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Renaissance<br />

prose<br />

81<br />

tolerant defence of Anglicanism against Puritan attacks, advocating intellectual<br />

liberty as opposed to the dogma of extremists. Hooker’s prose affirms a<br />

new outlook, where Bacon’s writing questions traditional concepts and<br />

assumptions in order to stimulate discussion and reflection.<br />

To think we may pray unto God for nothing but what he hath promised<br />

in Holy Scripture we shall obtain, is perhaps an error. For of Prayer<br />

there are two uses. It serveth as a mean to procure those things<br />

which God hath promised to grant when we ask, and it serveth as a<br />

mean to express our lawful desires also towards that, which, whether<br />

we shall have or no, we know not till we see the event.<br />

(Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie)<br />

The period also exhibits a fascination with books of manners such<br />

as The Courtyer (1561) translated from Castiglione’s Italian and describing<br />

how the young gentleman of style should behave. Numerous such<br />

‘how-to’ books were published to cater for all levels of society, from<br />

statesmen, as in The Book Named the Governour (1531) by Sir Thomas<br />

Elyot, to confidence tricksters with The Gull’s Hornbook (1609) by Thomas<br />

Dekker. Elyot affirms, for example, the qualities which dancing brings:<br />

In every dance of a most ancient custom there danceth together<br />

a man and a woman holding each other by the hand or the arm:<br />

which betokeneth concord. Now it behoveth the dancers and<br />

also the beholders of them to know all qualities incident to a<br />

man and also all qualities to a woman likewise appertaining. . .<br />

. These qualities . . . being knit together, and signified in the<br />

personages of the man and woman dancing, do express or set<br />

out the figure of very nobility: which in the higher estate it is<br />

contained, the more excellent is the virtue in estimation.<br />

By contrast, Dekker’s work confirms that books about low life in London<br />

– known as ‘cony-catching’ pamphlets – were a lively manifestation of<br />

the city’s subculture around the time when the theatre began to produce<br />

‘city comedies’, in which Dekker’s satirical voice was also prominent.<br />

The effectiveness of prose as both an argumentative and a<br />

descriptive genre is reflected in a growing range of writing during

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