And this spoken in common Prouerbe.
An ape wilbe an ape, by kinde as they
say,
Though that ye clad him all in purple
array.
Or as we once sported vpon a fellowes name who was
called Woodcock, and
for an ill part he had plaid entreated fauour by his
friend.
I praie you intreate no more for the
man,
Woodcocke wilbe a woodcocke do what ye
can.
Now also be there many other sortes of repetition
if a man would vse them,
but are nothing commendable, and therefore are not
obserued in good
poesie, as a vulgar rimer who doubled one word in
the end of euery verse,
thus:
adieu, adieu
my face, my face.
And an other that did the like in the beginning of
his verse, thus:
To loue him and loue him, as sinners
should doo.
These repetitions be not figuratiue but phantastical, for a figure is euer vsed to a purpose, either of beautie or of efficacie: and these last recited be to no purpose, for neither can ye say that it vrges affection, nor that it beautifieth or enforceth the sence, nor hath any other subtilitie in it, and therfore is a very foolish impertinency of speech, and not a figure.
[Sidenote: Prosonomasia, or the Nicknamer.]
Ye haue a figure by which ye play with a couple of
words or names much resembling, and because the one
seemes to answere th’other by manner of illusion,
and doth, as it were, nick him, I call him the Nicknamer.
If any other man can geue him a fitter English name,
I will not be angrie, but I am sure mine is very neere
the origninall sense of the Prosonomasia, and
is rather a by-name geuen in sport, than a surname
geuen of any earnest purpose. As, Tiberius
the Emperor, because he was a great drinker of wine,
they called him by way of derision to his owne name
Caldius Biberius Mero, in steade of Claudius
Tiberius Nero: and so a iesting frier that
wrate against Erasmus, called him by resemblance
to his own Errans mus, and are mainteined by
this figure Prosonomasia, or the Nicknamer.
But euery name geuen in iest or by way of a surname,
if it do not resemble the true, is not by this figure,
as, the Emperor of Greece, who was surnamed Constantinus
Cepronimus, because he beshit the foont at the
time he was christened: and so ye may see the
difference betwixt the figures Antonomasia
& Prosonomatia. Now when such resemblance
happens betweene words of another nature and not vpon
mens names, yet doeth the Poet or maker finde prety
sport to play with them in his verse, specially the
Comicall Poet and the Epigrammatist. Sir Philip
Sidney in a dittie plaide very pretily with these
two words, Loue and liue, thus.
And all my life I will confesse,
The lesse I loue, I liue the lesse.


