Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-4hvwz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T12:30:29.773Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

II - Man in Nature: the Renaissance Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

Get access

Summary

I have so far emphasized as strongly as I could the essential unity of the three inter-related hierarchies which made up the optimistic sixteenth-century picture of man's nature. Each one of them reflected the order of Nature's rule, and to think of one was almost automatically to think of the others. No one expressed this fact better than Shakespeare: Ulysses' famous speech on order, in Troilus and Cressida, sums up nearly everything the Elizabethans felt about the matter. Ulysses is explaining why the Greeks have been so unsuccessful in their war against Troy. The trouble is, he says, that “the specialty of rule [the particular function of government] hath been neglected,” and there has not been enough order in the administration of the Greek army. He first draws a parallel with the heavens, then with civil law, then with the four elements, then with natural and moral law, and finally with psychological law. Everything is inter-related and seen as part of the same scheme, obeying the same rules:

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order:

And therefore is the glorious planet Sol

In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd

Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil

And posts, like the commandment of a king,

Sans check, to good and bad: but when the planets

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,

What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,

Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixure! O! when degree is shak'd,

Which is the ladder to all high designs, […]

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1943

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×