As much modesty as cunning"; Maurice Scève's use of a Renaissance commonplace in the escort sonnets to Microcosme

"As much modesty as cunning"; Maurice Sceve's use of a Renaissance commonplace in the escort sonnets to Microcosme I have chosen Hamlet's words to the Players as a title for this paper because they sum up two apparently contradictory aspects of Renaissance poetry that characterise particularly Maurice Sceve's escort sonnets to his long poem Microcosme, and that give these sonnets an interest and complexity that have been too little recognised. Individually and in isolation the sonnets have been acknowledged as fine examples of the sonnet form. Until recently, however, they have been inadequately treated by commentators on the long poem with regard to their locative function; that is, as proper accompaniments to the long poem. When they are mentioned in discussion of Microcosme, they are usually dismissed as a melancholic attenuation of the optimism of the long poem. This critical negligence is in large part the result of the initial non-acceptance, or, at the most, grudging acceptance, of the obvious poetic convention that Sceve is employing: the assumed modesty of the confident author. The modesty formula is clearly outlined by Curtius as one of those devices of classical and medieval rhetoric that persisted until well into the eighteenth century. That the formula was an accepted commonplace in the Renaissance is recognised not only by modern critics, but also by poets of the time. At the two extremes in their use of the modesty formula lie Ronsard and Theodore de Beze. Ronsard pays lip service to the convention when he is not assuming, with barely concealed arrogance, that through poetic frenzy he is in a special and privileged position, an attitude that was to characterise his "Epistres aux Lecteurs" throughout his career. At the other end of the scale is Beze who, after his final acceptance of the Reforme, continually criticised the doctrine of poetic frenzy ("ceulx qui proposent leurs resveries c o m m e certaines regies que tout le monde doibt ensuyvre") and spoke in all humility of "ce mien petit labeur". W e find throughout Renaissance criticism the assumption that long and arduous study was necessary for the writing of an epic poem worthy of the name. Poetry was a branch of learning, and modesty was an aspect of that necessary decorum that a writer should observe when offering his work to the public. Once again Hamlet's words are apposite: "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature" (III, ii). Curtius lists the usual ways in which the writer expressed his modest presence as submissiveness before the reader, (which later merged with a Christian humility before both God and the reader, most clearly seen in BSze); an assertion that the writer is only complying with a superior's command to write (used especially in dedicatory poetry); and the expressed desire of the writer that he wishes to spare his 206 B. Garlick readers satiety or boredom. W e shall see the ways in which Sceve uses the standard expressions of the modesty formula with the cunning and skill of the mature poet. Once his "modesty and cunning" are jointly acknowledged, the sonnets convey not pessimism but a total serenity in the knowledge of poetic power, which is a fitting tribute to the long poem. Although Sceve's awareness of age and his expression of carpe diem is more apparent in the escort sonnets than in Microcosme, these sonnets do not thereby convey a sense of autumnal melancholy, but rather an assertion of ScSve's consciousness of his poetic abilities, which is a reaffirmation of the two levels on which the long poem itself works, as testament and as creative act. The sense of "temporal urgency" that Quinones sees as characteristic of the Renaissance,7 is here resolved by the emphasis on the completed work and the wholeness of the present. The most noticeable feature of each sonnet is its air of confessional intimacy which contrasts markedly with the elevated tone of the long poem. The assumed modesty which the poet feels is necessary in any presentation of a literary work to the reading public is here expressed...