Life & Wisdom Quote by George Chapman

Chapman’s line lands like a moral invoice slid across the table: virtue isn’t framed as a private glow but as a form of social intelligence men ignore at their peril. The phrasing is telling. “Let no man” is less gentle advice than a public warning, the kind of imperative that assumes a stubborn audience and a culture trained to discount women’s voices. “Under value” reads like the language of commerce, suggesting counsel is routinely mispriced in a market rigged by masculine authority. Chapman doesn’t just praise women; he exposes the habitual male error of treating their judgment as ornamental.

The crucial twist is “virtuous.” In early modern England, virtue was a loaded credential, often policed as chastity and obedience. By attaching women’s authority to virtue, Chapman both elevates and restricts. He makes female counsel admissible only when it arrives stamped with moral respectability. That’s the bargain: women may be heard, but only after they’ve been certified “safe” by the era’s anxieties about disorder, desire, and power. The line flatters women while keeping the gate in male hands.

Contextually, this fits a Renaissance literary world where women were frequently allegorized as temptresses or ideals, rarely as strategists. Chapman, steeped in classical models and courtly politics, knows counsel is a currency that moves kingdoms. He’s arguing that the household and the court alike run on advice, and that moral clarity - coded here as feminine and “virtuous” - can be a corrective to male ambition. The subtext isn’t purely feminist or purely patriarchal; it’s a pragmatic plea to respect a kind of wisdom society itself has trained men to overlook.