Gondibert

Sir Robert Howard, Thomas Hobbes, and the fall of Clarendon

“…We are the Peoples Pilots, they our winds; To change by Nature prone; but Art Laveers, 55 This example also shows how Howard favoured the sort of heavily condensed conceits which Davenant had used in Gondibert. The iambic pentameter cross-rhymed quatrain which Davenant used in Gondibert lent itself to developing these sorts of conceits.…”

The philosopher Hobbes as the poet Homer

“…59 It is this general image of Homer that, as Nelson and Davis both rightly argue, would have been anathema to Hobbes, encouraging what Davenant, had called 'dissembling inspiration' allowing men to 'pretend authority'. 60 For Hobbes, to have the word of man, by dint of inspiration passing for that of God was to be rejected for its socially destabilizing potential; but the dangers were a consequence of inherent philosophical pretension. It was only on the basis of bogus claims to privileged knowledge that the poet or priest might challenge the sober and certain reasoning of the philosopher.…”

The Insults of Defeat: Royalist Responses to Sir William Davenant'sGondibert(1651)

“…27 Similarly, Davenant's 'interwoven Stanza of foure' -devised because he 'believed it would be more pleasant to the Reader ... to give this respite or pause, between every Stanza (having endeavour'd that each should contain a period) then to run him out of breath with continued couplets' -was perceived by many to be torturously halting. 28 One of Davenant's mock elegists described Gondibert's style as one in which author and reader were 'perplex'd ... with Parenthesis on Parenthesis as, just in a wilderness or labyrinth, all sense was lost in them'. 29 Others used parody to mock the intolerable digressions, unpredictable suspensions and occasionally ridiculous diction of Davenant The Posts were of abstersive Ebony, (Though no abstersiveness in Posts we find, In powder tane (the learned not deny) It cleanses choler, and in pills breaks wind.)…”

“…As he reminded Hobbes in the preface to the poem, the 'operations [of poets] are as resistlesse, secret, easy, and subtle, as is the influence of the planets'; their work 'charms the People, with harmonious precepts' and 'begets such obedience as is never weary or griev'd'. 31 It does seem as if the Commonwealth authorities eventually recognised the truth of these arguments and saw the propaganda value of a Davenant who was free and apparently loyal to them. Indeed the release of a group of sometime royalist activist-writers (men such as Abraham Cowley, Marchamont N edham and Sir Thomas Urquhart) who were freed to write statements of allegiance, panegyric or polemic for the new regime suggests that this may well have been a policy advocated by certain members of successive Cromwellian administrations.32 Thus, within months of his release from the Tower in October 1652, Davenant was revisiting the arguments of Gondibert's preface to advise the Council of State, presumably at their request, that 'if the peoples senses were charm'd and entertain'd ... they would easily follow the voice of their shepherds'.…”