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(Bells ring out)

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It looks solid enough, doesn't it?

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In the late Middle Ages,
the civilisation of northern Europe

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seemed designed to last for ever.

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Rich merchants, self-satisfied guilds,
a conveniently loose political organisation -

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no material reasons for change.

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And yet, in a few years, in a single generation,

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came the first of those explosions
that were to create contemporary man -

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what we call the Reformation.

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What went wrong with that solid-looking world?

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I can't see the answer
outside the Fortress of Wirzburg,

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but inside it, in this room
one gets a hint of trouble.

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It contains carvings by a sculptor
named Tilman Riemenschneider

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perhaps the best of the many skillful craftsmen
in late 15th-century Germany.

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And these carvings are not, only moving
as works of art

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they show very clearly the character
of north European man about the year 1500.

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They show, to begin with,
his serious personal piety -

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a quality quite different
from the bland conventional piety

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that one finds in a great deal of Italian art.

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And then, a serious approach to life itself.

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These men were not to be fobbed off
by forms and ceremonies.

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They believed that there was such a thing
as truth, and they wanted to get at it.

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What they heard from papal legates, who
did a lot of travelling in Germany at this time,

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didn't convince them that there was,
the same desire for truth in Rome

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and they had
a rough, rawboned peasant tenacity of purpose.

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So far so good.

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But these faces reveal
a more dangerous characteristic,

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a vein of hysteria.

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The 15th century had been
the century of revivalism -

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religious movements on the fringe
of the Catholic church.

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Even in Italy,
Savonarola had persuaded his hearers

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to make a bonfire of their so-called vanities

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including pictures by Botticelli,
which I suppose was a bad day for civilisation.

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The Germans were much more easily excited.

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Look at this Italian cardinal by Raphael.

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He's not only a man of high culture,
but completely self-contained.

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And compare him with one of the greatest of
German portraits - Dürer's Oswald Krell.

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Those staring eyes, that look
of self-conscious introspection, that uneasiness,

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marvellously conveyed by Dürer through
the uneasiness of the planes in the modelling -

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how German it is
and what a nuisance for the rest of the world.

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However, in the 1490s
these destructive national characteristics

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hadn't yet shown themselves.

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It was still an age of internationalism.

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And in 1498
there arrived in Oxford a poor scholar,

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who was destined to become
the spokesman of northern civilisation,

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and the greatest internationalist of his day -
Erasmus.

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Erasmus was a Dutchman.
He came from Rotterdam.

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But he never went back to live in Holland.

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He'd been in a monastery there
and he'd hated it

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and he'd also hated the course, convivial life
of the average Netherlander.

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He was always complaining
that they drank too much.

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He himself had a delicate digestion and would
drink only a special kind of Burgundy.

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All his life, he moved from place to place,

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partly to avoid the plague -

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because that king of terrors kept all free men
on the move throughout the early 16th century -

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and partly due to a restlessness that
overcame him if he stayed anywhere too long.

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However, in his earlier life
he seems to have liked England

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and he had a successful stay
in Magdalen College

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and so this country makes a brief appearance
in our survey of civilisation.

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You know, considering the barbarous and
disorderly state of England in the 15th century,

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Oxford and Cambridge
are astonishing creations,

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and the Oxford that welcomed Erasmus

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still contained a few, though not very many
I suppose, pious and enlightened men.

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Of course, the atmosphere must have been
somewhat provincial and unsophisticated

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compared to Florence, even Bologna.

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And yet, about the year 1500,
this kind of naivety had its value,

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and Erasmus, who was anything but naive,
recognised it.

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He'd seen enough of the religious life
to know that the Church must be reformed

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not only in its institutions, but in its teachings.

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It was once the great civiliser of Europe

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and now it was aground,
stranded on forms and vested interests.

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And he knew that there was
more hope of reform

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from the teachings of a man like Colet,
the Dean of St Paul's

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who simply wanted people to read the Bible
as if it were true

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than from the sharp wits of Florence.

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The intelligence and the tact,

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by which Erasmus made himself so immediately
welcomed by the finest minds in England,

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are alive to us in his letters.

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And by great good fortune, we can supplement
these letters by visible evidence

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because he was the friend of the most incisive
portrait painter of the time - Hans Holbein.

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Holbein's portraits show Erasmus
when he had become famous and elderly,

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but they have so complete a grasp of his
character that we can imagine him at every age.

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Like all humanists
I might almost say like all civilised men,

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Erasmus set a high value on friendship,

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and he was anxious that Holbein should go
to England to paint pictures of his friends.

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And finally, in 1526, Holbein went, and was
introduced into the circle of Sir Thomas More.

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The brilliant youth, with whom 20 years earlier
Erasmus had fallen in love

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was now Lord Chancellor.

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He was also the author of the Utopia,

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where, in rather a quaint style, he recommends
almost everything that was believed in

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by enlightened reformers in the 1890s.

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Holbein painted a large picture
of Sir Thomas More and his family -

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Erasmus was staying in the house at the time.

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Alas, the picture was burnt,

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but the original drawing remains
with the name of the sitters written in.

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Erasmus used to say that More's family
were like the Academy of Plato.

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Well, in Holbein's studies of the heads
they don't look oppressively intellectual',

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but alert, sensible people of any epoch.

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Thomas More himself, of course
was a noble idealist

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too good for the world of action,
where he sometimes lost his way.

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It shows how quickly civilisations
can appear and disappear

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that the author of the Utopia,
should have flourished

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should have become, in spite of himself,
first minister of the crown

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halfway between the death of Richard III
and the judicial murders of Henry VIII,

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of which he of course was to be
the most distinguished victim.

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Holbein depicted other members
of Erasmus's circle in England,

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and I'm bound to say that some of them,
like the archbishops Wareham and Fisher,

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look as if they had no illusions

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about the transitory nature of civilisation
at the court of Henry VIII.

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They look defeated.

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And they were defeated.

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In 1506, Erasmus went to Italy.

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He was in Bologna at the exact time of Julius II's
famous quarrel with Michelangelo.

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He was in Rome when Raphael began work
on the papal apartments.

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But none of this seems to have made
any impression on him.

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His chief interest was in printing -

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in the publication of his works

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by the famous Venetian printer and pioneer
of popular editions Aldus Manutius.

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Whereas in talking about Italy,

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one's concerned with the enlargement
of man's spirit through the visual image,

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in the north, one's chiefly concerned with
the extension of his mind through the word.

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And this was made possible
by the invention of printing.

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In the 19th century,
people used to think of the invention of printing

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as the linchpin in the history of civilisation.

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Well, 5th-century Greece
and 12th-century Chartres

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and 15th-century Florence
got on very well without it,

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and who shall say
that they were less civilised than we are?

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Still, on balance, I suppose that printing
has done more good than harm.

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One certainly feels that way

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in the beautiful humanised workshop
of the Plantin Press in Antwerp.

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And one can't but look with awe
on this simple-seeming invention.

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It looks so easy to work.
Well, it is easy to work.

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Roll it in like that.

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Take this arm.

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Pull as hard as you can, very hard.

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Roll it back.

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Open it up...

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..and take out your printed sheet.

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How easy they are to operate.

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You would have thought that anyone
could have thought of it. Like the wheel.

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Yet it was so effective that it remained
practically unchanged for about 400 years.

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And perhaps one's doubts
about the civilising effect of printing

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have been aroused by
a later development of the craft.

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Of course, printing had been invented
long before the time of Erasmus.

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Gutenberg's Bible was printed in 1456.

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But these early printed books were
sumptuous and expensive,

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done in competition with manuscripts.

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Men only gradually realised that printed books
should reach as many people as possible.

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And it took preachers and persuaders
almost 30 years

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to recognise what a formidable new instrument
had come into their hands

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just as it took politicians 20 years
to recognise the value of television.

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The first man to take advantage
of the printing press was Erasmus.

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It made him, and unmade him
because in a way he became the first journalist.

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He'd all the qualifications: a clear, elegant style -

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in Latin of course, which meant that he could
be read everywhere but not by everyone -

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opinions on every subject,

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even the gift of putting things so that
they could be interpreted in different ways.

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Early in his journalistic career, he produced
a masterpiece - The Praise Of Folly.

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He wrote it staying with his friend Thomas More.
He said it took him a week.

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I dare say it's true. He had an amazing fluency,
and this time his whole being was engaged.

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You know, to an intelligent man,
human beings and human institutions

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sometimes seem intolerably stupid,

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and there are times when one's pent-up feelings
of impatience and annoyance

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can't be contained any longer.

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Erasmus's Praise Of Folly
was an outburst of this kind.

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It washed away everything -

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popes, kings, monks, of course, scholars,
war, theology, the whole works.

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This is a page from it, with a marginal drawing
by Holbein, showing Erasmus at his desk.

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And over the drawing, Erasmus has written

170
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that if he was really as handsome as this,
he wouldn't lack for a wife.

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In the ordinary way, satire is a negative activity,

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but there are times in the history of civilisation,
when it has a positive value.

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Times when the flypaper of complacency
holds down the free spirit.

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This was the first time in history
that a bright-minded intellectual exercise -

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something to make people stretch their minds

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and think for themselves
and question everything -

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had been made available to thousands
of readers all over Europe.

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It happened that, during the same period

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in which Erasmus was spreading enlightenment
through the word,

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00:14:04,269 --> 00:14:08,298
another development of the art of printing
was nourishing the imagination -

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00:14:08,389 --> 00:14:14,100
the illustrated book
engraved on a wooden block', like this.

182
00:14:17,908 --> 00:14:20,899
Of course, the illiterate faithful had for centuries

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been instructed by wall paintings
and stained glass.

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00:14:24,548 --> 00:14:29,980
But the vast multiplication of images
that was made possible by the printed woodcut

185
00:14:30,080 --> 00:14:33,509
put this form of communication
on quite a different footing -

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at once more widespread and more intimate.

187
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And as usual
the invention coincided with the man.

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00:14:40,668 --> 00:14:43,860
And the man was Albrecht Dürer.

189
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(Bells ring)

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He was born and brought up in Nuremberg,

191
00:15:08,629 --> 00:15:10,580
the town of the Meistersingers.

192
00:15:10,668 --> 00:15:12,820
That's his house, just behind me there.

193
00:15:14,028 --> 00:15:17,570
The great German myth of the worthy craftsman

194
00:15:17,668 --> 00:15:24,009
can still be felt in such of its streets and squares
that are still left standing.

195
00:15:24,840 --> 00:15:28,460
But Dürer, whose father
had come to Nuremberg from Hungary,

196
00:15:28,548 --> 00:15:33,899
was not at all the pious German craftsman figure
he was once supposed to be.

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He was a strange, uneasy character,

198
00:15:37,668 --> 00:15:40,500
intensely self-conscious and inordinately vain.

199
00:15:41,600 --> 00:15:43,870
This is his self-portrait, now in Madrid.

200
00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:48,110
You might think that self-love
couldn't go much further, but it could,

201
00:15:48,200 --> 00:15:50,830
because two years later,
he did another self-portrait,

202
00:15:50,908 --> 00:15:55,178
in which he deliberately painted himself
in the traditional pose of Christ.

203
00:15:55,960 --> 00:15:57,950
Well, this seems to us rather blasphemous,

204
00:15:58,028 --> 00:16:00,460
and Dürer's admirers don't make it much better

205
00:16:00,548 --> 00:16:04,418
by explaining that he thought creative power
was a divine quality

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00:16:04,509 --> 00:16:08,778
and that he wished to pay homage
to his own genius by depicting himself as God.

207
00:16:12,080 --> 00:16:16,149
Well, it's true that this belief in the artist
as inspired creator

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was part of the Renaissance spirit.

209
00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:21,830
Leonardo talks a lot about it
in his treatise on painting,

210
00:16:21,908 --> 00:16:25,450
but one can't imagine him
painting himself as Christ.

211
00:16:26,509 --> 00:16:30,500
However, Dürer had certain qualities in common
with Leonardo.

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00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:35,190
Although he didn't share Leonardo's
positive distaste for women,

213
00:16:35,269 --> 00:16:37,220
he wasn't far short of it

214
00:16:37,320 --> 00:16:39,470
and he would certainly never have married

215
00:16:39,548 --> 00:16:43,330
if the bourgeois conventions of Nuremberg
hadn't compelled him to do so.

216
00:16:44,080 --> 00:16:48,190
And then Dürer shared Leonardo's curiosity.

217
00:16:48,269 --> 00:16:53,460
But it was a curiosity about appearances,
not about causes.

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00:16:53,548 --> 00:16:59,379
He was almost entirely without Leonardo's
determination to find out how things worked.

219
00:17:00,080 --> 00:17:04,028
He collected rarities and monstrosities of a kind

220
00:17:04,108 --> 00:17:07,098
which 100 years later,
were to furnish the first museums.

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00:17:07,200 --> 00:17:08,868
He would go anywhere to see them.

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00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:15,348
Eventually he died, as a result of an expedition
to see a stranded whale in Zeeland.

223
00:17:15,440 --> 00:17:18,308
He never saw it -
it had been washed away before he got there.

224
00:17:18,400 --> 00:17:23,150
However, he did see a walrus
whose shiny snout delighted him'.

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00:17:24,480 --> 00:17:28,390
Dürer's curiosity about nature
had less questionable results

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00:17:28,480 --> 00:17:32,470
in the drawings he did
offlowers and grasses and animals.

227
00:17:32,548 --> 00:17:37,538
No man has ever described
natural objects more minutely.

228
00:17:38,509 --> 00:17:43,019
And yet, to my eye, something is missing -
the inner life.

229
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:48,910
This drawing of blades of grass,
which is greatly admired,

230
00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:54,190
looks to me like the back of a case
containing a stuffed animal.

231
00:17:59,920 --> 00:18:05,068
But if Dürer didn't try to peer so deeply
into the inner life of nature

232
00:18:05,160 --> 00:18:10,430
nor feel, as Leonardo did
its appalling independence of mankind,

233
00:18:10,509 --> 00:18:14,740
he was deeply engaged
by the mystery of the human psyche.

234
00:18:14,828 --> 00:18:17,578
His obsession with his own personality

235
00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:21,220
was part of a passionate interest
in psychology in general,

236
00:18:21,308 --> 00:18:26,328
and this led him to produce one of the great
prophetic documents of Western man -

237
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:30,588
the engraving he entitled Melancholia I.

238
00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:32,950
In the Middle Ages, melancholia had meant

239
00:18:33,028 --> 00:18:37,940
a simple combination
of sloth, boredom and despondency

240
00:18:38,028 --> 00:18:39,858
that must have been quite common

241
00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:43,578
when people couldn't read
or were cooped up together in monasteries.

242
00:18:44,548 --> 00:18:47,420
But Dürer's application is far from simple.

243
00:18:47,509 --> 00:18:50,618
This figure is humanity at its most evolved

244
00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:53,230
with wings to carry her upwards.

245
00:18:53,308 --> 00:18:56,818
She sits in the attitude of Rodin's Penseur

246
00:18:56,920 --> 00:19:00,670
and still holds in her hands the compasses -

247
00:19:00,750 --> 00:19:04,818
symbols of measurement
by which science will conquer the world.

248
00:19:04,920 --> 00:19:09,190
Around her are all the emblems
of constructive action.

249
00:19:09,680 --> 00:19:12,670
A saw, a plane, pincers,

250
00:19:12,750 --> 00:19:15,778
and those two prime elements in solid geometry

251
00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:18,338
the sphere and the dodecahedron.

252
00:19:19,440 --> 00:19:24,298
And yet, all these aids to construction
are abandoned.

253
00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:28,470
She sits there brooding on
the futility of human effort.

254
00:19:28,548 --> 00:19:33,298
Her obsessive stare
reflects some deep psychic disturbance.

255
00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:37,348
The German mind that produced Dürer
and the Reformation

256
00:19:37,440 --> 00:19:40,348
also produced psychoanalysis.

257
00:19:40,440 --> 00:19:43,308
I began by mentioning
the enemies of civilisation

258
00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:46,588
well, here in Dürer's prophetic vision,

259
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:50,430
is one more way
in which it can be destroyed from within.

260
00:19:51,509 --> 00:19:54,380
However, what made Dürer so important
in his own age

261
00:19:54,480 --> 00:19:57,950
was that he combined an iron grip
on the facts of appearance

262
00:19:58,028 --> 00:20:00,098
with an extremely fertile invention.

263
00:20:01,240 --> 00:20:05,990
And, as time went on, he became
absolute master of all the techniques of his day.

264
00:20:06,068 --> 00:20:08,500
In particular, the science of perspective,

265
00:20:08,588 --> 00:20:11,338
which he used
not simply as an intellectual game,

266
00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:13,900
but in order to increase the sense of reality.

267
00:20:14,588 --> 00:20:18,420
His woodcuts diffused a new way
of looking at art.

268
00:20:18,509 --> 00:20:24,460
Not as something magical or symbolic,
but as something accurate and factual.

269
00:20:26,348 --> 00:20:30,500
His treatment of sacred subjects
carried absolute conviction.

270
00:20:30,588 --> 00:20:35,528
I don't doubt that the many simple people
who bought his woodcuts of the Life of the Virgin

271
00:20:35,640 --> 00:20:37,788
accepted them as a correct record.

272
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:29,509
Dürer was immersed in
the intellectual life of his time.

273
00:22:29,588 --> 00:22:34,450
In the same year that Erasmus completed
his translation of St Jerome's Letters

274
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:39,430
Dürer did this delicate engraving
of his hero at work.

275
00:22:39,509 --> 00:22:42,019
What an Erasmian room -

276
00:22:42,108 --> 00:22:46,538
clear, sunny, orderly,
with its reminder of death

277
00:22:46,640 --> 00:22:48,990
but also with lots of cushions

278
00:22:49,068 --> 00:22:52,180
which they don't give you in monasteries.

279
00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:57,150
And Dürer made an even more
striking reference to Erasmus

280
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:01,308
in the engraving
of the Knight With Death And The Devil.

281
00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:04,990
One of Erasmus's most widely read books

282
00:23:05,068 --> 00:23:08,058
was called
The Handbook Of The Christian Knight.

283
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:12,509
It was almost certainly in the artist's mind
when he did this engraving,

284
00:23:12,588 --> 00:23:17,710
because he writes in a diary
that refers to the engraving:

285
00:23:17,788 --> 00:23:22,220
"Oh, Erasmus of Rotterdam
when wilt thou take thy stand'?

286
00:23:22,308 --> 00:23:27,618
Hark, thou knight of Christ.
Ride forth at the side of Christ our Lord.

287
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:31,150
Protect the truth, obtain the martyr's crown."

288
00:23:32,028 --> 00:23:35,259
Well, that wasn't at all Erasmus's line.

289
00:23:36,269 --> 00:23:39,940
And this grimly determined knight,
with his heavy Gothic armour,

290
00:23:40,028 --> 00:23:45,660
forging ahead, oblivious of the rather
grotesque terrors that accost him,

291
00:23:45,750 --> 00:23:51,380
is as far removed as possible
from the agile intelligence

292
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,670
and the nervous side glances
of the great scholar.

293
00:23:55,548 --> 00:24:01,730
For fifteen years Dürer's cry to Erasmus was
echoed by his contemporaries all over Europe.

294
00:24:01,828 --> 00:24:04,858
And it still appears
in old-fashioned history books.

295
00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:06,910
Why didn't Erasmus intervene?

296
00:24:07,588 --> 00:24:13,690
Well, he wanted, above all, to avoid a violent
split down the middle of the civilised world.

297
00:24:13,788 --> 00:24:16,940
He didn't think a revolution
would make people happier.

298
00:24:17,028 --> 00:24:19,460
In fact, revolutions seldom do.

299
00:24:19,548 --> 00:24:24,140
In one of his letters
written soon after Dürer had done his portrait,

300
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:28,269
he says of the Protestants, "I have seen them
return from hearing a sermon

301
00:24:28,348 --> 00:24:31,058
as if inspired by an evil spirit.

302
00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:36,019
The faces of all showed a curious wrath
and ferocity."

303
00:24:36,108 --> 00:24:38,568
Although Erasmus seems to us so modern,

304
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,630
he actually lived beyond his time.

305
00:24:41,308 --> 00:24:44,259
He was by nature a humanist
of the early Renaissance.

306
00:24:45,348 --> 00:24:47,980
The heroic world of the 16th century
was not his climate.

307
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:54,150
To my mind, the extraordinary thing is
what a huge following he had,

308
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:58,509
and how close Erasmus -
at least the Erasmian point of view -

309
00:24:58,588 --> 00:25:00,500
came to success.

310
00:25:00,588 --> 00:25:04,940
It shows how many people,
even in a time of crisis

311
00:25:05,028 --> 00:25:09,420
yearn for tolerance and reason
and simplicity of life.

312
00:25:09,509 --> 00:25:11,460
In fact, for civilisation.

313
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:18,308
But on the tide of fierce emotional
and biological impulses, they are powerless.

314
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:24,348
So, almost twenty years after the heroic spirit
was made visible in the work of Michelangelo,

315
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:29,298
it appears in Germany
in the words and actions of Luther.

316
00:25:30,269 --> 00:25:33,420
Whatever else he may have been,
Luther was a hero.

317
00:25:33,509 --> 00:25:37,778
And after all the doubts and hesitations
of the humanists

318
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:39,828
and the hovering flight of Erasmus,

319
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:46,910
it's with a real sense of emotional relief
that we hear Luther say: Here I stand!

320
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:48,950
(MUSIC) Ein Foste Burg

321
00:26:20,028 --> 00:26:23,380
We can see what this burning spirit was like

322
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,910
because the local painter of Wittenberg,
Lucas Cranach

323
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,868
was one of Luther's most trusted friends.

324
00:26:30,548 --> 00:26:34,700
And Cranach portrayed Luther
in all his changing aspects.

325
00:26:34,788 --> 00:26:38,700
The tense spiritually-struggling monk,

326
00:26:38,788 --> 00:26:42,700
the great theologian
with the brow of Michelangelo.

327
00:26:45,828 --> 00:26:47,778
The emancipated layman.

328
00:26:52,269 --> 00:26:56,818
Cranach was a witness at Luther's marriage
and painted the portrait of his bride,

329
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:58,868
and admirable and intelligent nun.

330
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:05,828
Even in the disguise he wore
when he escaped incognito to Wittenberg.

331
00:27:09,269 --> 00:27:12,460
No doubt he was extremely impressive.

332
00:27:12,548 --> 00:27:18,019
The Leader for which the earnest
German people is always waiting.

333
00:27:20,108 --> 00:27:23,578
Unfortunately for civilisation,
he not only settled their doubts

334
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:26,308
and gave them the courage of their convictions,

335
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,430
he also released
their latent violence and hysteria.

336
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:36,430
Beyond this was another northern characteristic
that was fundamentally opposed to civilisation,

337
00:27:36,509 --> 00:27:40,778
an earthy, animal hostility
to reason and decorum.

338
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:46,269
One fancies that Nordic man took a long time
to emerge from the primeval forest.

339
00:27:46,348 --> 00:27:48,298
Look at this old troll king,

340
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:51,190
who seems to have grown out of the earth.

341
00:27:51,269 --> 00:27:54,420
That's Luther's father, painted by Cranach.

342
00:27:57,828 --> 00:28:02,538
He was a miner, with a miner's independence
and strength of will.

343
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:07,990
HG Wells once made a useful distinction
between what he called

344
00:28:08,068 --> 00:28:11,220
"communities of obedience"
and "communities of will".

345
00:28:12,068 --> 00:28:15,220
He thought that the first,
the communities of obedience

346
00:28:15,308 --> 00:28:19,500
produced the stable societies,
like Egypt and Mesopotamia,

347
00:28:19,588 --> 00:28:21,618
the original homes of civilisation.

348
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:28,230
And that the second, the communities of will
produced the restless nomads of the north.

349
00:28:28,308 --> 00:28:30,259
He may be right.

350
00:28:30,348 --> 00:28:33,618
Anyway, the community of will
that we call the Reformation

351
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:36,390
was, basically, a popular movement.

352
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:39,910
At the end of Erasmus's letter

353
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:43,750
in which he describes the surly Protestants
coming out of church,

354
00:28:43,828 --> 00:28:47,900
he adds that none of them
except one old man, raised his hat.

355
00:28:49,108 --> 00:28:52,058
Erasmus was against
forms and ceremonies in religion

356
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:54,828
but when it came to society, he felt differently.

357
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:56,990
And so, strangely enough, did Luther.

358
00:28:57,068 --> 00:29:01,740
The great popular uprising, known as
the Peasant's Revolt, filled him with horror

359
00:29:01,828 --> 00:29:06,420
and he urged his princely patrons to put it down
with the utmost ferocity.

360
00:29:07,108 --> 00:29:09,259
Luther didn't approve of destruction,

361
00:29:09,348 --> 00:29:11,298
even the destruction of images.

362
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:14,868
But most of his followers were men
who owed nothing to the past.

363
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:19,548
To whom it meant no more than
an intolerable servitude.

364
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:23,390
And so Protestantism became destructive.

365
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:27,670
And from the point of view
ofthose who love what they see,

366
00:29:27,750 --> 00:29:29,298
it was a good deal of a disaster.

367
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:32,230
(Smashing masonry)

368
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:43,588
We all know about the destruction of images,

369
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:45,630
what we nowadays call works of art.

370
00:29:46,308 --> 00:29:49,500
How commissioners went round
not only to cathedrals like Ely,

371
00:29:49,588 --> 00:29:51,818
but even to the humblest parish churches

372
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,750
and smashed everything of beauty
that they contained.

373
00:29:54,828 --> 00:29:59,380
Knocked the heads off statues, smashed up
the carved font covers, broke the reredos

374
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:01,348
broke anything within reach.

375
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,588
It didn't pay them to stay too long
on a single job.

376
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:08,430
You can see the results here
in the lady chapel at Ely.

377
00:30:08,509 --> 00:30:10,460
All the painted glass smashed,

378
00:30:10,548 --> 00:30:16,730
and, unfortunately, the beautiful series of
carvings of the life of the Virgin was within reach.

379
00:30:16,828 --> 00:30:18,778
And they've knocked off every head,

380
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:21,068
made a marvellous job of it.

381
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:23,348
There wasn't much religion about it.

382
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:25,588
It was an instinct.

383
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,828
An instinct to destroy anything comely.

384
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:33,230
Anything that reflected a state of mind
that ignorant people couldn't share.

385
00:30:33,308 --> 00:30:37,740
The very existence of these
incomprehensible values enraged them.

386
00:30:38,588 --> 00:30:42,660
The visible aspect of civilisation
took a hard knock from Protestantism

387
00:30:42,750 --> 00:30:46,420
or, if you prefer it,
from HG Wells' community of will.

388
00:30:46,509 --> 00:30:48,460
And in some ways it never recovered.

389
00:30:48,548 --> 00:30:51,420
For example, one can't point to a single piece

390
00:30:51,509 --> 00:30:55,288
of specifically Protestant architecture
or sculpture.

391
00:30:56,200 --> 00:31:00,950
It shows how much these expressions of
civilisation depended on the Catholic Church.

392
00:31:07,269 --> 00:31:09,220
But it had to happen.

393
00:31:10,348 --> 00:31:15,210
If Western civilisation
was not to wither or petrify,

394
00:31:15,308 --> 00:31:17,538
like the civilisation of Ancient Egypt,

395
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:21,788
it had to draw life from a larger area

396
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:26,900
than that which had nourished the intellectual
and artistic triumphs of the Renaissance.

397
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:30,778
And, ultimately, a new civilisation emerged,

398
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:35,348
but it was a civilisation not of the image
but of the word.

399
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:41,108
Luther gave his countrymen words.

400
00:31:42,068 --> 00:31:44,098
Erasmus had written solely in Latin.

401
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,868
Luther translated the Bible into German.

402
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:49,028
Noble German too, as far as I can judge.

403
00:31:49,108 --> 00:31:53,538
And so gave people not only a chance
to read holy writ for themselves

404
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:55,588
but the tools of thought.

405
00:31:57,028 --> 00:32:00,298
And the medium of printing
was there to make it accessible.

406
00:32:02,828 --> 00:32:05,660
The translations of the Bible by Calvin
into French

407
00:32:05,750 --> 00:32:07,900
by Tyndale and Coverdale into English,

408
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:11,150
were crucial in the development
of the Western mind.

409
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,588
And if I hesitate to say to the,  development
of civilisation

410
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:19,700
it's because they were also
a stage in the growth of nationalism.

411
00:32:20,588 --> 00:32:23,420
As I've said, and shall go,  on saying
in this series

412
00:32:23,509 --> 00:32:30,098
nearly all the steps upward in civilisation
have been in periods of internationalism.

413
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:37,098
Whatever the long-term effects of Protestantism,

414
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:39,430
the immediate results were very bad.

415
00:32:40,108 --> 00:32:43,298
Not only bad for art, but bad for life.

416
00:32:44,308 --> 00:32:46,660
The north was full of bullyboys.

417
00:32:47,828 --> 00:32:50,778
They appear frequently
in 16th-century German art,

418
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,150
very pleased with themselves,

419
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:55,190
apparently much admired.

420
00:32:55,269 --> 00:32:59,818
They rampaged about the country
and took any excuse to beat people up.

421
00:32:59,920 --> 00:33:03,509
All the elements of destruction were let loose.

422
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:07,910
Thirty years earlier,
Dürer had done a series of wood engravings

423
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:09,950
illustrating the apocalypse.

424
00:33:11,028 --> 00:33:14,500
You can say that they express the Gothic side
of his nature

425
00:33:14,588 --> 00:33:17,858
or you can regard them as prophetic.

426
00:33:18,548 --> 00:33:22,980
Because they show with
terrifyingly effective precision

427
00:33:23,068 --> 00:33:25,900
the horrors that were to descend on
Western Europe -

428
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:30,828
both sides proclaiming themselves
as the instruments of God's wrath.

429
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:34,828
Fire rains down from heaven.

430
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:37,910
On kings, popes, monks

431
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:40,630
and poor families.

432
00:33:45,788 --> 00:33:50,259
And those who escape the fire
fall victim to the avenging sword.

433
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:56,950
It's a terrible thought
that so-called wars of religion,

434
00:33:57,028 --> 00:34:02,048
religion, of course, being used as a pretext
for political ambitions,

435
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:06,348
but still providing a sort of emotional dynamo,

436
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:10,389
that wars of religion went on for 120 years

437
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:16,989
and were accompanied by such revolting
episodes as the Massacre of St Bartholomew.

438
00:34:19,710 --> 00:34:26,099
What could an intelligent human, open-minded
man do in mid-16th-century Europe?

439
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:30,590
Keep quiet. Work in solitude.

440
00:34:30,670 --> 00:34:33,300
Outwardly conform, inwardly remain free.

441
00:34:34,550 --> 00:34:39,260
The wars of religion evoked a figure
new to European civilisation,

442
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:41,780
although familiar in the great ages of China,

443
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:43,829
the intellectual recluse.

444
00:34:44,630 --> 00:34:48,900
Petrarch and Erasmus had used their brains
at the highest level of politics.

445
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,070
They had been the advisors of princes.

446
00:34:51,150 --> 00:34:57,489
Their successor, the greatest humanist
of the mid-16th century, retreats into his tower.

447
00:34:57,590 --> 00:35:00,860
It was a real tower, not the ivory tower
of cliché language.

448
00:35:05,150 --> 00:35:10,380
This man who retreated into his tower
was Michel de Montaigne.

449
00:35:11,070 --> 00:35:13,820
He was a fairly conscientious
mayor of Bordeaux,

450
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,750
but he refused to go any nearer
to the centre of power.

451
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,190
He preferred his tower,

452
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:23,230
where through his window, in his own words,
he enjoyed,

453
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:27,268
"A far extending, rich and unresisted prospect.

454
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,949
There is my seat, there is my throne."

455
00:35:32,550 --> 00:35:35,010
He was born in southern France in 1533.

456
00:35:35,110 --> 00:35:38,380
His mother was a Jewish Protestant
his father a Catholic.

457
00:35:39,150 --> 00:35:42,539
He had no illusions about
the effect of the religious convictions

458
00:35:42,630 --> 00:35:44,739
released by the Reformation.

459
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:47,300
He said, "In trying to make themselves angels

460
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:50,869
men have transformed themselves into beasts."

461
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:55,750
But Montaigne was not only detached from
the two religious factions,

462
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:59,750
he was slightly sceptical
about the Christian religion altogether.

463
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:04,349
He said, "I will willingly carry a candle
in one hand for St Michael

464
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:06,389
and in the other for his dragon."

465
00:36:07,590 --> 00:36:11,980
Actually, he was thinking of a picture
of his patron saint that hung in this room.

466
00:36:13,070 --> 00:36:18,659
His essays are as crammed with quotations
as are the tracts of the warring priests,

467
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:20,989
but instead of being texts from the Bible,

468
00:36:21,070 --> 00:36:23,900
they are quotations
from the authors of Greece and Rome

469
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,829
whose works he seems to have known
almost by heart.

470
00:36:27,550 --> 00:36:31,900
He had his favourite quotations
written on the beams of his study.

471
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:33,949
The one above my head says:

472
00:36:34,030 --> 00:36:39,579
Homo sum, humani a me nihil alienum puto.

473
00:36:41,150 --> 00:36:46,170
I am a man, and think that nothing human
is foreign to me.

474
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:51,030
He used these texts as the reformers
had used the Bible

475
00:36:51,110 --> 00:36:53,059
to find out the truth.

476
00:36:53,150 --> 00:36:57,619
But it was a concept of truth very different
from that which serious men had sought

477
00:36:57,710 --> 00:37:01,139
in Colet's sermons
or Erasmus's New Testament.

478
00:37:01,230 --> 00:37:04,820
It involved always looking at
the other side of every question,

479
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:08,949
however shocking, by conventional standards,
that other side might be.

480
00:37:09,030 --> 00:37:12,980
Burning a candle both to St Michael
and his dragon.

481
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:18,230
It was a truth that depended on the testimony
of the only person he could examine

482
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:20,880
without shame or scruple - himself.

483
00:37:22,550 --> 00:37:26,170
In the past, self-examination had been painful
and penitential.

484
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:28,230
To Montaigne it was a pleasure.

485
00:37:29,030 --> 00:37:33,500
But as he says, "No pleasure has savour
unless I can communicate it."

486
00:37:33,590 --> 00:37:36,579
And in order to do so, he invented the essay,

487
00:37:36,670 --> 00:37:41,610
which was to remain the accepted form of
humanist communication for three centuries.

488
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:48,789
These self-searchings really marked
the end of the heroic spirit.

489
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:50,829
As Montaigne says,

490
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:56,550
"Sit we upon the highest throne in the world,
yet sit we only upon our own tails."

491
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:01,949
The strange thing is that people on high thrones
didn't resent Montaigne.

492
00:38:02,030 --> 00:38:04,300
On the contrary, they sought his company.

493
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:09,550
Had he lived, his friend Henry IV might have
forced him to become chancellor of France.

494
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:12,820
But he preferred to remain here,

495
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:14,869
in his tower.

496
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:17,909
(MUSIC) Melancholy Galliard

497
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:27,710
Such was the egocentric isolation

498
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:32,920
that the walls of religion forced on the most
civilised man in late-16th century Europe.

499
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,619
But there was one country in which, after 1570,

500
00:38:38,510 --> 00:38:41,780
men could live without fear of civil war
or sudden revenge -

501
00:38:42,670 --> 00:38:45,018
unless they happened to be Jesuit priests -

502
00:38:45,110 --> 00:38:46,219
England.

503
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:52,260
England, which was almost untouched
by the visible signs of the Renaissance.

504
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:55,190
Which had little painting and no sculpture,

505
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,150
but had developed a fantastic architecture
of its own.

506
00:39:20,190 --> 00:39:25,130
I suppose it's debatable how far Elizabethan
England can be called civilised.

507
00:39:25,230 --> 00:39:29,659
Certainly, it doesn't provide a reproducible
pattern of civilisation,

508
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:32,268
as does, for example, 18th-century France.

509
00:39:35,030 --> 00:39:38,699
It was brutal, unscrupulous and disorderly.

510
00:39:39,550 --> 00:39:41,500
But if, as I've suggested,

511
00:39:41,590 --> 00:39:46,940
the first requisites of civilisation
are intellectual energy, freedom of mind,

512
00:39:47,030 --> 00:39:48,739
a sense of beauty,

513
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:50,789
and a craving for immortality,

514
00:39:51,670 --> 00:39:53,619
then the age of Spenser and Marlowe,

515
00:39:53,710 --> 00:39:55,659
of Dowland and Byrd,

516
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:58,909
was a kind of civilisation.

517
00:40:03,550 --> 00:40:05,699
This is the background of Shakespeare.

518
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,750
Well, of course, we can't compress
Shakespeare into the scale of the programme.

519
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:14,070
But I can't altogether omit him because

520
00:40:14,150 --> 00:40:18,219
one of the first ways in which
I would justify civilisation,

521
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:21,150
is that it can produce a genius on this scale.

522
00:40:22,510 --> 00:40:26,340
In his freedom of mind
in his power of self-identification,

523
00:40:27,190 --> 00:40:29,219
in his complete absence of any dogma,

524
00:40:30,110 --> 00:40:35,579
Shakespeare sums up and illuminates
the piece of history that I've just described.

525
00:40:36,670 --> 00:40:39,099
His mature plays are, amongst other things,

526
00:40:39,190 --> 00:40:44,619
the poetical fulfilment
of Montaigne's intellectual honesty.

527
00:40:45,710 --> 00:40:49,059
In fact, we know that the first English edition
of Montaigne

528
00:40:49,150 --> 00:40:51,500
made a deep impression on Shakespeare.

529
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:58,150
But Shakespeare's scepticism
was more complete and more uncomfortable.

530
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:03,590
Instead of Montaigne's detachment
as a spirit of passionate engagement,

531
00:41:03,670 --> 00:41:06,018
and instead of the essay,

532
00:41:06,110 --> 00:41:09,809
there's the urgent communication of the stage.

533
00:41:12,110 --> 00:41:13,059
What

534
00:41:13,150 --> 00:41:15,099
art mad?

535
00:41:15,190 --> 00:41:19,139
A man may see how this world goes
without eyes.

536
00:41:20,030 --> 00:41:21,980
Look with thine ears.

537
00:41:23,630 --> 00:41:25,579
Thou rascal beadle

538
00:41:25,670 --> 00:41:27,619
hold thy bloody hand!

539
00:41:27,710 --> 00:41:29,659
Why dost thou lash that whore?

540
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:31,710
Strip thine own back.

541
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,829
Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind
for which thou whipst her.

542
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:39,469
The usurer hangs the cozener.

543
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:45,110
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear.

544
00:41:46,190 --> 00:41:50,139
Robes and furred gowns hide all.

545
00:41:51,510 --> 00:41:53,460
Plate sin with gold,

546
00:41:54,550 --> 00:41:58,619
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.

547
00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:01,829
Arm it in rags,

548
00:42:02,710 --> 00:42:05,659
a pigmy's straw does pierce it.

549
00:42:07,550 --> 00:42:09,500
None does offend

550
00:42:09,590 --> 00:42:11,300
none, I say -

551
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:13,349
none...

552
00:42:14,230 --> 00:42:16,500
Pure Montaigne...with a difference.

553
00:42:17,590 --> 00:42:21,260
You know, this must be the first time
and may well be the last time,

554
00:42:22,150 --> 00:42:25,219
that a supremely great poet
has been without religion.

555
00:42:27,030 --> 00:42:31,889
MACBETH: To-morrow, and to-morrow
and to-morrow

556
00:42:32,590 --> 00:42:36,860
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

557
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:40,949
To the last syllable of recorded time.

558
00:42:42,550 --> 00:42:47,739
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death.

559
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:51,789
Out

560
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:54,829
out, brief candle!

561
00:42:56,280 --> 00:42:58,230
Life's but a walking shadow.

562
00:42:59,670 --> 00:43:04,300
A poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

563
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:06,349
and then is heard no more.

564
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:11,869
It is a tale told by an idiot,

565
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:15,869
full of sound and fury,

566
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:21,829
signifying nothing.

567
00:43:26,510 --> 00:43:29,460
How unthinkable before
the break-up of Christendom.

568
00:43:29,550 --> 00:43:32,940
The tragic split that followed the Reformation.

569
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:39,630
And yet I feel that the human mind
has gained a new strength

570
00:43:39,710 --> 00:43:41,659
by out-staring this emptiness.

571
00:44:04,510 --> 00:44:07,940
How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?

572
00:44:10,670 --> 00:44:12,619
In faith

573
00:44:12,710 --> 00:44:14,659
if he be not rotten before he die -

574
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:20,268
as we have many pocky corses nowadays
as will scarce hold the laying in -

575
00:44:21,710 --> 00:44:24,860
he will last you eight year or nine year.

576
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:26,909
A tanner will last you nine year.

577
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:28,949
Why he more than another?

578
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:34,670
Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade
as will keep out water a great while,

579
00:44:36,550 --> 00:44:41,018
and your water is a sore decayer
of your whoreson dead body.

580
00:44:41,110 --> 00:44:43,059
(Hamlet chuckles)

581
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:53,190
Here's a skull that hath lain you in the earth
three-and-twenty years.

582
00:44:54,230 --> 00:44:56,179
Whose was it?

583
00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:58,230
A whoreson mad fellow's it was.

584
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:00,429
Whose do you think it was?

585
00:45:00,510 --> 00:45:02,219
Nay, I know not.

586
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:05,349
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!

587
00:45:06,590 --> 00:45:09,018
Poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.

588
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,230
This same skull, sir

589
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:17,789
was Yorick's skull

590
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:19,829
the king's jester.

591
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:22,869
This?

592
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:24,909
E'en that.

593
00:45:25,590 --> 00:45:26,940
Let me see.

594
00:45:31,230 --> 00:45:33,980
Alas, poor Yorick!

595
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:38,429
I knew him, Horatio.

596
00:45:40,070 --> 00:45:42,018
A fellow of infinite jest,

597
00:45:42,110 --> 00:45:44,059
of most excellent fancy.

598
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:49,829
He hath borne me on his back
a thousand times

599
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:55,869
and now how abhorred in my imagination it is.

600
00:45:57,280 --> 00:45:59,230
My gorge rises at it.

601
00:46:02,070 --> 00:46:04,018
Here hung those lips

602
00:46:05,150 --> 00:46:08,659
that I have kissed I know not how oft.

603
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:12,429
Where be your gibes now?

604
00:46:13,510 --> 00:46:15,460
Your gambols?

605
00:46:16,150 --> 00:46:18,099
Your songs?

606
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,550
Your flashes of merriment
that were wont to set the table on a roar?

607
00:46:24,550 --> 00:46:26,820
Not one now to mock your own grinning?

608
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:31,190
Quite chap-fallen?

609
00:46:35,150 --> 00:46:37,500
Now get thee to my lady's chamber,

610
00:46:38,590 --> 00:46:40,539
and tell her

611
00:46:40,630 --> 00:46:43,579
let her paint an inch thick,

612
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:47,829
to this favour she must come.

613
00:46:49,510 --> 00:46:51,699
Make her laugh at that.

614
00:46:54,630 --> 00:46:56,260
Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

615
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:57,789
What's that, my lord?

616
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:02,630
Dost thou think Alexander
Looked o' this fashion in the earth?

617
00:47:02,710 --> 00:47:04,139
E'en so.

618
00:47:04,230 --> 00:47:06,300
And smelt so? Pah!

619
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,349
E'en so, my lord.

620
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:10,869
To what base uses we may return, Horatio.

621
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:16,300
Why may not imagination trace
the noble dust of Alexander

622
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,230
till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

623
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,670
Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

624
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,110
No, faith, not a jot,

625
00:47:25,190 --> 00:47:29,219
but to follow him thither with modesty enough,
and likelihood to lead it

626
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:30,789
as thus.

627
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:33,710
Alexander died, Alexander was buried

628
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:36,909
Alexander returneth into dust.

629
00:47:37,590 --> 00:47:39,539
The dust is earth.

630
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:42,750
Of earth we make loam

631
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,510
and why of that loam whereto he was converted

632
00:47:49,190 --> 00:47:51,139
might they not stop a beer barrel?

633
00:47:53,150 --> 00:47:55,099
Imperious Caesar,

634
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:57,789
dead and turned to clay,

635
00:47:58,710 --> 00:48:01,579
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

636
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:06,949
O, that that earth which held the world in awe

637
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:12,510
Might patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw.

638
00:48:12,590 --> 00:48:14,539
(Wind howls)