Stella Achilleos
University of Nicosia
The Anacreontic and the Growth of Sociability in Early Modern England
1> The early modern period witnessed the production of a great number of English translations and imitations of the Anacreontea—an ancient Greek lyric corpus of verses devoted to the pleasures of love and wine that survived under the name of Anacreon and was first published by Henricus Stephanus in 1554.[1] While the publication of this collection had an immediate impact on French poets (especially on Pierre de Ronsard and Rémy Belleau), the vogue for anacreontic texts in England started in the seventeenth century. Appropriated by Ben Jonson in various places—like Why I Write not of Love or in A Celebration of Charis[2]—the anacreontic was further taken up by various Cavalier poets of the mid-seventeenth century. Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Abraham Cowley, Thomas Stanley and Charles Cotton produced a number of translations and imitations of the genre. Mainly reproduced in the first instance within circles of such classically-educated individuals who could read the original text or a Latin translation, the anacreontic subsequently followed a process of broader dissemination as it was gradually more widely reproduced in the vernacular. So by the end of the eighteenth century the anacreontic had emerged as an English genre in its own right that came to provide a very recognizable—and considerably popular—form of symposiastic verse.
2> Though in recent years we have witnessed increasing scholarly interest in the original collection, the phenomenon of the popularity of this genre in early modern England has received little critical attention.[3] Yet the reception of the Anacreontea in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England points to an intriguing cultural narrative that deserves more careful consideration, as the genre appears to have been intricately interwoven with a broader set of social and cultural uses. As I have argued elsewhere, the appropriation of the genre provides the identifier for a tradition of refined male sociability that may, in the first instance, be associated with a culture of tavern-clubbing developed in the seventeenth century by Ben Jonson and his ‘sons’.[4] Taking a brief look at the formative moments of that culture, my purpose here will be to concentrate on how that was subsequently developed and redefined in the eighteenth century—when one finds the formation of the Anacreontic Society of London and various other convivial social clubs that took their special identity by the anacreontic associations.
3> The social implications of the anacreontic are suggested by the original ancient Greek corpus. Preserved in the tenth-century Palatine Anthology under the title Anacreon of Teos’s Symposiastic Hemiambics, the poems in the collection were probably composed to provide entertainment on various symposiastic occasions. Like the Roman ‘convivium’, the ‘symposio’ held a significant role in the social life of ancient Greece: attended almost exclusively by men, it presented an occasion not simply for convivial drinking, but also for social intercourse, conversation, and frequently for literary composition.[5] Though to some readers of the Anacreontea, Anacreon’s voice may sound like the solipsistic voice of an old man who utters perpetual exhortations to a dream world of pleasure that no one else seems to share, the texts in fact contain a number of references to elements of communal drinking. Anacreontea 42 and 50, for instance, express the old speaker’s wish to share his symposiastic space with young male companions who will make him forget the restrictions imposed upon him by senility. More importantly, the anacreontic symposium involves the careful attendance to a set of ritual activities that suggest the need to maintain a sense of order and temperance. Various exhortations to wine-bearers to mix wine and water in the due proportions, for example, point to the wish to preserve an equilibrium and thus to construct a refined symposiastic space where excessive drinking is not allowed to interfere with the cheerful and companionate spirit of the occasion.[6]
4> This concept of refined sociability was taken up by various poets who translated or imitated the Anacreontea in seventeenth-century England—especially, as I have mentioned, by Ben Jonson and his ‘sons’ who often evoked the anacreontic model in their descriptions of genial symposiastic scenes. In Hesperides, for instance, Robert Herrick frequently looks back to Anacreon to draw a space of conviviality that is at once indulgent and controlled. Besides numerous translations and close imitations of the Anacreontea, Herrick’s collection contains various texts that appropriate more loosely the concept of the anacreontic symposium. Further, the model of Anacreon is often blended in Hesperides with that of Horace—whose Odes famously celebrate moderation—to yield a space of carefree, yet mild, merry-making. In An Ode to Sir Clipsebie Crew, for example, Herrick calls upon “Anacreon / To grace the frantick Thyrse” (8-9) and then asks for:
". . . Horace to be read,
Which sung, or seyd,
A Goblet, to the brim,
Of Lyrick Wine, both swell’d and crown’d,
A Round,
We quaffe to him." (13-18)
5> The concept of refined conviviality evoked in such descriptions is in fact associated by Herrick with the jovial drinking sessions held by Ben Jonson and his ‘sons’ at various London taverns in the 1620s and 1630s. In An Ode for Him, Herrick nostalgically looks back to those “Lyrick Feasts” shared by the older poet and his young followers:
"Ah Ben!
Say how, or when
Shall we thy Guests
Meet at those Lyrick Feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the triple Tunne?
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each Verse of thine
Out-did the meate, out-did the frolick wine." (1-10)
6> The lines here are reminiscent of the figure of Anacreon in Anacreontea 53 who wants to drink and dance among youths and to “go mad gracefully” (14). At the same time, the image of the boon companions going “nobly wild” rather than “mad” reminds us of Jonson’s Leges Convivales, his “Sociable Rules for the Apollo”—the room in the Devil and St Dustan tavern near Temple Bar, where Jonson and his ‘sons’ often met. Jonson’s code describes an intimate group of male companions who indulge in a polite kind of merry-making. The code in many ways suggests the exclusive nature of this group: besides being written in Latin, it also contains certain rules that invite those who are learned to join in, while fools and ignorant men are asked to stay away. The rules, further, recommend moderation in drinking and merry-making, so as to safeguard the meetings against riotous behavior.[7] As Alexander Brome’s translation of rules eleven to thirteen suggests, gatherings are defined as refined occasions for polite conversation; thus boon companions are prompted to “let [their] only emulation be / Not drinking much, but talking wittily” (13-14) and to “stir up / Each other with a moderate chirping cup” (15-16).
7> A number of convivial verses by the ‘sons of Ben’ that reproduce images of such an exclusive and urbane kind of tavern-clubbing were probably composed within the context of the Apollo in the 1620s and 1630s. It may be argued, for instance, that a number of Herrick’s anacreontics date back to that period. These, however, were presented—together with various other verses—in a definitive act of publication in Hesperides in 1648. At about that time, the anacreontic acquired distinct political resonances as it was mainly reproduced within circles of royalist poets. Besides Robert Herrick, Alexander Brome, Richard Lovelace, Charles Cotton, John Cleveland, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas Stanley produced translations and imitations of the Anacreontea, redefining the anacreontic symposium as a space for royalist bonding and camaraderie.
8> Primarily reproduced in the first half of the seventeenth century within such choice groups of learned or sophisticated figures, the anacreontic provided a rather elite discourse marked out by education and class. Subsequently though the genre followed a process of broader dissemination, during which the boundaries between the elite and the popular were constantly renegotiated. As the anacreontic started to become more widely reproduced in the vernacular, it was channeled to various new audiences further down the social scale or to readers who did not necessarily have knowledge of the original collection. Anacreontic texts appeared in various sorts of printed material that contributed to this wide dissemination of the genre—from broadsides to song-books and periodical publications, like the Gentleman’s Magazine.[8] A look into eighteenth-century materials further reveals an abundance of texts called ‘anacreontics’ that do not so strictly adhere to the original corpus. Attesting to the emergence of the anacreontic as an English genre in its own right, the term ‘anacreontic’ during this period comes to describe more broadly a kind of light and carefree literary composition, loosely appropriating the anacreontic subject matter.
9> Quite importantly, this process of broader dissemination reveals a whole new range of social and cultural uses of the genre, pointing at the same time to the development of new forms of public sociability in England. The most telling examples of how the tradition of refined sociability associated with the anacreontic in the seventeenth century was subsequently developed and redefined are provided by the formation in the eighteenth century of a number of social and musical societies that were named after Anacreon. The period notably witnessed the founding of an Anacreontic Society in London (that functioned from 1766 to 1793) and homonymous institutions in various other urban centers across the country. An Anacreontic Society, for instance, was formed in Birmingham in 1793, while another one was active in Norwich from about 1795. Evidence further points to the existence of such societies in Ireland. The Anacreontic Society of Dublin in fact preceded and outlasted that of London as it was active from about 1740 to 1865.[9] Another homonymous organization was also established in Belfast in 1814.
10> Though evidence may be scarce, details about the memberships and activities of these societies may be gleaned from diaries, letters, newspapers and other extant records of the period. Still largely unexplored, their music collections also offer a wealth of primary sources that can shed further light on these institutions. The majority of materials available to us today though concern the Anacreontic Society of London. While my discussion here will concentrate on this institution, its example I believe is more broadly suggestive. As I would like to argue, the formation of this society provides a useful insight into the growth of male sociability in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Further, its appropriation of the anacreontic points to how the genre intriguingly continued to provide an idiom of civility and to identify an urbane set of discourses, though perhaps not quite so select or exclusive as the tradition of male tavern-clubbing established by Jonson and his ‘sons’ in the seventeenth century.
11> A letter published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1780 (under the title History of the Anacreontic Society) provides one of our main sources of information about this social gentlemen’s club that thrived in London in the second half of the eighteenth century. Apparently, the society had by 1780 come to enjoy considerable popularity and public acclaim, as the author’s opening remark to the editor of the magazine—“Mr. Urban”—indicates:
"I will not pay you so ill a compliment to suppose you have never heard of the Anacreontic Society. I therefore flatter myself the following account of its institution and progress will not be unacceptable to you or your polite readers."[10]
12> Defined throughout its development as a male institution, the society held its meetings in establishments traditionally frequented by a male clientele:
"[B]egot and christened by a Mr. S – th about the year 1766, at a genteel public-house, [the Anacreontic Society] was nursed at the Feathers and Half-moon Taverns in Cheapside, and received a great part of its establishment at the London Coffee-house."
13> When the numerous applications for membership (a sign no doubt of the growing popularity of the society) required its expansion to more spacious premises, the club was again housed in a public drinking house, the Crown and Anchor in the Strand.[11] By the eighteenth century, social drinking at pubs, taverns and inns had been established as an exclusive practice that was nearly always confined to men.[12] The small number of women who appeared in this male public sphere would usually be as workers or prostitutes. Coffeehouses, that made their first appearance in the second half of the seventeenth century, also became a primarily male space where men could meet to socialize, read a variety of materials provided by the coffee-sellers and discuss topics of general interest.[13] The Anacreontic Society was reportedly dissolved in 1793, when ladies were admitted to view the proceedings of one of its meetings—to the detriment of many of its members.
14> Despite its exclusiveness in terms of sex, the Anacreontic Society drew members from a variety of social backgrounds. Though membership would carry the payment of a subscription fee (three guineas for existing member and three and a half for new ones), that would probably still allow individuals from a wide range of social groups to apply. The membership of the Anacreontic Society, we are told, consisted of “Peers, Commoners, Aldermen, Gentlemen, Proctors, Actors, and Polite Tradesmen.” In effect, besides members of the nobility and high-ranking officials, the society would also attract individuals from a wide range of groups further down the social scale—from merchants, to professional men and artisans. The educational level of this mixed group would probably be equally diverse. Some of them might have been classically educated and able to recognize and appreciate the significance of the appropriation of the Anacreontea, while others—who had a more basic educational background—would not have the same appreciation of the various ways in which the anacreontic was appropriated by the society.
15> The common denominator of all these individuals who sought to become members of the Anacreontic Society would probably be their pursuit of social status and refinement. In many ways, this marks broader social and financial developments in eighteenth-century England. It has often been suggested that the growth of industry and commerce during this period brought about the financial prosperity of an increasing part of the population of the country, that extended well beyond the traditional landed aristocracy and gentry. This resulted in what has been called the “commercialization of leisure”.[14] Ever-growing numbers of individuals were now able to buy products that were not restricted to their basic needs.[15] As Thomas Woodman has noted, this new consumerism involved a growing interest in politeness and social emulation.[16] One of the most significant manifestations of this consumerist society was an explosion in the demand for fashionable cultural products and forms of sociability that enabled individuals to display themselves and pursue social status.[17]
16> The Anacreontic Society of London was notably one of a great number of clubs and societies established during this period to supply for this booming demand for high-status leisure. Peter Clark’s study of British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800 serves to demonstrate how a wide range of such institutions transformed the social life of big urban centers to become a distinctive feature of eighteenth-century England.[18] While certain societies might have remained small and intimate, a great number of clubs grew into large, formalized institutions with a fixed schedule of meetings and an elaborately prepared set of entertainments, often based on ceremonial arrangements that provided an element of ritual and highlighted the formality of the meetings. The History of the Anacreontic Society refers to a fixed and well-regulated set of activities—mainly musical—that were divided in three distinct sections (a formal concert, a dinner and after-dinner entertainments that would include the singing of catches and glees), each held in dedicated rooms. Further, prestigious clubs would often attract eminent musicians—from England and the Continent—who would be invited to give concerts or simply to attend meetings.[19] Franz Joseph Haydn’s attendance of one of the meetings as honorary guest of the Anacreontic Society of London in 1791 probably provided the highlight of the season, attesting to the high profile of the club at the time.
17> In effect, the establishment of the Anacreontic Society of London finds its place in a much broader framework of developments that marked the growth of public sociability in eighteenth-century England. At the same time though, this society—just as its homonymous organizations in other urban centers—appears to have had a very distinctive social identity that is marked by its multifarious associations with Anacreon and the anacreontic model. The naming of the club after the Greek lyric poet who sang of love and wine makes broader claims to a space of civilization represented by the classical world. More specifically though, it suggests the reappropriation of the concept of the anacreontic symposium as a discourse of civil and refined sociability. Besides the name of the club, its special identity is further suggested by its constitutional song, The Anacreontic Song, or, as it became more widely known, To Anacreon in Heaven. Written by Ralph Tomlison, once president of the club, the song would be “chorused by the whole company” to “open the mirth of the evening”. This would enhance the element of ritual in the proceedings of each meeting, providing a ceremonious act of solidarity and group pledging to the society’s “patron”. The song further suggests a conscious act of public fashioning, as it tells a myth that humorously accounts for the special identity of the society. It begins with “a few sons of Harmony” (2) calling upon “the jolly old Grecian” (4) as their presiding figure and asking him to grace them with his patronage and inspiration:
"To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of Harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be;
When this answer arriv’d from the jolly old Grecian
“Voice, fiddle, and flute, no longer be mute,
I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot;
And besides, I’ll instruct you, like me to entwine,
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine.” (1-8)
18> Anacreon’s reply figuratively suggests an initiation ritual whereby those “few sons of Harmony”—thereafter called “sons of Anacreon”—are introduced to the pleasures of the anacreontic symposium. The lines that follow unfold a hilarious story, whereby the gods of Olympus decide—“in transport of joy” (13)—to desert heaven and fly down to earth to join the “sons of Anacreon”. This angers Jove who is concerned that “if these mortals are suffer’d their schemes to pursue, / The devil a Goddess will stay above stairs” (11-12), and threatens to strike the “sons” with his thunder. His wrath is appeased though by Apollo—the patron god of poetry and music—who takes the society under his protection:
"Apollo got up, and cried, “prithee, ne’er quarrel,
Good King of the Gods, with my vot’ries below,
Your thunder is useless,” then shewing his laurel,
Cried, “Sic evitabile fulmen, you know.
Then over each head my laurel I’ll spread,
So my sons from your crackers no mischief shall dread,
Whilst snug in their club-room they jovially twine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine.” (25-32)
19> Having received the blessing of Apollo’s laurel, the club is thus metaphorically marked as a space, not simply for urbane conviviality, but also for literary and musical production.
20> Indeed the Anacreontic Society appears to have been prolific, as it generated a large volume of convivial songs. Many of these probably escaped the immediate context of the Anacreontic Society and followed miscellaneous lines of broader dissemination that proliferated their social uses. The Anacreontic Song, for instance, enjoyed considerable popularity and was often printed as a broadside. Its tune by John Stafford Smith soon became well known and was used to set up various other songs in England. Amazingly enough, the traces of this popular song can even be found up until the present day as it traveled all the way to America, where, with the addition of new words in the early years of the nineteenth century, it provided the setting for the ‘Star-spangled Banner’, the piece we all know today as the National Anthem of the United States.[20]
21> Various other songs also were reproduced in a variety of printed materials—such as song-books and, most often, broadsides—that enabled their transmission to new audiences. In quite a few of these editions, the songs are advertised for their novelty, but also for the social context within which they were produced—an element that reflects what had apparently become common practice among printers and booksellers during this period, as the association of the printed text with the fashionable social context of clubs like the Anacreontic Society would probably increase the marketability of the edition. Thus a title like Brave boys let us live . . . A new drinking song, as sung at the Anacreontic Society (published in broadside, possibly in 1790) provides a typical example of how songs would be advertised at a time when the popularity of the Anacreontic Society seems to have been at its peak point.
22> One soon realizes that the example of the Anacreontic Society serves to highlight part of a much bigger picture that concerns the broader dissemination of the anacreontic in the eighteenth century. A closer look reveals that during this process an even greater set of social uses was applied to the genre, some of which might extend beyond all-male groups to involve the participation of heterosexual audiences. Evidence suggests that a number of anacreontic verses were put to music and used in various social functions and leisure activities that accommodated both men and women—such as private and public concerts at theatres, gardens and other venues. These provided alternative types of sociability that grew in parallel to the tradition of male clubbing to form an integral part of the commercialized culture of leisure discussed earlier on. Volumes like The Muses Banquet (published in 1792) bring together a number convivial songs about love and wine, in the manner of the anacreontic, with an indication that those were sung at a variety of social venues—ranging, as the full title of the edition suggests, from all-male societies like the Anacreontic Society and the Beef Steak Club to theatres and “other Convivial and Polite Assemblies in Town” that would accommodate both sexes. A number of these texts possibly found common use, circulating freely amongst different types of venues.
23> Gradually the term ‘anacreontic’ was also used in various other forms of public entertainments that involved both male and female participation, like the opera and ballet. These developments originated in the Continent as French and Italian musicians in the eighteenth century composed a number of ‘anacreontic’ ballets and operas—works that were often based on fictional stories about the life of Anacreon, Cupid narratives or other amatory themes. Jean Philippe Rameau’s Les Surprises de l’Amour (or The Surprises of Love), for instance, had a one-act ballet entitled Anacréon attached to it when the work was mounted at the Opera in Paris in 1757. By the end of the eighteenth century, ‘anacreontic’ ballet-operas became a distinctive genre that included works like Tout Cède à l’Amour (or Love Conquers All), produced by Eugène Hus in 1781, and Le Bonheur est d’Aimer (or Happiness is Being in Love), produced by Jean Bercher in 1785.[21]
24> Such entertainments were enjoyed by English men and women who traveled to the Continent. Some, however, were also performed in England as the trend soon took hold of English audiences as well. Luigi Cherubini’s opera Anacréon, ou l’Amour Fugitif (composed about 1800), for example, enjoyed considerable popularity in England, where it ran through several editions—its overture, in particular, which would probably be performed on many occasions as an individual piece. The list also includes various other ‘anacreontic’ ballets that were imported in England. For instance, Narcise et les Giroces. The last . . . Anacreontic Ballet by Sigr. Rossi . . . was arranged for the pianoforte and the harp by an English composer, Henry Rowley Bishop, while Cesare Bossi’s Paphos Assiégé par les Scythes. A Grand Anacreontic Ballet was printed in England and performed (about 1800) at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket.
25> As it appears, during this period the anacreontic found its broadest applications as it came to be associated with a wide range of social uses that grew in parallel to the male culture of clubbing described above. All in all, the genre seems to warrant a more comprehensive examination as it appears to yield surprising insights into the development of various forms of public sociability in early modern England, making broader suggestions about the complex relationship between literary texts and cultural contexts.
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Notes
[1] Modern scholarship has proved that the Anacreontea were written by a number of poets during a span of about six hundred years, from the late Hellenistic to the Byzantine period. Here ‘Anacreon’ is referred to as the author of the corpus for the sake of economy.
[2] In these texts, Jonson plays mischievously with the anacreontic themes of love and old age. Why I Write not of Love, for instance, offers a playful beginning to The Forest that provides an ironic version of those little Cupid narratives in the Anacreontea.
[3] This renewed scholarly interest in the Anacreontea was marked by the publication of M. L. West’s new Teubner edition of the Carmina Anacreontea in 1984, D. A. Campbell’s Loeb edition in 1988—that also made the corpus readily available in English—and by Patricia Rosenmeyer’s The Poetics of Imitation, a thought-provoking book-length study of the original collection. The publication of John O’Brien’s Anacreon Redivivus further points to an increasing scholarly interest in the French translations and imitations of the Anacreontea produced by the poets of the Pléiade—especially by Pierre de Ronsard and Rémy Belleau—in the mid-sixteenth century. However, we have not so far seen any attempt for a sustained consideration of the transmission of this genre in England.
[4] A more comprehensive discussion of the appropriation of the anacreontic by Jonson and his ‘sons’ may be found in my chapter “The Anacreontea and a Tradition of Refined Male Sociability” in A Pleasing Sinne.
[5] Works like Plato’s Symposion and Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae suggest a relaxed and friendly atmosphere where the symposium provides the background for elaborate philosophical discussions on a variety of issues.
[6] See, for instance, Anacreontea 47 (10-12) and Anacreontea 38 (11-12).
[7] In contrast to the ideal set of values projected in his Leges Convivales of course, Jonson was reputed to be a heavy drinker. That is suggested, for instance, in the Conversations with Drummond, or in the notes of John Aubrey and Archdeacon Plume, reproduced by Herford and Simpson in their edition of Jonson’s works (178-88).
[8] Anacreon is one of the most widely represented classical authors in the Gentleman’s Magazine, its volumes containing numerous anacreontic texts.
[9] Catherine Ferris’s article in Brio provides a useful study of the collection of the Anacreontic Society of Dublin—held in the library of the Royal Irish Academy of Music—that serves to shed light on the music scene in Dublin during the period. However, there has so far been no attempt to provide a comprehensive examination of all the ‘anacreontic’ societies formed in the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth century or to establish the possible inter-connections among these organizations.
[10] Unless otherwise stated, quotations that follow here are drawn from this document.
[11] According to the author of this letter, following its move to the Crown and Anchor, the club was allowed to expand considerably and to increase its membership, initially from twenty-five to forty members and gradually to eighty. Existing members were also allowed to invite a friend to the meetings, though as the membership grew this was limited to alternate nights.
[12] For an insightful discussion of the development of the English alehouse see Clark, The English Alehouse.
[13] See Laurence E. Klein’s discussion in “Coffeehouse Civility”.
[14] See, for instance, The Birth of a Consumer Society.
[15] See, N. McKendrick, “The Consumer Revolution of Eighteenth-Century England” in The Birth of a Consumer Society, pp.9-33.
[16] As Woodman comments, “considerable concern was expressed in the period about these symptoms of what one writer called the ‘Genteel Mania’ and ‘imitating every station above our own’” (19-20).
[17] Big urban centers in particular experienced what has been called by historians an “Urban Renaissance”, a transformation in their public life that included the provision of various kinds of high-status leisure. See Borsay’s The English Urban Renaissance.
[18] Clark’s study follows the history of the development of clubs from their early stages in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the eighteenth century, when they became formalized institutions. As Clark points out, besides being almost exclusively based in big urban centers, the majority of these societies attracted a male membership. Female societies represented a tiny fragment of this primarily male public sphere (198-204).
[19] As pointed out in the History of the Anacreontic Society, the concert offered in the first section of its entertainments “consist[ed] of the best performers … in London,” who were honorary members of the society.
[20] This piece of evidence is probably only part of the bigger picture that contains the transmission of the song to America. Though these threads fall outside the scope of the current paper, I suspect that the anacreontic melody acquired political connotations and was used to set up a number of patriotic folk songs in America, especially during the period of the American civil war.
[21] For a discussion of ‘anacreontic’ ballets in eighteenth-century France, see Judith Chazin-Bennahum’s “Wine, Women and Song.”
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Works Cited
Achilleos, Stella. “The Anacreontea and a Tradition of Refined Male Sociability.” A Pleasing Sinne. Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England. Ed. Adam Smyth. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004. 21-35.
Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Ed. with English trans. by D. A. Campbell, Loeb Classical Library: Greek Lyric, II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1988.
Ben Jonson. Ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-52.
Bishop, Henry Rowley. Narcisse et les Giroces. The last . . . Anacreontic Ballet by Sigr. Rossi . . . Composed and Arranged for the Pianoforte or Harp. London, [1806].
Borsay, Peter. The English Urban Renaissance. Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1660-1770. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Bossi, Cesare. Paphos Assiégé par les Scythes. A Grand Anacreontic Ballet, as Performed at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket. Composed and Arranged for the Piano-forte by C. Bossi. London: Rt. Birchall, [1800].
Brave boys let us live. Lets cheerfully live till we dye. A new drinking song, as sung at the Anacreontic Society. [London]: J. Fentum, [1790].
Carmina Anacreontea. Ed. Martin L. West. Leipzig: Teubner, 1984.
Chazin-Bennahum, Judith. “Wine, Women and Song. Anacreon’s Triple Threat to French Eighteenth-Century Ballet.” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 5.1 (1987): 55-64.
Cherubini, Luigi. Anacréon, ou l’Amour Fugitif. Opéra Ballet en Deux Acts . . . Paris: Luigi Cherubini, [1803].
Clark, Peter. British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800. The Origins of an Associational World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.
---. The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200-1830. London and New York: Longman, 1983.
Ferris, Catherine. “The Music Collections of the Anacreontic Society and the Sons of Handel Society and Music Making in Dublin c1740-1865.” Brio 43.1 (2006): 21-33.
Herrick, Robert. The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick. Ed. L. C. Martin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
“History of the Anacreontic Society.” Gentleman’s Magazine 50 (1780): 224.
Klein, Lawrence E. “Coffeehouse Civility, 1660-1714: An Aspect of Post-Courtly Culture in England.” Huntington Library Quarterly 59 (1997): 31-51.
McKendrick, N., J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, eds. The Birth of a Consumer Society. The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. London: Europa, 1982.
O’Brien, John. Anacreon Redivivus. A Study of Anacreontic Translation in Mid-Sixteenth-Century France. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Rameau, Jean Philippe. Les Surprises de l’Amour. Anacréon. Ballet en un Acte Détaché des Surprises de l’Amour. Paris: Daumont, [1757].
Rosenmeyer, Patricia A. The Poetics of Imitation. Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
The Muses Banquet, or Vocal Repository, for the Year 1792. Being the Newest and Most Modern Collection of Songs, Duets, Trios, &c. Lately Sung at the Anacreontic Society, Theatres Royal, Vauxhaul, Sadler’s Wells, Dibdin’s Sans Souci, Beef Steak Club, Astley’s, Circus, and at other Convivial and Polite Assemblies in Town. To which is added a Variety of Toasts and Sentiments. London: W. Cavill, 1792.
Woodman, Thomas. Politeness and Poetry in the Age of Pope. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1989.
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Stella Achilleos is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Nicosia. A graduate of the University of Reading (Ph.D. 2002), she has worked extensively on the social, cultural and political uses of the Anacreontea in early modern England. Currently her work also concentrates on the exploration of colonial space in Ben Jonson’s dramatic texts.
University of Nicosia
The Anacreontic and the Growth of Sociability in Early Modern England
1> The early modern period witnessed the production of a great number of English translations and imitations of the Anacreontea—an ancient Greek lyric corpus of verses devoted to the pleasures of love and wine that survived under the name of Anacreon and was first published by Henricus Stephanus in 1554.[1] While the publication of this collection had an immediate impact on French poets (especially on Pierre de Ronsard and Rémy Belleau), the vogue for anacreontic texts in England started in the seventeenth century. Appropriated by Ben Jonson in various places—like Why I Write not of Love or in A Celebration of Charis[2]—the anacreontic was further taken up by various Cavalier poets of the mid-seventeenth century. Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Abraham Cowley, Thomas Stanley and Charles Cotton produced a number of translations and imitations of the genre. Mainly reproduced in the first instance within circles of such classically-educated individuals who could read the original text or a Latin translation, the anacreontic subsequently followed a process of broader dissemination as it was gradually more widely reproduced in the vernacular. So by the end of the eighteenth century the anacreontic had emerged as an English genre in its own right that came to provide a very recognizable—and considerably popular—form of symposiastic verse.
2> Though in recent years we have witnessed increasing scholarly interest in the original collection, the phenomenon of the popularity of this genre in early modern England has received little critical attention.[3] Yet the reception of the Anacreontea in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England points to an intriguing cultural narrative that deserves more careful consideration, as the genre appears to have been intricately interwoven with a broader set of social and cultural uses. As I have argued elsewhere, the appropriation of the genre provides the identifier for a tradition of refined male sociability that may, in the first instance, be associated with a culture of tavern-clubbing developed in the seventeenth century by Ben Jonson and his ‘sons’.[4] Taking a brief look at the formative moments of that culture, my purpose here will be to concentrate on how that was subsequently developed and redefined in the eighteenth century—when one finds the formation of the Anacreontic Society of London and various other convivial social clubs that took their special identity by the anacreontic associations.
3> The social implications of the anacreontic are suggested by the original ancient Greek corpus. Preserved in the tenth-century Palatine Anthology under the title Anacreon of Teos’s Symposiastic Hemiambics, the poems in the collection were probably composed to provide entertainment on various symposiastic occasions. Like the Roman ‘convivium’, the ‘symposio’ held a significant role in the social life of ancient Greece: attended almost exclusively by men, it presented an occasion not simply for convivial drinking, but also for social intercourse, conversation, and frequently for literary composition.[5] Though to some readers of the Anacreontea, Anacreon’s voice may sound like the solipsistic voice of an old man who utters perpetual exhortations to a dream world of pleasure that no one else seems to share, the texts in fact contain a number of references to elements of communal drinking. Anacreontea 42 and 50, for instance, express the old speaker’s wish to share his symposiastic space with young male companions who will make him forget the restrictions imposed upon him by senility. More importantly, the anacreontic symposium involves the careful attendance to a set of ritual activities that suggest the need to maintain a sense of order and temperance. Various exhortations to wine-bearers to mix wine and water in the due proportions, for example, point to the wish to preserve an equilibrium and thus to construct a refined symposiastic space where excessive drinking is not allowed to interfere with the cheerful and companionate spirit of the occasion.[6]
4> This concept of refined sociability was taken up by various poets who translated or imitated the Anacreontea in seventeenth-century England—especially, as I have mentioned, by Ben Jonson and his ‘sons’ who often evoked the anacreontic model in their descriptions of genial symposiastic scenes. In Hesperides, for instance, Robert Herrick frequently looks back to Anacreon to draw a space of conviviality that is at once indulgent and controlled. Besides numerous translations and close imitations of the Anacreontea, Herrick’s collection contains various texts that appropriate more loosely the concept of the anacreontic symposium. Further, the model of Anacreon is often blended in Hesperides with that of Horace—whose Odes famously celebrate moderation—to yield a space of carefree, yet mild, merry-making. In An Ode to Sir Clipsebie Crew, for example, Herrick calls upon “Anacreon / To grace the frantick Thyrse” (8-9) and then asks for:
". . . Horace to be read,
Which sung, or seyd,
A Goblet, to the brim,
Of Lyrick Wine, both swell’d and crown’d,
A Round,
We quaffe to him." (13-18)
5> The concept of refined conviviality evoked in such descriptions is in fact associated by Herrick with the jovial drinking sessions held by Ben Jonson and his ‘sons’ at various London taverns in the 1620s and 1630s. In An Ode for Him, Herrick nostalgically looks back to those “Lyrick Feasts” shared by the older poet and his young followers:
"Ah Ben!
Say how, or when
Shall we thy Guests
Meet at those Lyrick Feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the triple Tunne?
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each Verse of thine
Out-did the meate, out-did the frolick wine." (1-10)
6> The lines here are reminiscent of the figure of Anacreon in Anacreontea 53 who wants to drink and dance among youths and to “go mad gracefully” (14). At the same time, the image of the boon companions going “nobly wild” rather than “mad” reminds us of Jonson’s Leges Convivales, his “Sociable Rules for the Apollo”—the room in the Devil and St Dustan tavern near Temple Bar, where Jonson and his ‘sons’ often met. Jonson’s code describes an intimate group of male companions who indulge in a polite kind of merry-making. The code in many ways suggests the exclusive nature of this group: besides being written in Latin, it also contains certain rules that invite those who are learned to join in, while fools and ignorant men are asked to stay away. The rules, further, recommend moderation in drinking and merry-making, so as to safeguard the meetings against riotous behavior.[7] As Alexander Brome’s translation of rules eleven to thirteen suggests, gatherings are defined as refined occasions for polite conversation; thus boon companions are prompted to “let [their] only emulation be / Not drinking much, but talking wittily” (13-14) and to “stir up / Each other with a moderate chirping cup” (15-16).
7> A number of convivial verses by the ‘sons of Ben’ that reproduce images of such an exclusive and urbane kind of tavern-clubbing were probably composed within the context of the Apollo in the 1620s and 1630s. It may be argued, for instance, that a number of Herrick’s anacreontics date back to that period. These, however, were presented—together with various other verses—in a definitive act of publication in Hesperides in 1648. At about that time, the anacreontic acquired distinct political resonances as it was mainly reproduced within circles of royalist poets. Besides Robert Herrick, Alexander Brome, Richard Lovelace, Charles Cotton, John Cleveland, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas Stanley produced translations and imitations of the Anacreontea, redefining the anacreontic symposium as a space for royalist bonding and camaraderie.
8> Primarily reproduced in the first half of the seventeenth century within such choice groups of learned or sophisticated figures, the anacreontic provided a rather elite discourse marked out by education and class. Subsequently though the genre followed a process of broader dissemination, during which the boundaries between the elite and the popular were constantly renegotiated. As the anacreontic started to become more widely reproduced in the vernacular, it was channeled to various new audiences further down the social scale or to readers who did not necessarily have knowledge of the original collection. Anacreontic texts appeared in various sorts of printed material that contributed to this wide dissemination of the genre—from broadsides to song-books and periodical publications, like the Gentleman’s Magazine.[8] A look into eighteenth-century materials further reveals an abundance of texts called ‘anacreontics’ that do not so strictly adhere to the original corpus. Attesting to the emergence of the anacreontic as an English genre in its own right, the term ‘anacreontic’ during this period comes to describe more broadly a kind of light and carefree literary composition, loosely appropriating the anacreontic subject matter.
9> Quite importantly, this process of broader dissemination reveals a whole new range of social and cultural uses of the genre, pointing at the same time to the development of new forms of public sociability in England. The most telling examples of how the tradition of refined sociability associated with the anacreontic in the seventeenth century was subsequently developed and redefined are provided by the formation in the eighteenth century of a number of social and musical societies that were named after Anacreon. The period notably witnessed the founding of an Anacreontic Society in London (that functioned from 1766 to 1793) and homonymous institutions in various other urban centers across the country. An Anacreontic Society, for instance, was formed in Birmingham in 1793, while another one was active in Norwich from about 1795. Evidence further points to the existence of such societies in Ireland. The Anacreontic Society of Dublin in fact preceded and outlasted that of London as it was active from about 1740 to 1865.[9] Another homonymous organization was also established in Belfast in 1814.
10> Though evidence may be scarce, details about the memberships and activities of these societies may be gleaned from diaries, letters, newspapers and other extant records of the period. Still largely unexplored, their music collections also offer a wealth of primary sources that can shed further light on these institutions. The majority of materials available to us today though concern the Anacreontic Society of London. While my discussion here will concentrate on this institution, its example I believe is more broadly suggestive. As I would like to argue, the formation of this society provides a useful insight into the growth of male sociability in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Further, its appropriation of the anacreontic points to how the genre intriguingly continued to provide an idiom of civility and to identify an urbane set of discourses, though perhaps not quite so select or exclusive as the tradition of male tavern-clubbing established by Jonson and his ‘sons’ in the seventeenth century.
11> A letter published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1780 (under the title History of the Anacreontic Society) provides one of our main sources of information about this social gentlemen’s club that thrived in London in the second half of the eighteenth century. Apparently, the society had by 1780 come to enjoy considerable popularity and public acclaim, as the author’s opening remark to the editor of the magazine—“Mr. Urban”—indicates:
"I will not pay you so ill a compliment to suppose you have never heard of the Anacreontic Society. I therefore flatter myself the following account of its institution and progress will not be unacceptable to you or your polite readers."[10]
12> Defined throughout its development as a male institution, the society held its meetings in establishments traditionally frequented by a male clientele:
"[B]egot and christened by a Mr. S – th about the year 1766, at a genteel public-house, [the Anacreontic Society] was nursed at the Feathers and Half-moon Taverns in Cheapside, and received a great part of its establishment at the London Coffee-house."
13> When the numerous applications for membership (a sign no doubt of the growing popularity of the society) required its expansion to more spacious premises, the club was again housed in a public drinking house, the Crown and Anchor in the Strand.[11] By the eighteenth century, social drinking at pubs, taverns and inns had been established as an exclusive practice that was nearly always confined to men.[12] The small number of women who appeared in this male public sphere would usually be as workers or prostitutes. Coffeehouses, that made their first appearance in the second half of the seventeenth century, also became a primarily male space where men could meet to socialize, read a variety of materials provided by the coffee-sellers and discuss topics of general interest.[13] The Anacreontic Society was reportedly dissolved in 1793, when ladies were admitted to view the proceedings of one of its meetings—to the detriment of many of its members.
14> Despite its exclusiveness in terms of sex, the Anacreontic Society drew members from a variety of social backgrounds. Though membership would carry the payment of a subscription fee (three guineas for existing member and three and a half for new ones), that would probably still allow individuals from a wide range of social groups to apply. The membership of the Anacreontic Society, we are told, consisted of “Peers, Commoners, Aldermen, Gentlemen, Proctors, Actors, and Polite Tradesmen.” In effect, besides members of the nobility and high-ranking officials, the society would also attract individuals from a wide range of groups further down the social scale—from merchants, to professional men and artisans. The educational level of this mixed group would probably be equally diverse. Some of them might have been classically educated and able to recognize and appreciate the significance of the appropriation of the Anacreontea, while others—who had a more basic educational background—would not have the same appreciation of the various ways in which the anacreontic was appropriated by the society.
15> The common denominator of all these individuals who sought to become members of the Anacreontic Society would probably be their pursuit of social status and refinement. In many ways, this marks broader social and financial developments in eighteenth-century England. It has often been suggested that the growth of industry and commerce during this period brought about the financial prosperity of an increasing part of the population of the country, that extended well beyond the traditional landed aristocracy and gentry. This resulted in what has been called the “commercialization of leisure”.[14] Ever-growing numbers of individuals were now able to buy products that were not restricted to their basic needs.[15] As Thomas Woodman has noted, this new consumerism involved a growing interest in politeness and social emulation.[16] One of the most significant manifestations of this consumerist society was an explosion in the demand for fashionable cultural products and forms of sociability that enabled individuals to display themselves and pursue social status.[17]
16> The Anacreontic Society of London was notably one of a great number of clubs and societies established during this period to supply for this booming demand for high-status leisure. Peter Clark’s study of British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800 serves to demonstrate how a wide range of such institutions transformed the social life of big urban centers to become a distinctive feature of eighteenth-century England.[18] While certain societies might have remained small and intimate, a great number of clubs grew into large, formalized institutions with a fixed schedule of meetings and an elaborately prepared set of entertainments, often based on ceremonial arrangements that provided an element of ritual and highlighted the formality of the meetings. The History of the Anacreontic Society refers to a fixed and well-regulated set of activities—mainly musical—that were divided in three distinct sections (a formal concert, a dinner and after-dinner entertainments that would include the singing of catches and glees), each held in dedicated rooms. Further, prestigious clubs would often attract eminent musicians—from England and the Continent—who would be invited to give concerts or simply to attend meetings.[19] Franz Joseph Haydn’s attendance of one of the meetings as honorary guest of the Anacreontic Society of London in 1791 probably provided the highlight of the season, attesting to the high profile of the club at the time.
17> In effect, the establishment of the Anacreontic Society of London finds its place in a much broader framework of developments that marked the growth of public sociability in eighteenth-century England. At the same time though, this society—just as its homonymous organizations in other urban centers—appears to have had a very distinctive social identity that is marked by its multifarious associations with Anacreon and the anacreontic model. The naming of the club after the Greek lyric poet who sang of love and wine makes broader claims to a space of civilization represented by the classical world. More specifically though, it suggests the reappropriation of the concept of the anacreontic symposium as a discourse of civil and refined sociability. Besides the name of the club, its special identity is further suggested by its constitutional song, The Anacreontic Song, or, as it became more widely known, To Anacreon in Heaven. Written by Ralph Tomlison, once president of the club, the song would be “chorused by the whole company” to “open the mirth of the evening”. This would enhance the element of ritual in the proceedings of each meeting, providing a ceremonious act of solidarity and group pledging to the society’s “patron”. The song further suggests a conscious act of public fashioning, as it tells a myth that humorously accounts for the special identity of the society. It begins with “a few sons of Harmony” (2) calling upon “the jolly old Grecian” (4) as their presiding figure and asking him to grace them with his patronage and inspiration:
"To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of Harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be;
When this answer arriv’d from the jolly old Grecian
“Voice, fiddle, and flute, no longer be mute,
I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot;
And besides, I’ll instruct you, like me to entwine,
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine.” (1-8)
18> Anacreon’s reply figuratively suggests an initiation ritual whereby those “few sons of Harmony”—thereafter called “sons of Anacreon”—are introduced to the pleasures of the anacreontic symposium. The lines that follow unfold a hilarious story, whereby the gods of Olympus decide—“in transport of joy” (13)—to desert heaven and fly down to earth to join the “sons of Anacreon”. This angers Jove who is concerned that “if these mortals are suffer’d their schemes to pursue, / The devil a Goddess will stay above stairs” (11-12), and threatens to strike the “sons” with his thunder. His wrath is appeased though by Apollo—the patron god of poetry and music—who takes the society under his protection:
"Apollo got up, and cried, “prithee, ne’er quarrel,
Good King of the Gods, with my vot’ries below,
Your thunder is useless,” then shewing his laurel,
Cried, “Sic evitabile fulmen, you know.
Then over each head my laurel I’ll spread,
So my sons from your crackers no mischief shall dread,
Whilst snug in their club-room they jovially twine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine.” (25-32)
19> Having received the blessing of Apollo’s laurel, the club is thus metaphorically marked as a space, not simply for urbane conviviality, but also for literary and musical production.
20> Indeed the Anacreontic Society appears to have been prolific, as it generated a large volume of convivial songs. Many of these probably escaped the immediate context of the Anacreontic Society and followed miscellaneous lines of broader dissemination that proliferated their social uses. The Anacreontic Song, for instance, enjoyed considerable popularity and was often printed as a broadside. Its tune by John Stafford Smith soon became well known and was used to set up various other songs in England. Amazingly enough, the traces of this popular song can even be found up until the present day as it traveled all the way to America, where, with the addition of new words in the early years of the nineteenth century, it provided the setting for the ‘Star-spangled Banner’, the piece we all know today as the National Anthem of the United States.[20]
21> Various other songs also were reproduced in a variety of printed materials—such as song-books and, most often, broadsides—that enabled their transmission to new audiences. In quite a few of these editions, the songs are advertised for their novelty, but also for the social context within which they were produced—an element that reflects what had apparently become common practice among printers and booksellers during this period, as the association of the printed text with the fashionable social context of clubs like the Anacreontic Society would probably increase the marketability of the edition. Thus a title like Brave boys let us live . . . A new drinking song, as sung at the Anacreontic Society (published in broadside, possibly in 1790) provides a typical example of how songs would be advertised at a time when the popularity of the Anacreontic Society seems to have been at its peak point.
22> One soon realizes that the example of the Anacreontic Society serves to highlight part of a much bigger picture that concerns the broader dissemination of the anacreontic in the eighteenth century. A closer look reveals that during this process an even greater set of social uses was applied to the genre, some of which might extend beyond all-male groups to involve the participation of heterosexual audiences. Evidence suggests that a number of anacreontic verses were put to music and used in various social functions and leisure activities that accommodated both men and women—such as private and public concerts at theatres, gardens and other venues. These provided alternative types of sociability that grew in parallel to the tradition of male clubbing to form an integral part of the commercialized culture of leisure discussed earlier on. Volumes like The Muses Banquet (published in 1792) bring together a number convivial songs about love and wine, in the manner of the anacreontic, with an indication that those were sung at a variety of social venues—ranging, as the full title of the edition suggests, from all-male societies like the Anacreontic Society and the Beef Steak Club to theatres and “other Convivial and Polite Assemblies in Town” that would accommodate both sexes. A number of these texts possibly found common use, circulating freely amongst different types of venues.
23> Gradually the term ‘anacreontic’ was also used in various other forms of public entertainments that involved both male and female participation, like the opera and ballet. These developments originated in the Continent as French and Italian musicians in the eighteenth century composed a number of ‘anacreontic’ ballets and operas—works that were often based on fictional stories about the life of Anacreon, Cupid narratives or other amatory themes. Jean Philippe Rameau’s Les Surprises de l’Amour (or The Surprises of Love), for instance, had a one-act ballet entitled Anacréon attached to it when the work was mounted at the Opera in Paris in 1757. By the end of the eighteenth century, ‘anacreontic’ ballet-operas became a distinctive genre that included works like Tout Cède à l’Amour (or Love Conquers All), produced by Eugène Hus in 1781, and Le Bonheur est d’Aimer (or Happiness is Being in Love), produced by Jean Bercher in 1785.[21]
24> Such entertainments were enjoyed by English men and women who traveled to the Continent. Some, however, were also performed in England as the trend soon took hold of English audiences as well. Luigi Cherubini’s opera Anacréon, ou l’Amour Fugitif (composed about 1800), for example, enjoyed considerable popularity in England, where it ran through several editions—its overture, in particular, which would probably be performed on many occasions as an individual piece. The list also includes various other ‘anacreontic’ ballets that were imported in England. For instance, Narcise et les Giroces. The last . . . Anacreontic Ballet by Sigr. Rossi . . . was arranged for the pianoforte and the harp by an English composer, Henry Rowley Bishop, while Cesare Bossi’s Paphos Assiégé par les Scythes. A Grand Anacreontic Ballet was printed in England and performed (about 1800) at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket.
25> As it appears, during this period the anacreontic found its broadest applications as it came to be associated with a wide range of social uses that grew in parallel to the male culture of clubbing described above. All in all, the genre seems to warrant a more comprehensive examination as it appears to yield surprising insights into the development of various forms of public sociability in early modern England, making broader suggestions about the complex relationship between literary texts and cultural contexts.
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Notes
[1] Modern scholarship has proved that the Anacreontea were written by a number of poets during a span of about six hundred years, from the late Hellenistic to the Byzantine period. Here ‘Anacreon’ is referred to as the author of the corpus for the sake of economy.
[2] In these texts, Jonson plays mischievously with the anacreontic themes of love and old age. Why I Write not of Love, for instance, offers a playful beginning to The Forest that provides an ironic version of those little Cupid narratives in the Anacreontea.
[3] This renewed scholarly interest in the Anacreontea was marked by the publication of M. L. West’s new Teubner edition of the Carmina Anacreontea in 1984, D. A. Campbell’s Loeb edition in 1988—that also made the corpus readily available in English—and by Patricia Rosenmeyer’s The Poetics of Imitation, a thought-provoking book-length study of the original collection. The publication of John O’Brien’s Anacreon Redivivus further points to an increasing scholarly interest in the French translations and imitations of the Anacreontea produced by the poets of the Pléiade—especially by Pierre de Ronsard and Rémy Belleau—in the mid-sixteenth century. However, we have not so far seen any attempt for a sustained consideration of the transmission of this genre in England.
[4] A more comprehensive discussion of the appropriation of the anacreontic by Jonson and his ‘sons’ may be found in my chapter “The Anacreontea and a Tradition of Refined Male Sociability” in A Pleasing Sinne.
[5] Works like Plato’s Symposion and Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae suggest a relaxed and friendly atmosphere where the symposium provides the background for elaborate philosophical discussions on a variety of issues.
[6] See, for instance, Anacreontea 47 (10-12) and Anacreontea 38 (11-12).
[7] In contrast to the ideal set of values projected in his Leges Convivales of course, Jonson was reputed to be a heavy drinker. That is suggested, for instance, in the Conversations with Drummond, or in the notes of John Aubrey and Archdeacon Plume, reproduced by Herford and Simpson in their edition of Jonson’s works (178-88).
[8] Anacreon is one of the most widely represented classical authors in the Gentleman’s Magazine, its volumes containing numerous anacreontic texts.
[9] Catherine Ferris’s article in Brio provides a useful study of the collection of the Anacreontic Society of Dublin—held in the library of the Royal Irish Academy of Music—that serves to shed light on the music scene in Dublin during the period. However, there has so far been no attempt to provide a comprehensive examination of all the ‘anacreontic’ societies formed in the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth century or to establish the possible inter-connections among these organizations.
[10] Unless otherwise stated, quotations that follow here are drawn from this document.
[11] According to the author of this letter, following its move to the Crown and Anchor, the club was allowed to expand considerably and to increase its membership, initially from twenty-five to forty members and gradually to eighty. Existing members were also allowed to invite a friend to the meetings, though as the membership grew this was limited to alternate nights.
[12] For an insightful discussion of the development of the English alehouse see Clark, The English Alehouse.
[13] See Laurence E. Klein’s discussion in “Coffeehouse Civility”.
[14] See, for instance, The Birth of a Consumer Society.
[15] See, N. McKendrick, “The Consumer Revolution of Eighteenth-Century England” in The Birth of a Consumer Society, pp.9-33.
[16] As Woodman comments, “considerable concern was expressed in the period about these symptoms of what one writer called the ‘Genteel Mania’ and ‘imitating every station above our own’” (19-20).
[17] Big urban centers in particular experienced what has been called by historians an “Urban Renaissance”, a transformation in their public life that included the provision of various kinds of high-status leisure. See Borsay’s The English Urban Renaissance.
[18] Clark’s study follows the history of the development of clubs from their early stages in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the eighteenth century, when they became formalized institutions. As Clark points out, besides being almost exclusively based in big urban centers, the majority of these societies attracted a male membership. Female societies represented a tiny fragment of this primarily male public sphere (198-204).
[19] As pointed out in the History of the Anacreontic Society, the concert offered in the first section of its entertainments “consist[ed] of the best performers … in London,” who were honorary members of the society.
[20] This piece of evidence is probably only part of the bigger picture that contains the transmission of the song to America. Though these threads fall outside the scope of the current paper, I suspect that the anacreontic melody acquired political connotations and was used to set up a number of patriotic folk songs in America, especially during the period of the American civil war.
[21] For a discussion of ‘anacreontic’ ballets in eighteenth-century France, see Judith Chazin-Bennahum’s “Wine, Women and Song.”
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Works Cited
Achilleos, Stella. “The Anacreontea and a Tradition of Refined Male Sociability.” A Pleasing Sinne. Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England. Ed. Adam Smyth. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004. 21-35.
Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Ed. with English trans. by D. A. Campbell, Loeb Classical Library: Greek Lyric, II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1988.
Ben Jonson. Ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-52.
Bishop, Henry Rowley. Narcisse et les Giroces. The last . . . Anacreontic Ballet by Sigr. Rossi . . . Composed and Arranged for the Pianoforte or Harp. London, [1806].
Borsay, Peter. The English Urban Renaissance. Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1660-1770. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Bossi, Cesare. Paphos Assiégé par les Scythes. A Grand Anacreontic Ballet, as Performed at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket. Composed and Arranged for the Piano-forte by C. Bossi. London: Rt. Birchall, [1800].
Brave boys let us live. Lets cheerfully live till we dye. A new drinking song, as sung at the Anacreontic Society. [London]: J. Fentum, [1790].
Carmina Anacreontea. Ed. Martin L. West. Leipzig: Teubner, 1984.
Chazin-Bennahum, Judith. “Wine, Women and Song. Anacreon’s Triple Threat to French Eighteenth-Century Ballet.” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 5.1 (1987): 55-64.
Cherubini, Luigi. Anacréon, ou l’Amour Fugitif. Opéra Ballet en Deux Acts . . . Paris: Luigi Cherubini, [1803].
Clark, Peter. British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800. The Origins of an Associational World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.
---. The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200-1830. London and New York: Longman, 1983.
Ferris, Catherine. “The Music Collections of the Anacreontic Society and the Sons of Handel Society and Music Making in Dublin c1740-1865.” Brio 43.1 (2006): 21-33.
Herrick, Robert. The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick. Ed. L. C. Martin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
“History of the Anacreontic Society.” Gentleman’s Magazine 50 (1780): 224.
Klein, Lawrence E. “Coffeehouse Civility, 1660-1714: An Aspect of Post-Courtly Culture in England.” Huntington Library Quarterly 59 (1997): 31-51.
McKendrick, N., J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, eds. The Birth of a Consumer Society. The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. London: Europa, 1982.
O’Brien, John. Anacreon Redivivus. A Study of Anacreontic Translation in Mid-Sixteenth-Century France. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Rameau, Jean Philippe. Les Surprises de l’Amour. Anacréon. Ballet en un Acte Détaché des Surprises de l’Amour. Paris: Daumont, [1757].
Rosenmeyer, Patricia A. The Poetics of Imitation. Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
The Muses Banquet, or Vocal Repository, for the Year 1792. Being the Newest and Most Modern Collection of Songs, Duets, Trios, &c. Lately Sung at the Anacreontic Society, Theatres Royal, Vauxhaul, Sadler’s Wells, Dibdin’s Sans Souci, Beef Steak Club, Astley’s, Circus, and at other Convivial and Polite Assemblies in Town. To which is added a Variety of Toasts and Sentiments. London: W. Cavill, 1792.
Woodman, Thomas. Politeness and Poetry in the Age of Pope. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1989.
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Stella Achilleos is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Nicosia. A graduate of the University of Reading (Ph.D. 2002), she has worked extensively on the social, cultural and political uses of the Anacreontea in early modern England. Currently her work also concentrates on the exploration of colonial space in Ben Jonson’s dramatic texts.
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APPOSITIONS: Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern Literature & Culture, http://appositions.blogspot.com/, ISSN: 1946-1992, Volume One (2008): Genres & Cultures
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