Iv The Rhetor-wrestler

By Author: Solo Chen
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In Of Education (1644), Milton recommends one-and-a-half hours of exercise every day, so that students may be 'equally good both for Peace and War'. That he has in mind wrestling in particular here is evident from his borrowing of Plato's Laws: As to the devices introduced by Antaeus or Cercyon in the art of ED Hardy Boots(http://www.onsaledhardy.com/ed-hardy-boots-c-29.html)wrestling for the sake of empty glory... since they are useless in the business of war, they merit no eulogy. But the exercises of stand-up wrestling, with the twisting free of neck, hands, and sides... these must not be omitted, since they are useful alike for service in war and for use at festivals... useful both in peace and war.

However, in Renaissance England, wrestling at festivals was equated with the 'empty glory' Plato derides. Thus, Milton can recommend wrestling in a pedagogical work, but debase the same activity in Samson Agonistes during the festival of Dagon: 'Have they not', wonders Samson disdainfully, 'Wrestlers, Riders, Runners, Juglers, and Dancers'. For humanist pedagogues, therefore, wrestling 'for peace' comprises in its ends ...
... mainly the health of the body, as well as a sign of civility expressed through the types of holds or stances employed. For Elyot, 'the helthe of man is preserved' through exercise, and for Ascham, wrestling is 'verie necessarie, for a Courtlie lentleman to vise'. Wrestling 'for war' is of course in preparation for the event of hand-to-hand combat, and is recommended by Castiglione, Elyot and Ascham, all of whom adhere to a long tradition beginning with the ancient Greeks promoting this kind of training in schools. Again, however, during the Renaissance, the terms required alteration, for the invention and increase in use of gunpowder had diminished the need for a soldier in possession of a well-trained body: 'but for these vile guns', says Hotspur in Henry IV, 'He would himself have been a soldier'. The redundancy of bodily skill in warfare, and the association of wrestling with 'empty glory' might have prompted Henry Peacham to remove wrestling from Ed Hardy Clothing(http://www.eshopedhardy.com)his list of recommended exercises in The Compleat Gentleman. Mulcaster's interest in wrestling, on the other hand, rises from a slightly different set of assumptions that, in turn, justify this sport's inclusion in his curriculum assumptions, too, that may underlie Spenser's boyhood praise of exercise for its 'warlike' and 'civill' benefits.

Rather, he will defend exercise when its end is 'to maintained health, and to bring the bodies to a very good habit'. Superficially, this claim does not imply any renovation of Elyot's 'health of a man' and Ascham's 'Courtlie lentleman', but Mulcaster exceeds them both, the first in degree, the latter in kind. With regard to physical education and health, Mulcaster bases his justifications on the humeral body (drawing heavily on Galen) in a way unparalleled amongst his English contemporaries. More importantly for this discussion, however, Mulcaster extends the notion of a 'good habit' of the body to include the gestures of the orator in the redefinition of a gentlemanly carriage. Here wrestling's association with temperance begins to take shape. Mulcaster's authority, Clement, admits wrestling into a Christian education because 'in every thing and every place we should not live for pleasure nor for immorality; neither should we go to the other extreme'; a wrestler is defined as one who aims for 'moderation in all things'. In adding to this association an exercise regime justified by its role in balancing the humours and ability to train the body of the orator, Mulcaster offers a paradigm which may be applied to Guyon's behaviour in The Faerie Queene. A rhetor-wrestler, in other words, provides a model for understanding the apparently violent methods of achieving temperance in Book II, thereby encouraging the reader to situate moments of the wrestler's intemperance within the larger framework of the moral allegory. Appreciating Guyon's 'excess' is, in this sense, merely to acknowledge with Sidney the 'wordish' affinity between poetry and oratory.