mind's eye. The "learn
it of virtues, vices, matters
are ineffectual because they
philosopher does not imitate
tion . . . doth neither strike,
as" the "perfect picture" of
"replenisheth the memory wi
itudes "lie dark before the im
mind's eye], if they be not illu
of poesy" (86.5-8).
So Sidney's theory of poetry
the Aristotelian tradition as
its literal sense. It is a fiction
complete action in a setting.
that the action must be unifie
goes even further, rendering
Sidney, to maintain the illusio
of time and place as well as
"stately speeches," "well-soun
nevertheless finds it "defectuous." It will not serve "as an exact model of all
tragedies" because, Sidney states specifically, "it is faulty both in place and
time, the two necessary companions of all corporal actions." And he goes on
at great length to explain his disappointment with the play: "For where the
stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time presup-
posed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept and common reason, bu
one day, there is both many days, and many places" {Defence 1 13.1-13). Unde
such constraints to re-present "corporal actions" within the recognizable co-
ordinates of time and space, poetry becomes essentially a narrative and de-
pictive art, and is only incidentally metrified.
Sidney's Arcadia is such a poem conceived in the dramatic form of five
acts, but without the traditional metrics except in the incidental songs and in
the interludes of pastoral eclogues. Astrophil and Stella is such a poem wholl
in verse. In each of these poems Sidney exemplifies poetry as speaking picture
Both present a fiction which imitates the actions of persons in fully realize
settings. Both also depend upon a speaking voice other than the poet. Sidney
demonstrates convincingly how a verbal system produces visual images, pro-
viding a prototype for the new sort of narrative poetry.
This poetics of image making gave to playwrights a new license to create
free-standing figures and self-contained episodes. It inevitably called forth an
age where drama became a dominant genre. What more accurate epithet for
a play than "speaking picture," where the ear and the eye are equally engaged,
addressed at the same time, coordinately. It is a

timedia artifact, of the genera mixta which b
Renaissance. Elizabethan drama at its best is the
speaking picture, a sort of kinetic emblem book
and presented on a stage, carries the authority of t
at the same time that it exploits the potential of
presented before our very eyes.
Notes
1 A prominent case in point is Dryden's essay "Of Dramatick Poesie" ( 1 668).

2 Compare: "Our tragedies and comedies (not without cause cried out against),
observing rules neither of honest civility nor skilful poetry." ( Defence 112.35-113.1).
References to Sidney's Defence of Poesie , as here, are made by page and line number.
3 For Sidney's systematic discussion of comedy, see Defence (95.30-96.19), and
of tragedy (96.20-97.4).
4 For Sidney's adoption of Aristotle's theory of tragedy, see Donald V. Stump.
See also Richard A. Lanham 358-60.
5 In this passage I have removed the dashes, misleadingly introduced by Jan van
Dorsten (as well as other modern editors), and have restored the punctuation, confirme
by the Penshurst manuscript, as it appears in the early edition published by William
Ponsonby in 1595. The justification for doing so is detailed in S. K. Heninger, Jr.,
"'Metaphor'" 120-29.
6 "The poet's job is not to tell what has happened but the kind of things that can
happen, i.e., the kind of events that are possible according to probability or necessity"
(Aristotle, Poetics 1451a36-38; qtd. in Else 301). Citations of other Greek and Latin
works refer to texts in the Loeb Classical Library. Compare Sidney: "Right poets . . .
to imitate borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be; but range, only reined
with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be and should be"
{Defence 81.3-6); and "A tragedy is tied to the laws of poesy, and not of history" (1 14.3-
4).
7 See Heninger, " 'Metaphor' " 138-44. In what follows I draw upon references
cited in this article.
8 For a working list, see "Figures of Description" in Lee A. Sonnino, 252.

9 Sidney discusses the three unities at considerable length {Defence 113.14-11 4.29).
He likely drew upon Julius Caesar Scaliger. See Sidney, An Apology 220 (notes to
134.12).
Works Cited
Castelvetro, Lodovoco. Poetica d Aristotele volgarizzata et sposta. Basle, 1576.

Dryden, John. Essays. Ed. W. P. Ker. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1900.
Else, Gerald F. Aristotle's Poetic

Gascoigne, George. "Certayne No
or Ryme in English." Elizabeth
London: Oxford UP, 1904. 46-5
Heninger, S. K., Jr. " 'Metaphor'
1 (1982): 117-49.
UP, 1989.
Herrick, Marvin T. The Poetics of Aristotle in En
Lanham, Richard A. "The Old Arcadia." Sidney's A
New Haven: Yale UP, 1965. 181-405.
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Poetices libri septem. Lyons, 1561.
Sidney, Philip. The Defence of Poesie. Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney. Ed.
Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973. 59-121.
Sonnino, Lee A. A Handbook to Sixteenth-Centur

Stump, Donald V. "Sidney's Concept of Tragedy
Studies in Philology 79 (1982): 41-61.

Sidney's Speaking Pictures and The Theater

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Sidney's Speaking Pictures and The Theater

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Sidney's Speaking Pictures and the Theater

Author(s): S. K. Heninger, Jr.

Sidney's Speaking Pictures and the Theater

Philip Sidney played an important role in the development of drama in

Style: Volume 23, No. 3, Fall 1989 395

directly from his clearly anno

Poesy therefore, is an art of imitatio

The invocation of Aristotle as authority for this definition of p

is grounded (47). This is that " idea or fore-conc

in the poeťs own voice. This

The descriptive history of drama that now h

Aristotle had been an increasi

by speaking metaphorically can describe someth

That Sidney adopted these principles can be readily demonstrated from

Shortly thereafter, when argu

addressed at the same time, coordinately. It is a

1 A prominent case in point is Dryden's essay "Of Dramatick Poesie" ( 1 668).

8 For a working list, see "Figures of Description" in Lee A. Sonnino, 252.

Castelvetro, Lodovoco. Poetica d Aristotele volgarizzata et sposta. Basle, 1576.

Else, Gerald F. Aristotle's Poetic

Sonnino, Lee A. A Handbook to Sixteenth-Centur

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi