Parts and Persons

 The everyday dramatism of the social actor according to Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy:

 

It is not worth, virtue (that's bonum theatrale [a theatrical good], wisdom, valour, learning, honesty, religion, or any sufficiency for which we are respected, but money, greatness, office, honour, authority; honesty is accounted folly; knavery, policy; men admired out of opinion, not as they are, but as they seem to be: such shifting, lying, cogging, plotting, counterplotting, temporizing, flattering, cozening, dissembling, "that of necessity one must highly offend God if he be conformable to the world," Cretizare cum Crete [to do at Crete as the Cretans do], "or else live in contempt, disgrace, and misery." One takes upon him temperance, holiness, another austerity, a third an affected kind of simplicity, whenas indeed he, and he, and he, and the rest are hypocrites, ambidexters, outsides, so many turning pictures, a lion on the one side, a lamb on the other. How would Democritus have been affected to see these things!

To see a man turn himself into all shapes like a chameleon, or as Proteus, omnia transformans sese in miracula rerum [who transformed himself into every possible shape], to act twenty parts and persons at once for his advantage, to temporize and vary like Mercury the planet, good with good, bad with bad; having a several face, garb, and character for every one he meets; of all religions, humours, inclinations; to fawn like a spaniel, mentitis et mimicis obsequiis [with feigned and hypocritical observance], rage like a lion, bark like a cur, fight like a dragon, sting like a serpent, as meek as a lamb, and yet again grin like a tiger, weep like a crocodile, insult over some, and yet others domineer over him, here command, there crouch, tyrannize in one place, be baffled in another, a wise man at home, a fool abroad to make others merry.

To see so much difference betwixt words and deeds, so many parasangs betwixt tongue and heart, men like stage-players act variety of parts, give good precepts to others, [to] soar aloft, whilst they themselves grovel on the ground.

To see a man protest friendship, kiss his hand, quem mallet truncatum videre [whom he would like to see decapitated], smile with an intent to do mischeif , or cozen him whom he elogiums; his enemy, albeit a good man, to vilify and disgrace him, yea, all his actions with the utmost livor and malice can invent.

To see a servant able to buy out his master, him that carries the mace mor worth than the magistrate, which Plato, lib. II de leg., absolutely forbids, Epictetus abhors. An horse that tills the land fed with chaff, an idle jade have provender in abundance; him that makes shoes go barefoot himself, him that sells meat almost pined; a toiling drudge starve, a drone flourish.

To see men buy smoke for wares, castles built with fools' heads, men like apes follow the fashions in tires, gestures, action; if the king laugh, all laugh: 

Rides? majore cachinno

Concutitur, flet si lacrimas conspexit amici?

[Should you smile, a heartier laughter shakes his sides; he sees you weep, and tears drop from his eyes.]

Alexander stooped, so did his courtiers; Alphonsus turned his head, and so did his parasites. Sabina Poppaea, Nero's wife, wore amber-coloured hair,so did all the Roman ladies in an instant, her fashion was theirs.

To see men wholly led by affection, admired and censured out of opinion without judgement: an inconsiderate multitude, like so many dogs in a village, if one bark, all bark without a cause as fortune's fan turns, if a man be in favour, or commended by some great one, all the world applauds him; if in disgrace, in an instant all hate him, and as the sun when he is eclipsed, that erst took no notice, now gaze and stare upon him.

(...)

("Democritus to the Reader," 65-66)

What's the Market? —What's the World?

—oOo—