Shakespeare's Montaigne
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14. Them funeral rites.
15. Cousoned cozened, deceived.
16. See Jean Bouchet, Annales of Acquitaine (Poitiers, 1567), 21–30, esp. 25–26.
17. Canker cancer.
18. Assistant eyewitness.
19. Saint Augustine, City of God, XXII.viii.
20. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, I.xxi.49.
21. Troubles of religion a reminder that Montaigne wrote during—and was deeply affected by—the wars of religion in sixteenth-century France between the Protestants (called Huguenots) and Catholics. Although a committed Catholic, Montaigne reveals in his essays a desire to make sense of these deep-seated and violent conflicts.
OF FRIENDSHIP
1. Proceeding of a painter’s work I have the method of a painter whom I employ.
2. Boscage “The pictorial representation of wooded landscape; also, a decorative design imitating branches and foliage” (OED).
3. Crotesko a grotesque; a monstrous and fantastic kind of painting.
4. Horace, Ars Poetica, 4.
5. Table tablet or board on which a picture is painted; the picture itself. See Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well: “To see him every hour, to sit and draw / His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, / In our heart’s table” (I.i.88–90).
6. Steven de la Boitie Montaigne’s friend and soul mate, Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563).
7. Not long of him not because of him.
8. Edict of January Also called the Edict of Saint-Germain, this royal proclamation of January 1562 allowed Protestants the right to preach without persecution for the first time.
9. Intestine war internecine, civil war.
10. Paris: Fédéric Morel, 1571.
11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII.i.
12. Amities friendships.
13. Venerian erotic.
14. Happly by chance.
15. Unbeseeming unbecoming.
16. Enterbearing carrying mutually. In this difficult passage Montaigne discusses nations in which children would kill parents, and others in which parents would kill children, as a way of avoiding the burdens each would cause the other; the only way for one to survive is to destroy the other. The friendship he is discussing, on the other hand, never yields such burdens.
17. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Empedocles, II.81.
18. Plutarch, translated by Jacques Amyot, De l’amitie fraternelle, 82E.
19. Dividence division.
20. Horace, Odes, II.ii.5–6.
21. Catullus, Epigrams, LXVIIIa.17–18.
22. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, X.vii.
23. Jouissance enjoyment, pleasure.
24. Pitch slope, height, trajectory (in falconry).
25. Greek licence homosexuality.
26. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, IV.xxxiii.70.
27. The Academy the school of Plato.
28. Son of Venus Cupid, Eros.
29. A false image of corporal generation a false image generated from the body by lust, instead of a true one born from the soul.
30. Difficile knowledge difficult to know.
31. Mistress strong(er) force.
32. Availful useful.
33. Comfortable salutary, wholesome, beneficial.
34. Demisness humbleness, lowliness.
35. Montaigne is still discussing homosexual friendship-love, emptied of most of its erotic components and thus thought of as “sacred and divine” except by tyrants and common people.
36. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, IV.xxxiv.72.
37. Cicero, De amicitia, XX.74.
38. Mediatrix mediator.
39. Remiss diluted, diminished, languid.
40. Preallable preliminary.
41. Semblable equal.
42. His Gracchus’s.
43. Mistress powerful, masterful.
44. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, IX.x.
45. Accrease increase.
46. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, IX.viii.
47. Alonely sole, only.
48. See Shakespeare, Richard III: “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” (V.vii.7).
49. Wards interior mechanisms, usually of a lock.
50. In confederacies which hold but by one end in relationships—unlike the ideal friendship that he is discussing—that are connected by only a small part. As an example of these simpler “confederacies,” Montaigne goes on to mention doctor-patient and lawyer-client relationships.
51. Muleteer mule driver.
52. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I.i.28.
53. Montaigne has “preud’homie,” which, according to Cotgrave, means “courage, valour, prowesse; loyaltie, faithfulnesse; honestie, sinceritie, integritie; good dealing, true meaning.”
54. Seld seldom.
55. Horace, Satires, I.v.44.
56. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I.i.97–98.
57. Horace, Odes, II.xvii.5–9.
58. Saying the French suggests “missing” rather than “saying.” Montaigne claims that he misses his friend, regardless of what he is doing or saying, and his friend would have similarly missed him.
59. Horace, Odes, I.xxiv.1–2.
60. Catullus, Epigrams, LXV.9–11.
61. Montaigne evidently planned to publish La Boétie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire [On Voluntary Servitude] here. But because it had been published in part in 1574 and in full in 1576, and had been co-opted for Protestant purposes, he decided to leave it out.
62. Interessed “toucht in honor, or reputation”; see WW, “Interessato.”
63. Wire-drawn elongated, drawn out.
64. Born at Venice than at Sarlac La Boétie was born at Sarlac (Sarlat), a village in Périgord (Nord). Venice was famous, at least partly, in Montaigne’s day for being an unusually tolerant state, founded on law and reason and removed from the factionalism of sixteenth-century France, which Montaigne goes on to characterize as full of “changes, innovations, new-fangles, and hurly-burlies.”
65. In editions of the Essays published in Montaigne’s lifetime, the next essay, “Nine and Twenty Sonnets of Steven de la Boétie, to the Lady of Grammont,” included the sonnets. Although presumably an edition of these sonnets was published between 1588 and 1592, it has never been found.
OF THE CANNIBALS
1. Vice Admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon (1510–1571) established the French colony of France Antarctique, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1557, as a haven for French Protestants (Huguenots) and Swiss Calvinists. Its main bastion, Fort Coligny, was destroyed by the Portuguese in 1560, and the French were completely expelled in 1567.
2. Sithence since.
3. Mare-Maggiore the Black Sea.
4. Plato, Timaeus, 21e–22a, 24e–25f.
5. Virgil, Aeneid, III.414, 416–17.
6. Soria Syria; Negroponte the Greek island of Euboea; Beotia Boetia or Voiotia, the regional unit of Greece that contains Thebes.
7. Horace, Ars Poetica, 65–66.
8. Febricitant feverish.
9. Rents and domains farms and arable lands.
10. As Montaigne suggests, Aristotle’s book of wonders, On Marvellous Things Heard, was almost certainly not written by Aristotle.
11. The same man “I have had long time dwelling with me” whom Montaigne mentioned early in the essay.
12. Scantling scant thing, scrap.
13. Where “that nation” referred to previously—the home of the Brazilian Indians.
14. Those those things altered by European agriculture and civilization.
15. Those...these the unadorned nature of Brazil (“those”) as opposed to the altered forms of nature in Europe (“these”).
16. They are even savage...wonderfully ashamed see the debate between Perdita and Polixenes in Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, IV.4.87–103.
17. Un-hanted unhaunted, solitary.
18. Propertius, Elegies, I.ii.10–12.
19. Least birdlet smallest bird.
20. Seel
y foolish, simple, silly.
21. Plato, Laws, X.889a.
22. Genuitie ingenuousness, simplicity. This is the only example of the word in the OED.
23. Dividences partitions, shares of goods; see WW: “Partigione, a partition, a diuidence, a separation, a share, a part” (260).
24. Manuring fertilizing.
25. “It is a nation...amongst them”: see Shakespeare, The Tempest, II.1.145–66. This is the clearest example of Shakespeare’s borrowing from Montaigne. But see note 49 below.
26. Virgil, Georgics, II.20.
27. Steepie steep.
28. Champaine a level, open field.
29. Steadeth them as a flank provides them with a (structural) side to the building.
30. Riving breaking apart.
31. Several own.
32. From apart from.
33. Pledge carouses they drink often and fully.
34. Corianders confected preserved coriander.
35. Wallowish insipid, tasteless; see WW: “Disapito, vnsauorie, tasting of nothing, wallowish” (104).
36. Auditory audience.
37. For their restraint Montaigne has “pour leur refrein”—“as their refrain.”
38. French league a little over two miles.
39. Sufficiency capacity, limitation.
40. Cony-catch deceive or dupe.
41. Broaches boar spears.
42. Rowts routs.
43. Portugales Portuguese.
44. Smartful painful.
45. Mammockes shreds, broken pieces.
46. Juvenal, Satires, XV.93–94.
47. Availful to availing, in aid of, useful to.
48. Montaigne is referring to the supposed magical and medical properties of corpses and “mummies.” See Shakespeare, Othello, Othello’s description of his mother’s handkerchief, “dyed in mummy which the skilful / Conserved of maidens’ hearts” (III.iv.72–73).
49. Kenji Go—in “Montaigne’s ‘Cannibals’ and The Tempest Revisited,” Studies in Philology 109.4 (2012): 455–73—has convincingly argued that the next two paragraphs (“But there was never any opinion...brings them into the world”) are the almost unrecognized source of the second part of Gonzalo’s speech in Shakespeare, The Tempest, II.1.159–64.
50. Ubertie fertility, copiousness, abundance.
51. Enlarge their limits expand their boundaries, push back their frontiers.
52. Enter-call mutually call, call each other.
53. Remissely weakly.
54. Danted daunted, subdued, controlled.
55. Claudian, De sexto consulatu Honorii, 248–49.
56. Porterly-rascal one who bears burdens, like a porter.
57. Disposition agility.
58. Seneca, De providentia, II.6–10.
59. Salamine Salamis, the site of a famous naval battle, won by the Greeks over the Persians in 480 BC.
60. Politikely in a politic manner.
61. A mean and indifferent course a middle way.
62. An invention an idea, a topic.
63. Mowes frowns, grimaces.
64. Awful full of awe and terror (toward the rule of custom).
65. Canzonet the Italian canzonetta, a sixteenth-century vocal form; see QAWW: “canzonétta, a canzonet or dittie.”
66. Anacreontike Anacreontic, like the poetry of Anacreon (582 BC–485 BC), the ancient Greek poet. An edition of his poetry was published in Paris by Henri Estienne in 1554.
67. Terminations word endings.
68. Cozened by a desire of new-fangled novelties This phrase is especially interesting since this essay is the one quoted in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Compare Caliban—ironically, the “Indian” and “cannibal” of the play—who criticizes Stephano and Trinculo for focusing on the “frippery,” “trash,” and “luggage” of Prospero’s wardrobe instead of on the murder of the magus (IV.1.222, 224, 229).
69. Roane Rouen. In 1562, Rouen, the capital city of Normandy, in the north of France, was retaken by royalist Protestant forces.
70. Swizzers Swiss Guard.
71. Whereby they call men but a moiety of men from others they speak of men as halves—“moieties”—of each other.
OF THE INEQUALITY THAT IS BETWEEN US
1. Plutarch, “Que les bêtes brutes usent de la raison,” 992d, translated by Jacques Amyot (1572), 274.
2. Terence, Phormio, V.iii.7.
3. Juvenal, Satires, VIII.57–59.
4. Furniture harness.
5. Cranes jesses, straps used in hawking.
6. Cheapen a horse bargain or haggle over a horse.
7. Abroad uncovered, open to view.
8. Crupper saddle strap.
9. Horace, Satires, I.ii.86–89.
10. Pattins thick-soled shoes, wooden clogs.
11. The Base is no part of his stature the base—or plinth—is not part of the statue. See Seneca, Epistulae morales, LXXVI.31.
12. His shirt his undershirt.
13. Horace, Satires, II.vii.83–88.
14. Plautus, Trinummus, II.ii.84.
15. bark...bark complain...body’s outer shell.
16. Lucretius, De rerum natura, II.16–19.
17. Several separate, distinct, apart.
18. Dissemblance difference.
19. Interlude-players actors in interludes or plays.
20. Porterly-hirelings vulgar, uncouth hired servants.
21. Lucretius, De rerum natura, IV.1126–28. Florio has “heat” for “sweat.”
22. Seely foolish, simple, silly.
23. Seneca, Epistulae morales, CXIX.12, CXV.9.
24. Maires officers chief municipal officers.
25. Horace, Odes, II.xvi.9–12.
26. Lucretius, De rerum natura, II.48–51.
27. Ague...megrim fever...migraine headache.
28. Lowting-curtzies or putting-off of hats deferential curtsies or doffing of hats—in other words, acts of ceremonial deference.
29. Enchased enclosed, encased (with)
30. Pangs...colic shooting pains...sharp pains in the belly.
31. Lucretius, De rerum natura, II.34–36.
32. Alexander Alexander the Great (356–323 BC).
33. Close-stool chamber pot.
34. Assays attempts.
35. Eftsoones recently.
36. Persius, Satires, II.37–38.
37. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I.ii.21–22.
38. Foments fomentations, soothing applications to a sore or wound; see WW: “Fomentatione, a fomentation, a comforting, a feeding with any plaisters applied to the stomacke, a strengthening with any cordials. Also a nourishment laid to the body to comfort and warme it” (135); sore-sight blurred vision, blindness. This passage suggests that material possessions help the tormented, lustful, or unhealthy person as much as a lotion or an unguent can help a bad case of gout or pictures can soothe the blind—that is, not at all.
39. Horace, Epistles, I.ii.47–52.
40. Plato, Laws, II.661.C–D.
41. Guird sudden blow or spasm of pain.
42. See Shakespeare, Henry V: “O be sick, great greatness, / And bid thy ceremony give thee cure. / Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out / With titles blown from adulation?” (IV.i.233–36).
43. Tibullus, Elegies, I.ii.71.
44. Horace, Epistles, I.xii.5–6.
45. Lucretius, De rerum natura, V.1127–28.
46. King Hieron—who plays a substantial role in this essay—was the subject of Hieron, written by Xenophon (ca. 430–354 BC), about a debate on kingship between Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, and the lyric poet Simonides. Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, or Education of Cyrus, was a favorite text of Sir Philip Sidney and other Renaissance humanists.
47. They kings.
48. Ovid, Amores, II.xix.25–26.
49. In Montaigne, “enfans de c[h]oeur”—choirboys. Florio’s version makes little sense.
50. Tasteless lacking taste, insipid.
51. Once again, Shakespeare’s Henry
V seems pertinent. Prince Hal has reveled in his recent past—explored in parts 1 and 2 of Henry IV—in the “base and popular kind of life” with Falstaff, and King Henry disguises himself on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt to see what his soldiers think of him and the war.
52. Horace, Odes, III.xxix.12–15.
53. Seraille seraglio, harem.
54. Falkners falconers.
55. Plato, Gorgias, 469c.
56. To have a score of find-faults, pick-thanks, and controllers about his close-stool to have twenty faultfinders, sycophants/flatterers, and stewards around him while he goes to the toilet. (Shakespeare’s Malvolio, from Twelfth Night, could be called a “controller.”)
57. Cales...Sienna Casale... Siena—sites of two battles between the armies of Henri II, king of France, and those of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1555.
58. The Duke of Venice is also known as the Doge.
59. Seneca, Epistulae morales, XXII.11.
60. The next few paragraphs are imagined thoughts of Hieron, though neither Montaigne nor Florio provides quotation marks.
61. Will-he or nill-he willy-nilly, like it or not.
62. Low-lowting curtzie low-bowing curtsy.
63. Seneca, Thyestes, 206–7.
64. Sithence since.
65. This is the end of Hieron’s remarks.
66. See Plutarch, “Banquet des sept sages,” 154E, translated by Jacques Amyot (1572), 155.
67. See Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus, XIV.
68. Lucretius, De rerum natura, V.1432–33.
69. Exclude conclude.
70. Cornelius Nepos, Life of Pomponius Atticus, XI.6.
OF AGE
1. Receive accept.
2. Continuance duration, span.
3. Montaigne rejects the notion of a normal life span being the biblical “three-score years and ten”; see Screech, 366n1.
4. Might do it might achieve these extra years of life.
5. Fond-goodly fine, pretty, self-flattering.
6. See Regan’s comment to Lear in Shakespeare, King Lear: “O, sir, you are old; / Nature in you stands on the very verge / Of her confine” (II.iv.139–41).
7. Ages centuries.
8. Cariere career, life’s journey.
9. We are very forward we have lived a long time.
10. Charge of judgement the office of judge.
11. Dispensed released.
12. Sejourning sojourning—in other words, retirement.