Hudibras
Hudibras is a vigorous satirical poem, written in a mock-heroic style by Samuel Butler, and published in three parts in 1663, 1664 and 1678. The action is set in the last years of the Interregnum, around 1658–60, immediately before the restoration of Charles II as king in May 1660.
The story shows Hudibras, a Cromwellian knight and colonel in the New Model Army, being regularly defeated and humiliated, as in Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, Butler's main inspiration. Colonel Hudibras' humiliations arrive sometimes by the skills and courage of women, and the epic ends with a witty and detailed declaration by the latest female to get the better of him that women are intellectually superior to men.
Hudibras is notable for its longevity: from the 1660s, it was more or less always in print, from many different publishers and editors, till the period of the First World War. Apart from Lord Byron's masterpiece Don Juan, there are few English verse satires of this length that have had such a long and influential life in print.
The satire "delighted the royalists but was less an attack on the puritans than a criticism of antiquated thinking and contemporary morals, and a parody of old-fashioned literary form."
Or, as one of the poem's editors has written: "Hudibras, like Gulliver's Travels, is unique imaginative work, capable of shocking, enlivening, provoking, and entertaining the reader in a peculiar and distinctive way, vigorously witty and powerful in its invective. It is the ebullient inventiveness of Hudibras which is likely to commend it to the modern reader and which raises it above its historical context. Justice still remains to be done not to Butler the moralist but to Butler the poet."
While the original proverb appears in King James Version of the Bible, Book of Proverbs, 13:24, this poem is the first appearance of the quotation and popularised the aphorism "spare the rod and spoil the child".
All Hudibras quotations and references below, unless otherwise marked, relate to the standard modern edition, edited by John Wilders.
Overview
Hudibras is a Presbyterian colonel. His squire, Ralpho, is one of the Independents, who follow a more radical version of puritanism, one far less formal and structured than Presbyterianism. However, Butler's satire is not focused on details of their belief or theology. They regularly fall into heated argument with each other, but these arguments are never about faith or doctrine; they are always focused on the rules of argument and the definitions of words. It is noticeable that not once, in over 11,000 lines of satiric verse, does either of them laugh or smile.Hudibras and Ralpho set out, much like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, to combat those whom they consider to be their enemies. Throughout their adventures and humiliations, the third key person of the story, the rich widow whose money Hudibras would dearly like to get his hands on, plays an increasingly important role, and the conclusion of Part III is a lengthy, detailed, and unqualified declaration by the rich widow that men, on the basis of the entire preceding story, are clearly inferior to women. This declaration is notable, in a large-scale popular satire written by an English male author in the seventeenth century, and reminds the reader that Hudibras's most crushing defeats were at the hands of Trulla, the village prostitute, and the rich widow herself in the last 382 lines of the last book headed "The Ladies Answer to the Knight".
Throughout the satire, Butler seems to write from a position of broad-based ironic scepticism. Unlike many anti-Puritan writers of the Restoration period, Butler says nothing in Hudibras to suggest that he himself welcomed either the return of the Church of England or the restoration of the monarchy. In his Commonplace book, recorded by his old friend William Longueville, Butler has a section on "Princes", where he shows a witty contempt of, amongst others, Charles II of England and his family: "No man can oblige a Prince more then hee that kills his father", and "CR came to the Throne by the Right of two Women and therfore has the more Reason to be Kind to Them", and "One Brother ruind another by forcing Him to marry a Whore and was after ruind himself by whores".
The characters
Hudibras
In Part One Canto One we have elaborately sardonic descriptions of Hudibras and Ralpho. "Never did trusty Squire with Knight, Or Knight with squier jump more right". Hudibras is described as a "Mirrour of Knighthood", though we soon find that he even has difficulty mounting, and staying on, his horse. As Butler describes key points of Hudibras's very formal university learning—logic, rhetoric, geometry, algebra, arithmetic and theology—he mocks the trivial and purely verbal uses that Hudibras makes of these:He was in Logick a great Critick,
Profoundly skill'd in Analytick.
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt South and South-west side:
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute.
All this by Syllogism, true
In mood and figure, he would doe.
For Rhetorick, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a Trope
a Babylonish dialect
Which learned Pedants much affect:
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin...
he by Geometrick scale
Could take the size of Pots of Ale
And wisely tell what hour o'th' day
The Clock does strike, by Algebra.
Ralpho
For Hudibras's squire Ralpho, on the other hand, who is a tailor, these formal academic skills are insignificant, or downright distractions. He guides his life not by philosophical systems but by direct personal inspiration: "Some call it Gifts, and some New light; A liberal Art, that costs no pains Of Study, Industry or Brains."Ralpho and Hudibras frequently challenge each other in long arguments, mostly about the "true" meanings of words. Ralpho, for example, argues that in reality a Presbyterian synod-meeting is the same thing as a bear-baiting: "...put them in a bag, and shake 'em Yourself o' th' sudden would mistake 'em, And not know which is which...", while Hudibras uses elaborate academic terminology to try to prove logically that synod-meetings and bear-baitings are not the same thing.He could deep Mysteries unriddle,
As easily as thread a Needle;
Whate're men speak by this new Light,
Still they are sure to be i' th' right.
'Tis a dark-Lanthorn of the Spirit,
Which none see by but those who bear it:
An Ignis Fatuus, that bewitches,
And leads men into Pools and Ditches,
To make them dip themselves, and sound
For Christendome in Dirty pond;
Thus Ralph became infallible...
The rich widow
The rich widow is unnamed throughout. Hudibras schemes to get her money, whether by marrying her or by legal trickery. She enjoys leading him on to make a fool of himself, and at the end of Part Three she is clearly the winner.The townspeople
Throughout Parts One and Two, the townspeople are elaborately presented as heroes in the grand literary mode. Under their heroic descriptions they are in fact Crowdero, a fiddler with a wooden leg; Orsin the bear-warden and his Bear, Bruin; Trulla the prostitute; Cerdon the shoemaker; Talgol the butcher; Magnano, a tinker; and Colon, a farmer.Sidrophel and Whackum
Sidrophel, the local Rosicrucian conjurer and astrologer, first appears at the end of Part Two, with his assistant, Whackum. Butler tells the reader in a footnote that Whackum is modelled on the "notorious Ideot" who wrote the spurious "Part Two" in "abominable Doggerel", before Butler published the genuine Part Two towards the end of that year.Plot
In The First Part Hudibras and Ralpho set out, seeking knightly adventure, and encounter a local bear-baiting which they agree that they have to prevent, though they disagree about exactly why. They first defeat, and are then defeated by, the townspeople, and in particular by Trulla, the characterful local prostitute, who gains the victory by pushing Hudibras, the "Mirrour of Knighthood", off his horse, beating him with a rain of blows, then climbing up and standing on him. Hudibras owns her the victor, and strips off and surrenders his armour and weapons. She mockingly puts her dress onto Hudibras, then locks him and Ralpho in the village stocks. They are finally released by a rich widow, who bails them out on condition that once he is free Hudibras will give himself the flogging he deserves.The Second Part begins with them debating whether it is permissible for Hudibras to break his oath to the widow, to not give himself a flogging, and then to lie to her. The discussion is interrupted by the approach of a riotous and noisy skimmington or charivari, which Hudibras mistakes for some paganism. The skimmington procession pelts Hudibras and Ralpho with rotten eggs and attacks their horses; they make their escape, and go to find a pond to get clean in. After a further discussion Ralpho persuades Hudibras to consult the local conjurer, Sidrophel, but Sidrophel and Hudibras argue angrily and at length about what arts are lawful and what arts are unlawful. Exasperated, Sidrophel taunts Hudibras with having been earlier humiliated at Kingston and Brentford Fairs, and claims that it was his own assistant Whackum who stole Hudibras's cloak and picked his pocket. Hudibras points out that Sidrophel is drawing that story from the spurious "Part Two", but nevertheless he sends Ralpho out to fetch a constable to charge Sidrophel with the possession of stolen property. Hudibras knocks Whackum and Sidrophel down and picks their pockets. Believing that they are both dead, Hudibras decides that since Ralpho is disrespectful towards Hudibras's orthodox puritanism, he will leave Ralpho to come back with the constable, find the two bodies, and carry the can for the two deaths.
The Third and Last Part begins with a satiric letter from Hudibras to Sidrophel, satirising the activities of the recently formed Royal Society. The story then moves on: after the fight with Sidrophel and Whackum, Hudibras, and Ralpho are now estranged, and Hudibras, determined to get his hands on the widow's wealth, goes to her and lies about how he flogged himself, and then defeated Sidrophel and Whackum. Ralpho, however, was ahead of him, and has already told the widow the truth. She traps Hudibras into a long argument about the true nature of marriage, which takes them till after sunset. This argument is interrupted by a loud knocking on the door. Terrified that it might be Sidrophel, Hudibras hides under a table in a nearby room, in the dark, only to find that he is being pulled out and trampled by what appears in the dark to be a group of demons; one cloven-hoofed demon, standing on him just as Trulla had done in Part One, makes him admit his intention to defraud the rich widow of her money; also to confess his lie about having scourged himself, and to confess his dishonesty and mercenariness, and more. Colonel Hudibras shows himself up as a dishonest, cowardly, and superstitious fool. The demons then leave him, still in darkness, but there is, somewhere in the dark room, one remaining "blackguard sprite" who upbraids him in detail with all his deceits and cowardice. Hudibras finds him uncomfortably well-informed about his doings. As dawn approaches, Hudibras and the "blackguard sprite" escape from the Widow's house, find Hudibras's and Ralpho's horses, and flee. Canto Two is a satiric disquisition on the turbulent state of puritan and national party politics in 1659–60. In Canto Three, as daylight breaks, Hudibras discovers that the "blackguard sprite" who upbraided him in the darkness was in fact Ralpho, who tells him that the cloven-hoofed demon who stood on him and questioned him was a local weaver in a parson's gown, and that the widow heard every word, and laughed.
Ralpho goes on to persuade him not to pursue the rich widow directly, but to go to law against her for a breach of contract to marry, and get hold of her money that way. Hudibras consults a pettifogging lawyer in London, who advises him how to begin by writing the widow a letter that will entrap her into making statements on paper that Hudibras can use to pursue a breach of promise suit against her.
The widow reads Hudibras's letter, smiles, and writes him a reply that avoids his trap, while spelling out in riotously contemptuous detail how right women are to despise men. Her last words, the very last words of Butler's Third and Last Part, are a strongly-worded statement that men are inferior to women: she ends her letter, and the entire satire, with a clear statement that she has no intention to "Let men usurp Th'unjust Dominion, / As if they were the Better Women."