Two sonnets mentioning Caesar

A very quick look at miscellaneous sonnets by Thomas Wyatt & George Gascoigne

Thomas Wyatt, ‘Of others fained sorrow, and the lovers fained mirth’ (Tottel’s Miscellany, 1557)

Cesar, when that the traytour of Egypt

with thonorable hed did him present*,

Coveryng his hartes gladnesse, did represent

Plaint with his teares outward, as it is writ.

Eke Hannibal, when fortune him outshut

Clene from his reigne, and from all his entent,

Laught to his folke, whom sorow did torment,

His cruel despite for to disgorge and quit**.

So chanceth me, that every passion

The minde hideth by colour contrary,

With fayned visage, now sad, now mery.

Wherby, if that I laugh at my season:

It is because I have none other way

To cloke my care, but under sport and play.

*During the siege of Alexandria, Julius Caesar reportedly wept at the sight of the head of his ally-turned-enemy, Pompey. Pompey had been murdered on the orders of the ambitious eunuch Pothinus (regent for Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII) on his return to Egypt, having lost the Battle of Pharsalus. According to Plutarch, when Ptolemy sent Caesar the decapitated head, the Roman general wept in horror.

**Plutarch also recorded that before the decisive Battle of Cannae in the second Punic war, Hannibal made his troops laugh: as he and his retinue prepared for battle with a much larger Roman army, one of Hannibal’s officers — Gisgo — remarked with trepidation on the Romans’ astonishing numbers. Hannibal replied: “You are right, but have you not noticed something yet more astonishing? In all their number, there is not a single Roman named Gisgo.” The moment provoked laughter, which spread through the Carthaginian ranks. Hannibal and his men then annihilated the Romans in a remarkable tactical victory.

George Gascoigne, ‘If yelding fear, or cancred villain’ (One Hundredth Sundrie Flowres, 1573)

I haue herde master Gascoignes memorie commended by these verses following, the vvhich were written vppon this occasion. He had (in middest of his youth) determined to abandone all vaine delights and to retourne vnto Greyes Inne, there to vndertake againe the study of the common lawes. And being required by fiue sundrie gentlemen to wrighte in verse somwhat worthy to be remembred, before he entred into their felowship, he compiled these fiue sundry sores of metre vpon fiue sundry theames whiche they deliuered vnto him, and the firste was at request of Francis Kwelmashe who deliuered him this theame Audaces fortuna iunat. And therevpon he wrote thys Sonnet following.*

If yelding feare, or cancred villanie,

In Caesars haughtie heart had tane the charge,

The walles of Rome had not bene rearde so hye,

Nor yet the mightie empire lefte so large*.

If Menelaus could haue rulde his will

With fowle reproch to loose his faire delight,

Then had the stately towres of Troy stood still,

And Greekes with grudge had dronke their owne despight**.

If dread of drenching waues or feare of fire,

Had stayde the wandring Prince amidde his race***,

Ascanius then, the frute of his desire

In Lauine lande had not possessed place,

But true it is, where lottes doe light by chaunce,

There Fortune helpes the boldest to aduaunce****.

Sic tuli.

*Writing of himself in the third person, Gascoigne frames this sonnet as an extemporised verse prompted by a request from other courtiers to compose a sonnet on the theme ‘audaces fortuna iunat’ (fortune favours the bold) before his departure to study law at Grey’s Inn. Given Gascoigne’s extensive revision of his own work, this is a framing device which is unlikely to trick the modern reader.

**Menelaus the Achaean helped to conquer Troy with the deployment of the legendary Trojan horse.

***The wandering prince = Aeneas.

****The legendary king Ascanius, said by Livy to be the son of Aeneas, became king of the ‘Lavine land’ (Lavinium, a port city to the south of Rome) after his father’s death, later founding the city of Alba Longa in modern-day central Italy.

Both poems, like many 16th century English sonnets, rely heavily on classical themes, responding to a series of allusive exempla with a dictum, keen observation, or confession in the final couplet. This form Shakespeare would go on to master with defter skill. But his precursors are commendable. Wyatt’s is a lovely poem (following Petrarch Rime 102) on the subject of emotional dissimulation for the sake of saving face; it moves effortlessly from the impersonal to the personal. He interprets the story of Caesar’s tears as a feigned show of empathy befitting a leader who wishes to humanise himself in crucial moments, likening it with an example of the inverse: Hannibal’s masterful conquest over his inner worry which aided the success of of the real conquest at hand. These anecdotes elevate the predicament of the sensitive lover who feigns mirth while inwardly suffering, cloaking his ‘care’ with ‘sport and play’.

Gascoigne, on the other hand, remains at considerable emotional distance from his sonnet, which he claims to have composed extempore. However, the poem is not devoid of psychology: Gascoigne shows just how much depends on the implausible risks taken by the likes of Caesar and Aneas, though they may have seemed mad in the moment. Gascoigne then satisfyingly caveats the classical exempla of audacity with the couplet: in moments of particular risk, whether even the greatest military heroes succeeded was not dependent on their agency alone, but on the extra aid granted by Fortune to natural heroes. ‘For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance.’

I was prompted to write this post having recently taught these sonnets to some students and been struck all over again by the handiwork of the best Tudor sonneteers. I hope I can motivate some readers to explore Wyatt and Gascoigne. My favourite Gascoigne is ‘Woodmanship’, and my favourite Wyatt is his famous sonnet ‘Whoso list to hunt’ (I absolutely love the surprise dactyls & alliteration in the seventh line, ‘Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore’).

Holbein’s Wyatt