Humanism Questioned: A Study of Four Renaissance Characters

Abstract

H U M A N IS M Q U E S T IO N E D : A S T U D Y O F F O U R R E N A IS S A N C E C H A R A C T E R S L. T. FIT Z University of Alberta JV Iarlow e’s Tamburlaine wants to “be immortal like the gods” ; yet the imagery associated with him is increasingly that of blood and cannibalism. Marlowe’s Faustus begins by regretting that he is no more than “Faustus, and a man” ; yet he ends his life wishing he were a beast. Shakespeare’s Angelo wants to purify society by extirpating lust through legislation; yet he eventually finds himself attempting to procure a maidenhead through extortion. Webster’s Ferdinand regrets that sex, eating, and sleeping are necessary human activities; yet he is finally transformed into something very like an animal. All four try, by denying man’s animal nature, to rise above the merely human; all four, by trying to be more than men, become less than men. I believe that the existence of these four characters, and their ultimate defeat in the plays in which they appear, can be seen as a comment on certain aspects of Renaissance humanism. The drama of the Renaissance is dependent upon the pre-existence of a general cultural climate of humanism, defined most simply as the philosophi­ cally-justified belief in the dignity of man and the value of life on earth. This cultural climate was created in England primarily by Christian human­ ists, whose philosophy represented a union of two traditions: first, the Chris­ tian, which (partly through the mediation of Thomist theory) based man’s limited dignity on his ability to approach God through reason; and second, the Neoplatonic,1 which based man’s almost unlimited dignity on his ability to transcend the bounds of his earthly position. Yet although the very exis­ tence of Renaissance drama, anthropocentric as it is, is indebted to the theor­ ists who helped to make anthropocentrism respectable, there were elements of the Christian humanist synthesis which were uncongenial to what might be called dramatic humanism. For the humanism underlying the great dramatic achievement of the English Renaissance rested on the acceptance of man as a composite creature, both physical and spiritual; while received Christian humanist doctrine carried with it an abhorrence of the senses which it had inherited from both parents — from Christianity a strict body-soul dualism (the flesh as fellow to world and devil) and from Neoplatonism the habit of E n g l is h St u d ie s in C anada, v , 4, Winter 1979 establishing human dignity at the expense of the physical nature that man shares with beasts. This brand of humanism would not answer either the purposes of Renaissance tragedy, in its essence a collision between the potential of the spirit and the vulnerability of the flesh, or the purposes of Renaissance comedy, that celebration of human happiness in which fruition and wholesome sexuality loom so large. The mainstream of English humanist philosophy is inadequate to explain the mainstream of English dramatic humanism, because English Renaissance drama attempted (in ways that Christian humanist philosophy did not) to come to terms with the limitations placed on man by his physicality. Philosophic humanism and dramatic humanism are in conflict on the question of man’s animal nature and how far he can transcend it. Characters like Tamburlaine, Faustus, Angelo, and Ferdinand represent, I believe, the dramatization of that conflict. Although in the form in which it was transmitted to English Renaissance culture, Neoplatonism was inseparable from Christianity, I will focus specifi­ cally on the Neoplatonic component, since I believe that the ascent-descent pattern discernible in these characters is more a product of Neoplatonic thinking than of the vaguer ascetic heritage of Christianity. Not only Pico and Ficino, but other Italian thinkers like Pomponazzi and Telesio who in many respects contradicted them, share one article of faith: that to be fully human, one must ascend above the life of the senses. This principle of ascent is the very essence of Neoplatonism. Pico, in effect, makes...