Anne Prescott's suggestion seems neither wild nor crazy; in fact, it's a
wonderful point to have in mind for reading that very difficult, very
contentious ending to Sidney's Lady of May--a fiction almost everyone agrees
has "something" to do with Elizabeth's proposed marriage to Alencon, whatever
that "something" might be.
At the end of the masque in lines of admitted defeat, Therion the forester
adopts the voice of Pan and takes consolation in the fact that he's been
defeated by Hercules:
'Poor Pan,' he said, 'although thou beaten be,
It is no shame since Hercules was he.'
Could Pan/Therion's admission of defeat--defeat at the hands of Hercules--in a
marriage contest decided by Elizabeth have resonated ironically with the
contemporary debate about the Queen's "impending" marriage to
Francois-Hercule, duc d'Alencon? I think so. And partly what's interesting
about the ironies at stake is that they work nicely whether Therion's speech
(more likely scripted in advance of the Queen's decision for Espilus the
shepherd than for Therion the forester, I'd argue) wound up in his mouth or
his rival's. In either instance, the reference to Hercule/Hercules looks
satirically barbed, but a reading that gives that speech by design to Espilus
appears all the more attractive in light of the apparent allusion to Alencon.
Sidney's story about Pan's embarrassment and shame refers to the god's
humiliation upon discovering that he's bed-hopped with Hercules rather than
Omphale--poor hopes for progeny, indeed.
>===== Original Message From Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
<[log in to unmask]> =====
>this is a wild and probably crazy and irrelevant idea, but another guy
>named "hercules" was Francois-Hercule, duc d'Alencon and then d'Anjou
>(sorry--I can't do accents). French court flatterers were to call Henri
>III "Hercules" and, much more often and with a damnsight more credibility,
>Henri IV a Hercules too--and not just a Gallic one who can chain ears but
>the original monster-slayer. From Sidney's point of view, as from
>Spenser's, the problem was the off-chance that young Francois-Hercule, if
>he married Elizabeth, might possibly produce offspring. Yes, a real
>stretch, but I did want to mention Elizabeth's very own French Hercules. I
>don't think Sidney could have known about Hercule Poirot, though. Anne P.
>
>>> I've been unable to find a gloss on Sidney's phrase "Herculea proles" at
>>> the end of the Defense of Poesy that explains the source of the phrase.
>>> Does anyone know where Sidney got it? I've also been unable to locate a
>>> reason for it in the Hercules myth(s). Why would a nobleman who supports
>>> poetry be described as a descendent of Hercules?
>>
>> Ariosto uses the phrase in the introductory stanzas to the Orlando
>> Furioso, in the dedication to his sometime patron, Ippolito de'Este, son
>> of Ercole I d'Este:
>>
>> Piacciavi, generosa Erculea prole,
>> ornamento e splendor del secol nostro,
>> Ippolito, aggradir questo che vuole
>> e darvi sol può l'umil servo vostro.
>> Quel ch'io vi debbo, posso di parole
>> pagare in parte e d'opera d'inchiostro;
>> né che poco io vi dia da imputar sono,
>> che quanto io posso dar, tutto vi dono.
>>
>> (Generous offspring of Hercules, ornament and splendor of our age, may
>> it please you to accept this which your lowly servant would like to, and
>> alone is able to, give you. The debt I owe you I can partially repay
>> with words and with a work of ink; do not think that I give you too
>> little, for all that I can give, I give to you.)
>>
>> Hercules is a favorite figure of courtier-poets in Ferrara because of
>> the pun on Ercole I and II d'Este, and he becomes a figure for the
>> subject both fashioned by a humanist education and fragmented by madness
>> (as in Seneca's Hercules Furens, echoed by Ariosto's title). Albert
>> Ascoli devotes a section of his Ariosto book to the figure of Hercules:
>> see Ariosto's Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian
>> Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 46–70.
>>
>> As far as I remember, Sidney doesn't refer to Ariosto directly, so
>> perhaps Sidney and Ariosto are analogues from a common tradition.
>>
>> Kathryn Evans
>> UC Berkeley
>>
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