| Chapter 1: | ‘The Fulsom Gingle of the Times’ |
|
|
She ties in her own insults with references to John Eachard’s castigations of the theories of Hobbes, ‘the Doctor of Malmesbury’, which implies, in her criticism of his being ‘prettily ingenious’, that she has read and judged his philosophies for herself.18 She includes a reference to Hobbesian thought in The Roundheads, 1681, act 2, scene 1, where she writes:
FREEMAN. Nay, I confess, ‘tis a great Pleasure to cheat the World.
LADY DESBRO. ‘Tis Power, as Divine Hobs calls it. (vol. 6, 385)
The use of ‘divine’ could also include other layers of meaning. Hobbes was renowned for what were seen as atheistic views: More had published Divine Dialogues in 1668 to combat scepticism of Christianity from a Platonist viewpoint. While one might refer to modern writers as if one has read all their works without ever reading more than a review in the Sunday papers, it is less likely that anyone with pretensions to literary stature would have found such superficial knowledge sufficient in the seventeenth century. Then, one mark of a cultivated mind was the ability to use quotations and apposite literary references in conversation.19 A poseur would soon have been caught out and indeed appears as one type of foolish character in the comedies as, for example, Lady Knowell in Sir Patient Fancy,20 an intellectual snob, who rhapsodises:
LEANDER. Methinks ‘tis very well in our Mother Tongue, Madam.