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Tears and Ink

by Elisa Tersigni

The tears-as-ink metaphor enacts crying, weeping, and sobbing, all of which had complicated and sometimes contradictory meanings.

Early-modern poets played with the humoral relationship between ink and bodily fluids, including blood, sweat, and tears. Putting pen to ink could function as bloodletting, emetics, or laxatives;1 these medical procedures could balance or distort the writer’s physiology. Bloodletting, for instance, was thought to be a cure for heartbreak.2 Crying could similarly serve a humoral purpose, releasing cold and wet vapours from the body, which would stimulate a drier and hotter state.3 Since, according to humoral theory, men naturally tend towards being hot and dry and women naturally tend towards being cold and wet,4 crying comes more readily to women,5 whereas crying could help a man who was overwhelmed with wet and cold, which would need dispelling.

But crying was complex6 and could be understood in other ways: tears could reflect genuine sorrow and regret, and thereby facilitate repentance and forgiveness of sin.7 Conversely, crying could be falsely adopted as a performance;8 crying, especially for women, could be suspect and seen as deceptive, insincere, or indulgent.9

For more on Pulter’s use of tears, see Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Curation for The Circle [1]17, Sighs and Tears.

In Sidney’s sonnet, the speaker details some of the ways in which lovers respond to their muse. Some lovers are inspired to an oxymoronic “sweet plaint,” in which tears and sighs serve as conduits for elegiac poetry.

Philip Sidney
“Sonnet 6” from Astrophel and Stella
  • SOme Louers speake, when they their Muses entertaine
  • Of hopes begot, by feare, of wot not what desires,
  • Of force of heau’nly beames, infusing hellish paine;
  • Of lyuing deathes, deere woundes, faire stormes, and flashing fyres.
  • Some one his songs in Ioue and Ioues strange tales attyres,
  • Bord’red with Bulles and Swannes, poud’red with golden raine:
  • An other humbler witte to shepheards pipe retyres,
  • Yet hiding royall blood, full oft in Rurall vaine.
  • To some a sweetest plaint a sweetest stile affordes,
  • Whiles teares poure out his inke, and sighes breath out his wordes.
  • His paper pale despaire, and paine his penne doth moue.
  • I can speake what I feele, and feele as much as they,
  • But thinke that all the mappe of my state I display.
  • When trembling voice brings foorth, that I do Stella loue.
Philip Sidney, “Sonnet 6,” Astrophel and Stella (London, 1597) STC 22538, A3r.

In Alabaster’s poem, both the speaker’s tears and Christ’s blood serve as ink. With his repentant tears as his ink and his tongue as his pen, the speaker records his sins. Christ then erases those records with his sacrificial body in the form of the communion bread.10 Here, the metaphor emphasizes the materiality of Christ’s sacrifice.

William Alabaster, “The Sponge”
  • O sweet and bitter monuments of pain,
  • Bitter to Christ who all the pain endured,
  • But sweet to me whose death my life procured,
  • How shall I full express such loss, such gain?
  • My tongue shall be my pen, my eyes shall rain
  • Tears for my ink, the place where I was cured
  • Shall be my book, where, having all abjured
  • And calling heavens to record in that plain,
  • Thus plainly will I write: no sin like mine.
  • When I have done, do thou, Jesu divine,
  • Take up the tart sponge of thy Passion
  • And blot it forth; then by that spirit the quill,
  • Attend, yee Graces, doe your Homage too,
  • Thy blood the ink, and with compassion
  • Write thus upon my soul: thy Jesu still.
William Alabaster, “The Sponge,” transcription from Gary Kuchar’s chapter on “Poetry and Sacrament in the English Renaissance” in A Companion to Renaissance Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates, John Wiley & Sons, 2018, p. 54.

This anonymous poem uses the tear-as-ink metaphor to contrast the authenticity of the weeping and sighing mourner (the poet laureate) against the inauthentic “poetaster” who records their grief only in ink.

Anonymous
“On the much lamented death of the Right Worshipfull Doctour PINKE VVarden of New College in Oxon”
  • COme, droppe a Teare from some relenting eye,
  • That I may weepe, or sigh an Elegy.
  • Teares of so high-Concernment, Accents raise,
  • Of Longer Durance, then the Poëts Bayes.
  • He that can pen a sigh, and write a teare,
  • Deserves to be a Poët-Laureat here.
  • Whoso with-Inke, not Teares, indites one Verse,
  • Is but a Poë:aster at this Herse.
  • Come then, ye Muses, in a Black-Disguise,
  • And bring whole Helicon within your eyes.
  • Empty your Treasures, and unload your store;
  • Your best knowne Freind will never know you more.
  • Attend, yee Graces, doe your Homage too,
  • Adde Grace to him, that was a Grace to You.
  • But ô! Hee’s gone! Nature, and Wit, and Art,
  • No other Mansion had but in his Heart.
  • All Christian-Virtues too, which he knew best.
  • Had severall-Thrones appointed in his Breast.
  • But that All-Hee, and all these too are lost,
  • Read this in him alone, that All ingrost.
  • Would you then know how kind and good he was?
  • Goe, read this in the weeping Orphan’s Face.
  • Or how devout to workes of Charity?
  • Goe, be resolved by the Poore Mans eye.
  • Nor was he in Divinity the least
  • Of our grave-Pauls: He may be well the best;
  • Whose words, when you some Scripture doubts would know,
  • Might well have pass’d for Text and Comment too.
  • Just such was Hee. In his inspired-eye,
  • You might have read exact Divinity.
  • Nor was his End unlike unto his Life,
  • His Life and Death were at a sacred-strife,
  • Which should excell in Goodnesse: His last voice
  • Might well Enthrone him in Eternall-Joyes.
  • For how can hee, but ever Blessed bee,
  • That made’s Last-Words a Benedicite?
  • Sic lachrymavit,
  • J. H.
Anonymous, “On the much lamented death of the Right Worshipfull Doctour PINKE VVarden of New College in Oxon.” From In honour of the right worshipfull doctor Robert Pinke, Doctour of Divinite, and VVarden of New Colledge in Oxford (Oxford, 1648) Wing I111, p. 1–2.

Footnotes

1. Kristen Kayem Polster, The Fifth Humor: Ink, Texts, and the Early Modern Body. PhD Dissertation, University of North Texas, 2012, p. 158.

2. James Ferrand, “CAP XXXI Chirurgicall Remedies for the Prevention of Love, and Erotique Melancholy.” Erōtomania, or, A treatise discoursing of the essence, causes, symptomes, prognosticks and cure of love or erotic melancholy written by James Ferrand, Dr. of physicke. Oxford, 1645: R2v–R4r or p. 260–263. [Wing F808G]

3. Timothie Bright, “CHAP. XXVII. The Causes of sobbing and sighing and how weeping easeth the heart.” A Treatise of Melancholie. London, 1586: p. 159–161. [STC 3747]

4. Gail Kern Paster, “The Unbearable Coldness of Female Being: Women’s Imperfection and the Humoral Economy.” English Literary Renaissance, 28 (3), 2008, p. 416.

5. Timothie Bright, “CHAP. XXIIII. The causes of teares, and their saltnesse.” A Treatise of Melancholie. London, 1586: p. 143–144. [STC 3747]

6. For more details, see Elina Gertsman’s introduction to Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History (xi–xx), Alec Ryrie’s Being Protestant in Reformation England (p. 187–195), and Bernard Capp’s “‘Jesus Wept’ But Did the Englishman? Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern England.” Past & Present 224 (2014): p. 75–108.

7. Lewis Bayly says that to repent one should “pricke thy heart with sorrow: that melting for remorse within thee: it may be dissolued into a fountaine of teares, trickling downe thy mournfull cheekes” (p. 639). According to Gilbert Primrose, “They that weepe not in his world, shall weepe in hell” (Christian mans teares, 1625, p. 117).

8. See, for instance, Martial’s epigram (1.33) on Gellia: “Gellia does not cry for her lost father when she’s by herself, but if she has company, out spring the tears to order. Gellia, whoever seeks credit for mourning is no mourner. He truly grieves who grieves without witnesses.”

9. See, for instance, Gilbert Primrose’s Christian mans teares (1625): “It was naturall to Rachel to weepe for her children; and in that, she shee sinned not: but when she refused to bee comforted, she sinned” (p. 84–85).

10. In the early-modern period, bread was used as an eraser for pencil and ink. See, for instance, Henry Peacham’s “Chap. IIII. Pencils and other Instruments necessarie for drawing” in The Gentlemans Exercise (London, 1612, STC 19508): “...and be not without the crums of fine manchet or white bread, to rubbe out your lead or coale, when you haue done amisse, or finished your worke” (D1r or p. 15).

Bibliography