Shakespeare’s poem was preceded in the English tradition by a more complicated version of the same idolatry in Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet to Mopsa in the Arcadia. In this example, Sidney adopts Dante’s trick of using a ‘screen lady’ to praise his real beloved, in this case, the ugly servant girl Mopsa to stand in for the prince’s real love, Philoclea, who is listening to the whole recital of the prince’s poem to Mopsa:
What length of verse can serve brave Mopsa’s good to show,
Whose vertues strange, and beuties such, as no man them may know?
Thus shrewdly burden’d then, how can my Muse escape?
The gods must help, and pretious things must serve to shew her shape:
Like great God Saturn fair, and like faire Venus chaste:
As smooth as Pan, as Juno milde, like goddesse Iris faste.
With Cupid she fore-sees, and goes god Vulcan’s pace:
And for a tast of all these gifts, she borowes Momus’ grace.
Her forhead jacinth like, her cheekes of opall hue,
Her twinkling eies bedeckt with pearle, her lips as Saphir blew:
Her hair pure Crapal-stone; her mouth O heavenly wide;
Her skin like burnisht gold, her hands like silver ure untryde.
As for those parts unknowne, which hidden sure are best:
Happy be they which well beleeve, and never seeke the rest.4
Never has sonnet lady been so grounded as Mopsa, but one also has to wonder about Philoclea’s response to this pseudo-praise of woman. What could she expect? But Sidney gives us the up-beat side of this praise in the river Ladon episode of the Arcadia when the prince, disguised as an Amazon, accompanies the ladies for a skinny-dip and sings his praise of Philoclea, in which the midpoint of the lush poem is a description of her navel (indicated by [*])!
What tongue can her perfections tell
In whose each part all pens may dwell?
Her hair fine threads of finest gold,
In curled knots man’s thought to hold;
But that her forehead says, ‘in me
A whiter beauty you may see.’
Whiter indeed, more white than snow,
Which on cold winter’s face doth grow.
That doth present those even brows
Whose equal line their angles bows,
Like to the moon when after change
Her horned head abroad doth range;
And arches be to heav’nly lids,
Whose wink each bold attempt forbids.
For the black stars those spheres contain,
The matchless pair, ev’n praise doth stain.
No lamp whose light by art is got,
No sun which shines, and seeth not,
Can liken them without all peer,
Save one as much as other clear;
Which only thus unhappy be
Because themselves they cannot see.
Her cheeks with kindly claret spread,
Aurora-like new out of bed,
Or like the fresh queen-apple’s side,
Blushing at sight of Phoebus’ pride.
Her nose, her chin pure ivory wears:
No purer than the pretty ears.
So that therein appears some blood,
Like wine and milk that mingled stood.
In whose incirclets if ye gaze,
Your eyes may tread a lover’s maze,
But with such turns the voice to stray,
No talk untaught can find the way.
The tip no jewel needs to wear;
The tip is jewel of the ear.
But who those ruddy lips can miss,
Which blessed still themselves do kiss?
Rubies, cherries, and roses new,
In worth, in taste, in perfit hue,
Which never part, but that they show
Of precious pearl the double row,
The second sweetly-fenced ward
Her heavenly-dewed tongue to guard,
Whence never word in vain did flow.
Fair under these doth stately grow
The handle of this precious work,
The neck in which strange graces lurk.
Such be, I think, the sumptuous towers
Which skill doth make in princes’ bowers.
So good a say invites the eye
A little downward to espy
The lovely clusters of her breasts,
Of Venus’ babe the wanton nests,
Like pommels round of marble clear,
Where azur’d veins well mix’d appear,
With dearest tops of porphyry.
Betwixt these two a way doth lie,
A way more worthy beauty’s fame
Than that which bears the milken name.
This leads unto the joyous field,
Which only still doth lilies yield;
But lilies such whose native smell
The Indian odours doth excel.
Waist it is called, for it doth waste
Men’s lives, until it be imbraced.
There may one see, and yet not see
Her ribs in white all armed be,
More white than Neptune’s foamy face
When struggling rocks he would embrace.
In these delights the wand’ring thought
Might of each side astray be brought,
But that her navel doth unite,[*]
In curious circle busy sight,
A dainty seal of virgin-wax,
Where nothing but impression lacks.
Her belly there glad sight doth fill,
Justly entitled Cupid’s hill;
A hill most fit for such a master,
A spotless mine of alabaster,
Like alabaster fair and sleek,
But soft and supple, satin-like.
In that sweet seat the boy doth sport.
Loath, I must leave his chief resort;
For such an use the world hath gotten,
The best things still must be forgotten.
Yet never shall my song omit
Those thighs (for Ovid’s song more fit)
Which flanked with two sugared flanks,
Lift up their stately swelling banks
That Albion cliffs in whiteness pass;
With haunches smooth as looking glass.
But bow all knees, now of her knees
My tongue doth tell what fancy sees
The knots of joy, the gems of love,
Whose motion makes all graces move;
Whose bought incaved doth yield such sight
Like cunning painter shadowing white.
The gartring place with childlike sign
Shows easy print in metal fine.
But there again the flesh doth rise
In her brave calves, like crystal skies,
Whose Atlas is a smallest small,
More white than whitest bone of whale.
There oft steals out that round clean foot,
This noble cedar’s precious root;
In show and scent pale violets,
Whose step on earth all beauty sets.
But back unto her back, my muse,
Where Leda’s swan his feathers mews,
Along whose ridge such bones are met,
Like comfits round in marchpane set.
Her shoulders be like two white doves,
Perching within square royal rooves,
Which leaded are with silver skin,
Passing the hate-spot ermelin.
And thence those arms derived are;
The phoenix’ wings be not so rare
For faultless length, and stainless hue.
Ah, woe is me, my woes renew.
Now course doth lead me to her hand,
Of my first love the fatal band,
Where whiteness doth for ever sit:
Nature herself enamell’d it.
For there with strange compact doth lie
Warm snow, moist pearl, soft ivory.
There fall tho
se sapphire-coloured brooks,
Which conduit-like with curious crooks,
Sweet islands make in that sweet land.
As for the fingers of the hand,
The bloody shafts of Cupid’s war,
With amethysts they headed are.
Thus hath each part his beauty’s part;
But how the Graces do impart
To all her limbs a special grace,
Becoming every time and place,
Which doth even beauty beautify,
And most bewitch the wretched eye!
How all this is but a fair inn
Of fairer guests, which dwells within.
Of whose high praise, and praiseful bliss,
Goodness the pen, heav’n paper is,
The ink immortal fame doth lend.
As I began, so must I end.
No tongue can her perfections tell,
In whose each part all pens may dwell.5
These three poems are examples of the blason, a kind of poem that Petrarch himself never wrote. He wrote in praise of eyes and other parts of the beloved’s body, but he never gathered them all together in a compendium as in these three poems. Nancy Vickers has written a well-received essay on Petrarch’s anatomizing of Laura as a remembering of the dis-memberment of the woman, forgetting, alas, that a poetic portrait must proceed one element after another, by virtue of the nature of language.6 Her article has given new life to the erroneous suggestion that Petrarch originated this laundry-list of feminine traits. He did not. In the Petrarchan tradition the blason was inevitable, but it is a realignment of separate elements in his poetry.
The earliest and possibly the most famous blason is the ‘Crin d’oro crispo e d’ambra tersa e pura’ of Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), which was almost immediately parodied by Francesco Berni (1497/8–1535) in his ‘Chiome d’argento fine, irte ed attorte’. Thus was established in Italy both the laudatory and the parodic. In spite of this contemporary but earlier outbreak of the blason in Italy, it is commonly assumed that the blason was a French invention, if not Petrarchan. Clément Marot (c. 1496–1544) is so credited for his Blason du beau tétin, and he may have been responsible for a poetic contest that resulted in the anthology Blasons anatomiques du corps feminin (1536), but from this point on catalogues of feminine items were in. One might look at Joachim du Bellay (1523–60), ‘Contre les Petrarchistes’, or at least the first of its 52 stanzas:
J’ai oublié l’art de pétrarquiser
Je veux d’amour franchement deviser
Sans vous flatter, et sans me déguiser
Ceux qui font tant de plaints.
More insidious and hilarious is the internalized blason of Barnabe Barnes in his Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593), of which the title alone is sufficient proof of the commodification of the mistress (to use a current critical velleity). The poet-lover’s easy accommodation to his desires is really nothing more than intercourse inside-out.
Ioue for Europaes loue tooke shape of Bull,
And for Calisto playde Dianaes parte
And in a golden shower, he filled full
The lappe of Danae with coelestiall arte,
Would I were chang’d but to my mistresse gloues,
That those white louely fingers I might hide,
That I might kisse those hands, which mine hart loues
Or else that cheane of pearle, her neckes vaine pride,
Made proude with her neckes vaines, that I might folde
About that louely necke, and her pappes tickle,
Or her to compasse like a belt of golde,
Or that sweet wine, which downe her throate doth trickle,
To kisse her lippes, and lye next at her hart,
Runne through her vaynes, and passe by pleasures part.7
More decorous examples occur in this anthology under Thomas Lodge and an anonymous poem from The Phoenix Nest, all of which were derived from Ronsard’s Amours, I. 12 (1552):8
Je vouldroy bien richement iaunissant
En pluye d’or goute à goute descendre
Dans le beau sein de ma belle Cassandre
Lors qu’en ses yeulx le somne va glissant.
Je vouldroy en toreau blandissant
Me transformer pour finement la prendre,
Quand elle vapar l’herbe la plus tendre
Seule à l’ecart mille fleurs rauissant.
Je vouldroy bien afin d’aiser ma peine
Estre un Narcisse & elle une fontaine,
Pour m’y plonger une nuict à sejour
Durast tousjours sans que jamais l’Aurore
D’un front nouveau nous r’allumast le jour.
The parody need not cleave to the physical. It can also appropriate the spiritual as in Daniel’s Complaint of Rosamond (1592), a complaint poem appended to Daniel’s sonnet sequence, Delia, in which the soul of Rosamond Clifford appeals to the poet to tell her story so that she may get across the river Styx, with the added inducement to the poet that Delia, hearing her story, would add her sighs to waft poor Rosamond over; to which one can only suppose that, having heard Rosamond’s story, Delia would be a stupid ninny not to recognize the perils of Rosamond’s submission to the king. Barnes does this irony one better in an ode that invokes the aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary to assist him in his conquest of Parthenophe, for the simple reason that she too is a virgin.
Vpon an holy Saintes eue
(As I tooke my pilgrimadge)
Wandring through the forrest warye
(Blest be that holy sainte)
I mette the louely Virgine Marye
And kneeled with long trauell fainte
Performing my dew homage,
My teares fore told mine hart did greeue
Yet Mary would not me releeue.
Her I did promise euery yeare,
The firstling foemale of my flocke
That in my loue she would me furder:
I curst the dayes of my first loue,
My comfortes spoiles, my pleasures murther:
She, she alas did me reproue,
My suites (as to a stonie rocke)
Were made, for she would not giue eare.
Ah loue, deare loue, loue bought to deare!
Mary, my sainte chast, and milde
Pittie, ah pittie my suite;
Thou art a virgine, pittie mee:
Shine eyes, though pittie wanting
That she by them my greefe may see
And looke on mine hart panting:
But her deafe eares, and tonge mute
Shewes her hard hart vnreconcil’de,
Hard hart, from all remorse exil’de.9
This kind of blasphemous Renaissance play is forgotten in the Romantic period, most notably by Byron, who in the third canto of Don Juan utters his famous invocation of the Muse and does a descant on the subject of romance and marriage with specific reference to Petrarch.
1
HAIL, Muse! et cetera – We left Juan sleeping,
Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast,
And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
To feel the poison through her spirit creeping,
Or know who rested there, a foe to rest,
Had soiled the current of her sinless years,
And turned her pure heart’s purest blood to tears!
2
Oh, Love! what is it in this world of ours
Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah why
With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers,
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?
As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers,
And place them on their breast – but place to die –
Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish
Are laid within our bosoms but to perish.
3
In her first passion Woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is Love,
&n
bsp; Which grows a habit she can ne’er get over,
And fits her loosely – like an easy glove,
As you may find, whene’er you like to prove her:
One man alone at first her heart can move;
She then prefers him in the plural number,
Not finding that the additions much encumber.
4
I know not if the fault be men’s or theirs;
But one thing’s pretty sure; a woman planted
(Unless at once she plunge for life in prayers) –
After a decent time must be gallanted;
Although, no doubt, her first of love affairs
Is that to which her heart is wholly granted;
Yet there are some, they say, who have had none,
But those who have ne’er end with only one.
5
’T is melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That Love and Marriage rarely can combine,
Although they both are born in the same clime;
Marriage from Love, like vinegar from wine –
A sad, sour, sober beverage – by Time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour
Down to a very homely household savour.
6
There’s something of antipathy, as ’t were,
Between their present and their future state;
A kind of flattery that’s hardly fair
Is used until the truth arrives too late –
Yet what can people do, except despair?
The same things change their names at such a rate;
For instance – Passion in a lover’s glorious,
But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.
7
Men grow ashamed of being so very fond;
They sometimes also get a little tired
(But that, of course, is rare), and then despond:
The same things cannot always be admired,
Yet ’t is ‘so nominated in the bond,’
That both are tied till one shall have expired.
Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorning
Our days, and put one’s servants into mourning.
8
There’s doubtless something in domestic doings
Which forms, in fact, true Love’s antithesis;
Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages;
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss:
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
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