Hello and welcome to the Discourse. After the fall of Cornwell’s government and the restoration of the monarchy in England, the group of Puritans, Presbyterians, and other religious zealots faced a strong backlash. One such poetic backlash that gained huge popularity was Hudibras, a mock-heroic satirical poem written by Samuel Buttler. Hdibras was published in three parts in the years 1663, 1664, and 1678. The poem describes the last years of the Interregnum, around 1658–60, immediately before the restoration of Charles II as king in May 1660. Since the poem satirizes the Puritans and other opponents of monarchy it was cherished and supported by King Charles II. Hudibras is a mock-heroic satiric poem. This poem basically attacks the Puritans, Presbyterians, and those people who are involved in the English Civil War. Hudibras is about eleven thousand lines. It is a socio-religious satirical mock-heroic poem with little or no stress on politics. Samuel Buttler incorporated religion, science, matrimony, and superstitions with satires of socio-political, moral, and literary themes. The title of the poem is taken from the name of a knight in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Spenser, on the other hand, got the name from the king of the Britons, Rud Hud Hudibras.
The poem is built with an octosyllabic couplet with strange double rhymes. The poet changed the vowel rhymes and mixed two monosyllabic words to rhyme with a dissyllable. To show knowledge of illustrations, the poet works with the rhyme to make the burlesque effect. Hudibras is written in iambic tetrameter with closed couplets. While Buttler satirized puritans and Presbyterians through this poem, it is less an attack on the puritans than a criticism of antiquated thinking and contemporary morals, and a parody of old-fashioned literary form.
Characters:
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. Hudibras is described as a “Mirrour of Knighthood.” that is, an epitome of knighthood. He is a combination of incongruous traits and a Presbyterian knight errant. He is hypocritically shy and cowardly. Hudibras even has difficulty mounting and staying on, his horse. The poet describes Hudibras as a formally educated person from a University with knowledge of logic, rhetoric, geometry, algebra, arithmetic, and theology and then shows how illogical and ignorant he is. Ralpho is Hudibras’s squire who is a tailor and is not well-educated. Ralpho considers formal educational skills as pointless. 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.” The Rich Widow is another important character that remains unnamed throughout the poem. 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. Trulia is another woman who defeats Hudibras significantly. Turla is a village prostitute. Being regularly defeated, sometimes by the skills and courage of women, Hudibrras ultimately makes a witty and detailed declaration that women are superior to men. Sidrophel is a local astrologer and Rosicrucian conjurer, a magician. Whackum is his assistant. In 1663, a fake copy of Hudibras Part II was published by someone and Buttler depicted the character of Whackum based on that anonymous author.
Hudibras is similar to Cervantes’ Don Quixote which is also a parody.
Summary:
The first part of the poem begins as Hudibras and Ralpho set out on an adventurous journey. They encounter a local bear-baiting. While the local people want them to face the bear, Hudibras and Ralpho decide to avoid it. However, both Hudibras and Ralpho offer different reasons for avoiding bear-baiting, and then both argue over the reason for doing so. As the townspeople encounter them, they initially win over them and brag about their bravery. Soon, a local village prostitute Troila comes forward and pushes 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 his armor and weapons. She mockingly throws her own mantle on Hudibras’s back, then locks him and Ralpho in the village stocks. Later on, the rich widow of the town comes and bails out Hudibras and Ralpho on the condition that once he is free Hudibras will give himself the flogging he deserves. Part 1 ends here.
In the second part, Hudibras and Ralpho argue whether it would be good for Hudibras to break his oath to the widow, to not give himself a flogging, and then to lie to her. While they are discussing, townspeople gather and arrange for an entertaining skimmington in which women are commemorated while men are dressed as clowns. As Hudibras sees this, he objects to it and starts lecturing the crowd for their indecency. The townspeople get offended again and throw rotten eggs and tomatoes on them and their horses. Somehow, Hudibras and Ralpho rescue themselves and run away to find a pond where they could clean themselves. As they clean themselves, Ralpho discusses the bad luck they are going through and suggests Hudibras meet the local conjurer for some help. Hudibras and Ralpho go to meet Sidrophel the astrologer. However, soon Hudibras and Sidrophel engage in a heated argument over what arts are lawful and what are unlawful. Hudibras claims that Sidrophel’s astrology and magic are unlawful and fraudulent. Sidrophel taunts Hudibras with having been humiliated at Kingston and Brentford Fair and claims that it was his 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 the 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 charge with the crime of two murders. The second part ends here.
The third part of Hudibras was published in 1678. It begins with a satirical letter written by Hudibras to Sidrophel in which he satirizes the activities of the recently formed Royal Society. Hudibras knows that Sidrophel and Whackum were not dead. Though he is now estranged from Ralpho. Hudibras pursues the rich widow who bailed them out. He is determined to get his hands on the widow’s wealth. He goes to the rich widow and lies about how he flogged himself, and then defeated Sidrophel and Whackum. However, Ralpho had already visited the rich widow and had told her how Hudibras wished to get his hands on her wealth. He also informed her how Hudibras intends to lie to her about flogging while Ralpho opposed his lying. He also informs her how Hudibras tried to trap Ralpho for the charge murders of Sidrophel and Whacko and ran away while they were not dead.
Aware of the truth, the rich widow engages Hudibras into a long argument about the true nature of marriage (she pointedly maintains that men marry principally because they are after a woman’s money), which takes them till 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 Trulia 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. After this, Buttler offers a satiric disquisition on the turbulent state of puritan and national party politics in 1659–60.
The story then continues 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 meant 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.” The poem ends here.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the History of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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