Renaissance on ingratitude

A few quotations from Renaissance writers on the subject of ingratitude, drawn from Catherine Dunn’s excellent 1946 CUA dissertation on the subject:

Lodowick Bryskett argued that ingratitude was contrary to reason: “How shamefull a thing is it therefore to man, that brute beasts should give him examples of gratitude; and he contrariwise, on whom God hath bestowed so great a gift as reason to discerne the good from the bad, should rather follow the example of the worst sort of beasts in doing ill, then of such as by naturall instinct shew him the way to goodnesse?”

Simon Howard quoted from Cicero, who claimed that ingratitude was inhuman: “Nihil tam inhmanum, tam immane, tam ferum, quam committere ut beneficio non dicam indignus, sed victus esse videare.”

William Bullein makes a similar point in his 1579 Bulwarke of Defence against all Sicknesse: “There is also an other evyll, ioyned to condicions of wycked Men, whych is none of the passions of the Mynde, nor yet an infirmitye of Nature; but rather is an euyll moste intollerable and moste odious of all unto a good Nature, which is called Ingratitude, churlishness, or unkyndnesse.”

In As You Like It, Shakespeare compared the winter wind to human ingratitude: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,/Thou art not so unkind/ As man’s ingratitude . . . . Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,/ That dost not bite so nigh/ As benefits forgot./ Though thou the waters warp,/ Thy sting is not so sharp/ As friend remember’d not.”