Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

G. Gregory Smith, ed. Elizabethan Critical Essays. 1904.

Abraham Fraunce (fl. 1587–1633)

From The Arcadian Rhetorike. 1588

[Abraham Fraunce issued, in 1588, from the press of Thomas Orwin, The Arcadian Rhetorike: Or The Præcepts of Rhetorike made plaine by examples, Greeke, Latin, English, Ita lian, French, Spanish, out of \ Homers Ilias, and Odissea, Virgils Æglogs, Georgikes, and Æneis Sir Philip Sydneis Arcadiæ, Songs, and Sonets, Torquato Tassoes Gosfredo, Aminta, Torrismondo, Salust his Judith, and both his Semaines, Boscan and Garcilassoes Sonets and Æglogs. \ Only one copy is preserved, that in the Bodleian (Malone 514). Sheet B 1–8 (eight leaves) is missing. A MS. note on the fly-leaf states that the tract was entered on the Stationers’ Books by T. Gubbyn and J. Newman on June 11, 1588.
A summary and a few extracts are here given in place of the complete text, which consists almost entirely of quotations from the authors named above. The rhetorical plan of the book is less elaborate than that of the contemporary Arte of Englishe Poesie (q. v. vol. ii. p. 1). The volume is dedicated ‘To the Right excellent and most honorable Ladie, the Ladie Marie, Countesse of Pembroke,’ in words which are printed thus:

The first book contains thirty-six chapters, and extends to Sig. H 6. The second book begins on H 6 v^o, and has but six chapters.
Bk. I. chap. 1 defines ‘What Rhetorike is,’ as two parts, ‘Eloqution & Pronuntiation.’ ‘Eloqution is the first part of Rhetorike, concerning the ordering & trimming of speach. It hath also two parts, Congruitie and Brauerie.’ Congruitie includes ‘grammaticall rules’—which Fraunce omits. ‘Brauerie of speech consisteth in tropes or turnings: and in figures or fashionings. A trope or turning is when a word is turned,’ &c…. ‘So much of the general proprieties of tropes: now to the divers kindes thereof.’
Chap. 2 to chap. 5 treat of the Metonymia of the subject and adjunct, &c.; chap. 6 of Ironia. Then comes the break in the text, which resumes in the midst of chap. 14, on feet and poetical dimensions, and the different sorts of verse, with examples. Chap. 15 is on the dimension for Orators; chap. 16, of Epizeuxis; chap. 17, of Anadiplosis; chap. 18, of Climax; chap. 19, of Anaphora; chap. 20, of Epistrophe; chap. 21, of Symploce; chap. 22, of Epanalepsis; chap. 23, of Epanodos; chap. 24, of Paronomasia; chap. 25, of Polyptoton (a long chapter); chap. 26, of Figures of Sentences; chap. 27, of Exclamation (with many classified examples); chap. 28, of Epanorthosis; chap. 29, of Aposiopesis; chap. 30, of Apostrophe; chap. 31, of Prosopopoia; chap. 32, of Addubitation; chap. 33, of Communication; chap. 34, of Præoccupation; chap. 35, of Sufferance; chap. 36, of Graunting. The Second Book consists of these chapters:—chap. 1, ‘of utterance or pronunciation’; chap. 2, ‘of the application of the voyce to severall affections’; chap. 3, ‘of action or gesture of the whole bodie’; chap. 4, ‘of the gesture of the head, eyes, lipps, &c.’; chap. 5, ‘of the gesture of the arme, hand, fingers, &c.; chap. 6, Of the gesture of other parts of the bodie.
Chap. 19, ‘Of Anaphora,’ may be quoted as an average example of Fraunce’s method:—


Thus much of the continued repetition of the same word in one or diuers sentences; now followeth the severed repetition of the same sound, and that either in the same place, or in divers. In the same place, either simple or conioined. Simple, Anaphora and Epistrophe. Anaphora, a bringing back of the same sound, is when the same sound is iterated in the beginning of the sentence.’
Then follow quotations from Homer (Iliad I), Virgil (Georg. IV, Eclog. I, Aen. III), Sir Philip Sidney, Tasso, Du Bartas (four passages from the Semaines), Boscan, and Garcilasso.
In the volume there are three quotations from Spenser’s works: (a) fol. C 4, to illustrate mixed iambics and spondees, the lines beginning, ‘Vnhappie verse, the witnes of my vnhappie state’ (see Spenser’s letter to Harvey, ante, p. 90): (b) fol. D 7, v^o, where the author, after giving some illustrations of Polyptoton, says, ‘Before I leaue of to talk of these figures of woords, I will here confusedlie insert a number of conceited verses, sith all their grace and delicacie proceedeth from the figures afore-named. Theocritus hath expressed the forme of an egge and an alter in verse; so hath Willy represented the figure of a swoard, and an old Abbot the image of the crosse, in verie laboured and intangled verses: but let them passe, and come we to such as are more plausible;’ and, among several examples, he quotes, ‘Ye wastfull woods, beare witnesse of my woe,’ &c. (Sheph. Cal., August): and (c), fol. E 3, in further illustration of ‘conceipted kindes of verses,’ he quotes Spenser, ‘in his Fairie Queene, 2 booke, cant. 4’—to the end of the stanza. The last quotation has the special interest of having been made before the publication of the Faerie Queene, and of being probably the first lines of the poem to appear in print. The MS. was already in circulation among Spenser’s intimate friends, and the poet made no secret of it even in more general society (see Ludovick Bryskett’s introduction to his Discourse of Civill Life, 1606, but written before 1589).]