Hare, Swift, Tortoise, Ape, Juvenalian, tour, satire, scourged, vices, independent
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87
the Hare:/ Swifte, sayes the Tortoise: vertuous the Ape”, and so forth (ll.260-2). These innocuous examples of degenerate behaviour serve as substitutes for those more immediate social stereotypes found on the Juvenalian city tour with which readers might be tempted to identify themselves, thereby avoiding one of the primary dangers of satire.
Guilpin’s contribution to the quarrel, The Whipper of the Satyre, accuses Weever of neglecting his social responsibility to identify and castigate vice as a good satirist ought. Although Guilpin argues that satire fulfils an essential social function, he nonetheless finds a means to circumvent the injunction upon satire. The individuals he encounters on his city tour have already been scourged of their vices, or dissuaded from succumbing to them, by the potency of the satires to which they have been exposed. We are first introduced to an individual who “since the Satyrist so playd on mee,/ […] can not brooke to heare of letcherie. & c.” (ll.131-2), and subsequently Guilpin’s persona meets others who have been saved from gambling and from pride by satirical intervention (ll.157-68 and ll.211-16). Thus, he avoids satirising by showing a world purged of sin by satire. As Weever has already shown, however, the most effective way for satirical writers to justify their work is to relinquish their self-sufficiency and present themselves as agents of the government, or as royally-appointed flyters, rather than independent satirists.
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