Honesty

Honesty is the Duke of Newcastle’s self-declared foster-mother and advocate in the attempted hearing between him and Fortune. A personified virtue whose loyalty rests on moral character rather than worldly advantage, she interrupts Prudence’s appeal for peace to insist that the case be heard plainly. Her speech offers a compact history of the Duke’s ethical formation, while the hearing’s failure reveals the cost of candor untempered by discretion.

Identity and Allegiance

Honesty appears among the immaterial company accompanying the Duchess of Newcastle and the Empress of the Blazing-World to the Blazing-World, where the Empress seeks help in composing the Duke’s long-standing dispute with Fortune. The Duke chooses Honesty and Prudence as his advocates. Their actions are described as corporeal despite their immaterial nature, placing them in the allegorical company of personified qualities while allowing them to participate directly in the hearing.

Her allegiance is personal as well as principled: she calls the Duke her foster-son and says that she raised him from childhood. Yet she presents that bond as the source of a moral education, not as a license for empty praise. Her case is that the Duke’s conduct deserves Fortune’s favor, and that his refusal to abase himself before her is precisely what has made him her enemy.

The Duke’s Moral Education

Honesty recounts the Duke’s upbringing as a sequence of tutelage and experience. She says she formed a lasting friendship between him and Gratitude, Charity, and Generosity, then sent him to Prudence, who taught him wisdom and the rules of Temperance, Patience, and Justice. He went on to the University of Honour, where he learned honorable qualities, arts, and sciences.

His education did not end in schools. Honesty sent him to travel through the World of Actions, with Observation as his governor; during those travels he befriended Experience. The progression makes the Duke’s virtue practical as well as instructed: ethical principles are joined to observation of conduct and knowledge acquired in the world. Honesty concludes that this formation made him fit for Heaven’s blessings and Fortune’s favors, sharpening the irony of Fortune’s hostility.

Advocacy at the Hearing

Prudence begins by asking the company to accept her offering of peace and to allow her to reconcile Fortune and the Duke. Honesty abruptly rises and interrupts her. She rejects flattering Fortune and says she has come not to speak rhetorically or eloquently but to state the case plainly and truthfully. The interruption turns a proposed settlement into a defense of the Duke’s record and a direct account of the dispute.

Honesty attributes Fortune’s malice to the Duke’s refusal to flatter her. She explains that she forbade him to do so because flattery would have forced him to follow Fortune’s inconstant ways and obey unjust commands. Prudence, by contrast, advised him not to despise Fortune’s favors, which could obstruct his worth and merit. Honesty says he followed both counsels: he neither flattered nor despised Fortune, but remained humble and respectful as far as honor, honesty, and conscience allowed. She then submits the matter to Truth’s judgment rather than claiming authority to settle it herself.

Candor, Prudence, and the Failed Judgment

Fortune considers Honesty’s plain speech rude and refuses to await Truth’s decision; she leaves in anger. The hearing therefore produces no judgment, and the attempted reconciliation fails at the moment Honesty’s argument reaches its conclusion. The Empress and the Duchess are distressed that their efforts have come to nothing.

Honesty then rebukes the Duchess for desiring Fortune’s favor, treating that desire as evidence of mistrust in the gods’ blessings. The Duchess replies tearfully that she neither distrusts those blessings nor relies on Fortune; she wants only for her lord to have no powerful enemies. The Empress reproves Honesty for lacking Prudence’s discretion and observes that, although Honesty is commended, she is apt to act indiscreetly without Prudence as her guide. Prudence smiles, Honesty is put somewhat out of countenance, and the two soon become good friends again. The episode leaves Honesty’s moral clarity intact, but demonstrates that truth delivered without tact can alienate its audience and frustrate even a just cause.