SOURCE: Farnsworth, Jane. “‘An equall, and a mutuall flame’: George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes 1635 and Caroline Court Culture.” In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts, edited by Michael Bath and Daniel Russell, pp. 83-96. New York: AMS Press, 1999.

[In the following essay, Farnsworth investigates the cultural context of Wither's emblem collection.]

In the introduction to the Renaissance English Text Society edition of George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes: Ancient and Moderne (1975), Rosemary Freeman comments that the text, according to Wither begun some twenty years before its publication date, would have been more up-to-date if it had appeared contemporaneously with the emblem books of Whitney in 1586 and Peacham in 1612 instead of in 1635. Freeman seems to be suggesting here that the date is misleading if we are attempting to understand the nature and success of Wither's work. In terms of style, she may be right, but for any comprehensive interpretation of the work and its purpose, it is necessary to take into account the cultural context of the publishing date—to see Wither's work in relation to the culture of the Caroline court.

The importance of this context becomes immediately apparent upon examining the many dedications found throughout Wither's A Collection of Emblemes, all of which are directed to the King and Queen and members of their court.¹ The work consists of two hundred emblems (the engravings are from an earlier work by Gabriel Rollenhagen) divided into four books, each one prefaced by one or two long verse dedications: Book I by a shared dedication to Charles I and Henrietta Maria (or Mary as Wither calls her), Book II by dedications to Charles, Prince of Wales, and to his brother, James, Duke of York (because James was only an infant at the time, the dedication is actually addressed to his governess, Mary, Countess of Dorset). Book III is prefaced by dedications to Princess Francis, Duchess Dowager of Richmond and Lennox, and to her nephew, James, Duke of Lennox, and Book IV by dedications to Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, and to Henry, Earl of Holland. In these dedicatory verses, Wither praises these powerful court members profusely, seeks their patronage, and sets them up as living emblems to be emulated by all. These dedications firmly place Wither's emblem book in a courtly context and influence our reading of the emblems.

Although most critics have focused on the presence of Puritan, middle-class values in Wither's collection, the “virtues of patient industry, content above riches, temperate, prudent conduct, use of one's talents for the public good, fit reverence for authority and, of course, lowly wisdom before God” (Hensley [1969] 75), none has remarked upon the significance of the court and its values for this work. As well as seeking readers of “vulgar understanding,” as he phrases it in his address to the readers at the beginning of his book, Wither also sought to interest, and not offend, the courtly readers from whom he wished preferment and favour. Charles Hensley's view in The Later Career (1969, 74) that Wither abandoned political matters in the 1630s for less dangerous humanist concerns, turning to “helping each man better understand his own mind and spirit,” is not totally accurate. Wither may have been hoping to do more than obtain patronage from these courtly figures—perhaps to influence them morally as well as his middle-class readers. Given that, in a monarchy, the king's character and that of his court is vital to just government and the well-being of the realm, Wither's reforming aim may serve a patriotic, political purpose while being completely compatible with the Caroline court's self-consciously high moral standards of behaviour. The virtues noted above would not be unfit for a king and his nobles to follow, and they would certainly ensure good government. In A Collection, the court and its values form a significant background to Wither's foregrounded moral reformation of the common reader.

We can see in Wither's dedications and emblems sentiments and even language which the courtly reader would find familiar and pleasing. Aside from general moral and spiritual truths, for example, that one should avoid flatterers and one should seek salvation, which all members of seventeenth-century society would subscribe to, there are a number of particular subjects and attitudes that reflect special interests or values associated with the royal court. These centre around such ideas as the ideal marriage of the royal couple, the celebration of family life and its joys, religious and social harmony, the importance of women in the court, and the use of the language of ideal or platonic friendship in the articulation of love. As Graham Parry concludes, “The controlling myth of the Caroline Court throughout the 1630s, was that of the ideal love of the King and Queen, whose perfection ensured the happiness of the nation.”² This myth, with additions and refinements, is found throughout the court literature of the 1630s, especially in the masques of Jonson, Townshend, Carew and Davenant, and is reflected clearly in Wither's dedication to the royal couple which opens the first book of his emblems.

This joint dedication to the King and Queen perfectly expresses the closeness of the royal pair and their role as the ideal couple. Wither, in describing their relationship, echoes the language of platonic friendship in such phrases as, “you doe appeare, to me / TWO PERSONS, in ONE MAJESTY, to be,” and again when he writes, “And, best, I thought, my Homage would be done, / If, thus, the tender were to BOTH-IN-ONE.” Wither is suitably humble in his address to the King and Queen and describes them as “double-treble-foure-fold Emblems” which he lacks the wit to explicate fully—though he, of course, goes on to try. He praises their marriage of virtue and affection and sees them as complementary figures—the gentle queen acts to temper the king's heroic power. Wither is very careful to say that the Queen moves the King only to justice and virtue:

And, in your lofty Spheare,
Most lovely QUEENE, Your Motions ever, were
So smooth, and, so direct; that, none can say,
They have withdrawne his Royall heart away
From just DESIGNES.

Here Wither tactfully disarms any possible criticism that the Queen was improperly influencing the King in matters of religion and state. Such influence was especially worrying to the Puritans who feared the Queen might seduce the King to the Catholic faith. Through such praise, Wither may also be gently admonishing the Queen to restrict her influence to such benign matters. He goes on to comment on the personal harmony and virtue of the royal couple as the reason for the peaceful and prosperous state which England enjoys at this time:

Your Princely Vertues, what can better show,
Than Peace, and Plenty, which have thrived so,
Whilst You have raign'd, that, yet, no people see,
A Richer, or more Peacefull time, than wee?

Such a view of the king's relation to his country was a very important part of the Caroline philosophy of kingship: “Side by side with the creed of divine-right monarchy there developed in the 1630s a secular cult of Charles and Henrietta Maria. … In this peaceful reign the arts flourish, manners grow civilized, and the realm fills with innocent revelry. … Over it all presides a royal couple who have tamed their own passions, purged the court of ill humors, shouldered the burden of the realm's affairs and established a polity based on love” (Smuts [1987] 245). Wither calls them succinctly, “living Emblems, to this Nation.” His interpretation of them as emblems is extended to the sphere of religion. He sees them as children of two sister churches (the protestant Church of England and the Roman Catholic church) who, through their example of “living-lovingly, together,” may show how “all the Daughters, of the Spouse Divine / Might reconciled be,” and who may even effect such a harmony throughout the kingdom. This, again, was one of the courtly interpretations of their marriage as “a pattern for Christian peace, one in which the twin figure of the ‘Mary-Charles’ was emblematic of policies originally put forward by James, of joining opposed religions through marriage and promoting peace through love.”³ Wither's dedication praises the royal couple in the same vein that the courtly writers did—he sees their union as a possible means of healing religious strife, as a means of ensuring peace for the nation, and as a living exemplum of married love and virtue for all to admire and follow.

On turning from this introductory dedication, in which perfect marital love has been embodied for us in Charles and Henrietta Maria, to the emblems which follow it, we find such an idealized union pictured in terms of the general reader. It is as if the royal pair are a kind of grand living pictura with Wither's Collection acting as the subscriptio which completes and applies them. In Book I we find a discussion of false love followed by a description of true in Emblem 33:

But, where True-Love begetteth, and enjoyes
The proper Object, which shee doth desire,
Not Time, nor Injury the same destroyes;
But, it continues a Perpetuall Fire.

The motto for this emblem emphasizes the oneness of such lovers, “True-Lovers Lives, in one Heart lye, / Both Live, or both together Dye.” This mutuality and oneness of true lovers is also emphasized in Emblem 34 which follows it:

And, thirdly, it informes, that those chast Fires
Which on Loves Altars keepe a lasting-Heat;
Are those, which in two Hearts, two Like-Desires
Upon each other, mutually beget.

He ends the subscriptio with this advice: “Let both your Aymes, and Longings, be alike; / Be one in Faith, and Will; and, one in Minde.” In Book II, the obligation to be faithful in marriage until death is set out in Emblem 37. However, it is in Emblems 28 and 44 of Book III that Wither most clearly reflects the married ideal of the court. In Emblem 28 mutual love between husbands and wives is celebrated using friendship as the metaphor or analogy for the relationship. Wither notes that many marry for the wrong reasons, money, sensual pleasure, or position, and not for love. Instead, Wither suggests, the man should choose his wife as carefully and for the same reasons as he chooses a true friend. Those that desire to marry must “seeke that fitnesse, and, that Sympathy, / Which maketh up the perfect'st Amity.” The subscriptio ends with a direct reference to its pictura: “A paire, so match'd: like Hands that wash each other, / As mutuall helpes, will sweetly live together.” Emblem 44 is perhaps the most important example of this relationship in the collection. It begins by examining what makes love last and concludes that “when Affection, to perfection growes, / The Fire, which doth inlighten, first, the same, / Is made an equall, and a mutuall flame.” The equality of the love and the unity of the lovers is emphatically stressed in both the pictura and the subscriptio:

                              and, lo, betweene
These Two, one Flaming-heart, is to be seene;
To signifie, that, they, but one, remaine
In Minde; though, in their Persons, they are twaine.

The language and nature of this discussion of love is found in much courtly writing of the 1630s, especially in the masques produced for the Queen.⁴ The subject of ideal love between men and women and the means to obtain it would be of great interest to Wither's courtly readers and, I suspect, to his readers in general. Since such true lovers were seen to be embodied in the King and Queen, the emblem becomes a subtle compliment to them; indeed, all references to such love in the book as a whole become, through the context of the dedications, complimentary shadows of Charles and Henrietta Maria.

Connected to the concerns with marriage and true love is the celebration of happy family life which the King and Queen also epitomized. As Lois Potter (1989, 102) comments, Charles and Henrietta Maria's “idealization as the perfect romantic pair, and the large family which made Charles a father figure in more senses than one, provided a never-failing source of imagery.” We can see this family feeling in the fact of the two dedications to the young princes. Wither writes these verses with an appropriate simplicity and discusses how the emblems are suitable for children because they can begin with the pictures which will delight them and then progress to the sound moral lessons in the verses. He also suggests that the lottery (a fortune-telling game with two wheels, two movable pointers and emblem lots, found at the end of the Collection) will also be enjoyed by children and makes it clear that he considers it to be a proper pastime for “a vertuous Court.” The extension of the family to the nation itself, with Charles, of course, acting as father, was a Caroline commonplace that is employed by Wither, specifically in Emblem 21 of Book III. There a king is described as a beneficent parent to his obedient subjects:

For, it [the pictura of crown and stork] informes, that, if we pious grow,
And love our Princes (who those Parents bee,)
To whom all Subjects, filiall duties owe)
The blessings of their Favours, we shall see.

The subscriptio goes on, however, to warn the nation that disobedience brings on disaster when the happy reciprocity between parent and child, prince and subject, is destroyed.

In various emblems throughout the Collection, Wither describes in more detail the nature of this kingly parent, his prerogatives and qualities, and, perhaps surprisingly given Wither's political leanings, the duty owed him by his loyal subjects. Although Wither eventually went over to the side of Parliament and was unquestionably of a Puritan persuasion in religion (although an Arminian in doctrine and a tolerant man in general), he was also a strong supporter of the monarchy until the outbreak of war. He took service, for example, under the Earl of Arundel in Charles's expedition against the Scottish Covenanters in 1639. As a cursory survey of the dedicatees reveals, being of a Puritan turn of mind did not preclude being a powerful member of the court or of courting that court for preferment. Two of his dedicatees, Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who was disliked by Laud and the Queen, and Henry, Earl of Holland, a Puritan peer who did not enforce uniformity as Chancellor of Cambridge, were influential members of the court, shared its culture, and were loyal and close to the King in the 1630s.

In Wither's emblem book, the importance of the king to the nation's well-being and the necessity of obeying him is unapologetically promoted. The description of the ideal king in Emblem 32 of Book I is exactly the image of Charles created by Van Dyck in his great portraits of the King—“A Princes most ennobling Parts, / Are Skill in Armes, and Love to Arts.” The king who is an example of piety, who loves peace, who is skilful at arms, who advances the arts and who drives out false religion is, the emblem concludes, God's blessing to his people. It is such a king, Emblem 16 in Book II asserts, who makes a country great, and the subscriptio ends with a prayer for such a ruler: “Grant, Lord, these Iles, for ever may be blessed, / With what, in this our Emblem is expressed.” Other emblems admonish the reader to honour the authority of the king and his lawful magistrates (III.3), not to rail at the king who acts as God commands (III.46), and to remember that the king gains his power from God alone (IV.15). Once again, Wither's praise of his royal dedicatee works in two directions, toward the reader as subject and here toward Charles as ruler, reminding him of his responsibilities to the nation as a whole. Wither, however, is so subtle that no offense could be taken and there is no doubt of his sincerity or his loyalty to the King at this point in his life.

Perhaps the most interesting emblem on the importance of harmony between a king and his people is Emblem 25 of Book III in which Wither makes a personal plea for favour from Charles. This harmony he sees in terms of growth and flowering, a part of the natural order of things:

Thus fares it with a Nation, and their King,
'Twixt whom there is a native Sympathy.
His Presence, and his Favours, like the Spring,
Doe make them sweetly thrive, and fructify.

He ends the emblem with a punning petition to the King—“Vouchsafe to shine on Mee, my Gracious King, / And then my Wither'd Leaves, will freshly spring.” The pictura not only presents this idea of natural growth visually through the foreground of blooming flowers reaching to the sun, it also presents in the background a king in procession being greeted by his bowing subjects. Wither, in a sense, becomes one of these subjects, a part of the pictura, through his petitioning of the King in the subscriptio. Although, of course, Wither did not commission the engraving, its appropriateness to his purposes is strengthened by the fact that the king is pictured on horseback, a familiar pose of Charles in paintings. It is obvious that Wither expected the King and his other courtly dedicatees to read the collection. Wither had been the recipient of royal favour before, especially from the Princess Elizabeth and King James, and he obviously hoped to gain it again from this monarch. Given such a desire, it would have been imperative that Wither not only consider the courtly audience as readers of his book, but also actively appeal to them.

One subject which Wither does not discuss at great length in his emblems is controversial religious matters. He does reveal an anti-Catholic position, but he keeps such criticisms to a minimum, for obvious reasons. In Emblem 25, Book I, he does, however, criticize Roman Catholic and Puritan extremes and emphasizes that sincerity and virtuous intention are more important than repetitious prayers and passive listening to preachers. He also brings up again the ideal of peaceful co-existence between the churches, but pushes it further by suggesting, through use of the startlingly effective metaphor of the hand, derived from the engraved pictura to Emblem 36, Book IV, an active co-operation between the various faiths:

Let all thy sev'rall Churches, Lord (that stand
Like many Fingers, members of one Hand)
Thy Will Essentiall with joynt love obay
Though circumstantially, they differ may.

Further marking the Collection out as clearly suitable for a courtly audience is its attitude towards and presentation of women as subjects and readers of the emblems. The dedications to the Queen, the Countess of Dorset, and Princess Francis indicate at least three select female readers for the emblems. Dedicating a work to a woman was not necessarily a sign of a positive attitude towards women in the work or even of any expectation of a general female readership, but there are other aspects of the collection which do show that Wither expected, even sought, women readers of all classes, including those of the court.

In his general address “To The Reader,” Wither leaves spaces in which female readers can situate themselves. He uses “man” in his comments about the reader, but he also uses “people” and “common readers” frequently. The effect is to make the work more inclusive than exclusive in relation to gender. This same strategy can be seen in his defence of the lottery game found at the end of his work. Wither extols the game as one which “may aswell become / The Hall, the Parlor, or the Dining-roome / As Chesse; or Tables.” These places and games were suitable for women as well as men and create the engaging image of men and women playing the game as a harmless and edifying domestic pastime. In the lottery game itself, Wither notes that a few emblems are suitable only for one sex, but the vast majority are to be applied equally to both men and women. Although this interest in the moral instruction of women is part of the Puritan middle-class ethos asociated with Wither, it is also compatible with the courtly view, especially Henrietta Maria's, of women's importance in moral and social matters. Even though the Queen and many of her court would go beyond the Puritans in believing that women should take a lively and eloquent part in society, they too based their ideal for women on “the traditionally feminine qualities of piety, chastity, compassion, beauty and modesty” (Veevers [1989] 27).

This inclusiveness and consideration for women is also seen in some of the emblems themselves. Several of the emblems are directly addressed to women and concern matters of love. For example, Emblem 20 in Book II is perhaps the most courtly of all such emblems with its pictura of a winged cupid holding a lute, its advice for ladies on how to recognize a true lover and its use of a musical conceit to express the marks of such a man. The proper lover is of suitable years, truthful, quick in affection, and, most of all, musical—each word he speaks is rapture to the ear, each gesture is a song of love, each glance touches the heartstrings, and his very name causes quavers in the breast of the smitten lady. And even discords in the relationship make it ultimately sweeter as they do in music. Even when Wither is criticizing women he is careful not to be too harsh or offensive. In Emblem 31, Book II, for instance, he begins by saying that women are men's greatest affliction, but then he tempers it by concluding that the husband is ultimately responsible for a shrewish wife: “So, Women, will be kinde, / Untill, with froward Husbands, they are joyn'd.” He goes even further and says that, “A Woman, was not given for Correction; / But, rather for a furtherance to Perfection.” Another example can be found in Emblem 23, Book IV in which he offers a corrective to Rollenhagen's plate, which shows a female figure representing fickleness, by arguing that the fault is not confined to women only but also found in men. In several places, Wither does castigate women rather severely, but it should be noted that he makes it very clear these are women who lack virtue, who are unchaste and false. Although Wither's criticism of unchaste women is usually seen as evidence of his Puritan outlook, it is congruent with the courtly view of women. Henrietta Maria's “happy marriage (after 1630) brought in a fashion for married love, and the ideal of love she inspired was the ideal recommended to women by moralists: chaste and domestic rather than coquettish or severe” (Veevers [1989] 36). Wither's view of women and marriage in his collection would have been acceptable both to the court and to his middle-class readers.⁵ Such similarity supports the recent view that the court world and its values had much more in common with the society around it than has previously been allowed.⁶ Wither's appeal to the Caroline court in his collection of emblems is not as incongruous as it may initially appear.

There were, however, some differences in the perceptions of these two reading audiences, for example, in their understanding of the figures of the caduceus and the ouroboros in eight of Wither's emblems. Even though Wither had no part in determining the content of the engravings, it does not negate the effect these figures would have had on a reader familiar with them and their rich political and alchemical significance from the masques and entertainments put on for and by the court. According to Douglas Brooks-Davies, Mercury was a symbol of the monarch and his staff, the caduceus, took on special meaning for Charles: “It symbolises wise, rational, government over himself and others, and since it is embraced by two serpents who, having been found fighting by the god, were pacified by him, it comes to be, in addition, an emblem of peace” (Brooks-Davies [1983] 2). The two entwined snakes also were applied to Charles and Henrietta Maria and their pure union. Likewise, the ouroboros also gained significance in relation to the royal couple as a symbol of their perfect union in the form of the eternal hermaphrodite. For example, in Thomas Carew's masque, Coelum Britannicum (1634) the figure of Eternity bears in his hand “a Serpent bent into a circle, with his taile in his mouth” and extols the virtues of Charles and Henrietta Maria, the “royal pair, for whom Fate will / Make motion cease and time stand still.”⁷ Shortly after, the figure of Homonoia or Concord echoes Eternity's image when he says, “And as their owne pure Soules entwin'd, / So are their Subjects hearts combin'd.”⁸ These political subtexts, although not generally accessible to the middle-class audience, would have added to the pleasure of the courtly audience. Here we can see the possibility of alternate readings of one work—both of which serve the purposes of the author.

Wither's A Collection of Emblemes: Ancient and Moderne, with its royal dedications and appeals for courtly preferment, is a work of the 1630s and its relationship to that specific context cannot be ignored in any interpretation of the collection. Although Wither does set out a middle-class audience for the emblems and does reveal his Puritan sympathies, they do not prevent his seeking of a courtly, even royal, readership for his book. His awareness of the different possible audiences for this work is clearly shown in the verse which closes his final “Direction” concerning the lottery on the last pages of the text. There he acknowledges the different groups he hopes will read his work—to profit both themselves and him—from the “King, Queene, Prince, or any one that springs / From Persons, knowne to be deriv'd from Kings” to “All other Personages of High degree,” and finally to “Allothers.”

Notes

1. George Wither (1968). All further references to this work are taken from this edition of Wither's emblems.

2. Parry (1989) 29. See also Parry (1981), especially Chap. 9, “The Court of Charles I,” pp. 184-203; Sharpe (1987), especially Chap. 2, “Sir William Davenant and the Drama of Love and Passion,” pp. 54-108; and Smuts (1987), especially Chap. 9, “The Halcyon Reign,” pp. 245-83.

3. Veevers (1989) 12. See also Chap. 6, “Love and Religion,” pp. 180-209.

4. See Chap. 2, “The Tone of Court Drama,” in Veevers (1989) 48-74.

5. Alan R. Young has suggested to me in conversation that Wither's positive view of women may stem in part from his own personal experience. According to the DNB [Dictionary of National Biography] he married Elizabeth, daughter of John Emerson or Emerton of South Lambeth, who was “’a great wit’ according to Aubrey,’and would write in verse too.’ Wither frequently refers to’his dear Betty’ in his poems in terms of deep devotion.” It would seem that his praise of the marital happiness of Charles and Henrietta Maria and his positive attitude towards women may not only be that of a subject and seeker of preferment, but also that of a fellow sharer in wedded bliss.

6. See Smuts (1987) Chap. 3, “The Court and London as a Cultural Environment,” pp. 53-72; and, Sharpe (1987) Chap. 1, “Culture and Politics, Court and Country: Assumptions and Problems, Questions and Suggestions,” pp. 1-53.

7. Carew (1949) 182-83 (l. 1080, ll. 1093-94).

8. Carew (1949) 183 (ll.1103-04).

References

Brooks-Davies, Douglas (1983). The Mercurian Monarch: Magical Politics from Spenser to Pope. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Carew, Thomas (1949). The Poems of Thomas Carew with His Masque, “Coelum Britannicum.” Ed. Rhodes Dunlap. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Hensley, Charles S. (1969). The Later Career of George Wither. Paris: Mouton.

Parry, Graham (1989). The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1603-1700. London: Longman.

Parry, Graham (1981). The Golden Age Restor'd: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603-42. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Potter, Lois (1989). Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature 1641-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sharpe, Kevin (1987). Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smuts, Malcolm R. (1987). Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Veevers, Erica (1989). Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wither, George (1969). A Collection of Emblemes 1635. Ed. John Horden. Menston: Scolar Press.

Wither, George (1975). A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (1635). Introduction by Rosemary Freeman. Columbia, S. C.: University of South Carolina Press.