Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

To the special fountain of manners: the court. Thou art a beautiful and brave spring and waterest all the noble plants of this island. In thee the whole kingdom dresseth itself and is ambitious to use thee as her glass. Beware, then, thou render men's figures truly and teach them no less to hate their deformities than to love their forms – for to grace there should come reverence, and no man can call that lovely which is not also venerable. It is not powdering, perfuming and every each day smelling of the tailor that converteth to a beautiful object, but a mind shining through any suit which needs no false light either of riches or honours to help it. Jonson's dedication to Cynthia's Revels (1601) added to the text for his Works (1616) illustrates the centrality of the court within early modern culture: it is the ‘special fountain’ and ‘glass’ (mirror) of the nation. This dedication comes from a volume which opens with Every Man In His Humour (1599, revised 1608–9 and after 1611), a play that resolves the disorder of urban culture through the intervention of a royally appointed magistrate; includes poems and works dedicated to many members of the court; and closes with the quintessential royal form, the masque The Golden Age Restored (1616) which celebrates the Jacobean regime's legality and pacifism. It is unsurprising, then, that many critics have seen the court as the ... log in or subscribe to read full text