William Shakespeare and John Donne: Stages of the soul in early modern English poetry 9781526133304

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William Shakespeare and John Donne

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The Manchester Spenser is a monograph and text series devoted to historical and textual approaches to Edmund Spenser –​to his life, times, places, works and contemporaries. A growing body of work in Spenser and Renaissance studies, fresh with confidence and curiosity and based on solid historical research, is being written in response to a general sense that our ability to interpret texts is becoming limited without the excavation of further knowledge. So the importance of research in nearby disciplines is quickly being recognised, and interest renewed: history, archaeology, religious or theological history, book history, translation, lexicography, commentary and glossary –​these require treatment for and by students of Spenser. The Manchester Spenser, to feed, foster and build on these refreshed attitudes, aims to publish reference tools, critical, historical, biographical and archaeological monographs on or related to Spenser, from several disciplines, and to publish editions of primary sources and classroom texts of a more wide-​ranging scope. The Manchester Spenser consists of work with stamina, high standards of scholarship and research, adroit handling of evidence, rigour of argument, exposition and documentation. The series will encourage and assist research into, and develop the readership of, one of the richest and most complex writers of the early modern period. General Editors  Joshua Reid, Kathryn Walls and Tamsin Badcoe Editorial Board  Sukanta Chaudhuri, Helen Cooper, Thomas Herron, J. B. Lethbridge, James Nohrnberg and Brian Vickers Also available Literary and visual Ralegh  Christopher M. Armitage (ed.) The art of The Faerie Queene  Richard Danson Brown A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene  Richard Danson Brown & J.B. Lethbridge A Supplement of the Faery Queene: By Ralph Knevet  Christopher Burlinson & Andrew Zurcher (eds) A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance  Sukanta Chaudhuri Pastoral poetry of the English Renaissance: An anthology  Sukanta Chaudhuri (ed.) Spenserian allegory and Elizabethan biblical exegesis: A context for The Faerie Queene  Margaret Christian Monsters and the poetic imagination in The Faerie Queene: ‘Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects’  Maik Goth Celebrating Mutabilitie: Essays on Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos  Jane Grogan (ed.) Spenserian satire: A tradition of indirection  Rachel E. Hile Castles and Colonists: An archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland  Eric Klingelhofer Shakespeare and Spenser: Attractive opposites  J.B. Lethbridge (ed.) Dublin: Renaissance city of literature  Kathleen Miller and Crawford Gribben (eds) A Fig for Fortune: By Anthony Copley  Susannah Brietz Monta Spenser and Virgil: The pastoral poems  Syrithe Pugh The Burley manuscript  Peter Redford (ed.) Renaissance psychologies: Spenser and Shakespeare  Robert Lanier Reid European erotic romance: Philhellene Protestantism, renaissance translation and English literary politics  Victor Skretkowicz God’s only daughter: Spenser’s Una as the invisible Church  Kathryn Walls

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William Shakespeare and John Donne Stages of the soul in early modern English poetry

m ANGELIKA ZIRKER

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Angelika Zirker 2019 The right of Angelika Zirker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 3329 8 hardback First published 2019 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Acknowledgements  Prologue  Introduction: stages of the soul and drama in poetry 

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Part I  William Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and the drama of the soul 1 Motivating the myth: allegory and psychology 

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2 ‘Thou art not what thou seem’st’: Tarquin’s inner stage and outer action 

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3 ‘But with my body my poor soul’s pollution’: Lucrece, her body, and soul 

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4 Lust-​breathed Tarquin –​Lucrece, the name of chaste: antagonism, parallelism, and chiasmus 

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Part II  John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and the so(u)le-​talk of the soul 5 Divine comedies: the speaker, his soul, and the poem as stage 

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6 The sonnet as miniature drama: Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ 

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7 Sole-​talk and soul-​talk: Donne’s so(u)liloquies in the Holy Sonnets 

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8 The speaker on the stage of the poem: Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ 

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9 Dialogue and antagonism in Donne’s theatre of the soul 

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Contents

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Part III  Conclusion 10 So(u)le-​talk, self, and stages of the soul 

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Bibliography  Index 

223 228 262

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Acknowledgements

This book is based on my research at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen (Germany) over the past few years. It would not have been possible to complete without the backing of several institutions, or without the support of a number of people whom I would like to thank now that the work is published. The book, in its current form, began to take shape during my residencies as a Visiting Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute of Birmingham University in Stratford-​ upon-​Avon in the summers of 2012 and 2013. The Fritz Thyssen Foundation generously funded my first stay in 2012. It was over lunch with Catherine Belsey that Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece suddenly emerged in a new light as a text relevant to my interest in Stages of the Soul. Subsequent conversations with Hugh Adlington, Michael Dobson, Ewan Fernie, John Jowett, Robert Wilcher, and Claire Preston contributed further insights into the link between early modern poetry and drama. Karin Brown, the librarian at the Shakespeare Institute, and her colleagues not only made me feel welcomed but tirelessly assisted me with all kinds of queries. I am also very much indebted to the assistance of Paul Edmondson, who helped establish contacts and arranged meetings over coffee, lunches, and dinners. My gratitude extends to Sue and Richard Lees who have welcomed me many more times since then to their guesthouse on Evesham Road. While my encounters with scholars at the Shakespeare Institute gave an impulse to my project, there were many others who played essential roles in completing this book. I would like to extend my thanks to all academic friends who discussed my work with me over the years, especially Judith Anderson, Åke Bergvall, Maurice Charney, Arthur Kinney, and Burkhard Niederhoff. The members of the team of Professor Matthias Bauer at Tübingen University assisted me with getting books from the library, provided me with PDFs and, above all, with encouragement, and were of indispensable help; my special thanks goes to Inken Armbrust, Martina Bross, Lisa Ebert, Burkhard von Eckartsberg, Mirjam Haas, Yvonne Hertzler, Florian Kubsch, Miriam Lahrsow, Lena Moltenbrey, Janina Niefer, Julia Pandtle, Nicole Poppe, Susanne Riecker, Jessica Schuchert, and Timo Stösser. The reviewers of my Habilitation, Matthias Bauer, Ingrid Hotz-​Davies, Joachim Knape, and Claudia Olk, as well as the committee at the Faculty of Humanities at Tübingen, proved to be excellent discussion partners and accompanied me towards the next

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step in my academic career. Julian Lethbridge, my former colleague, put me in touch with Manchester University Press, where Joshua Reid as well as Matthew Frost and Tamsin Badcoe made everything else possible to get my work published. The foundation of this book rests in large part on the scholarship of the late Inge Leimberg and of Matthias Bauer. Matthias Bauer has been my academic mentor ever since 2001 when I first worked as his student assistant. Discussions with him have been challenging from that start, and I am extremely grateful to him for his trust in me that I could meet the challenge. The book as it stands is proof of the fruitfulness of our ongoing critical debate. I have also been supported by a number of friends and would like to especially thank Helen Kay Gelinas, Alejandra Hillebrandt, Eva Maria Haag, Beate Starke, and all those who encouraged and helped me along the way. Unfortunately, one of them could not see this book published: Elaine Roberta Werblud Moore passed away in October 2017. I had very much wanted her to hold this in her hands. Last but not least, I am grateful to my husband Marcus for always being there, for his patience, and for never losing faith in whatever I do. This book is dedicated to him.

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Prologue

When the Ghost of his father reappears to Hamlet, he not only admonishes him not to forget his ‘almost blunted purpose’ of taking revenge (3.4.107)1 but also asks him to take care of his affrighted mother. The words he uses should make us reflect: ‘O step between her and her fighting soul’ (3.4.109). Modern editions hasten to paraphrase them as ‘intervene in her mental or spiritual crisis’ (Thompson/​ Taylor 345n) or ‘protect her from her own inner struggle’ (Jenkins 326n113). The very fact that these editors see the need to gloss the Ghost’s words shows that they are felt to be unusual. Other editors regard them as self-​explanatory and do not provide a paraphrase.2 The way the Ghost verbalizes his command, it appears, is both familiar and strange to us. It combines two metaphors, as is indicated by the paraphrases. The first is Hamlet’s ‘stepping between’, which is taken not to mean a literal movement of the body but is more abstractly rendered as ‘intervene’ and ‘protect’. The second is the ‘fighting soul’, which is in itself regarded as a metaphorical cluster, since the soul is variously paraphrased by the adjectives ‘mental’, ‘spiritual’, and ‘inner’, and ‘fighting’ is explained by the nouns ‘crisis’ and ‘struggle’. The paraphrases show that the Ghost obviously manages to put a complex demand into a string of very simple words. Hamlet does not show any signs of failing to know at once what the Ghost means. The literal sense of the line does not cause him any trouble. And to a certain degree it has survived in our conceptual lexicon, so that we do not absolutely demand an explanation of the utterance. But the literal sense is remarkable. The expression ‘stepping between’ denotes the action of entering the space between two persons; it presupposes the need of separation. The OED does not seem to have read Hamlet,3 for its first record of this collocation is dated 1605; the first really clear example given is a stage direction 1 The quotations here follow the most recent Arden edition by Thompson/​Taylor. 2 G. R. Hibbard’s Oxford World’s Classics edition is an example; he does not paraphrase the line but only gives a somewhat redundant paraphrase of the first two words, ‘interpose yourself between’ (3.4.105n). There is no explication or paraphrase of the line in the richly annotated edition by Klein; nor in the New Cambridge edition by Edwards. 3 The first Quarto of Hamlet was published in 1603. Stepping between as an act of required separation is clearly shown in All’s Well That Ends Well where Helena underlines the denouement of the play by exclaiming to Bertram: ‘If it appear not plain and prove untrue /​Deadly divorce step between me and you!’ (5.3.311–​12).

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dated 1615 (from Heywood’s Four Prentices), ‘She steps between them’. In any case, the very expression of stepping between seems to have had the ring of newness at the time, drawing attention to the phrasing of the Ghost’s utterance. And it was, as the stage direction shows, an expression associated with the theatre: this is where one typically watches a person stepping between antagonists in order to prevent or end a fight. It is an action of considerable dramatic impact.4 The nature of the antagonists Hamlet is asked to step between is as remarkable as the expression. In the little scene contained within a single sentence by the most theatrical of all dramatic personages, the Ghost, we learn that Hamlet is to intervene between his mother and her soul: what is part of Gertrude, or what is even the essence of her own self, has become a separate entity, so that Hamlet can (and must) step between them. The relationship between person and soul is represented in terms of a stage, on which an invisible entity appears as an acting character. This leads up to the ancient allegorical concept of the ‘fighting soul’: on this stage, the soul is not only a person but someone who fights (against her owner, Gertrude); moreover, by implication and through the historical evocation of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, it is someone within whom separate elements are at strife, who is a stage for the battle of its faculties. Gertrude is at war with her soul, and her soul is at war with itself, and Hamlet may help to prevent self-​destruction by stepping between the combatants. Hamlet (and at least part of his modern audience) is familiar with conceptualizing the soul in the way just witnessed. The Ghost’s utterance takes up traditional processes of allegorization (befitting the role of Hamlet’s father as a representative of the past), and, at the same time, it is very new in that both, literal and metaphorical, meanings of the soul as a character on the stage go together; it is also new in that there is a kind of metalepsis connecting what we learn about the soul’s inner state and what is enacted on the stage of the play. This is befitting Hamlet’s role in this drama of the soul, which has often been read as a text that opens up new ways of representing and analysing the depths of the psyche.5 In this concept, the soul is quintessentially dramatic, but not in the way of simply prolonging the inherited techniques of putting the fate of the soul on an allegorical stage. The soul is conceived in theatrical terms, as we notice from Gertrude’s self-​ analysis: ‘To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, /​Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss’ (4.5.17–​18). But something has happened. She is not only an actor but also a spectator, turning her eyes ‘into [her] very soul’ (3.4.87). The true theatre is within, and the true spectator is the one who can look inside. This makes itself felt in such exclamations as Hamlet’s ‘I have that within which passes show’ (1.2.85). At the same time, the soul itself emerges as the true spectator. When Hamlet plans 4 This is what Romeo does when Mercutio and Tybalt fight, even though there the stage direction (in Q1) only implies it: ‘Tybalt under Romeo’s arm thrusts Mercutio in and flies’ (3.1.89 SD). The action is the peripeteia of the play, as it marks the entrance of death, with Romeo inescapably involved in it. 5 See Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers, where she presents Hamlet as the text which marks the emergence of the modern subject in that it is here that Shakespeare prefigured the formulations of psychoanalysis (see also de Grazia, ‘The Motive for Interiority’ 431).

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the play that is to ‘catch the conscience of the King’ (2.2.540), his motivation for doing so is that the ‘cunning of the scene’ may ‘struck so to the soul’ that the spectators will ‘proclaim their malefactions’ (2.2.525–​6). The soul, which is the receptive spectator of the play, will see in it what is going on inside itself, and make it externally visible. This complex interplay of outside and inside that shows us the soul being at both ends of the dramatic communication is further enriched by the spectrum of what ‘soul’ actually means. As we have seen in the Ghost’s words to Hamlet and in Hamlet’s reflection on the function of his play, the soul comprises the inner senses and emotions and in particular a person’s conscience, where Gertrude sees ‘black and grieved spots’ (3.4.88) that make us imagine the interior of her soul as something physical or corporeal in need of cleansing. This indicates that the soul as the seat of emotions and faculties is inextricably linked with the notion of the soul as being in a particular state, which does not end with the life of the body. From early on in the play, for example, when Horatio warns Hamlet against following the Ghost (1.4.64), we see that the soul as the scene of dramatic action, as actor and spectator, is concurrently presented as the immortal part of the human being. Hamlet is not afraid of the Ghost since he is convinced that his soul, ‘[b]‌eing a thing immortal as itself ’ (1.4.67), cannot be harmed by him/​it. Thus Hamlet is not only a play of the soul but also a play of souls on their way from this world to the next, possibly reappearing for a time in physical shape as part of their stage in purgatory (1.5.3, 13). The soul of his father becomes ‘questionable’ (1.4.43), physically present, by appearing as a ghost; in this form, it interacts with Hamlet’s soul, which he calls ‘prophetic’ (1.5.40) for it apparently has had some foreknowledge of what happened and is going to happen. The soul is responsible for knowledge; it is ethically responsible, and it is the part and state of humankind that will, inevitably, wonder about its future in the ‘undiscovered country from whose bourn /​No traveller returns’ (3.1.78–​9). The following is not a study of Hamlet. But the cluster of ideas and representations of the soul in Shakespeare’s play provokes the question of their precise nature and origin. And it is my suggestion that we turn to specific examples of early modern poetry in order to learn how this cluster came about.

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Introduction: stages of the soul and drama in poetry

The subtitle Stages of the soul in early modern English poetry points towards the two genres of drama and lyrical poetry; the focus of this study is on dramatic elements in early modern poems and on the ways in which the soul is shown and understood in such a generic context. The recognition of so-​called dramatic elements in early modern poetry is not new;1 but, as far as I can see, the soul has not yet been considered to be an element that links the two genres. Neither has the counterpart to that reflection been sufficiently realized: when we consider such a link between the two genres, the soul comes to the fore. In the current context, the term ‘dramatic’ is used and understood as ‘pertaining to, or connected with the, or a, drama; dealing with or employing the forms of the drama’ (OED, ‘dramatic, adj.’ A.1.), and as the ‘animated action or striking presentation, as in a play; theatrical’ (OED, ‘dramatic, adj.’ A.2.).2 The underlying questions are how drama becomes integrated into poetry (and not, for instance, how poems are presented on the theatrical stage); in how far poetry is dramatic in the sense of these definitions, i.e. ‘dealing with or employing forms of drama’ and presenting ‘animated action’; and how the soul helps establish a link between the genres. One of the most famous examples of ‘dramatic poetry’ during the early modern period is Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, which was dubbed by Thomas Nashe (1591) a ‘tragicomedy of love’: Gentlemen […] let not your surfeited sight, new come from such puppet play, think scorne to turne aside into this Theater of pleasure, for here you shal find a paper stage streud with pearle, an artificial heau’n to ouershadow the faire frame, & christal

1 See, e.g., Lewalski, who describes Donne’s Holy Sonnets as depicting ‘various moments in the speaker’s spiritual drama’ (Protestant Poetics 265). Kullmann makes a similar point when he writes that Donne’s poetry is different from other Elizabethan poetry –​a claim that remains to be debated –​in its being ‘dramatic’, meaning its presentation of ‘dramatic situations’ (121). See also, e.g., Cheney, ‘Poetry and Theater in Shakespeare’s Sonnets’; Hunter, ‘The Dramatic Technique of Shakespeare’s Sonnets’; Mirsky; Pfister, ‘Notes’; Pirkhofer. 2 Cf. the definition of ‘theatrical, adj.’: ‘[p]‌ertaining to or connected with the theatre or “stage”, or with scenic representations’ (A.1.a.). See also Elam 2; and Cruttwell 90.

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wals to encounter your curious eyes, whiles the tragicommody of loue is performed by starlight. The chiefe Actor here is Melpomene, whose dusky robes, dipt in the ynke of teares, as yet seeme to drop when I view them neere. The argument cruell chastity, the Prologue hope, the Epilogue dispaire; videte, queso, et linguis animisque fauete. (Preface 329)3

Nashe defines the structure of Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella in terms of a drama: the argument, prologue, and epilogue. His description becomes allegorical when he refers to character and calls Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, the ‘chiefe Actor’. The sonnet cycle by Sidney is characterized as a tragicomedy of love and emotion; the poems are perceived as a play, and the play is an allegory of life. The theatre is the world, and life is a play that in this case begins with hope and ends in despair.4 If we look at the definitions of dramatic as given above, we come to understand that the link between poetry and drama comprises formal aspects, including structure, communicative situation, character etc. We also see that, for example, the sonnet is structured along the lines of drama:5 we are first introduced to the topic (as in the exposition of a drama), then the action rises, we come to the peripety in the volta, and finally to a resolution. Moreover, we find allusions to the theatre and communicative situations that imitate dramatic speech, which lends the action energeia. Drama is accordingly integrated into poetry on all levels: action, character, communication. During the early modern period, genre was considered fundamental for understanding and representing ideas, if not even the world.6 The individual genres as modes meant to express meanings of their own, and whenever genres were mixed or brought into a relationship with each other, this points to a conceptual link; a case in point is the emergence of tragicomedy during this period. Goethe comments on the relationships between genres that are based on their distinctness, post festum, in his ‘Naturformen der Dichtung’, when he reflects on the combination and blending of genres as we find it represented in small literary forms, ‘in the smallest poem’, as well as in Greek tragedy.7 3 See also Cheney, Shakespeare, National Poet-​Playwright 54; and Lengeler 53. 4 Rudenstine notes: ‘If dramatic speech or conversation was to be the new poetry’s main source of energeia […] [t]‌he new poetry was to retain, if possible, all these other sources of drama [the sense of things being present, character etc.] as well, and Sidney’s desire that it do so led to his invention of what was really a new form in English –​the so-​called dramatic lyric and its sequence. It is no accident that Astrophel is the most carefully plotted and the most overtly dramatized of all the English sonnet sequences. Sidney wanted a hero whose tale would be played out before us, whose love would be rendered with such immediacy that it could not help but move and persuade’ (166). See also Hadfield 57; and Austin, who calls several sonnets from Astrophil and Stella ‘dramatic miniature[s]’ (Language 17). 5 See, e.g., Edmondson/​Wells; Schalkwyk; Sprang; and Baumbach. 6 On early modern concepts of genre, see, e.g., Colie; Dubrow, Challenges; Low, esp. the introductory chapter. 7 ‘There are but three authentic natural forms of poetry:  the lucidly narrating form, the enthusiastically excited, and the subjectively acting: epic, lyric, and drama. These three modes of poetry may act together or separately. In the smallest poem we often find them united, and, based on this unity, they produce in the smallest room the most beautiful creation, as we can see in the highly-​esteemed ballads of all peoples. In the older Greek tragedy they are likewise all brought together’ (Goethe 187–​8; my translation).

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Introduction

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He refers to the fact that specific qualities or modes (what he calls ‘Dichtweisen’) have been traditionally attributed to genres, e.g. poetry as an expression of the soul,8 and, ever since Aristotle, drama as emphasizing mythos (i.e. action). We need not believe, with Goethe, that these qualities are naturally assigned to the genres in order to see their useful function as they help us realize and describe what an individual work of literature is like. It means learning about the options that the diverse genres provide us with. Thus Aristotle, in the Poetics, writes: For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—​in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—​or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us. (trans. Butcher III; 13)

In his reflection on the various kinds of imitation, Aristotle distinguishes between the narrator who ‘take[s]‌another personality, as Homer does’, i.e. in an epic narrative, or ‘speaks in his own person, unchanged’, as a lyrical persona9 in a sole-​talk of poetry –​ or he may present ‘his characters as living and moving before us’ as in a drama, with the character on the stage.10 Poetry and drama thus, by definition, lend themselves to the representation of the innermost thoughts and feelings of a persona/​character. During the early modern period, the prevalent discourses and generic modes tended to mutually influence each other  –​much in the sense as described by Goethe in his ‘Naturformen der Dichtung’. Poetry influenced drama, e.g. the sonnet was incorporated into love tragedy, because sonnets as a genre represented the expression of feeling,11 which could then be introduced into drama;12 and drama influenced poetry, i.e. dramatic elements (as defined above) were integrated into poetry. One of the most famous examples for the influence of poetry on drama is the sonnet Romeo and Juliet create together when they first meet during the ball at the Capulets’ home: the sonnet here (on the level of content) lends itself to 8 See, e.g., Barber on Shakespeare’s Sonnets as expressive of ‘a man’s experience’ (300): ‘though they do not tell a story [Barber is against a biographical reading], they do express a personality. They are gestures of love, concern, disappointment, anger or disgust, profoundly and candidly conveyed.’ What is crucial here is the notion of experience turned into self-​expression, which is where the soul comes into play. Oppenheimer links the origin of the sonnet with the soul and Plato’s Timaeus (1). See also Simpson, Philosophy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets 1. 9 The choice of this term indicates that ‘his own person’ may be a fictional ‘I’ purporting to be the writer’s self. 10 Cf. the three ‘styles’ of poetry in Plato’s Republic: ‘the narrative, in which the poet speaks in his own person; the imitative, in which the poet takes the person of another, whom he thus “imitates”; and the mixed, in which the two other styles are combined’ (Weinberg 1: 61). See also Bartenschlager; and Weinberg on ‘dramatic imitation in poetry’ (1: 269). The notion of imitation as mimesis also becomes relevant during the early modern period in the context of the living imitation that is then grasped poetically, e.g. in Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi (see below). 11 See, e.g., Spiller on the sonnet as expressive of ‘private emotion’ (81). 12 See Leimberg’s study on Romeo and Juliet, where she notes that there was no real source for the expression of feeling and emotion in the early theatre; Shakespeares Romeo und Julia 14. See also T. S. Eliot in ‘Poetry and Drama’ about the influence of poetry (verse) on drama and his claim that poetry ‘should justify itself dramatically, and not merely be fine poetry shaped into dramatic form’ (84); and Collier on poetry as an influential factor on York Corpus Christi Plays (Poetry and Drama 18); see also Elton on ‘Poetry in the Drama’ (ch. 10).

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the expression of feeling, and its form enables the lovers to put their feelings into words in a literary co-​creation.13 The example from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet shows that, because of their distinct qualities, genres may be combined and inserted into each other to make distinctive statements. This goes not only for the influence of poetry on drama but also the other way around, when drama influences poetry. Both on the early modern stage and in early modern poetry, we find new and characteristic ways of connecting the two modes. As we have seen, the poetic mode as it was represented by the sonnet was introduced into drama, and, conversely, dramatic modes were used consistently in poetry, especially when it came to representing the human soul. Following a tradition from medieval theatre, the soul becomes a character on the stage of the poem, and dramatic action is introduced into poetry, for instance, by the sonnet structure. Allegory thus becomes the way to introduce dramatic mythos into a poem; together they serve to represent and imagine inward processes. In this manner, the expression of the self as an expression of the soul is dramatized. The starting point of my investigation is therefore the connection between the genres or generic modes of poetry and drama, and the question of how the soul may be presented and imagined. The one leads to the other: when drama is introduced into the self-​reflective mode of poetry, the soul as an entity that inevitably has to undergo decisive developments will come up. And when the individual soul and its development is to be represented in a literary mode, drama and poetry will inevitably form a link.14 The reason for this affinity of the soul to the insertion of drama into poetry has to do with the way the soul was conceived in the time and by the writers considered. The soul as inner space and immortal self: psychology and religion If we consider our example from Hamlet again, we see that in this play the concepts of the soul as the seat of various faculties –​growth, sense, intelligence as well as reason, imagination, and memory  –​and as the immortal part of every human being which is involved in a dramatic action are blended. Psychology and religion are not to be separated. This is to be expressed by the title of this study: Stages of the Soul, which contains an obvious pun, to be found in Donne’s Second Anniversary and throughout the early modern period.15 This ambiguity lends itself well to 13 Cf. Leimberg’s reading of Romeo and Juliet and the sonnet in drama as an artful emotional expression that lends the text energeia; Shakespeares Romeo und Julia 14. See also Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Autorschaft und Mitschöpfung’. 14 Coyle sees a link between poetry and drama in relation to the subject and foregrounds the sonnet form in this context: ‘sonnet sequences allow for the construction both of a narrative and of an inward-​looking “I” figure’ (139) that is ‘also found in Renaissance drama’ (139). He links this to the ‘matter of “self-​analysis”: the subject only becomes fully autonomous once it believes and is encouraged to believe that it is not just self-​authored but is the prime object of all knowledge. The autonomous subject turns inward to itself to search for the knowledge that makes it what it is’ (139). 15 The alter ego of the soul in The Second Anniversary, Elizabeth Drury, is called ‘She to whom all this world was but a stage’ (67), immediately after the speaker’s stressing that she has, after death,

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Introduction

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pointing out how closely the two aspects of the soul (reflective interiority and the development of our essential and immortal selves) belong together. Accordingly, it is meant to be read both as genitivus obiectivus and subiectivus, as the stage for the soul and the soul being a stage. Stages of the soul accordingly refers to the soul on the stage of a theatre, i.e. the soul as an actor (or as a spectator in that theatre); but the soul as an interior space may also be the setting on which a drama is taking place, e.g. in a psychomachia. When it is an actor, the soul, on its progress that is life, goes through various stages up to and beyond death. At the same time, as will be shown, the inner drama of the soul and its faculties contributes to the drama of the immortal soul’s progress. The presentation of the soul is thus doubled in various ways: the inner faculties join with the immortal part of man as (e.g. allegorical) actors going through stages of action and development, and both the soul as the seat of interior faculties and the immortal soul may be considered stages on which action is presented. In the latter case, the immortal soul as a stage may paradoxically present the acting soul itself, especially in relation to the body. These fusions are already alluded to in medieval drama, when Anima appears as an allegorical character and reflects on her immortality as well as on the influence of the body on reason (when the will, for example, governs it). The soul then becomes an epistemic entity as it is both perceiving and reflecting. This pattern makes its entry into the poetry of the early modern period, as is evident in both The Rape of Lucrece and the Holy Sonnets. In Shakespeare’s epyllion the soul is a perceptive being; it becomes the place of a psychomachia, and it foregoes its immortality (in the case of Tarquin) or reaches it (in the case of Lucrece). In Donne’s religious poems, the soul is a stage; it also appears on the stage that is the poem, it may experience a progress towards and beyond death, and reflect on its being; it is moreover perceived as being immortal. In fact, Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and Donne’s Holy Sonnets are central to this study because they reflect, perhaps more clearly than any other early modern English poems, on the relationship between the soul as an inner space and as the immortal self by showing it involved in a drama that concerns the balance of its faculties as much as its eternal fate.16

reached a ‘happy state’ (65). ‘Stage’ at this point therefore primarily means a phase in her progress. Only in the next lines do we learn that a theatrical stage is also meant: ‘Where all sat hearkening how her youthful age /​Should be employed’ (68–​9; Donne’s poems are quoted on the basis of Robbins’s edition, unless otherwise indicated). Shakespeare, in his Sonnet 15, contrasts the ‘little moment’ (3) of perfection with the ‘huge stage’ which ‘presenteth nought but shows’ (4), thereby evoking both the temporal and the theatrical meaning of stage. In Pericles 4.4, Gower as Chorus speaks ambiguously of ‘[t]‌he stages of our story’ (9) in the context of ‘our scenes’ that ‘seems [sic] to live’ (7). Leimberg in an essay on Vaughan’s ‘And do they so?’ writes about ‘Stages of Sense’. The title of the present study alludes to this, even though the focus is quite a different one: Leimberg is concerned with one very particular aspect of Vaughan’s poetry, namely the not-​seeing as a precondition of God’s influence (‘Stages of Sense’ 80) as related to the soul. 16 This very fact may tell us something about the link between these two authors which has recently been studied in the volume by Anderson/​Vaught. See also Kietzman, who sees a link between Hamlet and The Rape of Lucrece.

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William Shakespeare and John Donne

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In these texts, the soul brings together matters psychological and religious as much as poetry and drama. While all of these aspects are combined in The Rape of Lucrece and the Holy Sonnets, some of them appear almost everywhere in early modern English poetry. The link between psychology and religion is presented, for instance, in Donne’s Anniversary poems. The speaker in these poems elaborates on concepts of the soul, focusing on the notion of ‘progress’, which is understood as an advancement from its origin to corruption but also from its being imprisoned in the body to the liberation on the point of death: Think further on thyself, my soul, and think How thou at first wast made but in a sink. Think that it argued some infirmity, That those two souls which then thou found’st in me, Thou fed’st upon, and drew’st into thee both My second soul of sense, and first of growth. Think but how poor thou wast, how òbnoxious, Whom a small lump of flesh could poison thus: This curded milk, this poor unlittered whelp My body, could, beyond escape or help, Infect thee with Orig’nal Sin, and thou Couldst neither then refuse, nor leave it now. (The Second Anniversary 157–​68)

The speaker’s address of the soul17 is rather negative: the soul was made in a sink, ‘a cesspool or sewer’ (Manley ed. 183),18 and it was ‘poor’ and ‘obnoxious’.19 The speaker seems to imply the view that ‘original sin is derived not from the body alone, but from its union with the soul’ (Manley ed. 184).20 But the notion that it was made in a ‘sink’ also refers to the sinfulness as represented by sinking ‘inward’ and making the soul red (see The First Anniversary 358). In the passage from the Second Anniversary only two souls (one of sense, and one of growth) are mentioned because the third soul is the intellectual one that is addressed by the speaker. This third soul has a self and is identified with the self: ‘Think further on thyself, my soul, and think’ (157). Donne also wrote about the different souls in one of his sermons: 17 The Anniversary poems are here used to exemplify a link that can also be found in Donne’s Holy Sonnets as well as in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece. Although the soul is addressed in this example, the Anniversaries are much less ‘dramatic’ in their overall setup than the poems considered here. 18 Targoff links this imagery to Donne’s view of the ex traduce origin of the soul: ‘Nothing could be further, of course, from a pristine creation in heaven than this image of the stomach or womb as a “sinke” –​a term used in the period only to describe sewers, cesspools, and other receptacles for waste […] The subsequent lines only intensify the impression of the dirty conditions of the soul’s birth’ (‘Traducing’ 1501). 19 This is a slightly redundant characterization given the ‘uncommon use of the root meaning of the word [obnoxious]: frail, infirm, exposed or liable to harm’ (Manley ed. 184). See OED, ‘obnoxious, adj.’: ‘1.†c. Liable or exposed to harm. Obs. rare.’ 20 See also his Donne’s Pseudo-​Martyr: ‘The purest Soule becomes stain’d and corrupt with sinne, as soone as it touches the body’ (31; Milgate ed. 161). See also Mahood 112.

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First, in a naturall man wee conceive there is a soule of vegetation and of growth; and secondly, a soule of motion and of sense; and then thirdly, a soule of reason and understanding, an immortal soule. And the two first soules of vegetation, and of sense, wee conceive to arise out of the temperament, and good disposition of the substance of which that man is made, they arise out of man himself; But the last soule, the perfect and immortall soule, that is immediately infused by God. (Sermons 3: 2.85; cf. Manley ed. 183)

The soul is indeed threefold, possessing three different faculties, with only one part being immortal. Donne here seems to try and resolve a dilemma that all the contemporary treatises on the soul are confronted with but apparently decline to discuss, namely how the partition of the soul can be reconciled with its immortality. When we locate the vegetative soul in the liver and the soul of ‘motion’, i.e. emotion and ‘sense’ in the heart, then the immortal part is in the brain, containing further faculties, namely memory, understanding, and will. The soul’s immortality is based on its origin with God; its faculties ‘survive’ after the death of the body because of this origin: ‘But there was a part in every one of them, that could not die; which the God of life, who breathed it into them, from his own mouth, hath suck’d into his own bosome’ (Sermons 6: 18.363).21 This is why Donne, in Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, writes that the soul ‘to’ heauen her first Seate takes flight’ (9; see below). To return to the soul as an entity that consists of certain faculties and is immortal, and that links poetry and drama: the stages it goes through can be immediately linked to the stage and the theatrum mundi metaphor.22 This metaphor is most famously referred to in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, when Duke Senior talks about ‘[t]‌his wide and universal theatre’ which ‘[p]resents more woeful pageants than the scene /​Wherein we play in’ (2.7.138–​40). And when Jacques goes on to expatiate on the fact that ‘All the world’s a stage’, he does so by describing the different stages or ages of man. The concept of theatrum mundi, however, is much older, and its relation to the soul is expressed, for instance, in Plotin’s third Ennead, where he writes that ‘every man must play a part’ (III.2.175). He uses the metaphor of the stage to combine it with a very specific concept of the soul: ‘As the actors on our stages get their masks and their costumes, robes of state or rags, so a soul is allotted its fortunes’ (III.2.176). He thus makes a direct link between the theatre (of the world) and the soul: 21 See also de la Primaudaye’s chapter ‘Of the Body and Soul’: ‘the soule, which is much more noble, and infused into the body by God the Creator, without any virtue of the generatiue seed, when as the parts of the body are already framed and fashioned’ (23); like Donne, he emphasizes the separation of body and soul by ‘death the destroier of all’ (19): ‘the earthie part returning into the masse of earth frō whence it came […] likewise, that which is spirituall and inuisible goeth into an eternall immortalitie’ (19). See also Bright’s Treatise: ‘it [the soul] was first made by inspiration from God himself, a creature immortall, proceeding from the eternall; with whome there is no mortality’ (40). A similar view is presented by Sir John Davies in his poem Nosce Teipsum (e.g. 26.613–​24). 22 On the history of this metaphor see, e.g., Yates, Theatre of the World; as well as de Grazia, ‘World Pictures, Modern Periods, and the Early Stage’; Matala de Mazza/​Pornschlegel’s introduction to Inszenierte Welt; Stevens. On performativity see also Fischer-​Lichte; and Schabert.

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William Shakespeare and John Donne It is like on the stage, when the actor who has been murdered changes his costume and comes on again in another character. But [in real life, not on the stage,] the man is really dead. If, then, death is a changing of body, like changing of clothes on the stage, or, for some of us, a putting off of body, like in the theatre the final exit, in that performance, of an actor who will on a later occasion come in again to play, what would there be that is terrible in a change into this kind, of living beings into each other? It is far better than if they had never come into existence at all. For that way there would be a barren absence of life and no possibility of a life which exists in something else; but as it is a manifold life exists in the All and makes all things, and in its living embroiders a rich variety and does not rest from ceaselessly making beautiful and shapely living toys. (III.2.15: 23–​33)

It is revealing for the relationship between stage and soul that, according to Plotin, ‘here in the events of our life it is not the soul within but the outside shadow of man which cries and moans and carries on in every sort of way on a stage which is the whole earth where men have in many places set up their stages’ (48–​51). What happens to man in this life is governed by a ‘rational principle’ (III.2.16); ‘it is like in the production of a play; the author gives each actor a part, but makes use of their characteristics which are there already […] [and] gives each man suitable words and so assigns him to the position which is proper to him’ (III.2.17:17–​19). This is the idea that he takes up again in his fourth Ennead, when he describes how the soul is put into a body that is appropriate. His argument is one of decorum and appropriateness, both with regard to action and character. This also serves him to explain how there are bad men and good, because they are allotted these roles accordingly. But it then depends on the individual actors if they act well or not; they ‘are responsible by themselves and from themselves for the good or bad acting of their parts’ (30–​2): in the truer poetic creation, which men who have a poetic nature imitate in part, the soul acts, receiving the part which it acts from the poet creator; just as the actors here get their parts and their costumes, the saffron robes and the rags, so the soul, too, itself gets its fortunes, and not by random chance; these fortunes, too, are according to the rational principle; and by fitting these into the pattern it becomes in tune itself and puts itself into its proper place in the play and the universal rational pattern […] in this way the soul, coming on the stage in this universal poetic creation and making itself a part of the play, supplies of itself the good or the bad in its acting; it is put in its proper place on its entrance and receives everything except itself and its own works, and so is given punishments or rewards. But the actors [in the universal drama] have something extra, in that they act in a greater space than that within the limits of a stage, and the author makes them masters of the All. (III.2.17)

The ‘poet creator’23 is a tautological expression by the translator for Plotin’s poies (παρὰ τοῦ ποιητοῦ) as ‘poet’ actually means ‘creator’ or ‘maker’ and equally 23 On the concept of the poeta creator see, e.g., Lieberg. The concept of the artist as a creator is an ancient one; earlier in the Renaissance the analogy between the Creator and the poet had been put forward, e.g. by Landino (Heninger 319; see Černy 5).

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Introduction

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designates both God and (human) author; this is why Sidney speaks of ‘the heavenly Maker of that maker’ (Apology 89).24 Plotin here mainly refers to God when creating the world: he assigns man a particular role, just like the poet does in his plays (or poems). How the soul fares depends on its acting –​both as an actor on the stage of the world but also as a stage on which internal faculties interact. Plotin points out that, within the theatrum mundi, the soul is assigned a role but also that the ‘actors […] act in a greater space than that within the limits of a stage’, which implies an extension of the metaphor: as soon as the soul (literally) comes into play, the metaphor of life as a play is extended towards the afterlife. And after its separation from the body, the soul indeed continues to exist both as an inner space and character. In this ur-​definition of the theatrum mundi metaphor the focus is on the soul, with the body being only a costume worn temporarily, and thus on the inner condition of man and on inwardness. This inwardness, however, has to find expression and be turned outward so that it can be perceived and witnessed by an audience. It is in the soliloquy that the concept of the soul as an entity that is self-​perceptive and one that finds itself on its way to its death and beyond in the sense of a progress is performatively brought to the fore. Soul-​talk and sole-​talk: the soliloquy in early modern English poetry and drama The soliloquy during the early modern period was conceived of in terms of both soul-​talk and sole-​talk (see below), as a talk by the soul and about the soul, and as a form of ‘talking with ourselves alone’, as Augustine has it,25 in which a self splits itself up when conducting an inner conversation. As a first and foremost devotional practice, the soliloquy made its way into both drama and poetry. It thus contributed in an important way to the expression of the soul in literary forms, and the genre of the soliloquy helps explain the relation of genres by means of the soul as much as it helps explain representations of the soul through genre interaction.26 If we agree to consider the soliloquy as a soul-​talk and a sole-​talk, then the exploration and analysis of the self need to be contemplated.27 In a soliloquy, the 24 See also Donne in his sermon on Prov 22:11 (preached at Pauls Cross on 24 March 1616): ‘Hath God made this World his Theatre, ut exhibeatur ludus deorum, that man may represent God in his conversation; and wilt thou play no part? But think that thou only wast made to pass thy time merrily, and to be the only spectator upon this Theatre?’ (1: 3.207). 25 For a link between Augustinian soliloquy and the early modern period with regard to the notion of ‘inwardness’, Ferry refers to Thomas Wythorne as an example of an autobiography (1576) that makes ‘full use of self-​analysis’ in the sense of inwardness in that he ‘claims to be writing “all my private affairs and secrets” ’ (36; she refers to Wythorne 1)  and also, and more importantly, all ‘imaginations and debatings of the matter within myself ’ (Wythorne 87; cf. Ferry 36). Ferry also notes that ‘the […] word “inward” […] [was] in fact repeated frequently, almost obsessively, by the love poets represented in Tottel’s miscellany’ (6). 26 See Hamlin: ‘Another quality we admire in Renaissance lyric is psychological realism, the ability to represent complex inward thought in verse, as Shakespeare did in his soliloquies and sonnets’ (xx). 27 For a definition of self during the early modern period see, e.g., Belsey, Subject; Greenblatt 9; Berns, ‘Solo Performances’; Ewbank; Porter; Reiss; Seigel; Selleck; Sherwood 43–​9; Webber.

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William Shakespeare and John Donne

speaker turns to his self –​he turns inward. It is this very inwardness (or, rather, its development) which has been recognized as a defining feature of early modern literature. But perhaps it makes sense to rather speak of an oscillation between inwardness and external display: external principles of staging become part of an inward scene,28 while, at the same time, on a stage the most intimate exploration of a person’s inner state is inevitably linked to the person’s bodily presence, such that even a ghost may appear as a character on the stage. Inwardness has been described as both ‘a psychological state (and hence subjective) and a spiritual condition (and hence objective); it bespeaks withdrawal and yet is insistently public, for we may only encounter a discursive inwardness, one dependent not only upon language but upon audience’ (Greenblatt 126). Problematic as Greenblatt’s attribution of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ may be, the spiritual condition is, in the first place, no more or less ‘subjective’ than the psychological state of an individual human being (Donne’s speaker in the Holy Sonnets is a case in point), and even the most inward communication presupposes an audience and is therefore to a certain degree ‘public’. This latter aspect of an audience points towards the notion of ‘self-​fashioning’:  how we perceive and present (as well as transmit) our self depends on our audience. The self is fashioned first and foremost by, i.e. in dialogue with, itself. It does not seem to be a coincidence that the word ‘consciousness’ in its modern sense emerges around 1600 as it indicates a self-​reflexive publication of inner states.29 If we regard this ‘self-​fashioning’ as a prevalent feature of the Renaissance, it corresponds to the frequently observed enhancement of subjectivity.30 In her 1989 essay ‘The Motive for Interiority: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Hamlet’, Margaret de Grazia argued that ‘interiority’ is not something that was given to the ‘Shakespearean text at its inception, but rather a dimension that it acquired during its long history of reception’ (431). She reads both Hamlet and the Sonnets as ‘the two texts that seem most conspicuously and inalienably to possess a personalized interiority’ (431) and maintains that, in an Enlightenment context, this interiority was ‘discovered’ within the texts ‘as a response to new pressures to unify and legitimate the subject: the first person of the Sonnets and the main character of the tragedy 28 Oppitz-​ Trotman comments on the ‘allegorical transformation of inner crisis into outward expression’ in medieval drama that followed Prudentius’s Psychomachia: ‘individual struggle was played out in external scenes organized by a multitude of bodies’ (157). 29 See ‘conscious, adj. and n.’:  ‘A.2. More generally:  having knowledge or awareness; able to perceive or experience something […] a1600 R. Hooker Disc. Justif. (1612).’ The first OED entry for ‘consciousness, n.’ (‘1. Internal knowledge or conviction; the state or fact of being mentally conscious or aware of something’) dates from 1605: ‘E. Sandys Relation State of Relig. sig. L2, Laying the ground of all his pollicie, in feare and ielousie issuing from a certaine consciousnesse of his owne worthlesness.’ 30 See Dollimore; Greenblatt; Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves and ‘The Matter of Inwardness’. Sánchez anchors this focus on inwardness and subjectivity in research during the 1980s: ‘Perhaps partly in reaction to deconstruction’s elimination of author and voice in the text […] the new historicism in the 1980s countered with descriptions of the emergence of the self in the early modern period’ (18–​19). He refers, e.g., to Greenblatt, Anderson, Helgerson, Dollimore as well as Sherwood, and, more recently, Kneidel (see Sánchez 19–​20). On inwardness, see also Ferry; Maus, Inwardness and Theatre; Morris; Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves; Skura; and Wald, The Reformation of Romance.

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Introduction

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Hamlet’ (431). In a similar vein, Ralf Haekel recently claimed that the concept of the soul as ‘part of the discovery of the human’ goes back to the Romantic era (19). Although it may be true that, in an Enlightenment as well as in a Romantic context, these are approaches to the works of Shakespeare that may appear to be particularly apt in this particular historical and cultural framework, the present study contests these ideas. The soul as both an inner space and as an actor on such an inner stage is not just a post-​Renaissance construct; it has been developed, to a large extent by taking up and transforming an Augustinian and medieval spiritual and devotional tradition, and by making poetry and drama interbreed, during the early modern period. In particular, the soliloquy (as an heir to the spiritual tradition and as a form linking poetry and drama) served to establish the notion of inwardness in Shakespeare and other writers of the time. Accordingly, to restrict concepts of individuality and subjectivity and their development to the eighteenth century (or later) is an oversimplification of historical facts and relations31 and, at least in de Grazia’s case, based on biographical fallacy, as she seems to identify the first-​person speaker with Shakespeare (see ‘The Motive for Interiority’ 342). None of these critics seem to take into consideration the history of the soliloquy, in which the continuity from a devotional practice to a literary one becomes apparent. This subjectivity and the self-​exploration as connected with a focus on the inward state and its expression through the soliloquy have to be linked to the realms of both literature and religion.32 But how does such a continuity from religion to performance/​performativity in the literary realm actually work? Is it indeed possible that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of all periods, such a reconciliation of religion and literary performance existed? One might doubt it when thinking of Tertullian and his stance that all pleasure ‘is disquieting, even when experienced in moderation and calm, but the theater, with its excitements and its maddened crowds, deliberately aims to provoke frenzy’ (Barish 44–​5).33 Augustine, the inventor of the soliloquy, 31 This is something that de Grazia seems to note herself:  ‘There is, however, something of an historical problem with these retroactive attributions’ (‘The Motive for Interiority’ 431). With regard to Hamlet, she notes that ‘critics did start at this enlightened historical juncture to remark on the inner reaches of Hamlet’s soul’ (‘The Motive for Interiority’ 434). 32 Medcalf sees a link between religious changes and the evolution of inwardness: ‘The Protestant turned inward:  what you do depends on what you are in relation to God; the Catholic turned outward: what you are is measured by what you do, by each of your particular acts’ (122). See also Kaufman 9; and Gardner, who describes religious poetry in terms of a ‘conflict’: ‘In all poetry which attempts to represent the intercourse between an individual soul and its Maker there is a conflict between the ostensible emotion  –​adoring love, absorbed in the contemplation of its object, or penitence, overwhelmed by the sense of personal unworthiness –​and the artist’s actual absorption in the creation of his poem and his satisfaction in achieving perfect expression’ (Introduction xv–​xvi). 33 The reference is to Tertullian, De Spectaculis XVII: ‘Quodsi sunt tragoediae et comoediae scelerum et libidinum actrices cruentae et lascivae, impiae et prodigae, nullius rei aut atrocis aut vilis commemoration melior est: quod in facto reicitur, etiam in dicto non est recipiendum’ [‘If these tragedies and comedies, bloody and lustful, impious and prodigal, teach outrage and lust, the study of what is cruel or vile is no better than itself. What in action is rejected, is not in word to be accepted’; 277]. Barish provides this reference in the context of ‘Christian controversialists seek[ing] a theological basis for the evil of the theatre’ (44). The theatre, according to Tertullian, ‘is disfigured by obscenities that defile actors and spectators alike. Nor does it extenuate filthy things

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William Shakespeare and John Donne

takes a slightly more subtle view (Barish 52) and asks himself the question (that also Schiller would ask), why spectators enjoy suffering onstage so much.34 In a passage in his Soliloquia, Augustine distinguishes between ‘the fallacious’ and ‘the fabulous’, i.e. intentional deception and telling tales; the first is linked to the ‘desire to deceive’, while the latter to the ‘desire to please’ (Soliloquia 2.9; see Barish 55). Therefore, ‘[p]‌oems, jokes, and fables should not be thought of as false at all, argues Augustine’s Reason, because they are unable to be true’ (55). Augustine goes on to comment on actors in a similar vein:  ‘Neque enim falsa esse volunt aut ullo adpetitu suo falsa sunt […] unde in speculo vera hominis imago, si non falsus homo?’ (Soliloquia 2.10).35 The truth of performance is embedded in an understanding of acting in accordance with an ethics of one’s true self: an actor can only be true to himself when acting. Performance and truth therefore do not exclude each other. The soliloquy, when it becomes a performative rather than a devotional mode, inherits its quality as a device that does not deceive but helps towards the recognition of truth (e.g. with regard to the soul), as it is ‘truly’ spoken and participates in established dialogic models of ascertaining the truth. If we regard poetry and drama as genres in which the soliloquy is used as a means to turn an inner debate, a speaker’s innermost thoughts and feelings, to the outside and present them to the world, this entails not only that psychology and religion are integrated into literary expression but also that self and soul are defined as performative. The speaker finds himself on a stage (literally, in the theatre, or, metaphorically, on the stage that is the poem or even the world); he or she performs and presents ‘on the stage a new conception of the free-​standing individual’ (Belsey, Subject 43). Individuality, interiority, and performativity are linked and brought together in the genre of the soliloquy.36 Even though we may nowadays associate the soliloquy more or less exclusively with drama, this is not a study of the soliloquy in drama, nor about the soliloquy in general. The genre of the soliloquy rather serves to provide a point of reference and a tradition through which we realize what happens when poetry becomes the to say that the actors merely feign them and the spectators merely witness them, for in the world of Tertullian’s polemic, the difference between art and life has no status’ (45); to him, what is seen is perceived as a fact, taken literally. 34 See Barish’s comment: ‘What seems to emerge […] is the implication that fictive emotion in the theatre provokes something potentially and essentially valuable in us, our capacity for fellow feeling, but that the theatrical context falsifies it […] Stage plays divert healthy feeling into an unhealthy channel. They invite us to luxuriate in questionable feelings and to flee real ones’ (53–​4). 35 ‘Pictures, images etc. do not wish to be false and are not false because of any desire of their own […] Or how could the image of the man in the mirror be true, if it were not a false man?’ (trans. Watson 95). 36 This reference to ‘performativity’ argues against the definition by Austin: ‘a performative utterance will, for example, be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in a soliloquy. […] Language in such circumstances is in special ways  –​ intelligibly –​used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon its normal use’ (How to Do Things With Words 22). Austin ignores the whole context of illusion that is, however, most relevant with regard to literary texts: we take these utterances for real in the context of a play or in a poem as we take the speaker seriously. One may call this, with Coleridge, ‘willing suspension of disbelief ’; or one may refer to the imperative put forward by the Prologue in Henry V: ‘let us […] /​On your imaginary forces work’ (17–​18).

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Introduction

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stage of the soul and when the soul becomes a stage in poetry. The genre of the soliloquy during the early modern period was used both in poetry and drama to convey inwardness/​interiority and to thus give expression to the self. In fact, we can only understand how the nature of dramatic soliloquy as a new form of self-​ reflection, of making the private public, was established in Elizabethan drama by considering poetry as a genre in which the speaker enacts a dialogue with and of the soul; at the same time, the dynamic reflection on the fate of the soul in early modern English poetry would have been impossible without incorporating dramatic elements. The fact has gone widely unnoticed that the soliloquy, made prominent in both poetry and drama, provides, via the soul, a link between the two genres. Stage and stages: Shakespeare and Donne When we go back to the epithet dramatic as describing poetry, it makes sense to consider both Shakespeare and Donne:  in their poems, the double perspective on the soul –​as actor and as stage –​becomes central. No writer other than Shakespeare creates a long poem as The Rape of Lucrece in which an internal drama of the soul is enacted; and no writer other than Donne in his Holy Sonnets manages to turn sonnets into soliloquies about and of the soul.37 The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare’s early epyllion, is dramatic in that it foregrounds the soul which becomes both a stage and an actor in the course of events; moreover, the soul serves to lend the action motivation: we are given insight into the psychology of both Tarquin and Lucrece. For one, we are presented with Tarquin’s inner struggle and psychomachia when it comes to his decision whether or not to give in to his desire and rape Lucrece. The fight takes place on the stage of his soul, between will and reason, and he eventually follows his ‘desire’, which will bring about his downfall. After the rape, the focus is on Lucrece and her inner struggle and debate in relation to her suicide. In her case, the soul is portrayed as a character in its own right that, after the body has been tainted, is struggling to stay clean. The drama of Tarquin and Lucrece culminates when their relationship, which is marked by contrast and develops into antagonism, turns into an uncanny exchange:  thus, when Lucrece finally kills herself, her hand becomes that of Tarquin. This exchange is established through the body–​soul relationship and transmitted linguistically by means of parallelism and chiasmus. Shakespeare uses references to the soul and its portrayal (both with regard to Tarquin and Lucrece) in order to endow the story with a psychological dimension. 37 Both Shakespeare and Donne have been called ‘dramatic’ poets (see, e.g., Cruttwell 42), and often primarily with regard to their biographical background. Shakespeare’s work as an actor and playwright and Donne’s visits to the theatre in his youth (Cruttwell 42) certainly make the play a ‘natural’ metaphor that was particularly apt to express deep emotions. See also Cruttwell’s conclusion that ‘the dramatic personality is as native to Donne as it is to Shakespeare’ (48). Cruttwell is representative of a multitude of critics, e.g. Patrick Cheney, Margaret Fetzer, Kathleen Lea, Edmund Miller, and others. The authors’ biographical background should, however, only be secondary; what counts is how both enact dramas of the soul in their poems in a unique way.

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William Shakespeare and John Donne

In how far this is innovative becomes particularly clear when comparing Lucrece with another popular epyllion of the period, Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1592–​93, i.e. during the same period of theatre closings when The Rape of Lucrece was written). Marlowe’s, like Shakespeare’s, is a story of chastity (‘Chaste Hero’ 1.178) and desire, with the difference that, in Marlowe’s epyllion, both characters give in to their desire, based on their mutual love at first sight (see 1.159–​66; 176). In Shakespeare’s Lucrece it is Tarquin who surrenders to his passion, while Lucrece stays chaste. The major dissimilarity, however, lies in the fact that the soul does not really play a part in Marlowe’s epyllion. The word is mentioned twice, both times as an epithet ‘poor soul’ to describe first Hero (‘she poor soul assays’ 1.362) and then Leander (‘the poor soul ’gan to cry’ 2.177). And although the narrator at one point speaks of Hero’s ‘words’ that ‘made war’ (1.331), he also makes it very clear that her ‘looks yielded’ (331) before that, ‘[w]‌herewith she yielded, that was won before’ (1.330). The assumed struggle turns out not to be one, elements of psychology are lacking from Marlowe’s epyllion, and the focus is a different one, namely on the erotic encounter between the two protagonists. Shakespeare, on the other hand, creates an epyllion that is likewise based on ancient myth but renders it psychological by making the soul its focus. In some of Donne’s Holy Sonnets we can observe a similar emphasis on the soul. Donne makes the sonnets dramatic by endowing them with action but also by turning the poem into a stage on which the soul appears as a character. Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ is representative of this technique:  the sonnet is a miniature drama both because of dramatic allusion, e.g. to medieval morality plays, and because of its structure which is in accordance with the genre requirements of comedy familiar to Elizabethans from Donatus’s commentary on Terence. As Heywood described the dramatic genres in his Apology for Actors (1612): ‘Tragedies and Comedies, faith Donatus, had their beginning a rebus divinis, from divine sacrifices; they differ thus:  in comedies, turbulenta prima, tranquilla ultima; in tragedies, tranquilla prima, turbulenta ultima, e.g. Comedies begin in trouble, and end in peace; tragedies begin in calms, and end in tempest’ (An Apology for Actors Fv.).38 This plot pattern is adhered to by Donne, whose speaker moves from an exposition, in which he describes the troublesome calling of death, to a peripety, when he remembers grace, and the final stage of his redemption in his Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. In this sonnet the speaker moreover addresses his soul and turns the poem into a soliloquy. The soul becomes an issue in Donne’s Holy Sonnets whenever the speaker is confronted with death and forced to reflect on his sins and, therefore, his salvation. In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, the sonnet is turned into a stage of the speaker’s imagination: again, he reflects on the final moment in his life and imagines what will happen to his body and soul –​and also to that 38 Donatus:  ‘inter tragoediam autem et comoediam cum multa tum inprimis hoc distat, quod in comoedia mediocres fortunae hominum, parui impetus periculorum laetique sunt exitus actionum, at in tragoedia omnia contra, ingentes personae, magni timores, exitus funesti habentur; et illic prima turbulenta, tranquilla ultima, in tragoedia contrario ordine res aguntur’ (1: 21).

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Introduction

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entity which constitutes himself, ‘I’. Again, the sonnet is structured along the lines of drama, but in this case we both witness a soul which is a partner of the self in the triadic character constellation of ‘My body and Soule, and I’, and a soul which envisages becoming identical with the self when it has been separated from the body and purged from the personified sins. Moreover, the sonnet becomes dramatic when the speaker presents himself in an act of persuasion serving to show God a way of saving his soul, and at the same time enacting the moment of delivery in the language of the poem. Early modern poetry becomes dramatic whenever the soul is at its focus; and the soul comes to the fore, whenever the link between poetry and drama can be observed. Both Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and Donne’s Holy Sonnets exemplify this double motion: they enact the drama of the soul in various ways, by alluding to psychomachia, by addressing the soul, by allegorizing it, and thus make their poems expressive of interior states, of inwardness, and the self. In both Shakespeare and Donne, the stage of the poem becomes a stage of the soul, and on this stage, the soul is going through different stages towards immortality.

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PART I

William Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and the drama of the soul

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1

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Motivating the myth: allegory and psychology

Shakespeare’s epyllion1 The Rape of Lucrece, first published in 1594, begins with the following lines: From the besieged Ardea in all post, Borne by the trustless wings of false desire, Lust-​breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host. (1–​3)2

Ardea is the capital of the Rutuli (see 234n7) which was burned by Aeneas and from whose ‘ashes the heron (ardea) emerged’ (234n7). But besides this historical and mythological context, the word ‘Ardea’ evokes Latin ardeo and ardens; both refer to burning and glowing desire; Cooper’s Thesaurus (1578) has ‘Ardere in virgine. Ouid. To be ravished with loue of ’ (s.v. ‘Ardeo’). The opening words thus prepare the reader for the second and third lines by opening the semantic field of lust with this allusive wordplay.3 In Lucrece, the imagery of lust continues when Tarquin is described as being ‘borne by the trustless wings of false desire’. His desire is false because it is directed at the wife of another man. The adjective ‘false’ carries further negative connotations such as wrong, lying, trustless, and cheating (OED, ‘false, adj., adv and n.’ II.). While the Arden editors claim that ‘trustless’ is used in a new sense of the word and expresses that ‘Tarquin is sceptical of Lucrece’s chastity’ (237n2), the fact that his desire is ‘false’ points to a different reading. Were he sceptical of Lucrece’s chastity, he would not regard her body as such a desirable prize to be 1 The term ‘epyllion’ is somewhat anachronistic; it was used in the sense of ‘little epic’ from the first half of the nineteenth century on (see Gutzwiller 454; Cuddon 304)  and has its origin in the Hellenistic era, albeit with a different meaning (see Gutzwiller 454). One of its characteristics is the inclusion of ekphrasis (Gutzwiller 454). Both Cuddon and Gutzwiller refer to the revival of the genre during the Renaissance and list as examples Marlowe’s Hero and Leander as well as Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. On the Ovidian tradition of Renaissance epyllia see Keach (esp. ­chapter 1). He also comments on the popularity of the epic and its subgenres in the years 1590 to 1596 (see 219). 2 All quotations from Lucrece are based on the third Arden edition, unless otherwise indicated. 3 See Cheney: ‘The name of the first city, Ardea, with its suggestion of burning, ardor, gives point to the image of bearing “lightless fire” to Collatium; that Tarquin is “lust-​breathed” suggests […] that he is inspired by lust’ (‘Tarquin, Juliet, and Other Romei’ 115). –​The only occurrence of ‘ardent’ in Shakespeare is in Timon of Athens (3.3.28–​35).

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The Rape of Lucrece and the drama of the soul

won, and he would not imagine how he will ‘girdle with embracing flames the waist /​Of […] Lucrece the chaste’ (6–​7). Primarily, it is his desire which is false, not to be trusted, treacherous and cruel (see also 47–​8: ‘To quench the coal which in his liver glows. /​O rash false heat’). ‘Of ’ in ‘wings of false desire’ in this reading indicates that the wings are made of false desire. But even though, contrary to the Arden editors, I do not think that Shakespeare uses ‘trustless’ in the sense of ‘[h]‌aving no trust or confidence; unbelieving, distrustful’ (OED, ‘trustless, adj.’ 2.), which the OED only documents for 1598, there is a double perspective involved:  for ‘trustless’ need not primarily refer to Tarquin’s desire or to his view of Lucrece but to the wings on which Tarquin and his desire are borne. While it does not make sense to speak of wings that are distrustful (as the Arden editors obviously do), it makes sense to speak of desire’s wings that cannot be trusted, and this is not the same as regarding the desire itself as treacherous. Thus, while we (sharing Lucrece’s perspective) will perceive the dishonesty of Tarquin’s desire, Tarquin himself will come to realize that his desire is not supported by sufficient means to be truly fulfilled. The meaning ‘Having no […] confidence’ may be implied after all, but only with regard to Tarquin himself. The adjective thus refers to his being ‘trustless’ in the sense of him having no self-​trust, a concept which is taken up again later in the poem: ‘For where is truth, if there be no self-​trust?’ (158). Tarquin lacks trust in himself –​and while the right desire is full of trust,4 his false desire is trustless, which is even more emphasized by the adjective ‘false’ that stresses the vicious character of Tarquin’s desire. This lack in Tarquin also foreshadows that he will later act out of weakness and not strength. In a single line Shakespeare manages by the apparent tautology of ‘trustless’ and ‘false’ to combine the two perspectives of Tarquin and Lucrece, the perpetrator and his victim. Tarquin’s weakness results from his being ‘lust-​breathed’, and this is the first instance where the soul implicitly comes into play (i.e. in line 3 of the poem).5 When man is created, the soul is breathed into him; the compound of lust with ‘breathed’ very much alludes to the divine inspiration of the soul into humankind (an overlap of Roman mythology/​legend and Christian concepts that can be observed throughout the poem). In the case of Tarquin, this inspiration seems to have taken place by some devil rather than by God, which is why lust was breathed 4 One might argue that there is nothing like a ‘right desire’, esp. in the context of (at least some of) Shakespeare’s Sonnets, e.g. ‘Desire is death’ (147.8). But Shakespeare himself treats the notion of desire ambivalently, see Sonnet 51: ‘Therefore desire, of perfect’st love being made’ (10). The notion of holy desire can also be found in religious texts; in his translation of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi, Rogers writes: ‘Grant that I maie so burn in love, that through the heate of desire I maie exceede my selfe: that I maie sing the ballad of love, folowe thee my lover aloft, and set forth thy praises with such a zeale, that even my hart maie faint againe:  that I  maie love thee more than myselfe’ (3.7; 124). See also examples from mystical poetry, e.g. ‘Lufe es thought wyth grete desire, of a fayre loving’ (Woolf 170). 5 The soul in Lucrece is the pivot of the action and of the moral and spiritual issues at stake, which constitutes one of the major differences between Shakespeare’s and other contemporary renderings of the Lucrece story, e.g. Thomas Middleton’s The Ghost of Lucrece (1600) and Heywood’s The Rape of Lucrece (1608). The soul does not at all figure in these plays. On Lucrece in relation to these plays, see, e.g., Introduction, Arden ed. 76–​8; and Donaldson.

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Motivating the myth

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into him and seems to have taken the place of his soul. At the same time, he is also breathing lust (panting), which, together with the wings of desire, evokes the image of a dragon who is about to take the fair and chaste virgin into his captivity (see also Cheney, ‘Tarquin, Juliet, and Other Romei’ 115). The first few lines of the poem thus indicate that the inner state of Tarquin is of central interest to Shakespeare in his version of the story; later in the poem, after the rape, this will be complemented by a detailed interior view of Lucrece’s soul. The soul becomes a topic as early as in stanza one of the poem, and thus, I will argue, is one of the keys to understanding the text. The third line of the poem also gives a hint with regard to another key, namely the way in which the complex inner states of the protagonists are made visible through language. The characterization of Tarquin on the level of content is mirrored on the level of language. This is also true for his soul as a space of antagonism: Tarquin is ‘borne by the trustless wings of false desire’ –​the apparent parallelism (adjective followed by a noun) in fact contains an antagonistic structure and introduces a double perspective; another means of representing his inner debate and self-​ division in the poem is chiasmus. The relations of synonymy and parallelism as well as of chiasmus/​oxymoron can be found throughout the poem, and they are part of the larger setup of the text in that they imitate the content iconically: form and content correspond to each other. They also become performative as the language enacts the content (see Zirker, ‘Performative Iconicity’). Through the antagonistic relationships between characters but also within them, the underlying structure of the poem is one of contrast and debate, very much in the sense and the tradition of agon in drama. Drama therefore provides another key to the text, especially with regard to the soul. Like some of the Sonnets, Lucrece has been dubbed a ‘dramatic’ poem by various critics,6 and, indeed, the epyllion becomes a drama in which antagonistic characters as well as body and soul act and interact. The ‘dramatic’ quality is brought about not only by soliloquies and dialogues within the poem, but also by its immediacy of transmission with regard to thoughts and feelings, the inherent drama of its action, its generic relation with tragedy, and its content; revenge and suicide are motifs of drama that go back to antiquity. Its dramatic dimension begins as early as in the ‘Argument’ that precedes the poem in that it provides a summary of the story of Lucrece as presented by Livy, Ovid, and Painter (see Burrow ed. 240n):  ‘The prefatory Argument functions rather as dumb-​shows did in plays, providing the audience with essential narrative data and moral instruction which will not necessarily be repeated in the longer text’ (Introduction, Arden ed. 66).7 This dumb show, which is similar to the prologue of a play, is then followed by the exposition  –​Tarquin is introduced as being ‘lust-​breathed’. Next comes the 6 See, e.g., Empson 247; Simpson, Philosophy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets 2; Walley. Belsey sees links between the poem and various of Shakespeare’s plays (‘The Rape of Lucrece’). –​It has been argued that Shakespeare wrote Lucrece when, because of the plague, the theatres were closed from 23 June to 29 December 1592, then again for all of 1593 and from 3 February to 1 April 1594 (see Introduction, Arden ed. 13). 7 On doubts concerning Shakespeare’s authorship of the Argument, see Introduction, Arden ed. 66.

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The Rape of Lucrece and the drama of the soul

rising action, when he goes to Collatium and sees Lucrece (his inner debate can actually be regarded as a retarding moment), and his decision to rape her. The rape constitutes the peripety of the poem, followed by a retarding moment that is Lucrece’s ekphrasis of the Troy painting, and the catastrophe, Lucrece’s suicide. The epyllion even adheres to the three unities and is thus probably the only text in which Shakespeare does so (except for Venus and Adonis). The dramatic setup of the epyllion is intricately linked to the topic of the soul which acquires a dramatic quality in that it becomes both a stage and an actor, and the essential drama of Lucrece is that of the soul.8 With regard to Tarquin, the soul is a stage on which a fierce battle is waged between the forces that urge him on and those that restrain him, e.g. when Tarquin’s inner forces enter a debate; the same goes for Lucrece, who finds herself in mutiny with herself and whose soul is the central actor in a drama of violation and liberation. But the soul also enters upon the stage of the poem, e.g. when, after the rape, Tarquin’s soul is described as a ‘spotted princess’. These descriptions are part of the narrative transmission; the Arden editors note that Lucrece is a poem but is marked by its telling a story ‘with great immediacy in the present tense, with little sense of a distinct narrative persona’ (Introduction 10). The latter point is debatable –​the poem clearly has a narrator, and the very existence of such a transmitting instance makes the poem lean towards the epic. The narrator structures the plot and conveys the events but also steps back whenever direct speech as well as the thoughts of the characters are conveyed, which means that he is integrated into the dramatic action and transmits the inner states of the characters in combination with the direct quotation of their thoughts and feelings in soliloquies and dialogues –​dramatic modes of presentation and the narration of inner events thus go hand in hand in Shakespeare’s text. This interaction of dramatic modes with psychological explorations of the characters still remains to be analysed. When Tarquin debates the matter of the rape in his ‘inward mind’ (185), he refers to the interiority of his thoughts. These thoughts are transmitted as in a soliloquy that is, however, allegorically transformed into a play staged within his soul; the good forces and the evil are fighting each other within him, very much in the tradition of Prudentius’s Psychomachia.9 This paradigm could also be found in morality plays as well as in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus; Shakespeare modifies this transformation further in linking elements of psychomachia to stage elements in a poem. By focusing on 8 The interest here is solely on the soul, not on political readings of the poem or its sources, e.g. Ovid’s Fasti. For political readings see, e.g., Bate 73; Donaldson esp. 116; Jed; Lanham; Patterson 297–​317; and Platt 13–​51; for intertextual references and sources, see Baldwin; Bate; Cousins (ch. 2, esp. 48–​58); Ewig (esp. 9–​32); Swärdh; Taylor, Shakespeare’s Ovid. On the tradition of the Lucrece story in the Renaissance, see esp. Jed; and in Early Modern England, see Bowers; Camino, Raping Lucrece and ‘Public Heroism’. For an overview of sources and critical voices see the Introduction to the Oxford edition (40–​73); and Bullough. 9 On the continuity of Prudentius’s Psychomachia in the cultural history of Europe see Fietz 105 and 116; Gnilka; and Katzenellenbogen, esp. 1–​13.

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Motivating the myth

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the inner life of the characters, he establishes a new mode of presentation of the inward state. This means that the ‘old’ model as introduced by Prudentius is being integrated into a complex presentation of the psychological state both of Tarquin and Lucrece. But we do not just get a combination of allegory and psychology. They are linked with each other in such a way that the relationship itself between external action and being/​existence on the one hand and the workings of the mind and soul on the other is held up to scrutiny. The expression ‘inward mind’, for example, illustrates this: it is tautological and signals towards the interiority of what is being described. ‘Inwardness’ was a rather new word at the time that suddenly came into fashion during the Renaissance;10 but it would have been sufficient to express the inwardness of what is being presented through the word ‘mind’ which refers to inner processes anyway: the emphasis is on the fact that this is an inner event in Tarquin which concerns his inner being and takes place within him. That this debate is set on an interior stage is directly expressed by Tarquin: ‘My part is youth, and beats these [sad pause and deep regard that beseem the sage] from the stage’ (278). The text thus gives ample hints with regard to its unravelling, and the close readings suggest themselves on this basis. The poem is often enigmatic and opaque in its meaning as well as in its expression, which is why its explication is an essential part of its critical assessment. Unresolved contradictions, paradoxes, debates that one finds in Lucrece are linked to mimetic and iconic techniques of presentation. The psychology and the actions of desire and denial, rape and suicide are part and parcel of an inner and outer world in which everything is meaningful and has to be interpreted as a texture of signs. Shakespeare’s text enacts, rather than merely depicts, this world;11 hence his underlying principle of composition is a semiotic one, not only with regard to the correspondence of form and content but also with regard to instructions of how to read ‘texts’ of different sorts. In the second half of the poem, Lucrece reads a painting of Troy, she asks to be read by Collatine, and throughout the poem, faces are being read and thus perceived as indexes of character. The complexity of the text is part of the mimetic technique, and this makes close reading necessary. The iconic-​performative modes to be identified in the poem are not only part of the complex technique of representation, they also build a bridge to the field of drama and theatre. This becomes particularly obvious in the ekphrasis scene of the Troy painting, when the painting is not only read, but what is seen is ‘interpreted’ (see 1325) into something that can be heard, i.e. the various channels of perception interact with one another as in the theatre; characters hear with eyes (as in A 10 See, e.g., Ferry; Greenblatt; Olk/​Zwierlein; Schoenfeldt, ‘The Matter of Inwardness’ and Bodies and Selves. 11 Fineman notes that the ‘poem’s own rhetoricity is […] performatively implicated in the rape it reports’ (Perjured Eye 178), as, in his view, Collatine’s praise of Lucrece points to the poem’s complicity in the rape. But this is only half the story since the poem is just as much implicated in Lucrece’s becoming a victim. The language of the poem enacts the events and character dispositions, and it is iconic as the language itself enacts the meaning. This mimetic dimension of language use is ignored in Fineman’s approach, despite his acknowledgement of its performativity.

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The Rape of Lucrece and the drama of the soul

Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.187), and what is being spoken can be seen before the inner eye. In the ekphrasis, the events experienced by Lucrece furthermore merge with the written word  –​and the written word transports the events of the poem to the reader and lends it energeia. Hearing and seeing, the inner view and the outer in their relationship are analogous to the debates of body and soul, of inside and outside in the poem, in that their connection is an analogous or a chiastic one. These connections are part of the semiotic setup and of the dramatic structure of the poem, and they go beyond mere poetic form and content (in the sense of action) in that they include the characters of Lucrece and Tarquin as well. From the beginning, these characters are introduced and presented as opposites: lust-​ breathed Tarquin and chaste Lucrece (7). But their opposition also connects them with one another. The key to their relationship lies in a statement that is uttered late in the poem, when Lucrece is looking at the Troy painting and says (actually about Sinon, who is, however, intricately related to Tarquin):  ‘These contraries such unity do hold’ (1558). Lucrece and Tarquin are such opposites that actually hold unity through parallel movements but also through chiasmus, and the antagonism that thus links them is an inherent part of the dramatic structure of the epyllion. Their contrast forms the foundation of dramatic conflict in the poem. As representatives of vice and virtue, the characters take on an allegorical dimension, which links them to the structure of psychomachia. But both characters are also attributed an inner motivation for their deeds. Tarquin, as vice figure, is given an inner force that guides and drives him and is based on his lust as well as his being ‘trustless’. His major goal is the destruction of the very virtue he is envious of:12 he wants to destroy Lucrece’s chastity. Hence, he is a purely negative and self-​ centred, vicious character, who is able to deceive Lucrece. She, by contrast, does not know how to dissemble. After the rape she fears the coming of the day, ‘For day … night’s scapes doth open lay, /​And my true eyes have never practised how /​To cloak offences with a cunning brow’ (747–​9). Her truthfulness is stressed here as well as her innocence: she simply does not know how to be cunning, she is ‘true’. Because the characters are given a psychological motivation for their deeds, the implied allegory is diversified.13 By combining psychomachia/​allegory with introspection, Shakespeare achieves a heretofore unknown psychological depth with regard to his protagonists. On the one hand, Tarquin and Lucrece are representatives, personifications of lust and chastity; on the other hand, they constantly need to reflect and to ruminate on the reasons for their behaviour. Thus, they do not only form a unity through their being opposites but also unite the seeming contrastive modes of allegory and psychology. Shakespeare chooses a 12 He may in some ways be regarded as the model for Milton’s Satan, as he cannot rejoice in anything good and beautiful but feels the urge to destroy it. Milton would write about Satan: ‘Th’ infernal Serpent … whose guile /​Stirred up with envy’ (Paradise Lost 1.34–​5). 13 See also Scodel: ‘Shakespeare turns Lucrece’s story into a psychologically complex mini-​epic’ (413).

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Motivating the myth

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well-​known myth that, in an Aristotelian sense, is meant to have the general shine forth in the particular, but he gives the characters motives for their actions and thus actualizes the myth.14 From the beginning of the poem, Shakespeare changes his source material available from antiquity.15 He does not have Tarquin see Lucrece first so that his passion will be ‘inflamed’, but he has him listen to Collatine’s report of her chastity (see also Schoenfeldt, ‘Constraint and Complaint’ 40): For he the night before in Tarquin’s tent Unlocked the treasure of his happy state: What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent In the possession of his beauteous mate; Reck’ning his fortune at such high-​proud rate   That kings might be espoused to more fame,   But king nor peer to such a peerless dame. (15–​21)

This description of Lucrece and her husband’s boasting of her beauty lead to ‘lust-​ breathed’ Tarquin being ‘animated by lust’ (Burrow ed. 243n3). Hearing about this ‘peerless dame’ whom not even a ‘peer’ may call his own makes him desire to go and peer at her, and to do more than that. (Later, in fright, the peerless dame will ‘peer her whiter chin’ [472] over the white sheet.) But the beginning of the poem is not only about Tarquin and how he suddenly burns with passion for Lucrece; it also introduces her husband Collatine.16 He boasts of his wife’s beauty and her chastity –​the wife, the ‘priceless wealth the heavens had him lent’, which emphasizes that she can be his only temporarily (see 239n) –​and he is ‘high-​proud’ about it.17 This also shows how he ‘unlocks the treasure’ that makes his happiness and shows it off to others –​very much like Tarquin will later unlock the ‘real locks […] to get to Lucrece’ (239n16): ‘Honour and beauty, in the owner’s arms, /​Are weakly fortressed from a world of harms’ (27–​8). The imagery of the fortress as well as of the treasure and its unlocking is related to the notion of containers and prisons, and it therefore alludes to the relation of body and soul as well as outer and inner being, beauty and honour. The body contains the soul, and both are ‘weakly fortressed’: Lucrece will be ‘besieged’ (221) and forcefully conquered by Tarquin –​as is Ardea at the beginning of the poem; honour and beauty in general are weakly fortressed, and Collatine makes this worse by bragging about his wife 14 See Leimberg on Shakespeare’s general blending of ‘history … with mythology’ (‘Golden Apollo’ 137). 15 On the sources of the Lucrece legend see, e.g., Donaldson; Scodel 413; and the introduction in Burrow’s edition; the story is mentioned by Livy and in Ovid’s Fasti, and it was taken up in the late Medieval period, for instance, by Chaucer, Legend of Good Women (1680–​1885), and Gower, Confessio Amantis (7.4754–​5130: see Introduction, Arden ed. 35). 16 On Collatine’s role in the poem see Dubrow, Captive Victors 136; Fineman, ‘Shakespeare’s Will’ 116; Vickers 176; and Cousins: ‘Like Chaucer’s narrator in The Legend of Good Women, Shakespeare’s narrator emphasizes Collatine’s responsibility for exciting the interest of Tarquin in Lucrece’ (70). 17 Kahn points to the analogy of Lucrece and Cymbeline in this respect (53). See also Leimberg, ‘Golden Apollo’ 153.

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in Tarquin’s presence.18 Shakespeare combines and transforms several notions of the soul and involves it (or rather: her) in the dramatic action: he does so with regard to psychomachia in the tradition of Prudentius and the Platonic concept of the soul as the ‘princess’ (721) in the ‘fair temple’ (719) of the body that becomes a prison and from which she seeks to free herself. Collatine apparently wants to impress Tarquin; at the same time, his description of Lucrece also introduces her –​both her character and her status and reputation. The comparison of her to a ‘jewel’ is reminiscent of Juliet and of the beloved in Sonnet 27 (see Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Shakespeare und die Bilder der Vorstellung’). The description as given by Collatine not only refers to a woman of flesh and blood but also to an ideal representative of a woman and wife: she is the ‘fair fair’ (346). One might even go so far as to argue that because of her perfection she cannot live after the rape: the ideal is then tainted, and therefore an ideal no more. Collatine should not have published her ‘sov’reignty’ but kept quiet about it. Collatine boasts so much that he forgets that Lucrece, his ‘delight’ (12), may be destroyed: in a world of harms, he does not seem to consider that Lucrece (or himself) might come to harm because of his bragging: Perchance his boast of Lucrece’s sov’reignty Suggested this proud issue of a king, For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be. Perchance that envy of so rich a thing, Braving compare, disdainfully did sting   His high-​pitched thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt   That golden hap which their superiors want. (36–​42)

This is the first time the narrator presents an insight into Tarquin’s character, not so much in the sense of revealing his true inner self and interiority, but rather by speculating (‘Perchance’) about what is going on in Tarquin’s mind and what causes his action. Tarquin’s mind is poisoned with envy (see 241n40), and his pride does not allow for another man to possess such a ‘golden hap’, such treasure as Collatine’s wife. But his envy of Lucrece’s beauty and chastity is significant on another level, too: both represent her virtue. Tarquin’s reaction to virtue with envy and pride, two vices, thus highlights the antagonism of the two characters. This character presentation also lends itself to allegory, which becomes obvious when Tarquin arrives in Collatium and is welcomed by Lucrece. In the context of this first meeting between her and Tarquin, a report of her beauty and chastity is given and linked to her virtue:

18 The vanity of her husband is highlighted by the speaker/​narrator, who voices his perplexity as to Collatine’s behaviour: ‘Beauty itself doth of itself persuade /​The eyes of men without an orator. /​ What needeth then apology be made /​To set forth that which is so singular? /​Or why is Collatine the publisher /​Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown /​From thievish ears, because it is his own?’ (29–​35).

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When at Collatium this false lord arrived, Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame, Within whose face beauty and virtue strived Which of them both should underprop her fame. When virtue bragged, beauty would blush for shame;   When beauty boasted blushes, in despite   Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white. But beauty, in that white intituled From Venus’s doves, doth challenge that fair field. Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red, Which virtue gave the golden age to gild Their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield;   Teaching them thus to use it in the fight,   When shame assailed, the red should fence the white. This heraldry in Lucrece’s face was seen, Argued by beauty’s red and virtue’s white. (50–​65)

Lucrece’s face unites the colours red and white –​beauty and virtue, ‘the unmatched red and white’ (11) praised by Collatine.19 The ‘war’ in her face is an outward expression of an inner battle, but hers is a battle of two virtuous forces that control each other. Her face becomes the index of her inner condition, and, in keeping with her perfect beauty and virtue, she is not boastful. This, however, does not make any difference with regard to Tarquin’s destructive desire: Collatine made him go to her; but she herself is then the fatal publication of beauty and chastity. Tarquin, in the meantime, finds himself overwhelmed with her beauty and thinks her husband a ‘niggard prodigal’ who ‘hath done her beauty wrong, /​Which far exceeds his barren skill to show’ (79–​81). This means that Collatine actually lacked in rhetorical skill to do her beauty justice. The sight of her beauty and virtue almost overcomes Tarquin’s base desire: ‘Enchanted Tarquin answers with surmise /​In silent wonder of still-​gazing eyes’ (83–​4); not only is he ‘enchanted’ (rather than ‘lust-​breathed’, at least in this very moment) but also is he unable to speak. He actually adores her; but at the same time the basic difference and antagonism with regard to their characters is shown: This earthly saint adored by this devil, Little suspecteth the false worshipper; ‘For unstained thoughts do seldom dream on evil’; ‘Birds never limed no secret bushes fear.’ So guiltless she securely gives good cheer   And reverent welcome to her princely guest,   Whose inward ill no outward harm expressed.

19 For the symbolic value of the two colours in Lucrece’s face and their ‘heraldry’, see Mason 23; and Vickers. These colours have also been read in the context of the blazon; see Vickers 176, and her earlier publication on ‘Blazon’ in Lucrece; see also Crewe.

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For that he coloured with his high estate, Hiding base sin in pleats of majesty; That nothing in him seemed inordinated, Save sometime too much wonder of his eye, Which, having all, all could not satisfy;   But, poorly rich, so wanteth in his store   That, cloyed with much, he pineth still for more. (85–​98)

While she is the ‘earthly saint’ whom he adores, he is the very ‘devil’; while she is virtuous, he represents vice (as in the later dichotomy of ‘holy-​thoughted Lucrece’ [384] and Tarquin’s ‘lewd unhallowed eyes’ [392]). The sententious quality of lines 87 and 88 –​they were marked thus in the quarto edition (see 245n) –​is again expressive of Lucrece representing perfection (or an idea-​like quality): she is so untainted in every way that she does not conceive of evil in others. This feature of hers is also linked with innocence20 and lack of experience, subtly conveyed in the following line, by means of the word ‘securely’, which makes her representative of Shakespeare’s ‘married chastity’ (PHT 61). While she is acting securely, she is not safe: the word ‘securely’ expresses ‘without care or misgiving’21 but also ‘in safety’ (OED, ‘securely, adv.’ 2.). Shakespeare here shows that, because she is good, she does not mistrust –​in contrast to Tarquin, who is ‘trustless’ and therefore vicious. What is more, we are presented with her experience of the situation: she thinks she is secure and has no misgivings; she is completely ‘guiltless’, i.e. virtuous, which is why she cannot conceive of ‘secret bushes’ and is unable to ‘pick [any] meaning from [the] parling looks [of his eyes]’ (100). The concluding line of this stanza, ‘whose inward ill no outward harm expressed’, is ambiguous as the subject of the sentence is unclear –​is it ‘inward ill’ or ‘outward harm’? In the first case, the line can be paraphrased as ‘His inward ill expressed no outward harm’,22 the inner state does not show on the outside; in the second case, ‘No outward harm expressed his inward ill’,23 i.e. nothing on the outside expresses the inside. Because the verb is not negated but the object or subject (depending on how the syntactical ambiguity is resolved), the verb is positive, which means that something is being expressed: inward ill expresses itself by ‘no outward harm’, it is deceitful, and ‘no outward harm’ is expressive of ‘inward ill’.24 Outside and 2 0 Gower refers to her ‘innocence’ which Tarquin wants to ‘betrappe’ (7.4915). 21 See OED, ‘securely, adv.’: ‘1. In a manner free from anxiety or apprehension; carelessly; confidently; without care or misgiving. In early use also: †in ignorant or complacent carelessness. Obs.’; see also Burrow ed. 248n89. 22 ‘Harm’ itself is ambiguous as it may refer both to a physical evil (see OED, ‘harm, n.’:  ‘1.a. Evil (physical or otherwise) as done to or suffered by some person or thing; hurt, injury, damage, mischief. Often in the set phrase “to do more harm than good” ’ and to an inner condition (‘†2. Grief, sorrow, pain, trouble, distress, affliction’). 23 Laurentius writes that ‘alterations in man’ are ‘seene oftentimes in the soule alone, the bodie standing sound and without blemish: as when a man by his malicious will becomming an apostate and reuolt, defaceth the ingraven forme of the Deitie, and commeth by the filth of sinne to defile the holy temple of God, when through an vnruly appetite, he suffereth himself to be carried in such headlong wise after his passions’ (2.2: 81). 24 The inference is that outward harm would be expressive of inward good, which is exactly Lucrece’s case, or will be, when she is put to harm.

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inside are clearly linked but not because they are identical:  they are the reverse of each other –​Tarquin’s therefore is a reversed (or inverse) indexicality, and the parallelism points to both, inward and outward, being false; the inversed syntax mirrors his character. While Lucrece’s goodness and innocence show in her face, so does Tarquin’s being evil because no outward harm is expressed in him who is a ‘world of harms’ (28): his outward inconspicuousness thus becomes a sign of evil.25 The link between inside and outside becomes particularly obvious in the following stanza: ‘For that he coloured with his high estate.’ The annotations of its opening line read ‘For that’ as referring to ‘inward ill’ (Prince ed. 72n92; Arden ed. 246n92), but, again, the reference is ambiguous. ‘For that’ may also refer to ‘outward harm’:  in order to express ‘no outward harm’, he ‘colour’d’ his outward harm,26 mainly through his appearance and his clothes, ‘his high estate’ and the ‘pleats of majesty’ (‘folds of opulent and ample cloth’; 246n93). But while Lucrece is able only to ‘pick no meaning from [the] parling looks [of his eyes]’ (100), i.e. she picks meaninglessness from his face,27 the reader is given a hint of Tarquin’s expression of ‘outward harm’. The climactic sequence ends with ‘sometime too much wonder of his eye’. The eye being the window of the soul, the ‘too much’ points towards the ending of the stanza, Tarquin’s being insatiable. The antithetical structure of the final couplet, including the oxymoron ‘poorly rich’, not only emphasizes this insatiability but also shows how the antagonisms become expressive of each other and characteristic of Tarquin. As embodiments of virtue and vice, i.e. as allegorical characters that interact (at least in parts of the poem) as in a morality play, Lucrece and Tarquin are representative of good and evil and, thus, of the humanum genus. The stage model of psychomachia serves to simplify the representation of inner events; at the same time, Shakespeare shows that this is not at all a simplification because his stage is not that of a morality play, although he may refer to the model. He uses it in order to achieve a credible psychology of his characters and to give them a motivation with regard to their actions: Lucrece and Tarquin do not merely act the way they do because they perform a version of the myth they are based on. The myth is re-​motivated by Shakespeare in showing the protagonists, on the one hand, to be representative of, and driven by, certain inner forces and, on the other hand, as having complex, individual minds debating and reflecting on their actions. The emphasis on the inner state of the soul –​and also on its inner stage –​is at the heart of the energeia of Shakespeare’s rendering of the story of The Rape of Lucrece. 25 The contrast between him and Lucrece established at the beginning of the stanza, as well as the action of the poem so far, link Tarquin with the figure of Sinon that will appear later in the poem and whose ‘soul is not to be read in his appearance’ (Cousins 80). Cousins notes: ‘If Tarquin’s looks do not reveal what he is, Lucrece’s certainly reveals what she is’ (87). 26 See OED, ‘colour, v.’: ‘6.b. To represent (a wrong or hostile act, intention, etc.) in a positive manner; to disguise with or under the appearance of something acceptable; to put a favourable gloss or “spin” on.’ See also Prince:  ‘cloaked, gave a fair appearance’ (72n92); Arden ed. ‘covered over, disguised’ (246n92). If Tarquin did not colour it, it might be immediately discovered. 27 Again, the verb is not negated but the noun is. In this case, however, it does not make any difference: Lucrece picks ‘no meaning’, i.e. meaninglessness from his face (where she should have read an expressive ‘no harm’).

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‘Thou art not what thou seem’st’: Tarquin’s inner stage and outer action

While at Collatium, Tarquin is able to uphold his outward show for a while, filling Lucrece’s ears with stories of ‘her husband’s fame’ (106). He dissembles his true intentions and deceives Lucrece: ‘[n]‌o cloudy show of stormy blust’ring weather /​ Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear’ (115–​16). His face is likened to the sky and implicitly even to that of Lucrece: it is ‘fair’, there is no stormy weather to be seen, no clouds. But then the weather changes: Till sable night, mother of dread and fear,   Upon the world dim darkness doth display,   And in her vaulty prison stows the day. (117–​19)

During night, ‘fair’ turns into ‘sable’, it becomes black and ghastly, and the day is stowed away like a prisoner with ‘dread and fear’. Night is given a very active role here, almost as if it was the conspirator of Tarquin’s:1 as Night changes everything, so will Tarquin now change and show his true self. It is bedtime, and ‘every one to rest themselves betake /​Save [sic] thieves, and cares, and troubled minds that wake’ (125–​6). Tarquin’s divided self: psychomachia and physiomachia The ‘troubled mind’ (126) metonymically refers to Tarquin: ‘As one of which doth Tarquin lie revolving.’ The narrator is deliberately ambiguous here: ‘one of which’ not only refers to ‘troubled minds’ but also to ‘thieves’ and ‘cares’. Tarquin is thus identified as a thief –​he ‘steals’ Lucrece from her rightful husband and violates his ‘property’. But he also is a ‘care’ in the sense that he brings such to Lucrece.2 1 Night is personified. The alliteration in line 118 emphasizes its role and the effect of its making the world dark. On Night as Tarquin’s conspirator see 771–​92. These lines are representative of the dichotomy that is established between Tarquin and Lucrece as dark vs. fair, night vs. day; on this contrast see Donaldson 13. 2 This reading goes slightly further than the Arden note:  ‘Unless the word is being used in an otherwise unrecorded transferred sense for people with cares, this implies that the cares stop themselves from sleeping’ (249n126). Because of his self-​division, Tarquin also has cares.

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In what follows we are then granted the first deeper immediate insight into his soul, and, in this, Shakespeare departs from his sources. As Burrow, for instance, notes: ‘[n]‌othing in Ovid or any other source corresponds to this section [127–​ 441] of the poem: its focus on the psychology of Tarquin’s actions is completely Shakespearian’ (250n). What we witness is a ‘debate’ ‘in his inward mind’ (185), the war that takes place within his soul, and that is different from the friendly strife between virtue and beauty witnessed in Lucrece’s face. In Lucrece the ‘fight’ is taking place between two good forces, in Tarquin between two evil ones; only between the two, the fight of good and evil takes place. One might argue that, in Tarquin, virtue battles with vice, for instance, when he realizes his ‘shame to knighthood’ (197). And yet, he is solely concerned with himself and not with any ‘higher good’. Accordingly, now fear wages war against will on the stage of his soul, and Tarquin is compared to ‘thieves, cares and troubled minds’: As one of which doth Tarquin lie revolving The sundry dangers of his will’s obtaining; Yet ever to obtain his will resolving, Though weak-​built hopes persuade him to abstaining. Despair to gain doth traffic oft for gaining,   And when great treasure is the meed proposed,   Though death be adjunct, there’s no death supposed. (127–​33)

When in bed, this inner battle of Tarquin’s first refers to one that concerns mainly his body:  ‘Now leaden slumber with life’s strength doth fight’ (124), i.e. a physiomachia corresponding to the psychomachia.3 The correspondence of his physical condition with that of his soul is mirrored on the level of syntax:  ‘lie revolving’ is an apo koinou, as Tarquin (physically) lies revolving (in his bed), and he revolves the dangers (in his mind/​soul) of his planned action. Tarquin’s internal fight  –​both on the level of his soul and his body, but also between body/​lust and soul/​reason –​lends itself to drama because of its inherent antagonistic structure. Shakespeare draws on the tradition of medieval morality plays in the wake of Prudentius’s Psychomachia to dramatize an internal fight and transforms it psychologically. Medieval morality plays dramatize this conflict and self-​division as the basis of the conditio humana. Humanum Genus, the protagonist in The Castle of Perseverance, is similarly torn between what the Good Angel and the Bad Angel offer him –​he wants to save his soul (see 378) as much as he wants to be ‘ryche in gret aray’ (377). And Mankind in the eponymous play likewise describes his situation as follows:

3 Donald Cheney sees such psychomachia also on another level that is more closely related to the historical dimension at the background to the Lucrece story and Livy’s account of it: ‘Livy’s story of civil or interfamilial strife turns out on closer examination to be essentially intrafamilial, even to the extent of becoming intrapersonal, at times virtually a psychomachia’ (‘Tarquin, Juliet, and Other Romei’ 114); but he does not elaborate on this aspect.

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The Rape of Lucrece and the drama of the soul My name is Mankind. I have my composition Of a body and of a soul, of condition contrary. Betwix them twain is a great division; He that should be subject, now he hath the victory.

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This is to me a lamentable story, To see my flesh of my soul to have governance. (Mankind  194–​9)

It is a ‘story’ when the flesh has ‘governance’ over the soul; and it makes for a drama within man, who is torn between these two forces body and soul, passion and reason (see Fietz 125–​8, 153).4 Passion is linked to bodily desire, reason is one of the faculties of the soul. While in medieval plays, as we can see in the example, the basic dichotomy between the mortal body and the immortal soul is at stake, Shakespeare in Lucrece transforms this opposition in mingling physical aspects and aspects concerning the soul in foregrounding fear and desire that contain and pertain to both body and soul. ‘Ever to obtain his will’: loss vs. gain Tarquin is utterly entangled by his passion, his ‘will’, referring both to ‘what he desires and […] his carnal lust’ (Arden ed. 249n128), the one being linked to his soul, the other to his body, his sexual desire (see Belsey, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ 97; Burrow ed. 250n128). The meaning oscillates between the two, which is emphasized by the chiasmus ‘of his will’s obtaining’ and ‘ever to obtain his will’. But not only ‘will’ is ambiguous;5 so is ‘obtain’: When he revolves the ‘sundry dangers of his will’s obtaining’, obtain can refer both to his will gaining or acquiring, i.e. getting something (see OED, ‘obtain, v.’: ‘1.b. intr. To gain, acquire, or get something. rare’), but also to the dangers that will result when his will prevails or wins (4.a. trans. ‘To secure (a victory, prize, etc.), to win’; and 4.†b. intr. ‘To be victorious; to prevail; to succeed or prosper. Obs.’). In the context of the inner battle that takes place, ‘obtain’ may also refer to yet another meaning: if his will ‘obtains’ (4.†c. trans. ‘To win or achieve success or victory in (a battle, contest, or cause). Obs.’), this includes the victory over the rational part of his soul. Accordingly, the internal argument that takes place wholly depends on his ‘will’:  ‘to obtain his will resolving, /​Though weak-​built hopes persuade him to abstaining.’ The word choice of ‘abstaining’ almost reads like a pun in the overall context of the poem: if Tarquin were to abstain from raping Lucrece, both his soul and her body would be left unstained, without a stain. And while, in traditional psychomachia, Hope is a force fighting on behalf of the virtues  –​in fact she 4 We find a similar description of the condition humana in the ‘Chorus Sacerdotum’ from Fulke Greville’s Mustapha, where the ‘self-​division’ of humankind is linked to sin and the Fall of Man (see 136.1–​6). 5 See Burton:  ‘The actions of the Will are Velle, and Nolle, to will and nill:  which two words comprehend all, and they are good or bad, accordingly as they are directed:  and some of them freely performed by himselfe […] Some other actions of the Will are performed by the inferior powers, which obey him as the Sensitive and Moving Appetite’ (1.1.2.11; 1: 160–​1).

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supports Humility (see Prudentius, Psychomachia 201–​2) –​Hope is here perverted in that it becomes the hope to lie with Lucrece that only advises abstaining because it is too weak. Tarquin is described in terms of his being completely given over to vice in his being self-​centred and self-​willed. La Primaudaye writes that the soul is ‘subject to two parts’ (25): ‘vnderstanding and will’. This means that it comprises ‘cognitive or knowing vertues: namely, reason, vnderstanding and phantasie. Vnto which three others are answerable appertaining to appetite: namely Will […]: Choler or Anger […] and Concupiscence’ (24).6 The ‘office’ of will ‘is to desire that which vnderstanding and reason propound vnto it’ (24). The will as such belongs to that part of the soul which is ‘brutish, which is the sensuall will, of it selfe wandring and disordred, where all the motions contrarie to reason, and all euill desires haue their dwelling’ (24). Usually, the will is controlled by the understanding; but ‘if there be no other guide comming from aboue to teach the vnderstanding, and to direct and leade the will […] both of them cannot but do euill, drawing the soule with them to vtter ruine and perdition, by causing her to consent to the law of her members, which are the bodie and flesh’ (25). The will in Tarquin’s case has won over the understanding and is now uncontrolled; which is why he wishes to ‘obtain his will’.7 The ‘ruine’ of the soul that La Primaudaye refers to can be seen as foreshadowing the fate of Tarquin; at the same time, this prevalence of the will and the pursuit of one’s appetite evokes another, although later, work by Shakespeare or, rather, another Shakespearean character, who warns of the loss of control and the sinking into ‘will’. In his famous ‘degree-​speech’, Ulysses describes the effects of the loss of control –​‘Take but degree away’ (Troilus and Cressida 1.3.109): 6 See also Babb: ‘The sensitive powers not only may win temporary mastery over the intellect but may permanently vitiate and dominate it’ (18); he refers to Wright: They also ‘trouble woonderfully the soule, corrupting the iudgement, & seducing the will’ (Passions 14). Wright goes on: ‘Moreover, the Will, by yeeding to the Passion, receyveth some little bribe of pleasure, the which moveth her, to let the bridle loose, vnto inordinate appetites, because she hath ingrafted in her, two inclinations; the one to follow Reason, the other to content the Sences’ (58). See also Burton ‘Of the Will’ (1.1.2.11: 159). 7 See also Burton’s explanation of the will as a faculty of the soul. He draws on a similar image, explaining that will and reason ‘often jarred, Reason is over borne by Passion’, and refers to Virgil:  ‘Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas, as so many wild horses runne away with a chariot, and will not be curbed’ (1.1.2.11:  161); the passage is from the Georgica 1.514 (see Commentary 4:  194n). Burton goes on to quote a passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when Medea says: ‘Trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido, /​Mens aliud suadet’ (1.1.2.11: 161) –​‘Some strange new force draws me on against my will; desire persuades me one way, reason the other’ (Metamorphoses 7.19–​20; see Burton, Commentary 4:  194n). See also Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier:  Lord Octavian states ‘that like as the soule and bodie in us are two thinges, so is the soule devided into two parts; whereof the one hath in it reason, and the other appetite. Even as therefore in generation the body goeth before the soule, so doth the unreasonable part of the soule goe before the reasonable’ (282–​3). Campbell accordingly distinguishes between the tragic hero and the villain in Shakespeare’s tragedies: ‘The tragic hero sins under the influence of passion, his reason failing to check his passion. His passion may lead him to madness, but as long as his passion is in conflict with reason, he has not committed mortal sin. When, however, passion has taken possession of his will, has perverted his will, when in perfect accord with passion his reason directs evil through the will, then we have a villain, one who is dyed in sin, and one whose sin is mortal’ (101). This is an important distinction when it comes to Tarquin, who, based on this definition, is a villain.

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Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And Appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey And last eat up himself. (119–​24)

Ulysses describes the effects of loss in rank and hierarchy (see Bevington, ed. Troilus and Cressida 162n83–​4), which leads to discord –​the will obtains, and everything falls into ‘appetite’ that is self-​consuming. Although Ulysses is an ambivalent character and his speech should therefore not be taken at face value, it nonetheless provides a valid context for Lucrece, as, here, in a serious fashion, the loss of ‘degree’ is caused by the bragging of Collatine: he made Tarquin envious ‘that meaner men should vaunt /​That golden hap which their superiors want’ (41–​2). It is the ‘great treasure’ of Lucrece that tempts Tarquin, which is yet another statement of his being a thief through the repetition of ‘treasure’ (16). This treasure is ‘the meed proposed’. It designates ‘reward’ but one immediately asks oneself: reward for what? Tarquin’s thoughts and his reasoning at this moment are presented: he does indeed seem to regard Lucrece as a reward for the effort he is undergoing (probably also including his internal battle). He is overcome by the vicious part within himself, his ‘despair to gain’, and this makes him want to obtain his will. But ‘despair to gain’ is yet another ambiguous expression: it can refer to his desire; but it could also mean that he has no hope to gain, in which case ‘weak-​ built hopes’ and ‘despair’ are synonymous. The paradox is that, even though he has no strong hope and the weak hopes may advise him to give up, the very same weakness of hope furthers the attempt. This is also why he does not ‘suppose’, i.e. does not see the danger of death in relation with his scheme. And indeed it will not be his death that is ‘adjunct’ but that of Lucrece. The fact that he does not consider her at all at this point in his ruminations is expressive of his self-​centredness. ‘Each one by him enforced’: Tarquin’s will overcoming fear The prevalence of his will (over his fear) is also emphasized when Tarquin finds himself on his way to Lucrece’s chamber, and this time his will enters into a struggle with all kinds of material objects that prove to be obstacles but that he overcomes by force:8 The locks between her chamber and his will, Each one by him enforced, retires his ward; […] As each unwilling portal yields him way, Through little vents and crannies of the place The wind wards with his torch to make him stay. (302–​3; 309–​11) 8 See also his resolution just before he is on his way to her chamber: ‘So Lucrece must I force to my desire’ (182).

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His will is opposed by the locks on his way to Lucrece’s chamber. He wins them over by force –​‘Each one by him enforced’, as will be Lucrece, who is left without ‘ward’, without any protection (see Arden ed. 264n303). But Tarquin is left undeterred:  although he is frightened by the sound of the ‘enforced’ locks, ‘he still pursues his fear’ (308). His will is now so strong that he is able to ignore his fear; and, at the same time, his will is juxtaposed with the ‘unwilling[ness]’ of the objects he encounters. The earlier physiomachia within his body, of slumber with strength, is now transferred to an external level, and Tarquin fights with locks, the wind, and finally with Lucrece’s glove which he finds lying on the ‘rushes’ (318) that cover the floor: And, gripping it, the needle his finger pricks, As who should say, ‘This glove to wanton tricks Is not inured. Return again in haste; Thou seest our mistress’ ornaments are chaste.’ (319–​22)

By pricking Tarquin’s finger, the glove is portrayed as speaking to Tarquin and warning him of what he is about to do, referring to the chastity of the ornaments and, thus, to that of Lucrece.9 But Tarquin is immune to all warnings and does not turn back: ‘all these poor forbiddings could not stay him’ (323). Still, Tarquin will not be deterred:  ‘My will is backed with resolution’ (352). This statement, made at the door of Lucrece’s chamber, is illustrative of Tarquin’s thinking gone wrong: he does not back his will with reason but with resolution (by which means he basically overcomes his fear), which can be linked to his defective (in the sense of lacking) self. He gives his body the reign over his whole being; and when he sees Lucrece asleep in her chamber, this visual perception ‘Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins’ (427). These then ‘Swell in their pride’ (432), which makes his heart beat, ‘alarum striking’ (433), and ‘[g]‌ives the hot charge’ (434) for the assault on Lucrece. The whole body of Tarquin –​heart, eye, hand (see 435–​6) –​becomes the instrument of usurpation, and in that it is guided by the will (416) and his lust (424). The earlier ‘battle’ of virtues that could be witnessed in the face of Lucrece is somewhat mirrored in the vices that now govern the body of Tarquin. Tarquin’s defective self: ‘want of wit’ and ‘no self-​trust’ The earlier debate of loss and gain that is linked to Tarquin’s reflections, the ‘thwarting strife’ (143) he is going through, are concluded by the narrator in three stanzas with a commentary that is actually part of a general comparison: Those that much covet are with gain so fond That what they have not, that which they possess, They scatter and unloose it from their bond, 9 On the possible erotic implications of needle and glove, see Arden ed. 266n320.

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And so by hoping more they have but less; Or, gaining more, the profit of excess   Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,   That they prove bankrupt in this poor-​rich gain. […] As life for honour in fell battle’s rage;   Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost   The death of all, and all together lost. (134–​47)

These stanzas are full of commercial metaphors which serve to emphasize the position of Tarquin:10 by ‘gaining’ Lucrece, he will actually lose. This is put in general terms by the narrator: whoever thinks and acts like this, does not ‘suppose’ death, nor does he see that the ‘battle’ is a ‘fell’ one,11 i.e. ‘fierce’ or ‘deadly’ (see Burrow ed. 252n145). At the basis of this kind of behaviour is self-​defeating desire:  as Tarquin, we may assume, desires something (or, rather, someone) he cannot actually possess, he will have less afterwards, as his ‘gain’ is bankruptcy. In a short interlude of self-​awareness Tarquin recognizes the futility of his gain: ‘What win I  if I  gain the thing I  seek? /​A  dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. /​Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week?’ (211–​13; see also 214–​17). Still, Tarquin will lose his honour for the ‘wealth’ he will briefly gain and that will ‘cost /​The death of all’, which foreshadows the outcome of his actions. There is not even an antagonist force needed to bring about his downfall –​he causes it himself, which again points to his self-​division, the antagonism within himself, between fear and will, reason and desire. His ‘self-​defeating desire’ is a transformation of traditional psychomachia, where Desire is killed by Chastity (see Prudentius, Psychomachia 283.49–​52). In their notes on these stanzas, the Arden editors refer to The Merchant of Venice, especially to the idea of excess meaning ‘usury’ (250n138), ‘so that profit of excess suggests the interest made from lending money’ (250n138).12 But another context lends itself to unravelling these stanzas. In Sonnet 4, the speaker also refers to commercial metaphors in order to persuade the young man into having offspring: Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy? Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free: Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The bounteous largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? 10 Collatine is also perceived and described in these terms. When Collatine learns of the rape from Lucrece, the narrator comments on him: ‘here the hopeless merchant of this loss’ (1660). 11 The word is repeated later in the poem, when Lucrece addresses night after her rape: ‘O comfort-​ killing Night, image of hell, /​[…] /​Black stage for tragedies and murders fell’ (764–​6). 12 They especially refer to Merchant 3.2.112–​14, the casket scene, when Portia cries out: ‘… scant this excess! /​I feel too much thy blessing, make it less /​For fear I surfeit.’

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For having traffic with thyself alone, Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive, Then how when Nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable audit canst thou leave?   Thy unus’d beauty must be tomb’d with thee,   Which used lives th’ executor to be.13

In an earlier comment, the narrator in Lucrece called Collatine ‘niggard prodigal’ (79) in order to underline that he ‘gave his wife too much praise, yet it was still too little’ (Arden ed. 245n79). The oxymoron is similar to the ‘poor-​rich gain’ that will result from Tarquin’s actions. The addressee in Sonnet 4 is called ‘beauteous niggard’ because he deals with his beauty so miserly that he does not wish to share it or bequeath it to the future. The underlying idea of this imagery is ‘traffic’  –​ commerce (OED, ‘traffic, n.’ 1.a. ‘The transportation of merchandise for the purpose of trade; hence, trade between distant or distinct communities; commerce’), trade (2.a. ‘In wider sense: The buying and selling or exchange of goods for profit; bargaining; trade’), merchandise (†4.a. transf. ‘Goods or merchandise in which trade is done; saleable commodities. Obs.’). While in the sonnet the underlying economic metaphor is based on the notion of usury, on lending and giving, Tarquin’s ‘traffic’ is more explicitly linked to loss and gain; the view that he will lose through his momentary gain is prevalent there. In the almost contemporary The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1588–​95; see Introduction Arden ed. 128), Proteus, another villainous (albeit later reformed) character, lends himself as a foil to Tarquin in this respect. When Proteus falls in love with Silvia and betrays his friend Valentine as much as his fiancée Julia, he thinks of his relationships with them in terms of loss –​but it is a loss that concerns only himself: Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose; If I keep them, I needs must lose myself. If I lose them, thus find I by their loss, For Valentine, myself, for Julia, Silvia. I to myself am dearer than a friend, For love is still most precious in itself. (2.6.19–​24)

Proteus thinks of the gain for himself: if he ‘loses’ Valentine, he will find himself; and by giving up Julia, he will gain Silvia. That this reasoning is a false one is not only implicit in his violation of ‘one of the central tenets of male friendship theory, placing his own desires before any consideration of his friend’ (Arden ed. 197n23), but also in the fact that he, because of his own unfaithfulness, does not trust in the constancy of Silvia, i.e. he does not take into account that she might simply not love him. The gain he expects from his plot is as fleeting as that of Tarquin; and in both cases, the false reasoning depends on the character’s self-​centredness and, as we shall see, lack of wit (as a force of reason). Shortly before thinking of his ‘losses’ 13 All quotations are based on the most recent Arden edition of the Sonnets, unless otherwise indicated.

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and the gain for himself, Proteus reflects on his commitment to Julia and comes to the following conclusion:

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Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken, And he wants wit that wants resolved will To learn his wit t’exchange the bad for better. (11–​13)

He regards the lack of ‘resolved will’ –​i.e. the lacking pursuit of his own desires –​ as expressive of a want of ‘wit’ and, consequently, wants to teach his wit to replace ‘the bad for better’, meaning Julia with Silvia. A similar notion of a lack of wit is expressed by the narrator in Lucrece, with the difference, however, that the lack of wit there is immediately linked to following one’s will and that this is uncovered to be destructive. Proteus’s reasoning, at least on the internal communicative level of the play, is not commented on further and only in the course of the action proves to be wrong. In Lucrece, the narrator goes on to speak in general terms for one more stanza, almost in the fashion of a commonplace book, and it becomes obvious that his moralizing is in fact related to Tarquin’s soul: So that in ventr’ing ill we leave to be The things we are for that which we expect, And this ambitious foul infirmity, In having much, torments us with defect Of that we have; so then we do neglect   The thing we have, and all for want of wit   Make something nothing by augmenting it. Such hazard now must doting Tarquin make […] (148–​55)

The narrator’s general reflections allude to the outcome of the story, namely the death of Lucrece as well as to Tarquin’s downfall, which also means the end of this line of kings. But these reflections also show something else, namely that it is the narrator, not Tarquin, who thinks about these issues. Had Tarquin thought about them seriously and looked at the wider implications of his actions and his behaviour, he might have abstained from them. But it is his ‘want of wit’, which implies his soul, that eventually is at the root of his downfall: what is going on in Tarquin’s mind is thus characterized as a lack of or in one of the faculties of the soul, which may be related to his being ‘lust-​breathed’. Wright, in his Passions of the Minde (1604), comments on such a lack or ‘defect’ of wit:  ‘All defects of our wit may be reduced to two, Ignorance, and Errour; by Ignorance we know not things necessary; by Errour we know them falsely:  Ignorance is a privation, Errour a positive action’ (295). This is not necessarily true for Tarquin, who is not ignorant of the possible consequences of his actions; he even fears them. But then, he is guided by error, which, however,

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is caused by a privation, namely that of wit. Shakespeare adds psychological complexity to Tarquin by complicating his inner processes, which becomes even more pertinent in the following stanza, when his lack of ‘self-​trust’ is described that can be immediately linked to the overall want and defect to be witnessed in him. But Wright establishes another connection that is enlightening when looking at the narratorial comment in these stanzas. When, in his first chapter, Wright explains how his book shall make the reader ‘profit’ (1) from its perusal, he first of all addresses the ‘temptations of the flesh’ (5) and how the ‘spirituall man ought to bee imployed in the expugnation’ of these temptations: ‘to knowe the nature of his enemies, their stratagems, and continuall incursions, even vnto the gates of the chiefest castell of his soule, I mean the very witte and will’ (5). Wit and will are the ‘chiefest castell of [man’s] soule’; and they are the faculties that are linked with the innermost part of the soul. Wright describes three ‘sortes of actions [that] proceede from mens soules’:  ‘some are internall and immateriall, as the actes of our wittes and willes’ (7). Wit and will are thus destined to protect man from his ‘enemies’, but Tarquin’s will is corrupted by his lust and passion; his will is seduced: They are called Passions (although indeed they be actes of the sensitive power, or facultie of our soule …:  a sensual motion of our appetitive facultie, through imagination of some good or ill thing) because when these affections are stirring in our minds, they alter the humours of our bodies, causing some passion or alteration in them. … they trouble wonderfully the soule, corrupting the iudgement, & seducing the will, inducing (for the most part) to vice, and commonly withdrawing from virtue. (Wright 8)

Wright elaborates on the notion how the ‘appetitive facultie’ causes a change in the body; the affections corrupt the judgement and seduce the will. The result is an inducement ‘to vice’, and this is exactly what one can witness in Tarquin: the lack of wit makes the seduction of his will possible –​‘Yet ever to obtain his will resolving’ –​, and he is no longer controlled by reason, which is why he falls into vice: ‘My will is strong, past reason’s weak removing’ (243; emphasis added). At the same time, his ‘want of wit’ leads to the making of nothing out of something, a sort of anti-​creation effected, which implies an important comment on the workings of the soul. The notion of defect here comes to the fore: because his soul wants wit, it no longer creates but destroys.14 The ‘self-​consuming’ lust of

14 Quite contrary is the creative force of the imaginative soul, as put forward, for example, by Theseus: ‘And as imagination bodies forth /​The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen /​Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing /​A local habitation and a name’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.14–​17). The ‘airy nothing’ is turned into something by another faculty of the soul, namely the imagination. See also Sonnet 27, where the soul’s ‘imaginary sight /​Presents [the beloved’s] shadow’ (27.9–​10) to the speaker.

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Tarquin lacks creative force, and, by following his will, he brings himself into a hazardous situation: Such hazard now must doting Tarquin make, Pawning his honour to obtain his lust, And for himself himself he must forsake. Then where is truth if there be no self-​trust? When shall he think to find a stranger just,   When he himself himself confounds, betrays   To sland’rous tongues and wretched hateful days? (155–​61)

The obtaining of his will is here replaced with ‘lust’ –​and his ‘want of wit’ is aligned with his lack of ‘self-​trust’; at the same time, ‘lust’ and ‘no self-​trust’ are set in relation to one another by means of rhyme. This relation is embedded in a sentence that takes up the paradoxical pattern from the previous stanza: ‘for himself himself he must forsake’. The chiasmus points towards an ellipsis that is contained in the structure: for the sake of himself  –​himself he must forsake:  by following his lust, i.e. his inner appetites, Tarquin abandons his own self. An analogous pattern is true for Lucrece, about whom, after the rape, the narrator says: ‘that unhappy guest /​Whose deed hath made herself herself detest’ (1565–​6), with the difference that it is a deed inflicted on her by someone else that leads to self-​hatred. ‘Self-​trust’ thus turns out to be a key notion in the overall context of the poem –​ especially so, as it harkens back to the ‘trustless wings of false desire’ in line 2. Desire and lust are semantically linked to one another, and the later instance of ‘self-​trust’ confirms the ambiguity from the beginning of the poem: the wings are not necessarily trustless, but desire is, here standing metonymically for Tarquin. The narrator thus comments on Tarquin’s soul: the phrase ‘no self-​trust’ combines both self-​deception and the lack of self-​confidence (see Arden ed. 252n158). The notion of self-​deception comes in as follows: there can be no truth when there is ‘no self-​trust’, and his action will lead to slander and hate –​the self-​hatred he will experience after the rape. Tarquin does not believe in his own self being capable of an honest action, and this is the way in which he becomes dishonest (as in a self-​fulfilling prophecy). Again, the notion of defect is decisive here, and his lack of wit as much as that of self-​trust cause his downfall. The psychological background to his actions is again emphasized. But the word ‘self-​trust’ as such is conspicuous because it was new at the time when Shakespeare used it –​and it is in Lucrece that he uses it not only for the first but also the only time. The OED notes only one earlier instance, namely the 1583 translation by Golding of Calvin’s Sermons on Deuteronomy:  ‘ii. 12 Let vs vnderstand that there is no strength in vs, and that we must rid our selues of all selfetrust’ (OED, ‘self-​trust, n.’). A derivation of the word and the idea can be found one hundred years later, in Baxter’s Paraphrase on the New Testament (1685): ‘vi.32 By *self-​trusting and self-​seeking [they] are drowned in worldly love and care’ (OED, ‘self-​trusting, vbl. n. and ppl. a.’). In both the meaning is different from that in Lucrece. What Calvin –​and in his wake Baxter –​refer to is the confidence and trust in oneself instead of God; they both convey a purely theological thought

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here. In Shakespeare, however, the notion is not theological but psychological.15 This means that, although Shakespeare makes use of archaic forms in his poem, such as psychomachia, the psychology presented is a new and an extremely subtle one. His notion of self-​trust is one of staying true to one’s self. When Tarquin forsakes himself for himself, then this means that the loss of self-​trust also implies the loss of self-​identity; it appears as if Shakespeare’s aim was to deal with the question: ‘Who is Tarquin?’ in these lines and to define his identity negatively and in terms of defect.16 This notion is further emphasized by the apo koinou in this line: ‘Then where is truth, if there be no self /​no self-​trust?’ The trust depends on self-​identity; where there is not truth, there can be no self and no trust –​and vice versa.17 The importance of truth as well as the mirroring (and also paradoxical relation) of truth and trust is further stressed by the word ‘just’ in the following line. When there is no truth, nor self-​trust, one cannot be just either. The result is put in a nutshell when the narrator comments:  ‘When he himself himself confounds, betrays.’ Not only does he repeat the doubling of ‘himself ’ from line 157, but he also introduces yet another apo koinou: when Tarquin confounds himself, i.e. does not know who he is and is not true to himself, this is self-​betrayal;18 or, as the following line suggests, a betrayal to others, to ‘sland’rous tongues’. He ‘belies’ himself to himself and to others; both meanings are contained here. The betrayal of himself refers back to his identity and his lack of self-​trust which is in itself related to his ‘want of wit’. As Tarquin cannot trust himself, he cannot trust his soul either, and this leads to a defect in self-​confidence and truth; he unwittingly destroys himself because his soul is incapable of true reflection: all his ‘pure thoughts are dead and still, /​While lust and murder wakes to stain and kill’ (167–​8). Yet he still suffers from confusion within himself and is ‘madly tossed between desire and dread’ (171), which now is turned into a fight between fear and desire that becomes allegorical, with personifications of the two emotions struggling: But honest fear, bewitched with lust’s foul charm,   Doth too-​too oft betake him to retire,   Beaten away by brainsick rude desire. (173–​5)

The narrator again generalizes: fear, although in itself honest, is easily ‘bewitched’ by lust. In what follows, honesty (a virtue) of fear is juxtaposed with the madness and baseness as well as violence of desire (see Burrow ed. 253n175; Arden ed. 15 The next mention of the word in the OED is by Emerson, which means a gap of almost 250 years: ‘Heroism in Ess. 1st Ser. 253 Self-​trust is the essence of Heroism.’ His use also suggests a psychological meaning. 16 The same question would turn up again in his later tragedies, for instance Hamlet and, perhaps even more so, King Lear: ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’ (1.4.221). 17 For the relation of truth and trust see also Sonnet 138 and the interpretation by Bauer/​Beck/​Bade/​ Dörge/​Zirker. 18 This may also imply a self-​destructive element as ‘confound’ may denote ‘destroy, ruin’ (see Arden ed. 252n160); OED, ‘confound, v.’ 1.a. trans.; for the denotation ‘confusion’, see 4.a.

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253n175). Lust and desire are already within his soul as parts of his will, but they now are personified and make fear retire.19 Lust takes over control and, being ‘brainsick’, makes Tarquin devoid of reason (see also Belsey, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ 93). He is now determined to ‘force’ Lucrece to his desire (182), taking up his ‘falchion’ (176) and making his way to her room.

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‘In his inward mind he doth debate’: Tarquin’s inner struggle His determination to use ‘force’ is an important step:  before that, Tarquin still ‘hoped’, which implies Lucrece’s agreement to having intercourse with him. That he now wants to force her thus illustrates the apex of his loss of self-​trust. After this decision, fear, although already beaten into retirement, returns once more: Here pale with fear he doth premeditate The dangers of his loathsome enterprise, And in his inward mind he doth debate What following sorrow may on this arise. Then, looking scornfully, he doth despise   His naked armour of still-​slaughtered lust,   And justly thus controls his thoughts unjust. (183–​9)

Tarquin meditates seriously on the consequences of his planned deed, its ‘dangers’. This meditation, or rather premeditation, takes place as a debate ‘in his inward mind’, which is to emphasize the faculty of the mind to foresee and imagine future events.20 He is conducting this inward debate in his soul, i.e. the soul becomes a place in which this debate takes place.21 19 This battle between forces of the soul is reminiscent of what Prudentius describes. The personification of these forces in Lucrece sets in once they meet their counterparts, and they are now grouped as vices and virtues (the honesty of fear links it to a virtue). Lust and desire are two of the altogether four (joy and grief) emotions which Augustine in The City of God defines as the ‘starting-​point, as it were, of all sins and vices’ (14.3; 271). Augustine refers to Virgil, Aeneid 6.733–​ 34, and Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 3.11.24–​5: ‘For all disturbance is a movement of the soul either destitute of reason, or contemptuous of reason, or disobedient to reason … fear is the idea of a serious threatening evil’; see also 4.6.11–​12. 20 The notion of premeditation was a rather new one; the OED has 1526 and 1542 as the first entries, both in connection with prayer; ‘premeditate, v.’:  1.a. ‘To ponder upon or study with a view to subsequent action; to think out beforehand; (now) esp. to plan in advance.?1526 P. Bush Extirpacion of Ignorancy […] 1542 T. Becon Newe Pathway vnto Praier ix. […].’ See also 1.†b.: ‘To think of in advance; to foresee, to anticipate. Obs. rare. 1566 in J. H. Burton Reg. Privy Council Scotl. (1877) 1st Ser. I. 473 That all troubill and occasioun of disordour be afoirhand foirsene and premiditat.’ 21 The word ‘debate’ is here used in the sense of ‘discuss or consider (with oneself or in one’s own mind), deliberate upon’ (OED, ‘debate, v.1’ 5.a. trans.). The OED gives Lucrece as an example of the meaning listed under 5.b.: ‘intr. To deliberate, consider (with oneself). 1594 [implied in: Shakespeare Lucrece sig. C3v, Then childish feare auaunt, debating die. (at debating n.)].’ As Tarquin’s ‘debate’ is followed by self-​loathing, these seem to be the prevalent meanings of the verb. Given the overall course of events, however, one might see a potential ambiguity implied here. The verb ‘debate’ may also signify ‘To abate; to beat down, bring down, lower, reduce, lessen, diminish’ (‘† debate, v.2’), which would suggest that Tarquin already here does not take seriously the sorrow that might ensue, although the immediate context does not necessarily support this reading. See also: ‘debate,

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This premeditation is followed by his debating the ‘sorrow’ that may follow his deed, and then by his ‘despis[ing]’ the ‘naked armour of still-​slaughtered lust’. Prince, in the second Arden edition, calls this a ‘paradoxical conceit’ (see 77n188), as an armour is usually armed and not naked. The line actually contains three problems of understanding:  what is ‘his naked armour’? What kind of relation does ‘of ’ express –​is it a genitivus subiectivus or a genitivus obiectivus, and does the difference matter with regard to the meaning of this line? And, thirdly, what does ‘still slaughtered lust’ mean?22 ‘The naked armour of still-​slaughtered lust’: Tarquin’s inherent ambiguity The basic difficulty is the meaning of ‘armour’: does it signify ‘defensive covering’ or ‘suit of mail’ (OED, ‘armour, n.’ 1. and 2.), or ‘military equipment or accoutrement, both offensive and defensive’ (OED 3.)? This difficulty is related to the question whether the armour, i.e. the arms, are naked, or if the armour consists in nakedness, or if the armour and arms have been laid aside.23 In the first case, the naked armour (like the ‘fair torch’ 190)  would be the weapon with which Tarquin wants to attack Lucrece (see OED, ‘naked, adj.’ 16.a. ‘Of a sword or similar weapon:  not covered by a sheath; unsheathed’). This reading goes with both genitivus subiectivus and obiectivus: the weapon as an instrument of lust, or the weapon characterized through lust. In any case, the reading of ‘weapon/​arms’ is prevalent here, as an armour cannot be naked or covered, but a weapon, e.g. a sword, can. ‘Naked’ may also be used metaphorically (see 18.a. ‘plain, obvious, clear. Also (esp. of an emotion, characteristic, etc.): blatant, unashamed’). In this case, he would despise the blatant weapon/​armour of his lust. But also the nakedness itself may be the armour, in which case the line would be metaphorical (or even ironical, as nakedness is the exact opposite of armour, which would fit the notion of ‘scornfully’ and of ‘despise’). If lust has a naked armour, i.e. the naked body, however, this may (unironically) mean that nakedness is indeed the armour of lust, because, if dressed, lust would be overcome and conquered quickly.24 A metonymic reading is also possible, in the v.1’: †1. intr. ‘To fight, contend, strive, quarrel, wrangle. Obs. c1386 Chaucer Sir Thopas 157 His cote-​armour … In which he wold debate.’ 22 The Arden editors added a hyphen to still slaughtered, which delimits the range of possible meanings. The multiple meanings in all three parts of the line can probably be combined with one another, which results in a potentially high number of possible meanings. Some of these should be preferred in the overall context of the poem (and some, e.g., go better with the genitivus subiectivus etc.). 23 The phrase ‘naked armour of still-​slaughtered lust’ is explained by Burrow: ‘His only armour is lust, and lust is no defence (hence is naked) since it is always destroyed (still-​slaughtered) the moment it is satisfied. The fact that he is despising this armour suggests two quite contrary things: (a) that he will abandon his enterprise because it clothes him with such squalid armour; (b) that he will seek like an extremely brave warrior to abandon his armour and proceed with his enterprise unprotected’ (254n188). The second reading that Burrow offers, however, does not make sense: when Tarquin’s armour is lust, and he throws away his armour, he has given up his lust. The notion that he would ‘proceed with his enterprise unprotected then’ therefore is a contradiction. 24 An analogous case is the collocation ‘naked bed’ (OED 1.b.) that does not describe the bed but the state in which one is in it.

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sense of ‘undressed armour’: the fighter has got rid of his armour and is now ready for erotic encounters (as in Venus and Adonis). In this case, lust would not be an armour, and Tarquin despises his unarmoured state of still slaughtered lust, which would lead back to the paradoxical notion of the line.25 In any case, the expression ‘naked armour’ also refers to the relation of body and soul: Tarquin’s body, i.e. the outer shell, is naked (obvious, unprotected, uncovered), and it covers (or rather fails to cover) the true self, hidden underneath. The double meaning underlying the collocation refers to the question whether Tarquin uses his armour as a means of aggression or as one of defence, whether it refers to his outer state or to an inner condition. The link between armour and lust, ‘of ’, can be read in terms of a genitivus subiectivus and a genitivus obiectivus:  in the first case, the armour is identical with his still-​slaughtered lust, i.e. his armour is his lust, him being ‘lust-​breathed’ (3) from the beginning, thus indicating that his ‘only armor in this enterprise is lust […] which is no real armor, for it is always slain (perishes, comes to naught) when it is satisfied’ (Arden ed. 254n188). In the second case, lust is either a weapon or an armour, which means it is like a shield that does not allow any other feeling than lust itself to go through. The difference between the two possible readings of the genitive thus does not so much change the meaning of the line in itself, except for what it is that Tarquin despises:  his lust or the armour. But this ambiguity remains unresolved. The collocation ‘still slaughtered lust’ draws attention to itself by its sound alone: the metre is here disrupted, the iamb is followed by three words with initial stress, containing only one unstressed syllable (sláughtered), and there is an accumulation of s-​ and l-​sounds. Its meaning is rather opaque, and the comment in the Arden edition hardly helpful:  ‘The effect of the line is powerful but its meaning is hard to grasp’ (254n188). The word ‘slaughter’ in itself, at least in its use as adjective and verb, is rather recent. It is in Shakespeare that we find the first use of the adjective: in Titus Andronicus (1594), Bassianus is described after his murder as being ‘like to a slaughtered lamb’ (2.2.223); and again in Lucrece, when Lucrece looks at the painting of Troy: ‘Many a dry drop seemed a weaping tear /​ Shed for the slaughtered husband by the wife’, the past participle here being used with reference to people (OED, ‘slaughtered, adj. and n.’: A.2. ‘Of persons: Killed, slain; massacred’). The word is mentioned again later in the poem, when Lucrece recounts the rape and how she was threatened: ‘ “For some hard-​favoured groom of thine,” quoth he, /​“Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will, /​I’ll murder straight, and then I’ll slaughter thee” ’ (1632–​4).26 In all these cases, whether used as an adjective or a verb, the word ‘slaughter’ signifies brutality and violent force.

25 See OED, ‘naked, adj.’: 6.a. ‘Having no defence or protection; open or exposed to assault or injury; vulnerable’; and esp. 6.†b. ‘Of a person or vessel: without weapons or armour; unarmed. Also fig. Obs.’ See also 8.a.: ‘Having no protective covering; uncovered.’ 26 See the meaning of ‘slaughter, v.’ with reference to persons in the OED: 2.a. ‘To kill, slay, murder (a person), esp. in a bloody or brutal manner.’ The first entry for this use is from 1582 (‘R. Stanyhurst tr. Virgil First Foure Bookes Æneis i 4 Wheare lyes strong Hector slaughtred by manful Achilles’).

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But what about ‘still’? Here a wide range of meanings is possible (both as an adjective and an adverb). It may signify a result: lust is slaughtered and becomes motionless (see OED, ‘still, adj.’ 1.) or ‘silent’ (OED 2.).27 The reading of ‘still’ as an adverb, however, is more likely as it modifies the meaning of ‘slaughtered’ (which is then read as an adjective) and does not primarily describe lust. In this case, ‘slaughtered’ can be read as an adjective (usually, nowadays, a hyphen is added –​ but only rarely in Shakespeare’s time; see OED, ‘still, adv.’ 7.) and signifies ‘always’ (OED 7.b.), or ‘now as before’ (7.c., the first entry is for 1609), and the meaning then is ‘his ever-​slaughtered lust’. The readings of still as an adjective and slaughtered as an adjective contradict each other, which results in another paradox: lust is either made silent, or it is constantly slaughtered and thus never brought to silence. Slaughtered can also be read as a past participle. In this reading, the meaning of ‘still’ as ‘[u]‌sed to emphasize a comparative’ (OED 5.a.), i.e. as ‘yet’, and ‘where the comparative notion is merely implied’ (5.b., obs.)28 adds a new note to the line (almost in the sense of ‘nevertheless’): despite the armour, lust is slaughtered, as it is so weak (due to its nakedness) that it is not protective anymore; although it possesses an armour (both as shield and weapon) of nakedness, lust is slaughtered. This reading fits into the context of comprehension that Tarquin (briefly) possesses in these lines: lust will not last (as will be proved in the ensuing action), although it possesses an armour. What Tarquin despises are the weapons of lust that are only naked.29 What this close reading of the line illustrates in conclusion is the fact that the ambiguity and multi-​signification of the line results in paradoxes, in denotations that exclude each other. Tarquin either despises his naked armour of lust that constantly needs satisfaction (which is an entirely physical reading); his armour consists of constantly slaughtered lust (which refers to his moral insensibility and emotional recklessness toward the victim of his lust, and this recklessness is like an armour that does not know any shame); his nakedness is an armour for his constantly slaughtered lust (his nakedness furthers his lust and makes it come to life again and again; despite this naked armour, his lust is slaughtered).30 The 27 This resultative meaning seems to be the only way to read ‘still’ as an adjective here; but then the speaker would despise himself for his lust being still/​silent. This does not make sense in the overall context. The word ‘still-​slaughtered’ may also evoke ‘still-​born’ which, according to the OED, makes its first appearance in 2 Henry VI (1600), in a figurative sense: ‘Grant that our hopes […] Should be still-​born’ (1.3.64; OED, ‘still-​born, adj. and n.’ A.2.). The now prevalent meaning of ‘still-​born’ as ‘[b]‌orn lifeless; dead at birth; abortive’ (OED A.1.) is later than that: ‘1607 R. C. tr. H. Estienne World of Wonders 348 Restoring children to life, which were stil borne.’ This reading, however, is also problematic as ‘still-​born’ describes the state in which someone is born; here, the meaning that lust is already dead when slaughtered can be excluded. On resultative vs. active meanings of verbs see, e.g., Bauer/​Knape/​Koch/​Winkler. 28 Lucrece is actually the first entry for this denotation:  ‘The guilt being great, the feare doth still exceede.’ 29 This becomes obvious after the rape, when the narrator portrays Tarquin: ‘So surfeit-​taking Tarquin fares this night:  /​His taste delicious, in digestion souring, /​Devours his will that lived by foul devouring’ (698–​700). Not only does he describe a deterioration in Tarquin, a downfall, but also is the will –​of which lust is a part –​devoured, slaughtered, by raping and thus destroying Lucrece. 30 Iachimo resembles Tarquin in this regard: ‘The cloyed will –​/​That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub /​Both filled and running –​ravening first the lamb, /​Longs after for the garbage’ (Cymbeline 1.6.47–​50). On analogies between Lucrece and Cymbeline, see also Charney, Shakespeare on Love and Lust  19–​20.

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underlying ambiguity of armour as shield or weapon, as well as of nakedness as armour or being naked and without an armour, and the ambiguity of ‘still slaughtered’ in the sense of silenced or newly and repeatedly slaughtered (and thus never coming to silence), leads to an overarching ambiguity of his lust being either within him (which refers back to his being ‘lust-​breathed’) or without him. In the first sense, this means that lust is slaughtered despite his armour; in the second sense, his lust is embodied by something outside him, in this case Lucrece. She is his lust, and this is why she has to be slaughtered. The genitive allows for the despising of his lust (subiectivus) or his armour (obiectivus); but the ambiguity cannot (and should not) be resolved, because, as much as ‘despises’ governs the sentence as a verb, it is also the feeling that governs Tarquin. The underlying paradoxes and ambiguities result in illustrating that, for the first time, Tarquin despises what he is about to do, and, what is more, he despises himself, which relates back to his lack of self-​trust and, hence, to the complex psychology that is essential to his character. ‘My will is strong’: physical desire vs. reason In a next step, Tarquin’s intellect (for a short time, at least) overcomes his physical desire; it is the voice of restraint that is speaking. He ‘justly thus controls his thoughts unjust’ (see Bauer/​Beck/​Bade/​Dörge/​Zirker on a similar play on ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ in Sonnet 138)  and enters upon a soliloquy that expresses what is going on in his ‘inward mind’: he first thinks about how the rape will stain Lucrece (190–​6), thereby recognizing his own darkness in comparison with her ‘light’ (191), then how it will stain himself (197–​217). He addresses his ‘unhallowed thoughts’ and tells them to ‘die’ (192), thus emphasizing how much the events depend on what is going on within his mind and his soul. The turn towards his own possible grievances after only one stanza about Lucrece are, however, again an illustration of his self-​centredness (see also Dubrow, Captive Victors 118) and indicate that he is still mostly governed by his greatest weakness. He fears that his ‘digression is so vile, so base /​That it will live engraven in [his] face’ (202–​3), i.e. that it will actually show outwardly and harm him in that his sin will be visible. This outward show of inner turmoil is not only what will happen to Lucrece later, who blushes when a servant comes upon her because she is convinced that he will see what took place in her face (750–​1; see also 807–​8); it also refers back to the beginning and their first encounter when he managed to hide his true intentions so well and did not let them shine forth in his countenance. He is also afraid for his reputation, and this shows a further analogy with Lucrece; yet  all that happens depends entirely on the conduct and decisions of Tarquin: ‘Yea, though I die, the scandal will survive, /​And be an eyesore in my golden coat’ (204–​5). This reference to his coat of arms (see Burrow ed. 255n205) also shows his awareness: his actions will also affect his family (his ‘household’s grave’ 198). Moreover, he is now aware of how fleeting the moment of his pleasure will be in comparison with the longevity of its consequences (see 211–​17), the ‘ever-​during blame’ (224). He is also thinking of Collatine, fearing that he may

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‘dream’ of Tarquin’s ‘intent’ (218) and try to prevent it: ‘O, what excuse can my invention make /​When thou shalt charge me with so black a deed?’ (224–​5). It is unclear whether he is actually addressing Collatine here or perhaps Lucrece, of whom he is thinking, in an imaginary dialogue, or if he is entering upon a dialogue with his own self, his conscience or his soul (see Arden ed. 257n226). Collatine has done him no harm, and nothing actually justifies his deed, that ‘shame and fault finds no excuse nor end’ (238; see Mason 28; Camino, Raping Lucrece 18). After seven stanzas Tarquin finds that he will not gain but can only lose if he follows his design, and the ‘debate’ becomes a ‘disputation’ (246),31 which means that, instead of one voice speaking, now there are two: ‘Shameful it is: ay, if the fact be known. Hateful it is: there is no hate in loving. I’ll beg her love: but she is not her own. The worst is but denial and reproving: My will is strong, past reason’s weak removing.   Who fears a sentence or an old man’s saw   Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe.’ (239–​45)

Tarquin here stages a soliloquy in which his self-​division becomes apparent –​and he proves to be a ‘kinsman’ of Richard III in his villainy, who likewise enters into a soliloquy just before the battle at Bosworth (5.3.182–​92; see below; and Arden ed. 258n). Tarquin first attests the shamefulness of his planned deed  –​to then point out that it will only be shameful ‘if the fact be known’, an argument he takes up again later when talking to Lucrece before he rapes her: ‘A fault unknown is as a thought unacted’ (527). Accordingly, his better part points to the negative outcome, while his vicious part does not even present many arguments but refers to the fact that the shame will only be relevant should the deed be known. This kind of ‘reasoning’ is continued in the next line: ‘Hateful it is’ is answered with ‘there is no hate in loving’. The latter argument is particularly disturbing in the overall context of the poem: he claims that he ‘loves’ Lucrece and that raping her, therefore, cannot be hateful. Although in some renderings of the Lucrece story, for instance in Ovid’s, Tarquin is actually in love with Lucrece, in Shakespeare’s version the motive for his action is desire, as the opening stanzas of the poem show. Yet, he uses this very argument –​his love for her –​as he goes on in his ‘disputation’: ‘I’ll beg her love’, which apparently means that he wants her to reciprocate his feelings. But he knows that ‘she is not her own’, i.e. that she is actually married to someone else and that ‘her love belongs to her husband’ (Arden ed. 259n241). He therefore ends his reasoning with the recognition that the ‘worst’ that can befall him is her ‘denial and reproving’, her rejection. Again he takes recourse to his ‘will’ –​ and his will now overcomes reason, which means that the forces of sensuality within him overcome his rationality. Earlier in the poem, two sentential phrases 31 Both the editors of the Arden edition as well as Burrow point out that ‘disputation’ refers to a ‘formal debate’ (Arden ed. 259n246; Burrow ed. 257n246).

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expressed –​and even underlined –​Lucrece’s innocence; at the conclusion of this stanza, Tarquin also refers to proverbial expressions to highlight his determination: ‘Who fears a sentence or an old man’s saw.’32 Apparently he has now overcome all fear and will not be awed by a ‘painted cloth’ –​unlike Lucrece later in the ekphrasis scene. With this determination ends his soliloquy, and the narrator now comments on the debate that has taken place in Tarquin; it is only here that it becomes explicitly apparent that the preceding stanza is a disputation between conscience and will: Thus graceless holds he disputation ‘Tween frozen conscience and hot-​burning will, And with good thoughts makes dispensation, Urging the worser sense for vantages still; Which in a moment doth confound and kill   All pure effects, and doth so far proceed   That what is vile shows like a virtuous deed. (246–​52)

His disputation is characterized to be ‘graceless’, i.e. ‘impious’, ‘merciless’, and ‘wanting a sense of decency and propriety’ (Burrow ed. 257n; see also Arden ed. 259n244); and it is only in keeping with this gracelessness that he dispenses with his ‘good thoughts’ –​already earlier his ‘pure thoughts’ were said to be ‘dead and still’ (167) –​and gives over his ‘frozen conscience’ in favour of his ‘hot-​burning will’. He literally silences his good thoughts here; later, in her bedchamber, Lucrece becomes the voice of reason and of virtue, but like the voice within himself, he silences her as well. He thus kills ‘all pure effects’, and in his progression from evil to worse what is vile is turned into a virtuous deed in his eyes; thus his rape of Lucrece becomes an act of ‘affection’ (271), which is a reference back to his claim that he loves Lucrece in the preceding stanza.33 This ‘affection’, however is ambiguous:34 it can refer to love –​which he claimed for himself earlier –​but it also can signify nothing but passion and desire (see OED, ‘affection, n.1’ I.1.†b.; and Fietz 164). ‘My part is youth’: Tarquin and the stage In his soliloquy (which he continues after one stanza of narratorial comment and evaluation), Tarquin remembers his first encounter with Lucrece and how she reacted to his arrival. He then contends that Lucrece would have prevented Narcissus from drowning himself (265–​6) as a consequence of his self-​love; instead, he would have loved her. Tarquin thus argues himself out of the fact that it is self-​love that drives him. Again, he discusses away what is vile and makes it 3 2 ‘Sentence’ is ambiguous in this context, as the Arden editors point out (259n244). 33 See also Belsey: ‘The narrative voice, however, tells a slightly different story. Here power constitutes the driving force, not love in any of its forms. The imagery consistently identifies Tarquin as a predator rather than a lover’ (‘The Rape of Lucrece’ 99). 34 See Maus on the ambiguity of will, lust, and pride in the poem (‘Language and Violence’ 304).

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‘show … like a virtuous deed’. After relying fully on his affection as an inner force, he once more tells his fear to go away: ‘Then childish fear avaunt! debating die! Respect and reason wait on wrinkled age! My heart shall never countermand mine eye: Sad pause and deep regard beseems the sage. My part is youth, and beats these from the stage.   Desire my pilot is, beauty my prize.   Then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?’ (274–​80)

He no longer wants to endure the debating between good and evil that takes place inwardly but wants to come to a resolution and take action. To follow reason, he goes on to say, is for old people, again using slightly ambiguous expressions as ‘sad pause’ can refer to ‘hesitation’ (see Arden ed. 262n277) but also to the opposite of action, which becomes a relevant meaning when we read on in this stanza; ‘deep regard’ is equally ambiguous as it designates both ‘careful consideration’ (Burrow ed. 259n277) and a deeply felt affection and esteem for someone else. The conclusion of the stanza is indicative of his ‘lack of wit’:  when he regards Lucrece, i.e. her beauty’ as his ‘prize’, which again has mercantile connotations (see Burrow ed. 259n279),35 he treats her like the booty of pirates. And by regarding beauty as something that can be captured like a prize, he treats it as a material thing, which indicates that his whole line of thinking is faulty from the start. Yet Tarquin is unaware of this. With this nautical and mercantile imagery, he ends on a metaphorical note: the prize he has before him, the treasure that is Lucrece, is so tempting that his will to gain her overcomes his fear. This is also his reasoning when he is confronted with all kinds of obstacles on his way to Lucrece’s chamber (‘The doors, the wind, the glove that did delay him’ 325): ‘The merchant fears, ere rich at home he lands’ (336). When Tarquin says ‘My part is youth’, he clearly shows that he knows his Aristotle, or, rather, Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric. Aristotle describes ‘the nature of the characters of men according to their emotions, habits, ages, and fortunes’ (II.12.2; 1389a) and links those to the ages of man –​‘youth, the prime of life, and old age’: The young, as to character, are ready to desire and to carry out what they desire. Of the bodily desires they chiefly obey those of sensual pleasure and these they are unable to control. […] They are passionate, hot-​tempered, and carried away by impulse, and unable to control their passion. […] And they are more courageous, for they are full of passion and hope, and the former of these prevents them fearing, while the latter inspires them with confidence, for no one fears when angry, and hope of some advantage inspires confidence. (12.3–​11)36

3 5 The Arden editors here notice an allusion to nautical imagery and to Petrarch (see 262n279–​80). 36 Wright seems to follow Aristotle when he describes ‘what sort of persons be most passionate’: ‘young men generally are arrogant, prowde, prodigall, incontinent, given to all sortes of pleasure’ (29).

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When Tarquin is taking on the ‘part of youth’, he emphasizes that he is following his desire, his will.37 He leaves aside the fear that he felt earlier and replaces it with his passion. Tarquin thus bases his actions on a ‘part’ he is playing, and he is using this theatrical metaphor throughout this stanza, as he also beats whatever is virtuous from the ‘stage’ of his soul. The attitudes of ‘Sad pause and deep regard’, he says, belong to old age. Following Aristotle, Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (in Book 4) takes up this notion when Bembo describes how the young lover follows his senses only (see 312), but the wiser and older courtier is guided by his reason, which makes him happier in love than the young (see 315). Tarquin, however, does not want to be wise and ‘sage’ –​his ‘heart shall never countermand [his] eye’, which means that he is steered by his eye, his sensuality, rather than his heart, i.e. by his reason or conscience.38 When he says next: ‘Desire my pilot is’, this not only is parallel to the ‘Affection is my captain’: it also disambiguates the earlier statement that could refer to love as well as to desire. As ‘desire’ is his pilot as much as ‘affection’ is his captain, Tarquin himself exposes his earlier (self-​)deception when he was speaking of love. But in this line he also refers to the stage and states that, in this ‘universal theatre’, the stage that is our life –​or our life that is taking place on a stage, the theatre of the world –​he does not want the part of the old and wise character: his ‘part is youth’.39 He is playing a role in the theatre that is this world, and he openly says so. His acknowledgement of his playing a part is embedded within a whole range of theatrical allusions and references (see also Dubrow, Captive Victors 90). Prince glosses this line40 by referring to Malone and Steevens; Malone’s annotation reads: ‘The poet seems to have had the conflicts between the Devil and the Vice of the old moralities, in his thoughts. In these, the Vice was always victorious, and

37 Lucrece later refers to the contrast between old age and youth in a far more ambivalent manner, when she thinks of their respective attitudes to wealth: ‘Their father was too weak and they too strong’ (865). See also the Arden edition for further contexts (309n862–​64) On the contrast of age and youth see also part 12 of The Passionate Pilgrim: ‘Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; /​Youth is wild, and age is tame’ (12.7–​8). The girl here prefers youth, but the characterization also illustrates typical notions usually associated with these different stages in life. 38 The heart finds itself in competition with the eye, and it is here seen as the seat of intellect and reason (see Arden ed. 261n276). Batman vppon Bartholome has ‘the soule, abiding in the middle of the heart’ (12v.). That Shakespeare seems to situate the soul sometimes in the heart, sometimes in the mind, is not unusual: not only was the seat of the soul a highly debated matter at the time, but poets referred to this by means of a certain poetic license. 39 Soellner sees a reference to Horace: ‘the poet, speaking as an old roué, orders himself to make place of youth’ (393). The passage in Horace is Epistles 2.2.215–​16 as well as Epode 13.3–​5: ‘rapiamus, amici /​occasionem de die, dumque virent genua /​Et decet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus’ (‘Let us snatch our opportunity from the day, my friends, and while our limbs are strong and the time is fitting, let seriousness be banished form the clouded brow!’ 397). This latter passage is particularly intriguing in the context of Lucrece as occasion and opportunity are here addressed, which is also the case in Lucrece’s lamentations (she calls on Time, Opportunity, and Eternity). What is more, ‘rapiamus’ is mentioned, which is at the root of English ‘rape’ but used in a different sense here (to grasp). The Horatian passages do however not explain the strong theatrical connotations of Lucrece in this instance. 40 While neither the Cambridge nor the Oxford edition provide a note, the latest Arden comments: ‘the theatrical imagery here refers in general to the moral interludes of the 16th century’ (262n278).

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drove the Devil roaring off the stage’ (Supplement 489n). Malone apparently refers to Vice as the prankster-​servant of the devil, who gets the better of him.41 In the case of Tarquin, the Devil does not even make his appearance: his major vice, lust, drives him towards his downfall.42 Malone goes on to explain the line and refers to Steevens’s note that ‘[p]‌robably the poet was thinking on that particular interlude intitled Lusty Juventus’ (489n), a play by Wever that ‘belongs to the reign of Edward VI’ (Wilson 39; ca. 1547–​53, see Bevington 21); the protagonist is told that ‘[i]n youth is pleasure’ (Wilson 39), which makes the connection to this passage in Lucrece plausible but not essential. The allusion might, however, likewise have been to the anonymous The Interlude of Youth (1513–​29) which Bevington lists among ‘popular plays of the late fifteenth century and Henrician period’ (66). Belsey sees yet another possible reference: The Interlude of Youth, which probably dates back to the early years of the sixteenth century, shows its flamboyant protagonist choosing to keep company with Riot, Pride, and Lady Lechery, while Humility and Charity do their best to reclaim him for Christian values. During most of the play they fail. Impervious to their moral counsel, which he does not seem to understand, Youth, like the equally arrogant and pitiless Tarquin, struts and threatens with his dagger, until, with the help of his companions, he puts Charity in the stocks […] As unwise and as wayward as Tarquin, the young man claims entitlement to his own will. (103–​4)

In both interludes that critics have referred to, however, nothing really takes place within a character, within his soul, and the forces of the soul, vices and virtues, are externalized and appear on the stage proper.43 What is significant here is the fact that Tarquin’s ‘part is youth, and beats these [pause and regard] from the stage’: as whatever is virtuous –​pause and regard that would give reason the opportunity to take over –​as well as his fear only made their appearance in his internal debate, on the stage of his soul, we can conclude that all forces, good and bad, at some point showed up on the stage of his soul, from which he now beats them.

4 1 Cf. the definition of Vice: ‘the devil’s disciple […] irredeemable’ (Wilson 63). 42 Belsey notes: ‘if Tarquin were portrayed with more sympathy, if, in other words, we saw more of the action from his point of view [and, one should add, if his deeds were not instigated by himself alone], he himself might qualify as a tragic hero. But the depiction of Tarquin also looks back to the moral plays, whose protagonists tend to seem altogether more obtuse, more blindly bent on the pursuit of their own immediate pleasures in the face of the arguments presented by personified abstractions representing virtue’ (‘The Rape of Lucrece’ 103). 43 The ‘soul’ is mentioned in both plays, but only rarely: in Lusty Juventus, Youth is told early in the play that he ‘must love [God] with all [his] soul and mind’ (268), and that ‘he that followeth his own lusts and imagination, /​Keepeth the ready path to everlast damnation’ (302–​3). In Interlude, Youth is reformed at the end of the play, and he learns that, in the wake of the fall of man and original sin, ‘all the souls […] /​Were in the bondage of the devil of hell’ (719–​20) but that they were redeemed by the blood of Jesus who ‘our souls did save’ (726). This makes Youth with to save his soul (see 729), and he is literally redressed, i.e. he is given ‘a new array’ (767; see below on ‘redress’ in Magnificence).

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The stage of Tarquin’s soul presents images to him,44 while he is debating in his soul what course to take: Within his thought her heavenly image sits, And in the self-​same seat sits Collatine. That eye which looks on her confounds his wits, That eye which him beholds, as more divine, Unto a view so false will no incline,   But with a pure appeal seeks to the heart,   Which once corrupted takes the worser part; And therein heartens up his servile powers, Who, flattered by their leader’s jocund show, Stuff up his lust, as minutes fill up hours; […]   By reprobate desire thus madly led,   The Roman lord marcheth to Lucrece’ bed. (288–​301)

What he is presented with by his soul’s imaginary sight, ‘within his thought’, is Lucrece, and with her Collatine, so he actually sees them with his inner eye, sitting in the ‘self-​same seat’. The references to ‘eye’ that follow are both ambiguous: the first may refer either to Tarquin, whose wits are confounded because he beholds Lucrece (see 165); or it may be Collatine’s, who lovingly and admiringly looks unto his wife, which confounds Tarquin because he realizes all the more that Lucrece actually belongs to another and that he can never make her his. (As all this takes part within Tarquin’s imagination, the first reading is more unlikely:  Tarquin would then behold his own eye beholding Lucrece.) The second ‘eye’ is the one that ‘him beholds’, and, again, this is ambiguous. The pronoun may either refer to Collatine or to Tarquin. The parenthesis ‘as more divine’ may equally refer to ‘him beholds’ –​which makes Collatine more divine in the eye of Lucrece and therefore does not incline to Tarquin’s false view –​or to the ‘eye’ that will not incline unto so mean an object.45 The action that he witnesses ‘within his thought’ ‘with a pure appeal seeks to the heart’. The Arden edition glosses this, with reference to the Oxford edition, as ‘making a “legal appeal to the heart based purely on the nature of the case” ’ (263n). But the word ‘appeal’ carries further connotations that come into play here when 44 As the ‘soul’s imaginary sight’ in Sonnet 27; see Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Shakespeare und die Bilder der Vorstellung’. 45 The Arden editors note that ‘the second eye is a divine one, in which case the refusal to incline or look favourable on or be favourably disposed towards Tarquin is a sign that the divine eye will not yield to Tarquin’s false outward show’ (263n290–​2). This does not make sense grammatically, for ‘as’ in ‘as more divine’ requires a referent that has been mentioned. Likewise, the note on 291, ‘as more divine’ –​‘as if paying more respect to religion’ (263n) is beside the point. Religion does not figure in this context; rather, Collatine resembles the earthly saint Lucrece in his being beholden by her ‘as more divine’.

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considering the concluding line of this stanza as well. ‘Appeal’ is indeed mostly used in a legal sense (OED, ‘appeal, n.’ 4.a.); the word can, however, also refer to the accusation ‘of a heinous crime whereby the accuser has received personal injury or wrong, for which he demands reparation’ (OED, ‘appeal, v.’ I.1.c.46), which would imply a foreshadowing or rather an anticipation on Lucrece’s behalf of what will happen to her –​and as all this is taking place within Tarquin’s imagination, he may well imagine her to anticipate his deed. Another implied meaning is ‘to call upon a recognized authority to vindicate one’s right or decide in one’s favour in a dispute’ (II.6.). The authority would in this case be the heart of Tarquin, the seat of his emotions and also the seat of his lust,47 that then takes the worser part –​ reminiscent of the ‘worser sense’ (249) that already showed his corruption –​and then decides over the ensuing action, which is emphasized by means of the play on heart and ‘heartens’. The vision of Lucrece thus does not put him in a milder or more merciful mood but actually heartens ‘his servile powers’. In Tarquin’s mind the ‘heavenly show’ is, through his corrupted heart, transformed into a ‘jocund show’. This image has theatrical overtones and suggests that the vision resembles a play staged within his mind.48 His ‘lust’ is consequently ‘stuff[ed] up’ (297), and he is ‘madly led’ (another allusion to his ‘lack of wit’ but also to his being beyond reason) to Lucrece’s bed by his ‘desire’ (300). What happens to him physically can be illustrated by (or compared to) what is described by Laurentius in his second discourse: Loue therefore hauing abused the eyes, as the proper spyes and plotters of the mind, maketh a way for it selfe smoothly to glaunce along through the conducting guides, and passing […] through the veines unto the liver, doth suddenly imprint a burning desire to obtaine the thing, which is or seemeth worthie of the beloved, setteth concupiscence on fire, beginneth by this desire all the strife and contention: but fearing her selfe too weake to incounter with reason, the principal part of the minde, she posteth in haste to the heart, to surprise and winne the same: whereof when she is once sure, as of the strongest hold, she afterward assaileth and setteth upon reason. (2.10.118)

Laurentius here describes what he calls ‘outragious love’.49 Tarquin, when seeing Lucrece, literally burns with desire (‘love’s fire’ 355); he first perceives her with his eyes, but then his whole body is affected (he tries to ‘quench the coal which in his liver glows’ 47),50 and he asks his heart not to ‘countermand’ his eye. In Laurentius, 46 Although this meaning is not recorded for the noun ‘appeal’, the fact that it was well-​established in the sixteenth century accounts for the possibility that Shakespeare might have used it in this sense. 47 See ‘his drumming heart’ that ‘cheers up his burning eye’ (435) when he approaches Lucrece’s chamber. He also said earlier that he would not have his eye countermanded by his heart (276). 48 Cousins reads this passage as an instance of ‘self-​division’ (84). Maus notes: ‘Tarquin’s prosopopeia, his personification of fears and desires and of parts of the body as independent entities, is one indication of his moral disarray’ (‘Language and Violence’ 302). 49 See OED, ‘outrageous, adj. and adv.’:  2.a. ‘Excessive or unrestrained in action; violent, furious; †excessively bold or fierce (obs.). Now rare.’ 50 The liver, a principal part in the theory of humours, is mentioned by both Shakespeare and Laurentius in the context of passion. In Lucrece, however, it remains unclear whether Tarquin

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the passion –​he also, like Tarquin, calls it ‘love’ –​begins with the eye and makes its way through the whole body; it then is given the choice between an encounter with reason or with the heart, to decide in favour of the latter, and, subsequently, takes hold over reason from there. While Laurentius merely describes the physiological effect or rather path that love takes in the body, in Tarquin’s case –​although his passion follows a similar route –​desire and fear that fight each other, and the rational part that argues or steps in at some point (namely in 183)  is overcome by his ‘worser part’ that is situated within his ‘corrupted’ heart. From that moment on, Tarquin is no longer approachable by reason but follows his heart alone; this heart, however, is taken over by lust, which means that he acts in accordance with his will only. The narrator thus leaves the mere physiological level of description and resorts to a psychological explication of Tarquin’s behaviour. We witness how his desire takes control over his heart, how fear and desire fight on the stage of his soul, and how reason is eventually overcome; and we are presented with complex psychological workings of which traditional elements both of physiology (humoural theory) and psychomachia form a part but which are transformed into a representation of Tarquin’s psyche.51 The representation of this internal war is based on theatrical imagery:  fear and desire, lust and hope, vices and virtues enter the stage of Tarquin’s soul, they fight each other, compete with each other, and eventually, vice wins and beats virtue from the stage.52 Tarquin’s struggle externalized: Lucrece as the voice of reason Tarquin is very much aware of the fight that is going on inwardly. He even tells Lucrece, while standing by her bed before he rapes her, ‘I have debated even in my soul, /​What wrong, what shame, what sorrow I shall breed’ (498–​9). His cognitive understanding of the deed he is about to commit and its possible consequences are emphasized here: ‘I see […] /​I know […] /​I think’ (491–​3; see also 502–​4). But he fails to act upon this understanding and again follows his desire, his will, rather than his reason: ‘But nothing can affection’s course control, /​Or stop the headlong fury of his speed’ (500–​1).53 At the same time, he is fooling himself by using the ambiguous word ‘affection’ instead of ‘desire’ to describe his emotional state. wants to quench the coal in his liver by satiating his lust or by overcoming it through reason. On the physiological implications of Tarquin’s desire based on humoral theory see Belling 115. 51 This war that takes place within his soul is yet another means to show the difference in similarity with Lucrece: at the beginning of the poem, the ‘silent war of lilies and of roses’ (71) in her face was described, and it is a war similar to that which takes place in Tarquin’s soul, the difference, however, lying in the fact that, in her case, it is beauty and virtue fighting a war, while in his, it is virtue and vice, reason and appetite. 52 Troilus undergoes quite a similar experience while he is watching Cressida in the enemy’s camp: ‘Within my soul there doth conduce a fight’ (5.2.154); see Walker (Cambridge Shakespeare 217n147). 53 Both the Arden editors as well as Burrow link the ‘headlong fury’ of affection’s ‘speed’ to a horse, probably referring to Plato’s Phaedrus and the tradition of comparing affection to a horse (see Burrow ed. 270n500). But the connection is not a necessary one, especially so as Tarquin is compared to all kinds of beasts of prey in what follows (see, e.g., ‘cat’ 554, ‘wolf ’ 677). The Phaedrus

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While he is bordering on some (self-​)knowledge but successfully ignores this voice of reason, Lucrece is now able to recognize his true self, although she was deceived by him earlier. In what follows she takes over the part of reason and argues against his will: the debate that took place within his soul earlier is now partly externalized. Tarquin’s self-​division is no longer taking place within his soul alone; as the will takes precedence within Tarquin, reason is subdued within him but appears outside of him through Lucrece. He no longer debates matters within his soul now that he has come to a decision; but Lucrece becomes the soul’s substitute and continues the debate externally. Lucrece’s speech is introduced by the narrator, who summarizes that she begins by pleading with Tarquin and refers to virtues and honourable behaviour (see 568–​73), concluding with an appeal to ‘stoop to honour, not to foul desire’ (574). This dichotomy and her references to honour and desire (i.e. his will) structure her speech, and she appeals to Tarquin’s true self (see 582–​4) as well as his power in a flattering manner; she also warns him of the consequences of his deed at the same time. The notion of honour is linked to his position as future king and governor of Rome, who should be capable of governing himself:  ‘Thou art not what thou seem’st, and if the same, /​Thou seem’st not what thou art, a god, a king; /​For kings like gods should govern everything’ (600–​2).54 While she points to the dissimilarity between his being and his seeming, she emphasizes this duality even more when she says: ‘In Tarquin’s likeness I did entertain thee. Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame? To all the host of heaven I complain me. Thou wrong’st his honour, wound’st his princely name.’ (596–​9)

Lucrece differentiates between the ‘true’ Tarquin and the deceiver that is now threatening her with rape by making a distinction between ‘him’ and ‘thou’. While she is well-​aware of the fact that he is one and the same, she thus aims to appeal to his honour and give him the possibility to retract. She takes up this rhetorical strategy again later, when she says: ‘To thee, to thee, my heaved-​up hands appeal, Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier. I sue for exiled majesty’s repeal; Let him return, and flatt’ring thoughts retire. provides a context in another respect:  when Tarquin rapes Lucrece, they are described in the following terms: ‘The wolf hath seized his prey, the poor lamb cries’ (577); Lucrece is also later called a ‘lamb’ (737), while he is compared to a ‘thievish dog’ (736); and in 878, the wolf-​lamb imagery is repeated. Socrates says about the lover:  ‘the fondness of the lover is not a matter of goodwill, but of appetite which he wishes to satisfy: Just as the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover adores his beloved’ (241c-​d). The imagery of wolf and lamb in Lucrece also goes back to Ovid, Fasti II.800. 54 His self-​division is here expressed by means of a chiasmus: he is not what he seems or he seems not what he is, and in any case, seeming and being are contradictory.

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His true respect will prison false desire,   And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,   That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine.’ (638–​44)

In this instance, Lucrece makes a difference between ‘thee’, i.e. the ‘true’ Tarquin, and his lust, thus referring to his divided self. This distinction goes along with one between ‘true respect’ and ‘false desire’. In Lucrece’s view, ‘majesty’ is exiled, and she asks his return; moreover, she finds that he is blinded by his lust, ‘the dim mist’, and has to be made to see truly again. While she relies on an ethical notion, his honour, he fully depends on his ‘affection’. Lucrece’s appeal to ‘majesty’ also includes the return of reason, the governor of Tarquin, who would also make ‘flatt’ring thoughts retire’, i.e. those thoughts that, by his lust, have turned him to build up any hopes towards Lucrece (see Arden ed. 292n641). The concept of Tarquin’s ‘majesty’ is a motif that governs Lucrece’s appeal to him. She warns him of the consequences that might ensue his behaviour: ‘Thou art,’ quoth she, ‘a sea, a sovereign king, And lo, there falls into thy boundless flood Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning, Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood. If all these petty ills shall change thy good,   Thy sea within a puddle’s womb is hearsed,   And not the puddle in thy sea dispersed. So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave; Thou nobly based, they basely dignified; Thou their fail life, and they thy fouler grave;’ (652–​61)

She metaphorically compares him to the sea –​referring to his preceding statement that he could not resist the ‘uncontrolled tide’ of his passion (645).55 Into this sea flow his passions, lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning, that will stain it, a notion that is relevant later with regard to her own blood and soul. His passions are the ‘petty streams’ (649) that fill his sea; but because the tide that uncontrolledly flows forth consists of nothing but his passions, the sea will finally be ‘hearsed’ in a ‘puddle’s womb’,56 which means that the greater part will be entombed in the smaller container. A  puddle has ‘strong associations with dirt and filth’ (Arden ed. 293n).57 Tarquin’s sea will be stained, and this puddle will finally govern the sea, the smaller and lesser part the greater; were the sea to govern and ‘hearse’ 55 This is very similar to the description of the soul and its passions by Wright: ‘Or we may compare the Soule without Passions, to a calme Sea, with sweete, pleasant, and crispling streames; but the Passionate, to the raging Gulfe, swelling with waves, surging by tempests, minacing the stony rockes, and endevouring to overthrowe Mountaines’ (2.2: 59). 56 The image of the womb as a place of enclosure and a hearse is reminiscent of John Donne, e.g. his sermon Deaths Duell. 57 See also Marlowe’s Edward II: ‘And there in mire and puddle have I stood /​This ten days’ space’ (5.5.59–​60). While in Edward II, his standing in the ‘mire and puddle’ in an outward action to shame him, in Lucrece, the imagery is used to express his inward condition: the puddle is his inside, and it will swallow the sea.

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the puddle, the passions would lose their force. Lucrece goes on to describe this corruption of his soul by again using the image of a king and his servants in a twofold way: Tarquin is the future king, and reason should be the king of the soul, governing all the passions and the will; but Tarquin subordinates the rational part of his soul to the passions and thus allows these slaves to govern him. The order of reason being sovereign over the will is overturned, and reason actually becomes a slave unto passion: ‘The passions are very likely to be not good servants, but intestine enemies always ready to rise and reverse the normal order of the soul. When they do so, they are diseases of the soul’ (Babb 19).58 Lucrece uses this imagery of sea and puddle as well as slave and king in order to show that Tarquin with his behaviour reverses the natural order and does something that is unnatural (see also 664–​5), namely rape the wife of a friend and act against the rules of hospitality (see 575). But Tarquin will ‘not hear’ her (667) –​Lucrece’s final appeal to his ‘thoughts’ (666) makes him stop her speak and threaten to ‘yield to [his] love’ (668). Again, he refers to love instead of lust, he will not listen to her as he would not listen to the voice of reason within himself earlier. He transfers all responsibility of what is going to happen unto her: if she refuses to ‘abide’ his will (486), he will kill her and put her body into bed with ‘some rascal groom’ (671) in order to shame her. This attitude of not accounting himself responsible for the deed he is about to commit shows that, indeed, he has not heard her. When she first awoke, he told her: ‘Thy beauty hath ensnared thee to this night, Where thou with patience must my will abide, My will that marks thee for my earth’s delight, Which I to conquer sought with all my might.   But as reproof and reason beat it dead,   By thy bright beauty was it newly bred. […] But Will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends; Only he hath an eye to gaze on Beauty, And dotes on what he looks, ‘gainst law or duty.’ (485–​97)

He makes Lucrece, or, rather, her beauty, accountable and also charges her of being guilty of her own fate, which again is illustrative of his ‘want of wit’. He also admits that ‘reproof and reason’ had beaten his will dead –​until it was ‘newly bred’ by her beauty. But he then points out that now ‘will is deaf ’, i.e. he will not listen to what he is being told but act only upon what he sees, which also refers to his being guided by his appetites that are triggered by sight. Yet this is a lie. When Tarquin arrives in Lucrece’s bedroom, she is fast asleep, and he ‘gazeth on her yet unstained bed, /​The curtains being close’ (366–​7; emphasis mine), which means that he cannot actually see her. He walks about the room, ‘[r]‌olling his greedy eyeballs in his head. /​By their high treason is his heart misled’ 58 Babb refers to Burton’s Anatomy for the image of man as slave to his lust and appetite (see 19n77).

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(368–​9). When he first saw Lucrece, it was his ‘traitor eye’ (73) that beheld her. The fact that, even after drawing the curtains, he still cannot see her, as ‘his eyes begun /​To wink, being blinded with a greater light’ (374–​5), ‘blind they are and keep themselves enclosed’ (378), stresses Tarquin’s corrupted will and his ‘madness’ (he is rolling his eyes as in a frenzy). His visual perception is not tainted, but his will is: Lucrece’s outer beauty does not lead to evil behaviour –​it is the will, his thoughts that do so (which is why, later, Lucrece will appeal to his thoughts; see 666). Will has taken over the government of Tarquin’s self, and, being deaf, he will not be approachable by what Lucrece is telling him. Lucrece’s reasoning is therefore in vain, at least with regard to Tarquin, but it serves to show two things: for one, it illustrates her chastity and that she is trying to persuade him into abstaining from his deed; moreover, it presents their connectedness in that she has become his externalised voice of reason and reminds him of his duties towards himself and the state rather than that she pleads for herself. This connectedness through opposition has been topical from the beginning: Lucrece is chaste, while Tarquin is lust-​breathed; she is a saint, he a devil. But now this connection is of a slightly different nature, as they are each representative of an inner force: he of will, she of reason. It is almost as if Tarquin’s soul has been divided, and the part containing reason has fully gone over to Lucrece. But this self-​division goes even further after the rape: he seems to have lost his soul (and thus his self) fully, while in Lucrece a strong division between body and soul takes place, the former being polluted, the latter still clear and pure. Tarquin’s ruined self: after the rape After the rape, Tarquin’s soul is lost because it was overcome by the will and body, by his appetites. The notion of loss is expressed immediately after the rape has taken place, and it affects both parties: But she hath lost a dearer thing than life, And he hath won that he would lose again. This forced league doth force a further strife; This momentary joy breeds months of pain; This hot desire converts to cold disdain:   Pure Chastity is rifled of her store,   And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before. (687–​93)

At the end of this stanza, Lucrece and Tarquin are portrayed in terms of allegories, Chastity and Lust, and both have lost through the rape: Chastity is ‘rifled to her store’, which means that her possessions have been taken away and that chastity itself has been plundered (Arden ed. 296n); and Lust, the thief, paradoxically is ‘poorer than before’, which means that he has not actually gained anything through his crime but lost, as the object of his longing is such an object no more, and his desire has turned into ‘disdain’. What Tarquin goes through here resembles very much what is described by the speaker in Sonnet 129: ‘Th’ expense of spirit

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in a waste of shame /​Is lust in action’: ‘Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight’ (129.1–​2, 5; see also Burrow ed. 281n; and Lever, ‘Narrative Poems’ 125). The act was not worth the result, and this concept is brought forth for the remainder of the poem, which shows that the dispensation of his ‘good thoughts’ (248) does not really work in the long run: what follows Tarquin’s ‘hot desire’ is ‘cold disdain’. The narrator here openly addresses the reader –​‘Look’ (694) –​when he describes Tarquin and compares him again to beasts, ‘the full-​fed hound or gorged hawk’ (694). Like these animals who, when overfed, no longer ‘delight’ in their prey (697), ‘[s]‌o surfeit-​taking Tarquin fares this night’ (698). By Tarquin’s living on his will, his will has devoured itself, an image that is reminiscent of his ‘still slaughtered lust’ (188; see also Arden 296n700). The narrator then continues to elaborate on this image of self-​consumption by dwelling on Desire and Lust. Both appear as allegorical figures (see e.g. capital letters; see above, e.g. 271–​80) on the stage of ‘still imagination’ (702): Drunken Desire must vomit his receipt Ere he can see his own abomination. While Lust is in his pride, no exclamation   Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire,   Till like a jade Self-​will himself doth tire. And then with lank and lean discoloured cheek, With heavy eye, knit brow and strenghtless pace, Feeble Desire, all recreant, poor and meek, Like to a bankrupt beggar wails his case. The flesh being proud, Desire doth fight with Grace,   For there it revels, and when that decays,   The guilty rebel for remission prays. (703–​14)

The inner forces of his soul, Desire and Lust, are much changed. The narratorial comment takes up the idea of self-​consumption again in his description of ‘Drunken Desire’ that vomits to see ‘his own abomination’, referring to the disdain Tarquin is feeling after the rape. Lust ‘in his pride’ would not listen (‘no exclamation’) but is now tired by himself. This rather descriptive mode is then replaced by strong imagery when ‘Feeble Desire’ is portrayed in more detail, emaciated and likened to a ‘bankrupt beggar’. While earlier fighting with ‘Grace’, Desire now prays ‘for remission’, being weak and ‘strengthless’, the notion of defect linking it strongly with Tarquin himself. What is being depicted resembles the plot of a morality play, a reference that is highlighted by the notion of ‘revels’ (713) and the continuation of the allegorical mode of psychomachia. The narrator dwells on this notion of self-​consumption –​of ‘momentary joy’ that is followed by ‘months of pain’ (690) in more general terms to then return to Tarquin himself: the description of how parts of his soul (desire, lust) have been ruined is now completed by a portrayal of the ruin of his soul as a whole:59 59 The concept of the ruins of the soul resulting from morally wrong behaviour is brought forth by the Priest in Fulke Greville’s Mustapha (1609), when he speaks to the eponymous hero: ‘If thou haue felt the selfe-​accusing Warre, /​Where knowledge is the endlesse hell of thought, /​The ruines of

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So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome, Who this accomplishment so hotly chased; For now against himself he sounds this doom, That through the length of times he stands disgraced. Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defaced,   To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares,   To ask the spotted princess how she fares. She says her subjects with foul insurrection Have battered down her consecrated wall, And by their mortal fault brought in subjection Her immortality, and made her thrall To living death and pain perpetual;   Which in her prescience she controlled still,   But her foresight could not forestall their will. (715–​28)

The first few lines of these stanzas sound like a summary of Tarquin’s behaviour and its effect on his reputation. He ‘hotly chased’ the ‘accomplishment’, which euphemistically expresses his rape of Lucrece, to then sound his doom of being ‘disgraced’.60 While earlier he was mainly defined by defect with regard to his virtues –​his lack of wit and trustlessness –​he is now portrayed mainly through the adjective ‘faultful’ that summarizes his fullness in vice and fault.61 What Lucrece predicted in her appeal to him has already come true, and the loss of his reputation will stay on forever, ‘through the length of times’. But not only her predictions have come true; what he threatened her with earlier now comes true for him. This reversal or transference is made obvious through repetition of ‘sound’ and ‘doom’ in the comment ‘against himself he sounds his doom’: When he first spoke to Lucrece, this was described as: ‘First, like a trumpet does his tongue begin /​To sound a parley to his heartless foe’ (470–​1; emphasis mine), and he then spoke of her ‘shameful doom’ (672) should she refuse him (in which case he would have her killed and put into bed with a slave). The repetition of these words is further emphasized through the stress on ‘against himself ’, which underlines his responsibility for the outcome of his deed –​but also that all he did or threatened Lucrece with is now directed against himself. The narrator then moves from this outward effect to that on Tarquin’s soul whose ‘fair temple is defaced’. While in the preceding stanza, the weakness of forces or parts of his soul was shown, e.g. when ‘Feeble Desire’ was described, the weakness of his soul as such now comes into focus and in terms that link her even more strongly with Lucrece than before. This begins with the ambiguity of the term ‘the

my Soule there figured are, /​For where despaire the Conscience doth feare /​My wounds bleed out the Horror which they beare’ (4.4.60–​4). See Mahoney on Greville and the ‘Idea of Mutability and Decay’. 60 See Desire’s earlier fight with Grace (712) and his being ‘graceless’ (246). 61 See OED, ‘faultful, adj.’: ‘Faulty, culpable. 1591 Troublesome Raigne Iohn i. sig. G2v, Such Meteors were the Ensignes of his wrath That hastned to destroy the faultfull Towne. 1594 Shakespeare Lucrece sig. F2, So fares it with this fault-​full Lord of Rome.’

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spotted princess’ (720): ‘spotted’ contains a pun, in the sense of a princess seen (which might be read as a reference back to Tarquin’s emphasis on his eyes and on the effect that seeing Lucrece had on him) and a princess stained.62 The Arden editors comment: ‘It is unusual that he has a princess in his temple rather than, say, a priestess’ (298n721) but this is exactly the point:  Shakespeare would not choose ‘priestess’ but the referential ambiguity of ‘princess’ that may refer both to Lucrece, the princess, and to Tarquin’s soul. The link between these two is further strengthened in what follows but it is also based on the notion of being spotted, stained, which becomes even more obvious in the text that follows (see esp. 734).63 Moreover, the terms in which Tarquin’s soul is described are also closely linked to Lucrece through the semantic field of usurping a town or a fort; when he is talking to her in her room, he calls her a ‘never-​conquered fort’ (482). He sees himself as a usurper who uses military means in order to attack and conquer her, the ‘sweet city’. After the rape, Tarquin’s soul is described as a ‘fair temple […] defaced’, i.e. the soul is depicted as a building, and her ‘troops of cares’ ask her ‘how she fares’.64 The notion of ‘defacement’65 implies that Tarquin’s bodily deed has damaged his soul because he followed his will –​as it turns out later that in Lucrece’s case her body has been damaged and stained (‘defaced’ even), but her soul stays intact as her will was not involved in what happened. Body and soul are presented in a relation of contrast; at the same time they are intricately connected with and mutually influence each other. In the following stanza the soul actually speaks, though only indirectly, about her state: she describes how her ‘consecrated walls’ were ‘battered down’ by her subjects, i.e. by her passions (Burrow ed. 283n722),66 which shows that her destruction comes from within –​Tarquin has ‘himself himself ’ destroyed. Her temple, i.e. the soul herself, is now nothing but a ruin, and she has lost her 62 The image of the soul that is ‘spotted’ because of sinful behaviour can be found in Hamlet when Gertrude says in the closet scene: ‘Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul, /​And there I see such black and grained spots /​As will not leave their tinct’ (3.4.89–​91); and Richard II: ‘Terrible hell /​ Make war upon their spotted souls for this!’ (3.2.133–​4). On the notion of a stain resulting from adultery, see also Cymbeline 2.4.139–​40. 63 Because of the female pronoun that traditionally refers to the (female) soul/​anima, Kramer/​ Kaminsky read lines 722–​8 as a statement about Lucrece (145), not as one about Tarquin’s soul. The reference is, however, ambiguous. Camino notes: ‘The confusion between Tarquin’s soul and Lucrece’s body after the rape takes place raises doubts as to who is the “she” […] It is actually Tarquin’s soul which speaks his own assault in these lines’ (Raping Lucrece 45); and Burrow: ‘the pronoun matters acutely. Tarquin becomes a rebel against himself, who destroys his own soul’s private and consecrated places, and his invasive male pride forces on him a feminine sense of violation’ (57). See also C. S. Lewis: ‘ “The spotted princess” (Tarquin’s soul) is admirable: still a princess, unable to abdicate, and there’s the tragedy’ (English Literature 501). 64 These ‘troops of cares’ echo the earlier ‘every one to rest themselves betake /​Save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds that wake’ (125–​6), even more so as Tarquin is afterwards called a thievish dog’ (736). 65 See OED, ‘deface, v.’: 1.a. trans. ‘To mar the face, features, or appearance of; to spoil or ruin the figure, form, or beauty of; to disfigure.’ The damage that Tarquin has done to his honour and reputation is also implied in the word:  †4. ‘To destroy the reputation or credit of; to discredit, defame. Obs.’ 66 Lucrece will later speak of her soul in very similar terms (see 1170–​6), the difference being that her destruction came from without, while Tarquin’s came from within, i.e. was caused by himself.

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immortality through the ‘mortal fault’. This loss of immortality means that she is dead already and has nothing to look forward to, all that awaits her is ‘pain perpetual’. Tarquin, by his deed, has foregone eternal life and brought ruin upon his soul, his true self (see also Hynes 452–​3). The concluding couplet of this stanza points out that the soul (i.e. her rational part) had actually anticipated the events and her own destruction but could not do anything about it as her subjects went out of control. Tarquin has lost everything, and he is a ‘captive victor that hath lost in gain’ (730).67 The paradox expresses again his ‘want of wit’:  he thought that, by conquering Lucrece, he would gain, but what follows is loss, namely of that which should have been most precious to him, his soul. He is wounded forever (731) and cannot be healed. But it is here that the victim of his deed comes into focus again: Leaving his spoil perplexed in greater pain.   She bears the load of lust he left behind,   And he the burden of a guilty mind. (733–​5)

The word ‘spoil’ refers back to the imagery of usurpation, and is further alluded to by ‘load’ and ‘burden’. These refer, for one, to Tarquin, who has a guilty mind (which may very well stand for his soul); the other party involved, ‘she’, ‘bears the load of lust he left behind’. Not only does the pronoun reference oscillate again between grammatical and biological gender, but here, as nowhere else, the ambiguity of ‘she’ cannot be resolved:  ‘she’ may refer both to the soul, who bears a load of lust in the sense of sin and being aware of the loss of immortality; and to Lucrece. The link to the soul is further established and strengthened through the reference to ‘pain’: the soul is subject to ‘pain perpetual’ (726), and may very well suffer still ‘greater pain’ than Tarquin. With regard to Lucrece also the meaning of ‘load of lust’ is ambiguous: it may refer to both a physical load of lust (Tarquin’s semen and her potential pregnancy) as well as to a psychological one in the sense of trauma. What follows is a constant line-​to-​line change between ‘He’ and ‘She’: this cross-​ wise anaphora over the course of eleven lines (736–​46) serves to show that an evil deed does not affect the instigator of evil alone but also involves consequences for the object of his desire (see also Lever, ‘Narrative Poems’ 123). While Tarquin is trapped in continuous self-​hatred (see 738) and suffers from a ‘guilty mind’, the effect of the rape on Lucrece is foremost physical:  ‘She like a wearied lamb lies panting there […] She, desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear’ (737; 739), which further underlines the contrast between Tarquin and Lucrece but also their connection, although this has now shifted. While, earlier, Tarquin was governed by his will in order to find physical pleasure, he now suffers from his guilt and the destruction of his soul; Lucrece, conversely, particularly feels the physical effects of the rape and immediately reacts with her body. Tarquin’s lust is now destroyed, 67 See also Palamon’s speech at the end of Two Noble Kinsmen: ‘That we should things desire which do cost us /​The loss of our desire’ (5.4.110–​11).

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and all that is left is his self-​hatred and ‘guilty fear’ (740); his lust has indeed self-​ slaughtered itself. But it has also destroyed Lucrece. One might even argue that, because Lucrece was chaste and he governed by lust, he felt that he needed to kill his lust by destroying her (‘Devours his will that lived by foul devouring’ 700). What he did not take into account is the fact that she, because of her chastity, is now also destroyed or, rather, must destroy herself in order to make his deed undone. By having given in to his will, desire, lust, i.e. his passions, these took precedence over reason –​and over Lucrece. Tarquin can only flee: he ‘flies’ (740), ‘runs’ (742), ‘thence departs’ (743), while Lucrece stays and is the focus for the remainder of the poem.68

68 The story of Tarquin is continued by Quarles in the poem Tarquin Banished: or, the Reward of Lust, published in 1655. He presents Tarquin’s turmoil; towards the ending of the poem, Tarquin finds that his ‘heart combin’d /​With my affections to corrupt my minde’, and he cries out to Lucrece: ‘thou didst finde /​A raped body, I a raped minde’ (10), which reads like a sequel to Shakespeare’s poem. Quarles ends with Tarquin being haunted by Philomel and falling in the wood, where he dies, pursued by her. Quarles’s poem was published in a combined edition with Shakespeare’s Lucrece.

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‘But with my body my poor soul’s pollution’: Lucrece, her body, and soul

The rape affects Tarquin’s soul, who is described in terms of a ‘spotted princess’ that has lost her immortality, as well as Lucrece’s body; the latter is left behind by Tarquin with ‘the load of lust’ (734). The effect on Lucrece is thus primarily physical: she lies ‘panting’, begins to tear ‘with her nails her flesh’ (737; 739).1 The contrast that is established here concerns both the antagonism between Tarquin and Lucrece, and an inner opposition with regard to Lucrece. She becomes divided between her body and her soul and eventually kills herself because she thinks that her soul cannot continue to live in the stained and dishonoured body. The soul is both an internal and external instance:  it is a place of action, for instance, in the context of debates; it even becomes a stage on which vices and virtues battle in the tradition of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, or on which characters but also personified vices and virtues appear before the mind’s eye. It is also an agent, for example, when it is personified. The soul in The Rape of Lucrece represents an inward state and can thus be related to the (internal) self-​division of the characters. Whenever the soul comes into play with regard to Tarquin, it is the site of an internal battle, a debate; after the rape, Lucrece follows a similar pattern: she begins to argue with(in) herself. On the level of narrative transmission, this kind of interiority is therefore signified in the fact that, when struggles take place and characters undergo moments or phases of self-​division, this takes place in the form of a soliloquy. By turning their inside out and speaking about their inner state in soliloquies, they make that which is most private public.2 The soul and what is going on within it –​thoughts, images, ruminations –​is thus transformed from a private space into a public one that is brought onto a stage (i.e. the stage of the poem). 1 See the notion of ‘traumatic memory as an experience that is encapsulated in the body’ (Assmann 21; see also Wald, Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia 97); and Starks-​Estes ch. 4 (115–​28). On ‘trauma’ in Lucrece, see below. 2 Lucrece eventually also erases the boundaries of public and private: by committing suicide after giving away the name of her ravisher, she makes it possible for Brutus to ‘publish’ what happened and thus bring about political change. Cheney for this very reason calls Brutus ‘a playwright of sorts, a rhetorician who knows how to show Lucrece to best advantage’ (‘Tarquin, Juliet, and Other Romei’ 116).

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Moreover, the soul is personified:  the most striking example of such an externalized representation of the soul is the ‘spotted princess’ into which Tarquin’s soul has turned after the rape. Both Tarquin and Lucrece lose the ‘treasure’ of their own soul: Tarquin by committing an awful crime, Lucrece by being robbed of her honour. This, however, entails a further level of character portrayal, namely that of Lucrece in relation to Tarquin:  she becomes the representation of Tarquin’s soul, and they enter into a chiastic link that is also based on and part of the outside–​inside relationship (see below; and Zirker, ‘Performative Iconicity’): while his soul is destroyed –​as is her body, his body stays intact –​as does Lucrece’s soul. What ensues is a drama of the soul that takes place on and in different stages. Tarquin’s siege of Lucrece: the female body and its usurpation After his long inner debate, Tarquin finally goes to Lucrece’s room and enters.3 There he is watching Lucrece, and ‘new ambition [is] bred’ (411) within him. This is mainly based on her physical features that are described along the lines of the (Petrarchan) beauty catalogue, including a whole series of similes (386–​ 420).4 But while he is looking at her outside with ‘his wilful’ eye (417), his ‘rage of lust’ is suddenly ‘qualified’ by the very act of ‘gazing’ (424) when Lucrece is described as a ‘sleeping soul’ (423). This may simply refer to her sleeping, expressed metonymically; but it is rather conspicuous that the detailed description of her outer appearance is followed by a reference to her soul. All the same, it is left open whether Tarquin’s lust is ‘qualified’ by her very beauty and his looking at her in ‘admiration’ (418), or whether it is indeed a glimpse at her soul that affects him thus as her purity shines forth through her outer appearance, ‘her azure veins, her alabaster skin, /​her coral lips, her snow-​white dimpled chin’ (419–​20). Outside and inside of Lucrece are connected and fused. Yet, it is the very act of looking at her that, a moment later, ‘unto a greater uproar tempts his veins’, and his eye finally directs his hand to ‘march [...] on to make his stand /​On her bare breast’ (438–​9).5 The whole enterprise is now transformed into military action, and Tarquin’s suit is compared to and described as an assault and a siege. This is linked to the narrator’s presentation of yet another example of physiomachia, i.e. an allegorical battle of body elements, but now between a man and a woman. Accordingly, Lucrece’s body is depicted in terms of battlements preparing for the attack that they expect from outside: ‘Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale /​Left their round turrets destitute and pale’ (440–​1). The veins are transformed into ‘ranks’, and they leave their ‘turrets’ to warn Lucrece: 3 His entering her room is an external equivalent of the body/​soul intrusion; and a case of tota allegoria in comparison to the explicit allegory that follows. 4 On Petrarchism in this poem see, e.g., Braden, ‘Shakespeare’s Petrarchism’; Greenstadt 54; and Starks-​Estes  119. 5 On this blend of admiration and idealization of beautiful characters in Shakespeare, see Beyer 101.

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They, must’ring to the quiet cabinet Where their dear governess and lady lies, Do tell her she is dreadfully beset, And fright her with confusion of their cries. She, much amazed, breaks ope her locked-​up eyes,   Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold,   Are by his flaming torch dimmed and controlled. (442–​8)

The veins, i.e. those that carry the blood,6 go to the quiet ‘cabinet’,7 where they fright their ‘governess’ with their cries. While, so far, they have been described in terms of visual perception (the ‘blue veins’), they are now transformed into an instance that can be heard as well –​again, the visual is translated into the auditive, and the perception of the action is transmitted.8 The pronoun ‘she’ in the lines that follow certainly refers to Lucrece, but it still seems to be ambiguous in its reference: why should their ‘dear governess and lady’ be lying in the heart when she is in fact lying in her chamber? A second point of reference of ‘she’ comes into play here, namely her soul –​we remember Tarquin’s ‘spotted princess’. This double reference, however, points (again) to the mutual interconnectedness of literal and metaphorical (or metonymic) elements which creates the fusion (as well as a chiastic reversal) of outside and inside: the rape of Lucrece is described in terms of an attack of the castle in which Lucrece dwells (she lies in a quiet cabinet), and she herself becomes identical with that innermost governor of herself who is endangered by the attack.9 The ‘cabinet’ thus refers to an actual room in the house where she lives as well as to the ‘inner rooms’ of Lucrece.10 Another chiastic reversal takes place here that results in (or is based on) a paradox (see Prince ed. 88n442): Lucrece lies in a chamber that is inside her; she is inside and outside simultaneously. The subdivision of the soul is topical. One part is the ‘virtue vegetable’ that gives life to humankind (see Bartholomaeus Anglicus ch. 8). The blood, as the element that carries the spirits within the body, is therefore immediately linked to the soul, while the seat of the vital forces within the soul is traditionally the heart (see Bartholomaeus Anglicus ch. 12; Laurentius 2.2: 83; Walkington 50v); from there the spirits wander to the brain and are able to communicate with the soul.11 6 See also the play on vessels that become ‘vassals’ (429). 7 See Burrow on how ‘[t]‌he rape is figured as a violation of domestic spaces’ (57). 8 Lucrece thus becomes a sort of meta-​text about the stage as the perception of the action is always addressed together with the action itself; in Shakespeare’s work this is elsewhere done by means of the play-​within-​the-​play (see, e.g., A Midsummer Night’s Dream). 9 Teresa of Avila refers to similar imagery in her Interior Castle where the soul is depicted as ‘both castle and nomadic inhabitant’ (Hughes 379), i.e. it is a room and the inhabitant of this room who explores it, a space and an agent; see also Cheney, ‘Tarquin, Juliet, and Other Romei’ 111). 10 The exact localities remain unclear; the ‘governess’ may either lodge in the heart or the head, and both readings are actually possible here: the blood goes to the heart (see the Platonic view below), but it may also go to the head, since ‘she [...] breaks up her lock’d up eyes’. 11 ‘[T]‌hough the spirits proceed from the heart, yet are they diffused through the whole body in the arteries and veines’ (Walkington 51r). See also Burton 1.1.2.5:  147–​8. Burton also refers to the debate whether the rational soul is ‘seated in the Braine, Heart, or Blood’ (1.1.2.9: 155), which goes probably back to Plato’s Timaeus 69a-​e. The Arden commentators do not seem to take this context into account (see 276n442).

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The ‘heart, which is the junction of the veins and the fount of the blood which circulates vigorously through all the limbs’, is

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appointed to be the chamber of the bodyguard, to the end that when the heat of the passion boils up, as soon as reason passes the word round that some unjust action is being done which affects them, either from without or possibly even from the interior desires, every organ of sense in the body might quickly perceive through all the channels both the injunctions and the threats and in all ways obey and follow them, thus allowing their best part to be the leader of them all. (Plato, Timaeus 70b)12

But the ‘quiet cabinet’ in Lucrece is underspecified, and it remains open whether it is the heart or the head/​brain that functions as bodyguard who sends its ranks (i.e. the blood in its veins) forth to warn the rational part of the soul of impending danger (see also Timaeus 70a). The allegory of Lucrece as a city under siege is specified by the turrets that are left by the guards, i.e. the veins (441); the soldiers (veins) defend the castle in that they warn their mistress (see Burrow 56; Cousins 49 and his reference to Ovid’s Fasti II. 781–​3). Next, ‘[s]‌he […] breaks ope her locked-​up eyes’:  the soul opens the windows (the eyes) in order to see what is going on; Lucrece at first sees nothing as her eyes are blinded by Tarquin’s torch (448). Throughout the stanza, the meaning of ‘she’ oscillates and goes back and forth between the soul and Lucrece (as both body and soul). Tarquin, meanwhile, remains towering over her, his hand resting on her breast: His hand that yet remains upon her breast –​ Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall! –​ May feel her heart, poor citizen, distressed, Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall, Beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal.   This moves in him more rage and lesser pity,   To make the breach and enter this sweet city. (463–​9)

The hand is transformed into a ‘ram’ that is battering the walls and trying to ‘make the breach’.13 Lucrece is the ‘city’ he has laid siege to and which he wishes to enter. The language in this stanza is based on military metaphor again: Lucrece’s heart is the citizen who is ‘distressed’ and who rises up and falls to such an extent that Tarquin’s hand begins to shake. But instead of pitying her, he only becomes more enraged. 12 Physiological knowledge of a similar kind is presented by Falstaff when he describes the faculty of ‘sherris-​sack’: ‘It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it […] the sherries warms it [the liver], and makes its course from the inwards to the parts’ extremes. It illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm, and then the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart’ (2 Henry IV 4.3.95–​110). Falstaff (being Falstaff) describes not only the physiological processes set off by sherry, but he also describes them in an allegorical fashion that is very similar to the imagery in Lucrece –​but in a far less serious manner. 13 The ‘ivory wall’ refers to the whiteness of Lucrece’s skin (OED, ‘ivory, n.’ 4.) but also signifies that his hand is resting on her bone and that this ‘city’ will not be easily conquered, ivory being ascribed particular hardness (1.a.).

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The narrator describes Tarquin’s siege of Lucrece in stages:  first, Tarquin’s drumming heart, then how his hand makes ‘his stand /​On her bare breast’  –​ conquering the ‘land’ that is her body (439). Lucrece is then being warned by her guardsmen, waking up and feeling ‘terror’; her heart beats in distress. Then he turns back to Tarquin, who continues his assault of Lucrece: First, like a trumpet doth his tongue begin To sound a parley to his heartless foe, Who o’er the white sheet peers her whiter chin, The reason of this rash alarm to know, Which he by dumb demeanour seeks to show. (470–​4)

He gives a ‘signal to discuss terms’ (Arden ed. 278n471) like a trumpet; but he does not really speak and only shows his ‘dumb demeanour’. Apparently, he is ‘[t]‌emporarily bereft of the power of speech’ (OED, ‘dumb, adj. and n.’ A. adj. 2.). The narrator’s comment is ambiguous as it moreover refers to Tarquin’s ‘[s]aying nothing to the understanding; inexpressive, meaningless; stupid, senseless’ (7.a.), which actually explains that he sounds ‘like a trumpet’. He cannot make himself understood by Lucrece, who, in turn, lacks the ability (or refuses) to understand what is going on. At the same time, the stupidity or ‘dumbness’ of Tarquin can be linked to his ‘lack of wit’ (7.b. ‘Foolish, stupid, ignorant’). The collocation containing ‘dumb’ furthermore evokes the connotation of ‘dumb show’, which can be linked to Tarquin’s playing a ‘part’ in this drama which is going to turn into a tragedy; the Arden editors view this as a ‘theatrical element in his behaviour’ (279n474). His assault of Lucrece thus, on an external level, also becomes a stage action. Lucrece, whose heart was in danger of ‘wounding itself to death’, is now ‘heartless’.14 She joins in the military imagery and asks him ‘Under what colour he commits this ill’ (476), which he –​wilfully, one might say –​misunderstands as he refers to the colours in the heraldry of her face, i.e. her beauty, which he witnessed during their first encounter. What ensues is the monologue in which he explains his deed and the motivation for it to Lucrece. This attempt to attack and besiege her can be read as one of the dramatic elements within the poem: dramatic both in the sense of structure and of content as the action presented here is leading towards the peripety of the plot and is full of suspense. But it is also dramatic in that it can be linked to the siege of a castle or city and the dramatization of psychomachia, both to be found, for instance, in the medieval morality play The Castle of Perseverance. There the vices, under the command of World, Flesh and Devil besiege the castle of virtues in order to tempt Mankind outside and win him back; the Devil wants to ‘clyvyn [ruin] yone castel clene’ (1910). Tarquin follows a similar aim –​he wants to conquer Lucrece and knows that he will ruin her (498–​504), a fact which he has ‘debated even in [his] 14 See OED, ‘heartless, adj. and n.’: 1.†a. ‘Lacking in courage; characterized by cowardice; cowardly, fearful.’

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soul’. The psychomachia that has so far taken place within Tarquin (and will, after the rape, also be taking place in Lucrece) is now transposed to the relation between them. It is, moreover, linked to a physiomachia (see above); Lucrece and Tarquin, from the beginning of the poem introduced as quasi-​allegorical representatives of virtue and vice, chastity and lust, now interact with each other as such antagonists. While in The Castle of Perseverance Humanum Genus, the protagonist, is divided between vice and virtue, this division at the basis of the conditio humana is transferred to two separate individuals, Lucrece and Tarquin, who are intricately (and chiastically) connected with one another. After the rape, this interrelatedness continues between Lucrece and the soul of Tarquin. The notion of lack and defect in Tarquin is one that he is trying to ‘compensate’ through conquering Lucrece –​ his lust, the ‘naked armour of still slaughtered lust’, finds its counterpart in her chastity. Instead of cherishing that which could save him, he destroys her; instead of taking her as an example and listening to her reasoning, he lacks wit to such an extent that her chastity enrages him even more. He wants to conquer her, which leads to the ruin of his own soul and his self –​and later to his destruction as a governor. At the beginning of the epyllion, he leaves ‘besieged Ardea’ and ‘lurks to aspire’ Lucrece, i.e. Tarquin moves from the besieged city of Ardea to another siege, to attack Lucrece in like manner (see also Dubrow, Captive Victors 94–​5). The public action he undertakes as governor of Rome is transformed into a private one; and this action, in turn, reverberates in his public life at the conclusion of the poem, when he is banished (see 1855). But first, the focus shifts away from Tarquin again and to Lucrece. ‘Black stage for tragedies and murders fell’: the (inner) drama of Lucrece Lucrece experiences an inner debate caused by the loss of honour through the rape and by her fear that this might affect not only her body but also her soul. She begins to argue with herself as she realizes that she is confronted with a dilemma:15 if she wants to save her soul, she has to kill herself and destroy her tainted body; if she lives on, she risks not only her reputation but also her soul. These debates and inner struggles are transmitted as in a drama: her arguments that represent antagonistic viewpoints; the ‘shadows’ that she sees on her inner stage; and also her surroundings, for example night which she addresses as a ‘[b]‌lack stage’. Lucrece finds herself as part of a drama that concerns her life, her inner being, her soul, and she acts in surroundings that become a stage. ‘Shadows’ and ‘the weak brain’s forgeries’: Lucrece’s vision The drama of Lucrece begins at the moment she is threatened by Tarquin. Before the narrator describes how she reacts to the intruder, he directly addresses the 15 She is afraid to lose her soul, which means that a Christian dimension is superimposed upon the Roman context of the story. This is where the dilemma results from, and this is the actual basis of her tragedy.

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reader and asks him to ‘imagine’ what happens before his mental eye, i.e. on his own inner stage: Imagine her as one in dead of night From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking, That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, Whose grim aspect sets every joint a-​shaking: What terror ’tis! But she in worser taking,   From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view   The sight which makes supposed terror true. Wrapped and confounded in a thousand fears, Like to a new-​killed bird she trembling lies. She dares not look; yet, winking, there appears Quick-​shifting antics, ugly in her eyes. ‘Such shadows are the weak brain’s forgeries,   Who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights,   In darkness daunts them with more dreadful sights.’ (449–​62)

The particle ‘as’ in ‘Imagine her as one in dead of night’ is ambiguous and thus supports the tension that underlies these stanzas. Through the ambiguity of ‘as’, the inner and the outer perspective are merged: we are to imagine her as someone who had a bad dream and visions that turn out to be true, which means that we are to empathize with her; and, simultaneously, we are to compare her to someone who had a bad dream and thus visualize her before our inner eye based on mental images that we already possess.16 Thus, Shakespeare manages to make us both look with her eyes and at her; internal and external action become one by means of a single word, which again points to the subtlety of composition. But then, it turns out, what she saw was not a ‘dreadful fancy’ but reality: the ‘supposed terror’ is actually true.17 She is ‘confounded’ by her fear –​as was Tarquin by his desire; she resembles a ‘new-​killed bird’ in her trembling. The image of a ‘new-​killed bird’ refers to her soul: not only will her soul be a ‘winged sprite’ after her suicide (1728); the image of the soul as bird also evokes the winged soul in Plato’s Phaedrus (246e–​256e; see Lang-​Graumann 242n170); a further evocation is the character of Philomel. She thinks she saw a ‘ghastly sprite’ but now learns that it also exists outside her imagination. Moreover, ‘sprite’ not only denotes ‘spirit’ but also the soul,18 and

16 Everybody, especially during a period when several people used to sleep in the same room, had probably at least once seen someone awake from a bad dream, which allows for presupposing the existence of such mental images. 17 See Burrow:  ‘Then the real and the imaginary blend, as a reader is first asked to imagine her imaginings, and then to realize that she awakes and finds her imagination truth. A dreaming queen within a simile of siege who is really a woman under attack: the effect is of claustrophobia, of truth within a dream within a siege’ (56). Burrow refers to one meaning of the line only and overlooks the ambiguity of ‘as’. 18 See OED, ‘spirit, n.’ 2.a. and 3.a. Later on, her ‘winged sprite’ (1728), i.e. her soul, leaves her body.

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the inherent ambiguity of the word hence refers to Tarquin as well: he is a ‘ghastly sprite’, and his soul is ‘ghastly’. While earlier Lucrece was unable to see his true being (and he actually was dissembling), she is now able to recognize his true being and feels ‘terror’. In order not to be further ‘confounded’, she closes her eyes, ‘[s]‌he dares not look’. But then she sees with her inner eye, and what she perceives there is even more terrifying because the eyes are angry to be robbed of the light, and darkness overcomes them with fear as much as the sight with her physical eyes at first overcomes Lucrece (see Maus, ‘Language and Violence’ 301). On her inner stage ‘quick-​shifting antics’ appear, and they are the ‘shadows’ of the ‘weak brain’s forgeries’. The experience described here foreshadows the dialogue between Theseus and Hippolyta in Act 5 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, first performed a year after Lucrece was written (1595/​96). While Theseus doubts the truth of what the ‘lovers speak of ’ and calls their nightly experiences ‘antique fables’ (5.1.1; 3), echoing the ‘Quick-​shifting antics’ in Lucrece, Hippolyta takes and believes that ‘the story […] More witnesseth than fancy’s images’ (5.1.23–​5). A ‘strong imagination’ (18), according to Theseus, may lead to ‘imagining some fear’ (21) during the night. The negative ring of the imagination, as put forward by Theseus, is also manifest in Lucrece: she thinks her brain weak –​like that of ‘the lunatic, the lover, and the poet’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.7). But while she condemns her fancy and the images produced on her inner stage, the ‘shadows’ she sees are not ‘the weak brain’s forgeries’, they are more than ‘fancy’s images’ –​the shadows actually show her the truth because they are not imagined (although she thinks so at first). The ‘shadows’ are a recurring image of creatures produced by fancy on the inner stage  –​in Sonnet 27, for example, the speaker is presented with the ‘shadow’ of the beloved  –​which links them to the ‘antics’ and the theatrical imagery in more general terms.19 What Lucrece thinks she sees within her soul is actually identical with what is happening outside. And while she tries to fight the fear that results from these visions, thus relying on reason rather than imagination, she soon recognizes their reality. Shadow and substance (see Wickert) are thus not opposites  –​they are intricately related and even equal. What she thinks she imagined is a nightmare come true; the truth here is not the result of the ability of the inner sense to see it but of brutal external reality.20 In that sense, the imagination is able to show us a truth potentially ‘more than cool reason ever comprehends’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.6), especially 19 Burrow (268n) as well as the Arden editors note that ‘antics’ are ‘characters in grotesque or fantastic costumes which rapidly change their form and appearance. The image is of actors in a play or pageant going through several costume-​changes’ (277n459). See also Hamlet 1.5.180 and Jenkins’s note (226n). 20 It is by implication only that we do we get a statement about the imagination/​sight of the soul, which is quite different from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Sonnet 27:  because reality is so horrible, our horrible imaginings are not just the fabrications of the brain but pictures of the world as it is. That is to say, imagination is not seen as inherently positive, but its negativity is not based on the fact that it is wrong. Imagination is awful because it is true.

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when it comes to ‘foresight’. The same goes for Tarquin’s soul as well: the narrator spoke of her ‘prescience’ and ‘foresight’ (727–​8) that, however, were not able to control his lust and prevent him from committing the rape. The fact that the soul now presents these horrible antics to Lucrece’s eye points in a very similar direction: she is shown, by her foresight, what awaits her. Shakespeare includes a statement and meta-​commentary on the faculty of shadows here, both with regard to the imagination and the representations on the stage:  what we see there is more than ‘fancy’s images’. The imperative (‘Imagine’) at the beginning of this passage draws the reader into the action as he follows suit and begins to imagine Lucrece. While Lucrece at first thinks that what she saw was based on her fancy, antics that appeared before her inner eye, it soon becomes clear that her vision was true. She is therefore not someone who wakes ‘by dreadful fancy’. Later on, she closes her eyes again (‘winking’ 458) but still sees the horrible scene. Now the pictures of the mind are shadows (Nachbilder) of what she had viewed ‘heedfully’ (454) before. The shadows become an index of reality, and the text that we read becomes like a stage script so that we begin to see the ‘shadows’ of Lucrece and also of Tarquin (‘His hand that yet remains’). The whole poem is here transformed into a miniature drama: not only is Lucrece’s soul a stage –​the epyllion becomes one as well on which internal and external forces act and interact. The merging of the inside and outside is further emphasized through a subtle play with focalization in these lines. While the Arden editors Duncan Jones and Woudhuysen add quotation marks to 460–​2 (‘Such shadows’), Prince has none, nor does Burrow, which leaves us the option to read those lines as either the narrator’s comment on Lucrece or as her own view. The same goes for the exclamation ‘What terror ’tis!’ (453):  even with regard to focalization there is a link and an interplay between outside and inside. ‘So am I now –​O no, that cannot be’: Lucrece’s self-​division and shame The theatrical or dramatic dimension established here becomes manifest in the antagonisms that structure the poem in such manifold forms as psychomachia and physiomachia but also with regard to the character constellation of Lucrece and Tarquin. Psychomachia (and physiomachia) as a fight between good and evil (as well as between different virtues, e.g. chastity and beauty in Lucrece, or between evil forces in Tarquin) is linked to the notion of self-​division. But while in the psychomachia two forces within one person fight each other, in the case of self-​ division two parts of one human being really do become separate and their conflict cannot be resolved.21 This is what happens to Tarquin, whose soul is ruined after the rape so that he only lives on physically (and disappears altogether); and it also happens, albeit in a contrary manner, to Lucrece, who feels such an extent of shame for her body that her soul is unable to go on living with(in) it. 21 One might even say they cannot be reconciled. This impossibility of reconciliation is, for instance, expressed by Fulke Greville in the ‘Chorus Sacerdotum’.

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After Tarquin has left, Lucrece fears the coming of the day as she thinks that her ‘guilt’ will immediately be discovered (754).22 She feels ‘shame’ on her cheeks (756), which means that the red of beauty in her face has been replaced. The effect of the rape thus shows physically, and it is indeed her body that has suffered and has been blemished: She wakes her heart by beating on her breast, And bids it leap from thence, where it may find Some purer chest to close so pure a mind. (759–​61)

Her heart was earlier woken by the pumping of her veins to warn her of the impending assault; she now beats her breast to wake it up. She wants it to leave her body and to be enclosed in a ‘purer chest’.23 The earlier obscurity of locations (442–​8) is here continued, soul and heart are connected and even identified with each other, and they are set apart from the body: it is her body that is polluted, not her mind or heart or soul, and while these are still chaste, her body is no more.24 This inner struggle and division now show in her attitude, exemplified by her behaviour towards night: she at first wants it to stay so that her shame will not show in daylight, but then asks it to go away: O comfort-​killing Night, image of hell, Dim register and notary of shame, Black stage for tragedies and murders fell, Vast sin-​concealing chaos, nurse of blame, Blind muffled bawd, dark harbour for defame,   Grim cave of death, whisp’ring conspirator   With close-​tongued treason and the ravisher! (764–​70)

Her major complaint about night (which she continues up to line 812) consists in the fact that it is connected with shame (in the sense of ‘[d]‌isgrace, ignominy, loss of esteem or reputation’; OED, ‘shame, n.’ 3.a.) and gives shelter to all kinds of sinful behaviour. The theatrical dimension is made obvious when Lucrece compares night to a ‘black stage’, thereby referring to ‘the contemporary practice of hanging the back of the stage with black material for tragedies’ (Arden ed. 301n766). Lucrece becomes the tragic heroine in a play with Tarquin as

22 The fact that she speaks of her own guilt has made Empson read this against lines 1655 (‘gross blood’) and 1658 (‘accessory yieldings’); he concludes that ‘she took an involuntary pleasure in the rape, though she would have resisted it in any way possible; that is why she felt guilty, and why some of her blood turned black […] St. Augustine would conclude that she deserved death for enjoying the rape and Hell for her suicide afterwards; but the dramatist is sure that all her reactions, in this tricky situation, do her the greatest credit and are enough to explain the permanent majesty of Rome’ (257). Empson’s reading is apparently based on his misreading of Augustine (see below). 23 See Arden edition: ‘i.e. although her mind in its spiritual dimension, her heart or soul […] is pure, she wishes it to be enclosed or kept (to close) in a breast which is physically purer than her polluted body or in a casket or in a box’ (301n761). 24 Chaste and chest are connected (and contrasted) with each other by a pun.

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antagonistic villain and Night his helper;25 she thus reflects on her own role within this drama which is her life. Tarquin killed the purity of her body, her chastity. To the antagonism between him and her, an antagonism within herself is added. She is divided between her impure body and her pure heart/​soul, and this self-​division is now also reflected in her wish that night stay and go away, and in the fact that she is not even able to locate the soul in the mind or the heart. This self-​division will, in the course of the action, be intricately linked to the dilemma that she will lose her soul by staying alive –​and that she cannot go on living in an impure body. What also comes into play here is her reputation and honour –​which contributes to her dilemma and is connected with the dramatic dimension of the poem. She asks Night not to make her the ‘object to the tell-​tale Day’ (806) and then begins to imagine what this tale would consist in. She does not want to become a spectacle, nor a nurse’s story (see 813), nor does she want the orator to ‘couple my reproach to Tarquin’s shame’ (816). She recognizes the link that will from now on consist between Tarquin and her: Tarquin’s shame is hers as well. But as much as shame connects Lucrece and Tarquin, so much is it ambiguous in itself as it affects both inside and outside: Lucrece feels ashamed of what has happened to her (OED, ‘shame, n.’ 1.a.), and she fears the shame that others will attribute to her.26 Shame thus is iconic of the overall relation of internal and external forces at work in the poem. In a next step Lucrece realizes that also her husband is implicated in this shame; she therefore asks night that her ‘good name, that senseless reputation’ (820) ‘be kept unspotted’ (821) for the sake of Collatine.27 While she is feeling the shame, her reputation is ‘senseless’ –​it will not be recognized or perceived by others, like her ‘unseen shame, invisible disgrace’ (827) and the ‘private scar’ (828) that the rape has left on her. The adjectives become synonymous and entail a dichotomy (as well as a link) between what will be seen openly ‘charactered in [her] brow’ (807) and the ‘senseless reputation’, i.e. that which will be left unseen. She is afraid of being misunderstood and misread as the text that can (and will) be read in her face is ambiguous: she cannot prove her innocence, and the blush, earlier standing for her beauty, will now be interpreted as shameful (see 756).28 As much as she wishes not to become a story, the ‘story of sweet chastity’s decay’ (808) will be ciphered in her face. 25 That Night begins with a capital letter makes it become a character in the play that is now being enacted by Lucrece. A parody of this situation of the tragic hero/​heroine apostrophizing night and blaming it can be found in Bottom’s speech as Pyramus: ‘O grim-​looked night, O night with hue so black, /​O night which ever art when day is not!’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.167–​8). 26 See OED, ‘shame, n.’ 3.a. One of the references is to Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors: ‘Free from these slanders, and this open shame’ (4.4.68). Hotz-​Davies studies shame against the background of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and her reading of Silvan Tomkins; in her view, shame is an affect to be conceived of as a texture (187), which can be related to Lucrece: she is suffering from an affect that manifests itself within her, but also in her relation and connection to Tarquin, to her husband and the society of Rome. See also Sedgwick, who speaks of a ‘double movement’ of shame: ‘toward painful individuation, toward uncontrollable relationality’ (37). 27 Note the contrast between Collatine’s ‘unspotted’ reputation and the ‘spotted princess’ that is Tarquin’s soul. 28 See also the ‘Reproach’ that is ‘stamp’d in Collatinus’ face’ (829).

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At the same time, she knows that the reproach against her will go over onto Collatine; that his reputation should be affected is ‘undeserved’ (824), and against this background she expresses her feeling of guilt: ‘Yet I am guilty of thy honour’s wrack; Yet for thy honour did I entertain him. Coming from thee, I could not put him back, For it had been dishonour to disdain him. Besides, of weariness he did complain him,   And talked of virtue: O, unlooked-​for evil,   When virtue is profaned in such a devil!’ (841–​7)

The address of her absent husband reflects on the self-​division not only of her body and soul but also her being torn and divided between knowing that she did not have a choice and could not but entertain Tarquin because he is her husband’s kinsman and friend, and that she had to think of his ‘honour’. While Prince regards this as an example of debate (like 239–​42), giving evidence of Shakespeare’s ‘training in dramatic verse’ (106n841–​2), these two lines rather put her tragic plight and the ensuing dilemma in a nutshell.29 Moreover, this is also the moment of her awareness –​her anagnorisis –​that she has been tricked by relying on Tarquin’s deceptive words: Tarquin ‘talked of virtue’, but that does not mean that he is virtuous; rather he ‘profaned’ virtue, being the ‘devil’ that he is. So while she was trying to follow honour and be honourable in her deeds, he did the very opposite and feigned virtue. His seeming expressed the exact opposite of his being. Although she knows that Tarquin is guilty because of his ‘impious breach of holy wedlock vow’ (809; see also Arden ed. 305n809), she equally blames herself with regard to her husband’s honour. While she recognizes the antagonisms inherent in Tarquin, she also begins to wonder at the antagonisms that generally exist in nature, including human nature:30 ‘Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?’ (848), which can be seen as a metaphorical representation of herself and Tarquin. This is continued in the following lines: ‘Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts? /​Or kings be breakers of their own behests?’ (852–​3). These questions are followed by and culminate in a line of statements on the destructive force inherent in these contrasts: ‘What virtue breeds iniquity devours’ (309). Lucrece, the representative of virtue, is indeed ‘devoured’ by Tarquin, the representative of vice, the ‘adder’ that ‘hisses where the sweet birds sing’ (871), the bird here again being reminiscent of Philomel and the story of her rape (see 1128–​48). Lucrece’s self-​division –​between her body and soul but also, in the wake of her confusion, with regard to the feeling of her own guilt and Tarquin’s, her thoughts on her own reputation and her husband’s –​chimes in with the division inherent in 29 The topic of ‘shame’ is an inherently dramatic one (and especially apt in the context of tragedy; see Fernie 224, 230); and Scodel on shame in Lucrece. 30 Her reflections are apparently based on inferences from the microcosm onto the macrocosm.

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nature, in everything that exists: there are contrastive forces everywhere, and they appear to be irreconcilable; based on these antagonisms within herself and around her, Lucrece will eventually kill herself. She reflects on her helplessness when confronted with Tarquin and blames herself for not having done more in the situation, only to recognize that she is now seeking death, while she feared it when Tarquin threatened her (1046–​57). Tarquin has robbed her of the ‘true type’ of ‘loyal wife’, and she has thus lost her honour, that ‘for which I sought to live’ (1051) but is still chaste (‘So am I now’ 1049). Her status as a loyal wife has been damaged by Tarquin, which results in ‘infamy’ (1055): Inwardly she is still the faithful wife, ‘true to her marriage’ (Arden ed. 321n1034), but outwardly she has been stained. Tarquin has left a ‘spot’ (1053) on her, which links her to the ‘spotted princess’ (721) that is his soul. Through the connection that exists between them, he also violated ‘holy wedlock vow’ (809), and people will read this ‘breach’ (809) in(to) Lucrece.31 She now thinks of the ‘stained taste of violated troth’ (1059) which she does not want her husband to know, the ‘infringed oath’ (1061). A distinction has to be made between chastity as a virtue of her soul –​which is never diminished –​and as a fact of the body. The latter is violated by Tarquin.32 Because of this violation –​which is connected to the topic of reputation –​she wants to end her life and thus ‘clear this spot’ left by Tarquin, give a ‘dying life to living infamy’. The Arden editors comment: ‘either through her death she will give a life to the infamy of her rape which will live on for ever, or she will effectively kill off the infamy with which she would be associated if she went on living’ (322n1055; see Burrow ed. 300n1055). This, however, does not really correspond to what is being said in the text. The parallel is to the badge that will give a contradictory sign to the livery of slander. The chiastic wordplay on livery/​life and fame/​infamy is typical for the kind of paronomastic wordplay in this poem and points to the parallel stated here. She knows that her suicide can only be a ‘helpless help’ (1056) but she will have to ‘burn the guiltless casket’33 where the ‘treasure […] lay’, which means that she has to destroy her body because it was shamed and spotted. The ‘stain’ left by Tarquin (as well as the possibly physical ‘load of lust’34) has to be removed by her death, now that her body has become worthless because it has lost its ‘treasure’. In a more psychological reading, one might argue that Tarquin, in 31 He breaches the vow and her vow is breached –​the action of breaching conforms to the pattern of internal and external interconnectedness. Lucrece finds herself in a bond that she cannot escape: she is a victim and thus intricately connected to her ravisher. 32 See also the later passage when she reflects on the injustice that she will be blamed for what happened: ‘Not that devoured, but that which doth devour /​Is worthy blame. O, let it not be hild /​Poor women’s faults that they are so fulfilled /​With men’s abuses: those proud lords, to blame, /​ Make weak-​made women tenants to their shame’ (1256–​60). 33 Both the Arden editors (323n1057) and Burrow (300n1057) read ‘guiltless’ as a play on the homophones ‘guilt’ and ‘gilt’. This, however, seems rather far-​fetched in the overall context of these lines as Lucrece was true, not gilt; her outward appearance was not fake but real and corresponding to her inner state of mind/​soul. 34 See also 1062–​4 on the possible pregnancy resulting from the rape. On the notion of stigma as ‘the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance’, see Goffman (i); and Lewis, ‘Shame and Stigma’.

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violating her body, has stolen (at least) part of her soul, her ‘treasure’. In modern terms, she is traumatized and feels guilty even though she is innocent. All the same, she is aware of the fact that she cannot really be blamed for what has happened, but nevertheless feels that she has to take the blame and act upon it.35 While Tarquin’s soul had been visited by ‘troops of cares’ (702), Lucrece is now ‘drenched in a sea of care’ (1100), and, like Tarquin earlier (246), ‘holds disputation with each things she views’ (1101); but her disputation is not ‘graceless’ as was Tarquin’s: it strengthens her grief. As the poor frighted deer that stands at gaze, Wildly determining which way to fly, Or one encompassed with a winding maze That cannot tread the way out readily, So with herself is she in mutiny,   To live or die which of the twain were better,   When life is shamed and death reproach’s debtor. (1149–​55)

While the comparison to a bird and its allusion to Philomel is central (see 1079–​ 80), Lucrece is also likened to a lamb (and Tarquin to a wolf) and now to another animal that is hunted, a deer who, standing ‘at gaze’, does not know where to run. She feels as if trapped in a maze, which means she does not know what to do and how to act and is therefore still caught in her disputation and grief; ‘with herself she is in mutiny’.36 The word ‘mutiny’ is a conspicuous choice. It evokes ‘mute’, which echoes the ‘muteness’ of Philomel. It also establishes a link to Tarquin, when he was debating whether to rape Lucrece or not, and was in ‘mutiny’ (426) with himself as well (see Soellner 396). He was ‘debating in his soul’ and eventually followed his will, his desire, not his reason. With Lucrece things seem to be still more complicated, as she has to decide whether to live or to kill herself. But the term ‘mutiny’ also suggests that some inferior forces are rebelling against superior ones (OED, ‘mutiny, n.’ 2.b.) –​although it is not entirely clear which are which; if there was just dissent, without a difference in power or authority, Shakespeare might have used, for example, ‘debate’ or ‘discord’ (see †1. ‘Discord, contention, tumult; a state of discord; a dispute, quarrel’). The term thus also refers to her self-​division: she is in mutiny ‘with herself ’, which expresses how her desire to live rebels against the order to die, and the desire to die rebels against the order to live. But the whole frantic debate and indecision, the ‘wild[ly] determining’, is also a mutiny against herself. There is a true self which is infringed upon by either decision, i.e. 35 The term ‘trauma’ is anachronistic (see OED, which records the first entry of the noun for 1684, for ‘traumatic, adj.’ in 1656); the psychological application took place in the late nineteenth century (see Wald, Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia 2). Still, the phenomenon described corresponds to the ‘wound’ and the ‘condition caused by this’ (OED, ‘trauma, n.’) that Lucrece experiences. 36 ‘When Lucrece is raped, she loses the balance of her self. There is never any doubt within the terms set by the poem that she is overwhelmed and corrupted by evil. She responds by an act of suicide which is a rational and successful attempt to restore order within and outside herself ’ (Bromley 86).

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by the very struggle to decide between life and death. Her life is ‘shame’ because she has lost her honour and reputation; death is ‘reproach’s debtor’, i.e. she kills herself for fear of reproach –​a notion which is likewise linked to her honour and reputation.37 She finds herself in a true dilemma and is divided, which is further stressed by the word ‘twain’. This word recalls another scene. When Tarquin was looking at the sleeping Lucrece, she was described in the following terms: Showing life’s triumph in the map of death, And death’s dim look in life’s mortality. Each in her sleep themselves so beautify,   As if between them twain there were no strife,   But that life liv’d in death, and death in life. (402–​6)

At this moment the paradoxical relation between life in death and death in life is spelt out. Lucrece lies in bed ‘like a virtuous monument’ (391), her head ‘entombed is’ between the ‘hills’ of her pillow (390);38 her portrayal resembles that of a dead person, not of someone alive.39 Before the rape, in Lucrece the ‘strife’ between two antagonistic forces was cancelled –​or at least, it appeared to be. But now the strife between life and death is at full swing, and either choice is destructive. Lucrece is torn between life and death but also between action and inaction. At daybreak, her inner struggle, fruitless to this point, continues:  ‘Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words, /​Sometime ’tis mad and too much talk affords’ (1105–​6). But she soon comes to the conclusion that words will not help and deeds must follow: ‘This helpless smoke of words doth me no right /​The remedy indeed to do me good /​Is to let forth my foul-​defiled blood’ (1027–​9).40 She has to cleanse herself. Earlier, when first considering suicide, she found: ‘I am the mistress of my fate’ (1069); and now she has made up her mind to ‘make some hole’ into her body:  ‘Through which I  may convey this troubled soul’ (1175–​6).

37 The Arden editors do not give a satisfactory explication:  ‘i.e. killing yourself will only incur (greater) reproach or shame’ (330n1155). If this were the case, Lucrece would not be confronted with a dilemma nor go through a mutiny with herself. If she killed herself ‘for fear of reproach’, this would be wrong as it would make the action itself indebted to reproach. Lucrece does not kill herself because she has lost her virtue but because she cannot go on living the life of an honourable wife; see below. 38 One might read this passage in two ways:  as a foreshadowing of Lucrece’s death but also as an allusion to Tarquin’s death in life that he is going to experience after the rape. 39 When Romeo enters the monument of the Capulets, he addresses Juliet as dead but also as still resembling life in her beauty (5.3.91–​3; see Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Sites of Death’ 19–​20). He thus points to the transition from life to death, and also towards the similarity of sleep and death. See also Camino: ‘In her sleep, she is a map on the vanitas theme, reminding Tarquin of the eternal presence of the great leveller, death’ (Raping Lucrece 20). 40 See also later in the poem:  ‘To shun this blot [i.e. the suspicion which she will attract; Arden ed. 342n1322] she would not blot the letter /​With words, till action might become them better’ (1322–​3).

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‘To kill myself ’: Lucrece and the suicide debate41 Lucrece’s soul is not troubled because it is guilty; its trouble results from the shame that is connected to its body and the fact that her innocence will not make any difference with regard to her reputation. In Livy’s version of the story, Lucrece tells her husband and father of Tarquin’s crime: ‘corpus est tauntum violatum, animus insons; mors testis erit’ (1.58.7) –​‘Yet my body only has been violated; my heart is guiltless, as death shall be my witness,’ a claim that Shakespeare’s Lucrece will repeat just before her suicide: ‘Though my gross blood be stained with this abuse, /​Immaculate and spotless is my mind’ (1655–​6). In the same vein, the men in Livy then ‘tell her it is the mind that sins, not the body; and that where purpose has been wanting there is no guilt’ (1.58.9). Lucrece is without sin but she still punishes herself for what was done to her. Her freedom from sin is also a point that Augustine makes in The City of God,42 where he writes in the chapter on the question ‘Whether the violation of captured virgins, even those consecrated, defiled their virtuous character, though their will did not consent’ (1.16). He stresses that the problem of rape is not a problem of the virtue of chastity. Augustine points out the very difference that is relevant to Shakespeare’s Lucrece: she is certain in her virtue but nevertheless feels shame (see also Maus, ‘Language and Violence’ 299). Augustine writes: But since it is not only the occasion of pain, but also the occasion of lust that can be inflicted on another’s body by force, in the latter case, though shamefastness, to which a superlatively steadfast mind holds fast, is not thrust out, yet shame is thrust in, shame for fear that the mind too may be thought to have consented to an act that could perhaps not have taken place without some carnal pleasure. (1.16.75–​7)43

As Lucrece’s will is uncorrupted and no lust or desire (i.e. no appetites) were involved when Tarquin raped her, her soul is untouched and she cannot be blamed for what happened: let the principle be stated and affirmed that the virtue whereby a good life is lived controls the members of the body from its seat in the mind and that the body becomes holy through the exercise of a holy will, and while such a will remains unshaken and steadfast, no matter what anyone else does with the body or in the 41 Lucrece’s suicide has been the matter of much debate, prominently so ever since Augustine discussed it in The City of God (Book 1, c­ hapters 14–​20). Some critics, however, have seen this suicide as an acknowledgement of Lucrece’s guilt (see, e.g., Allen; Battenhouse 14–​15; and Empson 256). Kahn takes a position against these critics (see 71n1). Tertullian (see Roe) and Jerome saw the death of the historical/​mythical Lucrece as a type of Christian martyrdom (see Donaldson 25–​6). Watson (‘Suicide’ 26) refers to Yates’s The Chariot of Chastitie (1582) that presents Lucrece as an exemplar for all virgins (35v). In Yates’s view, Lucrece’s suicide is clearly one of chastity, not of despair, and therefore justified. For an overview of critical voices, see, e.g., Donaldson; and Watson, ‘Suicide’. 42 Burrow notes that Augustine’s City of God was issued at the same print-​shop as Shakespeare’s Sonnets (46). 43 The words ‘may be thought’ express the ‘reproach’ to whom ‘death’ becomes the ‘debtor’ (see 1155): for fear of such an opinion Lucrece might commit suicide.

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body that a person has no power to avoid without sin on his own part, no blame attaches to the one who suffers it. (75)44

In ­chapter 18, he takes this up again and writes: ‘If […] purity is a possession of the soul, neither is it lost when the body is violated’ (81; ‘Si autem animo bonum est, etiam oppresso corpore non amittitur’), which corresponds to the reading of Livy. Lucrece’s soul is good, and it remains good. The violation of the body is thus not necessarily concomitant with the pollution of the soul; it only becomes so when the soul is not pure: ‘Let there be no such mistake, and let us draw from this case the conclusion that holiness of the body is not lost while holiness of the soul remains, even though the body is forced to yield, just as holiness of the body is lost when holiness of the soul is violated, even though the body remain intact’ (83). The key to this understanding lies in the notion of ‘consent’ (1.19). In c­ hapter 19, where Augustine discusses the case of Lucrece, he therefore asks:  ‘Must she be judged an adulteress or chaste? Who can think it necessary to ponder over the answer?’ and goes on to argue: A certain declaimer [who remains unknown] develops this there admirably and accurately:  ‘A wonderful tale! There were two and only one committed adultery.’ Very striking and very true! For he, taking into consideration in this intermingling of two bodies the utterly foul passion on one side and the utterly chaste will of the other, and paying attention, not to the union of the bodies, but to the variance in the souls. (1.19; 85)

Lucrece’s ‘will’ was chaste, while Tarquin followed his ‘foul passion’. The difference of the souls is stressed in Augustine’s argument as well as the interdependence of body and soul in the case of Tarquin –​where both are corrupted –​and their independence of each other in Lucrece, as her will is not part of the intercourse. When Shakespeare’s Lucrece debates with herself whether to commit suicide, she likewise refers to the difference between body and soul: ‘To kill myself,’ quoth she, ‘alack, what were it, But with my body my poor soul’s pollution? They that lose half with greater patience bear it Than they whose whole is swallowed in confusion. That mother tries a merciless conclusion   Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one   Will slay the other and be nurse to none.’ (1156–​62)

Lucrece enters into a dialogue with herself –​very much in the Augustinian tradition of the soliloquy (see below). Her difficulty  –​the ‘mutiny’ (1153) within 44 See the Latin original: ‘positum atque firmatum virtutem, qua recte vivitur, ab animi sede membris corporis imperare sanctumque corpus usu fieri sanctae voluntatis, qua inconcussa ac stabili permanente, quidquid alius de corpore vel in corpore fecerit quod sine peccato proprio non valeat evitari praetor culpam esse patientis’ (my emphasis).

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herself –​is based on the reflection that ‘suicide would pollute or corrupt her soul as well as her already violated body’ (Arden ed. 330n1157).45 By killing herself, hence, Lucrece would actually worsen her situation: in the wake of the rape her body is polluted; suicide would involve her soul in this pollution as well (see also Kahn 49). Lucrece thus at first argues against suicide:  she finds that, generally speaking at least, it is easier to bear the destruction of only one ‘half ’, i.e. the body, than the ‘whole’, i.e. body and soul, and draws an analogy of a mother who would, because one of her children died, kill the other one too. She is torn between her body and soul, but in a way different from Tarquin: while he is torn between body and soul in that he gives his body ‘governance’ over the soul, Lucrece’s division is based on virtue, both in the heraldry of her face (see above) and in the relation of body and soul. The ‘two babes’, body and soul, are linked to each other, and it will become clear to her, eventually, that her soul will have governance over the body. But her inner disputation still goes on, and she cannot decide which one was dearer to her, her body or soul, exactly because they are both determined by her own virtue; at the same time, she understands that they are interdependent, and that the shame her body has experienced will eventually affect her soul as well: ‘My body or my soul, which was the dearer, When the one pure the other made divine? Whose love of either to myself was nearer, When both were kept for heaven and Collatine? Ay me! The bark pilled from the lofty pine,   His leaves will wither and his sap decay;   So must my soul, her bark being pilled away. Her house is sacked, her quiet interrupted, Her mansion battered by her enemy, Her sacred temple spotted, spoiled, corrupted, Grossly engirt with daring infamy. Then let it not be called impiety,   If in this blemished fort I make some hole   Through which I may convey this troubled soul.’ (1163–​76)

Because of the interdependence, the agreement of body and soul, her tainted body will make her soul ‘troubled’ (1176).46 She draws an analogy to a tree: when the 45 See also Burrow ed. 305n; and Burton: ‘This pernicious kinde of desperation is the subject of our discourse, homicida animæ, the murderer of the soule, as Austin tearmes it, a fearefull passion, wherein the party oppressed thinks he can get no ease but by death, and is fully resolved to offer violence unto himself; […] he hopes by death alone to bee freed of his calamity (though it prove otherwise) and chuseth with Job 6. […] Rather to be strangled and die, then to be in his bones. The part affected is the whole soule, and all the faculties of it […] The heart is grieved, the conscience wounded, the minde eclipsed with blacke fumes, arising from those perpetuall terrors’ (3: 3.4.2.2; 410). 46 ‘What she yearns for is her condition before the rape when there was no need to make a choice between the body and the soul. She finds the conflict between them impossible to endure, but refuses to privilege one element and resolve the conflict’ (Maus, ‘Language and Violence’ 300). This, however, is only temporarily the case.

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bark is pilled from it, its leaves and sap will ‘wither’ and ‘decay’; likewise, when the body is tainted, the inner life will be damaged. It is striking that, in the following lines, she uses the same imagery to describe her body that was earlier used to describe the state of Tarquin’s soul after the rape: he has lost in gain (730), i.e. was sacked, the walls of his soul have been battered (723), and his soul is portrayed as a ‘spotted princess’ (721), whose ‘fair temple’ is ‘defaced’ (719).47 When she goes on, she actually believes that her soul can live: this is why she wants it to leave the ‘spotted’ temple (1172) through a hole in the body. The rape does not taint the essence of her soul, its immortality. She has now decided to kill herself: it will be no ‘impiety’ to ‘make some hole’ in the ‘blemished fort’ (i.e. her body) to let forth the soul that is ‘troubled’ but not yet corrupted. In the case of Tarquin, this is different: he really foregoes immortality, and his personified soul, the spotted princess, says as much:  ‘She says her subjects with foul insurrection /​Have battered down her consecrated wall, /​And by their mortal fault brought in subjection /​Her immortality, and made her thrall /​To living death and pain perpetual’ (722–​6; emphases added). Tarquin has destroyed the immortality of his soul by committing a crime.48 It is noteworthy that, in Tarquin’s case, the soul is spotted but in Lucrece’s case the body represents the ‘spotted princess’, which brings her spotted body in an interlocking relationship with his ‘spotted soul’. Lucrece’s body has been stained, and this may affect the faculties but not her immortal soul. To return to Augustine: while he does not blame the Lucrece of the legend for the rape and actually emphasizes her chastity, he also warns of the ‘sure guilt of murder’ (1.18) that is suicide. Here he basically argues against the Roman law, according to which: ‘Sexual intercourse between a wife and a man other than her husband was seen at this time as an act which […] tainted the woman concerned. No distinction was made in matter between adultery and rape, for the polluting effect of both acts was thought to be the same’ (Donaldson 23). Augustine writes: ‘If there is no impurity in her being ravished not consenting, there is no justice in her being punished not unchaste. I appeal to you, ye law and judges of Rome!’ (1.19). He thus turns sarcastically against the unjust Roman law that punishes the innocent victim of rape and represents the absurd behaviour of the Romans: ‘If she was made an adulteress, why has she been praised; if she was chaste, why was she slain?’ (89). But then he goes on to call her a murderer of herself, and he explains this self-​murder by means of ‘irresolute shame’ (89), which is based on Roman law: ‘she blushed at the possibility of being believed to be an accomplice of the deed if she were to bear passively the shame that another had actively inflicted upon her’ (89).49 This is where Augustine sees the difference between her and 47 See also Burrow ed. 305n. The repetition of ‘engirt’ goes in a similar direction; see ‘Siege that hath engirt his marriage’ (221). 48 He raped Lucrece and committed adultery. Shakespeare seems to introduce a Christian element here, as he does in other places, too, e.g. in Lucrece’s argument against suicide, before she focuses on (Roman notions of) honour. 49 Livy’s version also contains a justification of her suicide: ‘ “It is for you to determine,” she answers, “what is due to him; for my own part, though I acquit myself of the sin, I do not absolve myself from punishment” ’ (1.8.10–​11).

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Christian women who shared her experience, and he concludes the chapter with these reflections. But Shakespeare adds yet another layer to Lucrece’s reasoning: he has her kill herself because of honour, rather than what she in a passing moment of Augustinian insight calls ‘reproach’s debtor’ (1155), i.e. assumed dishonour and reproach that would result from her suicide. In her own mind, her fault consisted in her fear of death when Tarquin attacked her, the fact that she was ‘heartless’, i.e. ‘lacking in courage; characterized by cowardice; cowardly, fearful’ (OED, ‘heartless, adj. and n.’ 1.†a.), and this is why she now has to kill herself:50 ‘My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife That wounds my body so dishonoured. ’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life; The one will live, the other being dead. So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,   For in my death I murder shameful scorn;   My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.’ (1184–​90)

The beginning of this stanza turns around honour and dishonour. It harkens back to her first thoughts of suicide, when she addressed her hand: ‘Honour thyself to rid me of this shame’ (1031). Honour and shame go together, and she ‘bequeaths’ her honour to the knife, i.e. the knife will destroy her shame and recreate her honour.51 In yet another (twisted) analogy between her and Tarquin, the knife will later be the means used by Brutus to persuade the Romans to banish Tarquin and his family (Arden ed. 332n) and thus eventually becomes the instrument to dishonour Tarquin, to rob him of his reputation and his status. The notion of bequeathing establishes a further link with Tarquin: ‘My stained blood to Tarquin I’ll bequeath, /​Which by him tainted shall for him be spent, /​And as his due writ in my testament’ (1181–​3); she will bequeath the blood that has been stained to him who stained it.52 While she is being sarcastic in this bestowment, she is serious when she bequeaths her honour to the knife with which she kills herself. By this, the dishonouring of Lucrece’s body will be revenged. But her honour is also reinstalled because she ends her dishonoured life: when her life is dead, her honour will live, because (in her own reasoning) she will have shown that she is faultless with regard to the rape (which goes against the reasoning of Augustine) and have cleared her name from reproach, i.e. the possible allegation of a loss of chastity. This is also the source of her ‘fame’: by ending her shame, she will salvage her reputation.

5 0 Fernie reads her suicide in the context of shame (248–​9n4). 51 See 1210–​11: ‘Yield to my hand; my hand shall conquer thee: /​Thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.’ 52 The word ‘stain’ is repeated throughout the poem; to Kahn it is its ‘central metaphor’ (47).

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She also makes it very clear, however, that it is not only her reputation she is thinking of.53 In the following stanza she addresses her husband in an imagined dialogue and explains to him what she leaves him for a legacy. She openly asks him (in absentia) to revenge her and to ‘read’ (1195) in her example how he must use Tarquin, which is why she decides to wait for her husband and to let him know the reason of her suicide in order to warrant her revenge; she has now truly become the ‘mistress of [her] fate’ (1069).54 Accordingly, she kills herself also for Collatine (see Donaldson 12), not only for the restoration of her own virtue and honour: ‘Myself thy friend will kill myself thy foe’ (1196). With the doubling of ‘myself ’ –​which is both friend and foe, friend in doing good and saving her honour, foe in having been the means to destroy this honour –​she also mirrors an earlier characterization of Tarquin, who likewise struggled:  ‘And for himself himself he must forsake. /​Then where is truth if there be no self-​trust? […] /​ When he himself himself confounds’ (157–​60).55 By raping her, Tarquin has not only destroyed the unity of himself, but also that of Lucrece. While he eternally remains in this condition, she is able to reunite the two ‘myself ’s in her decision to commit suicide. But in this very fact also the notion of tragedy comes in. Her tragedy does not consist in her being raped by Tarquin but rather in that she feels that her soul paradoxically can only survive through her suicide. From a Christian-​Augustinian perspective, there is tragic irony in this. Tragedy thus becomes another link between poetry and drama, i.e. the stage of the soul. At the same time, contrary to Augustine, the narrator shows understanding for her deed and her decision to end her life: her ‘winged sprite’ (1728) is allowed to leave her body; he does not condemn her but explains how her soul cannot go on to live in a body that was corrupted and shamed.56 Lucrece and Troy: ekphrasis and dramatic enactment Lucrece thus decides to kill herself, but she is also determined not to die until her husband has ‘heard the cause of [her] untimely death’ (1178). She sends him a letter to summon him home, and, while waiting for his return, to entertain the ‘weary time’, she ‘calls to mind where hangs a piece /​Of skilful painting made for 53 That her husband’s honour means a lot to Lucrece was emphasized earlier in the poem: Tarquin threatens to kill her if she refuses him and kill a slave too to lay him next to her, which would damage her husband’s reputation. See also Kahn 58–​61. 54 This determination of Lucrece has been read as representing her male qualities (see Maus, ‘Language and Violence’ 299), esp. so as Ovid has ‘animi matron virilis’ (Fasti II.847). Another example of this is her chiding herself for fearing death when Tarquin attacked her. 55 Her self-​division will be referred to again later in the poem: ‘that unhappy guest /​Whose deed hath made herself herself detest’ (1565–6). See also Richard III, who will use a similar formula in his soliloquy before the battle at Bosworth (5.3.82–​4). 56 That suicide destroys the soul as well as the body is, however, the commonly held view. See, for example, Vittoria’s plea to her brother Flamineo in Webster’s The White Devil: ‘Will you turn your body, /​Which is the goodly palace of the soul, /​To the soul’s slaughter house?’ (5.6.56–​8). Vittoria here varies the ubiquitous topos of the body as the house of the soul.

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Priam’s Troy’ (1366–​7) which features ‘the power of Greece /​For Helen’s rape the city to destroy’ (1368–​9).57 The ‘rape’ of Helen is the element that makes her think of the painting, and it triggers an ekphrasis that becomes a dramatic enactment, a stage on the stage within the poem. This ekphrasis not only consists in a description of what Lucrece sees in the painting; it is also a presentation of the effect of the painting on her inner life, inasmuch as the image she is looking at in turn produces images before her inner eye (see Zirker, ‘Anschauung und Anschaulichkeit’). The effect of visual perception was stressed by the narrator earlier in the poem, before Lucrece sent off the letter to her husband: Besides, the life and feeling of her passion She hoards, to spend when he is by to hear her; When sighs and groans and tears may grace the fashion Of her disgrace, the better so to clear her From that suspicion which the world might bear her.   To shun this blot she would not blot the letter   With words, till action might become them better. To see sad sights move more than hear them told, For then the eye interprets to the ear The heavy motion that it doth behold, When every part a part of woe doth bear. (1317–​27)

Lucrece’s approach to writing the letter is one of economy: she does not report in detail about the rape but hoards the ‘life and feeling of her passion’ until her husband is present and can ‘hear her’.58 And even then, a ‘wind of words’ (1330) would make the sorrow ebb; more sorrow is expressed by fewer words:  ‘Deep sounds make lesser noise than shallow fords’ (1329). It will therefore not suffice to ‘hear her’: he will also have to see the ‘sad sight’, ‘for then the eye interprets to the ear’.59 Performance (which is directed at the visual as well as the auditive sense) adds to the persuasive power of words: ‘action might become them better’; at the same time, language remains the frame of reference (‘interprets’ 1325), eye and ear meet on the level of language.

5 7 On possible origins or models of this painting, see Truax. See also Wells, esp. 217–​20. 58 At the same time, the narrator’s description of her approach is not economical with regard to the use of words, as he uses a lot of doublings, e.g. the hendiadys in ‘life and feeling’ (Arden ed. 341n1317), and the antithetical figura etymologica ‘grace the fashion of her disgrace’; yet these doublings and antitheses are economical in that they linguistically refer back to Lucrece’s self-​divided state. 59 The Arden editors refer to a passage from Horace’s Ars Poetica, 180–​2: ‘However, the mind is less actively stimulated by what it takes in through the ear than by what is presented to it through the trustworthy agency of the eyes –​something that the spectator can see for himself ’; they continue to comment: ‘The line is part of the paragone or debate between the comparative power of visual images and of words’ (342n1324). But of course there is the alternative model of the ear being the higher organ. Shakespeare is ambivalent about this by making the eye interpret things to the ear:  we hear better when we include the eye in the hearing process. But the ear should not be overcrowded. On the hierarchy of the senses; see, e.g., Bauer, ‘John Donne and the Speaking Ear’.

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The narrator is using poetological terms throughout, thus making a metapoetical statement. When Collatine returns to learn of his wife’s fate, he will be her audience, and the action that turned out to be dramatic for Lucrece (with regard to her life) will then literally become a dramatic one: the notion of moving him is appropriate in the context of this tragedy (Aristotle speaks of ‘astonishment’, Poetics 52a). Lucrece wants to give ‘action’ (1323) to the description of her fate; what will be achieved is evidentia. She will ‘grace the fashion of her disgrace’ in order to ‘clear her from that suspicion’: the ‘senseless reputation’ will obtain energeia and help save her reputation. The use of ambiguous terms and the antithetical grace/​ disgrace illustrate the deletion of reproach ensuing her performance.60 Words will become images, the whole text is to be read like a drama, and the poetics of drama become the poetics of the epyllion, transformed from stage to page. Lucrece also reflects on the nature of (linguistic) signs in these lines; in her later ekphrasis this reflection will move from text to image. In the ‘heavy motion’ that the eye will see ‘every part a part of woe doth bear’. The noun ‘part’ is ambiguous as it refers to both the pars pro toto –​every part will be representative of the whole (i.e. ‘woe’) –​but also to the notion of role-​play: what is staged is woe, and every part (economically) represents this part, which shows the whole extent of the tragedy.61 The theatrical dimension of the line is actually emphasized by the word ‘motion’: ‘A show, an entertainment’ (OED, ‘motion, n.’ †8.a.). But the power of signs is also stressed through the chiastic better  –​letter  –​better (1320–​3) that is somewhat conspicuous62 but foregrounds the function of the letter –​both the letter that is sent to Collatine, whose return home will bring relief to Lucrece, and the linguistic sign, the letter, the word that enables Lucrece to ‘better’ her situation in being able to express her grief. It is again the medial transmission that is here (albeit implicitly) addressed. The medial transmission with the eye as interpreting power as well as the effect of linguistic and visual expression becomes decisive when Lucrece is looking at the Troy painting and links letter and image with one another. In the painting, again, ‘the eye interprets to the ear’ (1325), and Lucrece recognizes that, within the motion represented in it, likewise every ‘part’ that is played is one of ‘woe’.63 Not only does this chime in with her notion of herself becoming a ‘story’ (813), but the world of Troy becomes a stage in Lucrece’s thinking: what she sees becomes a story; she follows the painting scene by scene and recognizes that it is not static but dynamic, a liveliness highlighted by the narrator (esp. 1401–​21). The painter ‘gave lifeless life’ (1374), so that ‘[m]‌any a dry drop seemed a weeping tear […] The red blood reeked, to show the painter’s strife’ (1375–​7). 60 This is further emphasized by the verb grace governing disgrace:  grace is stronger here as an argument. Both ‘grace’ and ‘disgrace’ are ambiguous in their reference to an inner and an outward condition; see OED, ‘grace, v.’: 3. trans. a.; 5. trans.†a. ‘Disgrace, n.’ †2.a. and 3. 61 The notion of the theatre as pars pro toto is expressed, e.g., in the prologue to Henry V:  three soldiers will represent the whole army. 62 The Arden editors note: ‘The repetition is slightly awkward’ (341n1320–​3), but it obtains meaning in the overall context of the passage. 63 See also the self-​reflexive final lines of Romeo and Juliet: ‘For never was a story of more woe /​Than this of Juliet and her Romeo’ (5.3.309–​10).

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Her perusal of the painting begins with an overall view of Troy, soldiers, citizens. But then she zooms in and notices Ajax and Ulysses: In Ajax and Ulysses, O, what art Of physiognomy might one behold! The face of either ciphered either’s heart; Their face their manners most expressly told: In Ajax’ eyes blunt rage and rigour rolled;   But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent   Showed deep regard and smiling government. (1394–​400)

The faces of Ajax and Ulysses reflect their character –​their faces are ‘ciphered’, they are texts in and on which one can read their feelings. At the same time, the deception of ‘sly’ Ulysses evokes a parallel to an actor playing a role. The face that can be read provides a link to the face that signals what is going on in the soul, for example in the case of Lucrece:  the face there became a stage that showed the debate in her soul; and to Tarquin, for instance, during his first encounter with Lucrece when his true feelings (as well as his intentions) were not recognized by her.64 The deceptive power of the face is reflected on in the description of ‘sly Ulysses’ who shows ‘deep regard and smiling government’.65 The face becomes an index and a stage that can be watched and on which the emotions of a character are displayed or that is meant to deceive (‘conceit deceitful’ 1423). The faces of the two characters set Lucrece thinking, and the ‘imaginary work’ (1422) that is contained in the picture contributes to this. The phrase is used in the context of Achilles, and it denotes both ‘a work of the artist’s imagination’ and ‘a work which stimulates the imagination of the viewer’ (Burrow ed. 318n). Achilles is only presented metonymically by his spear: ‘himself behind /​Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: /​A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, /​Stood for the whole to be imagined’ (1425–​8). It is striking that the face, although mentioned, is not described in any more detail but, as hand, foot etc., stands for the ‘whole to be imagined’ before the mind’s eye; not everything is expressed in the painting, and ‘‘Tis but a part of sorrow that we hear’ (1328), which establishes a parallel between what is seen in the painting and the words and sounds in Lucrece’s letter. The painting is here just as economical with regard to its means, and the spectator or audience of the painting is to imagine what cannot be seen (see also Maus, ‘Language and Violence’ 312). Lucrece’s ekphrasis includes a theory of spectator response that is similar to the first Chorus of Henry V in which the speaker asks 64 The ability to decipher faces correctly as well as the ability to hide one’s genuine features seems to be gendered: ‘Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, /​Poor women’s faces are their own faults’ books’ (1252–​3); the statement is yet another reference to the book/​text metaphor. See 829:  ‘Reproach is stamp’d in Collatinus’ face.’ Castiglione writes:  ‘And therefore is the outwarde beautie a true signe of the inward goodnesse, and in bodies this comelines is imprinted more and lesse (as it were) for a marke of the soule, whereby she is outwardly knowne’ (309); whereas: ‘There be also many wicked men that have the comlinesse of a beautifull countenance, and it seemeth nature hath so shaped them, because they may bee the readier to deceive’ (308). 65 Ulysses is an ambivalent figure (see above), but the Arden editors read him in a positive light: ‘The government may be of his fellow Greeks of or himself ’ (348n1400).

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the audience to have their ‘imaginary forces work’ (1Pr 18).66 They are meant to ‘Suppose’, to imagine, to ‘Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them’ (26), which is the opposite connection of eye and ear: what is heard, can be seen.67 What is seen or heard is being translated; and this is also why Lucrece is able to ‘see’ the whole of Achilles, although only part of him –​the pars pro toto –​is actually visible. What can be seen is so lifelike and works on the imagination to such a degree that it is described as: ‘Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind’ (1423). ‘Conceit’ refers to the imagination,68 i.e. the two lines are actually tautological  –​the imaginary work that is imagination. The adjective ‘deceitful’ is linked to it in paronomastic play: the conceit that is deceit. ‘Deceitful’, according to the OED, has negative connotations (‘Full of deceit; given to deceiving or cheating; misleading, false, fallacious’); here, however, the meaning seems to refer to its deceiving the spectator into believing that what he sees is actually real. The representation is thus congenial to the subject matter: the Greeks’ deception is depicted skilfully; it is ‘compact’ and ‘kind’. Compact refers to the composition of the painting; it is ‘well put together’ (Arden ed. 350n1423; or to something that is ‘Made up by combination of parts; framed, composed of’, OED, ‘compact, adj.1’ I.2.); but it is also ‘[c]‌ompacted, knit, firmly put together’ (I.1.a), which can be linked to the pars pro toto and the economy of means.69 The second adjective in the line, ‘kind’ refers to something that is ‘natural, appropriate’ (Arden ed. 350n1423; see OED, ‘kind, adj.’ I. †1.). What we see is natural, and for that reason we are, for instance, tricked into seeing the whole person, even though he is not painted. The painting thus stimulates the imagination and chimes in with Shakespeare’s aesthetic view regarding its effect on the spectator, namely that the spectator is to respond to what he sees. Lucrece wishes her husband to be moved and persuaded by what he sees when he returns home; and likewise the painter (and the playwright) wants the spectator of what he presents to be moved and persuaded by his art. The art lies in being ‘compact’ and ‘kind’: in what the artwork is composed of and in its naturalness and aptness but also its economy of presentation. It is therefore sufficient that Nestor, for instance, is watched by Lucrece ‘Making such sober action with his hand /​That it beguiled attention, charmed the sight’ (1403–​4). Again, it is ‘conceit deceitful’ at work, and one movement of the hand is sufficient to betray (and transmit) his action, to ‘charm the sight’. The figures in the painting become actors, who are involved in events that are shown as ‘action’ (1403). The painting becomes a space that is (like drama) determined by contrast 66 See also Arden ed. 350n1422; and the use of ‘cipher’ in both the Prologue (17) and Lucrece (1396). 67 At the beginning of the poem, Tarquin is likewise moved by Collatine’s words, his description of Lucrece, and it is on the basis of the resulting image of her that he leaves Ardea. 68 See OED, ‘conceit, n.’: 7.b. ‘(without pl.) Fancy, imagination, as an attribute or faculty’; see esp. the example from Sidney: ‘a1586 Sir P. Sidney Apol. Poetrie (1595) sig. B4, That high flying liberty of conceit proper to the Poet.’ 69 The adjective is also linked to the imagination in Theseus’s speech: ‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet /​Are of imagination all compact’ (5.1.7–​8). Here, ‘compact’ refers as a past participle to the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, who are entirely composed of the imagination. This shows that seeing things which are not there is not a consequence of being compact (or compacted) but of the imagination itself.

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and antagonism: ‘light joy’ is juxtaposed with ‘heavy fear’; moreover, the mothers are compared to ‘bright things stained’ (1435), which evokes an analogy with Lucrece herself (see Arden ed. 351n1435). But she also finds a character to identify with more immediately in the painting –​as much as she will, in the course of its perusal, find the counterpart to Tarquin, so that she indeed sees herself and her story mirrored. In Hecuba’s ‘face where all distress is stelled’ (1444), i.e. portrayed (Arden ed. 352n), she is confronted with someone’s suffering,70 and this suffering becomes the linking element between the dramatic agon and the image presented in the painting: ‘the painter had anatomized /​Time’s ruin, beauty’s wrack and grim care’s reign’ (1450–​1); ‘Her blue blood changed to black in every vein […] Showed life imprisoned in a body dead’ (1454–​6). The black blood foreshadows Lucrece’s own fate: when she kills herself, black blood springs from her body. But she sees in Hecuba –​and in Hecuba as a representative of all of Troy –​an overall analogue to her own fate as she, too, is the victim of one man’s lust. Hecuba is portrayed as one who ‘Showed life imprisoned in a body dead’ (1456). In the case of Lucrece, likewise, the body is affected by what happened to her; she wants it dead so that her soul can live. But Hecuba is also the ‘sad shadow’ (1457) –​ both in terms of likeness and the actress performing within the painting  –​to whose ‘woes’ Lucrece ‘shapes her sorrow’ (1458). Lucrece knows that grief affords the ability to utter words  –​and she therefore offers to ‘tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue’ (1465). Whereas earlier, words had to be supplemented by the painting, now the painting has to be supplemented by words:  ‘Lucrece swears he [the painter] did her [Hecuba] wrong, /​To give her so much grief, and not a tongue’ (1462–​3). Lucrece enters into an interaction with the characters in the painting: ‘She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow’ (1498). This exchange is intricately linked to the notion of translation: the ekphrasis consists in a translation of that which is seen into something heard –​she sees with her ears, and she listens with her eyes; the painting is to become a ‘speaking picture’ (Sidney, Apology 90).71 But Lucrece does not only empathize with Hecuba –​she also pities her and is angry at the cause of ‘this stir’, namely the ‘strumpet’ (1471) that caused it, Helen. Her blame, however, is not so much on Helen as a person but on her beauty which she asks to destroy ‘with [her] nails’ (1472). She really blames Paris and addresses him: ‘Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear: Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here,   And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,   The sire, the son, the dame and daughter die.’ (1473–​7)

7 0 On ‘suffering’ as an integral part of tragedy, see Aristotle, Poetics 52b. 71 This is a reversal of what happens on the theatre stage: there, what is said becomes that which is seen before the inner eye (see the prologue to Henry V).

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Paris’s ‘heat of lust’ has led to a ‘load of wrath’ –​while Tarquin left behind a ‘load of lust’. It was mainly the ‘eye’ of Paris that caused all the mischief, and likewise it was the vision of Lucrece that made Tarquin rape her, which is, however, not her fault (as distinct from Paris’s): ‘By their [the eyes’] high treason is his heart misled’ (369). She blames Paris for having forgotten his public responsibility by following his lust: ‘Why should the private pleasure of some one /​Become the public plague of many moe?’ (1478–​9).72 This clearly is directed at Tarquin, who also followed the heat of his lust and who is therefore unfit to govern the state as he cannot even govern himself. Sin and guilt, she says, should ‘light alone /​Upon his head that hath transgressed so’ (1480–​1) and not affect others: ‘Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe’ (1482). She not only uses ‘soul’ metonymically here but also refers to her own situation: if a soul is innocent, she should not feel ‘sorrow that comes from a sense of being culpable’ (Arden ed. 355n1482). The anger she expresses at Paris’s unchecked lust is actually the one she feels for Tarquin, and she seems to include him in her address of the reader when she begins the next stanza with the imperative ‘Lo’: Lo, here weeps Hecuby, here Priam dies, Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds, […] And one man’s lust these many lines confounds.   Had doting Priam checked his son’s desire,   Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire. (1485–​91)

Her addressee is meant to look and to behold the picture she paints by means of her words which is one of woe, of death, and of misery. But the crucial element is expressed in line 1489: it was the lust of one man alone that brought all this doom over a people. There is one figure in the painting who resembles Tarquin even more than Paris. When her eye falls on Sinon, she sees how ‘His face, though full of cares, yet showed content’ (1503). Like Tarquin, he is full of ‘care’ and of deceit: In him the painter laboured with his skill To hide deceit, and give the harmless show An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still, A brow unbent that seemed to welcome woe, Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so   That blushing red no guilty instance gave,   Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have. (1506–​12)

72 See Bromley, who argues that the painting of Troy makes Lucrece see ‘herself in an historical context. Lucrece realizes that private sin does, in reality, become public plague. She sees that her position is not only private of personal but public and political’ (89). See also Berns, ‘Shakespeares heldische Lukretia’ 226–​32.

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In Sinon, deceit is hidden, and he puts on a ‘harmless show’, i.e. he is playing a part. He is able to control his emotions and his looks to a high degree; while Lucrece’s face mirrored the battle of red and white, beauty and chastity at the beginning, his cheeks are neither ‘red’ ‘nor […] pale’, but ‘mingled so’ that actually nothing shows in his face, neither guilt nor fear. Seeming and being are contrary to each other in Sinon, his ‘show’ (1514), which is ‘so seeming just’ (1514) eventually leads to the downfall of Troy.73 His ‘saintlike form’ (1519) is form only; what is inside him is ‘hell-​born sin’. Lucrece, who knows the story of Troy, is intrigued particularly by this depiction of Sinon, the ‘mild image’ the painter drew of him, which finally leads to her anagnorisis: This picture she advisedly perused, And chid the painter for his wondrous skill, Saying some shape in Sinon’s was abused: So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill. And still on him she gazed, and gazing still,   Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied,   That she concludes the picture was belied. ‘It cannot be,’ quoth she, ‘that so much guile’ –​ She would have said ‘can lurk in such a look.’ But Tarquin’s shape came in her mind the while, And from her tongue ‘can lurk’ from ‘cannot’ took. (1527–​37)

By looking at the painting and reflecting on the character of Sinon and his depiction, the forces of her memory start to work, and she suddenly pictures Tarquin before the eye of her mind. While at first thinking that there must be a correspondence between outer appearance and inner qualities –​‘So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill’  –​she then thinks of her own experience; she recognizes his deceit and her false conclusion that ‘It cannot be, I find /​But such a face should bear a wicked mind’ (1539–​40). A reversal takes place, and the correspondence is exactly what she finds must be the case: such a face must indicate a wicked mind. The outside is the index of the inside again –​but in reversal, i.e. she recognizes the inverted indexicality that links Sinon and Tarquin:74 ‘For even as subtle Sinon here is painted, So sober-​sad, so weary and so mild, As if with grief or travail he had fainted, To me came Tarquin armed to beguild With outward honesty, but yet defiled   With inward vice. As Priam him did cherish,   So did I Tarquin, so my Troy did perish.’ (1541–​7) 73 The word ‘show’ creates another link between Sinon and Tarquin:  ‘And therein heartens up his servile powers, /​Who, flattered by their leader’s jocund show’ (295–​6). 74 Another instance of this likeness is their consisting or being constituted by contrasting notions: ‘For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold, /​And in that cold hot-​burning fire doth dwell. / These contraries such unity do hold’ (1556–​8).

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She identifies the ‘subtle’, i.e. the ‘treacherously cunning, deceptive’ (Arden ed. 359n) behaviour of Sinon as well as of Tarquin and their similarity.75 As Sinon destroyed Troy, so did Tarquin destroy her. She no longer identifies her own fate with that of Hecuba but with the whole city of Troy: ‘so my Troy did perish’. She here sees herself as a besieged city –​as the narrator did earlier (and, thus, she also indirectly refers to Tarquin’s soul): a fake friend entered the walls of her body and conquered it by force, ‘Her house is sack’d, her quiet interrupted’ (1170–​2; see also Montgomery 33). While she was unable to revenge herself on Tarquin, she now is ‘all enraged’ (1562) and ‘tears the senseless Sinon with her nails, /​Comparing him to that unhappy guest /​Whose deed hath made herself herself detest’ (1564–​ 6). She sees the parallel and is again reminded of the consequences of the rape: she directs her aggression mainly at herself as she feels destroyed by Tarquin. What she sees in the painting triggers the eye of the mind but also her understanding: she is able to see her own situation in what is pictured about Troy. The stage upon the stage in the poem makes her see the state of her own soul; moreover, it makes her recognize what can be read and what is ciphered in faces, which become stages as well: they may mirror the soul –​or express the contrary. Thus, there are actually three levels of stages depicted here: the poem becomes a stage on which characters (inter)act; the painting is a stage-​upon-​the-​stage within the poem; and within the painting, emotions are being staged  –​in the double sense of displayed and feigned –​in faces. Lucrece’s ekphrasis triggers an anagnorisis on her part but also the ability of sympathy: ‘Being from the feeling of her own grief brought /​By deep surmise of others’ detriment /​Losing her woes in shows of discontent’ (1578–​80). She no longer feels alone in her grief (see above, 789–​98) but has found company in her discontent, albeit only within herself. In a next step, she will share the events with her husband, who returns from Ardea. ‘Immaculate and spotless is my mind’: Lucrece’s drama of the soul When Collatine returns, Lucrece herself becomes a stage which displays what happened to her. Not only is she ‘clad in mourning black’ (1585) in order to express her sadness; also her husband begins to observe her: 75 The anagnorisis consists in the fact that ‘she now acknowledges that a fair exterior does not guarantee a fair character’ (Dubrow, Captive Victors 109). This is a literary topos in the early modern period. See, e.g. Spenser’s Faerie Queene 2.9.1; and Barkan 164. Walkington in his Optick Glasse devotes a whole chapter to the question ‘Whether the internall faculty may be knowne by the externall physiognomie.’ He gives various examples of figures whose outward appearance does not correspond to their inner qualities; e.g. Sappho (19r), and those whose outer appearance mirrors their inner qualities, one of his examples being Ulysses (18r). The divergence of outer appearance and inner virtue is generally a Shakespearean topic, if one thinks of Macbeth ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ (see also Dubrow, Captive Victors 99) or of the caskets in The Merchant of Venice (see Leimberg, Reading 119–​42). See also Zirker, ‘Physiognomy’, on the context of the Silenus figure and the question of inner and outer correspondence. Lucrece knows that Sinon is an evil character since he belongs to a story familiar to her. Not every good face is an evil face in disguise. She could not have known about Tarquin but, judging from previous knowledge (analogous to the Troy story) must have held him to be a good character.

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Which when her sad-​beholding husband saw, Amazedly in her sad face he stares: Her eyes, though sod in tears, looked red and raw, Her lively colour killed with deadly cares. He hath no power to ask her how she fares.   Both stood like old acquaintance in a trance,   Met far from home, wond’ring each other’s chance. (1590–​6)

Their encounter is depicted as in a stage direction: they are standing there, facing each other, as in a (stage) tableau; at the same time, Lucrece and Collatine mirror each other: he is ‘sad-​beholding’76 and stares ‘amazedly’,77 while her face is ‘sad’. But there is more to be seen in her face. Lucrece’s inner division is now also perceptible on the outside: her eyes, ‘though sod in tears’, i.e. ‘boiled or scalded with’ (Arden ed. 364n1592), look raw; her ‘lively colour’ is contrasted with the ‘deadly cares’ she is feeling; she is made up of contrasts. Both are speechless, ‘in a trance’. Collatine (unlike the ‘troops of cares’ earlier) is not even able to ask his (spotted) princess ‘how she fares’.78 The state of ‘trance’ indicates the intermediate state that Lucrece finds herself in  –​which is now transposed to Collatine as well:  ‘An intermediate state between sleeping and waking; half-​conscious or half-​awake condition; a stunned or dazed state’ (see OED, ‘trance, n.1’ 3.a. and †1.); being ‘bloodless’ and ‘deadly’.79 When Collatine is eventually able to address her, he asks her to ‘[u]‌nmask […] this moody heaviness’ (1602),80 which alludes to the stage metaphor underlying this scene. After three attempts (cf. 1604) she is able ‘to let them [i.e. Collatine and his company] know /​Her honour is ta’en prisoner by the foe’ (1607–​8). The word choice –​that her honour is ‘prisoner’ to the foe –​is conspicuous: a prisoner may potentially also be released (see OED, ‘prisoner, n.2’); Lucrece will achieve this by killing herself, for, when she frees her soul from her body, she will also free her honour. But her immediate audience on the stage of the poem is as yet unaware of this meaning; whereas the reader, in an instance of dramatic irony, can infer it based on his knowledge of what happened to Lucrece. Lucrece then begins the ‘sad dirge of her certain ending’ (1612), i.e. she performs her own burial song. This self-​referential generic comment by the narrator points 76 The word is ambiguous. The Arden editors have added a hyphen, which lessens the ambiguity; they note as its meaning: ‘serious-​or grave-​looking’ (363n1590) but the expression also refers to his beholding sadness, which then reverberates onto his own mood. 77 See also his reaction to her suicide: again, he is described as in a tableau: ‘Stone-​still, astonished with this deadly deed, /​Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew’ (1730–​1). On astonishment as a theatrical/​dramatic element, see, e.g., Beyer. 78 The parallel between this scene and the earlier one concerned with Tarquin’s soul immediately after the rape is striking. Collatine and his company begin to resemble the troops of cares, especially so as Lucrece later asks all of them to revenge her (see 1688–​94). 79 Lucrece once more resembles the ‘monument’ that she was in her sleep (391) but also in her grief after the rape (798 and 805). For monuments as in-​between states see also Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Sites of Death’. 80 OED, ‘unmask, v.’: 2.a. fig. ‘To divest of a specious appearance or show; to disclose the true character of; to bring into the light; to make plain or obvious.’ This passage is the first entry denoting this figurative use (see Arden ed. 364n1602).

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to the performative quality both of the scene and of Lucrece. Dirges were, at least during the early modern period, often incorporated into dramatic texts.81 This involves yet another stage-​upon-​the-​stage in this epyllion:  Lucrece was earlier afraid that she might become a story; now she performs her own story in a dirge. She reports what happened, including her attacker’s threat to kill a slave and put him next to her in bed (see 1632–​8), and she ends with a plea to her audience: ‘O, teach me how to make mine own excuse! Or, at the least, this refuge let me find: Though my gross blood be stained with abuse, Immaculate and spotless is my mind; That was not forced, that never was inclined   To accessory yieldings, but still pure   Doth in her poisoned cabinet yet endure.’ (1653–​9)

She is desperate to find an excuse but only finds ‘refuge’ in contrasting her mind with her blood. Her body is thus metonymically represented by the blood, the defiled blood she is longing to be rid of. The phrase ‘gross blood’ is again an ambiguous one: ‘all my blood, all my descendants, my blood which is now coarse or lacking in refinement’ (Arden ed. 367n),82 which emphasizes the effect of the rape on herself but also on her children. But while her body is ‘stained’, her mind, i.e. her soul, is ‘spotless’. She contrasts the two in order to highlight that her chastity has not been diminished by the rape. The ‘poisoned cabinet’ still contains a pure treasure.83 She appeals to her husband and the lords in his company to ‘venge this wrong of mine’ (1691), and after they have all pledged their help, she goes on:           ‘O, speak,’ quoth  she, ‘How may this forced stain be wiped from me? What is the quality of my offence, Being constrained with dreadful circumstance? May my pure mind with the foul act dispense, My low-​declined honour to advance? May any terms acquit me from this chance?   The poisoned fountain clears itself again;   And why not I from this compelled stain?’ (1700–​8)

81 Cuddon (249) refers to, e.g., Ariel’s song for Ferdinand’s (supposedly) dead father (The Tempest 2.1; see also Abrams/​Harpham 102); Fidele’s dirge in Cymbeline (4.1); Cornelia’s song over Marcello (Webster 5.4). 82 See OED, ‘gross, adj. and n.4’: I.4.a. ‘with ns. denoting vices, errors, faults’; II. ‘With reference to comprehensiveness.’ †5.a., 6.a., 8. and †11. 83 The imagery she is using here is a particularly feminine one: the closet is a small room, often used by women to do work or write letters and important because of its privacy; see Burrow ed. 329n. By referring to a room she also alludes to the earlier imagery of the house and mansion that is her body.

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She externalizes her earlier inner debate now that she has an audience and voices her inability to understand what has been done to her as much as her despair at what she is about to do. The key words in her speech are all related to the semantic field of ‘force’: forced, constrained, compelled. She knows very well that she is not to blame, but at the same time sees no way to be acquitted from ‘this chance’, the ‘dreadful circumstance’. For one last time she debates, is in ‘mutiny’ with herself, which is represented by the accumulation of questions, and wonders whether the purity of her mind will not clear itself and herself from the stain that was given to her by Tarquin.84 But when the men watching her and listening to her confirm that ‘[h]‌er body’s stain her mind untainted clears’ (1710),85 she does not believe them. Lucrece’s inner debate and her dilemma are now conveyed to her audience; the inner stage has become an outer one, and she has come to her final act. Before stabbing herself, she has yet to name her ravisher. The stanza again reads like a stage direction: Here, with a sigh as if her heart would break, She throws forth Tarquin’s name: ‘He, he,’ she says, But more than ‘he’ her poor tongue could not speak; Till, after many accents and delays, Untimely breathings, sick and short assays,   She utters this: ‘He, he, fair lords, ’tis he   That guides this hand to give this wound to me.’ (1716–​22)

Tarquin’s name has become unspeakable for her. The precise description of what she is doing while she is trying to speak his name, the ‘accents and delays’, her breathing, all contribute to producing an image of her in the mind of the reader (see also Kahn 64). The aposiopesis contributes to this dramatic presentation of Lucrece; at the same time, this is an instance of dramatic irony: the reader (i.e. her external audience) knows very well who ‘he’ is; but her internal audience does not, which heightens the tension at this moment.

84 Kahn comments that, in this stanza (1701–​8), ‘[h]‌er questions are predicated on the Christian idea, voiced by Augustine, that the “Pure mind” can rule the body and transcend “dreadful circumstance”. For nearly a thousand lines previously, Lucrece has seemed unaware of such a distinction. Furthermore, in referring to the stain as “forced” and “compelled”, she deviates from her previous, amply elaborated belief that it is the inevitable consequence of the rape for her and her appropriate moral burden. Here Shakespeare simply forsakes consistency of characterization, as he often does, to clarify an idea which the character represents. This dramatic last-​minute appeal to a moral justice untainted by sexual prejudice is only the rhetorical prelude, however, to Lucrece’s final enactment of her selflessly patriarchal conception of the role of woman in marriage’ (66). But Shakespeare does not for one moment ‘forsake consistency of characterization’; Lucrece knows what the men will answer, her questions are rhetorical. What she aims to achieve here is a persuasion through her questions as to her dilemma and her resolution of it, namely to kill herself. She acts not so much against the background of her ‘patriarchal conception of the role of women in marriage’ but rather on her own understanding of honour and purity. She simply cannot go on to live in a body thus violated. 85 Battenhouse comments on this line:  ‘Shakespeare […] understands Lucrece’s staged suicide as paganism’s dark substitute for the Christian Passion story’ (25).

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The repeated ‘he’ and ‘’tis he’ also has another effect: Lucrece thus stresses that she does not kill herself but that it is actually Tarquin who kills her as he guides the hand that gives the wound to her body. Her action here also contains an implicit answer to Augustine and his problem with Lucrece’s suicide as stated in The City of God: she does not kill herself, Tarquin does, which is why her death is not suicide but murder. Lucrece regrets that she did not allow Tarquin to kill her  –​although, and this is also part of her dilemma, she is aware of the fact that this would have blemished her to a degree that she would not have had the chance to recompense, and that her honour would have been stained forever. She lacked fortitude, was weak, because she was afraid for her honour:  ‘Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak, /​And far the weaker with so strong a fear’ (1646–​7). But now, because Tarquin is weak (he has destroyed his soul), she can be strong (because her soul is pure). The two, the rapist and his victim, are linked by chiasmus: her body is his spotted soul, i.e. his inner stain is externalized onto her body, and because he has destroyed her body, his soul is destroyed. And while, earlier, she was too weak to act, she is now the mistress of her fate. She can decide her own fate as well as of Tarquin’s who, when he raped her, was judge, complainant and witness at once (see 1648–​52), leaving her, the ‘prisoner’, in a helpless situation. With killing herself she wants to reverse her fate; that such reversal is at least partly possible in her view becomes obvious when she asks her husband to ‘Suppose thou dost defend me /​From what is past’ (1684–​5). The verb ‘defend’ usually has an aspect of the future to it (or to the present time), but here it is used to refer to a deed in the past. Likewise, Lucrece now turns back the time and, when penetrating her own flesh with a knife, she actually makes Tarquin kill her –​’tis he /​That guides this hand to give this wound to me’: Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed: That blow did bail it from the deep unrest Of that polluted prison where it breathed. Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed   Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly   Life’s lasting date from cancelled destiny. (1723–​9)

The knife to which she bequeathed her honour goes into her breast like into its sheath, i.e. as if her breast was its destined container; at the same time, the sheathing of the knife means the unsheathing of her soul that now is able to leave its container.86 The movements in this stanza are as chiastic and antagonistic (and thus linked) as is the relation between Lucrece and Tarquin –​and they gain a similar allegorical meaning:  she sheathes the knife in her body, 86 Walkington refers to Plato’s concept of the body as prison of the soul: ‘whiles this mind of ours hath this abode in this darkesome dungeon, this vile mansion of our body, it can neuer act his part well, till it step vpon the heauenly stage’ (11r). This reads like a commentary on Lucrece.

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her soul is unsheathed (1174–​6); her harmless breast is juxtaposed with the harmful knife. Her view is then adopted by the narrator:  now that she is dead and thus unable to speak and think, the narrator speaks of the ‘polluted prison’ where the soul ‘breathed’. The soul is bailed, i.e. released ‘by the offering of a security’ (Burrow ed. 333n, i.e. the knife unto which she bequeathed her honour); the word choice refers back to the imprisonment she felt:  ‘Her honour is ta’en prisoner by the foe’ (1608). When threatened by Tarquin, she thought of her honour, but her honour was stained, by the rape  –​her suicide thus ‘cancels destiny’ in that it restores her reputation. What flies from her is ‘life’s lasting date’, i.e. her immortality.87 And as she bequeathed all kinds of things to all kinds of people, and also her ‘soul and body to the skies and ground’ (1199), her soul now is ‘bequeathed’ upwards ‘to the clouds’ with the help of her contrite, i.e. her repentant sighs. The narrator continues to tell the reader what happens to the soul  –​not in the manner of the speaker in Donne’s Holy Sonnets who says that the soul ‘shall’ go to the sky (e.g. Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, see below), but with certainty. He never explicitly says that her soul goes up to heaven (which would have been possible metrically) but ‘unto the clouds’. By introducing an ambiguity to these lines, Shakespeare maintains the Roman story context, without, however, fully forestalling a possible Christian reading.88 Lucrece kills herself in order to set her (virtuous and pure) soul free from the blemished body, and because she is afraid that this purity might, in the long run, be destroyed or infected by her spotted blood.89 Accordingly, when Brutus draws the knife from her breast, two streams of blood flow from it:

87 The word ‘date’ contains a pun on ‘datum’, a gift (OED, ‘date, n.2’). The meaning of the line is: Life’s lasting date, i.e. what is lasting about life (the immortal soul), flies through the wounds, away from her destiny (of being a dishonoured woman) which is now cancelled. 88 The editors of the Oxford and the Arden editions accordingly provide contradictory and mutually exclusive readings; Maxwell notes that line 1729 –​‘Life’s lasting date’ –​is ‘obscure’ (Cambridge ed. 201n); see Burrow: ‘eternal life, which escaped from the temporary cancelled bond which tied her to her human life […] This line marks the inversion of the fear of Lucrece had expressed in those lines [934–​35], that she would be permanently bound to receive endless woes’ (333n), i.e. her soul is immortal and has been released from the body; the clouds are heaven (which would be a reading in accordance with both pagan ideas of the afterlife of the soul as well as Christian). The Arden editors provide a different reading; in their view, Lucrece has destroyed the immortality of her soul by committing suicide, and, although her soul may go to the clouds, i.e. flies out of the body in an upward direction, she is not saved, which is implicitly conferred by the poet’s choice of words (the clouds instead of heaven) (373n). 89 Belling explains the defilement of Lucrece’s blood in terms of cacochymia and refers to Gyer’s English Phlebotomy (1592): ‘a corrupted quality of humors, by reason whereof the humor departeth from his just mediocritie [a term of approbation meaning balance and temperateness]. Under which cacochymia is conteyned all corruption of humors in quality: whereby the powers of the bodie are hindered from their proper functions, whereby also the whole bodie waxeth filthie and daily decayeth’ (8; see Belling 117–​18). See also Walkington 49v, on plethora and cacochymia; and Neely 55.

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And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, Who like a late-​sacked island vastly stood Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.   Some of her blood still pure and red remained,   And some looked black, and that false Tarquin stained. About the mourning and congealed face Of that black blood a wat’ry rigol goes, Which seems to weep upon the tainted place; And ever since, as pitying Lucrece’ woes, Corrupted blood some watery token shows,   And blood untainted still doth red abide,   Blushing at that which is so putrefied. (1737–​50)

Two rivers of blood flow from her body, one red, the other black.90 This blood in fact represents the state of her body: most of it is clean, untainted, but some of it has been stained by the rape; the stain of the body, its blackness, is literally transferred to the blood. With killing herself, Lucrece has thus deterred more of her blood being infected by the stain that Tarquin left. Lucrece’s drama is one of the soul: in order to save it from losing its immortality –​ that which Tarquin’s soul lost because of the rape –​she has to sacrifice her body. The tragedy of Lucrece thus consists not only in the rape itself but also in the dilemma that ensues and that brings forth the chiastic connection which exists between Lucrece and her ravisher. His soul is a ‘spotted princess’, while her body is stained. While he cannot save his soul (his body intact), she can save her soul by leaving her body behind; the salvation for her lies in the blood, which metonymically stands for the body: ‘Ere she with blood had stained her stained excuse’ (1316). The choice she has to make between body and soul causes the ‘mutiny’ inside her –​the dilemma actually is not one as she knows that she does not really have a choice; in fact, her life is already over because of the rape, all she can do is restore her honour after Tarquin has destroyed her. This tragedy that lies at the basis of the story of Lucrece provides the link between poetry and drama, the epyllion becomes the stage of the soul –​and the soul becomes a stage.

90 This is somewhat reminiscent of the introduction of Lucrece and the colours that were represented her beauty and her chastity, red and white (Belling 122). –​The concept of red blood signifying health and black blood some kind of disease, either physical or mental, can be traced back to Aristotle’s Historia Animalium: ‘If healthy, blood naturally has a sweet taste, and a red colour; if in inferior condition, either naturally or through disease, it tends to be black. Blood in its best condition is not excessively thick nor thin, unless it has deteriorated either naturally or through disease’ (1: 3.19.520b; 219). See also Kahn 64. Belling cites Celcus’ De Medicina on ‘vitiated’ black and healthy red blood (120).

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Lust-​breathed Tarquin –​Lucrece, the name of chaste: antagonism, parallelism, and chiasmus1 In his study on chiasmus in Macbeth, Anthony Paul incidentally comments on the abundance of the rhetorical figure in Lucrece: ‘Early Shakespeare, no less than Lyly or Sidney, revels in elegant, playful, spectacular (as well as specular) linguistic performance and verbal patterning. In the leisurely, prolix style of Lucrece, for instance, chiasmus is one of the many forms of rhetorical luxuriance, rather than a means of semantic or mimetic reinforcement’ (36).2 While he regards the use of chiasmus in Lucrece as a sign of Shakespeare showing off his rhetorical and stylistic skill, the analysis of the text so far has shown that chiasmus is rather more important: it is functional in Shakespeare’s poem.3 The views pronounced by Paul on Lucrece, especially that the style is ‘leisurely’ and ‘prolix’ are beside the point (let alone unclear) and rather astounding when he later writes (about Macbeth):  ‘the pervasiveness and centrality of chiastic patterning […] is not merely a matter of local rhetorical effect (there are, indeed, in a work so massively integrated, no effects that are merely local: every part of the composition interacts with every other part)’ (54).4 As much as Paul seems to want to contrast the early and the late Shakespeare, chiasmus is not an arbitrarily used figure of speech in Lucrece.

1 A few aspects addressed in this chapter has been published in Zirker, ‘Performative Iconicity’. 2 Davis dwells rather extensively on the difference between chiasmus and antimetabole (‘Art’ 311–​ 12) to then stress that the distinction was less defined in the Renaissance (312); he also refers to its biblical models. On chiasmus in the Bible see Watson, ‘Chiastic Patterns’; on definitions of chiasmus, see Lausberg §§800–​3; Nänny (esp. 75); and Puttenham, who emphasizes the notion of ‘exchange’ (293: ‘Antimetabole, or the Counterchange’). 3 Paul goes on to speak of a ‘variety of uses’ (37) of chiasmus, followed by the sweeping statement: ‘in early Shakespeare, feeling, or fancy, is sometimes allowed to hold up the action, in mature Shakespeare, action and feeling are generally more closely integrated’ (37). A similarly sweeping statement follows about generic contexts: ‘in comedy, wordplay is interpersonal […] as it generally is not in tragedy’ (40). Lucrece is more complex as a narrator and implied reader are involved and the relation also becomes ‘interpersonal’, e.g. by means of reader address. Paul’s taking exception with Lucrece is even more surprising as he also states that: ‘All Shakespeare’s tragedies are built on the conflict of oppositions, of complementary incompatibilities’ (41). 4 See also his reading of Sonnet 138 and the chiasmus in the final couple ‘as the appropriate figure to convey this idea of reciprocal deception as well as the feeling of mutual interdependence’ (72). A similar relation can be stated with regard to Tarquin and Lucrece.

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Chiasmus, which is often based on items that are brought into a contrasting and antagonistic relation,5 is part of the semiotic structure of the poem, contributing to its iconic-​performative qualities:6 throughout the text of Lucrece, examples of parallelism, antagonism, and chiasmus can be found; these structures help illustrate but also enact the relation between the characters. They concern individual words and are part of the syntax but they also involve the characters, first and foremost Tarquin and Lucrece. Chiasmus and parallelism in small units influence the content  –​and the content of the text interacts with its gestalt.7 With regard to the characters, they also refer to the link between the body and the soul, especially when an ‘exchange’ takes place between Tarquin and Lucrece, the ‘spotted princess’ that is his soul; in this case, chiasmus helps overcome the antagonism between the characters in the course of the enactment of the myth. Parallelism and chiasmus may concern the inner and outer states of characters and contribute to the overall allegory; contrast helps us recognize analogies, and chiasmus thus becomes a means of showing parallels. One of the earliest instances of syntactic chiasmus in Lucrece can be found with regard to Tarquin. After his arrival at Collatium, he is described as lying in bed and unable to sleep because of his inner battle between lust and fear –​and the question whether or not to rape Lucrece: As one of which doth Tarquin lie revolving The sundry dangers of his will’s obtaining; Yet ever to obtain his will resolving. (128–​30)

The chiasmus here is embedded in an apo koinou construction and serves to emphasize Tarquin’s inner division; the syntactical structure mirrors his inner state: on the one hand, he considers the dangers that result from ‘his will’s obtaining’, on the other hand, he wants to ‘obtain his will’.8 The syntactic form underlying the chiasmus in this example is complicated through the apo koinou, which introduces yet another level of contrast, namely between his bodily ‘revolving’ in bed and his mental ‘revolving /​The sundry dangers’; moreover, the underlying contrastive relation is supported by ‘Yet’: will’s obtaining –​Yet –​obtain his will. The syntax 5 On the relatedness of chiasmus, contrast and also parallelism see, e.g., Davis, ‘Structural Secrets’ (238); Horvei, Study in Shakespearean Rhetoric (esp. 188, 193) and Der Chiasmus, ch. 4 (95–​105); Paul. Chiasmus may be syntactic and semantic (Horvei, Der Chiasmus 15). 6 Nänny notes how chiasmus can be used to ‘various mimetic or iconic ends’ (75), e.g. ‘as an iconic reinforcement of reversal or inversion’ (81) and ‘an emblem to indicate balance, symmetry or equality’ (90). 7 See Engel: ‘chiasmus can be used to situate and to reflect in syntactic terms what is being played out on a larger scale’ (4); his example is Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. He goes on: ‘Shakespeare’s use of extreme dramatic symmetries as yet another way that allegories of desire are created and mimetic visions of order are presented and resolved chiastically’ (10). Nänny notes that chiastic structure may become ‘part and parcel of the total meaning of a text’ (81). 8 The complexity of these lines goes beyond the performance of ‘pleasant ornamental tricks’ that Paul generally ascribes to the early Shakespeare (33). They rather express, as Horvei puts it in similarly general terms, ‘in condensed form’ one of the ‘main ideas’ of the work (Study in Shakespearean Rhetoric 17). On chiasmus as a compositional principle in Shakespeare see also Ramirez.

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iconically represents and enacts Tarquin’s difficulty at making a decision but also his being made up inwardly of contrasting forces, i.e. his will/​lust and his fear. The ambiguity is continued in ‘dangers of his will’s obtaining’ which also contains an apo koinou. At first, one reads ‘dangers of his will[’s]’; i.e. the will itself is dangerous. Then one reads ‘dangers of his will’s obtaining’, which leads to a reinterpretation of ‘dangers’ in the sense of ‘risk’: Tarquin ponders that there may be some risk involved in doing what he desires. In this case, the will is not dangerous (to Lucrece and perhaps others) but the action is risky (to Tarquin). The apo koinou in these lines enacts the double perspective, while chiasmus expresses it. Whereas in the case of Tarquin, chiasmus is used locally (i.e. on the microstructural level) to portray his inner state, for Lucrece, it emphasizes her ability to bring contrasting forces to a reconciliation (at any rate before the rape). After Tarquin has entered her room, she is described in detail: Her hair, like golden threads, played with her breath, O modest wantons, wanton modesty! Showing life’s triumph in the map of death, And death’s dim look in life’s mortality. (400–​3)

There are at least two instances of chiasmus to be found in these lines, and both times they connect elements with one another that are related by an oxymoron. The first, ‘modest wantons, wanton modesty’, refers to Lucrece’s hair which becomes metonymical of Lucrece herself:9 it is both ‘immodestly restrained’ (Arden ed. 272n400) and modest, i.e. contraries ‘hold unity’.10 According to the Arden editors, oxymoron and chiasmus ‘enact the reconciliation of life and death and sex and chastity’ (Arden ed. 272n400). But the riddle of the life–​death chiasmus is still there, and the apparent chiasmus  –​life’s triumph in the map of death /​And death’s dim look in life’s mortality –​does not exactly express a double balance:  life’s triumph in the map of death /​And death’s dim look in life’s mortality.11 First, ‘life’s triumph’ and ‘the map of death’, i.e. life and death are contrasted with each other; but then, ‘death’s dim look’ is not antagonistic to ‘life’ but to ‘mortality’. ‘Life’ is just the possessive; the object is ‘mortality’, i.e. death. The chiasmus does hence not enact a reconciliation of life and death. Rather, the expectation of such a chiastic balance is created only to be tipped towards the side of death, which contains a clear foreshadowing of Lucrece’s tragedy. The apparent contrast is in fact a parallelism.

9 The Arden editors note:  ‘The paradoxical and playful nature of the description is suggested by the way her hair plays in response to her breath, rather than the more conventional images of her breath playing with her hair’ (272n400). 10 See Shakespeare’s ‘married chastity’ in Phoenix and Turtle. 11 The ‘map of death’ is reminiscent of the body of the beloved in Donne’s Elegies; moreover, map refers to ‘the embodiment, the very picture or image’ (Arden ed. 272n402; see OED, ‘map, n.1’, 5.b.). Sleep as a shadow of death is topical, e.g. in Donne, but also in Romeo and Juliet.

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These two examples referring to the main characters illustrate that parallelism and chiasmus do not only work on the syntactical level but actually determine and express relations of characters as well as the structure of the text:  the first half focuses on Tarquin, the second on Lucrece, and in-​between these two parts, the rape takes place, the peripety of the drama. Parallelism and chiasmus are also functional with regard to the inherent drama of the poem, which is illustrated by the off-​balance chiasmus of Lucrece. The two characters are intricately linked to one another, but the chiastic relations expressed are not always the same and may have different functions –​as these two examples have shown. The point is not ‘simply symmetry’ (Fowler 102), but chiasmus is used to express all kinds of different relations, from symmetry to contrast.12 Chiasmus on the level of syntax thus points towards chiastic structures on the level of character. This is true both for individual characters, e.g. in the context of their self-​division (see the example above of Tarquin) or their ability to ‘hold contraries in unity’ (as in the case of Lucrece), but also in their interaction. Lucrece and Tarquin are set in a chiastic relation to one another: he, being ‘lust-​breathed’, wants to rape her because she represents what he is not, namely chastity; after the rape, his shame becomes hers, and his soul is identified with Lucrece; his (public) siege of Ardea is transposed onto his (private) siege of Lucrece; and the ‘private’ action of the rape is transformed by Lucrece into a public one through her suicide, culminating in a new political situation for Rome. Tarquin himself expresses their interconnectedness at one point, which is reported by Lucrece to her husband: ‘[He said:] this act will be /​My fame, and thy perpetual infamy’ (1637–​8). ‘Fame’ and ‘infamy’ are here juxtaposed in an antagonistic relation on the basis of the etymological relation between the two words and linked through parallelism: Tarquin’s threat to kill Lucrece and put her in bed with one of her servants shows his reasoning; he would be famous, her fate would be infamy. The connection that would result from this deed is based on parallelism and contrast –​the two (again) reinforce each other. Lucrece’s suicide eventually reverses the relation of fame and infamy that Tarquin announces here: she will become famous (for her chastity), he infamous (for the rape). That the fear of infamy, the feeling of ‘shame’ as well as the notions of ‘honour’ and ‘fame’ are relevant to Lucrece is made obvious when she is making her ‘will’: ‘My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife That wounds my body so dishonoured. ’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life; The one will live, the other being dead. So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,   For in my death I murder shameful scorn;   My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.’ (1184–​90) 12 Fowler comments on the use of chiasmus in Venus and Adonis (102–​3). On the various functions of chiasmus, see also Horvei, Der Chiasmus.

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Lucrece dwells on her honour and her being dishonoured; these two words frame the first two lines of the stanza and are repeated in a parallel construction in line three. But honour also frames the whole stanza, cancelling shame through death and thus also emphasizing Lucrece’s motive for her suicide. The contrastive relation of honour and dishonour are set in connection with fame and shame; the concluding three lines of the stanza (1188–​90) are composed around these notions: shame –​death[ashes] –​fame –​breeding /​death –​shame /​shame –​death –​ honour [similar to fame] –​birth [similar to breeding]. This is a choreography of four words/​notions, in which chiasmus and parallelism (also through rhyme) are carefully intertwined; the chiasmus is inserted into a parallel construction. The resulting image here is not one of exchange but of fame and honour being born, phoenix-​like, from the ashes of Lucrece’s shame, and this image is enacted in the language of these lines. Lucrece goes on to talk about her testament, her ‘legacy’ (1192), and this is the epitome of the anagnorisis of her connection with Tarquin:  ‘How Tarquin must be used, read it in me’ (1195). When she is looking at the Troy painting, she learns how to read –​the story depicted there becomes a book, like her face was to be deciphered as a text –​in a similar fashion, she will become a story to be read and to give instructions how to ‘use’ Tarquin (1198–​204). She states that she will give her ‘soul and body to the skies and ground’ (1199) and bequeath resolution, honour etc. to various instances in a parallel structure; the stanza ends on chiasmus, and ‘shame’ and ‘fame’ become the predominant arguments:  ‘My shame be his that did my fame confound; /​And all my fame that lives disbursed be /​To those that live and think no shame of me’ (1202–​4). In a quasi-​commercial exchange, she gives her shame to Tarquin, while she remains with ‘no shame’. Her fame that was ‘confounded’ by Tarquin will be ‘paid out’ (Arden ed. 333n1203) to those that do not blame her for what happened. The word ‘disbursed’ and the subsequent argument also underline the notion of giving and taking here, which is based on a chiasmus that can be found both on the lexical and syntactic as well as the semantic level. The form iconically mirrors the matter at hand, and Lucrece herself becomes the instrument of her fame through the exchange that takes place between her and Tarquin. She thus helps herself to a more positive ending. Chiasmus and parallelism are strong formal and semantic elements throughout the poem; the reader will at some point recognize their significance that goes beyond the expression of mirror images or contrasts as well as beyond the expression of self-​division within individual characters. Chiasmus determines the structure of Lucrece and serves to iconically represent reversals and exchanges of inner and outer self, of wit and will –​‘What wit sets down is blotted straight with will’ (1299) –​of body and soul, of Tarquin and Lucrece. She becomes the ‘spotted princess’ that is Tarquin’s soul and is bodily harmed, while his body stays intact. Against this background, the action taking place between Tarquin and Lucrece becomes a reversed (or even perverted) love tragedy where lust encounters chastity and destroys it. One might, however, also read the overall conclusion in the sense of a slightly happier (or at least not entirely tragic) ending, when harm is turned into harmony in this poem.

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Plotin, in his reflections on the theatrum mundi, uses the ‘metaphor of the stage to elucidate the idea of universal harmony’ (Leimberg, Reading 95) by linking it to a very specific concept of the soul: ‘What is evil in the single soul will stand a good thing in the universal system’ (Enneads III.2.177). He thus provides a theodicy in explaining the existence of evil as a necessary precondition of the existence of good. Read in this light, we might come to regard Tarquin’s as a necessary role –​and the story of Lucrece no longer a tragedy as harm brings harmony. Their relationship thus is indeed one of exchange: his evil, his infamy result in bringing about ‘good […] in the universal system’, especially if one thinks of the political implications of the Lucrece-​story. The exchange (or even commerce) between them leads to the positive in the negative, and this also goes for the foundation of the Roman republic. Chiasmus thus contributes to the allegory which becomes diversified on the stage of the poem in the acting characters. They are different, defined by defect and perfection, they are polar antagonists  –​but in their opposition actually form a unity. The underlying (or overarching) allegory is intricately linked to the genre of epyllion that connects poetry and drama with narrative, to psychomachia and to the psychology of the characters, e.g. in the soliloquy. The inner debates performed and enacted in the poem become an allegorical drama of the soul, and, hence, Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece is indeed a poem of the soul.

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PART II

John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and the so(u)le-​talk of the soul

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Divine comedies: the speaker, his soul, and the poem as stage

John Donne was deeply influenced by the theatre.1 In his youth, according to his contemporary Richard Baker (156; see also Bentley 50; Cruttwell 42), he had been ‘a great frequenter of plays’,2 and, later in his career, when he was Dean of St. Paul’s, he let his knowledge and experience come to fruition in the seriousness of his performance as a man of God and a preacher.3 Even his biographical background shows links to the theatre: he was the grandson of the playwright John Heywood and the father-​in-​law of Edward Alleyn.4 Moreover, his poetry was written at about roughly the same time when Shakespeare’s Sonnets were published in 1609 (Gardner xxix, xxxvii–​lv);5 and, although it will remain unknown if Donne ever met William Shakespeare in person, he certainly cannot have escaped the latter’s theatrical success in London. When it comes to the Holy Sonnets,6 at least three aspects of drama can be identified:7 dramatic allusion (esp. to medieval morality 1 Leimberg notes the importance of drama for Donne’s divine poetry and the prevalence of dramatic forms for his subjective expression and style (Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis 146–​7). See also the biographies of Donne by Bald; Carey; Docherty; Edwards, John Donne; Gosse; Gransden; Kermode; Marotti; Parfitt; Partridge; Payne; Walton. 2 See Collier, Memoirs of Edward Alleyn; see also Miller 10. 3 See Fetzer, Performances 27 and ‘Donne’s Sermons’ on the dramatic and performative quality of his sermons; see also Döring 20; and Crockett 3. 4 Gosse refers to the family background of Donne’s mother:  ‘His mother’s great-​grandmother, who was born in 1482, had been Elizabeth, sister of the illustrious Sir Thomas More. Elizabeth More married a friend and fanatical follower of the great Chancellor, John Rastell […] This man, John Rastell (or Rastall) the elder, was an impetuous controversialist, and like his more eminent grandson by marriage, John Heywood, took an interest in the infancy of the drama’ (Gosse 1: 5). See also Bald 22, 47; Koppenfels 141–​2. Harris points to Donne’s friendship with Ben Jonson in this context (258–​9); he argues that Donne’s view of the theatre was negative but all evidence speaks against such a view. 5 On the affinities of Shakespeare’s and Donne’s dramatic œuvre and poetry, esp. in the context of the depiction of love, see Koppenfels 138. On the dating of the Holy Sonnets see also below. 6 Quotations are based on the Westmoreland Sequence in the Variorum edition, unless otherwise indicated. 7 While it is a commonplace in Donne criticism to call his poetry ‘dramatic’, this epithet often lacks a clear definition (see Ferry 10). Critics who have labelled Donne’s poetry, the Holy Sonnets in particular, as ‘dramatic’, refer to different qualities when using the term: immediacy, action, role-​ playing, forms of speech, pathos, wit, effect, genre. Legouis comes to the conclusion ‘that general agreement upon the epithet “dramatic” rather tends to confusion than enlightenment because no two critics seem to understand it in the same sense’ (47). See also Austin, Language 16; Gardner,

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plays);8 the perception of the soul as a character in its own right and the resulting communicative situation of the soliloquy; and the poem as a stage with a speaker who becomes a character on that stage and experiences an inner drama. Dramatic allusion serves to underline the drama that the speaker witnesses and in which he is involved. In the Holy Sonnets, this drama tends to revolve around the meditatio mortis, i.e. the speaker imagines his being ‘summoned’ to death (Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’). This is a very personal and individual experience, and thus agrees with the nature of Donne’s interest in the soul, its relation to the body, and its immortality.9 In one of his letters to Sir Henry Goodyer from December 1611, he comments on Averroes: ‘It is not perfectly true which a very subtil, yet very deep wit Averoes says, that all mankinde hath but one soul, which informes and rules us all, as one Intelligence doth the firmament and all the Starres in it; as though a particular body were too little an organ for a soul to play on’ (Letters 1651 43), and eventually contends that this opinion ‘expresse[s]‌[…] the mutuall necessity of one another’ (43–​4) and the inability of man to live alone. Donne apparently refutes the idea that all human beings participate in a single overall soul and emphasizes the individuality of every being and their soul.10 It is this very singularity of the soul in each individual man that becomes relevant in his Holy Sonnets. In some of the sonnets, the speaker addresses his soul and the various parts that constitute his self. These parts are conceived of in a double sense: the stage of the poem becomes a world of its own (in the sense of the theatrum mundi topos), with a speaker who takes on different roles in each sonnet (although these roles may sometimes resemble each other), and a speaker who addresses several parts of himself: his body, soul, and ‘I’ (see Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’). The speaker enters upon a stage and addresses his current situation, e.g. that of his impending death. Similarly, the soul becomes a stage whenever conflicting forces struggle within the speaker as in a psychomachia. The soul itself becomes the theatron, the place of dramatic action, and the speaker is doubled in being an actor and an audience in the scene presented (Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’). Thus, not only the poem may become a stage but also the soul; the stage may be external to the speaker (he is speaking on the stage of the poem) and internal (his ‘Religious Poetry’ 189; Leishman, Monarch of Wit 20; Robbins 231–​2; Wilcox, ‘Devotional Writing’ 154, 161. Müller points to the fact that lyrical speech is often understood in terms of dramatic-​ monological speech; he refers to John Crowe Ransom as well as to Brooks/​Warren’s view that all poetry involves a dramatic organization (Das Lyrische Ich 47). 8 On the influence of morality plays well into the sixteenth and also the early seventeenth century, see, e.g., Weber, esp.  80–​3; Dessen, Shakespeare and the Late Moral Plays; and Johnston, who criticizes the fact that that ‘the Middle Ages is constructed as the Renaissance’s absolute Other’ (269). See also Simpson on the ‘medievality’ of Donne (Prose Works 74); and Grant: ‘the ways in which Donne’s Holy Sonnets are medieval have scarcely been adequately described’ (561). 9 Targoff points to the fact that Donne’s library contained several works on the soul and its immortality (Body and Soul 7–​8). See also Stanwood for Donne’s books (195). 10 Averroes thought that the individual soul is eternal but that all mankind shares one and the same divine soul. See, e.g., introduction to the edition of Averroes by Wirmer, Einleitung; and Mohammed. Thomas Aquinas took a contrary position; see, e.g., McInerny; and Zedler, Introduction 12, who refers to Aquinas’s On the Unity of the Intellect III.62 (see Zedler 1). Potter/​ Simpson comment on Aquinas’ influence on Donne (Sermons 10: 364); see also Ramsay.

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soul becomes a stage). This double perspective may, however, in itself be doubled as well, in accordance with the ambiguity of ‘stage’: while on the stage, the speaker may go through different stages that indicate his progress in the pilgrimage that is his life or on his way to death. Furthermore, the soul travels towards the moment of its separation from the body and its redemption. The sonnets, therefore, do not present tableaux but are dynamic; the stages the speaker experiences are related to the topic of sin and redemption from sin, for example, through divine grace (see Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’). The Holy Sonnets in themselves stage the speaker’s way towards salvation, they are redemptive dramas, following the tradition set by morality plays in the late medieval period. By means of their highly individual speaker they can also be related to early modern drama, for instance to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, albeit adhering to the genre conventions of comedy rather than tragedy through their happy endings: hence, one might also call these miniature dramas divine comedies. The generic contexts associated with drama are further reflected in the form of the sonnet itself. Donne’s Holy Sonnets mostly end happily (or with a positive outlook, e.g. Holy Sonnet ‘Batter my Heart’), either in that the speaker finds grace, a way towards redemption, or in that death is overcome (Holy Sonnet ‘Death bee not proud’). The resolution of the dramatic conflict that the speaker presents in the course of the sonnet usually comes with the volta, which acts as a peripety, and finds its climax in the final couplet. The sonnets thus adhere to structural units that are traditionally related to drama:11 the speaker begins with an exposition  –​either the situation he finds himself in, for instance, his being summoned by death, or with the imagination of a particular scene, in the sense of a compositio loci and in the tradition of Ignatian meditation (Holy Sonnet ‘Spitt in my face’). The more he becomes aware of his desperate state or of the agitating situation he is witnessing, the more the action rises and gains in urgency and excitement. This is, as in drama, followed by the volta which, in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, for instance, coincides with the memory of grace: ‘But grace’. It is often marked by an adversative conjunction: ‘Yet such are thy Laws’ (Holy Sonnet ‘Father, part of his double interest’), ‘But let them sleepe, Lord’ (Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’); and may also be indicated by a question: ‘Why dothe the deuill then vsurpe in mee?’ (Holy Sonnet ‘As due by many titles’). The falling action (reflection, elaboration) is then followed by the climax that also brings the denouement, namely the recognition or anagnorisis that death will be overcome, that the speaker will be saved, that the love of God will prevail. Two of the sonnets bring together the elements outlined here in a drama of salvation: Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ and Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’; they follow immediately on each other in all manuscript versions of the Holy Sonnets12 and are both concerned with a speaker who imagines that the moment of his death has arrived. Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ is not only 11 See, e.g., Leimberg, who explores the influence of contemporary poetry on emotional expression in the theatre, especially with regard to the sonnet (Shakespeares Romeo und Julia). 12 See Variorum ix–​x; and Young, ‘The Religious Sonnet’.

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structured along the lines of drama and the generic features of comedy;13 it also teems with dramatic allusions, e.g. to The Summoning of Everyman and Doctor Faustus, to name only two examples. At the same time, the sonnets also focus on the psychology of the individual speaker.14 In Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ the speaker begins with an exclamation that may either be read as a statement about his soul or an address of his soul. The communicative situation of this poem is ambiguous: the speaker regards the soul as a part of himself and as a separate entity. This quasi-​allegorical self-​division is based on the soliloquy that found its way into the drama and the poetry of the time; in these texts, it serves to help the speaker gain psychological insight which, in the case of Donne’s sonnet, is linked to religious anagnorisis. The speaker eventually tells the soul what to do, and the poem ends on an imperative that is related to the compositio loci of Ignatian meditation: the speaker imagines his soul to be present at the crucifixion, which makes possible the salvation of his soul. Devotional contexts and the drama of salvation meet in this sonnet. Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ begins with a reference to the theatrum mundi topos, as the speaker refers to both his poem and the communicative situation in terms of a play. Not only does he imagine the moment of his death but he also regards this as the ‘last scene’ of the play that is his life. As the speaker reflects on the various stages his soul has to go through when dying, the notion of the stage becomes explicitly ambiguous:  he moves on from his ‘Pilgrimages last Mile’, to ‘My Spanns last inche; my Minutes last pointe’, and to the unjoining of body and soul by ‘gluttonous Death’. The speaker is therefore someone who finds himself within the last hour of his life which he metaphorically calls the last scene of ‘his’ play. In this expression, however, metaphorical and literal sense merge; it is impossible to say where one ends and the other begins.15 The audience of the poem is confronted with a speaker who plays the last hour of his life, and who points to this fact by referring to the stage. Thus he not only alludes to the theatrum mundi metaphor but he also presents his own experience as a stage event: he plays the role of somebody who finds himself facing his death, who is conscious of this situation, and who asks himself what is going to happen to him. The poem becomes a miniature drama, with the speaker as protagonist on the stage that is the poem. Drama –​dramatic allusion, the stage and stages, the communicative situation of the soliloquy –​provides a key to processes of recognition, of anagnorisis, within these texts. At the same time these ‘dramatic’ elements in Donne’s Holy Sonnets help to explain the popularity of the soliloquy in contemporary drama. Poetry, drama, and the soul again are related to each other through interaction, and they point the speaker his way towards a happy ending. 1 3 For an overview of generic features see, e.g., Niederhoff. 14 This speaker may be identified with Donne himself:  the speaker’s roles are roles of the author, not in the sense of ‘posings’ (Robbins 231) but as fictional and rhetorical realizations of his inner situation. 15 Shakespeare’s As You Like It is another instance of this merging of literal and metaphorical sense in the context of the theatrum mundi topos.

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The sonnet as miniature drama: Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’

John Donne’s sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ combines in a nutshell, i.e. within the space of fourteen lines, the two ways in which the soul is time and again linked to drama: on the one hand, the very apostrophe at its beginning, followed by the observation that the soul is ‘summoned’, establishes the speaker as a spectator who witnesses the soul becoming the protagonist of a dramatic action that leads to death and beyond.1 This is an action familiar from the Summoning of Everyman but, as we shall see, provided with its very own peripeteia and anagnorisis. The spectator does not watch this drama passively but intervenes actively and tells the figure on the stage what to do. On the other hand, we realize that the speaker who exclaims ‘Oh my black Soule!’ addresses no one but himself. The poem is an example of a soliloquy in which the self becomes aware of its own situation; accordingly, this soliloquy is actually a dialogue taking place within the soul that becomes the stage on which the drama of salvation is enacted: Oh my black Soule, now thou art summoned    By Sicknes, Deaths Harold and Champion,    Thou’art like a Pilgrim, which abroad had don Treason, and darst not turne to whence he’is fled, Or as a thiefe which till death’s doome be red    Wisheth himselfe deliuered from prison    But damn’d and haled to execution Wisheth that still he might be’imprisoned. Yet grace, if thou repent thou canst not lacke.    But who shall giue thee that grace to begin?    Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke, And red with blushinge as thou art with Sin.    Or washe thee in Christs blood, which hath this might    That beeing red, it dyes red Soules to whight. (Variorum 7.1: 13)

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1 In this poem, the immediacy of expression is particularly striking; see Ruf: ‘In fact, we seem to overhear a very private moment. The moment is so intimate that this might be a silent prayer, our ears close enough to hear silent words. The anguish of which he speaks is ostensibly taking place in the present’ (300). On drama in this sonnet, see also Zirker, ‘Aspects’.

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Donne has his speaker act the role of someone imagining that the moment of his death has come and has him address his soul. The sinful soul is ‘summoned’ by sickness, who, in this sonnet, is the ‘Harold and Champion’ of death. In the first two quatrains, the speaker reflects on his soul’s sinfulness, which is indicated by means of the adjective ‘black’: He compares the personified soul first to a pilgrim (or rather to a traitor taking to flight) and then to a thief who is threatened with execution. With the volta, however, he points towards the concept of grace2 –​and the granting of grace if the soul is repentant: in this sonnet, the speaker’s repentance is the precondition of his redemption and a religious problem at the same time (see also Leimberg, Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis 146). The poem ends with the speaker admonishing his soul to seek salvation through Christ’s blood that will make the soul ‘clean’ again by turning it ‘to white’. The ‘summoning’ of the soul is a direct reference to the morality play The Summoning of Everyman (which goes back to 1509–​19) and hence to the topic of death.3 The morality play has the subtitle:  A Treatise how the high father of heaven sendeth death to summon every creature to come and give account of their lives in this world, [and is in manner of a moral play]:4 Death is sent to summon Everyman and call him to account for the sins he has committed.5 This means that the ‘summoning’ of the soul introduces two links to Everyman: the poem’s action is based on the morality play, and the soul is transformed by the speaker into a character with whom he interacts. Being summoned, the speaker enters an intermediate state: he is not dead yet but he knows that he will soon die. Everyman finds himself in a similar situation: he must embark on his journey to his death

2 ‘Grace’ provides the transition from the event (brought up by the simile of the thief) to theology here. On readings of this sonnet with regard to Christian concepts of grace and repentance, see Altizer; Blanch; Halewood; Herbold; Sanders. See also Cummings. 3 See Leimberg, Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis 140–​1; she refers to Doctor Faustus and the development of tragedy; see below. For the link of this Holy Sonnet with Everyman see also Hester, ‘The troubled wit’, whose perspective is slightly different: ‘My focus of attention in the following pages is on the manner in which one of the most elusive of these poems, the sonnet beginning “Oh my black Soule”, is better understood through comparison of its central paradox with the dramatic exposition of that [Roman Catholic] doctrine in Everyman. Such a perspective suggests that the achievement of Donne’s sonnet derives in large measure from the manner in which it engages the doctrine of prevenient Grace as it is expostulated dramatically in the play, not in order to endorse explicitly the Catholic view of that doctrine but in order to explore the psychological and moral questions attendant to the application of the Protestant or Reformed view of imputation to that doctrine current at the time of the poem’s composition. Such a perspective serves to underscore and identify the moral tensions that Donne’s Holy Sonnets enact so well’ (16). See also Milward/​Ishii 139–​40 (Variorum 286). Harris is wrong when he claims that ‘two allusions to Tamburlaine and the verses about Volpone are apparently Donne’s only references to any play, ancient or contemporary’ (261). 4 For various editions and translations of Everyman, see White, Early English Drama 121–​39; the ongoing reception of medieval morality plays into the sixteenth century is addressed, e.g., by McKinnell; Mills; Potter, The English Morality Play, esp. ch. 3 (58–​77); Wyckham, esp.  118–​21 and 172–​3. Best summarizes its continental reception. Dessen discusses the influence of medieval moral plays well into the early seventeenth century (Shakespeare and the Late Moral Plays 8–​9). See also Bevington (esp. Introduction 1–​7); Fichte, ‘New Wine in Old Bottles’ and ‘The Presentation of Sin as Verbal Action in the Moral Interludes’; and Stevens 26. 5 On the ‘Summons of Death’, see Spinrad; and Spivack 64–​7. See also Ariès, Hour of Our Death and Western Attitudes.

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from the moment that he has been summoned.6 But this summoning also refers to a legal context: one is summoned to court or to appear before a judge (OED, ‘summon, v.’ 2.a. and 5.b.). The soul is summoned by death to its judgement. The personification of the soul leads to an allegorical reading of the poem which is reinforced by the allusion to the morality play.7 The sonnet is altogether written in an allegorical vein:  the colours  –​black and red –​change their meaning in its course. This is a semantic and symbolic shift which ensures that there is hope for the soul to change its character and condition:  the different meanings of black and red make it possible that it may become white. The black of sin becomes the black of mourning, and the red of sin becomes one of blushing which is linked to Christ’s blood that, ‘being red’, ‘dyes red Soules to whight’. At this final stage the change of colours becomes the central movement of the poem: dying becomes dyeing and thus dies, which links the sonnet to 1 Cor 15:55 as well as to George Herbert’s ‘Death’ and Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Death bee not proude’. The problem of death is reinterpreted by means of wordplay on the homophone dy(e) ing, and the process which the soul undergoes is linked to a linguistic process. The poem therefore describes and enacts how death is overcome and comes to its climax when the speaker tells his soul –​in an image worthy of the most shocking dramatic presentation –​to wash in the blood of Christ. Both ‘summoning’ and ‘dy(e)ing’ illustrate how semantic and symbolic fields and contexts are linked to each other and build up a continuum of oscillating meanings that performatively show the process by which the soul is led to grace and finally to salvation; the process is brought about thematically and linguistically, by means of metaphor and allegory. In what follows, these various layers of meaning and structure will be analysed in more detail and brought into closer connection with the ‘dramatic’ qualities of this Holy Sonnet. The communicative situation which resembles a soliloquy contributes to the dramatic quality of the poem and lends it coherence. The various topics raised in the sonnet –​approaching death, colours, sin, grace, the allusion to medieval drama, the form of the soliloquy –​thus turn out to belong together: they are linked to one another in the course of the sonnet and lend the speaker’s reaction to his impending death enargeia. By treating the soul as a person that he asks to ‘make [it]self with holy mourning black’, the speaker alludes to the figure of the Soul (Anima) in medieval morality plays as it appears, for instance, in The Castle of Perseverance (see below). As a rule, in morality plays the initial situation of the protagonist is rather bleak –​he is immersed in sin. In the course of the action, the soul recognizes its sinfulness and the dependence of its wellbeing on God’s grace to be saved in the end and ascend to heaven.8 The speaker in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ goes through 6 One might easily make a biographical connection to Donne here: the sense of death in life and the ubiquity of the consciousness of death is reflected in a particular manner in his Devotions. 7 That allegory figures in poetry is not unusual in the early modern period –​one need only think, for instance, of ‘step-​dame Study’ who appears in the first sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella. But how Donne introduces allegory in this sonnet and makes it functional is rather unusual. 8 ‘Each of the plays begins as a potential tragedy and ends happily –​not primarily because Mankind has learned his lesson in time, but because God’s plan for Mankind’s salvation is as strong as

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a very similar process: he is called by Sickness, becomes aware of his sins, and then thinks of a way to salvation; this salvation is eventually achieved. The action of the sonnet is thus dramatized, or, rather, the poem is about the action that the soul ought to take; Donne’s Holy Sonnets can be read in terms of a stage on which the speaker talks to his soul as to another character.9 In addition to evoking medieval allegorical theatre, the sonnet is structured like a miniature drama, with a peripety and a happy ending. Summoning the soul: sickness and judgement The sonnet begins with the speaker’s ‘black soul’ being summoned, and this summoning is ambiguous: it means that the personified soul is ‘called’ by sickness, who acts as death’s messenger, but also that it is called to its judgement. The summoning of the soul as an allusion to Everyman links the theatrical and the legal spheres. While the speaker turns the poem into a stage, the soul also is (or plays the role of) a criminal whom the speaker compares to ‘a pilgrim’ guilty of ‘treason’ and to a ‘thief ’ summoned to trial. By linking theatre and law court in this sonnet, Donne refers to a tradition put forward since antiquity, through the field of rhetoric: the actor who is an orator or rhetor, and the rhetor who must train like an actor; their common aim is to move their respective audiences.10 In Donne’s sonnet, the function is a similar one: the speaker, who evaluates his soul and is himself an actor, playing the role, as it were, of Good Angel in this morality play, wants to move his soul in order to make it fit for death. Through the comparison with a thief the soul is constituted as a speaker in its own right, albeit only indirectly: the speaker of the poem presents us with the speech of the thief in prison as he imagines it (‘he wisheth’), in the sense of an imagined prosopopeia or sermocinatio.11 He tries to evoke fear in the soul by comparing it to a traitor Mankind is weak. The emphasis on mercy is so pervasive in the plays that damnation seems almost an impossibility […] more than anything else, the moralities are entertaining celebrations of the power of God’s limitless mercy, reminding their audiences that His mercy is the ultimate source of salvation’ (Kelley 26–​7). See also Baker-​Smith; Menascè. 9 The soul is here treated as an instance of the self  –​my soul, comparable to ‘my body’ and ‘my heart’ –​but also in terms of a pars pro toto of the self, similar to an expression like ‘so and so many souls were lost in a shipwreck’. See, e.g., The Rape of Lucrece 881–​2; and Richard III: ‘Methought the souls of all I had murder’d /​Came into my tent’ (5.3.204–​5). Richard, in this passage, however, really refers to the part that lives on after death. 10 See also Proske 90. The connection is topical as Cicero as well as Quintilian comment on the resemblance of rhetor and actor: In De Oratore, Cicero writes that ‘in an orator we must demand […] a tragedian’s voice, and the bearing almost of the consummate actor’ (1.28.128); see also 3.55.211; and Quintilian, Institutio 1.11.2–​14. For the history and tradition of the analogy of stage and tribunal see Proske 94–​102, who refers to the coinage by Schiller in ‘Die Kraniche des Ibycus’:  ‘Die Scene wird zum Tribunal’ (390.182). See also Arrowsmith for the origin of Greek tragedy in lawsuits (37–​8; Proske 95); and Staiger 177. 11 See Lausberg §§ 821–​3. Instead of sermocinatio, the term of prosopopeia is also used to describe this particular ‘feigning’ of a communicative situation. In classical rhetoric, prosopopeia is delimited to fictio personae, i.e. non-​personal things and the dead (Lausberg § 826); see also Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herrenium 4.65; Quintilian 9.2.29; and Sinfield, Dramatic Monologue 42. The term sermocinationes is also used by Augustine ‘to describe his internal and external discourses’ (Stock 72). On Donne’s use of sermocinatio in his love poetry see Müller, ‘Poem as Performance’ 177.

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and a thief –​the summoning by sickness thus becomes a summoning to the soul’s final trial and judgement. But it is not just the reference to a courtroom scene that evokes the theatre in this sonnet: the fear of the place of execution brings up the image of the scaffold, which is just the kind of stage from which the speaker tries to save his addressee.12 The double notion of stage and trial can furthermore be embedded in a religious context which goes back to Tertullian: ‘But what a spectacle is already at hand […] there are still to come other spectacles –​that last, that eternal Day of Judgement […]. How vast the spectacle that day, and how wide!’ (De Spectaculis 30.297). Donne elaborates on this idea of a spectacle as linked to judgement in his sermons. In a sermon preached at Lincolns Inn in 1618 on Ps 38:4, he writes: ‘He [David] weighed his sin with his punishment, and in his punishment hee saw the anger, and indignation of God, and when we see sin through that spectacle, through an angry God, it appears great, and red, and fearefull unto us’ (Sermons 2: 4.124). Although the term ‘spectacle’ is here used primarily in the sense of a perspective glass, the theatrical connotation of the term is evident as well.13 The spectacle or drama becomes part of an epistemic process that results in the recognition of sinfulness; in Donne’s poem this process leads to the restoration of the speaker’s innocence in a drama of salvation. The speaker and the soul both have a double role as actor and audience. The speaker is doubled into a Good Angel addressing his soul and an observer of his soul; the soul is asked to act but at the same time to observe itself and to be(come) aware of its sinfulness. By turning or comparing his soul to Everyman through allusions to this morality play, Donne imitates the action of this drama that likewise results in the protagonist’s salvation; the mode of ‘as if ’ helps uncover the truth. And like Everyman, the drama –​or trial –​in the sonnet comes to a happy conclusion. But it is not only the soul that appears on the stage of the poem. Contrary to Everyman, in Donne’s poem the soul is not summoned by Death but by Sickness,14 who is further defined as ‘Death’s Harold and Champion’.15 Both herald and champion are semantically polyvalent, if not ambiguous. Our intuitive reading of ‘herald’ is that of a messenger, the herald delivering a message to the speaker’s soul and summoning it (OED ‘herald, n.’: 2.a. ‘One who proclaims or announces the message of another; a messenger, envoy’). Another reading of ‘herald’ is in the sense of ‘[a]‌n officer having the special duty of making royal or state 12 See, e.g., the Prologue to Henry V: ‘On this [referring to the stage] unworthy scaffold’ (10). Anne Righter refers to double meaning of ‘scaffold’ –​’the scene both of executions and of plays’ (74) –​as expressed in Andrew Marvell’s ‘Horatian Ode’ (213n31). See Proske 250n20; and OED, ‘scaffold, n.’ †3., 4., †5. and 6. 13 See Beecher on the relation of speculum, spectacle, and the theatre. 14 In both texts, however, Death and Sickness appear as allegorical characters on the stage, a point that is particularly emphasized by ‘Sicknes’ being spelt with a capital ‘S’ both in the Westmoreland and the Revised Sequence. 15 The emphasis is a different one: the drama shows the different stages and companions of Everyman on his journey which concludes with the ascent of his soul to heaven, whereas the speaker in Donne’s sonnet is concerned with the salvation of his soul and what it can do with regard to its sinfulness.

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proclamations, and of bearing ceremonial messages between princes or sovereign powers’ (1.a.); or ‘[a]n officer employed in the tourney to make proclamations, convey challenges, and marshal the combatants’ (1.b.). ‘Herald’, however, may also refer to: ‘A person (or thing) that precedes and announces the approach of another; a forerunner, precursor’ (2.b.). Sickness is thus characterized either as making a ‘royal […] proclamation’ (1.a.), Death being king, in the sense of being powerful and sovereign; or as the conveyer of a challenge (1.b.). The last meaning listed here (2.b.) means that Sickness merely announces death and is its precursor: it precedes death in this case. This polysemous reading of ‘herald’ becomes even more obvious when we take into account the ambiguity of ‘champion’. The word can signify ‘a fighting man, a combatant’ (OED, ‘champion, n.’ 1.) as well as ‘[o]‌ne who fights on behalf of another’ (2.a.) and ‘one who stoutly maintains any cause’ (3.).16 The meanings of ‘fight’ and combat are in the foreground:  Sickness is not only a messenger and precursor of death but it is also one that fights on death’s behalf. Read in the context of the various meanings of ‘herald’ and ‘champion’, sickness thus becomes much more threatening. The fact that sickness replaces Everyman’s Death-figure in the sonnet may have to do with Donne considering it to be worse than death itself, or at least being responsible for the fearful aspect of death. Donne’s personal experience surely contributed to his emphasis on the ‘sickness unto death’ and the threat that sickness poses to man. He dwells extensively on this situation in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, which were written during a long and life-​threatening sickness in 1623. The first meditation in his Devotions hence reads as follows: ‘O multiplied misery! we die, and cannot enjoy death, because wee die in this torment of sickness; we are tormented with sicknes, & cannot stay till the torment come, but pre-​apprehensions and presages, prophecy those torments, which induce that Death before either come’ (7). In Everyman, the protagonist learns that he has to leave this world and embark on his pilgrimage towards death. For this journey he is seeking friends to accompany him, but all his relatives and acquaintances deny him the favour. He is alone until first his Good Deeds and later Knowledge join him. Good Deeds stays with him until he dies and ascends to heaven. Yet it is not his ‘Good Deeds’ in their materiality that save Everyman: the memory of the possibility to do good deeds brings about a change in his attitude. As long as he does not remember them, salvation seems impossible: his Good Deeds are (literally, if we think of the stage setup at the beginning) in the background. This is why, in Everyman, mankind cannot be saved through good deeds but through their memory; the emphasis is not on the performance of good deeds than on the inner focus: Everyman has to want to be good and remember his ability of doing Good Deeds. Donne refers to a similar idea in one of his Sermons: ‘The art of salvation, is but the art of memory’ (2: 2.73). The evocation of Everyman in Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ 16 Our prevalent understanding of the word today, in the sense of ‘He who holds the first place in prize-​fighting’ (4.a.) was only current from the early eighteenth century onwards.

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does not mean that their concepts of salvation are necessarily identical. While the allusion will make us remember that it is the memory of his Good Deeds that saves the protagonist of the morality play, we will notice that they are conspicuously absent from Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’: all the deeds the soul is called upon to do are related to itself. The soul has to prepare itself for grace. But even though this shows the Protestant shift from works to grace, Donne stresses the link to the Catholic morality tradition rather than the discrepancy. The speaker’s didactic line, ‘But who shall giue thee that grace to begin?’ (10), undoubtedly echoes Everyman’s decision, ‘I will now begin, if God give me grace’ (607).17 Everyman’s action is different (he begins to whip his body in order to suffer like Christ) but he realizes, like Donne’s speaker, that God’s grace is the prerequisite of any redemptive action, and that repentance is inextricably bound up with grace. In both Everyman and Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, the turning point of the drama is the insight into the need for a new beginning, made possible through divine grace. Donne’s dialogue with Everyman and the morality play tradition, however, is established not only through verbal allusion and theological dialogue but also through the shared mode of personification and allegory:  they serve as means of providing dramatic evidence. Personification: the soul as pilgrim and traitor In Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ Sickness is not merely described as a herald but as ‘Death’s Herald and Champion’, i.e. herald and champion syntactically and semantically depend on ‘Death’. This presupposes that ‘Death’ is personified because it has a herald and champion –​and through this personification of death, the words herald and champion become literal, which means that they appear as ‘real figures’ in the speaker’s narrative within the poem. If Death is, however, read as an abstract entity, then herald and champion become figurative in their meaning and, accordingly, allegories.18 In both cases the beginning of the poem contains an allegory, and the poem becomes a scene on which these allegorical characters act and move. Part of this allegory is the personification of the soul.19 The soul is not only characterized as being ‘black’ (l. 1), but it is compared, first, to a ‘pilgrim’ and then a ‘thief ’. The image of the pilgrim is transformed by the speaker in a strange way 1 7 Claudius in Hamlet is unable to repent and therefore cannot even begin as he lacks grace (3.3.65–​8). 18 ‘Herald’ and ‘Champion’ have to be reinterpreted based on the reading of ‘Death’; see Bauer/​Beck on coercion and reinterpretation (‘Interpretation’; see also their ‘On the Meaning of Fictional Texts’). 19 ‘Personification as an acting mode reached a clearer definition in the Morality plays. In these the dramatist was creating an allegory. He was not concerned with biblical events but with the present and eternal condition of man’ (Burns 162–​3). Burns juxtaposes personification with impersonation, ‘the portrayal of a person through imitation of behavior, derived from observation and experience of ordinary life’ (163). One might argue that this allegory is a particularly ‘Catholic’ element that cannot be reconciled with Donne’s Protestantism. Allegory, especially as practiced in medieval morality plays, however, shows a high degree of continuity well into the literature of Protestant England; one need only think of Tudor Interludes that make use of allegory. Allegory is a double form as an extended metaphor and with its reference to the theatre; its central source is Prudentius (esp. with regard to medieval theatre). See Donne on allegory: ‘It is true that S. Augustine sayes,

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(see OED, ‘pilgrim, n.’ 2.a., 2.b., and 3. fig.), as he links the notion of pilgrimage with a sinful journey, a flight even:  the soul-​as-​pilgrim has committed treason while ‘abroad’ and does not dare return for fear of punishment. This description of the soul as a pilgrim can be read in relation to The Summoning of Everyman; there, the pilgrim is on his way to death and fears the endpoint of his journey rather than his return to the point from ‘whence he’is fled’: He bad me go a pylgrymage, to my payne, And I knowe well I shall neuer come agayne. Also I must gyue rekenyge strayte […] How I haue lyued and my dayes spent; Also of yll dedes that I haue vsed In my tyme, syth lyfe was me lent; And of all vertues that I haue refused. (331–​42)

This passage refers to the pilgrimage that follows the announcement of death and the reckoning man has to give, all the while regretting his ‘yll dedes’ as he now expects punishment for them (see Lester 336–​40). In Donne’s sonnet, the emphasis is on the soul going abroad and not daring to return. Both cases allude to the notion of life as a pilgrimage:20 the speaker’s soul has gone on a pilgrimage –​ which is his life; the aim is the place of God (which is also the pilgrim’s place of origin); but because of his sinfulness  –​he has committed treason (a capital crime) –​he does not want to go there. It is rather strange that the speaker uses the term ‘pilgrimage’ at all when he seems to refer to a sinful journey, a flight even; yet this may be regarded as an expression of the general sinfulness of life on earth and its being nothing but a pilgrimage towards death. This explains the extent of the fear the soul ought to feel in view of its sin and the ensuing tribunal. Like Everyman, the soul in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ is not a born criminal but has committed crimes (sins) in the course of life and hence has become one of the ‘traitors deject’ that God talks about at the beginning of Everyman: I hoped well that euery man In my glory sholde make his mansyon, And therto I had them all electe; But now I se, lyke traytours deiecte, They thanke me not for the pleasure that I to them ment, Nor yet for theyr beynge that I them haue lent. (52–​7)

Every man (represented by the character Everyman) commits sins and thus treason on God, which can be linked to the thanklessness of the creature. In Everyman, we accompany one representative of humankind on his pilgrimage to death; in Figura nihil probat, A  figure, an Allegory proves nothing; yet, sayes he, addit lucem et ornat; It makes that which is true in it selfe, more evident and more acceptable’ (Sermons 3: 5.144). 20 For this notion see, e.g., Qualls; its origin is biblical (Hebr 11:13). See Schell on pilgrimage in morality plays as an imitation of life.

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Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, this representation is turned inward as the speaker addresses his soul: it is not the speaker who becomes a pilgrim but his soul.21 This ‘treason’ implies the soul’s remoteness from God through sin. A literary model for this potential of the soul to become a traitor can be found in Lydgate’s translation of De Guileville’s The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine; 1426).22 When the pilgrim is talking to Grace Dieu, he wants to know who it is that drives him towards sin and debasement: ‘Ma dame,’ quod I, ‘yiff ye lyst se, I merveylle what he sholdë be, He that ye accuse and blame, And puton hym so gret dyffame, How that he sholdë, day & nyht, Be bysy (as ffer as he hath might) To traisshe [betray] me, as a fals tractour, And to my worshype & honour Don any derogacioun By swych compassyd fals traisoun.’ (9077–​86)

The pilgrim (i.e. man) wonders who it is that the whole time (‘day & nyht’) tries to debase him.23 This debasement consists mostly in the fact that his foe wants to betray him as a false traitor; the tautology (‘fals tractour’, ‘fals traisoun’) serves to emphasize the gravity of the betrayal. As it turns out, it is the body who betrays the pilgrim (9240) –​the pilgrim is thus identified with his soul, the body being an entity somewhat separate from him. But while it may be topical that the body betrays the soul (in committing sins of the body), in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, it is the soul itself that becomes a traitor, namely of itself:  it foregoes its own salvation by committing sins and therefore betrays itself. We find a similar concept of a pilgrim turned traitor in The Rape of Lucrece, when Lucrece addresses Time: ‘Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage, /​Unless thou coulst return to make amends?’ (960–​1). Although ‘pilgrimage’ is here used in a secular sense (see Arden ed. ‘progress or journey to a future state’ 360n960), the association of pilgrimage with mischief and the inability to return to an earlier state to ‘make amends’ is conspicuous. Time ‘cannot’ return  –​the soul in Donne’s Holy Sonnets dares not. In both cases the ‘crime’ is left unanswered. In Donne’s sonnets, the speaker goes on to compare his soul to ‘a thief ’ in the second quatrain and thus accuses it of yet another crime:24 ‘as a thief ’ the soul 21 See the devotional book on the Wandering Soul (published in 1635, first in the Netherlands): the image of the pilgrim soul was topical in the seventeenth century. 22 I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Joerg Fichte for pointing out this source that Donne was presumably familiar with. See also Le Pélerinage de l’Âme by De Guileville, printed in 1483 by Caxton. 23 Cf. marginal gloss: ‘I wonder who this foe is, who’s always trying to debase me’ (251). 24 Hester in this context misreads the parallels between Everyman and Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’: while it is correct to state that Everyman is a ‘traitor deject’ because God describes ‘every man’ in these terms, he is not called a ‘thief ’ in the morality play (‘The troubled wit’ 17). There is indeed a passage in Everyman, in which the word ‘thief ’ appears, but it contains an ironic twist and

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wants to be ‘delivered from prison’, but thinking that it is damned and will be ‘haled to execution’, it rather were in prison again, which emphasizes its ambivalent state:25 it is torn between the wish to escape (i.e. leave the body) and the fear of judgement (as a consequence of escape). This ambivalence is also presented on the linguistic level:  ‘to hale’ means ‘[t]‌o draw or pull’ in the first place (OED, ‘hale, v.1’ 1.; see also 2.a. fig.: ‘To constrain, or draw forcibly to, into, or out of a course of action, feeling, condition, etc.; to bring in violently, drag in’), i.e. the soul-​become-​thief is ‘damned and [drawn /​pulled] to execution’, its unwillingness being linked to meaning 2.a. But in the sixteenth century, to ‘hale’ also carried a further denotation, now obsolete: ‘Obs. trans. To make hale or whole; to heal’ (‘†hale, v.2’), which means that the soul is healed by execution, a paradox of the kind quite common in Donne’s poetry: only when the body dies and the soul is freed, can the latter become whole again.26 Still, at a first glance, the phrasing ‘damned and haled to execution’ seems to speak against a positive reinterpretation of ‘haled’. Even if one takes into consideration a wider context, this reinterpretation does not seem to make much sense:  the prisoner does not need to wish himself back to prison if he knows himself healed and saved. Another level of communication hence comes into play through the personification of the soul: what is being communicated within the sonnet, i.e. between the speaker and his soul, is not identical with what is being communicated on the external level. In that respect, Donne’s sonnet also resembles a drama where we find this double communication throughout:27 the prisoner thinks he is damned and haled to execution, while the reader knows –​ or at least has an inkling, taking into account the ending of the poem and the ambiguity of ‘dyes’28 –​that his execution is to his salvation, his heal. In this sense, the order of ‘damned and haled’ makes even more sense: the speaker only thinks that his soul is damned, but it will be healed in a next step because of God’s grace. The speaker’s overall ambivalent attitude towards the soul can be further linked to the Platonic interpretation of the body as prison of the soul: on the one hand, it wants to leave its prison, the body, in order to be free again; but as it thinks it is ‘damned’ and because of its sinfulness cannot be sure of its salvation, it would rather stay where it is. In Plato, the imprisonment of the soul in the body is conceived of as a punishment (Cratylos 400c), and the soul is liberated when ‘the penalty is paid’ (400c). Donne modifies this image slightly: the soul is indeed also does not at all refer to Everyman; Goods says: ‘to thy soule Good is a thefe’ (447), i.e. it is not man who steals goods here but Goods steals men. 25 The topics of imprisonment and execution establish another link to legal institutions and the law. The point is that the soul is not damned but behaves as if it were and deserved it. 26 A cynical reading in the sense ‘healed in order to be executed’ is improbable in the overall context of the poem and generally in Donne. 27 Fetzer links this double communication to the ‘performativity’ of Donne’s poetry; ‘Plays of Self ’ 190. 28 The pun on ‘dy(e)ing’ is further emphasized by the meaning of ‘execution’ from the Latin exsequi meaning ‘to follow out’ (exequies as the funeral rites). Through the transitive use of ‘dies’, line 14 becomes ambiguous; Christ’s blood dies red soules to white means: (1) through its giving up life they become white; (2) through its making them die they become new.

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incarcerated like a thief in prison; but it is reluctant to ‘pay the penalty’ as it is afraid of punishment, which implies that its state is far more ambivalent regarding its imprisonment in the body than in Plato.29 The comparison stresses that, for committing sins, the soul has to undergo judgement and is therefore afraid of its current state. The fact that the speaker uses similes when he addresses his soul –​ ‘like a pilgrim’, ‘as a thief ’  –​fleshes out his self-​recognition as a sinful person. Although he merely compares his soul to criminals, he implies in this comparison that he actually equals it to these, as truth is expressed emphatically in the mode of ‘as if ’. In the octave, the speaker thus addresses his soul in negative terms, and he personifies it throughout. The soul is conceived of figuratively and metaphorically as early as in the first words, when the speaker addresses it as a ‘black Soule’. When the soul is called a pilgrim, who committed treason, and a thief, this is already an extension of this first personification. Added to the personification of the soul is that of sickness as well as death. The very first lines of the poem therefore introduce allegory through an extended metaphor; moreover, they allude to the medieval morality play Everyman. Thus, drama comes into play: abstract entities are personified and begin to interact with each other, which implies they become agents. The soul therefore becomes an actor (a transformation supported by the dramatic allusion) and is asked to take action in the sestet. The structure of the sonnet reflects the various stages the soul has to go through in order to be saved. Peripety: remembering grace While dwelling on the sinfulness of his soul in the octave, the speaker then, after the volta, suddenly thinks of a way out of his situation: ‘Yet grace, if thou repent thou canst not lack.’ At the beginning of the sestet, the speaker recognizes that his stain of guilt (and accordingly his fear) can be removed by God’s grace, for which the soul can (and should) prepare itself. When the speaker begins to remember the concept of grace, this is the peripety in his little ‘drama of redemption’ (Sanders 128), aptly presented by the volta and introduced with the conjunction ‘yet’. This recognition is immediately followed by a question: ‘But who shall giue thee that grace to begin?’ In this line, the metre puts stress on the deictic pronoun: ‘thát grace’, which implies a particular kind of grace that it needs in order to ‘begin’: grace in order to begin (to repent) at all, i.e. the grace which enables us to begin, as well as grace from the beginning, i.e. even before we have repented we have obtained grace. Donne dwells on this notion of a ‘beginning’ in his sermon preached on 14 December 1617 (Robbins ed. 529n10):30 ‘except God love us first, we cannot love 29 The mingling of Platonic concepts of the imprisonment of the soul and the Christian idea of the sinfulness and damnation of the soul can be seen as almost characteristic of the early modern period; see Lobsien on the connection of Platonism/​Neoplatonism and Christianity (32–​6). 30 Although it may be considered problematic to anachronistically refer to Donne’s sermons when commenting on the earlier Holy Sonnets, they still provide religious contexts that were valid and known at the time –​and explicitly mentioned by Donne when preaching.

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him; but God doth love us all so well, from the beginning, as that every man may see the fault was in the perverseness of his own will, that he did not love God better’ (1: 5.244). Here, Donne states that God’s love comes first, it is the beginning, and our love depends on his.31 Our lack of recognition of this love and our dependence on our own will makes us ‘perverse’.32 If God loves us ‘from the beginning’, this also implies that we already have grace, which then enables us to repent. When the speaker in Donne’s poem asks ‘But who shall give thee that grace to begin?’, this question can thus also be linked to the concept of grace as being the beginning, i.e. prevenient grace,33 which echoes Everyman’s ‘I will now begin, if God give me grace’ (607). Grace is therefore ‘prevenient’ in two senses. We are redeemed even before repentance, and we need grace in order to repent  –​as much as we need to repent in order to obtain grace. At the same time, grace is not only the beginning, it is also the end:  ‘grace if thou repent thou canst not lack’ –​when man is on the verge of despairing of his sins as he knows that death is imminent, he can count on God’s grace (which has always been there, from the very beginning). Grace exists from the beginning, but humankind does not necessarily recognize it –​like the speaker in Donne’s sonnet, who only more than halfway through the poem remembers what resembles a doctrinal statement ‘Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack’. This notion of ‘lack’ implies the restoration of completeness, in a way reminiscent of George Herbert’s ‘Love (III)’ in which the sinner is welcomed by the heavenly host and fed despite his ‘lack’. He describes himself as lacking in terms of ‘a guest [...] worthy to be here’, meaning that he himself is an unworthy guest, only to learn that he is worthy, which culminates in his being served by God. The speaker in Donne’s Holy Sonnets likewise finds a way of having his soul saved when he remembers Christ and his sacrifice in the concluding lines of the poem: this is the grace that he lacks and needs.34 31 He also gave us Jesus Christ ‘in the beginning’ to help us obtain grace: ‘What is a human wretch to do? Who will free him from his death-​laden body, if not your grace, given through Jesus Christ our Lord, whom you have begotten coeternal with yourself and created at the beginning of all your works?’ (Augustine, Confessions 7.21.27). See Bergvall on Augustine’s reference to Rom 7:22–​5 (46). See also Creswell 96. 32 Donne here seems to draw on the distinction between ‘free will’ and autonomy as free will, which is viewed in positive terms, e.g., by Augustine in his The Spirit and the Letter: ‘Are we then doing away with free choice through grace? Heaven forbid! Rather, we make free choice stronger’ (30.52 [185]; see Cary, Inner Grace 15). In the case of autonomy, man is ‘a law unto [him]self ’, which means that he is ‘captive to the sensual demands of the body’ rather than to the law of God (Cary, Inner Grace 17). On the relation of grace and free will, see Augustine, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio (427); see Creswell 115–​34, esp. 115–​18. See also Piper 72. 33 Prevenient grace ‘is the working of God to make one desire and will to do what is right; helping grace […] is the working of God to give the power to accomplish that which one wills; and forgiving grace […] is the forgiveness which is given to those who fail in their attempt to do what is right’ (Creswell 99). See also Lewalski, Protestant Poetics 267; and Young, ‘Donne’s Holy Sonnets’ 22–​3. See also Chéné 31–​5; Creswell 74–​5; and Drecoll, ‘Gratia’ 195–​7. 34 Petrarch, in his ‘Triumph of Eternity’, the last poem in his collection Rime e Trionfi, states: ‘Ma tarde non fur mai grazie divine’ (l. 13); it is never too late for divine grace. See also Bergvall’s comment (33–​4); and the Good Angel in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: ‘Never too late, if Faustus will repent’ (B-​text 2.2.82).

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The speaker, or rather his soul, has to repent first, i.e. recognize his sinfulness, and trust in God’s grace.35 From the soul’s perspective, there is no certainty in the poem: the question the speaker asks in line 9 is followed by the call to action, but the outcome of the action remains a wish –​‘That’ in the sense of ‘so that’.36 Yet, the speaker moves on from the awareness of his sins in the octave and begins to consider grace with the volta: ‘Yet grace’ stands in opposition to his preceding bleak thoughts. The fulfilment of grace depends on his repentance that is only possible because of grace –​these two lines make Donne’s reference to Augustinian dogma obvious (see Papazian 83). Against this background, the speaker’s question as to who shall give his soul ‘that grace’ is a rhetorical one, and we as an audience,37 who know that the soul will be saved, can read the concluding four lines as an answer how that grace can be obtained:38 the speaker has made the beginning by realizing his sin; this, paradoxically, allows God to ‘begin’. Allegory: dress, colours, and the soul as (dramatic) character The several stages the soul goes through in Donne’s sonnet are defined in terms of its character –​from traitor and thief to the recipient of grace –​but also in terms of colour, from being black and red with sin, mourning and shame, to, eventually, the whiteness of innocence. That character and colour are related to each other becomes obvious when the soul is asked to make itself ‘red with blushing’, which presupposes a face that can blush:39 the colours are used in an allegorical fashion and support our perception of the soul as a character in the drama of salvation staged in this poem. The speaker begins with addressing his soul as black and, in the sestet, returns to this notion. But this blackness undergoes a change: Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke,    And red with blushinge as thou art with Sin. Or washe thee in Christs blood, which hath this might That beeing red, it dyes red Soules to whight.

His soul that is black with sin40 is asked to make itself black with ‘mourning’ and, as it also is red with sin, the meaning of this colour likewise ought to be changed, 35 This aspect is further emphasized by the answer to the question in line 10 that contains an imperative:  ‘O make thyself with holy mourning black’; see Leimberg, Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis 146. 36 See the ending of Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’ for a similar ambiguity; Bauer, ‘Ironie und Ambiguität’. 37 The sonnet hence works like a comedy with its double communication: while the protagonist, the soul, is unsure of the outcome, the audience knows that all will end well but still, in the course of events, fears for the character; the speaker finds himself in an intermediate position and is somewhat ambivalent. 38 See Papazian 70. In her view, Donne presents a speaker ‘who embod[ies] Augustine’s views of sinful man yearning for the grace that only God can give’ (80). See also Evans. 39 Since Petrarchan poetry, the colours red and white have been used for characterization; see Lucrece 54–​6 and  64–​70. 40 This can be read as a dramatic allusion to Shakespeare’s Henry V, when the boy remembers Falstaff: ‘Do you not remember ’a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph’s nose and ’a said it was a black soul

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namely into ‘red with blushing’ (see also Sermons 9: 1.49, 64–​5). The emotions of the soul are thus addressed, which emphasizes its anthropomorphized and physical qualities: it has both a body that can blush and emotions like shame (‘[t]‌he affection that moueth blushing is shame’, Bright 166).41 Donne refers to this physicality of the soul in his sermons: ‘Habet anima ossa sua, says S. Basil, The soule hath bones, as well as the body’ (8:  8.195). Even when the soul is not directly conceived as physical, it is presented metaphorically as being in need of food and clothing as if it had a body: ‘Ecce animam, Behold thou hast an immortall soule, which must have spirituall food, the Bread of life, and a more durable garment, the garment of righteousnesse’ (6: 6.139). The soul as character: dress and clothing This concept of the anthropomorphized soul is topical. In Donne’s writings, it is not in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ alone that Donne refers to the whiteness and purity of the soul and its personification. The image of the soul being a physical entity that is clothed and (potentially) sinful also appears in his ‘Verse Letter to Rowland Woodward’ (?1597): […] Omissions of good ill as ill deeds be. For though to us it seem and be light and thin, Yet, in whose faithful scales where God throws in Men’s works, vanity weighs as much as sin. If our souls have stained their first white, yet we May clothe them with faith and dear honesty, Which God imputes as native purity, There is no virtue but religion: Wise, valiant, sober, just, are names which none Wants which wants not vice-​covering discretion. (58–​9.9–​18; emphasis added)

Donne refers to the omission of good deeds, which counts as a vice as much as ill deeds; and he refers to prevenient grace that is imputed by God (see below). The dogmatic statement is combined with the imagery of the clothed soul: the soul is at first white, innocent, but then, in the course of life, it is stained; ‘If our souls have stained their first white’, i.e. their natural colour. However, we may clothe the soul with ‘faith and dear honesty’, and it can be made white again –​so that God imputes burning in hell-​fire?’ (2.3.37–​40); black is used in the sense of ‘damned’. For further implications of this scene, see Bauer, ‘Falstaff, Green Fields, and Incarnation’; and note in the Arden edition: ‘in some last judgement plays in the mystery cycles the costume of white souls and black souls indicated their condition’ (184). Dessen/​Thomson list meanings of ‘black’ on the early modern stage (31). 41 Bright goes on to describe the ‘causes of blushing’:  ‘Shame is an affection of griefe, mixed with anger against our selues, rising of the conscience of some knowne, or supposed to be knowne offence, either in doing that, which ought not be done, or omitting that which was requisite of vs to be done’ (166). See also Blanch 480; Herbold 284.

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its native purity. The clothing is primarily understood as a metaphorical one, but still the speaker conceptualizes the soul as an entity capable (and in need) of a dress. This concept of the immaterial soul dressed in material clothes and becoming physical, which in Donne’s sonnet is evoked by the colours and their change, by the ‘holy mourning’ (a mode of dress),42 and the dying (a process applied to cloth), has its model, from a Christian point of view, in the incarnation. The soul, however sinful, resembles God who has ‘put on’ human flesh, a concept that Luther refers to in the Christmas song ‘Gelobet seist Du, Jesu Christ’ (1524): Gelobet seistu Jhesu Christ das du mensch geboren bist Von einer jungfraw das ist war des frewet sich der engel schar Kyrieleison.

Praised be you, Jesus Christ that you have been born as a man from a virgin –​this is true –​ at which the host of angels rejoices.

Des ewign Vatters eynig kindt itz man ihn der krippen findt Inn vnser armes fleysch vnd blut verkleydet sich das ewig gut Kyrieleison.

The only child of the eternal father is now found in the manger, in our poor flesh and blood eternal goodness has clothed itself.43

In the song, the phrase ‘verkleydet sich das ewig gut’ refers to the notion of disguise –​both as a way of concealment but also as a dressing up as or with something; in the case of Jesus he dresses up as a human being, ‘inn vnser armes fleysch vnd blut’.44 The soul is dressed in robes that indicate its state of purity or sinfulness; the spirit is the dress, an idea also George Herbert refers to in ‘Death’: ‘When souls shall wear their new aray’ (648.19). In Donne’s Holy Sonnet, Christ’s blood ‘dyes red souls’ like a tissue or a piece of cloth.45 Disguise and dress serve as a means of identification, which becomes obvious in the speaker’s admonition to his soul: ‘make thyself ’. In Luther’s song, the disguise has its origin in God: disguise and wearing clothes that do not belong to one’s actual appearance are part of an actor’s business.46 Donne also refers to this imagery in Holy Sonnet ‘Spitt in my face’: 42 The OED has clothes of mourning since the fourteenth century, but in the Renaissance black was not the only colour of mourning, see ‘1548 Hall’s Vnion: Henry VIII f. ccxxviii, The kynge ware whyte for mournyng’. 43 The translation follows that of Bach Cantata BWV 91 (www.bach-​cantatas.com/​Texts/​Chorale003-​ Eng3.htm). 44 A similar concept can be found in Luther’s ‘An die Christen zu Riga und in Liefland’ (1524): ‘Der Welt Lauf und sonderlich seiner heiligen Wesen sey Gottes Mummerey.’ ‘Mummerey’ refers to disguise; see Adelung 3: 309. 45 For an analogy see, e.g., Montaigne’s Apology:  ‘The human soul takes pride in its privilege of bringing all its conceptions into harmony with its own condition:  […] it clothes everything in its own condition, spiritual and immortal’ (46). See also Jacopone da Todi’s poem 36 (in Papini’s edition), ‘Como l’Anima vestita de virtue passa a la Gloria’ [How the soul vested with virtue passes on to glory]; the soul is personified and asked to metaphorically ‘dress’ in virtue. 46 See also Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when, early in the play, the Queen asks her son to ‘cast [his] nightly colour off ’ (1.2.68). His inner disposition is reflected in his apparel –​not the other way around, i.e. it is not his apparel affects his mood.

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And Iacob came clothd in vile harsh attyre   But to supplant and with gainfull intent: God cloth’d himself in vile Mans flesh, that so He might be weake inough to suffer wo. (Variorum 17.11–​14)

God puts the garment of ‘Mans flesh’ onto himself, which is compared to Jacob’s disguise as his brother Esau. Jacob, whose name in Hebrew means ‘one who supplants’ (Shawcross ed. 342), is here likened to (and contrasted with) Jesus, whom the ‘gainful intent’ alludes to in a double sense.47 But it is not only God who puts on human flesh; the reverse movement can also be found in Donne. In one of his sermons, delivered at a Christening, he writes, referring to Gal 3:27: ‘For all ye that are baptized into Christ, haue put on Christ’ (Geneva Bible). Donne comments as follows: that to be baptized is to put on Christ: And this putting on of Christ, doth so far carry us to that Infinitissimum, to God himselfe, that we are thereby made Semen Dei, the seed of God […] And we are translated even into the nature of God, By his pretious promises we are made partakes of the Divine nature; yea, we are discharged of all bodily, and earthly incombrances, and we are made all spirit, yea the spirit of Got himselfe, He that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit with him. All this we have, if we doe put on Christ, and we doe put on Christ, if we be baptized into him. (5: 6.134–​5)

Baptism means to ‘partake of the divine nature’.48 It is only later in the sermon that Donne points to the putting on of ‘righteousnesse, and his innocency, by imitation, and conforming our selves to him’ (159). In Luther’s Christmas song, Christ puts on mankind like clothes; Donne in his sermon asks the congregation to put on Christ as ‘we must prove, that we are the sonnes of God; To prove that ingraffing, and that adoption, we must prove, that we have put on Christ Iesus; And to prove that apparelling of our selves, our proofe is, that we are baptized into Him’ (5: 7.153). From the moment of our baptism onwards we have put on Christ. In Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ this idea is expressed through the imagery of the soul washing itself in Christ’s blood in order to be freed from sin: the stain of sin is washed away, and the soul becomes white again. The link between sonnet and sermon is the white dress put on at baptism.49 In his sermon on Gal 3:27 (5: 7.151–​ 67), Donne uses ‘white’ to refer to the baptismal clothing and baptism in the sense of becoming a new human being. Death is thus represented as a new birth: the old clothing –​black –​is substituted with the new –​white.50 47 See, e.g., Labriola 64; Lever, Sonnets 181; Di Nola 114; Vicari 174; Wilcox, ‘Devotional Writing’ 152. 48 Luther’s emphasis on these verses is slightly different from Donne’s: while he highlights the effects of this ‘putting on Christ’, the receipt of justice, truth, and grace, Donne rather stresses the ‘spiritual’ consequences, namely that we become one with Christ and, hence, with God. 49 See OED, ‘alb n.’: ‘1649 Bp. J. Taylor Great Exemplar ii. 68 Newly-​baptized persons, whose albes of baptisme served them also for a winding sheet.’ Another term for this is ‘chrisom’. 50 The motif of death as birth is elaborated on by Donne in his final sermon, Deaths Duell. See also Luther’s sermon on baptism (November 1509; see Starke 62), where he links a similar concept to the notion of ‘purity’ (‘Reinheit’). See also Beegle/​Crawford on the symbolism of white in medieval plays and pageants (154–​5).

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In another sermon, Donne links the notion of baptism with that of ‘putting on Christ’, i.e. to that of dressing up, or a quite literal understanding of ‘redress’:

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Baptizari,    To be  washed. Induere,     To be cloathed. Induere, is to cover so far, as that Covering can reach; a hat covers the head; a glove the hand; and other garments, more; But Christ, when he is put on, Covers us all […] Particular excuses cover our particular defects, from the sight of men, but to put on Christ, covers us all over, even from the sight of God himself. So that how narrowly so ever he search into us, he sees nothing but the whiteness of his Sonnes innocency, and the rednesse of his Sonnes bloud. (5: 7.153–​4)

Christ is our protector because, if we put him on like a garment, not even God will see our defects as Christ died for us: he takes away our sins, or, to remain within the metaphor, he covers them (see Stanwood/​Asals ed. 125). In Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, a similar action takes place: we wash our souls in Christ’s blood (which implies baptism, a cleansing), and we put on Christ as this washing ‘dyes our red souls to white’, which insinuates the existence of some kind of cloth that can be dyed and is thus linked to the image of ‘induere’: ‘Donne considers the twofold aspect of Induere (to be cloathed)’ (Johnson 73) when he writes: ‘1. Vestem, put on a garment; 2. Personam, put on a person. We may put on Christ so, as we shall be his, and we may put him on so, as we shall be He’ (Sermons 5: 7.158). The process is reciprocal: Christ puts us on, and we put him on so that ‘we shall be He’. The double sense of ‘induere’ is thus explained by Donne, and especially the second one, ‘put on a person’, alludes to the context of the theatre with its potential to ‘delude others’ (158).51 But to ‘put on a person’ can also be positive if that ‘person’ is Christ: then disguise is no longer a form of delusion but rather it effects a change in one’s own being and identity. By putting on Christ we become similar to him and approach our salvation. This is why the speaker wants his soul to dye itself/​die in Christ’s blood. The morality play staged in this poem thus develops into a mystery play: in the final part of the poem he refers to the topic of ‘grace’ and evokes the Passion, ‘Christ’s blood’. By dying our soul white, we also put on Christ, as we dye it with his blood.52 This means that a purgation of the soul is to take place, which is both cathartic and therapeutic.53 The colour symbolism in this poem is both dramatic and theological, 51 Donne probably means the notion of persona as a mask. See Johnson, who refers to another sermon by Donne: ‘We need clothing; Baptisme is Gods Wardrobe’ (2: 1.66; Johnson 73). 52 Donne takes up the same imagery of putting on Christ in another sermon (see Stanwood/​Asals ed. 128): ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus, and keep him on, put him not off again. Christ is not only the Stuff, but the Garment ready made; he will not be translated and turned, and put into new fashions, nor laid up in a Wardrobe, but put on all day, all the days of our life; though it rain, and rain blood; how foul soever any persecution make the day, we must keep on that Garment, the true profession of Christ Jesus’ (4: 4.142). 53 See the notion of sin as an illness and the meditative work on the self as proposed in Johann Gerhard’s Schola pietatis (1622; see Butzer, Soliloquium 205). The first step towards the therapy of the soul is the recognition of self as a sinner (Butzer, Soliloquium 206), which is exactly what is going on in Donne’s sonnet. There is even another parallel between Gerhard and Donne: in 1603/​

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with white being the final stage that the soul achieves.54 The changes in meaning that affect black and red, however, deserve slightly more attention, both with regard to their theological implications and their dramatic qualities.

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Colours of the soul: black, red, and white The speaker first addresses his ‘black soule’, and then tells it what to do, implying that the soul is to bring about a change by itself into the black of ‘holy mourning’. It is striking, firstly, that mourning should be ‘holy’; secondly, the phrase is a homophone of ‘holy morning’, evoking Easter and the Resurrection. This second meaning becomes even more significant as the couplet ends with Christ’s blood and his ability to save human souls. The specification of the noun ‘mourning’ by means of an adjective suggests that there are several kinds of mourning, with one of them being ‘holy’. The injunction to wear mourning immediately evokes, in apparent contrast, Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’.55 There, the speaker admonishes his addressee at the moment of death: ‘let us melt and make no noise /​No tear-​floods nor sigh-​ tempests move; /​’T’were profanation of our joys’ (Robbins ed. 258.5–​7). The ‘art of dying well’ is understood in terms of a noiseless death, without crying and sighing, because this would mean ‘profanation’ and an ‘inordinateness of affections’ (Sermons 4: 13.330–​1).56 Man is to avoid ‘inordinate lamentation’, and there is only one kind of mourning that is apt, a ‘holy mourning’ connected with the Passion and the death of Jesus, when the ‘whole frame of nature [did] mourn’ (333), implying the connection to the holy morning and the resurrection on Easter-​day. What Donne refers to in this sermon is ‘the right use of teares’ (341), caused by ‘true sorrow’ (340). These tears are ‘first for sin’ (341; 342): ‘our owne sins must be the object of our sorrow’ (343). Although Donne does not explicitly refer to ‘holy mourning’ in this sermon, he speaks of ‘holy teares’ (342) which are part of this mourning. The whole sermon is construed like a syllogism: he claims that our sins must be subject for our sorrow and that we use our tears rightly if we shed them for ‘true sorrow’, which implies that we pursue the right kind of mourning, a holy mourning, when we cry for our own sins. And these sins are, equally, the cause of the death of Jesus. Mourning for one’s own sins and for Jesus is what the speaker asks of his soul in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. Yet the speaker in Donne’s sonnet  also asks his soul to make itself red ‘with blushing’. The redness of sin is thus to be transformed into an expression of ‘shame 4, when Gerhard fell ill with the plague, he wrote the first version of his Meditationes –​ springing from a highly individual longing for consolation (Butzer, Soliloquium 209). 54 The ‘theology of colour’ goes back to Pseudo-​Dionysius Areopagita (ca. 500), whose work was translated into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century (see Meier/​Suntrup 392). On the history of the meaning of colours see also Dronke; Hermann/​Azevedo; Kroos/​Kobler; and Lersch. 55 For the morning/​mourning pun in that poem, see Bauer, ‘Paronomasia celata’. 56 In the sermon Donne speaks of this ‘inordinateness of affections’ and distinguishes it from ‘naturall tendernesse’ (331); he goes on to talk about John 11:35 –​‘Jesus wept’ –​and explicates the three instances of Jesus’ weeping –​for the death of Lazarus, on looking upon Jerusalem, and during the Passion (4: 13.341).

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or modesty’ (OED, ‘blush, v.’: 3. a. intr.; 4. fig. ‘To be ashamed’) –​very much in the sense of Hamlet’s ‘O shame, where is thy blush?’ (3.4.81). The notion of shame includes repentance, which links this line of the sonnet with the notion of grace in the preceding verse. The cold-​blooded sinner lacks this ability:  ‘What canst thou say all this and neuer blush’, the Goth says to Aaron in Titus Andronicus (5.1.121).57 The idea is biblical, e.g. in Jer 6:15: ‘Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall’; and in Ps 83:16: ‘Fill their faces with shame.’58 Being ashamed and blushing are intricately connected; if one lacks the ability to blush, one consequently also lacks grace. Therefore, the soul is asked to become red with blushing to show that it regrets its sinfulness.59 While the colour imagery is topical, Donne uses this very topicality to make a statement of his own by transforming and modifying it. A case in point is the ambiguity of colours as expressed in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, to which Donne also refers in one of his sermons preached on the penitential psalms in 1623 (see Robbins ed. 530n): There are complexions that cannot blush; there grows a blacknesse, a sootinesse upon the soule, by custom in sin, which overcomes all blushing, all tenderness. White alone is paleness, and God loves not a pale soule, a soule possest with a horror, affrighted with a diffidence, and distrusting his mercy. Rednesse alone is anger, and vehemency, and distemper, and God loves not such a red soule, a soule that sweats in sin, that quarrels for sin, that revenges in sin. But that whitenesse that preserves it selfe, not only from being died all over in any foule colour, from contracting the name of any habituall sin, and so to be called such or such a sinner, but from taking any spot, from comming within distance of a tentation, or of a suspition, is that whitenesse, which God meanes, when he sayes, Thou art all faire my Love, and there is no spot in thee […] To avoid these spots, is that whitenesse that God loves in the soule. But there is a rednesse that God loves too; which is this Erubescence that we speak of; an aptnesse in the soule to blush, when any of these spots doe fall upon it.’ (6: 1.57–​8; the quotation in the sermon is from Song 4:7).

57 This change in meaning is also reflected on in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, e.g. when Lady Macbeth says: ‘[…] ‘tis the eye of childhood /​That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, /​I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, /​For it must seem their guilt’ (2.2.53–​6). 58 Donne quotes this in another sermon on the penitential psalms (1623) and refers to the vehemence of David’s imprecation: ‘Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O LORD. Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish: That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth’ (Ps 83:16–​18). In another sermon, Donne says: ‘Hee that is past shame of sin, is past recovery from sin’ (Sermons 2: 2.73). See Dubinski on analogies between the penitential psalms and Donne’s Holy Sonnets (209). 59 In Skelton’s Magnificence, the protagonist, Magnificence, is ‘delivered from distress’ (2383): Following his repentance, Redresse appears onstage: ‘Take now upon you this habiliment, /​And to that I say give good advisement’ (2406–​7). Skelton puns on the notion of (re)dress: a new dress is put on when Redresse arrives. One may read Donne’s play on the dressing of the soul in various colours, e.g. in red and black, in light of this wordplay. Clothes can also be ‘a second flesh-​assisting prison, and further corrupting weight of corruption cast on our soules to keepe them from soaring to heaven’ (Nashe, Christ’s Tears 2: 142; see Spencer 101–​4).

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Different colours can take on different meanings, and they are, as such, ambiguous in that they all have a good side and an evil one  –​Donne conceives of them ‘in bonam partem et in malam partem’ (Ohly, ‘Vom geistigen Sinn’ 9). Donne establishes this context by indicating that the ‘right’ kind of colour is needed, i.e. not the white of paleness, nor the redness of anger and distemper.60 In a similar sense, the colours black and red in the sonnet have to be turned from the wrong significance to the right: black has to overcome its sinfulness and become mournful, red expressive of shame. Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ thus gains rhetorical enargeia through the use of colours, their change in meaning, the contrasts between them, and their inherent dramatic quality.61 This theatrical potential was recognized by contemporary writers and did not end with medieval morality plays. Marlowe, in his Tamburlaine, refers to various stages of his protagonist’s disposition. In the first part of the play, during the siege of Damascus, a messenger describes Tamburlaine’s ‘resolution’ (4.1.48) to the Sultan of Egypt: The first day when he pitcheth down his tents White is their hue, and on his silver crest A snowy feather spangled white he bears, To signify the mildness of his mind That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood. But when Aurora mounts the second time, As red as scarlet is his furniture; Then must his kindled wrath be quenched with blood, Not sparing any that can manage arms. But if these threats move not submission, Black are his colours –​black pavilion, His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumes, And jetty feathers menace death and hell. (4.1.49–​61; emphases added)

Tamburlaine begins with white, which represents ‘mildness’ and the refusal of bloodshed; in the next stage, on the second day, this is turned into red to signify his ‘wrath’ that will ‘be quenched with blood’. In a final stage, black means ‘death and hell’.62 Donne refers to Marlowe’s use of colours in a letter from 1608/​9, when he writes  to Wotton about a ‘suddaine raging sicknes’ (Simpson, Prose 315):  ‘I confesse that this is my sicknes worst fit & as fearefully ominous as Tamerlins last dayes black ensigns whose threatnings none scaped’ (Simpson, Prose 316).63 The 60 See also Joseph Hall’s ‘Heaven upon Earth’: ‘Look upon the face of the guilty heart, and thou shalt see it pale and ghastly’ (4: 8). The same imagery is used in Lucrece (1511–​12). 61 Shakespeare likewise tended to work with colour contrasts to create enargeia; see Spurgeon: ‘what he notices about colour and what attract him supremely are change and contrast’ (58–​9). 62 Neill comments: ‘In Part I Tamburlaine’s symbolic dressing of the stage in white, blood red and black usurps the language of funeral pageantry’ (164). See also Tamburlaine II 5.3.48–​50. 63 See Mahood (89), and Bald on the ‘two allusions to Tamburlaine’ (73) in Donne’s writings; the other can be found in ‘The Calme’.

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meaning of the colour black is thus perceived as threatening, and Donne here links it to the fear of death, emphasized by his tautological ‘fearefully ominous’ (OED, ‘ominous, adj.’1.a. and 1.†c.). While the stages of colours in Marlowe are reversed by Donne in his Holy Sonnet –​progressing from bad to good, from black to white, in accordance with the speaker’s aim to arrive at a graceful state –​the symbolic significance stays the same:  the colours express the condition of the character’s soul. These dramatic instances of turning black, red, and white into striking symbolic colours can again be linked to the realm of religion and to liturgical meanings, e.g. around Easter: ‘The white hangings [on the altar] were exchanged for red during the last fortnight of Lent, while Good Friday varied from red, through purple and violet, to black’ (Beegle/​Crawford 155). Each stage acquires meaning through colour:  ‘Red and black combined were the colors of Satan, purgatory, and evil spirits. Red and white roses, apart from their political significance in England, were emblems of love and innocence, or love and wisdom […] Black meant darkness, wickedness, and death. It belonged to Satan. It was the color of mourning (as today) and of shame and despair’ (156–​7). Donne thus could count on a general acquaintance, from drama and religion, with the symbolic meaningfulness of these colours, and use them to characterize his speaker and his soul as representatives of a larger drama. At the same time, he individualizes them. The sinful soul personified: colours and spots in allegorical drama In his sermon on the penitential psalms (Sermons 6: 1), Donne refers to the spots that are acquired through sin and thus to a dramatic image:  spotted faces are emblematic of a character’s sinfulness, a motif used in a number of plays to indicate a character’s moral corruptedness. Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ does not expressly refer to spots but is quite suggestive of them, as the ‘Sicknes’ which is ‘Deaths Harold’ is apparently the physical reason for the blackness and the redness to be transformed from a sign of sin to one of shame and contrition. If blackness and sickness are connected, inevitably the plague comes to mind, the symptoms of which were ‘darkish points or pustules’ (Herlihy 29). This connection of sickness with dark spots can also be found in allegorical drama. In The Whore of Babylon (Dessen/​Thomson 87) by Thomas Dekker (written in 1605/​6; see Riely 15–​43), one of the stage directions reads: ‘A cave suddenly breaks open, and out of it comes Falsehood, attired as Truth is, her face spotted’ (4.1.0). The same imagery is used in The Three Ladies of London, attributed to Robert Wilson (E1v; Dessen/​Thomson 87)  and first published in 1584 (with a second edition in print by 1592): ‘Here let LUCRE open the box, and dip her finger in it, and spot CONSCIENCE’ face [Usury had entered the stage shortly before this scene, “with a painted box of ink in his hand” 337]’ (338). This is followed by Lucre’s speech on how she has ‘spotted Conscience’ (339). As long as a character’s conscience is still intact, these spots may become a reason for feeling shame. In John Redford’s Wit and Science (written between

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1531/​34 and 1547; Wilson 43), Wit, after Idleness had exchanged his coat with that of Ignorancy’s, looks in a mirror and finds he has become a fool: Other this glass is shamefully spotted, Or else am I too shamefully blotted! Nay, by God’s arms! I am so, no doubt! How look their faces here round about? All fair and clear they, everyone; And I, by the mass, a fool alone, Decked, by God’s bones, like a very ass! […] And as for this face it is abominable; As black as the devil! (164–​5)

The character’s sinfulness is expressed by his being ‘spotted’ and ‘blotted’ as well as by the contrast with the other characters whose faces are ‘all fair and clear’, i.e. white, unspotted.64 In these plays, the concept of sin obtains a physical representation. The characters onstage are conceived as allegorical figures and act according to their specific traits:  Truth and Falsehood in Dekker’s play; Love, Conscience, Fame/​ Lucre, Dissimulation, Simplicity, to name but a few, in The Three Ladies of London; Wit, Science, Ignorancy, Idleness in Wit and Science.65 The imagery referred to by Donne is part of a theatrical tradition. The allegorical features of the soul in Donne’s sonnet can be linked to medieval drama in one further respect. The combination of personification and colour symbolism is an element inherent to allegory in medieval plays. When the soul in Donne’s sonnet is asked to make itself black and red and to wash in Christ’s blood, this implies (or presupposes) that the soul has a body or is at least considered to be a physical entity. In like manner, the soul appears as a character in morality plays. One prominent example of the allegorical representation of the soul combined with colour symbolism is Wisdom.66 This play focuses on the characters of Anima, the soul, and Wisdom, who introduces himself ‘as the Son of God’ (Eccles xxxv). The action revolves around the fight between good and evil, and, like other morality plays, e.g. The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom stages a psychomachia, ‘a 64 See also ‘The cloth that is white, which is wont to be the colour of innocency, is capable of any dye; the black, of none other’ (Hall, ‘The Art of Divine Meditation’ V.51); and Alabaster: ‘the white of innocence, the black of paine, /​the blew of stripes, the yellow of disdaine /​and purple which his blood doth welle designe’ (Sonnet 70). 65 Later in Redford’s play, Conscience reappears onstage, dressed ‘all in white’ (443) to indicate her regained purity. The play ends with Pleasure: ‘On all the rest that in this land do dwell, /​Chiefly in London, Lord! pour down Thy grace, /​Who living in Thy fear, and dying well, /​In heaven with angels they may have a place’ (502). The notions of grace and of dying well show further links with Donne’s poetry as well as the ongoing tradition of medieval morality plays. 66 A popular subtitle of the play was ‘Mind, Will, and Understanding’, the three faculties of the soul (see Bevington 50). The soul is a topic in the play from its very beginning; in their first dialogue, Anima asks Wisdom: ‘Wat ys a sowll, wyll 3e declare?’ Wisdom replies: ‘Yt ys Þe ymage of Gode Þat all began; /​And not only ymage, but hys lyknes 3e are’ (117.102–​4).

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clear conflict between black and white’ (Eccles xxxv), represented by Lucifer and Wisdom. The play begins with the appearance of Wisdom. Anima then enters the stage ‘as a mayde, in a wyght clothe of golde gysely purfyled wyth menyver, a mantyll of blake Þerwppeon’ (114).67 The duality of the soul is presented from the start: ‘a black mantle over her white gown reminds the audience that her soul has two aspects –​one foul, the other fair –​sensuality and reason’ (Kelley 101; see Eccles xxxv). Wisdom explains to Anima the state of the soul and how easily the inherent dichotomy of black and white can change the soul’s appearance (119.149–​56).68 The soul is divided between ‘sensualyte’ (154) and ‘resone’ (155), a division shown in the soul’s ‘dysgysynge’ and ‘array’ (150).69 Black represents sin and sensuality, whereas white stands for reason. Accordingly, when Anima is tempted by Lucifer, she reappears on stage ‘in Þe most horrybull wyse, fowlere Þan a fende’ (143);70 she has been ‘dysvyguryde’ (143.901). Upon the recognition of her sins, she cries out to God for ‘Mercy’ (145.950) and asks to be clean again (954).71 What she wears reflects her moral condition; after her repentance, she reappears on stage, ‘all in here first clothynge’ (149), to which now is added a crown that represents her ‘victory over sin’ (Eccles xxxvi).72 Earlier in the play, Anima, in a dialogue about the nature of man’s sinfulness, asks the question:  ‘How dothe grace Þan ageyn begynne?’ (118.119), which is echoed by Everyman (607) and in Donne’s sonnet. Anima refers to the stage in the existence of humankind when Original Sin, going back to Adam (117.110), can be overcome ‘again’: ‘Wat reformythe Þe sowll to hys fyrste lyght?’ (118.120). It is the 67 ‘In the most powerful Morality plays […] each character was determined by the relationship between the social reality he represented and vice or virtue. Motive and intention were self-​evident in the personnage thus created. The characters were usually established not only by their names but also emblematically by costume or appurtenances’ (Burns 163). 68 ‘It was a central tenet of medieval Catholic thinking that human beings were fundamentally conflicted, divided between the higher rational aspect of the soul, which sought to know God and follow his commands, and the lower, sensual urge to pleasure and self-​gratification that was a product of fallen, fleshly human nature. The point is made economically in Wisdom’ (Walker, ‘Cultural Work’ 78). 69 See OED, ‘disguise, n.’ 3.  and 4.  for the denotation of concealment. See also Farnham for the allegorical significance of this division (197). 70 ‘She is wearing a “horrible” mantle and seven boy devils come out from under it, run around, and then return. The directions don’t specify what makes the mantle horrible or how it could accommodate seven little boys, but we can be sure that the visual effect must have been impressive’ (Kelley 104). Another example of the visual impact of drama and character change is the later play Enough Is as Good as a Feast by William Wager (1565) in which dress is indicative of the moral states of Worldly Man, the protagonist, is juxtaposed with the character Poorly arrayed Inough. 71 Wisdom tells her that the soul can be cleansed through tears and sorrow (963–​4), true penance and confession (965–​76). 72 Pamela M. King writes: ‘The Five Wits belong to Anima in her incorrupt state and are consequently dressed all in white, a supportive signal of the purity of the soul. All these disguisings embedded in the action are unambivalent and are removed and replaced when a moral change takes place’ (251). Fichte points out the general importance of colours in morality plays as indicative of a change in a character’s moral standing (‘The Presentation of Sin’ 27).

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express wish of the soul to leave its state of sinfulness and to become pure again. Wisdom’s answer points out a way towards redemption that is echoed in the final couplet of Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’:

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Wysdam, Þat was Gode and man right, Made a full seethe to Þe Fadyr of hewyn By Þe dredfull dethe to hym was dyght, Off wyche dethe spronge Þe sacramentys sevyn, Wyche sacramentys all synne washe awey. (118.121–​5)

The ultimate way to the salvation of the soul is through the blood of Christ, his death on the cross. This is the origin of the sacraments, and they are the foundation of grace, ‘baptem clensythe synne orygynall’ (126). Wisdom here gives a straightforward doctrinal lesson. The speaker in Donne’s sonnet likewise explains the concept of grace through Christ’s death, and arrives at the final stage. The final stage of the soul: dy(e)ing in Christ’s blood Donne’s final couplet with the imperative directed at the soul –​‘Or washe thee in Christs blood, which hath this might /​That beeing red, it dyes red Soules to whight’ –​has both dramatic and religious implications.73 The imperative is vital as the speaker asks his soul to do something and not to suffer and submit to its fate;74 it can be linked to Donne’s preface to the Jesuits in his Pseudo-​Martyr: ‘Wee are not sent into this world, to Suffer, but to Doe, and to performe the Office of societie’ (27; see Monta 137). The image of washing in blood to become white is biblical;75 Isa 1:18 ‘though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’, and Rev 7:14  ‘these are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’. The red of Christ’s blood in combination with the redness of sin makes the soul white –​it is cleansed in a quasi-​alchemical process.76 We find a similar reference to the passion of Christ  –​even a similar concluding image, but with a different addressee –​in Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths imagined corners’: 73 In his study on interior conversation (La conversation intérieure) Belin refers to the double meaning of colours in Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ in the context of another poet of the time, the French author, Jean de La Ceppède (1548/​50–​1623), in particular to Sonnet 63 in the second part of his Théorèmes (165n25). In this poem the ‘colour of blood’ (‘sanglante couleu’) signifies ‘our sins’ (9: ‘nos pechez’). But at the beginning of the poem, the royal meaning of the colour is stressed:  red is also the colour of princes. See Belin 165–​6; and Ruchon 24. Similar to Donne’s sonnet, the colour takes on a double meaning here; what is missing in de La Ceppède, however, is the central paradox of transforming red into white. 74 See Asals on Donne’s use of the imperative (esp. 127–​8). 75 For the origin of the idea see Hebr 10:22 which ‘speaks of drawing near to God in faith, “having hearts sprinkled clean” by the blood of Christ’ (Cary, Inner Grace 13). 76 Shawcross sees an alchemical principle behind this as ‘blood was thought to act as a tincture’ (ed. 339) and points to 1 John 1:7.

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           Here on this lowly  ground Teach me how to repent, for that’s as good As if thou hadst Seald my pardon with thy blood. (Variorum 14.12–​14)

The speaker asks the Lord to ‘teach’ him to repent and equals this teaching with the sealing of his ‘pardon’ with the Lord’s blood. He thus presents himself as an unknowing, an ignorant speaker and plays the role of one who does not dare believe in his pardon. At the same time, he refers to Christ’s death –​and thus to the inherent grace and redemption of Christ’s dying on the cross. He juxtaposes his ignorance with the (possible) vision of the future. His insecurity is combined with an allusion to the Apocalypse (as put forward in the sealing of the ‘foreheads’ in Rev 7:3; Willmott 68) and the Passion of Christ (i.e. his knowledge of the New Testament); the ‘As if ’ thus becomes expressive of dramatic irony:  the reader thinks of the death of Christ as a sign of redemption, while the speaker does not seem to be aware of this context.77 The Passion of Christ turns out to be a major context that is being evoked in the conclusion of this Holy Sonnet as well as in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. In a sermon preached at St. Paul’s on 21 June 1626, Donne establishes an explicit link between baptism and the Passion of Christ, referring to Mt 20:22 and Lk 12:50: ‘In both which places, Christ doth understand by this word Baptisme, his Passion; That is true: And so ordinarily in the Christian Church, as the dayes of the death of the Martyrs were called Natalitia Martyrum, The Birth-​dayes of the Martyrs; so Martyrdome it selfe, was called Baptisme, Baptisma sanguinis, The Baptisme of Blood’ (7: 7.193–​4). Martyrdom is conceived of as a reenactment: Christ died for us by shedding his blood –​and when a martyr dies, he imitates Christ and is saved through the blood of Christ in imitatio Christi.78 In Donne’s Holy Sonnet, the soul’s washing itself in blood evokes these contexts of baptism in connection with the Passion and martyrdom. The baptism of blood that Donne refers to is also mentioned in the Peristephanon Liber (Crowns of Martyrdom) by Prudentius: It is an honourable way of death and one that becomes good men, to make of the body, which is a fabric of feeble flesh and doomed to be wasted by disease, a gift to the enemy’s sword, and by death to overcome the foe. A noble thing it is to suffer the stroke of the persecutor’s sword; through the wide wound a glorious gateway opens to the righteous, and the soul, cleansed in the scarlet baptism, leaps from its seat in the breast. (1.25–​30; emphasis added) But when the martyr found rest on his couch, being weary at heart of the tedious delays and burning with desire to die, –​if we should think it death, which sets the 77 See Lewalski/​Sabol: ‘Repentance is the sign, the evidence of election and pardon’ (153). See also Gardner, Divine Poems 68; Leimberg, Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis 171–​2. Bauer remarks on the dramatic irony of the poem’s conclusion (‘Ironie und Ambiguität’ 154). 78 See Elsky, on the imitation of Christ in religious poems (esp. 76–​9). On martyrdom as imitatio Christi, see, e.g., Knott 2.

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soul free from the prison of the body and restores it to God its creator, the soul that has been purified with blood and cleansed with the washing of death and has given itself and its life as a sacrifice to Christ. (5.352–​64; emphasis added)

In both passages, Prudentius refers to the death of the martyr in terms of a cleansing of the soul in blood; in the first instance, he even reads this as ‘scarlet baptism’,79 an image reminiscent of the paradoxical cleansing, making the soul ‘whight’ through the red blood of Christ. The motif of blood baptism of the soul is, in Donne’s sonnet, expressly turned back on the one true martyr, Christ, while Prudentius refers to the martyrs who sacrified themselves for Christ.80 It is Donne in his sermon who establishes a link between the two. The image of the soul washing in blood, however, also evokes a dramatic connection. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, first performed in London in 1599, Caesar describes the dream of Calphurnia: She dreamt to-​night she saw my statue, Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts, Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans Came smiling and did bathe their hands in it. (2.2.76–​9)

Shakespeare here changes his sources: while Plutarch also mentions a dream, ‘but of a fallen pinnacle’ (Daniell ed. 223n76–​9), the statue running blood and people bathing their hands in it is Shakespeare’s invention.81 The religious dimension of the image becomes even more pertinent in Decius’s (albeit treacherous) interpretation of the dream: Your statue spouting blood in many pipes In which so many smiling Romans bathed, Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck Reviving blood, and that great men shall press For tinctures, stains, relics and cognizance. (85–​9)

Decius refers to the image of sacred blood, as put forth in Rev 1:5 ‘Prince of the kings of the earth […] washed us from our sins in his blood’ (Geneva; Daniell ed.

79 Southwell, in his Epistle of Comfort, a contemporary tract on martyrs, also speaks of the ‘baptism of blood’ in martyrdom (140v, 161r; see also Monta 121). 80 Donne’s interest in martyrdom is perhaps most clearly expressed in his Pseudo-​Martyr (1610). Monta mentions this and Southwell’s Epistle of Comfort (1587–​88) as ‘the two most important English language tracts in ongoing controversies over whether English Catholics’ suffering was meritorious’ (118). In one of his sermons, Donne links martyrdom with the notion of a ‘Better Resurrection’: ‘A Better Resurrection reserved for them, and appropriated to them That fulfill the sufferings of Christ, in their flesh, by Martyrdome, and so become witnesses to that Conveyance which he hath sealed with his blood, by shedding their blood […] every suffering of ours, by which suffering, he may be glorified, is a degree of Martyrdome, and so a degree of improving and bettering our Resurrection’ (7: 390–​1; Monta 147). 81 See Kirschbaum on the stage effect of this scene (519–​24). See also Charney, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays 50–​1; Mahon 96–​7.

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224n83–​9).82 The notion of the blood as being ‘reviving’ has implications towards monarchy (Daniell ed. 224n88) and religious ones:  the blood here revives as a reinvigorating force but also with regard to the meaning that Jesus, through dying, took away death from the world; his death literally ‘revived’ humankind in saving it from death perpetuall.83 The bathing in the blood furthermore evokes images of martyrdom, and Decius furthers this association by mentioning ‘tinctures, stains, relics’ (Daniell 224n89). After the murder of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius (on the internal communication level) inadvertently allude to this dream of Calphurnia: Brutus.[…]   Stoop, Romans,  stoop, And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords. […] Cassius. Stoop then, and wash. How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In [states] unborn and accents yet unknown! (3.1.105–​13)

They regard the act of literally ‘bath[ing]’ in Caesar’s blood as a ‘reviving’ of the Roman people who regain ‘Peace, Freedom and Liberty’ (110). Again, Shakespeare diverges from his source Plutarch and invents this incident; he points not only to the brutality of the act84 but also shows another aspect: Brutus and his companions have committed treason (3.2.189–​90) and now want to wash themselves clean in Caesar’s blood, while making him out as a tyrant. On the external communication level, Shakespeare makes quite a point of the act being treacherous and condemnable. The imagery of the traitor washing in the blood of Caesar, however, is a point of reference between this play and Donne’s sonnet. Washing in blood in the sonnet  –​and, in part, also in Shakespeare’s play  –​ is presented as a way of finding grace.85 Donne presents a similar context in a Lent-​Sermon preached at Whitehall on 20 February 1617. The biblical passage is Lk 23:40:  ‘Fearest not thou God, being under the same condemnation?’ The words are uttered by one of the thieves crucified with Jesus: he responds to his fellow-​criminal who rails at Christ. The content of the sermon can be linked to Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ as both texts are concerned with the process of finding grace. Donne explains: ‘This Thief, whose words they are, is Baptized in his blood’ (252);86 what remains unclear is the reference of ‘his’ which may be both 82 Daniell, somewhat errouneously, refers to the ‘drinking of the blood’ here as well as in ‘sacramental references throughout the New Testament’ (224n85–​9). The bathing in the blood provides the link to the cleaning effected by Christ’s blood in Donne’s Holy Sonnet. 83 On the analogy of Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar see, e.g., Bradley; Geddes 46, 54; Sohmer 27–​8, 136, esp. 139–​41. Tobin comments on Shakespeare’s references to Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem by Thomas Nashe; Hunt, ‘Cobbling Souls’, also refers to ‘the fact that both men’s names begin with the same initials’ (112). Kaula reads ‘Caesar as Antichrist’ (201). 84 See Antony’s reference to ‘brutish beasts’ (3.2.105) that puns on Brutus’s name; see Knape/​Winkler. 85 Cassius says: ‘Brutus shall lead, and we will grace his heals’ (3.1.120); see Daniell 214n120. 86 On this concept of the passion as baptism as well as the blood streaming from Christ as a purging force, see Rahner 372–​3; and 378–​9. He refers in particular to the theology of baptism connected

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the thief ’s own blood as well as that of Jesus. The thief is further characterized by Donne: ‘This condemned person who had been a thief […] was suddainly a Convertite, suddainly a Confessor, suddainly a Martyr’ (254; emphasis added), who dies defending Christ: ‘This thief hung on the right hand, and was suddenly made a Confessor for himself, a Martyr to witnesse for Christ’ (260). The link to the imagery of Christ’s martyrdom that we also find in the sonnet is obvious: the thief on the cross is converted, becomes a martyr, and experiences a baptism in blood. The soul in the sonnet experiences a similar process: the soul is (in the quatrains) characterized as a thief and a traitor. When the speaker asks it to ‘wash itself ’ in Christ’s blood (in the concluding couplet), the soul becomes like the thief who died on the cross and who recognized his own guilt. In a dramatic transformation, the soul turns from the thief who does not wish to leave his prison into the good thief who dies for Jesus and is cleansed in his blood. In both sermon and sonnet, imminent death brings about a peripety which consists in the memory or recognition of ‘grace’ (259); the souls are eventually saved through the blood of Christ. In the sonnet, the speaker admonishes his soul; in the sermon, we hear the thief address his congregation, his ‘poor Parish’ (262).87 While in the sonnet, the speaker addresses his soul as if it was a criminal (thief, traitor), in the sermon, the thief is also portrayed as a murderer of ‘his own soul’ (257). In Donne’s explication in the sermon, the thief undergoes a process of conversion that is comparable to that of the soul in the poem. Donne argues against Augustine, who ‘is confident in it, that this Thief never reviled Christ’ (258). In Donne’s view, if that were true, ‘we shall lack an example of a notorious Blasphemer, and reviler of Christ, to be effectually converted to salvation (of which example, considering how our times abound and overflow with this sin, we stand much in need) except this thief be our example’ (258). It is in this context that he brings the image which we find in the concluding couplet of the sonnet to its climax:  ‘that though he were execrable to men, and execrated God, yet Christ Jesus took him into those bowels which he had rippe’d up, and into those wounds which he had opened wider by his execrations, and had mercy upon him, and buried him in them’ (258–​9). The image is closely related to the conceits of metaphysical poetry; one thinks, for example, of Crashaw’s ‘walking baths’ (‘The Weeper’ 19.113) when Donne speaks of the thief being completely immersed in the wounds of Christ, in his bowels. The sermon brings the finding of grace to its dramatic climax, both in the dramatic representation and structure. The sinner/​ the soul has found the ultimate way to make itself clean again. Both sinner and soul will be granted a happy ending.88

with Jesus’s death on the cross (385–​7). See also Ohly on the ‘bathing’ of Adam’s skull in the blood of Jesus in pictorial representations of the Passion as the redemption of all humankind (Gesetz und Evangelium  63–​5). 87 The sermon here becomes different from the sonnet: it is the fear of God that Donne concludes with (264), which is actually the topic of the following sonnet, Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ (see below). 88 See Lk 23:42: ‘To day thou shalt be with me in paradise.’

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The concluding pun on ‘dye’ in Donne’s sonnet thus refers not only to the death of Christ that saves humankind but also, again, to the physicality and personification of the soul. As Anima in the morality play Wisdom was clothed in order to allegorically represent its state, so the soul here likewise appears to receive a new dress (it is being ‘redressed’; see above), which is implied in the word ‘dye’, as the action of dying is mostly limited to cloths/​clothes and tissues (OED, ‘dye, v.1’ b.). The final stage of the soul, in Donne’s Holy Sonnet as much as in Rev 13–​14 and in Prudentius, consists in wearing white robes that were washed and dyed in Christ’s blood. The soul is thus eventually made pure again. Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ refers to a variety of contexts  –​it contains Donnean Bible exegesis as well as allusions to dramatic texts, medieval morality plays as much as contemporary drama. The final couplet in particular condenses a dramatic motif linked to martyrdom and to the Passion of Christ but, moreover, also refers to a concept that has been present throughout the sonnet: temporality. Not only does the soul move in time –​it is a pilgrim who has done treason, and it is a thief who thinks he is condemned; in the couplet the past event of Christ’s Passion becomes an event that takes place in the future, when the speaker orders his soul ‘wash thee in Christ’s blood’. In the course of fourteen lines, the speaker proceeds from the present moment to the past state of his soul as a thief and traitor to the future in the injunction to do something. The pun on dying can be read as a playful way suggested by Donne (in the sense of serio ludere89) of overcoming death, and the transformation of death into dy(e)ing becomes the central move of the poem: the imperative to wash in Christ’s blood cleanses the soul and (re)turns the criminal (traitor and thief) into an innocent person; death has to be turned into the dy(e)ing of the soul and can thus be overcome. This notion of a fight against death (which is similarly elaborated on in Holy Sonnet ‘Death bee not proud’) also explains the word choice of ‘Champion’ earlier in the poem: Sickness and the soul really do confront each other as in a battle scene, and the soul will eventually be able to win, with the help of Christ’s blood. By means of a pun the speaker in Donne’s poem reinterprets death and dying and shows how death can be overcome in spite of sin. One may hence conclude that the morality play becomes a mystery play in that the soul experiences the ‘might’ of Christ’s death on the cross.

89 On the notion of serious play see, e.g., Leimberg, Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis; Bauer, Mystical Linguistics; Föcking.

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Sole-​talk and soul-​talk: Donne’s so(u)liloquies in the Holy Sonnets

When, in Donne’s Holy Sonnets, the speaker utters an exclamation or apostrophe, this usually has a highly dramatic effect, and one can easily imagine the poem to be spoken on the stage.1 In some of the Holy Sonnets, he directs such an exclamation or apostrophe at his soul. This communicative situation implies both the position of an onlooker as well as of someone involved in the situation; the soul is at once an internal entity of the speaker and his self as well as an external one in that it is made an object of observation, which results in a double perspective: the speaker looks onto and into himself, he addresses his soul, who is inside or external, separate from or part of himself. The address of the soul is at once a dialogue and a soliloquy in which the innermost thoughts and feelings of the speaker are being expressed. This communicative situation relates the Holy Sonnets to the drama of the time, while, concurrently, early modern drama shows strong links with this kind of poetry. Addressing the soul The soul is addressed in the Holy Sonnets four times:2 in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, the opening utterance produces ambiguity in that it may be a statement about the soul or to the soul as well as an expression of interaction between the speaker and his soul. In Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’, the speaker enters into a dialogue with his soul and tells it what to do, while in Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’ and Holy Sonnet ‘What yf this present’, he asks his soul to enter into a meditation. In each case, the communicative situation which involves the address of the soul lends the poem dramatic quality.

1 According to Kullmann, the Holy Sonnets are ‘dramatic’ because of their setting, action and the scenic introduction to the poem (135) as well as their communicative situation (125). See also Wall 202; and Pfister on the dramatic quality of Shakespeare’s Sonnets that is comparable to Donne’s: ‘the majority of his sonnets convey a strong sense of the hic et nunc’ (‘Notes’ 210–​11). 2 See also La Corona: ‘See’st thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eye’ (3.9).

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Soliloquy as (self-​)observation in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’: the speaker and/​about/​to his soul Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ begins with an address of the soul by the speaker who feels death approach and admonishes his soul to prepare for it:3 ‘Oh my black Soule, now thou art summoned /​By Sicknes, Deaths Harold and Champion’. This apparent address of the soul turns out to be less straightforward in terms of the communicative situation than it may at first appear: although the sonnet opens with a statement directed at ‘thou’, this by no means allows for a description of the sonnet as a dialogue; the speaker does not necessarily talk to another character but may just speak to his own soul, who never replies.4 The fact that he does not call the soul a thief or traitor but compares it to a thief or traitor means that the speaker oscillates between reflection and (self-​)address. This wavering is triggered by the ambiguity of the opening ‘Oh’,5 so that ‘Oh my black Soule’ can either be read as an exclamation (on the state of his soul), or an apostrophe (a poetic address to an unhearing entity; see Waters 61), or an address of the soul, either dialogical or monological. By offering comparisons (pilgrim, thief, traitor), which means that he describes and defines the soul by comparing it to something (or rather someone) else; the speaker talks to the soul but still (at least up to line 10) does not really address it. He rather reflects on it while speaking to it, which means that he pronounces an apostrophe.6 But even if we read this first exclamation as an apostrophe, we soon come to realize that the speaker addresses his soul as if it were an entity in its own right that he asks to take action. This communicative behaviour implies a certain degree of distance between him and his soul; concurrently, however, the speaker is deeply involved in what is taking place within the sonnet.7 But the speaker’s description of the soul also takes the form of an anguished exclamation about it:  he does not deem himself, or rather his soul, ready and well prepared for death. The colour ‘black’ is linked to a negative meaning,8 and the speaker is aware of the sinfulness and the ‘disease’ of his soul. The apparent apostrophe is therefore ambiguous in that it can be read as an utterance directed by the speaker at his soul as well as about his soul; or it can be seen as a statement 3 For readings of the sonnet as meditatio mortis see Gransden; Kermode; Spurr. See also Collmer. 4 Hamlet’s famous ‘O my prophetic soul’ (1.5.41) similarly is a statement about and addressed to the soul. 5 ‘Oh’ recurs in line 10: there, the following imperative ‘Make thyself ’ may also refer to both the soul and to the speaker himself. 6 The dramatic quality of the sonnet is based on the communicative situation and linked to apostrophe. In classical oratory, apostrophe meant that the orator, who ‘was felt to be addressing his audience at all times’, was ‘turning aside’ so that he could ‘address briefly someone or something else’ (Waters 61; see Quintilian, Institutio 4.1.63–​70). See also Culler:  to cry ‘Oh’ ‘to something insentient is self-​consciously to stage a drama of the self calling’ (‘Apostrophe’ 142–​3 and 148); Mackenzie 76; and Spurr 19, for different readings of the communicative situation in this poem. 7 Wodianka stresses that the meditatio mortis may have a warning function and a consoling one (169 and 173). 8 ‘Black often means simply “bad” or “evil” ’ (Ferber 28). See also Holy Sonnet ‘I am a little world’: ‘But black sin hath betrayed to endless night /​My world’s both parts, and, oh, both parts must die’ (534.3); and Holy Sonnet ‘If pois’nous minerals’: ‘And drown in it my sins’ black memory’ (538.12).

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about his inner condition, which means that the reflection about his soul is, in fact, a reflection about himself. This reading, however, is not excluded by the other two possibilities: no matter if he addresses his soul or makes a statement about its general features and characteristics, his soul is always connected to himself –​and he to it, while, at the same time, it is conceived of as being a separate entity. The beginning of the sonnet thus contains various dichotomies that are (at least partly) based on ambiguities. These ambiguities may be combined, which means that the sonnet can be read as either a dialogue with the speaker’s own soul, a soliloquy, or as a reflection qua dialogue with another person, as the dialogical reading may also involve the reader/​audience. In the latter case, ‘my soul’ could mean something like ‘my dear’, as in a metonymical form of address, and the readers/​audience are invited to recognize their own situation and fate: they realize, like the speaker as spectator does in the poem, that this, on the stage of the poem, is about themselves and their souls.9 The communicative situation in this poem tells us something about the speaker and his mental state  –​but also about the object he is reflecting on: he can either be regarded as a reflective speaker, who is meditating on the state of his soul; or as an anguished soul; or as an interventionist speaker, who wants to bring about change. These different possibilities stand in a paradoxical relation to each other as they all exist simultaneously. Because of its peculiar communicative situation with the speaker addressing his soul on the point of death, Donne’s sonnet has been read in the tradition of deathbed literature (see Doebler; Fuson, esp. 45): a person on the verge of dying recognizes his or her sins and is afraid of God’s judgement. Against this background, it can be contextualized within the Renaissance preoccupation with death and the art of dying well –​a preoccupation that took place both in relation to the self and the salvation of the soul.10 The speaker in this poem, however, also tells his soul to act. Thus, the soul becomes an agent or actor in its, or rather (based on Latin anima) her own right, who is separate from the speaker (see Oliver 155): not only is she addressed as such but she also becomes the protagonist of a ritual performance11 –​ and the poem becomes a stage upon which the soul is addressed as a character. The utterance ‘Oh my black Soule’ hence opens a dialogue, but what happens in the poem, including the dialogue, takes place within the speaker’s self. At the same time, this dialogue is being transmitted by a speaker who acts like an audience that knows more than the protagonist of the action which is about to take place. It furthermore becomes evident that the action of this sonnet begins in medias res and is followed by the self-​questioning and growing knowledge of the speaker regarding what needs to be done by the soul in order to achieve salvation. This 9 On the address of the soul as a lyrical thou see Coenen-​Mennemeier (esp. ch. 2, 65–​99); her focus is on French as well as German poetry. She refers to Henry Vaughan’s ‘Peace’ (see 94–​5) and later English poetry in which the soul is being addressed (95–​9) in her conclusion. 10 Doebler speaks of ‘the drama of dying as a great climatic [sic] moment of evaluation of the self: the final moment of “self-​fashioning” in which the Christian ideally loses the self to find it’ (49). See also the dance of death-​tradition as described by Spinrad; and Doebler (esp. 40–​5). See also Caxton’s Treatise (1490); and Taylor, The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying (1650). 11 On the reading of the Holy Sonnets in the light of ritual, see Fetzer, Performances 176.

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can be read as an anagnorisis in that the speaker recognizes the true nature of his soul; he is both audience (in watching and commenting on his soul) and actor (in meeting and interacting with his soul); regarding his soul makes him learn and remember something (the nature of its own state and the redeeming act of Christ), while, simultaneously, he teaches his soul by telling it what to do. All this takes place inside the soul but it also takes place inside the self, where the speaker, as in a soliloquy,12 confronts his soul as ‘soul’. This state of being at once both inside and outside has a double effect: it marks the speaker’s distance from himself (because of the soul’s sinfulness), while still acknowledging the soul as his own; and it indicates that the speaker has a double audience: his soul (whose audience he also is) and the readers or listeners of the poem. This, too, very much resembles a dramatic soliloquy.13 Soliloquy as dialogue in Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’: the speaker in conversation with his soul In Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’, the speaker addresses the soul only in the last three lines, following upon a reflection on ‘faythfull Soules’ in the first words of the sonnet. Since the apostrophe ‘O pensive soul’ takes up the reference to ‘our Minds’ and ‘my Mind […]’, the speaker here simultaneously talks about pensive souls in general (the soul of everyone who has a mind of white truth) and his own soul, the main focus, as becomes evident in the concluding words: If faythfull Soules be alike glorified    As Angels, then my fathers Soule doth see    And ads this even to full felicitee That valiantly’I hells wide mouth orestride. But if our Minds to these Soules be descride    By Circumstances, and by Signes that bee    Apparent in vs, not immediatlee How shall my Minds whight truthe by them be tride? They see Idolatrous Lovers weepe and mourne    And vile blasphemous Coniurers to call    On Iesus Name, and pharisaicall Dissemblers feigne devotion: then turne    O pensive Soule to God; for he knowes best    Thy true griefe, for he put it in my brest. (Variorum 15)

1 2 See, e.g., Richard II to himself: ‘Awake, thou coward majesty, thou sleepest!’ (3.2.84). 13 See Müller: ‘the lyric is a kind of stage for a speaker to present himself or herself in front of an intratextual and an implied extratextual audience in ever-​changing self-​representations which are quasi theatrical roles enacted in the small space of a poem’ (‘Poem as Performance’ 173). In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, this is further modified in that God is like a divine stage-​ manager who has delivered a script which is based on grace. See also Arnold on the apostrophic ‘O/​Oh’ as a marker of soliloquy that goes back to classical drama (Soliloquies 136).

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The whole sonnet is based on two if–​then constructions: ‘If faythfull Soules’ /​‘then my father’s soul doth see’ –​‘But if our minds’ /​‘then turne /​O pensive Soule to God’. This structure gives a hint as to how this poem should be read, namely as a thought image, a scene that is taking place in the speaker’s mind, and the poem thus becomes an example of what is to be observed by the faithful souls or, rather, by God. The starting point of the speaker’s reflection is the hypothesis that, if faithful souls acquire the capabilities of Angels, then his father will see how the speaker ‘overstrides’ the mouth of hell.14 The process of seeing that the speaker describes is a double one: the speaker imagines (and sees in his thoughts) how his father watches him. But he then doubts if the souls in heaven are really able to see the minds of those on earth. The mind might be ‘descride’, i.e. revealed by outward appearances only (Smith ed., Complete Poems 628), which means that the ‘white truth’ of his thoughts may be hidden;15 and it is ‘tride’ by the watching souls. This notion of trial is polysemous: it can refer to the separation of ‘the good part of a thing from the rest’ (OED, ‘try, v.’ †2.); the process of ‘to ascertain, find out (something […] obscure, or secret) by search or examination’ (5.†a.); and, in a legal sense, ‘to examine and determine (a cause or question) judicially; to determine the guilt or otherwise of (an accused person) by consideration of the evidence’ (6.); as well as ‘to subject to a severe test or strain’ (10.); and ‘to endeavour to ascertain by experiment or effort; to attempt to find out’ (12.). The speaker thus wonders how the souls ‘glorified’ in heaven will separate his ‘whight truthe’ from the rest, how they will search it, how examine and judge it. His perspective changes from ‘our Minds’ to ‘my Minds whight truthe’, and from ‘these Soules’ to his own soul. The speaker also refers to the relation of mind and soul as seat of the faculties and immortal substance of human beings; he doubts the faculty of the souls in heaven to recognize his mind and try it justly because they lack the necessary abilities. In the following quatrain, the speaker goes on to elaborate on the fact that ‘our minds’ are only descried by circumstances, and on how the soul is only apparent to the souls in heaven by signs, not ‘immediatlee’; he describes what the souls see from heaven, namely ‘Idolatrous Lovers’, ‘blasphemous Coniurers’, and ‘pharisaicall Dissemblers’: those watched ‘feign devotion’, which means that they are play-​acting; what they show on the outside is not true, and the whole world actually is nothing more than a stage on which various characters are assembled. The characters depicted could indeed all appear on a stage; the most apparent allusion to the stage is the ‘vile blasphemous Coniurer’, namely Doctor Faustus. The whole problem that the speaker addresses is a crucial one for theatrical performance: how can the innermost be expressed by visible and audible signs?16 14 The adverb ‘valiantly’ adds a note of chivalry to this image of overstriding the mouth of hell. 15 The verb ‘descride’ evokes ‘described’ (implicitly the writing process as the revelation of the soul) and ‘cried’, i.e. the outcry which is a sign of ‘true griefe’; see OED entries for ‘descry’ (v.1 for ‘cry’ and v.2 for ‘describe’.) While both do not fit grammatically, the evocation adds the above connotations to the line. 16 See also Hamlet in the player-​scene on the acting of Hecuba (2.2.545–​54); and the reflection in Lucrece.

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Two notions come into play here: firstly, the stage metaphor –​in connection with the topos of theatrum mundi; and, secondly, the dramatic irony in the speaker’s reference to the souls in heaven and their inability to read the speaker’s soul immediately. What the souls see is a spectacle similar to the allegory of Vives in his Fabula de homine, where the souls of the dead are watching those who are still alive.17 Man is first performing on the stage of the world and then, when in heaven, he watches others. God is the best spectator because he is the author, and this is why, in the last lines of the poem, the speaker asks his soul to ‘turne to God’.18 Donne expresses a similar thought in a Lent Sermon preached before the King on 16 February 1620 (on 1 Tim 3:16):  ‘Spectaculum sumus, sayes the Apostle; We are made a spectacle to men and angels. The word is there Theatrum, and so S. Hierom reads it: And therefore let us be careful to play those parts well, which even the Angels desire to see well acted’ (3: 9.218). The world is a theatre, and we are indeed merely players –​watched by a heavenly audience. The sonnet is ironical in that the soul is only apparent to those other souls by signs, not immediately, which means that they may misread them, whereas the signs of the text make the soul accessible to the reader, and the poem becomes a ‘so(u)liloquy’ in the sense of being not only spoken to the soul but also as a revelation of the soul. While those ‘glorified’ souls in heaven are not able to look into the speaker’s soul, God is; he has written its ‘text’ anyway. The poem renders the soul legible and gives the reader a privileged position. As in a soliloquy spoken on the stage, the poem opens up the soul of the speaker and turns it into a stage where a view into a character is provided. The soul in this poem can be interpreted in a double perspective: it is a spectator (as the glorified soul of a dead person), who cannot look into the minds of those on earth (5–​8) but perceives their outer action only. And it is an actor on the stage of the world (like the other actors watched by the souls in heaven) who are ‘feigning devotion’.19 In the concluding apostrophe/​exclamation, the address is also double:  the speaker either asks his own soul to act, or he speaks with his father’s soul in heaven as spectator. The inherent ambiguity, however, is resolved in the final words: the speaker is addressing his own soul, himself, because he refers to the ‘true griefe’ in ‘[his] brest’. This ‘true griefe’ is linked to the epithet that the speaker gives his soul: ‘pensive’ refers to the soul being ‘1. Sorrowfully thoughtful; gloomy, sad, melancholy’ 1 7 See also Tertullian, De Spectaculis. 18 See Vives: ‘The great Jupiter was director of the plays’ (Fable About Man 387); later, the other gods recognize that he is not only the director but also the author. 19 This kind of ‘feigning’ is implicitly contrasted with the feigning that is the poem. Fetzer reads this sonnet as an instance of ‘an awareness of the two mutually contradictory meanings of “perform” –​ to enact vs. to pretend’ (‘Plays of Self ’ 197). Sinfield refers to the notion of ‘feint’ –​following the terminology of Käte Hamburger (fiction as being derived from Lat. fingere 53–​6) –​and regards it as characteristic of the genre of dramatic monologue in which the communicative situation is based on a fictive speaker (Dramatic Monologue 25). The generic label of dramatic monologue is used to refer to authors of the nineteenth century and beyond (Sinfield, Dramatic Monologue 42); Donne’s Holy Sonnets, because of their communicative situation, can be regarded as precedents of the genre.

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(OED, ‘pensive, adj.’ A.1.; see also 2. and †3.). The speaker is concerned with his salvation, and he comes to understand –​as in an anagnorisis introduced with the volta –​that only God will recognize and ‘try’ him for what he is. This recognition is given particular emphasis by means of stress: ‘thén túrne /​(´)O pénsive Sóule to Gód’, and also through enjambment.20 The soul obtains particular weight. This corresponds to the double stress given to ‘knowes best’ in line 13: God’s recognition of the speaker’s grief is the counterpart, and cause, of the speaker’s anagnorisis. The speaker begins by contrasting (or at least putting a distance between) ‘our Minds’ (in this world) and ‘faithful souls’ (in the next world). The latter watch the former, but the stage of the world is full of deceptions, and the spectators, although ‘glorified’, only possess limited discernment; they are with God, but they are not God. The only true spectator is, as it were, the author (God), who created (and therefore knows) the ‘inside’. Correspondingly, there is a shift from ‘mind’ to ‘soul’, and the speaker turns from his mind and its ‘whight truthe’ to his soul and to God. The soul is the part of the speaker that is able to turn to God. The speaker and his soul are separate and one: God knows ‘thy true grief ’ (i.e. the soul’s) that he put in ‘my brest’. The use of pronouns puts the communicative situation in a nutshell: the speaker is talking to himself and to his soul in a dialogue at the same time, and the poem truly is a ‘dialogue of one’, embedded in the theatre of the speaker’s mind and the stage that is the world, watched by heavenly spectators. Soliloquy as meditation in Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’: the speaker’s inner stage In Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’ the implicit stage metaphor and the transformation of the soul into an inner stage contribute to the dramatic dimension. In Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’, the soul is also presented as a stage, and the ambiguous communicative situation of soliloquy and dialogue is integrated into the speaker’s ‘meditation: Wilt thou love God, as he, thee? then digest    My Soule, this holsome meditation:    How God the Spirit by Angels wayted on In heauen; doth make his temple in thy brest. (Variorum 16.1–​4)

The referent of the personal pronoun thou/​thee is not clear until the beginning of line 2, when the soul is addressed and asked to ‘digest […] this wholesome meditation’.21 Again, this address of the soul is ambiguous: it can either refer to the 20 This is not unusual in Donne’s Holy Sonnets and can be found in a similar manner in Holy Sonnet ‘Batter my heart’ and Holy Sonnet ‘Oh, to vex me’. The line thus contains a metapoetical statement as well: when the speaker asks his soul to ‘turn’, the volta follows; on the Notion of ‘Turning’, see Dörge. See also Hamer’s notion of ‘overflow’ in this context (on the conventional break in the English sonnet form; 201); and Linville 76. 21 This has been read as an allusion to metaphoric descriptions of memory as the stomach or belly of the soul’ in Augustine (Confessions 10.14) and St. Bernard (Guibbory 271–​2). See also Donne’s reference to St. Bernard: ‘The memory, says St. Bernard, is the stomach of the soul [Stomachus

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speaker himself or to someone else, a lyrical thou. Depending on this ambiguity, there are three options: God either resides in the breast of the (external) addressee of the poem, or the soul is addressed metonymically (‘thy’ refers to the person as a whole), or the soul is given physical qualities by the speaker and addressed as if it had a body. As the speaker in Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’ goes on to talk about the Incarnation (5), a similar process of being incarnated, taking on flesh, can be assumed for the soul.22 The reference to the body of the soul can therefore be read as the soul being an instance of the self because the body always is the body of an incarnated soul. According to this reading, the soul is the real self of the speaker, and he addresses it for it is the place where his meditation ought to take place. This latter aspect links the sonnet to Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’, as the poem itself is the meditation, the process going on in the soul. This meditation is linked to a mental process (OED, ‘digest, v.’ 2. and 3.), which foregrounds the connection of mind and soul. If the poem is read as the address of a lyrical thou that is metonymically called ‘My Soule’,23 this means that the speaker first asks this person a question, and then recommends to digest ‘this wholesome meditation’, the poem.24 The speaker turns into a caretaker of the soul, counselling the soul(s) that he is in charge of. In either case, the speaker reminds the ‘soul’ of God living in his/​its breast.25 While the speaker in Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’ explicitly mentions the poetic form of meditation (OED, ‘meditation, n.’ 2. and 3.), in Holy Sonnet ‘What yf this present’ the practice is literally presented and becomes part of the process described in the poem:26 What yf this present were the worlds last night?    Looke in my Hart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell    The picture of Christ crucifyde and tell Whether that countenance can thee affright? (Variorum 18.1–​4) animae], it receives and digests’ (Sermons 2: 11.236). Guibbory notes that Donne’s attribution to St. Bernard is wrong; it actually goes back to Augustine (cf. 272n27). Already Quintilian links the action of reading and memorizing the content to one of eating and digesting (Institutio 10.1.19; see Butzer, Soliloquium 81–​2). Strier’s reading is beside the point when he comments that this line contains ‘a sense of force-​feeding’ (378). The main reference of the food metaphors (digest, wholesome) is the idea of nourishment for the soul (with the Eucharist in the background); see Fetzer, ‘Donne, Devotion, and Digestion’ 149; on ‘Eating Words’ and the Eucharist, see also Bauer, ‘Eating Words’. 22 If the soul has a breast, then it also has a heart  –​a concept that Mary Sidney refers to in her translation of Ps 51: ‘the heart-​broken soul’ (98.49). See Niefer. 23 Anne in Richard III is repeatedly addressed as ‘poor soul’ by Elizabeth as an expression of pity and compassion (4.1.63; 90). See also Richard II, when Richard says to his Queen: ‘Learn, good soul’ (5.1.17). 24 On the notion of meditation as text see Martz, Poetry; and Doebler 205. 25 The reference to the breast, which implies the seat of the heart, has repeatedly been read as an allusion to love poetry (Altizer 85; Ferry 227; Lever, Sonnets 181). But this poem refers to the love of God alone. However, as God lives in the heart, one might see a pattern or motif reminiscent of love poetry, where the picture of the speaker’s beloved can be found in his heart; see Donne’s ‘The Damp’ (Robbins ed. 163.1–​4). In Holy Sonnet ‘What yf this present’ as well as in ‘A Litanie’ (Low 54) it is the picture of Jesus crucified that can be found in the heart. 26 See OED, ‘meditation, n.’ 1.a. and c.

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The speaker begins this poem with a question and exposes the fictional character of the situation on which he is going to reflect in a compositio temporum. The opening line serves as a prologue and sets the context. This fictional frame is then related to reality and emphasizes the seriousness of the speaker’s role-​play:  the speaker can only find the truth about himself (and his salvation) if he imagines this situation.27 The heart is the seat of the speaker’s soul;28 and it is so in a double sense: literally and as a metaphor of the inner self, i.e. the soul. Again, the speaker addresses the soul and thus introduces a division between himself –​‘my Hart’ –​and the soul which dwells there. The soul is perceived as an entity that is separate from the speaker but, at the same time, a part of him; the breast is also the place of ‘God the Spirit’ (Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’). The speaker asks, or, rather, commands his soul to ‘look’ and to ‘tell’,29 which contributes to the personification of the soul and also points towards a spectator-​ situation: the heart, the inner part of the speaker, becomes a stage on which the soul is to look at something, namely the ‘picture of Christ’ on the cross. The picture of Christ is to move the soul.30 In the question concluding the quatrain, the speaker again refers to the situation of the soul as a spectator, and asks whether the soul experiences fear when looking at that picture.31 The second quatrain focuses on a description of the picture of Christ, and the sonnet concludes: No, No; but as in myne idolatree    I sayd to all my profane Mistressis    Bewty of pity, foulnes only is A Signe of rigor; So I say to thee    To wicked Sprights are horrid Shapes assignd,    This bewteous forme assures a piteous mind. (9–​14)

The speaker opens the sestet with a reference to his behaviour towards his ‘profane Mistressis’ and with an analogy: beauty goes along with pity, foulness with rigour (see Smith ed. 631; Cain 312), which is an allusion to the topos of the cruel lady 27 The tone set by the opening words ‘What yf ’ is reminiscent of ‘as if ’; see Leimberg, Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis 170, and ‘If and It’. 28 This is a variation of the biblical concept that Christ dwells in the heart of man (see Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’, ‘temple in thy breast’), e.g. in Eph 3:16–​17. The ‘rational part of the soul’ in the Old Testament is called ‘ “the heart” (which in Hebrew clearly means a faculty of understanding and thought as well as feeling)’ (Cary, Augustine’s Invention 47). 29 As in Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’ and in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, the speaker addresses the soul with imperatives, which implies teaching:  the speaker knows what the soul should do. 30 Sloane links emblem and meditation by referring to Anton Wiericx’s Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (74). See also Donne’s sermon preached to the King on Gen 1:26: ‘The Image of God […] is in our soule’ (9: 2.81); and the sermon preached at White-​Hall on Ez 34:19 (10: 6.153). 31 Aristotle in his Poetics names phobos as one of the emotions that the audience is to experience when watching a tragedy. Hunt refers to the opening lines of the sonnet as having a ‘superb dramatic power, bursting on the reader’ in a ‘coup de théâtre’ (Donne’s Poetry 135).

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(e.g. in Petrarch), who ought to be pitiful because of her beauty (Willey 387). The analogy serves to introduce another correspondence, namely the parallel ‘I sayd’ and ‘I say’, between the mistresses and the picture of Christ crucified that dwells in the heart, where the soul is, too:  this parallel, however, comes with a twist, namely the speaker’s emphasis on the beauty of Christ’s tortured face.32 Formerly, the speaker tried to persuade his mistresses (as in Donne’s love poetry, e.g. ‘The Flea’) by logic or by making them share the Platonic assumption of a union of the beautiful and the good (see Lewalski/​Sabol 155), as well as by appealing to their pity and compassion. This process of persuasion now leaves the secular realm and enters the realm of the sacred:  Christ is meant to be persuaded that he be pitiful. The soul, who is afraid of judgement (7–​8), can be assured by means of the ‘bewteous forme’,33 since it (be)holds the picture of Christ crucified. Donne here turns around Isaiah 53:2 in quite an ingenious manner: ‘he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him’ (see Milward, Commentary 76). The word ‘desire’ in Isaiah seems to suggest the parallel Donne draws between the speaker’s attitude towards his mistresses and that towards Christ. The picture must be beautiful since neither Christ nor the soul is a wicked spirit to which horrid shapes are assigned. The persuasion is thus a double one: it is active as an address to the mistresses (in the past) and to Christ to be pitiful as they are/​he is beautiful; and it is a passive one directed at the soul and meant to persuade it: what it sees is beautiful because it is a shape inside itself (i.e. the heart). This persuasion, however, is also embedded in a (serious) joke which consists in cleverly transferring the discourse of secular love to religious meditation. In his love affairs, the speaker has asked his mistresses to give in to his wishes because beauty and pity must go together. The analogy with Christ not only postulates that Christ must be forgiving because he is beautiful but that Christ must be beautiful because he must be forgiving; the ocular evidence, Christ’s blood-​stained face as described in the second quatrain, might rather suggest the opposite. It is through the analogy with the mistresses that the speaker’s salvation becomes a matter of persuasion –​wit is serving religion. By looking at the picture of Christ the soul is able to show pity –​it is a ‘piteous mind’ (the mind providing a link to the soul) and it is assured by what it sees.34 Yet the poem as a whole is a meditation on the end of the world and God’s judgement: the soul is reminded of the sacrifice of God’s son and its own salvation by looking at Christ’s picture;35 and God is persuaded to be 32 Gilman reads this as a parallelism rather than an opposition or contrast and claims the sestet is blasphemous as the speaker ‘attempt[s]‌to seduce Christ into granting mercy’ in a way similar to that of his trying to seduce his profane mistresses (90–​1); on the proposed blasphemy of the sestet see also Carey 47. 33 Fish in ‘Masculine Persuasive Force’ reads the ‘beauteous form’ as also referring to the poem itself. 34 The adjective ‘piteous’ is ambiguous: it can mean pitiable, i.e. deserving pity (OED, ‘piteous, adj.’ 2.a.), or compassionate (OED 1.); another reading refers to ‘pious, godly, devout’ (†3.). 35 The beauty of Christ on the cross can be linked to the motif of Jesus’s divine glory (Gk. doxa), as presented in the gospel of John 1:14. The concept of doxa is intricately linked with the motif of elevation, an ambiguous term that can refer to both the crucifixion and the revelation of Jesus’s glory which becomes particularly obvious on the cross (John 12:12–​16:28; 17:1–​5). I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Christof Landmesser for this theological contextualization.

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merciful through the analogy in the poem. The statement ‘who is beautiful is also merciful’ is in fact an illocutionary/​performative act. The picturing of Christ on the cross in meditation was already recognized as a way towards salvation during the Middle Ages and in the devotio moderna; it is Luther who writes in his Bettbüchleyn: Das ist gnade vnd barmherzigkeyt /​das Christus am creuz dein sündt vō dir nympt /​vn tregt sie fur dich /​vnd erwůrget sie /​vnd dasselb festiglich glauben /​vnd vor augen haben /​nit daran zweyffeln /​Das heysset das gnaden bilde ansehen /​vnd in sich bilden. (‘Sermon vom Sterben’ P)36

The wording ‘vor augen haben’ and ‘das gnaden bilde ansehen und in sich bilden’ suggests that the direction of looking should be turned inward. The imagining of the picture of Christ is a way towards salvation as the memory of his killing sin triggers the understanding of God’s mercy. Luther establishes a connection between the picture –​‘bilde’ –​and the formation of that picture within oneself –​ ‘bilden’. To meditate inwardly (‘festiglich glauben vnd vor augen haben’) means looking at the picture of Grace; the (inner) picture is thus not the origin of faith but the result of it. In Donne’s Holy Sonnets, this meditation takes place as and in a soliloquy with the soul. ‘Dialogues of One’: the history and tradition of the so(u)liloquy The speaker in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ (as well as in the other Holy Sonnets mentioned above) addresses his soul simultaneously as an external recipient and as a part of himself.37 In this sonnet one thus finds a meditation of the speaker about the soul, an address of the soul, and, hence, the soul as character. The apparent soliloquy is actually a dialogue –​but it is a dialogue of one;38 the soul becomes the interlocutor in an inner dialogue, which lends the whole communicative situation a ‘dramatic’ quality.39 The phrase ‘dialogue of one’ is coined by Donne in ‘The Extasie’. In this love poem (from Songs and Sonets), death is anticipated:  the speaker describes the moment and the place when and where the souls of the lovers are liberated from the body and unite to then return to the respective bodies, in a refined state. The union of the lovers described is figuratively a foreshadowing of the time when they actually will be in the grave. Their temporary union is observed by a third party,

36 ‘This is the grace and mercy that Christ took away your sin on the cross and carries it for you and kills it; and to believe in this thoroughly and hold it before one’s eyes and never doubt it, this means to look at the picture of grace and form it in oneself ’ (translation mine). 37 There is an essay by Wiltenburg titled ‘Donne’s Dialogue of One:  The Self and the Soul’ which, however, focuses on texts other than the Holy Sonnets (except for Holy Sonnet ‘Why am I’) and on the topic ‘Donne in love’ (414). 38 Hillman emphasizes the ‘discursive function’ of self-​speaking and soliloquy (68; see also Hirsh, History 13–​18). Hösle refers to the intersubjectivity of dialogue (28); see also Kinzel/​Mildorf on dialogue as ‘having another person speak’ (14; see Hösle 28). 39 In Müller’s view, inner dialogue is constitutive to dramas of the soul (‘Das Ich im Dialog’ 329).

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a lover who hears ‘this dialogue of one’, which refers to the souls talking to each other while united, as well as the poem itself (see Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Sites of Death’). This notion of a ‘dialogue of one’ can be transferred to the communicative situation in the poems discussed here:  although there is a speaker addressing someone perceived as other than himself, this other is actually a part of him. While in ‘The Extasie’ this notion relates to the lovers, in the Holy Sonnets it refers to the speaker and his soul; the soul, however, is not only an internal instance but also becomes a character of its own as in a drama.40 This double view of the soul is highlighted in the conclusion to Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’: ‘Then turn /​O pensive soul, to God, for he knows best /​Thy true grief, for he put it in my breast’. As the soul in these sonnets is always also a part of the speaker, the address of the soul is, accordingly, a form of self-​address. The assumed dialogue in Donne’s Holy Sonnets is therefore an internal one, a soliloquy –​a ‘dialogue of one’.41 The communicative situation of the soliloquy, prominent as it may have been in early modern poetry and on the stage, goes back to at least two older traditions: Senecan drama, where long monological speeches by the Chorus can be found and characters speak in soliloquy, and an Augustinian tradition that lived on into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example in readings, translations, and interpretations of the Psalter,42 in dialogues between the body and soul,43 the form of confession (Beichtspiegel),44 as well as in the 1592 English translation of 40 On the link between drama and dialogue see, e.g., Hirzel 1:  12. Andrieu draws the distinction between ‘dialogues in dramatic form, which can be compared to scenes from plays, and dialogues in narrative form, which are organized around the positions of the participants and for which, as a consequence, additional staging or scenery is irrelevant’ (283; see Stock 73). Keener sees a major difference in the history of dialogue and drama (15). On the question whether a dialogue or a drama is designed to be ‘read or heard’ or played see, e.g., Berger; Buzacot; Coursen; Gurr/​ Ichikawa; Stern; and Weimann/​Bruster. 41 This becomes particularly clear in Donne’s sermons: in these he stresses that all he says to other people always also concerns himself:  ‘when I  accuse my selfe, and confesse mine infirmities to another man, that man may understand, that there is, in that confession of mine, a Sermon’ (5: 1.51). Walton notes that Donne was ‘always preaching to himself ’ (31). See also McCullough, who refers to the Horatian topos ‘Si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi’ (Ars Poetica 1.102; ‘Donne as Preacher’ 175–​6). 42 Cardelle de Hartmann refers to Thomas of Chobham ([died] 1233/​36), who called the psalter liber soliloquiorum: ‘Tales sunt claustrales qui habent aures erectas ad rimas claustri. Tales cum legunt psalterium debent scire quot legunt librum soliloquiorum. Ideo dicitur liber soliloquiorum quia fere per illum totum librum dirigitur sermo ad solum Deum, non ad angelos, neque ad Petrum, neque ad Paulum, neque ad alios sanctos’ (ed. Morenzoni, Sermo 11, 37–​42; Lateinische Dialoge 206). See also Whither: ‘Beda saith, that those holy Songs are called the Booke of the Soliloquies of Dauid: and it is tearmed so, because either Dauid speakes alone to God in Spirit and contemplation, or else because hee introduceth Christ speaking alone to God the Father, or because he bringeth in the mysticall body of the faithfull, speaking to the Father, or to their Head and Redeemer’ (Preparation 6.45). Larson refers to the conversational nature of the Psalms in the context of the Sidney Psalter (63–​4). See Radzinowicz for a detailled analysis of the Psalms and their connections to Donne. Fetzer also points to the similarity of Psalms and Donne’s Holy Sonnets (Performances 28). See also Zim; and Teuber on the biblical tradition of soul-​talk. 43 Dialogues of body and soul count as soliloquies because two entities converse that form a unit; they became fashionable in medieval literature; see Bossy; Leishman, Art 210; Osmond 55–​69. 44 Like the other genres mentioned, the Beichtspiegel belong to forms of sacred discourse in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. They are usually directed (in an internal dialogue) to God or a saint (or a priest) to express repentance for one’s sins; see Cornett; Haberkern; Schavan; Schulze; Stammler esp. 816–​20.

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Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi by Thomas Rogers. There is a major difference between these two strands of a tradition: while Senecan soliloquy aimed at ‘self-​ examination’ (Cunliffe 17; see also Skiffington), in the religious sense, ‘soliloquy’ was directed ‘ad solum Deum’, alone to God. Already Augustine seems to have re-​ interpreted the meaning of ‘soliloquy’ in that he was aware of the inherent ambiguity of ‘ad solum Deum’ –​which can refer to either ‘when I am alone with God’ or ‘to God alone’. When he has a part of himself (Ratio) enter into a dialogue with himself in the Soliloquia, he is speaking with a part of himself, and is alone with God. This is the notion of the soliloquy relevant in devotional writings of the early modern period. The Protestant Rogers substitutes Kempis’s fourth book  –​‘De Sacramento  –​Devota exhortatio ad sacram communionem’ (De Imitatione Christi 406–​93)45 –​with the Soliloquium Animae: The sole-​talke of the Soule. Or, A  spirituall and heauenlie Dialogue betwixt the Soule of Man and God (Dibdin, Introduction cv). He probably found his cue for doing so in the first chapter of Kempis’s third book (Liber Internae Consolationis), ‘De interna Christi locutione ad animam fidelem’ (182–​4), which points to the soliloquy as ‘soul-​talk’.46 Rogers explicitly establishes a connection between the soliloquy and the soul when he gives his fourth book the title The sole-​talke of the Soule; the soliloquy is a mental exercise, not unlike meditation, and it is concerned mainly with the action that the soul ought to take in order to find salvation. Donne’s Holy Sonnets can be read in a new light and understood more clearly against the background of the soliloquy, especially with regard to the communicative situation but also the drama of salvation that the speaker experiences and gives expression to in these miniature dramas. And yet, Donne’s Holy Sonnets also add to the theory of the soliloquy, namely with regard to the merging of soul and self and the doubling of soul and speaker in mental discourses and scenes. ‘Talking with ourselves alone’: the Augustinian context and definition The Latin word ‘soliloquium’ (OED, ‘soliloquy, n.’ etym.) was introduced by Augustine in the title of his Soliloquia (387).47 In the second book of the Soliloquia, 45 Like all Protestant translators (Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations 128 and his Introduction), Rogers left out Book Four of Kempis’s Imitatio Christi; it was only in 1592, in ‘at least the seventh edition of his version’ (White, ‘Some Continuing Traditions’ 977) that he inserted his translation of Soliloquium Animae. 46 Authorship of the Soliloquium Animae is a matter of debate. While Narveson maintains that ‘Rogers’s Soliloquium Animae […] [was] a “translation and correction” of psuedo[sic]-​Augustinian meditations that Rogers substituted for the fourth book of Kempis’s Imitation of Christ’ (‘Publishing the Sole-​talk’ 111), the title page of Rogers’s Soliloquium Animae itself suggests that it is indeed a translation of Kempis:  ‘Which for the great affinitie it hath with other books of the Auctor published heeretoefore in our native tongue, is now entituled The fourth booke of the Imitation of Christ.’ Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi was a bestseller during the early modern period, with translations into English abounding (Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations). On the reception history of Kempis, see Hudson; Kubsch; and White, ‘Some Continuing Traditions’. 47 On the origin and the context of composition of Augustine’s Soliloquia, see, e.g., Cardelle de Hartmann 165–​9. The word was used mainly to refer to Augustine’s work soliloquium’, even during the Middle Ages (205).

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Reason says:  ‘quae, quoniam cum solis nobis loquimur, Soliloquia vocari atque inscribi volo, novo quidem et fortasse duro nomine, se ad rem demonstrandam satis idoneo’ (2.14.1–​2; emphasis added) –​‘Think of the very reason why we have chosen this type of conversation. I want them to be called “Soliloquies” because we are talking with ourselves alone. The title is new and perhaps it is rather harsh, but suitable enough, I think for the situation it wishes to highlight. There is no better way of seeking the truth than the question and answer method’ (Watson ed. 89; emphasis added);48 he goes on: ‘It was for that reason that the most peaceful and most profitable procedure was for me to question and answer myself, and so with God’s help to search for what is true’ (Watson 89).49 Augustine emphasizes both the novelty and the aptness of the term for the res he wants to label, namely the ‘talking with ourselves alone’.50 This ‘self-​inquiry or self-​report’ takes place in the form of a dialogue (see Moser 378):  it is not Reason alone in Augustine’s Soliloquia who is talking to him-​or herself  –​nor is it the Soul alone in Kempis. The self-​inquiry is based on the division of man into ‘himself ’ and some other instance, namely the Soul or Reason (as part of the Soul); but the interlocutors are not really to be separated from each other.51 Rather, the speaker (the ‘I’) enters into a conversation with a personified part of himself or with God. To Augustine –​in this text and elsewhere –​soliloquy is dialogue,52 and always a dialogue with God, a conversation ‘ad Deum solus’ in its ambiguous sense:53 when the speaker is talking to himself, he is addressing

48 In Augustine, form and content are often linked, which is why he chooses to elaborate on the condition of the soul in a soliloquy. His short treatise De immortalitate Animae was composed as a supplement to the Soliloquia (Bogan 6); De Quantitate Animae (a dialogue) was written to prove the immateriality of the soul (Bogan 6). For the reception history of Augustine’s Soliloquia in England see, e.g., the Introduction to the translation of the Soliloquia by King Alfred from around the second quarter of the twelfth century (Cardelle de Hartmann 169; Carnicelli 3). Butzer argues that, concurrently, Augustine also introduced meditation as a literary genre (Soliloquium 20; see also ‘Rhetorik’ 60). Butzer does expressly not consider meditative poetry in his otherwise very useful study (see Soliloquium 27). 49 With regard to the history of self-​fictionalization in literary texts, Kambasković-​Sawers refers to Augustine’s Soliloquia and Confessions, and to Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae (286). 50 Stock explains:  ‘There are a number of writers in antiquity and late antiquity before Augustine who make use of soliloquies; however, there is no one who employs inner dialogue in relation to narrative in the fashion in which this combination appears in his early writings and the Confessions’ (63). 51 See Stock’s definition of the soliloquy: ‘a type of rational dialogue (or dialogue with Reason) in which questions are asked and answers given within the mind of a single person’ (1). See also Matthew Arnold’s definition of soliloquy as a ‘dialogue of the mind with itself ’ (‘Critical Preface’ 591; see Clemen, Shakespeare’s Soliloquies 3), where one could easily substitute ‘mind’ with ‘soul’. Arnold sees the origin of this dialogue in the period of Shakespeare and Marlowe’s tragedies (esp. Hamlet and Doctor Faustus; 591). 52 See Bogan 15; Butzer, Soliloquium 129; Lerer 31; and Stock 71. 53 Stock’s distinction between ‘dialogues as public discourses, whereas his soliloquies are private conversations, even on the occasions when they appear to be overheard, as in the case of his inner dialogues in God’s presence’ (72) is somewhat beside the point as God does not just overhear the inner dialogue but may be its addressee. What Stock describes is different from ‘cum solis nobis loquimur’ in Augustine.

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God.54 Augustine commented on his Soliloquia in his Confessions and described them as ‘deliberations with myself when I was alone in your [i.e. God’s] presence’ (Lerer 47; trans. of Confessiones 9.4.7).55 The dialogue that occurs within the soul as a rational activity in Augustine’s Soliloquia becomes a dialogue with the Soul as the immortal part of man in Thomas à Kempis/​Rogers’s Sole-​talke. The soliloquy as such, in this understanding, is therefore not some speech uttered by a person in his mind but is always an inner dialogue that involves as an interlocutor some (inner) part of the person who soliloquises.56 We find the concept (i.e. the res) of the soliloquy as dialogue in Plato (see Stock 67): in his Hippias maior, he has Socrates ask questions to himself not in his own person but by using a mask, by means of which he presents himself on the basis of dialogue. He follows the formula from the Theaetetus in which reflection and thinking are defined as ‘[a]‌talk which the soul has with itself about the objects under its consideration […] It seems to me that the soul when it thinks is simply carrying on a discussion in which it asks itself questions and answers them itself, affirms and denies’ (189e–​190a; see Butzer, Soliloquium 13–​14). In Socrates’ view, the soliloquy is not a speech but a conversation in which the soul is involved.57 Stock, in the context of Socrates, also refers to Seneca and argues that he, in his Epistulae Morales, ‘produced the most sophisticated adaptations of the soliloquy before Augustine. Seneca’s soliloquies frequently take place in double dialogues, i.e., in exchanges with Kucilius and within himself ’ (68). These doublings are an element that make their way into dramatic speech, for example, when Atreus addresses his soul: ‘Age, anime, fac quod nulla posteritas probet /​sed nulla taceat’ (Thyestes 2.192–​ 3).58 In a similar vein, Medea exclaims: ‘nun hoc age, anime. non in occulto tibi est /​ perdenda virtus; approba populo manum’ (Medea 5.976–​7).59 In both instances, the 54 A third line of this tradition can be seen in Cicero’s works; see Stock 32; Lerer 5; and Michel, who reads Augustine in terms of a reconciliation of the Ciceronian tradition of dialogue with Senecan interiority (‘L’influence du dialogue cicéronien’ 15). 55 See the pseudo-​Augustinian Soliloquia animae ad Deum (1621), where the title Soliloquia … ad also points towards the understanding of soliloquy as dialogue. 56 Müller refers to T. S. Eliot’s concept of the ‘voice of the poet talking to himself –​or to nobody’ (see T. S. Eliot ‘The Three Voices of Poetry’ 89; Müller, ‘Das Ich im Dialog’ 315). Müller does not consider inner dialogues between man and his soul. 57 Butzer, Soliloquium 14. See Cary on the relation of soliloquy and inwardness and suggests an ongoing tradition from Plato to Plotin and to Augustine (Augustine’s Invention 11). 58 Jasper Heywood, in his 1560 translation, renders this as: ‘Go to, do that which neuer shall /​no after age allow’ (His Tenne Tragedies 24), which reflects the fact that, in 1560, the form of self-​address (or address of the soul) was not yet popular in drama. In the most recent translation, the line is given as ‘Come, my spirit’ (Fitch, ed. and trans. 245). Borgmeier refers to this passage in Thyestes to illustrate similarities between Seneca and Richard III, especially his opening monologue (306). His point is, however, not so much the function of the soliloquy as a dialogue of speakers with their soul, but rather a structural one, regarding the evolution of plot. Soliloquy as a Senecan element that would influence early modern drama is explicitly mentioned by Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition; Cunliffe 16–​17; and Skiffington 11. 59 Heywood renders this as ‘Of stomack stout, that you did use in murthering of thy childe. /​ Proclaime in peoples eares the prayse of cruell bloudy hand’ (His Tenne Tragedies 138). See also Ajax in Sophocles at the moment of his suicide: ‘The killer stands where it will be sharpest, if one has time to work it out […] So I am well equipped; and after this, do you first, Zeus, help me, as is natural; the favour I ask of you is not a great one […] O light, O sacred plain of my own land of Salamis, O pedestal of my native hearth, and you glorious Athens, and the race that lives with you,

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characters speak with their soul as in a dialogue; a doubling takes place, not only with regard to the character in relation to his or her soul but also in that what is being thought is uttered; in the dramatic text thought and speech become identical, which refers to an idea already expressed in the Sophist: ‘Aren’t thought and speech the same, except that what we call thought is speech that occurs without the voice, inside the soul in conversation with itself?’ (263e–​64a). When Augustine chooses the soliloquy in order to debate the immortality of the soul –​the Soliloquia end on the conclusion that the soul is immortal: ‘inmortalis est animus humanus’ (II.24) –​ and the knowledge of God and himself, he follows a Platonic technique but also one that had become popular through Seneca’s philosophical writings as well as his drama. What was new in Augustine, apart from the fact that he coined the term ‘soliloquium’, was the focus on the self, his inner struggle, in the dialogue with God, which was intended to prove his ‘self-​existence’ (Stock 230): ‘do you know that you exist?’ is one of the questions that Reason asks him (2.1). In the end, Augustine is not only convinced of his existence but also of the immortality of the soul. What happens in the course of his inner debate with Reason is the acquisition of self-​knowledge and the knowledge of God: ‘noverim me, noverim te’ (2.1.1). Reason turns into the authority with whose help he may attain this knowledge.60 This means that the soliloquy, in Augustine’s view, is a form of psychagogy that helps the speaker learn who he is. This self-​knowledge can be achieved through meditation,61 and it is a form of internal communication. The ‘sole-​talke of the Soule’: Thomas à Kempis and Rogers The full title of Rogers’s translation announces a Soliloquium Animae:  The sole-​ talke of the Soule, or, A spirituall and heauvenlie Dialogue betwixt the Soule of Man and God. Rogers thus introduces various forms of communicative situations in his title: soliloquium (re-​interpreted as a ‘sole talke of the soule’) and dialogue. Indeed, this soliloquium or sole-​talke of the soul turns out to be a dialogue between Man and Soul –​and sometimes God. Rogers’s title can hence be read as a rather playful literal translation of the word ‘soliloquium’ into English:  solus + loqui becomes ‘sole-​talke’ (see also Arnold, Soliloquies 2). This coinage suggests that either only the soul is talking in what follows, or that there is a sole addressee. At the same streams and rivers here, and plains of Troy do I address; hail, you who have given me sustenance! This is the last word Ajax speaks to you; the rest I shall utter in Hades to those below’ (Sophocles, Ajax 107–​9). Even this soliloquy is in fact a dialogue –​a detail which Skiffington overlooks (see 8) –​as Ajax addresses all different sorts of communicative partners in absentia, e.g., Zeus, Hermes, Death, and later also his ‘own land’ and Athens, while on the point of killing himself. He is alone on the stage, and the moment of his suicide has come, which triggers the need to utter his thoughts and wishes, to reveal his innermost in terms of fears –​he does not want to be found by the enemy –​ and his affections, e.g. for his homeland. 60 See Butzer, Soliloquium 17; and Moser 369. 61 ‘Looking by the soul is reason. Since, however, it does not follow that everyone who looks sees, right and perfect looking, that is, the looking on which seeing follows, is called virtue: virtue is right or perfect reason’ (Soliloquia 1.13). On the psychagogical function of the soliloquy see, e.g. Butzer, Soliloquium, in his ­chapter 2.

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time, ‘sole’ and ‘soule’ are homophones and spelling variants of the word ‘soul’.62 Rogers thus establishes through wordplay (that is based on a literal understanding) a connection between the soliloquy and the soul. What follows is not a dialogue between man and God either, at least not in the beginning. The Soul begins to speak, and then Man enters into a dialogue with her; they appear as the characters Philothea and Theophilos in the Latin text.63 The chiastic structure of their names (philo-​thea and theo-​philos) emphasizes their mutual interdependency and relation. The intimate relationship between the two is further emphasized in Kempis through the choice of a male and a female name. At the very beginning of the text, the Soul addresses itself: Therefore, my soule, saie thou with the Prophet, As for mee, it is good to drawe neere unto God. (2; Ps 73:28) Dic ergo anima mea cum Propheta: Mihi autem adhaerere DEO bonum est. (Sole-​talke 7)

In the Latin text, this is Philothea speaking; in Rogers, it is the Soul, Philothea’s ‘equivalent’, the character who ‘loves God’. Rogers does not adopt the names introduced by Kempis, although this would have been in accordance with the fashion of the day if one thinks, for instance, of the names Lyly gives the dialogue partners in Euphues.64 By having the Soul speak as a character in its own right (instead of giving it the somewhat allegorical name Philothea), the whole text is removed from the fictional realm, and the Soul appears as if it were a corporeal entity that addresses its innermost part. When Man begins to speak, he asks the Soul about God and wants to learn more about him, assuming that the Soul possesses this knowledge. The Soul, however, does not want to share this information and is rather coy, which makes the dialogue resemble one between a man and his coy mistress. Accordingly, Man even speaks of his ‘desire’ (5) and goes on in his attempt to persuade the Soul to give in (6–​7). The Soul loves God, and Man is looking for God in her, this is his desire: ‘O beloued, speake of the welbeloued’ (6). The language Man uses here in his dialogue with the Soul is reminiscent of the Song of Songs:65 62 See Donne’s ‘The Sunne Rising’, where the sun is ‘halfe as happy as we’ (Robbins ed. 249.25) because it is sol(e), and the ending of Vaughan’s ‘L’Envoy’: ‘Thy service to be our sole ease, /​With prostrate souls adoring thee, /​Who turned our sad captivity’ (313.60–​2). 63 In some editions of the Latin text, the characters appear as Theophilus, Philothea, and Dilectus, ‘seu Hominem, Animam, et Dominum’ (Soliloquium Animae, Opera Selecta 2: 7); in the edition by Pohl the names of the speakers are not mentioned. In what follows, the Latin text will be referred to as Soliloquium, the English version as Sole-​talke. 64 The dialogue partners are called according to their nature: Euphues is good-​natured, Eubulus, the old and prudent advice-​giver. Stock refers to the use of allegorical figures in inner dialogues of the ‘Latin Neoplatonists, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, and Boethius’ (66). On the use of abstractions and personifications see, e.g., Herford 23–​4. 65 The Song of Songs is the paradigmatic text in which the Soul appears personified; see, e.g., Lewalski, Protestant Poetics  62–​4.

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1:7: Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: 1:13: A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me;

The Soul in Sole-​Talke indeed makes the connection herself when she explicitly refers to 1:7: ‘Your demaund seemeth vnto mee to be like that of the Spouse [...] in the Songs’ (8). While the Song of Songs depicts a mutual love story, the relationship in Sole-​ talke is a triadic one. Still, the structure of the Song of Songs with regard to its communicative setup shows a pattern that resembles the one found in Kempis/​ Rogers. In his ‘Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs’, Origen describes it as follows: This book seems to me an epithalamium, that is, a wedding song, written by Solomon in the form of a play, which he recited in the character of a bride who was being married and burned with heavenly love for her bridegroom, who is the Word of God. For whether she is the soul made after His image or the Church, she has fallen deeply in love with Him […] Moreover, the bride addresses not only the bridegroom but also the young girls, and further the bridegroom not only addresses the bride but also turns to the friends of the bridegroom. And this is what we meant a moment ago by saying that it is a wedding song written in the form of a play. For a play is defined as a story, usually acted on the stage, where different characters are introduced, and where with some characters entering and others making their exits the structure of the narrative is completed by different speeches addressed to different characters. (217)

Origen emphasizes the fact that a play is made up ‘by different speeches addressed to different characters’. In configuring the Soliloquium/​Sole-​talke along the lines of monologues and dialogues between the Soul, Man, and God, Kempis/​Rogers therefore not only allude to and mention the Song of Songs on the level of content but also refer to it structurally. This implies that Soul and Man in Sole-​talke speak with one another very much like the lovers in the Song, and by this means the emotional intensity of the desire felt by Man (and the Soul) is stressed. The Soul’s desire for God (‘my desire is to heauen-​ward’ 41) is transferred onto Man, and he is therefore also longing for heaven:66 Oah that I enioied such pleasure, as dooth the holie soule, when the senses beeing asleepe, shee is carried aloft, and eleuated aboue her selfe beloued, and coopled to God by the bonde of most hartie friendship! (Sole-​talke  66–​7)

The Soul is described as a ‘holie soule’ whose relationship with God is based on mutual love. They choose each other like lovers: ‘And when he [God] speaketh, he reioiceth to heare her make answere, saing; I am thine onlie beloued, of thee 66 One may read Milton’s ‘He for God only, she for God in him’ (Paradise Lost 4.299) as an allusion to this concept.

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elected’ (66);67 ‘thou doost with the soule whome thou hast chosen, euen as thou wilt’ (67). What happens in the dialogues between Man and Soul and in the description of the Soul with regard to her own desire for God thus resembles an enactment of the Song of Songs as well as its translation into a devotional text to be used alongside the Bible. What the Souls in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ and in Kempis/​Rogers’s text have in common is their actuality as a character. In Sole-​talke, this personification is sometimes taken to its limits, for instance, when the Soul cries out: And whereas I now liue in the bodie, it is no ioie to mee; for better it were for mee to die, than to liue […] It is now enough Lord, take awaie my soule, which thou hast redeemed with thy pretious blood. (40–​1)

The Soul is unhappy because it lives in the body, and it would rather die than continue to live there. It wants to be separated from the body in order to come into its own and begin the heavenly life after life in this world.68 Then the Soul even asks the Lord to take away its soul: the Soul perceives herself as an entity separate from (the physical body of) Man. In Sole-​talke, the triadic relationship allows for the soul being in a superior position over Man. At the end of chapter two, a chapter wholly spoken by the Soul, she addresses and even admonishes Man for his behaviour: Why for a little pleasure which you doo loue, doo yee hasten vnto euerlasting torments? Whie feare yee not hell, which doo so feare a little penance? And, you which flie the death of the flesh, whie aforehand doo yee not take heed of the eternall death of the soule? Vnlesse therefore yee doo conuert, and repent, yee shall neuer escape these horrible and firie torments of Gods displeasure. When I consider the daie and houre of generall iudgement, my bones doo shake for feare, because entreatie then shall not turne awaie the wrath of God, but hee will be a righteous iudge to all. O God most holie, mightie, and mercifull Sauiour, saue mee from that bitter death, and giue mee grace to repent, that I  may vnfeinedlie bewaile my sinnes before I departe out of this present world. (18)69

The communicative situation is similar to Donne’s Holy Sonnets:  the soul is perceived as a separate entity, a character of its own that becomes a partner in the

67 In Emily Dickinson’s ‘The Soul selects her own Society’ (Johnson #303) the selection is turned around, and it is the soul who acts, not God who elects. This appears to be a reference to Hamlet, when he says to Horatio:  ‘Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice /​And could of men distinguish, her election /​Hath sealed thee for herself ’ (3.2.56–​8). 68 See Donne’s Deaths Duell. On the origin of this topos see, e.g., Weber 189–​97. 69 A similar kind of admonishment is expressed in the medieval morality play The Castle of Perseverance where the Soul, after Mankind has died, steps forward as a character and bemoans man’s way of life.

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conversation with man and even possesses a body, whose ‘bones shake for fear’.70 But it cannot be really separated from the feelings and fears of Man, as the two are intricately linked –​and at the same time it appears to be independent from him and asks for grace. The speaker in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ likewise emphasizes the necessity of grace for the soul to be saved. While in Sole-​talke the  (holy) soul admonishes Man, in Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ the speaker reproves his (black) soul, which is one of the roles he is playing in the sonnet, namely that of admonishing the soul from a somewhat superior position. The similarities of Donne with Kempis/​Rogers pointed out here suggest that we can pursue a tradition of soul-​talk from Augustine (or earlier) well into the early modern period.71 Kempis/​Rogers provide a key link in the tradition of representing the personal nature of the soul. This representation is based both on the notion of the soliloquy as the ‘sole-​talk of the soul’, which is in fact a dialogue,72 and the externalization of the soul that becomes an allegorical character in exchange with the ‘body’ or Man. The particular communicative situation of the soliloquy as a dialogue between man and soul can be further linked to the form of animi coniectura (see Lausberg §154), a subgenre of sermocinatio.73 The animi coniectura ‘relates to psychological disposition’ (Lausberg §154)74 and thus correlates with the soliloquy as soul-​talk that is meant to help the speaker find out the truth about himself:  ‘The fabrication of soliloquies is based on coniectura animi’ (Lausberg §823). Both are concerned, as the names indicate, with the presentation of or the enquiry into the soul.75 This form of self-​address thus points to a tradition in ancient rhetoric that finds a new way of representation (as well as new functions) in the course of the early modern period.

70 See the speaker in Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’: ‘Whose feare allredy shakes my euery ioynt’ (9). 71 See, e.g., Narveson, who claims that what she calls ‘holy soliloquy’ is a genre that can be traced from Augustine to near-​contemporaries of John Donne, e.g. Thomas Rogers, Sir John Hayward, Phineas Fletcher (‘Piety and Genre’). See also her chapter on ‘The Devotion’, esp. 310–​11. 72 In many ways, Thomas à Kempis’s text resembles the Soliloquium de arrha animae (Soliloquy on the Earnest Money of the Soul) by Hugh of St. Victor, a dialogue between Man and his Soul in the course of which Man is trying to find out what his Soul loves most (see Herbert, Introduction 11–​12). But unlike Kempis’s, this text does not seem to have been translated into English earlier than the twentieth century (Herbert, Introduction 11; he refers to ‘many French versions [...] [and] others in Flemish, Catalan, and German’). 73 Sermocinatio becomes relevant in Donne when the speaker imagines, e.g. in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, what the soul ‘wisheth’. 74 Lausberg refers to Quintilian’s Institutio 7.2.6 (§154). According to Quinitilian, animi coniectura is always concerned with the past, present and future as opposed to conjectures relating to facts concerned with one time only. 75 This form can also be associated with the genre of dramatic monologue as the ‘dramatic revelation of a soul in action, not a mere static bit of character study’ (Perry 268). William Lathum, e.g., calls one of the poems published in his Phyala Lachrymarum, or a Few Friendly Tears, Together with sundry choyce Meditations of Mortalitie (1634) ‘Prosopopeia Corporis Animae Valedicturi: Adios A Riverderci’ (Marshall ed., Rare Poems 141–​2); the poem is about the death of the speaker and his address of the soul. The communicative situation of prosopopeia is joined to the speaker’s exploration of the relationship between body and soul.

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Soliloquium and soliloquy: early modern meanings and usage For a long time, ‘soliloquium’ remained a term used more or less exclusively as a reference to Augustine’s eponymous work; the word accordingly made its way into dictionaries based on the Augustinian definition. Isidore writes in his Etymologiae (first published around 623/​630, first printed in 1472): ‘Peusis, id est soliloquium, cum ad interrogata ipsi nobis respondemus’ (2.21.47), i.e. he defines the soliloquy as a question that we put to and answer ourselves. One the most important medieval dictionaries well into the sixteenth century, the Catholicon by Johannes de Balbis, first published in 1286, has: ‘Soliloquium -​quii, generis neutri, id es solitarium eloquium. scilicet cum nos ipsi nobis at interrogata respondemus. Unus quidam liber Augustini dictus est soliloquium. et videtur componi a sollus vel solitarius et loquium’ (‘soliloquium’), meaning something we utter to ourselves, a question we put to and answer ourselves.76 While in Balbis’s entry the reference to Augustine is given, it is sometimes left unmentioned in dictionaries, for example in the 1532 edition of Niccolò Perotti’s (1429–​80) Cornucopiae: ‘soliloquus, qui solus loquitur. et Soliloquium, quod per nos contemplando loqui solemus’ (429.49); and in Ambrosius Calepinus’s (1440–​1510) Dictionarium latinum: ‘Soliloquus penultima corrupta [i.e. with a shortened penultimate syllable, which results in the accent on solilóquium] qui solus loquitur. et soliloquium quod per nos contemplando loqui solemus’; this definition also refers to someone speaking to oneself.77 The continuity of this concept of soliloquy is documented well into the seventeenth century, in works such as Peter du Moulin’s A week of soliloquies and prayers: with a preparation to the Holy Communion, and other devotions added to this edition (London 1692). Rogers’s translation, however, illustrates how the word became domesticated into English towards the turn of the century. His use of the term is still Augustinian, but he apparently felt the need to give an English paraphrase, the ‘sole-​talk of the soule’. And it is likewise around 1600 that the word ‘soliloquy’ is introduced into the English language. According to the OED, two forms of the word, English and Latin, existed alongside each other for a while: ‘soliloquium’ mainly referred to St. Augustine’s usage and the conversation with God,78 and ‘soliloquy’ to Augustine’s meaning of ‘talking with ourselves alone’:  ‘[a]‌n instance of talking to or conversing with oneself, or of uttering one’s thoughts aloud without addressing any person’ (OED, ‘soliloquy, n.’ 1.a.).79 The term ‘soliloquy’ apparently was used in English as an 76 I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Jürgen Leonhardt for providing me with information on the history of the term ‘soliloquium’ in Latin dictionaries and Neo-​Latin texts. 77 The word is not mentioned in most of the later Latin dictionaries, e.g. in Johannes Fries’s Dictionarium Latinogermanicum (Zürich 1556), the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae by Robert Estienne (1531) nor in the Thesaurus Eruditionis Scholasticae by Basilibus Fabri (in the Frankfurt edition of 1605; it appears in the enlarged version of the dictionary from 1749). This is most probably due to the fact that the word is a neologism coined by Augustine and was not used in classical Latin. 78 OED, ‘soliloquium, n.’: ‘a1612 J. Harington Treat. Playe in Nugæ Antiquæ (1775) II.6 Some of the elloquent and excellent soliloquyas of St. Awgustin’; see also ‘1622 J. Mabbe tr. M. Alemán Rogue 122, I making a large Soliloquium, and meditation to my selfe, went on a good while with the same’. 79 See the two earliest references in the OED: ‘1613 R. Cawdrey Table Alphabet. (ed. 3), Soliloquie, priuate talke; 1629 F. Quarles Argalus & Parthenia i.48 Her pining thoughts; and her projecting feares; Her soliloquies, and her secret teares.’

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anglicized variant of the Latin soliloquium.80 This anglicized variant is, moreover, hardly linked to a change in meaning, as becomes obvious in the dictionary definitions from the OED; the two meanings, the theological meaning going back to Augustine, and the broader meaning referring to a particular communicative situation in more general terms are strongly linked, if not identical. If we look for references to the word ‘soliloquium’ in an English context, we find it in Thomas Elyot’s Dictionarie, first published in 1538 (reissued in 1542 in an enlarged edition; see Staykova 125). Elyot defines it as a ‘communication, which a man beinge alone, hathe with god in contemplation’.81 Robert Cawdrey, in his Table Alphabeticus from 1613, which the OED lists as the first record of the word, has: ‘Soliloquie, priuate talke’ (1.a.).82 Cawdrey’s definition, however, makes it impossible to infer whether it is meant as a dialogue or not. Apart from dictionaries, the term is, indeed, used in English texts and earlier than the OED indicates. Anthony Rudd mentions the Latin ‘soliloquium’ in a sermon published in 1603:  ‘And therefore I  conceive that in her soliloquia or private meditations, she [the Queen] frameth her speech in this wise’ (EI v.). This passage found its way as an anecdote into Harington’s Nugae Antiquae (see Staykova 124–​5; and OED, ‘soliloquy, n.’). In Richard Rogers’s (a priest in Wethersfield in Essex) Seaven Treatises, first published in 1610, it is mentioned in c­ hapter 16, ‘Of the decclaration of the fifth dutie, how wee should behaue our selues in solitarinesse’: ‘they [the men of our daies] are not oft and vsuall daily with the Lord in their soliloquies, that is, in their communing betwixt God and themselues in their praier and meditation’ (413).83 Rogers thus uses the term ‘soliloquy’, the anglicized variant, in an Augustinian sense, as a ‘communing betwixt God and themselues’, which shows that there does not seem to have been a huge difference between the Latin and the English form of the term. This quasi-​ synonymy of the Latin and the anglicized form of the word can also be found in Paul Bayne who, in 1618, published his Holy Soliloquies: ‘Now there is one branch of deuout exercise more fruitfull, then that of soliloquie, wherein wee commune

80 See also the early integration of the Latin word into English: ‘In the following quot. the reference is to St. Augustine’s Liber Soliloquiorum:  c1380 in C.  Horstmann Altengl. Leg. (1878) 91 Þat he dispised so riches, [in] Þe bok Soliloquijs he bereþ witnes’ (OED, ‘soliloquy, n.’). 81 Elyot furthermore has ‘Soliloquus’: ‘he that talketh beinge alone.’ See also Cooper’s Thesaurus, who lists both ‘soliloquium’ (‘talke alone with god in contemplation’) and ‘soliloquus’ (‘That talketh beyng alone’). Staykova in this context refers to ‘Richard Huloet’s bilingual Abecedarium Anglico-​Latinum, published in 1552, [which] draws heavily on Thomas Elyot’s earlier dictionary; republished in 1572 […] the Higgins-​Huloet Dictionarie of 1572 interprets the English term “soliloquy” as “Babblyng to him selfe, and no body present” and then interprets the corresponding Latin term “soliloquium” as “Communiation or contemplatiue talking with God” ’ (125). If one, however, consults the said dictionary, there is no entry for ‘soliloquium’ nor for ‘soliloquy’. Pelegromius does not mention the term, neither in the 1580 nor the 1615 edition. 82 The fact that the anglicized version made its way into a dictionary shows that it must have been used for a while by 1613. It is, however, not mentioned in Cawdrey’s 1604 edition. Stock gives 1604 as the date when the ‘English cognate’ of soliloquium first appears (64) without, however, providing a reference. He must have been thinking either of Cawdrey’s second edition, or, possibly, of Rudd’s sermon (see below). 83 Kaufman refers to this passage in his Prayer, Despair and Drama (140–​1).

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with our owne soules, and excite them towards God’ (A7r).84 The examples illustrate that the Augustinian denotation of the word was still prevalent, and the words ‘soliloquium’ and ‘soliloquy’ continued to coexist and were largely used in the same sense. Yet, there is the phenomenon of solitary speech on the stage which became popular in the drama of Shakespeare’s time. On the stage, the ‘private talk’, the communion with oneself, becomes public; a particular (dramatic) situation was recognized (as it had been in Senecan times already) to require a particular (communicative) form. Playwrights found this form in the inner debate that are Augustine’s Soliloquia and that was still popular in devotional writing of the time; they began to stage its theatrical (and secular) equivalent. The word ‘soliloquy’, however, was apparently not used to refer to drama during the early modern period. The OED is, in this respect, not really helpful as it does not comment on the first use of the term in a dramatic context:85 although the res, i.e. the communicative form of soliloquy, existed, the verbum to express this remained a gap. The word ‘soliloquy’ continued to refer to the Augustinian sense and the generic usage concerning a particular form of religious discourse in the early seventeenth century. Whenever monological speech is referred to in the context of drama, the term ‘soliloquy’ or ‘soliloquium’ is not used. For example, Bartolomeo Ricci refers to the res of soliloquy in his De Imitatione Libri Tres (1545), but does not mention the verbum: ‘Aut per personas, ut si quis illud conuertat. quid igitur faciam? quid igitur faciat? aut etiam simulutrunque & numerum, & personam. ut quid igitur faciant? Ita in nomine, ut, ubi ego, alius tu, ille, ita & in caeteris, ex quo genere illud est, cum quis de se loquitur, tertiam tamen personam loquentem inducit’ (69r; 73r&v). He dwells on the notion of someone speaking with themselves in the first and the third person (e.g. ‘quid igitur faciam’ and ‘quid igitur faciat’). In a similar vein, Snelling (as late as in 1640) writes in the third prefatory letter to his neo-​Latin play Thibaldus about ‘intime loquenti’ (2.23).86 The word ‘soliloquy’, however, is still left unmentioned in these literary and dramatic contexts. 84 Narveson quotes part of this passage from Bayne and defines ‘soliloquy’ as a ‘form of private devotion’ (‘Piety and Genre’ 118–​19). Bayne writes: ‘Now though there are many meanes whereby the soule doth shake vp it selfe, yet there is none more fruitful, then for a Christian to accustom himselfe to Soliloquie, taking words to our selues betweene God and our owne soules’ (3). Narveson also refers to Richard Sibbes’s ‘The Soul’s Conflict with Itself, and Victory over Itself by Faith’ (1635; see Narveson, ‘Piety and Genre’ 118); in his view, the ‘special use of these soliloquies [is] to awake the soul and to stir up reason cast asleep by Satan’s charms’ (The Soul’s Conflict 191). In her article ‘Genre in Early Stuart Piety’, Narveson mentions Christopher Sutton’s Godly meditations (1626) and his offering of ‘a spiritual soliloquie, or meditation of the soule with God’ (111). 85 The first entry under ‘soliloquy, n.’ may be interpreted in this vein: ‘1629 Her pining thoughts; and her projecting feares; Her soliloquies, and her secret teares’ (1.a.). But the stage reference, i.e. the direct reference to drama, is missing. 86 See also Matthew Gwinne in his dedicatory letter to Vertumnus sive annus recurrens (1607): ‘loquentes silens introduxit’ (1.10). Snelling and Gwinne are the only instances in sixty-​ eight neo-​Latin plays (Olms Renaissance Latin Drama in England series) from the mid-​sixteenth to the mid-​seventeenth century where the res of ‘soliloquy’ is being referred to. I  would like to thank Julia Pandtle for helping me search these plays.

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The verbum eventually followed the development of the res. In 1693, finally, the word is (apparently for the first time) used in a dramatic context and referring to dramatic speech (see Hirsh, History 34). William Congreve, in the dedication ‘To the Right Honorable Charles Montague, One of the Lords of the Treasure’ (preceding the text of his play The Double-​Dealer in 1693), wrote in defence of his play:

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That which looks most like an Objection, does not relate in particular to this Play, but to all or most that ever have been written; and that is Soliloquy […] I grant, that for a Man to Talk to himself, appears absurd and unnatural; and indeed it is so in most Cases; but the Circumstances which may attend the Occasion, make great Alteration. It oftentimes happens to a Man, to have Designs which require him to speak to himself, and in their Nature cannot admit of a Confident. Such, for certain, is all Villainy; and other less mischievous Intentions may be very improper to be Communicated to a second Person. In such a Case therefore the Audience must observe, whether the Person upon the Stage takes any notice of them at all, or no. For if he supposes any one to be by, when he talks to himself, it is monstrous and ridiculous to the last degree. Nay, not only in this Case, but in any Part of a Play, if there is expressed any Knowledge of an Audience, it is insufferable. But otherwise, when a Man in Soliloquy reasons with himself, and Pro’s and Con’s, and weighs all his Designs: We ought not to imagine that this Man either talks to us or to himself; he is only thinking, and thinking such Matter as were inexcusable Folly in him to speak. But because we are conceal’d Spectators of the Plot in Agitation, and the Poet finds it necessary to let us know the whole Mystery of his Contrivance, he is willing to inform us of this Person’s Thoughts; and to that end is forc’d to make use of the Expedient of Speech, no other better way being yet invented for the Communication of Thought. (Dedication 128–​9.47–​77)87

Congreve indirectly defines the soliloquy: it can either mean that a character is talking to himself while alone on the stage because he is engaged in some villainous act; or that he is thinking, weighing pros and cons, in which case he is not actually speaking to himself but thinking and using spoken words because, otherwise, the audience would not be able to follow. Congreve’s definition of the soliloquy goes back, as has been noted by editors of his play (McKenzie 470n53; Ross 6n75–​ 98), to François Hédelin, Abbé d’Aubignac’s La Pratique du Théâtre, first published in 1657 and translated into English in 1684 as The Whole Art of the Stage. Hédelin, in c­ hapter 8 of book three comments on ‘Monologues, or Discourses made by a single person’ (56–​60),88 but, and this is noteworthy, neither in the French nor in the English translation is the word ‘soliloquy’ mentioned.89 The words used there are ‘la Monodie des Anciens, 8 7 The quotation is based on the Oxford edition of Congreve’s Complete Works. 88 Ross refers to this chapter (6n75–​93), while McKenzie quotes ­chapter 9, on ‘a Partes, or Discourses made to ones self in the presence of others’ (60–​5; McKenzie 470n53). Hédelin elaborates on monologues in both. 89 Hédelin also influenced Corneille who writes in his ‘Discours du l’Utilité et des Parties du Poème Dramatique’ in 1660: ‘Surtout le poète se soit souvenir que quand un acteur est seul sur le théâtre, il est présumé ne faire que s’entretenier en lui-​même, et ne parle qu’afin que le speactateur sache de quoi il s’entretien, et à quoi il pense’ (45). See Arnold on Corneille (Soliloquies 15–​16).

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avec ce qu’aucuns appellent maintenant Monologue’ (229) and ‘Monodia’/​ ‘Monologue’ in the English rendering (56–​60).90 Congreve, thus, is the first writer to use the term ‘soliloquy’ to describe a person speaking with him/​herself alone in a dramatic context. As soon as in 1698 the word seems to have been fairly well adopted; Sir John Vanbrugh, for instance, uses it in his Vindication (1698): ‘upon the Stage the Person who speaks in a Soliloquy is always suppos’d to deliver his real Thoughts to the Audience’ (214; qtd. in Hirsh, ‘Dialogic Self-​Address’ 323).91 The notion that ‘a Man in Soliloquy reasons with himself ’ resembles that of Augustine’s inner conversation and Thomas Rogers’s ‘sole-​talk of the soule’. James Hirsh, however, and this deserves some commentary, claims that ‘[s]‌oliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays [and this, in his view, goes for all soliloquies until the mid-​ seventeeth century;  18] clearly represent speeches rather than the unspoken thoughts of characters’ (History 26).92 This argument is based on his reading of Congreve, who, in his view, introduces ‘a new type of soliloquy’ (20): ‘when a Man in Soliloquy reasons with himself […] We ought not to imagine that this Man either talks to us or to himself; he is only thinking, and thinking such Matter as were inexcusable Folly in him to speak.’ Hirsh comments: This new type of soliloquy that represented ‘thinking’ rather than speaking was an interior monologue, although it did not acquire that label for two centuries. Congreve actually specifies the three distinct kinds of soliloquy in the process of dismissing two of them: ‘talks to us’ (audience address), ‘or to himself ’ (self-​addressed speech), ‘only thinking’ (interior monologue). (20)

But Congreve, as the full quotation of the passage illustrates, neither dismisses any form of soliloquy nor does he describe three different kinds. He refers to the two kinds of soliloquy that exist in drama, namely the one that is spoken by a character to himself (about a villainy he is about to commit) and one that is thought. This thought one has to be spoken aloud as, otherwise, the spectators would not be able to participate in the character’s reflections; at the same time, they are to imagine that these words are thought only. The fiction of the soliloquy on the stage is only credible because the boundary between what is thought and what is said is permeable on the stage. A prime example of this permeability is the opening prologue of Henry V: ‘Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them’ (26). When the stage becomes the world, and the world is a stage, likewise thoughts become words and words are thoughts. The inner perception of the theatre is a theatre of the mind. On his very own argumentative basis, Hirsh goes on to criticize the use of the term ‘soliloquy’ when it comes to the theatre before the late seventeenth century; 90 Neuschäfer, in his notes to the French edition of Hédelin, refers to the notion of ‘monodia’ in Scaliger, Libres Poetices Septem 1§50 and 3§122 (see 220nb). 91 See also, for example, the 1724 Thesaurus dramaticus:  Containing all the celebrated passages, soliloquies, similies, descriptions, and other poetical beauties in the body of English plays, antient and modern, digested under proper topics; with the names of the plays, and their authors, referr’d to in the margin. 92 He goes on to write: ‘I have encountered no evidence of any sort that any passage in any play by Shakespeare or by any other dramatist of the period was an interior monologue’ (26).

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he regards the ‘use of the etymology of the word’ as ‘anachronistic’ (341): ‘In fact, it would be absurd to believe that, even after the word became a theatrical term, a playwright would conform his or her dramatic practice to the etymology of the word’ (341–​2). It is in this context that he mentions Augustine for the first and only time in his study on the History of Soliloquies: ‘Augustine’s use of the word has no connection to the set of dramatic conventions that later became associated with the term’ (342): Augustine’s ‘soliloquies’ are verbal exchanges between ‘Augustine’ and ‘Reason’. Even though Reason is the personification of a faculty within Augustine’s mind, it is nevertheless presented as a character in his own right, and thus the work, if it were staged, would be a dialogue between two characters, not a series of soliloquies in the sense of the word used in this study, a sense that has been constructed on the basis of a systematic consideration of the actual practices of dramatists. (342)

His reading of Augustine is wholly beside the point. As we have seen, the word soliloquy from its very conception onwards has been used in the sense of ‘dialogue’. What happens and can be observed in many soliloquies in early modern drama and poetry is such a ‘dialogue of one’. They were meant to be spoken because of the medium of the stage –​but they always present the inner thoughts of the character who utters them.93 Congreve describes this phenomenon when he refers to the character ‘weighing’ and reasoning with himself; but we remember that we already found this notion in the Sophist:  ‘Aren’t thought and speech the same, except that what we call thought is speech that occurs without the voice, inside the soul in conversation with itself?’ (263e–​64a). What Congreve describes in his ‘Dedication’ to the Double-​Dealer is unthinkable without the background of the Augustinian tradition. He can be seen as the endpoint of a development of choric monologue (as we find it, for example, in Seneca) to a speaker’s dialogue with the soul on the early modern stage and beyond.94 Early modern so(u)le-​talk: the soliloquy in poetry and on the stage The term ‘soliloquy’ became first integrated into English in the period of Shakespeare and Donne, when the form began to be used in dramatic texts and 93 Hirsh himself actually gives evidence that goes against his line of argument, when he refers to Charles Lamb, who ‘described Hamlet’s soliloquies as “the silent meditation with which his bosom is bursting, reduced to words for the sake of the reader” [‘On the Tragedies of Shakespeare’ 447n15]’, as well as Coleridge, who ‘suggests that Hamlet’s soliloquies represented his “inward brooding” [Writings on Shakespeare 447n16]’ (History 340). Hirsh regards these as the ‘anachronistic projection of the direct representation of interiority onto Shakespeare’s characters’ (History 340). 94 Around 1600, theatrical elements from late antiquity and medieval traditions were integrated into early modern theatre with an inward turn; suddenly, the inner life of characters was important; see Skiffington, History ix. Skiffington regards Shakespeare as the inventor of ‘psychological soliloquies’ (71). See also Nordlund, who addresses the Shakespearean Inside in his computer-​assisted analysis of soliloquies and solo asides.

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became popular on the stage.95 The Latin and English expressions continued to coexist: eventually, the aesthetic frame of the soliloquy widened and soliloquies were no longer restricted to religious/​devotional uses; yet, concerns of the soul and its redemption were still an issue strongly related to the form whenever the soliloquy served as a means to express a character’s inmost thoughts. Within these literary contexts, the pattern of an inward dialogue of the speaker and his soul can also be found in a subgenre of poetry that stages dialogues: the conversation takes place between the physical and the spiritual parts of the speaker, his body and soul. These were, in continuation from the medieval period, still anchored in a religious tradition (as are Donne’s Holy Sonnets), while they were also highly dramatic. As early as in the fourth century, addresses of the soul to the body were composed, mostly in the form of homilies. Osmond refers to ‘The Homily of Marcarius’ and the ‘Visio Pauli’ (57). The tradition lived on well into the twelfth century and was then transformed into dialogues between body and soul (see 58–​9).96 Medieval literature set the general tone of this poetic (as well as religious) genre: ‘either the Soul argues with the Body from a position of moral superiority or it shares guilt with the Body’ (Bossy 145).97 These patterns of earlier Latin texts find their way into medieval morality plays and into the Italian and French vernacular98 as well as into English poetry of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.99 95 See Staykova on how ‘the reception of the Augustinian soliloquy in early modern England was mediated by a compilation that bore the title St. Augustine’s Soliloquies but was not written by Augustine. Published under variant titles […] the compilation was widely known on the continent and had an energetic reception in England, going through twenty-​seven translated editions in the 1550s-​1640s alone’ (121). She sees a connection between these publications and the emergence of soliloquies both ‘in Tudor and early Stuart devotional practice’ (121) as well as the occurrence in drama. See also Herford on the ‘drama of debate’ (Studies 28; 56–​7); and Baumann on the ‘drama of the I’ emerging from soliloquy (‘Zu monologischer Kunst’ 11). 96 Although Osmond mentions Augustine, she does not explicitly refer to his Soliloquia. Leishman suggests that ‘two passages in the Bible’ may have been at the origin of the debates of body and soul: 1 Peter 2: ‘Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul’; and Gal 5:16–​25: ‘This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would’ (Art 210). 97 Debates between flesh and spirit can be found in book 8 of Augustine’s Confessions (Stock 230). 98 One of Bossy’s major examples are the Laude of the Italian medieval poet and monk Jacopone da Todi (1230–​1306); ‘three different body and soul debates’ were written by Jacopone in Italian (156). We find more examples of addresses of the soul in Jacopone that follow the tradition of the Psalter: ‘O anima mia –​creata gentile, /​non te far vile –​enchinar tuo coragio, /​ch’en gran baronagio –​è posto el tuo stato’ (35.1–​3; ‘O my soul, you are created noble; /​Don’t make yourself common by degrading your will, /​As your state is given great value’; my translation. I would like to thank Markus Ising and Heinrich Kohring for their help translating these lines). See Friedrich on Jacopone (44). Grant sees similarities between Jacopone and Donne (548), without, however, establishing textual connections. What links them is the tendency to mingle the secular and sacred in their poems, e.g. Donne’s ‘Batter my heart’ and some of the Laude can be read like the words of someone overcome by love (Friedrich 44). 99 See Leishman on the history of dialogues between body and soul ‘which seem [...] to have originated in England during the Middle Ages, to have disappeared from European literature, after enjoying a brief popularity with writers of medieval Latin, and then, suddenly and inexplicably, to have reappeared in the country of its origin at the beginning of the seventeenth century’ (Art 210). The question is if this is really so ‘inexplicable’; the popularity of the theatre, the form in which dialogue is predominant, gives some context.

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Among the more prominent examples are Andrew Marvell’s ‘A Dialogue between the Soul and Body’ (see Bossy 160) and Henry Vaughan’s ‘Death: a Dialogue’.100 These dialogues, due to their dramatic form and quality, bring us back to the soliloquy in the drama of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It cannot be the purpose here to repeat or even summarize all that has been written about the soliloquy in drama.101 What should be emphasized in the present context is the double nature of the soliloquy: in drama, it serves as a poetic element while, in poetry, it turns out to be a dramatic element. In drama, soliloquies interrupt the ongoing dialogue; they introduce a moment of reflection, of ‘weighing’, as Congreve puts it. Monologue and monological asides achieve a similar effect;102 but the soliloquy is different from these (as well as from the chorus) in that monologues are directed either at the audience external to the play, or at an internal audience within the play (aimed to be overheard by someone), while the soliloquy is an inner dialogue of one character, who enters into a conversation with(in) himself. This shows that all forms of communication in drama are in fact dialogical. But it is the soliloquy with its reflective stance that enters the poetry of the time and, at the same time, provides it with a dramatic element.103 This means that soliloquy takes poetry into drama and drama into poetry; but it also means that the soliloquy takes reflection into poetry and makes it dramatic. Clemen points out that ‘in pre-​Shakespearean drama [soliloquy] was only occasionally used for purposes which had to do with reflection or inner conflict; more often it fulfilled the function of chorus, of “supranatural” utterance, of exhortation, of clarification of the plot, above all of exposition, looking both backwards and forwards, as the prologue and the chorus had often done’ (Shakespeare’s Soliloquies 3–​4; emphasis added).104 The historical change in the nature of dramatic soliloquy, for which Clemen does not give any reasons, can be at least partly explained by the revival and transformation of Augustinian

100 Müller refers to George Herbert’s ‘The Collar’ in the context of dialogues of body and soul, and describes these as a form of ‘interior dialogue’ (‘Lyric Soliloquy’ 286). That the form was immensely popular shows in the variety of examples in Marshall’s edition of Rare Poems, e.g. John Collop’s ‘Spirit, Flesh’ from his Poesis rediviva, or Poesie revived (first published in 1656; see Marshall 32). 101 See Clemen, Shakespeare’s Soliloquies and English Tragedy before Shakespeare; see also Arnold, Soliloquies; Belsey, Subject; Skiffington, to name but a few. 102 See, e.g., Arnold on the difference between soliloquy and monological aside (esp. Soliloquies 3–​ 4); and Hirsh, History 146–​61. Michelle M. Butler comments on the difficulties of defining, e.g., prologue in sixteenth-​century plays (see 93). She notes: ‘Early medieval soliloquy, especially of the so-​called mysteries, is completely and exclusively an offering of information to the audience’ (27). See also Bevington 121. Medcalf notes that soliloquy in medieval theatre mostly takes ‘the form of prayer’ (110); Dahl argues that it could be ‘expository, self-​revealing and self-​characterizing’ (138). 103 See Stapleton on Marlowe’s rendering of Ovid as ‘a series of forty-​eight soliloquies’ and on drama in poetry (47). 104 He goes on to emphasize the function of soliloquy as expressing a character’s innermost thought and feelings: ‘It becomes apparent also that the instinctive dramatist in Shakespeare sensed early on the latent possibilities of dramatization within the soliloquy, of the process whereby monologue becomes dialogue, the speaker being split into selves that conflict with one another. Much of what distinguishes Shakespeare’s soliloquies from those of his predecessors may be attributed to this process of dramatization, a skill which he developed gradually’ (Shakespeare’s Soliloquies 6).

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soliloquy in early modern poetry.105 The involvement of some inner part can be understood in terms of what one would later call ‘inwardness […] the conception of an inner space that one can enter and look within’ (Cary, Augustine’s Invention 49), a concept connected in particular with the soliloquies in early modern drama and derived from the notion of the ‘inner man’.106 What happens to the Augustinian soliloquy (or soliloquium, for that matter) during the early modern period is an internalization of the formerly exteriorized (and allegorical) dialogue partners. While in Augustine’s Soliloquia, the speaker and Ratio argue with each other in a dialogue, these separate entities (which are, even in Augustine, both part of one person) join each other in a ‘dialogue of one’, with one speaker only. When Hirsh writes that ‘Augustine’s “soliloquies” are verbal exchanges between “Augustine” and “Reason”. Even though Reason is the personification of a faculty within Augustine’s mind, it is nevertheless presented as a character in his own right, and thus the work, if it were staged, would be a dialogue between two characters’ (History 342), he correctly recognizes the allegorical setup of Augustine’s text (the problem lies in the conclusions he draws from this observation, see above). The focus in the early modern soliloquy is on interiority. Donne’s Holy Sonnets exemplify a transition between allegorical and non-​ allegorical speech by means of the soul: it is at once personified (as a separate entity that is being addressed) and a part of the speaker, the self. Thus, the visions of the moment of death or the final judgement that we find in these poems are always perspectives of the observer on himself: he sees himself on the stage of the world and wants to find out something about his soul and his achievement of salvation.107 This stage is both outside  –​the speaker is on the stage of the theatre that is the world  –​and inside of the speaker, when he interacts with his soul and the soul becomes a character that he addresses. The notion of the soul dwelling in an inner room refers to the mode of meditation; the speaker imagines a scene that is related to a particular image, for example the soul in his heart (as an inner dwelling) looking at Christ on the cross. Modern critics have defined this practice of meditation as a form of self-​education and self-​searching based on an enquiry into the soul,108 which creates a link between the soliloquy and meditation. 105 See Hillman 4. The notion of subjectivity is often linked with the soliloquy: ‘To be a subject is to speak, to identify with the “I” of an utterance, to be the agent of the action inscribed in the verb’ (Belsey, Subject 15); see also Wodianka 12. Taylor notes: ‘Our modern notion of the self is related to, one might say constituted by, a certain sense […] of inwardness’ (Sources 111). One should probably distinguish between the inquiry into the soul and the ‘self ’ (in the sense of an autonomous, separate entity). The point is not so much that a speaker says ‘I’ (as Belsey seems to think) but that the speaker addresses himself (or an essential part of himself) as ‘you’. 106 See Ferry’s study on Inwardness; and Niefer/​Zirker. Cary refers to both the Pauline corpus and Plato’s Republic (9.589a) and regards Augustine as the inventor of inwardness (47). See also Olk/​ Zwierlein (11), who refer to Augustine’s De vera religione:  ‘Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi; in interior homine habitat veritas’ (39.72; 200). 107 This mode of representation is reminiscent of Vives’s Fable of Man and the theatrum mundi topos. 108 See, e.g., Lewalski, Protestant Poetics; Martz’s The Poetry of Meditation; Wolf.

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Early modern meditation: ‘The simplest method of mental prayer’ There is a much closer connection between the soliloquy and meditation than usually tends to be acknowledged.109 In the Lexicon Alchemiae by Martin Ruland, first published in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1612, the entry for ‘meditari’ reads as follows: ‘Meditatio dicitur, quoties cum aliquo alio colloquium habetur internum, qui tamen non videtur. Ut cum Deo ipsum invocando, vel cum seipse, vel prorio angelo bono’ (327)110  –​‘we speak of meditation when someone has an internal dialogue with someone else who is nevertheless invisible. Like the one with God whom one appeals to, or with oneself, or with one’s own good angel’ (my translation). Meditation as an internal colloquy –​or soliloquy –​is defined as being similar to prayer: ‘Ut cum Deo ipsum invocando.’ In contrast with prayer, which is a direct invocation and address of God, meditation is directed inwards; the emphasis clearly lies on the soliloquy.111 Cooper similarly writes in his Thesaurus: ‘meditor […] to thinke depely: to studie: to muse on a thing: to recorde in once [sic] minde.’112 Donne’s awareness of the synonymy of meditation and soliloquy is expressed in one of his sermons preached at St. Paul’s on Ps 90:14: ‘Our Countreyman Bede found another Title, in some Copies of his booke, Liber Soliloquiorum de Christo, The Booke of Meditations upon Christ’ (5: 14.289).113 He translates ‘soliloquium’ in the title of Bede’s book as ‘meditation’, although the term soliloquy had by then already been introduced into English.114 This shows that the meaning of meditation as internal colloquy, as soliloquy, was the prevalent one in Donne’s time. Later in the sermon, he says: If I be tyed to a death-​bed in a Consumption, and cannot rejoyce in coming to these publique Congregations, to participate of their prayers, and to impart to them my Meditations, If I be ruined in my fortune, and cannot rejoyce in an open distribution

109 An exception is Narveson, ‘Genre in Early Stuart Piety’, see below. 110 Reimbold refers to this quotation in his introduction to Hermann Hugo’s Pia Desideria, without, however, giving a reference or even mentioning the dictionary (18). 111 Wodianka in her study fleshes out the difference between meditation as soliloquy and prayer dialogue, i.e. as turning inward versus externalized speech (17). Clemen writes about the soliloquy: ‘Today we tend to associate the soliloquy primarily with meditation and the expression of emotion, with introspection’ (Shakespeare’s Soliloquies 3). See also Butzer, ‘Meditation’, on its origin as soliloquy (1016). 112 Today’s usage is mainly in the sense of 1.d. ‘meditation, n.’ in the OED:  ‘In Buddhism, Yoga, and other systems of religious or spiritual discipline: a practice of the mind (and body) aimed at achieving the eradication of rational or worldly mental activity.’ In the early modern period, however, the term was used in senses 1.a.–​c.: a. ‘The action or practice of profound spiritual or religious reflection or contemplation; spec. a variety of private devotional exercise consisting of the continuous application of the mind to the contemplation of a particular religious text, truth, mystery, or object.’; b. gen. ‘The action, or an act, of meditating; continuous thought or musing upon one subject or series of subjects; (a period of) serious and sustained reflection or mental contemplation’; c. ‘Thought or mental contemplation of something. Now rare’. 113 See Lewalski (Protestant Poetics 48). The title of another translation by Thomas Rogers reads: ‘A Pretious Booke of Heavenlie Meditations; called, A private talke of the Soule with God’ (London 1612; first edition 1581; see Lewalski 456n4; and Staykova 132). The entry in Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticus (1613) for ‘soliloquy’ is ‘priuate talke’ (OED, ‘soliloquy, n.’ 1.a.). 114 See above, Rudd’s use mention of ‘soliloquia or private meditations’ in his sermon.

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to the reliefe of the poore, and a preaching to others, in that way, by example of doing good works […] if I be not able so much, as with hand or eye to make a signe, though I have lost my Ranan, all the Eloquence of outward declaration, yet God shall never take from me, my Shamach, my internall gladnesse and consolation. (291)

Even if the speaker is in a state that does not allow him to share his inner ‘meditations’ with others, i.e. his congregation, this does not matter for the meditation itself as his ‘internall gladnesse and consolation’ remain intact. The emphasis is on ‘internall’ and on the fact that his meditations take place in an inner space. Both meditation and soliloquy are inner dialogues and hence dramatic; while meditation is in general composed in a more reflecting mode, based on an image, the soliloquy expresses innermost feelings in an internal colloquy.115 Both meditative poems based on an image (e.g. Holy Sonnet ‘Spitt in my face’) and soliloquies (in which the speaker addresses his soul) can be found in Donne’s Holy Sonnets. In some editions, they are called Divine Meditations,116 and ever since Louis L. Martz’s 1962 study The Poetry of Meditation, the influence of religious meditation on these poems has been a commonplace in the study of Donne’s sacred poetry. According to Helen Gardner, they ‘depend on a long-​established form of religious exercise:  not oral prayer, but the simplest method of mental prayer, meditation’ (Introduction xxix). Meditation is closely linked to devotion, a ‘state of mind that arises after love of the divine has searched out in heavenly things certain topics upon which the power of wit may operate’, as Martz writes referring to William Alabaster’s poetry (‘The Action of the Self ’ 103). This ‘state of mind’, Martz goes on, is ‘created by the “powers of the soul” in an intense, dramatic action, focused upon one central issue’ (103). A devotion or meditation therefore is an ‘internal drama’ (105) staged in the mind of the meditator. In a similar vein, Roston writes that meditations ‘exemplify in their introspective and intensely personal presentation […] the meditator’s turning inward to enquire […] what effort is required to move closer to that spiritual standard’ (205).117 Meditation as defined by Gardner, Martz, and Roston is accordingly understood as ‘mental prayer’, a ‘turning inward’, created by the ‘powers of the soul’, working internally and introspectively, related to the inner being. If meditation is to be understood as soliloquy, and the soliloquy is ‘soul-​talk’, then the goal of meditation is indeed to enter into a dialogue with God or one’s

115 ‘The soliloquy […] shifts meditation toward a more passionate mode, recording the affective response of the meditator’ (Narveson, ‘Genre in Early Stuart Piety’ 113). 116 What is regarded as the Revised Sequence of the Holy Sonnets was published in 1635 as Divine Meditations; Grierson, ed., Poems 1: 322. See Kermode who thinks that Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ shows some resemblance with the Ignatian method of meditation (38); and Fetzer, ‘Plays of Self ’ 198; Gransden 136; Hester, ‘The troubled wit’; Martz, ‘John Donne: The Meditative Voice’ and ‘Meditative Action’; Milward, Commentary 46–​8; Peterson, ‘John Donne’s Holy Sonnets’ 509; Tsur. Hall sees some affinities between sermons and meditation and a resemblance of the sermons with his Devotions (‘Searching the Scriptures’ 211). 117 Roston explains that ‘the sermons emerge as fervent personal dialogues with God, creating the impression for reader and auditor that one is eavesdropping upon a private meditation in progress’ (205).

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own soul (see Wolf 205; he refers to Martz, Poetry 37).118 While Martz based his study mainly on Ignatian meditation,119 more recent studies, especially by Narveson, acknowledge the ‘soliloquy as a form of private devotion’ (‘Pietry and Genre’ 118) and relate it to the form of meditation.120 We have seen that the word ‘soliloquy’ continued to be used exclusively in a devotional context during the early modern period, and, perhaps due to their synonymy, is used to refer to meditation: ‘Wherefore as you would have the soule thrive, breathe it well in meditation, and other duties of devotion’, Paul Bayne writes in his Holy Soliloquies (‘Preface’).121 Donne himself refers to his poetry as ‘meditation’ in a few cases, e.g. in Holy Sonnet ‘Wilt thou love God’ (see above). The deictic ‘this’ in ‘this holsome meditation’ refers to the poem itself, and the meditation is (referred to) in the poem as in a metapoetic statement. That Donne would choose the sonnet form for his ‘meditations’ fits the description of the ‘sonnet […] [as] a social form of lyric verse, functioning as a dialogue and defined by the relationship of speaker to addressee’ (Wilcox, ‘Sacred Desire’ 147). ‘Meditation’ for Donne served as a means of self-​enquiry and had a purging (e.g. in Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’) –​and eventually redemptive –​function.122 118 Ettenhuber refers to the Augustinian tradition in the context of early modern meditation and its influence on Donne (130). See also Low, who does not delimit his approach to meditation to the Ignatian model (5) but stresses ‘devotional modes’ and their ‘element[s]‌of the dramatic’ (8):  ‘a speaker, singer, praiser, petitioner; someone reforming himself or being regenerated; a recipient of divine grace or mystical visitations; a viewpoint; a heart, mind or soul in the process of removing itself from evil and seeking out or responding to God’ (8). 119 For interpretations of the Holy Sonnets in the light of the Spiritual Exercises (1548) by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–​1556), see also Colie 193; Gardner, Introduction xxxii; Parini; Stachniewski, Imagination 255; as well as the dispute between Martz and Lewalski as summarized by Raspa (Introduction xxiv–​xxvi); and Radcliffe 5–​6. See also Martz’s reaction in ‘Meditation as Poetic Strategy’. On a rejection of the meditative approach, see Oliver. In 1610–​11, Donne wrote Ignatius His Conclave, a satire about the Jesuit order, which makes it rather plausible that he was familiar with his writings; see Chanoff 156; Gardner, Introduction liv–​lv; Harris 260; Parini 304. Although the concept of religious meditation originally goes back to the Catholic Ignatius, it was a common practice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; see, e.g., François de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life (1609) and Joseph Hall’s Arte of Divine Meditation (1606). The linked practice of meditating on death, however, is much older and was already known in Greek antiquity: the meléte thanátou, or meditatio mortis in Latin is referred to, e.g., in Plutarch’s De genio Socratis (585a; see Gehring 56). 120 See also Staykova 126. Richard Baxter in his 1650 Saints Everlasting Rest introduced a division of meditation into ‘cogitation’ and ‘soliloquy’ (see Lewalski, Protestant Poetics 154):  ‘Soliloquy, which is nothing but a pleading the case with our own souls […] a Preaching to ones self ’ (Baxter 749–​50). 121 Narveson refers to ‘works that contain soliloquies but that use the term “meditation” ’ (‘Genre in Early Stuart Piety’ 123n7): A Heavenly Years Gift (London, 1620); Gabriel Powell, The Mystery of Redemption (London 1607); William Clever, Four Profitable Bookes, The first intituled the Exercise of the Soule … containing pithy Praiers, and godly Meditations (London 1597). 122 In a letter to Sir Henry Goodyer (September 1608), Donne metaphorically compares the tending of a garden to that of body and soul through meditation: ‘The primitive Monkes were excusable in their retirings and enclosures of themselves: for even of them every one cultivated his own garden and orchard, that is, his soul and body, by meditation, and manufactures […] But for me, if I were able to husband all my time so thriftily, as not onely not to wound my soul in any minute by actuall sinne, but not to rob and cousen [sic] her by giving any part to pleasure or businesse, but bestow it all upon her in meditation’ (Letters 1651  48–​9).

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In Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, the speaker therefore first admonishes his soul for its sinfulness and addresses it in its blackness, almost as if were a lost case. In the course of his ‘meditation’, however, he comes to a conclusion that is based on his faith and the acknowledgement of God’s grace. The soul still has to take action, but it is through the sonnet, i.e. the meditation and soliloquy, that the speaker comes to this insight. Moreover, in this sonnet, the speaker ends on a meditative note (in the Ignatian sense) in that he ‘makes himself present at a scene in the life of Christ’ (Martz, Poetry xx):123 in the final couplet, the speaker evokes the picture of Christ’s blood in which the soul may wash to become clean again. Moreover, in both Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ and Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, the speaker finds himself on a (mental/​imagined) stage and pictures himself in a particular situation, facing his approaching death. This imagination of a particular situation or setting –​hinted at even more clearly in Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ by means of the deictic ‘This’ that indicates some location –​can be linked to the compositio loci in meditation –​but it even more so illustrates the ‘dramatic’ immediacy of the communicative situation. Both the apostrophe of the soul and the deictic ‘This’ in these poems throw both the speaker and his hearer/​reader in medias res: There is no introduction, no reflection, but the speech begins directly with the speaker addressing the situation. Both Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ and Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ are reflections, colloquies, meditations on death. As death is an inevitable event that occurs in each and every individual life, the meditation on death gives the individual the opportunity to gain self-​consciousness and self-​awareness.124 The individual ‘practises’ death by imagining and entering the situation of someone dying and thus confronts the experience and grows conscious of it, which is a preparation for the actual moment (see Gehring 56). This preparation for the actual moment of death is linked to the recognition that death can ‘summon’ us in the course of every imaginable activity. 123 This is an element typical of Ignatian meditation; after the preparatory prayer (see Ignatius 18), ‘[t]‌he first prelude consists of a certain mental re-​creation of the place. It should be observed in this regard that during any meditation or contemplation of a corporal entity […] we shall see with a sort of imaginary vision a physical place representing what we are contemplating […] If, on the contrary, the pondered subject is an incorporal entity, like the consideration of sin […] the composition of the place could be such that, through the imagination, we would perceive our soul chained in this corruptible body as if in prison, and man himself exiled, in this valley of miseries, among irrational animals’ (Ignatius 18; First Week /​First Exercise). See Kullmann, who refers in particular to the structure of meditation as being ‘dramatic’ (133); and Parini 303. Fetzer comments: ‘As a theatre of their own, a theatre of the self, where speaker and addressee, actor and audience are no longer clearly distinct from one another, the communicative situation of the Holy Sonnets is less indebted to theatre proper than to Catholic ritual and meditation in the Ignatian style’ (‘Plays of Self ’ 203). Such biographical/​denominational readings are, not really fruitful, esp. so as Donne apparently wishes to overcome denominational boundaries in at least some of his Holy Sonnets (see below). 124 See Foucault 458. Foucault locates the meditation on death as linked with the premeditation of evil (457), and refers to the origin of the melete thanatou with Plato (Phaedo 67e; 81a) as well as the to the Stoic practice of regarding every day as the last, as expressed, e.g. by Seneca in his Epistle 12.8 and by Marc Aurel (Foucault 458; see also Gehring 57).

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Donne once said that ‘It hath been my desire […] that I might die in the Pulpit’ (Selected Prose 170). In one of his Essays in Divinity, he writes:

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Go one step lower, that is higher, and nearer to God, O my soul, in this Meditation, and thou shalt see, that even in this moment, when he affords thee these thoughts, he delivers thee from an Egypt of dulness and stupiditie. As often as he moves thee to pray to be delivered from the Egypt of sin, he delivers thee. (75)

The closer one comes to God, the more one approaches one’s deliverance from this world. It is the glance forward, onto what is to come, namely his salvation and resurrection, that is predominant in Donne’s writings in which he mentions or dwells on the concept of ‘meditation’. In his Devotions he ‘rehearses the experience of resurrection’ (Targoff, Body and Soul 132).125 Life on this earth has to be left behind, which makes the meditation on death all the more necessary. Donne’s Devotions are structured along the lines of the practice of meditation, followed by an expostulation and prayer;126 his Essays in Divinity are similarly structured, e.g. when he has his meditation followed by the prayer: ‘so I beseech thee, that since by thy grace, I have thus long meditated upon thee, and spoken of thee, I may now speak to thee’ (96). They are ‘dialogues of one’ and dramatic in their immediacy. It is probably this latter point, the dramatic immediacy that made the soliloquy so popular in poetry and on the stage. The soliloquy on the stage: inner dialogue in Richard III Although the term ‘soliloquy’, i.e. the verbum, was not yet established or even introduced into a dramatic context during Shakespeare’s time, the thing itself, the res, as we have seen, became most popular in the period. We find soliloquy as characters talking to themselves alone, or addressing some absent instance (in apostrophe) as dialogues of one. Within the stage tradition, we now come to the point when choric monologue becomes a dialogue within a speaker’s soul.127 Congreve ex post saw two major reasons for using the soliloquy on the stage: when a character has ‘Designs’ that require secrecy, i.e. when he is a villain; or, when he reasons with himself, ‘weighs all his Designs’, and their pros and cons. We find both patterns in Shakespeare, and both are related to what has been 125 See also his Sermons with their references to 1 Cor 15:31, ‘I die daily’ (4: 14.360; 6: 4.111; 6: 10.213; 8: 6.161; 10: 11.235). See Leimberg, Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis  152–​3. 126 ‘The work synthesizes his ideas about metaphysics and literature, medicine and cosmology, and the relationship of man to God. Its genre is devotional and, more specifically, meditative, though the nature of the meditative and devotional tradition he was following is not readily apparent’ (Raspa, Introduction xiii). 127 See Clemen, who writes that the ‘soliloquy of pre-​Shakespearean drama was regularly addressed directly to the audience, forging a link between them and the stage’ (Shakespeare’s Soliloquies 4). This is not a very precise statement (‘regularly’). If we think of the soliloquy in Everyman, which marks the play’s peripety, this is not necessarily addressed at the audience: Everyman summarizes his adventures and encounters so far, and speaks in a rather desperate mood: ‘O, to whom shall I make my moan /​For to go with me in that heavy journey?’ (463–​4), not really addressing anyone but literally talking to himself.

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dubbed ‘interiority’ or ‘introspection’.128 What we see on the early modern stage is therefore an equivalent of Augustine’s Soliloquia: the mimetic element, required by drama and added to the Augustinian notion, is the speaker, a ‘fictional’ character. This speaker is a ‘double one’, as he addresses a part of himself as if it was a separate entity, while all the time talking ‘to himself alone’. The revival of the interest in Senecan drama129 together with the ongoing popularity of Augustine and an increased interest in the condition of the soul130 led to the popularity of the soliloquy on the early modern stage. When Hamlet, for instance, tells his soul to ‘sit still’ (1.2.255) in the soliloquy that ends the second scene of the play, he talks to his soul in order to stay calm in the prospect of seeing the ghost of his father. Throughout the play, his soliloquies are illustrative of some inner division but also of his attempt to stay composed; they are expressive of inner conflict and turmoil.131 In Richard III (Q1 from 1597), the protagonist is likewise a character who expresses his inner state in a soliloquy,132 and the play even begins with one in which Richard lays open his evil plans:133 he wants to destroy his brothers and become king himself. The Augustinian heritage of the soliloquy, however, becomes most obvious in his final soliloquy, after the vision of the ghosts, when he is speaking in two voices and the soliloquy becomes the medium to express an inner division: Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds! Have mercy, Jesu! –​Soft, I did but dream. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! The lights turn blue. It is now dead midnight. Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.

128 On ‘interiority’, see Belsey (Subject 33–​42): ‘the soliloquy makes audible the personal voice and offers access to the presence of an individual speaker’ (42). See also Hugenberg/​Schaefermeyer. Gusdorf links monologue to self-​knowledge and refers to Montaigne (Découverte 136; trans. Hillman 43). The origin of this concept, however, goes back at least to Augustine, if not Plato. 129 See above for the Senecan origin of the ‘double’ nature of the speaker. Nashe noted in his epistle ‘To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities’, the Preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589): ‘Seneca […] will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speaches’ (15). The reference is to the old Hamlet, i.e. pre-​Shakespeare, but it shows the contemporary awareness or association of Seneca with long ‘tragical speeches’ (Cunliffe 2), presumably by one speaker alone. 130 See above on the examples by Bayne, Hayward, and Sibbes. Frieden writes, with regard to Doctor Faustus: ‘Renaissance drama retains the connection between solitary speech and communication with divine beings’ (111). 131 See, e.g., Skiffington on ‘Character-​revelation’ and ‘Psychological Soliloquy’ in Hamlet (87–​97). See also Newell, who speaks of ‘duality’ in Hamlet’s soliloquies (40). On this ‘root dualism of the play’ see Knight 304. 132 Shakespeare wrote ‘more than 300 soliloquies’ (Clemen, Shakespeare’s Soliloquies 1) that ‘became an organic part of his dramatic compositions’: ‘Shakespeare increasingly discovers the aptness of the soliloquy as a mode of human expression’ (6). Richard III is the only play which begins with a soliloquy. Milward links the soliloquy to the tradition of the vice: ‘the Vice or Devil would confide his evil schemes to the audience’ (Shakespeare’s Soliloquies 2). An example of this tradition is Iago; on his soliloquies, see Dietrich/​Zirker. 133 See above on the opening soliloquy and its possible reference to Atreus in Thyestes (Act 2.192–​3); Borgmeier 306; see also Clemen on possible Senecan roots of this soliloquy (Commentary 10).

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Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason why? Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good That I myself have done unto myself? O, no. Alas, I rather hate myself, For hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain. Yet I lie; I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter. My conscience has a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree; Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree; All several sins, all used in each degree, Throng to the bar, crying all, “Guilty, guilty!” I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, And if I die, no soul will pity me. And wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself? Methought the souls of all that I had murdered Came to my tent, and every one did threat Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard. (5.3.173–​206)

This is the first time in the whole play that Richard reflects on his deeds in a manner that can be related to his conscience and to the state of his own soul.134 The soliloquy begins with Richard being still asleep at first and haunted by his vision that is actually a foreshadowing of the events to come on the following day. He then awakens, ‘Soft, I did but dream’, and addresses his ‘coward conscience’ as ‘thou’: the exclamation is introduced with ‘O’, adding ‘dramatic vigour’ (Pfister, ‘Notes’ 213), and thus makes us think of Donne’s anguished speaker in the Holy Sonnets. Richard is addressing a part of himself, and, simultaneously apostrophizes his conscience very much as if it were a character in its own right, a notion that can be traced back (as we have seen) to Augustine and to the tradition of psychomachia in medieval allegory and morality plays. It was used repeatedly by Shakespeare, e.g. in Gobbo’s speech in 134 ‘Until now Richard has never examined the workings of his own mind, his sole care has been the carrying out of his design, and whatever he has revealed of his plans and thoughts has been deliberately controlled […] In a relatively short passage a psychological drama of great immediacy is enacted’ (Clemen, Commentary 20). When Arnold writes about the beginning of this soliloquy ‘Here feeling outweighs thought’ (154), this is only half the story:  rather, Richard’s attempt at being rational is being thwarted by his conscience, which may be related to thought. This is not about one item, e.g. conscience, outweighing the other, e.g. feeling, but the soliloquy actually performatively renders Richard’s inner conflict. See Olk, who argues that the ‘conceptual developlent of conscience can almost be seen as the invention of an inner person and as a precondition of early modern subjectivity’ (2). Olk does not link this observation to the tradition of the soliloquy but continues to speak of Richard’s ‘monologue’ (15); see also Zirker, ‘Aspects’ 255.

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The Merchant of Venice.135 In Richard’s case, the pronoun ‘thou’ and his address of conscience is telling with regard to his character as this identifies him to be a proper villain: it is the only time that he addresses another instance in the second person; in what follows he wholly focuses on himself with ‘I’ and ‘myself ’, to then change to the third person singular, e.g. in ‘Richard is Richard’. He is no longer able to address himself but presents himself as a split (or self-​divided) entity nonetheless. Richard’s conscience at the beginning of the soliloquy is portrayed as a virtue, a moralizing character who ‘afflicts’ him in that it shows him his ill deeds, as conscience is indicative of a ‘sense of fault’ (Bright 167)  and ‘has a thousand several tongues’.136 What follows is the enactment of a psychomachia: Richard sees himself confronted with his sins, and the good and evil forces within him begin to argue about them: ‘I am a villain. Yet I lie; I am not. /​Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.’137 He is torn between the way he wishes to see himself and the way he now perceives himself, a villain and a liar –​or not. Two voices have entered his inner space and are struggling with each other: What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason why?

He is utterly confused, which is made evident by the accumulation of questions and the ‘staccato rhythm of the short sentences’ (Clemen, Commentary 221).138 He repeats his name twice and then the first-​person pronoun –​and later on the 135 Müller emphasizes the internalization which characterizes Richard’s final soliloquy as opposed to the allegory in Gobbo’s soliloquy (‘Das Ich im Dialog’ 322). But when Richard imagines his sins ‘throng to the bar’, this very much resembles an allegorical drama with in the self. The internalization thus takes place on the basis of allegory and becomes psychological. Arnold refers to Launcelot Gobbo and his ‘travesty’ of serious soliloquy in 2.2.1–​28. Gobbo is torn between following his Conscience or the Fiend. Hirsh also argues that Gobbo is not serious in this scene: ‘Launcelot is probably entertaining himself by turning his moral crisis into a parody of a medieval psychomachia. Launcelot can be facetious even when he has only himself for an audience’ (History 190). Although the mode of presentation with malapropisms and comic repetition points towards comedy, it becomes evident that Gobbo is indeed undergoing a struggle in this scene. Being a comic character, he draws on a peculiar image, namely on a quasi-​allegorical fight between conscience and the fiend –​reminiscent of, if not alluding to, Faustus’s Good and Bad Angel and its origin in medieval allegorical plays. See the notes by Brown and Drakakis in Arden as well as Leimberg (Reading 77–​8), who both refer to the origin in psychomachia and morality plays. 136 Bright goes on: ‘for that it [conscience] is which layeth our actions to the rule, and concludeth them good or bad: so although the fault be committed in deede, and yet no conscience made thereof, it is taken for no offence, neither can giue cause of this internall grief & reuengement’ (167). Against this background it becomes even more obvious how strong the effect of seeing the ghosts of those he murdered is on Richard. The ‘thousand several tongues’ are similar to Gobbo’s characterization of conscience as ‘a thousand witnesses’ (Leimberg, Reading 78n15). 137 One might read his self-​address of ‘Fool’ as a corrupted printing of ‘Foul’ and of ‘Soul’. The association is even stronger in Hamlet: ‘Till then sit still my soul –​foul deeds will rise’ (1.2.255), where chiasmus binds the two elements semantically (sit still my soul –​foul deeds … rise). 138 ‘The technique of rapid question and answer was one Shakespeare was to employ in later soliloquies, but here the attempt to show Richard’s panic results in a syntax so broken that the audience is hard put to it to follow the quick reversals of thought’ (Hussey 169).

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pronoun ‘myself ’ in epanalepsis and epiphora (see also Clemen, Commentary 221) –​as if he needed to reassure himself who he was.139 The fact that he uses the first singular pronoun both as subject (I) and object (myself) further indicates that two different persons or two different parts of one person are speaking. His inner debate is a way to find out who (or what) he is; it is marked by a high degree of psychological urgency.140 The fact that he begins his soliloquy with an exclamation to conscience is conspicuous in this context: ‘Conscience’ is derived from Latin ‘con-​scire’ (OED, ‘conscience’ etym.). Cooper writes in his Thesaurus: ‘a testimonie or witnesse of ones own minde: knowledge’.141 But then Richard does not really know because he answers his question with two responses: ‘No. Yes, I am.’ Part of himself negates the question of whether there is a murderer present; the other part confirms this: the dialogue is one between the Richard who says ‘I love myself ’ and the one who would ‘rather hate myself ’ (187; 189) –​and it thus turns into one between his self and his reason (i.e. part of his soul), the part that is still encumbered in self-​love, and the one who tries to look at things as they are and wants to acknowledge his villainous behaviour. Read in this light, one may even go so far and attribute the imperative ‘Then fly!’ to his soul/​reason: it echoes the message written in Faustus’s blood when he signs the contract with Mephistopheles: ‘Homo fuge!’ (A-​text 2.1.77 and 81).142 The question ‘Great reason why?’ is ambiguous: it can be read as a commonplace set phrase, seeking for an explanation by reason; but it can also be understood as an address to ‘great reason’, asking reason why this is happening to him and expecting an answer –​as Augustine addressed Reason in his Soliloquia.143 Richard eventually finds himself trapped as he recognizes that he cannot even take revenge as revenge needs to be directed at himself.144 139 He is trying to establish a sense of self. See Shakespeare’s play with the notion of self and myself, e.g. in Sonnet 62: ‘T’is thee (my selfe) that for my selfe I praise’ (62.13); Wyatt’s Psalm 102: ‘But thou thy self the self remainest well’; see Ferry 39: ‘In the sixteenth century self was sometimes a simple synonym for the human soul, the definition Sidney jokes about in Sonnet 52 of Astrophil and Stella when the lover grants to his personified rival, “Vertue”, the possession of Stella’s “selfe” if only he can have her body.’ 140 Gerber calls this soliloquy ‘a masterpiece of psychological insight’ (294). 141 ‘According to this definition conscience is a synonym of self-​knowledge’ (Leimberg, Reading 78). Hirsh’s line of thought does not make any sense: ‘Richard plays the role of his own confidant, but in his speeches to himself he is capable of lying to himself or saying something that he does not really mean’ (History 363). If this were true, the play would collapse: if we cannot trust what a character says in a soliloquy, then the whole drama lacks credibility. 142 Hall writes that ‘thy soul may fly from thy body; thy conscience will not fly from thy soul, nor thy sin from thy conscience’ (Sect. IV: 8); see Corthell on Hall and Donne. See also the final soliloquy spoken by Faustus, where he addresses both his soul and God and explores the machinations of good and evil, which can again be viewed in the tradition of psychomachia (A-​text 5.2.57–​71). Faustus’s soliloquy oscillates between address of self (‘Ah Faustus’) and address of his soul as well as Christ and God (‘O God’, ‘O soul’, ‘My God, my God’). He has a rather distanced position towards himself (which is similar to that in Richard III, when Richard talks about himself as ‘Fool’) as he is talking about himself in the third person. His final speech is an instance where prayer and soliloquy merge; see Arnold, Soliloquies; and Hillman 165. 143 This line does not seem to be annotated in any edition of the play. 144 Clemen notes that the ‘despair which Richard reveals is not caused by the external situation (which is still favourable, thanks to the greater military strength on Richard’s side), but by hopeless conflict being waged within him’ (Commentary 222). See also Jowett 68.

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His conscience becomes his judge, and he imagines himself to be in a ‘courtroom’ (Siemon ed. 398n196–​7). His sins appear at the bar and declare him guilty (which resembles an allusion to the Last Judgement; see Jowett, Introduction 69),  and he is ‘condemned’ by his conscience as a villain. But still the conflicting forces within himself argue in contrasting directions  –​the ones in his defence cry ‘Perjury’, ‘rejecting the charge that he is a villain’ (Siemon ed. 398n196–​7), those in his accusation ‘Murder’. The imagined courtroom situation is an action that takes place within his soul, with conscience being the judge, deciding over his sins. Richard finally arrives at some sort of knowledge: he ‘shall despair’, as predicted by the ghosts who visited him in his dream. Richard thus eventually recognizes that ‘no soul will pity [him]’; this is connected with the epiphany that not even his own soul will: ‘And wherefore should they, since that I myself /​Find in myself no pity to myself?’145 If he finds no pity ‘in himself ’, this still implies that there is (or ought to be) an inward instance of pity. But his self has not really acknowledged his guilt (‘Is there a murderer here? No.’), while his better part (reason) is unable to pity, knowing that the villainy he committed was his choice: ‘I am determined to prove a villain’ (1.1.30). Richard’s inner debate does not result in repentance but in despair. He is condemned and found ‘Guilty, guilty!’ His inner debate literally becomes a drama of the soul: not only do the conflicting voices inside him debate his case, but also do we learn that he is a lost soul for whom nothing is left but despair and who is loved by no one. The second person is literally missing from this soliloquy: he is able only once to address a ‘thou’, his conscience; then he moves on to ‘I’, ‘myself ’, and the third person. The pronouns allegorize the events in this soliloquy: the address in the second person, especially ‘thou’, is expressive of an emotional, a loving relationship,146 both in love poetry and in religious texts. When Richard concludes that ‘There is no creature loves me’, he acknowledges that his soul is no longer an imago dei because it is incapable of a loving self-​address. Richard’s drama of the soul does accordingly not end happily. But despite this difference with regard to outcome between Shakespeare’s Richard and the speaker in Donne’s Holy Sonnets, they are linked with regard to the communicative situation: the speaker is doubled. The fiction of a speaker who addresses himself when confronted with his judgement or death found his way into the drama of Shakespeare and into Donne’s poetry. But we find this fictional speaker also in one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the final example of the soliloquy as so(u)le-​talk. Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry: addressing the ‘Poor Soul’ in Sonnet 146 While in Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ we observe a speaker who is anguished and admonishing his soul at the same time, and in Richard III the 145 Earlier he denied the ability to pity in another soliloquy: ‘[…] But I am in /​So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. /​Tear-​falling pity dwells not in this eye’ (4.2.62–​3). 146 See, e.g., Freedman on the uses of you and thou in Shakespeare.

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speaker of the soliloquy is concerned with his conscience and driven by psychological urgency, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 146 has a middle position between the two. The speaker is anxious for the wellbeing of his soul after death and psychologically affected by this; the poem can therefore be read in the tradition of the meditatio mortis. Religious contexts are alluded to throughout; but altogether Shakespeare’s sonnet is far more secular in tone than Donne’s Holy Sonnets.147 In Richard’s soliloquy, conversely, his inner division and fear are foregrounded. Still, the speaker in many ways resembles both: he is asking a lot of questions in the course of the sonnet, and he begins by addressing his soul and contrasting it with the body. Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Feeding these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end? Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross, Within be fed, without be rich no more:   So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,   And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

This sonnet, in a fashion similar to Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’,148 begins with a statement that is ambiguous with regard to the communicative situation: the epithet ‘Poor soul’ may either be a remark about the soul or an address of the soul. In the first case, it ‘momentarily stands alone and can give the lines that follow overtones of the well-​established idiom meaning “poor creature” ’ (Booth ed. 502); Booth refers to The Taming of the Shrew: ‘she, poor soul, /​Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak’ (4.1.168–​9). In the latter case, the speaker is more involved in the action and addressing his own soul that he is worried about.

147 This poem is considered unusual in the overall context of the Sonnets as it is more openly religious (Duncan Jones ed. 408) than the other sonnets in the collection. See Huttar; Melchiori 161–​5; Southam; and West, for an overview of the critical history of Sonnet 146. Leishman notes:  ‘It is unique among his sonnets, and is the only one having some real affinity with some of those sonnets full of suspire de profundis written towards the close of his life by Michelangelo, the only sonnets, I think, except perhaps for some of Donne’s Holy Sonnets, with which it is really comparable’ (Themes and Variations 120). 148 Donne’s Holy Sonnets were presumably written at the same time when Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first published in 1609 (see Edwards, John Donne 227; Gardner, Introduction xxix, xxxvii–​ lv; Stachniewski, Imagination 287). See also the note on ‘The Dates of the Holy Sonnets’ in the General Introduction to Volume 7.1 of the Variorum edition (LXXXVIII-​CI); and Targoff, Body and Soul 108. For a different dating see, e.g., Flynn, who proposes the 1590s as the years of composition.

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In any case, the opening statement ‘Poor soul’ is ‘dramatic in form’ (Berkelman 139–​40; Stauffer 53). As we read on, we can see that the soul is addressed and then described as the ‘centre of my sinful earth’. The speaker hence perceives his soul as being a part of himself, which is implied in the first person possessive pronoun. But this representation of the soul in relation to the speaker also reveals that he, simultaneously, views it as an entity somehow separate from himself, which is emphasized by means of the epithet ‘poor’ that has been identified as implying ‘a position of detached superiority’ (Booth ed. 502);149 the tension between distance and involvement of the speaker is reminiscent of Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. The speaker goes on to describe his soul as dwelling in the house of his body,150 which is a topical depiction of the relationship between body and soul (Ohly, ‘Haus’ 953–​8),151 as expressed in 2 Cor 5:1–​10 (Booth ed. 503): For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: nor for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. […] Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: […] We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

This passage is based on the perception of the body as a house that is not ‘from heaven’ and therefore signifies distance from the Lord. The longing (of the soul) is for the heavenly house, which is reached through death. John Donne, in a sermon on Ex 12:30, preached at St. Dunstans on 15 January 1625, expatiates on the metaphor:

149 Traditionally, hell is the centre of the earth (Booth ed. 502). 150 His whole being is thus portrayed in the sense of a microcosm, which is an image reminiscent of, or rather similar to, Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘I am a little world’ (see Booth ed. 503). See also Lok, for the use of this imagery: ‘My bodie Lord the house which hath bene long. /​Possest with spirits to ruine of the same, /​[…] /​Hath found some comfort since thy message came /​Vnto my soule […]’ (Sundry Sonnets I.36: 1–​6); and Quarles, e.g. in his emblem V.8 (275). 151 Ohly refers to the inherent ambivalence of the image of the body as the soul’s house (954). See also 3 Henry VI: ‘Now my soul’s palace is become a prison’ (2.1.74); and John Norris’s ‘The Meditation’ from A Collection of Miscellanies, first published in 1687 (Marshall 160–​1). Here, the speaker reflects on what happens when the soul leaves ‘this tenement of clay’. Barkan has a chapter on the house as metaphor for the body during the Renaissance (ch. 3, 134–​74).

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If we have no other house but this which we carry about us, this house of clay, this tabernacle of flesh, this body, yet if we consider the inmate, the sojourner within this house, the state of our corrupt and putrified soul, there is one dead in this house too […] There is a […] House, which we are, this House of Clay, and of Mud-​walls, our selves, this body. And is there none dead there? not within us? The House it self is ready to fall as soon as it is set up: The next thing that we are to practise after we are born, is to die. The Timber of this House is but our Bones […] The lome-​walls of this house are but this Flesh. (6: 18.350; 356)

The body that is the house with the soul pining and suffering inside is a topical image, and the dichotomy that is established in all these examples of inside and outside can be linked to the ‘traditional’ debates between body and soul.152 What we find in Sonnet 146, however, is not really a dialogue between body and soul but a variation of it, with a speaker addressing his soul in a soliloquy and thereby reflecting on its relation with the body.153 This relation of the soul to the body is elaborated on in the three quartrains, with the first and second marked by the speaker’s questions: ‘Why dost thou pine […]?’; ‘Why so large cost […] dost […] spend?’ etc. In the speaker’s view, the soul has wrong priorities: while it is pining ‘within’, the outside, the body, is in prime condition. The fact that he accuses the soul of allowing the body too many privileges not only implies that he regards the soul as superior to the body,154 but also that the speaker himself takes a rather detached position with regard to his body and soul, as if he were quite unconcerned by them. He accordingly goes on with his catalogue of wrong priorities: the soul, instead of being fed, is ‘feeding’ the ‘rebel powers’ that ‘array’ it. The verb ‘array’ is polysemous:155 it may denote to ‘furnish the person with raiment (= arrayment), to attire, dress; now, to dress up with display’ (OED, ‘array, v.’ 8.); ‘[t]‌o “clothe”, “attire” ’ (9.a.); as well as ‘[t]o put into a (sore) plight, trouble, afflict’ (†10. Ironically. †b.), and even ‘[t]o disfigure, dirty, befoul, defile. Obs.’ (†10.†c.). The denotations of ‘to dress’ and ‘to clothe’ were the ‘commonest’ in Shakespeare’s time (Booth ed. 504); the context of suffering, however, points towards the meanings of ‘to trouble, afflict’ and even ‘defile’.156 The second quatrain then focuses on the transience of the body: the house is described as a ‘fading mansion’, which the speaker uses as an argument that the 152 See Hornstein 641n12; Melchiori 169–​72; and West 110. 153 At one point, West even speaks of Shakespeare’s ‘concern for inner and outer’ and links it to Rom 7:22–​4 (113–​14). Osmond writes about Sonnet 146:  ‘this sonnet brings together all the assumptions about the antagonism between body and soul in this life that were prevalent in the age’ (137). 154 ‘With its faculties of reason and will, soul is placed in the flesh to rule it, not to be ruled by it’ (Kocher 285). 155 See Huttar, who reads this as part of ‘the dominant image [...] of a rebellion carried on by siege’ (361). See Booth 508–​9 for criticism of Huttar’s reading. 156 There is yet another meaning of ‘array’ given in the OED that (curiously) is not mentioned by Booth nor by Huttar:  ‘To furnish (a house, etc.)’ (III.7). Booth links the ‘rebel powers’ with ‘the body and the passions’ (504); see the perception of the ‘passions’ as ‘turbulently rebellious servants’ (Babb 17), e.g. in Vives’s Introduction to Wisedome (dii-​diii; qtd. in Babb 17).

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soul should focus on itself, not on the body:157 because of its mortality the body will eventually be eaten by worms anyway. The second quatrain, in accordance with this line of argument, ends on the question ‘Is this thy body’s end?’ (8). This concluding question to the second quatrain illustrates again that the speaker perceives himself as an entity somehow separate from body and soul, a perception familiar from Kempis/​Rogers but also from Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’:  ‘My body, and soul, and I’ (6; see below). The genitive expresses that the body is the body of the soul –​‘thy body’s’ (8) –​and that the two are intricately linked to one another. At the same time, they are also separate: if the soul spends too much (‘cost’) on the body, it will ‘pine’. This inherent contrast lends the sonnet ‘dramatic quality’ based on ‘the clash’ usually existing in his love sonnets ‘between I and Thou’ (Melchiori 29) but here transposed to body and soul.158 The question that the speaker asks to conclude this quatrain therefore contains at least two ambiguities: one is based on the connection and separation of body and soul, the other on the meaning of ‘end’, which can mean both ‘conclusion’ and ‘purpose’ (Huttar 362).159 The speaker thus voices an implicit warning: the conclusion of the life of the body will be its consumption by worms; its purpose should not be that. This thought introduces a reversal: rather than the soul, it should be the body who pines, which leads to the termination of suffering for the soul and its potential to increase its store, which is expressed by ‘aggravate’ (OED, ‘aggravate, v.’ II.5); the soul shall from now on thrive, and the focus should lie on the feeding of the inside, not the outside. This reversal is also reflected linguistically: whereas the soul was feeding the body, it is now feeding on the body. The third quatrain ends in a conclusion drawn from the preceding questions and reflection:  ‘Then soul’. The soul, as in Donne’s Honly Sonnets, is no longer questioned but asked to act; here, the stress lies on its acting in a manner different from that described in the preceding quatrains, which marks the peripety. While the emphasis has so far been is on the relation of inner suffering and outer gaiety, or, rather on suffering as a consequence of outer gaiety, it is now modified in that the focus from now on will be on the soul. The sonnet comes to its climax when, in the final couplet, ‘death’ is mentioned explicitly: ‘So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, /​And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.’ The modal ‘shalt’ is expressive of an imperative that is at once pointing towards the future and certainty, but also contains a wish. The soul is starving no longer; it is fed ‘within’ and eventually feeds on death: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor 15:54;

157 The imagery of the soul taking care of, embellishing and, apparently, even nourishing the body –​ she first pines within and then feeds upon her ‘servant’s loss’ –​goes back to the idea that the soul as tenant cares for the house (Ohly, ‘Haus’ 958). 158 Melchiori is one of the few critics who see a direct connection between the sonnets and the soliloquies in Shakespeare’s work. Although Melchiori does not make the link to the Augustinian tradition, his point of an interior dialogue established in these sonnets is valid. 159 ‘End’ refers to both both the ‘limit of a duration, or close, of a period of time’ (OED, ‘end, n.’ II.7.a.; see also 8.b.) and the ‘intended result of an action; an aim, purpose’ (14.a., Latin finis). The speaker thus puts stress not only on the end of life but also on the missed purpose that lies in the fact that the body will be eaten by worms, suggesting that this cannot be the ‘end’, i.e. aim of the soul.

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Booth ed. 507).160 The conclusion is similar to Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Death bee not proude’: ‘One short sleepe past, wee wake æternallye /​And Death shall bee noe more. Death, thou shalt dye’ (Variorum 23.13–​14).161 While the speaker in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 146 started rather bleakly, pitying the soul and admonishing it, the ending of his soliloquy is far more optimistic; the sonnet is thus structured in a fashion similar to Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, leading towards a happy conclusion. The address of the soul here does not serve general dogmatic considerations (as proposed by Stauffer), but the situation of an individual soul that is giving too much attention to its body and invests wrongly and excessively. The speaker at first reasons with his soul and then gives it advice on how it can be saved (Southam 69), expressed with an imperative that coincides with the volta. But all the time, he is concerned with the soul’s welfare, its ‘end’, in a double sense, and he expresses this concern dramatically, by taking recourse to the structure of the soliloquy.

160 See Rev 21:4 ‘there shall be no more death’. For more biblical references see Huttar 364. 161 See also West 118; Southam 71; Stauffer 55.

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The speaker on the stage of the poem: Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’

In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, the poem which follows Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ in all manuscripts, Donne has his speaker refer to the various instances that form his self when he reflects on their separation at the moment of death. While in the preceding sonnet these instances of the self are meditated on by means of the soliloquy, the speaker in this Holy Sonnet begins with an allusion to the stage –​the ‘last scene’ of the play that is his life. In this last scene, the several parts of his self become actors that move to different places. The perspective of life as a stage is merged with the inner stage on which the separate parts of the speaker appear in a manner reminiscent of medieval allegorical plays. In the process of separation that he describes, the speaker goes beyond the dualism of body and soul whose disjunction has, since Plato (in the Phaedo), been defined as denoting the moment of death.1 Rather, Donne adds to this dualism and refers to triadic structures throughout: he speaks of ‘My body and Soule, and I’, of body, soul, and sins –​as well as of earth, heaven, and hell, and, finally, world, flesh and devil.2 By choosing a triadic rather than a dual concept of the self, he hints at the trinity and the formation of Man in God’s image; he also transforms the triadic concept of self as body, soul, and spirit when he adds sins to body and soul. This enables him not only to overcome traditional dualism in the way of (iconic) representation but moreover allows for a theological re-​interpretation: the apokatastasis of the soul as presented in this Holy Sonnet implies the speaker’s salvation, and the sins that ‘press [him]’ to hell will be separated from body and soul, and fall there themselves. Death becomes a process of separation that culminates in the speaker’s purgation from evil, which is reminiscent of Aristotelian catharsis and thus of the effect of drama. This is my Playes last Scene, here heauens appoint   My Pilgrimages last Mile, and my race,   Idely, yet quickly run, hath this last pace

1 See, e.g., Osmond on dualism and its dramatic implications (esp. ch. 1). See also Wiley on dualism in Donne (176). 2 On a similar triadic structure see also The Second Anniversary, where Donne refers to the soul of sense and the soul of growth as well as the third soul that is identified with the self.

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My Spanns last inche; my Minutes last pointe. And gluttonous death will instantly vnioynt   My body and Soule, and I shall sleepe a space,   Or presently, I know not, see that face Whose feare allredy shakes my euery ioynt. Then as my Soule, to’heauen her first Seate takes flight,   And earthborne body in the earth shall dwell, So fall my Sins, that all may haue their right,   To where they’are bred, and would presse me, to hell. Impute me righteous thus purg’d of euill, For thus I leaue the world, the fleshe, and deuill. (Variorum 13)

The speaker sets the dramatic scene with a reference to the theatrum mundi topos, as he ambiguously refers to both his poem and the situation he describes in terms of a play.3 He thus not only imagines the moment of his death but also regards it as the ‘last scene’ of the play which is his life. Donne links the theatrum mundi metaphor with the idea of the progress of the soul by a hidden wordplay4 on ‘stage’ which becomes the link between these two thematic strands of the poem.5 The speaker finds himself both in the dramatic setting of his impending death that will end the play that was his life on earth, and he considers the various stages he –​that is his body, soul, and ‘I’ as well as his sins –​will have to go through before and after their separation. These stages are envisaged as occurrences in space: the drama of his life is also a pilgrimage, and the distances that he has to pass towards his end become smaller and smaller. The journey does not end with his death: even the sleep that may follow is paradoxically described as a movement in space, just as his soul and as his sins will move in space afterwards. In both, Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ and Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, Donne holds a particular view of body and soul. In the first, he addresses his soul as a separate entity which is, however, a part of himself that he wishes to save. In the latter, he imagines his death as the separation of body, soul, and sins. In both poems, the soul goes through various stages.6 The communicative situation in this 3 Targoff comments on the theatrum mundi topos:  ‘What Donne does with this metaphor is to personalize and possess it […] as if to suggest that he is not merely a player in a larger drama, but the author of a drama that belongs to him’ (Body and Soul 124). Her reading apparently fails to acknowledge the metaphor of the life as a stage /​a theatre play, created and directed by God; the notion goes back to Plato’s Laws: ‘man is contrived […] to be a plaything of God’ (803c); and perpetuated, among others, by Böhme’s Vom lebendigen Glauben (148). It depends on God alone whether the individual human being is saved or not. See Waswo on this kind of opening: ‘Using such abrupt colloquial outbursts as the opening lines of these sonnets [in Caelica] to plunge us immediately into the middle of a dramatic situation was a technique presumably invented by Sidney and later made famous by Donne’ (101). 4 See Bauer on ‘Secret Wordplay’. 5 ‘Donne was a deeply theatrical person, and he was perhaps at his most theatrical when he attempted to stage the actual instant when his soul would depart from his body’ (Targoff, ‘Facing Death’ 217). See also Albrecht 23; and Wilcox, ‘Devotional Writing’ 151. 6 See also his two Anniversary poems, written only shortly after the composition of the Holy Sonnets, in which he deals with the immortality of the soul and its dualism with the body, albeit in a far less ‘dramatic’ fashion; see Lewalski, Donne’s Anniversaries; Manley; Martz, ‘Donne’s Anniversaries’; Smith, ‘Enfranchisement’; Tayler; Voss.

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latter sonnet is more straightforward than in the preceding one: up to the couplet, the speaker addresses not his soul but God, whom he asks, ‘Impute me righteous’. But this does not mean that the poem is always univocal. The two final lines turn the poem into a rhetorical act: while the speaker at first reflects on himself, with the sestet he begins to express a speech act in that he wishes that his soul turn to heaven, his body to the earth, and his sins towards hell. With the couplet and his turn to God, the sonnet becomes a persuasive act, with God as communicative partner. This sonnet therefore combines the notions of the soliloquy as meditation and devotion as well as the dramatic practice (with regard to an audience, e.g. the reader) with that of a persuasive intent. Moreover, the meaning of the first sentence, as we have noted, is ambiguous due to the deictic pronoun at its beginning: ‘This’ can be understood as a metapoetical reference to the poem itself; but it can also be read endophorically or exophorically, i.e. with its point of reference lying inside the poem (‘This’ relates to the scene created by the fiction of the poem) or outside of it (‘This’ refers to a scene outside, which implies that the poem is not autonomous but must be read as a comment on something else).7 As the poem starts in medias res no more specific context is given in order to disambiguate the reference immediately.8 Setting the stage: ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ In the case of a metapoetical reading, ‘This’ refers to the poem itself, a common function in poetry. The final couplet in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is one example: ‘So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.’ But ‘this’ is often used ambiguously in early modern poems; one example can be found in the final stanza of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem ‘My lute, awake’: Now cease, my lute. This is the last Labour that I and thou shall waste, And ended is that we begun. Now is this song both sung and past; My lute, be still, for I have done. (Wyatt, The Complete Poems 145.36–​40; emphasis added)

The speaker talks to his lute and refers to the song he has just performed:  the deictic reference at the beginning of the passage is cataphoric to ‘this song’. But ‘this song’ may also point to a song the poem is about (created by the fiction of the

7 On endophoric and exophoric reference see, e.g., Beaugrande/​Dressler; Halliday/​Hasan; and Levinson. Hall notes that Donne gives particular emphasis to the interpretation of the first word, which is often merely a conjunction like ‘and’ or ‘but’ –​in his readings of the Scripture (‘Searching the Scriptures’ 216). See also Donne’s Sermons 9: 9.226. On Donne’s deictics, see Dubrow, Deixis. 8 This dramatic entry into the poem is also underlined by the use of monosyllables in the first few words; see also Austin, Language 23; Gardner, Introduction xxxii; and Magnusson 191. Koppenfels remarks that most poems by Donne start without any further preparation so that, like in the theatre, the audience is presented with a seemingly long begun action (139).

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poem); the reference may even extend to a song outside the poem, one that he has just performed. Donne’s use of ‘This’ to open the sonnet, however, is more complex as it foregrounds that we do not know what kind of an utterance we are confronted with: is this poem the scene the speaker refers to at its beginning, which would imply that the poem is part of a larger dramatic text? Or are we rather to share the imagination of sitting in a theatre, together with the author of a drama, who explains the events –​‘This is my play’s last scene, here …’ –​that unfold before us on the stage?9 In the case of a metapoetical reading, the poem could indeed be part of a larger text; but this metapoetical reading may even entail a metaphorical reference to ‘play’, which means that the speaker regards the writing of this poem as the last act of his life. Similarly, when read endophorically, ‘This’ either opens up the fiction of an author sitting in the audience and describing a scene to the reader (as an internal ekphrasis that is, however, distinct from the exophoric reading, in which the poem would be the description of a picture or a scene on a theatre stage) or a person standing on the stage and explaining to us what is going on.10 With regard to all readings of ‘This’, we are therefore either to conceive of the speaker as literally on a stage and leaving his role as he comments on the situation; or as someone who metaphorically refers to the end of his life as the ‘last scene’ of his play. We find a similar ambiguity of literal and metaphorical references to the stage in the theatrum mundi speech of Duke Senior in As You Like It: This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in. (2.7.138–​40)

The Duke here refers to the stage metaphorically, and it is only on the second (external) level of communication that the literal reference is understood; at the same time, we realize that life is actually (and not just metaphorically) a play. The speaker in Henry Lok’s Sonnet 30 from the Second Part of Christian Passions (1597; see Robbins ed. 531n1) also expresses this idea: This stately stage wherein we players stande, To represent the part to vs assigned, Was built by God, that he might pleasure finde, In beautie of the works of his owne band, All creatures of the ayre, the sea and land, 9 Dessen refers to the difficulties deictic pronouns may cause for the actor for their lack of clear reference (Elizabethan Stage Conventions 53) and their ‘possible ambiguity’ (57). 10 See the figure of the stage manager in modern plays, for instance Wilder’s Our Town. See also Horace’s Satire VI, which begins with ‘This’:  ‘Hoc erat in votis  –​’ /​‘This is what I  prayed for’ (210–​11). Horace reflects on the achievement and success of his prayers in the past tense, ‘erat’; see Fairclough’s comment:  ‘In the opening words Horace gives utterance to a feeling of deep satisfaction as he contemplates the scene before him in the morning sunshine. His former prayer has been realized’ (210).

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Are players at his appointment of some thing, Which to the world a proper vse may bring, And may not breake assigned bownds or band: Some do in ioy still forth his praises sing, Some mourne & make their mone with heauy mind, Some shew the frutes of nature weake and blind, Some shew how grace base sin away doth fling,    God (like a king) Beholds, Christ doth attire,    The plaiers with the shape, their states require. (Christian Passions II.30)

‘This’ here points to the world as a stage in accordance with the theatrum mundi topos:  God has created this world and humankind acts their various parts as players within it. Lok refers to the topos in a traditional manner: all human beings are actors, playing the roles assigned to them by the heavenly ‘stage-​manager’. By commenting on this topos and describing it, the notion is literalized. The ‘last scene’ that the speaker refers to in this sonnet thus literally becomes his exit from the stage that is this world. Donne famously referred to death as an exit from this world in his final sermon, ‘Deaths Duell’, where being born and death become dramatic acts, and birth is described as entering a world of death. Donne visualizes this notion in terms of a paradoxical interdependence of exitus and introitus, of going out and going in, which characterizes the relation of life and death:11 But then this exitus a morte, is but introitus in mortem, this issue, this deliverance from that death, the death of the wombe, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this world. (10: 11.235)

Donne regards life in this world as a stage entrance and exit but he also states that life in this world is nothing but a form of death. The physical death in the earthly realm is the entrance into real life, which means that death is actually a happy event. In Donne’s sonnet, the fall of the sins equally means that the speaker may hope for a happy ending, and he concludes with a plea to God in the final couplet. In Donne’s Holy Sonnet, the speaker considers his present situation and sets the scene by lending it immediacy (the hic and nunc of the poem) and by positioning himself in a particular location and situation (the meditatio mortis). Just like the Duke Senior’s words in As You Like It, metaphorical and literal sense merge,12 and it is impossible to say where one ends and the other begins. This is reinforced by the ambiguity of ‘play’ which refers both to his speaking on the stage and to a particular scene on the stage of life.13 Thus he not only alludes to the theatrum 11 The living are merely awaiting their deliverance from ‘the manifold deaths of this world’ (10: 11.233); see Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Sites of Death’. 12 For Donne’s views on literal and figurative sense see, e.g. Sermons 6:  2.62:  ‘in many places of Scripture, a figurative sense is the literall sense’. He explicitly refers to the blending of metaphor and literal meaning. 13 This reading shows that Pfister’s statement about the ‘dramatic quality’ of Donne’s poems as an inner dialogue or dialogue with God does not fully describe the complexity of what is going on in

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mundi metaphor but also presents his own experience as a stage event: He plays the role of somebody who finds himself facing his death, who is conscious of this situation, and who asks himself what is going to happen to him. By slipping into the role of an actor, the metaphor of acting/​the stage evoked by the speaker gains energeia: his own situation in life is a stage.14 The speaker’s soliloquy in the sonnet becomes an image of his soul; as Scaliger put it: ‘Orationes enim quodam modo picturae sunt animorum’ (2: 3, 34). Moreover, the speaker joins together place and time, which becomes particularly evident in the remaining lines of the first quatrain: temporal and spatial expressions blend when the speaker talks about his ‘Minutes last pointe’.15 This is again reminiscent of As You Like It, this time of Jaques in his famous speech that immediately follows the Duke’s words: ‘All the world’s a stage’ (2.7.140); the stage of the world and the stages of life become one, since Jaques is not so much concerned with roles which we may or may not put on but speaks about the ages or phases of life. In Donne’s sonnet, the link is emphasized through the use of ‘pilgrimage’. The speaker in Donne’s poem acts out the setting of the last scene in his life’s play as the decisive moment in the course of his life: ‘here heavens appoint’. The notion of life as a journey, a pilgrimage, is of biblical origin and refers to, for example, Hebr 11:13: ‘they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.’16 The speaker adds the notion of a race, thus emphasizing the urgency of his current situation, which is an allusion to 1 Cor 9:24: ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.’ With death, the race ends, and life, although it has been spent ‘idly’, approaches its end. The closer the speaker gets, the shorter are the distances. This is emphasized by the adjective ‘last’, which is repeated five times within these four lines. Stampfer comments that this repetition ‘establishes a pace, gradually shortening to a “last mile”, “last pace”, “last inch”, and finally a “last point” ’ (246; see also Lever, Sonnets 179).17 But it is by no means certain if the pace is either slowing down or increasing, in which case the situation gains in urgency and haste –​and also in dramatic impact, which runs full circle with the theatrical allusion in the first line of the poem. In any case, we notice, in the speaker’s insistent ‘last … last … last’, his urgent awareness of death and his desire for a life to last, to become immortal. The drama runs towards its this Holy Sonnet (‘Die frühe Neuzeit’ 104–​5). ‘Donne combines three traditional metaphors: life as a play, life as a pilgrimage or exile from heaven, and life as St. Paul’s footrace’ (Low 61). 14 See also The Second Anniversary: ‘What hope have wee to know our selves, when wee /​Know not the least things, which for our use be? /​[…] /​And yet one watches, starves, freezes, and sweats, /​ To know but Catechismes and Alphabets /​Of unconcerning things, matters of fact /​How others on our stage their parts did Act’ (279–​86; emphasis added). See also the First Anniversary, where the speaker reflects on the role of Elizabeth Drury in this world in terms of the theatrum mundi metaphor: ‘Shee, to whom all this world was but a stage’ (67). Smith argues that this is a direct allusion to As You Like It (‘Donniana’ 47), while Ellrodt does not see a direct link because of the commonplace nature of the trope in the early modern period (2: 189n). 15 See also La Corona: ‘Measuring self-​life’s infinity to span, /​Nay an inch’ (5.8–​9). 16 See Leimberg’s Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis on pilgrimage and the link to Hebr 11:13 (415–​25); see also Edwards, Pilgrimage and Literary Tradition, on the biblical origins of the imagery of life as a pilgrimage (esp. 11–​12). 17 In some editions, line four reads ‘My span’s last inch, my minute’s latest point’.

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climax, the protagonist’s death, but then something extraordinary happens which is reminiscent of the allegorical medieval stage:18 as the concluding point of events the speaker –​or, rather the persona –​imagines the separation of his body, soul, and sins.

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The speaker and death: ‘unjoining’ body and soul In the second quatrain, ‘death’ divides the speaker into body, soul and ‘I’  –​as well as into body, soul, and sins in the sestet. Death is portrayed in an allegorical fashion:  it is ‘gluttonous’19 and thus linked to vice, which foregrounds the personification and the link to medieval moralities in a manner reminiscent of Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. The underlying antagonism between gluttonous death and a self that it will ‘unjoint’ into body and soul and ‘I’ (and sins) lends itself to drama.20 Donne’s sonnet not only refers to death as the ‘Playes last Scene’ in the life of the speaker but also alludes to a situation and an agon portrayed on the stage by introducing a personified (‘gluttonous’) death. The popularity of this imagery (and its continuity from drama into devotional writing) becomes evident with an example from John Hall’s ‘Heaven upon Earth’ (1606), where he portrays death as follows: Now when this great adversary, like a proud giant, comes stalking out in his fearful shape, and insults over our frail mortality, daring the world to match him with an equal champion; while a whole host of worldlings show him their backs for fear, the true Christian, armed only with confidence and resolution of his future happiness, dares boldly encounter him; and can wound him in the forehead, the wonted seat of terror; and, trampling upon him, can cut off his head with his own sword, and, victoriously returning, can sing in triumph, O death, where is thy sting? an happy victory! We die, and are not foiled: yea, we are conquerors in dying: we could not overcome death, if we died not. That dissolution is well bestowed that parts the soul from the body, that it may unite both to God. (XVII: 24–​5)

Hall’s representation resembles a stage setup: death is personified and enters the stage (‘comes stalking out’) ‘like a proud giant’ to fight with the ‘true Christian’.21 The latter is the hero of this scene; in a battle he will ‘wound [death] in the forehead’,

18 The variant of line 7 evokes the stage by means of the expression ‘part’: ‘But my ever-​waking part shall see that face’ (TCC [MS at Trinity College Cambridge] and TCD [Dublin] 1633; ‘By my everlasting part shall see that face’ (DC [Dolau Cothi MS of the National Library of Wales] 1635; see Robbins ed.). For a reading of this variant see Daniels. 19 A variation of the motif occurs in ‘An Elegy upon the Death of Mistress Bulstrode’: ‘Death, […] /​ Th’ Earth’s face is but thy table, and the meat /​Plants, cattle, men, dishèd for Death to eat. /​In a rude hunger now he millions draws /​Into his bloody or plaguy or starved jaws’ (744–​5.1–​8). Ul-​Hasan notes that death is portrayed as ‘devouring and swallowing [in] undignified haste, greediness, and unhealthy hunger’ (58) but fails to acknowledge a possible link to the vice figure in morality plays. 20 See also The Second Anniversary, where death is described as the ‘unbinding of a pack’ (94). 21 George Herbert’s ‘A Dialogue-​Antheme’ similarly enacts a dialogue between Christian and Death; see Leimberg, ‘Annotating Baroque Poetry’.

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and finally be triumphant in a manner reminiscent of Holy Sonnet ‘Death bee not proude’. Similarly, in Everyman, individual death enters the stage as an allegorical figure, and the action of the play (as in Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’) focuses on the events from the announcement until the moment of death. Everyman is afraid of death, and his dialogues with his companions constitute a psychodrama with the (contradictory) motives of human action as their topic. As early as in the prologue of the play, the separation of body and soul is described:22 Ye thynke synne in the begynnynge full swete, Whiche in the ende causeth the soule to wepe, Whan the body lyeth in claye. (Prologue 12–​14)

The body returns to his place of origin and ‘lyeth in claye’ after death, while the soul mourns for man’s sinfulness during his life.23 Everyman here adopts a pattern that is topical in morality plays: the dualism of body and soul is staged by representing the two as allegorical figures. The earliest instance of such a personification of the soul as a stage figure can be found in The Pride of Life from the fourteenth century (~1343/​44).24 Although the play is only extant in fragments, we know that the prologue announces the appearance of the soul in the course of the play: ‘Qwhen þe body is doun ibroᴣt /​ þe soule sorow awakith’ (93–​4). The separation of body and soul is presented as a dispute between two characters: while the body accumulates sins, it is the soul who will have to take the blame for them –​‘þe fendis takith’ (96). It is only through prayer that they will be saved; but their difference remains all the same. When the speaker in Donne’s sonnet reflects on his death as an unjoining of body and soul, he refers to the general assumption that body and soul are only temporarily connected, and that the soul is the immortal part of man, while the body is mortal. The concept goes back to Plato: ‘We believe, do we not, that death is the separation of the soul from the body, and that the state of being dead is the state in which the body is separated from the soul and exists alone by itself and the soul is separated from the body and exists alone by itself ’ (Phaedo 64c). Yet he also describes how the soul is usually very closely linked to the body, and that it is 22 See also later, when he is called by the Angel: ‘Now thy soule is taken thy body fro, /​Thy rekenynge is crystal-​clere’ (897–​8). The body is the part that is most damned, which is why, during confession, Everyman asks only for the punishment of his body: ‘thou delytest to go gay and fresshe, /​And in the way of dampnacyon thou dyd me brynge’ (614–​15). One of the common denominators of Donne’s poem and morality plays is the interest in man’s ‘spiritual welfare in the life to come’ (Cawley, Introduction xvi). 23 Everyman’s Good Deeds already ‘lye, colde in the grounde’ (486) during his life, drawn down there by his sins: ‘Thy synnes hath me sore bounde, /​That I can not stere’ (486–​7). –​For the ‘Presentation of Sin’ in early morality plays see, e.g., Fichte. 24 The play is about the King of Life who boasts of invincible strength and who is reminded by his Queen of the overwhelming power of death. When the King challenges Death, a homily on the soul and its seizure by the devil as well as the power of Our Lady to bring about salvation follows (see Introduction lxxxviii–​lxxxix). A similar pattern can be seen in The Castle of Perseverance, where the soul appears on the stage as a character after the death of the body.

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therefore hard for it to detach itself at the moment of death.25 Plato thus explains why the separation is not an abrupt but rather a slow one: ‘it [the soul] will be interpenetrated, I suppose, with the corporeal which intercourse and communion with the body have made a part of its nature because the body has been its constant communion and the object of its care’ (Phaedo 81c).26 During life, body and soul develop a certain degree of interdependence; to endure the separation of body and soul, in Plato’s view, is easier for the philosopher, who is ‘eager to release the soul […] the true philosophers practise dying, and death is less terrible to them than to any other men’ (67d–​e).27 To practise dying is an exercise that foreshadows St Paul’s ‘I die daily’ (1 Cor 15:31), which is taken up by Donne in his sermon Deaths Duell: ‘deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world, the omni die and the tota die, the every dayes death, and every houres death, by that one death, the final dissolution of body and soule, the end of all’ (10: 11.235).28 In this Holy Sonnet, however, this ‘final dissolution’ is complicated by the addition of a third entity, ‘I’. ‘My body and Soule, and I’ With the appearance of death and its ‘unjoining’ of body and soul, the speaker presents two alternative scenarios as to what will happen next. He is doubtful whether the soul will still be joined to the body in sleep after death until Judgement day,29 or if it will directly see the face of God, while the body is still asleep. He admits to his ignorance (‘I know not’), and, for the time being, he can only meditate on what may happen and express a wish (in the sestet). This ignorance is part of his life on earth, but the soul will progress from ‘ignorance in this life and knowledge in the next’, as Donne puts it in the marginal gloss in The Second Anniversary (893–​4.251–​5). This gloss is an allusion to 1 Cor 13:12 ‘For now we 25 Donne describes this moment at the beginning of ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’:  ‘As virtuous men pass mildly away, /​And whisper to their souls to go’ (257.1–​2); here the separation of body and soul is reflected on in relation to a love context. See Targoff: ‘Donne’s thoughts about the body and soul do not belong to a realm separate from his thoughts about his lovers or his friends. He approaches the parting between body and soul and the parting between two people with the same structure of feeling. The only difference is that the parting between body and soul is for him more intense, more fraught, more poignant’ (Body and Soul 2). 26 See also Plutarch’s De genio Socratis: ‘every soul partakes of understanding; none is irrational or unintelligent. But the portion of the soul that mingles with flesh and passions suffers alteration and becomes in the pleasures and pains it undergoes irrational. Not every soul mingles to the same extent: some sink entirely into the body, and becoming disordered throughout, are during their life wholly distracted by passions; others mingle in part, but leave outside what is purest in them’ (591d). 27 Plato describes as the aim of the philosopher to free himself as much as possible from the body and thus from earthly life, which results in his being not afraid of death (68a). Petrarch takes up the imagery in his Canzoniere; see Friedrich 229. In Petrarch’s case, the liberation is achieved through love: ‘Ma rispondemi Amor: Non ti rimembra /​che questo è privilegio degli amanti, /​sciolti da tutte qualitati humane?’ (Canzoniere XV [65]). 28 See Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Of my Name in the Window’: ‘Since I dye daily, daily mourne’ (267.42). 29 The sonnet which follows Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ in the Revised Sequence, Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’, takes up the first scenario: the speaker imagines how, on Judgement Day, the ‘numberles inifinities /​Of Soules’ will ‘Arise […] and to [their] scattered bodyes go’ (Variorum 14.2–​4).

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see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known’; and it is rather specific with regard to life and death: we do not (i.e. the soul does not) know any details regarding life and death, but what is important for the soul is to return to its place of origin. This is the wish that the speaker expresses in the sestet. In the octave, he goes on to reflect on the separation of body and soul: it will either be followed by sleep, expressed in the spatio-​temporal expression ‘I shall sleep a space’, sleep being nothing but ‘a kind of separation of the soule from the body for a time’ (Bright 117).30 This not only implies that the speaker (and what remains of him after the separation of body and soul by death) enters some intermediary state to be awakened again on the Day of Judgement when body and soul will be reunited, but also that ‘I’ still includes the soul (Gardner, Introduction xlvn3). Alternatively, the speaker, who is doubtful as to which scenario he is going to experience31 will ‘presently [...] see that face’ –​i.e. go to heaven immediately and face his judgement there. In the variant of this line, ‘But my’ever-​waking part shall see that face’, the speaker’s uncertainty is toned down. If, however, according to Bright, all sleep is a separation of the soul from the body, the waking state of the soul is taken for granted in ‘I sleep’. In that case, ‘I’ is associated with the body (sleeping), as in the ‘But my’ever-​waking part’ variant; if one follows the reading ‘Or presently, I know not, see that face’, the ‘I’ is identified with the soul, being awake. The ambiguity shows that the ‘I’ is both body and soul. In this Holy Sonnet, ‘I’ is hence treated separately from body and soul and, concurrently, includes both. This ‘separation in unity’ is reminiscent of the Soliloquium Animae and other texts written in that vein, in which the soul and the speaker are separate and one at the same time; it also seems to allude to a passage on the ‘Holy Communion’ in the Book of Common Prayer (1559) ‘And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our soules and bodies’ (138), where a similar kind of division and unity can be observed.32 Man is ‘a litle World, made cunningly /​Of Elements and an Angelique Spright’ (Holy Sonnet ‘I ame a litle World’ 14.1–​2), both of which are threatened by ‘blacke Sin’.33 The reference to ‘a litle World’ suggests the concept that, at creation, man is put together physically by the elements –​earth, fire, water, and air –​and an ‘angelic sprite’, the soul, the 30 The state described by the speaker refers to the intermediate state of the souls after death in which they are waiting for the resurrection of the body, called refrigerium interim by Tertullian and others See Bauer/​Zirker, ‘Sites of Death’ 24; and Stuiber 52–​8. 31 See Gardner:  ‘The deliberate expression of doubt [I know not] is the more impressive, in that the sestet assumes that the second alternative is the true one, and makes the soul receive its final judgement at death’ (Introduction xlv). Why the expression of doubt should make the ‘second alternative […] the true one’, however, remains unexplained. 32 The sentence is ambiguous, though: it can either be read as an enumeration –​‘our selves, our soules and bodies’ –​or as apposition, ‘soules and bodies’ specifying ‘our selves’. 33 In the context of Holy Sonnet ‘I ame a litle World’, Matsuura refers to the Sermon Preached at Whitehall on 8 March 1621 (12): ‘upon my expiration, my transmigration from hence, as soone as my soule enters into Heaven, I shall be able to say to the Angels, I am of the same stuffe as you, spirit, and spirit, and therefore let me stand with you, and looke upon the face of your God, and my God’ (2: 1.46). See also de la Primaudaye’s definition of the body where ‘we may behold the […] the excellencie of the wonderful works of God’ ‘as in a little world’ (21; emphasis added).

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‘best part’:34 ‘I am my best part, I am my soule’ (1st Expostulation, Devotions 8). But although the soul may be the ‘best part’, Donne also emphasizes that body and soul are mutually dependent: ‘the body is not the man, nor the soul is not the man, but the union of the soul and body’ (Sermons 4: 13.331–​2); ‘to constitute a man, there must be a body, as well as a soule’ (4: 14.357; see also 2: 12.262). Similarly, Donne writes in a prayer: ‘in this world my body was first made and then my soul, but in the next my soul shall be first and then my body’ (qtd. in Gosse 2: 103).35 He thus refers to a sequence of creation which all the more emphasizes the division between body and soul but also their interrelatedness, especially during life on earth: Our nature is Meteorique, we respect (because we partake so) both earth and heaven; for as our bodies glorified shall be capable of spirituall joy, so our souls demerged into those bodies, are allowed to partake earthly pleasure. Our soul is not sent hither, only to go back again: we have some errand to do here: nor is it sent into prison, because it comes innocent: and he which sent it, is just. (Letter to Sir Henry Goodyer, December 1611; Letters 1651 46)

The soul has a role on earth –​Donne explicitly refutes the Platonic notion of the body as a prison of the soul in this letter. What he believes in is the final resurrection, i.e. the reunion of body and soul in the life to come;36 he gives expression to this conviction in Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’ when the speaker orders the souls: ‘arise, arise /​From death, you numberless infinities /​Of soules, and to your scattered bodies goe’ (2–​4). In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, however, his focus is a different one. Although what the speaker calls ‘I’ in this poem appears to include the soul (the body will continue to remain on earth, while the soul will ascend to heaven), body, soul, and I form a unity. If it is, however, ‘I’ who will ‘see that face’ in heaven, the notion of the soul ascending to heaven implies the inclusion of the soul into ‘I’. Still, these lines appear to contain a paradoxical notion that expresses a tension of identification and distance similar to Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my 34 Robbins, in his annotations to this Holy Sonnet, quotes ‘Donne’s Sermon Preached at Lincolns Inn’ in 1618: ‘Fire and Air, Water and Earth, are not the Elements of man; Inward decay, and outward violence, bodily pain, and sorrow of the heart may be rather styled his Elements; And though he be destroyed by these, yet he consists of nothing but these […] As though man could be a Microcosm, a world in himself, no other way, except all the misery of the world fell upon him’ (2: 2.78). See also his sermon, ‘Preached at the Spittle, upon Easter-​Munday, 1622’ (4: 3.104). Bauer notes that these passages read like a comment on King Lear, where the Fool evokes the image of the ‘footstool’ in 3.6.51 (‘Tränen und Regen’). 35 See also the sermon where he writes:  ‘Our life is a warfare; other wars, in a great part, end in mariages: Ours in a divorce, in a divorce of body and soule in death’ (10: 7.176). 36 This image of the separation and the final resurrection and reunion of body and soul also occurs in his last will and testament: ‘First I give my good and gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and soul with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the salvation of the one and the resurrection of the other and for that constant and cheerful resolution which the same Spirit established in me to live and die in the religion now professed in the Church of England. In expectation of that resurrection I desire that my body may be buried in the most private manner that may be in that place of Saint Paul’s Church’ (Gosse Appendix B 359–​60). On Donne’s last will see also Targoff, ‘Traducing the Soul’ 1493.

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black Soule’; this tension is, at least partly, resolved in the sestet, when the separate entities that make up the speaker return to their places of origin.

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‘Whose fear allredy shakes my euery ioynt’ The last line of the octave of Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’is dedicated to the topic of fear: implicitly referring to Exodus 33:20 (‘And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live’), the speaker trembles at the idea that he should ascend to heaven and see ‘that face’, i.e. the face of God. This fear is a recurrent topic in the Holy Sonnets.37 In Holy Sonnet ‘Thou hast made me’, the speaker dwells on his ‘terror’: Thou hast made me: and shall thy worke decay?  […] I dare not moue my dimme eyes any way,   Dispaire behind, and death before doth cast   Such terror, and my febled fleshe doth wast By Sin in it, which towards hell doth weigh. (Variorum 11.1–​8)38

In the very first sonnet of the Westmoreland sequence, both what lies behind and before the speaker in the course of his pilgrimage that is his life, casts ‘terror’ on him. It is his flesh which ‘wastes’ because of his sinful life; it is sin that has entered the flesh ‘which towards hell doth weigh’. In the concluding poem, Holy Sonnet ‘Oh, to vex me’, the speaker first dwells on the fear of punishment but comes to a more positive view as he learns to appreciate this fear as a path towards salvation; Lewalski refers to Job 28:28 ‘The feare of the Lord, that is wisdome’ in these lines (Protestant Poetics 274–​5): I durst not view heauen yesterday; and to day   In prayers, and flattering Speaches I court God:   To morrow I quake with true feare of his rod. So my deuout fitts come and go away   Like a fantastic Ague: Save that here   Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare. (20.9–​14) 37 The expression of fear has often been read autobiographically as ‘most of the Holy Sonnets were composed between 1607 and 1610, a period of spiritual crisis for Donne […] Uncertain of his salvation and paralyzed with fear, Donne fastened his mind on death, a concept which precipitated terror because Donne imagined his soul as enmeshed in sin’ (Blanch 476); see also Sellin 164–​7; and Wilcox, ‘Devotional Writing’ 152. The speaker’s fear is also associated with the concept of salvation: as soon as the separation of body, soul and sins has taken place, salvation is possible. See Donne’s Satire III:  ‘This feare great courage, and high valour is’ (388.16). See also Luther’s ‘Sermon vom Sterben’ (first published in 1519 and linked to late medieval prayer books and the ‘ars moriendi’ topos; Starke 17) emphasizes that the fear should only be momentary (Bettbüchleyn O iii v.). 38 Bald comments:  ‘Despair, it should be recalled, was in the seventeenth century sin as well as suffering, for it implied distrust in God and His mercy; and Donne was afflicted by this distrust’ (234); see Ohly, ‘Desperatio et Praesumptio’. See also Donne’s ‘A Hymne to God the Father’: ‘I have a sin of fear’ (Robbins ed. 579.13).

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Fear quite literally frames the sonnets. Donne implicitly refers to the concept of ‘timor mortis conturbat me’, but emphasizes that it is not death as such but rather the divine judgement which he fears most. In a sermon ‘Preached at White-​hall, November 2, 1617’ on Ps 55:19, he writes: ‘The fear of God is the beginning of all’ (4:  4.233), which echoes the ‘grace to begin’ given by God in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. He goes on:  ‘Even that fear of God, which we use to call servile fear, which is but an apprehension of punishment […] is a fear, which our Saviour counsels us to entertain’ (233). Fear will eventually lead to salvation, as it makes us aware of our sinfulness: ‘To learn to fear God, he sends us to the meditation of the torments of hell’ (234). It is a ‘fantastic ague’ that the speaker experiences, and it is quite obvious that the ‘quaking’ and the ‘shaking’ is caused by very strong emotion.39 In a similar fashion, the speaker in Holy Sonnet ‘Why ame I by all Creatures’ presents himself as a sinner who is ‘timorous’ (10). In The First Anniversary, he finds that ‘agues physic are’ (817.21),40 a paradoxical notion expressed also in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh, to vex me’: his best days are those when he ‘shakes with fear’. By means of this paradox, therefore, ‘contraries’ do indeed ‘meet in one’: the fear the speaker feels when confronted with death and, subsequently judgement, has a positive effect on him –​in accordance with the affects in tragedy, eleos and phobos, although only ‘fear’ is mentioned in Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’.41 This fear urges his wish for a ‘purgation’ from sins42 –​ if he recognizes his sinfulness and repents, then a catharsis sets in. The fear of the divine spectacle may further his restoration and is therefore an instrument of divine mercy. As Donne put it in a sermon: ‘This then is the operation of the feare of the Lord, this is his working; [there] remaines onely to consider what this feare of the Lord is: And, beloved in him, be not afraid of it; for, this fear of God, is the love of God’ (6: 4.111; see also Johnson 2). The speaker’s fear in the sonnet is caused by the anticipated overwhelming spectacle of the divine. The speaker’s trembling at the very idea of seeing ‘that face’ anticipates a similar reflection in Donne’s poem ‘Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward’, where he speaks of seeing God’s face as a ‘spectacle of too much weight for [him]’ (16). The genre of that 39 See Robbins’s reference (495n12–​13) to the sermon by Donne preached at Lincoln’s Inn in the spring or summer of 1618 on Ps 38:3: ‘There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones, because of my sinne’ (8: 2.76); ‘[e]‌very fit of an Ague is an Earth-​quake that swallows him, every fainting of the knee, is a step to Hell; every lying down at night is a funeral; and every quaking is a rising to judgement’ (84). 40 See Rollin 131. For a very similar concept of poetry as a means of memory and of expressing one’s fear or an ‘ague’, see Lok’s Preface to his Sundry Sonnets: ‘I hauing […] felt in the direction and protection of my vnstable youth, a plentifull portion of the wonderfull care he [God] hath ouer vs […] the more to stirre vp my selfe to a memorie thereof, haue thought good to set downe these abrupt passions of my passed afflictions, as witnesses of the impediments most stopping me in my Christian pilgrimage […] In which (as in a glasse) may be seene, the state of a renegerate [sic] soul, sicke with sinne, sometimes (Ague-​like) shiuering with cold despaire, straight waies inflamed with feruencie of faith and hope’ (‘To the Reader’ n.p.). 41 One might, in a dramatic context, even go so far and read ‘whose fear already shakes’ as a witty allusion to Shakespeare. 42 George Herbert uses the religious meaning of purgation in ‘The Rose’: ‘And repentance is a purge’ (354.28). For the different connotations of ‘purge’ and ‘purgation’ see Bauer, Mystical Linguistics.

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spectacle is in both poems more clearly the religious mystery and morality rather than tragedy.

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The tripartite self: soul, body, and sins The fear expressed by Donne at the conclusion of the octave can thus be read as a mental exercise that is meant to prepare the speaker for death: he imagines what will happen to him, and the implied awareness of his sinfulness evokes fear. This fear gives rise to two urgent wishes (‘So fall […]’ and ‘Impute […]’) in the sestet and the conclusion of leaving everything worldly behind; the volta structurally marks this turn of thought.43 His fear accordingly makes him reflect on how he can avoid the direct confrontation with and the judgement by God: he imagines himself to be divided not into two separate entities, namely body and soul, but three. This is prepared in the second quatrain with the ambiguous ‘I’ as an entity added to body and soul. In the sestet, the representation of sins as separate ‘beings’ allows the speaker to imagine and wish for an act of purification in which those beings leave him and go back to where they belong.44 The sins are neither the soul’s nor the body’s but alien to them. This is what the dramatic mode of the poem can represent; the inner multiplication of the self into several actors, however, also enables the speaker to make a theological statement. Death as a process of separation becomes one of purgation,45 and the triadic division of the speaker is reminiscent of the trinity: in becoming a tripartite self the speaker truly is an imago dei that permits him to hope for a happy ending of the scene that is to be the last of his life. The speaker begins with the soul, who he wants to return to ‘her first Seate’ in heaven, whereas the body shall ‘dwell’ in the earth. This notion of the return of body and soul to their places of origin is reminiscent of Lucrece, who pronounces her ‘will’ and says: ‘My soul and body to the skies and ground’ (1199); its origin can be found in Plato’s Timaeus and the ascent to heaven as the place of origin of the soul.46 Plotin, in his Enneads, refers to this concept in a Neoplatonic context: ‘each soul comes down to a body made ready for it according to its resemblance to the soul’s disposition […] then […] the soul goes up again’ (IV.3.12; IV.7.10). 4 3 See French on the change in tone between the octave and the sestet (116–​18). 44 Targoff puts this in a nutshell: ‘The gesture of dividing himself into three parts rather than two –​ body, soul, and sin –​reflects Donne’s desire to isolate that part of the self that he expects will not fare well at the Last Judgment. It also reflects his fantasy of reconceiving himself as someone not limited by the ordinary conditions of human dualism, someone whose sinfulness does not afflict the constitution of either his body or soul’ (Body and Soul 125). But Donne does not present a fantasy: he takes the three parties for granted; neither is there a ‘reconceiving’ himself: what he imagines/​wishes is what happens to them. 45 This is reminiscent of an alchemical process; in ‘The Extasie’ purity of the soul results from its separation from the body. 46 ‘Such, then, was the sum of the reasoning of the ever-​existing God concerning the god which was one day to be existent, whereby He made it smooth and even and equal on all sides from the centre, a whole and perfect body compounded of perfect bodies. And in the midst thereof He set Soul, which He stretched throughout the whole of it, and therewith He enveloped also the exterior of its body’ (Timaeus 34b).

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Apokatastasis,47 the homecoming of the soul, is thus evoked in the poem, even though not in terms of a conviction about the salvation of every soul but as a hope of the speaker with regard to himself (which may indirectly become a model for everyone). In the context of a lecture on Pythagorean and Platonic theories of the afterlife, Cicero in his Tusculanae disputationes (1.17–​19) raises the question whether body and soul are separated at the point of death and what happens to them afterwards (1.9.18–​10.22). He then also describes the ascent to heaven: Furthermore we do not doubt that the nature of the four elements from which all things are begotten is such that, as though their laws of motion were mutually apportioned and divided, the earthy and the moist are carried perpendicularly into land and sea by their own tendency and weight, while the two remaining parts, one fiery, the other airy, precisely as the two first-​mentioned are carried into the centre of the universe by heaviness and weight, so the last two on the contrary fly vertically upward into the heavenly region, whether this be due to an upward tendency inherent in their nature, or because bodies naturally lighter are driven away from heavier bodies. And since these facts are established it ought to be clear that souls, on quitting the body, whether they are airy, that is to say, of the nature of breath, or fiery, are carried aloft. (1.17.40)

According to him, the earthly parts fall back into earth, the wet parts back to the sea, but the remaining elements –​air and fire –​ascend to heaven because it is their nature to do so. It therefore does not matter whether the soul consists of air or of fire –​a point of dispute –​because either way they ascend and return to the element of their origin: ‘For my part, when I study the nature of the soul, the conception of it in the body, as it were in a home that is not its own, presents itself as one much more difficult, much more doubtful than the conception of the nature of the soul when it has quit the body and come into the free heaven, as it were to its home’ (1.22.51). In his Holy Sonnets, Donne combines the traditional (Platonic) dualism of body and soul with the Ciceronian tetrad of the elements to develop a triadic concept. The return of the soul to its point of origin is linked to the question of where the soul actually comes from in the first place, and whether it is infused into the body by God or propagated through the parents.48 When in Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ the soul returns to its place of origin by going to heaven, then it originates from God, not from parental propagation, and it returns to him. But this question was a matter of theological debate, e.g. in St Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram:49 do all souls go back to the first created soul, or were they created out of nothing? If the latter were the case, how then could Adam’s sins be transferred through propagation –​as the first sin takes place in the soul, not in the body (see Book 10)? 47 For more information on this concept, see, e.g., Ramelli; and Rosenau. 48 On the debate in the early modern period see Osmond 27–​30; and Targoff, ‘Traducing’ 1495. Burton also provides an overview in Anatomy 1.1.2.9. 49 On contemporary debates see, e.g. Targoff, who refers to ‘the Elizabethan divine John Wollton […] who argued in his 1576 Treatise of the Immortalitie of the Soule that “mans Soule commeth ex traduce, and hath its origin together with the body” ’ (‘Traducing’ 1500).

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In his ‘Sermon Preached in Lent, to the King’ (20 April 1630) Donne writes:50

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Many men have troubled themselves more, how the soule comes into man, then how it goes out; They wangle, whether it comes in by Infusion from God, or by Propagation from parents, and never consider, whether it shall returne to Him that made it, or to him that marr’d it. (3: 9.213–​14)

The question is whether the soul shall return to its Maker (in heaven) or to him ‘that marr’d it’, which would be Adam and, accordingly, earth. In other places, Donne does not so much debate this question but makes a clear statement; in Meditation 18 of his Devotions, he writes that the soul is supposed to return to Him that made it: ‘Let the departure of my soule to salvation be evident to my faith, and I care the lesse, how darke the entrance of my soule, into my body, bee to my reason. It is the going out, more than the coming in, that concerns us’ (92). Although he stresses the ‘going out’, he also discusses the origin of the soul, for instance, in a letter to Sir Thomas Lucy from 9 October 1607: for Christian religion presuming a soul, and intending principally her happiness in the life to come, hath been content to accept any way which hath been obtruded, how this soul is begun in us. Hence it is that whole Christian Churches arrest themselves upon propagation from parents; and other whole Christian Churches allow only infusion from God. In both which opinions there appear such infirmities as it is time to look for a better; for whosoever will adhere to the way of propagation, can never evict necessarily and certainly a natural immortality in the soul, if the soul result out of matter, nor shall he ever prove that all mankind hath any more than one soul: as certainly of all beasts, if they receive such souls as they have from their parents, every species can have but one soul. And they which follow the opinion of infusion from God, and of a new creation (which is now the more common opinion), as they can very hardly defend the doctrine of original sin (the soul is forced to take this infection, and comes not into the body of her disposition), so shall they never be able to prove that all those whom we see in the shape of men have an immortal and reasonable soul, because our parents are as able as any other species is to give us a soul of growth and sense, and to perform all vital and animal functions. And so without infusion of such a soul may produce a creature as wise and well disposed as any horse or elephant, of which degree many whom we see come far short; nor hath God bound or declared Himself that He will always create a soul for every embryon, there is yet therefore no opinion in philosophy nor divinity so well established as constrains us to believe both that the soul is immortal, and that every particular man hath such a soul, which, since out of the great mercy of our God we do constantly believe, I am ashamed that we do not also know it by searching further. (Gosse 1: 175–​6) 50 See also: ‘But the immortall soule, that is, the discerning of Gods image in every piece, and of the seale of Gods love in every temporall blessing, this is infused from God alone, and arises neither from Parents, nor the wisedome of this world’ (Sermons 3: 2.86); and ‘As our soul is infused when it is created, and created when it is infused, so at her going out, Gods mercy is had by asking, and that is asked by having’ (Letter to Sir Henry Goodyer, September 1608; Letters 1651 53).

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The letter reflects Donne’s preoccupation with the soul. He refers to the immortality of the soul51 and links this to the question of its origin. Gosse has commented on this letter as reflecting Donne’s wide reading on the matter; according to him, it contains ‘a very full and most learned discussion and summary […] [of] Pererius’ Commentary on Genesis, ii.7’ (Gosse 1: 177):52 ‘tunc formavit Dominus Deus hominem pulverem de humo et inspiravit in nares eius spiraculum vitae, et factus est homo in animam viventem’ (Vulgata). In the fourth book, ‘qui est de Creatione primorum hominum’ (i.e. which deals with the creation of the first man), Pererius describes the creation of man against the background of a dualistic concept of body and soul.53 His third quaestio in this section concerns the problem ‘quàm sit creata anima & corpori infusa’ (416): how is the soul created and infused into the body? Pererius argues his case and comes to the conclusion that body and soul necessarily must have been created at the same time: ‘At verò, animam primo hominis non ante corpus esse creatam sed simul con corpore, quemadmodum caeterorum etiam omnium animae cum suo quaeque corpore simul procreantur, equidem non tantum similus vero, sed plane verum certumque censeo’ (423; ‘But it is true that the soul of man was not created before the body but simultaneously with the body, just like each soul of all other things was created simultaneously with the body, and I believe that this is not only similar to the truth but utterly true and certain’). He also addresses the aspect of the soul leaving the body upon death, which, according to him, is ‘necessary’:  ‘cum enim homo sit mortalis, animus verò noster immortalis, extincto homine animum superesse & omni aeno permanere necesse est’ (424; emphasis added: ‘For, because man is mortal and our 51 On the immortality of the soul see, e.g., Plato, Phaedo (100b and 105c–​e), and Phaedrus 245c–​ d:  ‘Every soul is immortal. For that which is ever moving is immortal; but hat which moves something else or is moved by something else, when it ceases to move, ceases to live. Only that which moves itself, since it does not leave itself, never ceases to move, and this is also the source and beginning of motion for all other things which have motion.’ For a philosophical and theological overview of concepts of the soul see, e.g., Gardner, ‘Donne’s Views’; Hasenfratz; the articles on ‘Seele’ in RGG and Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie; Matsuura (44–​64); and Waddington. 52 This suggestion was made to Gosse by Augustus Jessopp, a curate who took interest in Donne and published three works on him, the first being a preface to the Essays in Divinity in 1855, followed by the entry on Donne’s life for the DNB in 1888, and finally a book in the ‘Leaders of Religion’ series in 1897 (Bald 15–​16). As Donne mentions Pererius in the Essays more often than anywhere else in his work (see also Sermons 5: 73; 7: 123; 8: 151), it is not surprising that Jessopp would note this. Curiously enough, this hint does not seem to have been pursued by Donne scholars, except by Potter/​Simpson in their edition of the Sermons; see esp. the Appendix to vol. 8 (393) and Sermons 10: 329n1. Pererius (or: Benedictus Pereira or Pereyra, 1535–​1610) was a Jesuit philosopher and exegete from Spain, who taught theology and philosophy in Rome; see Potter/​Simpson 10: 397. In 1594, the first volume of his commentary and disputation of Genesis was published in Lyon, France; three more followed in 1596, 1598 and 1600. 53 ‘Deo qui ex limo corpus humanum quasi manubus suis finxit atque figuravit, & in ipsum vitam & vigorem inspirauit:  animāmque rationalem non ex materiae gremio sinúque, vt caeteras omnes formas mortals expromptam, sed extrinsecus infusam, & à solo Deo creatam ex nihilo, corpori à se formato indidit’ (1: 348; God who made and formed man out of mud with his own hands and inspired life and vigour into him: he gave the created body a soul not out of his bosom or innermost, where other mortal forms come from, but it was infused and created out of nothing by the single God; translation mine). Pererius also emphasizes the rationality of the soul: ‘quam materiam humana specie figuratam, Deum animasse ac viuificasse inspirando in eam animum rationalem’ (413; when this object of human form was made, God inspired it with a rational soul; translation mine).

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soul immortal, it is necessary that, when man dies, the soul remains and lives on in all eternity’). Pererius thus gives an overview as to scholastic opinions regarding the questions that Donne addresses and draws on in his letter. The stages of the soul begin with its creation, and they end with its return to God, i.e. its place of origin, and its separation from the body. Donne points out in his letter that, as far as philosophy and divinity go, neither of the views is entirely convincing. The propagation view runs into trouble when it comes to the question of how to explain the individuality of human souls (as the souls are all inherited from Adam) and when it comes to restricting the immortality of the soul to human beings. The divine infusion is problematic when it comes to explaining original sin (as the soul comes from God and cannot be infected) and when it comes to the question of whether every human being is actually endowed with such a soul. In his last sermon, Deaths Duell, Donne is much more straightforward: ‘The Lord that infus’d a quickning soule into that conception’ (Sermons 10: 11.233).54 The Holy Sonnet shows that Donne was concerned with the future of the soul more than with its origin. Nevertheless, the idea of a homecoming, expressed by the reference to the soul’s ‘first Seate’, indicates that a strong belief in the divine origin of the soul informs the poem. Characteristically, Donne does not stress the need for explaining away the difficulty of defending the doctrine of original sin in his letter to Sir Thomas Lucy. The fact that, in the sonnet, sins should fall to where they are bred (to hell), does not really look like an endorsement of that doctrine either. Sins appear like a later ‘infection’, from which the body and soul may be purged. We thus do not learn about the three places of origin of soul, body, and sins, but we do learn about how body and soul first come to be joined and how sins come to make them impure. Donne’s spatio-​theatrical way of presenting the stages of the soul in this Holy Sonnet, however, suggests that the soul comes down to earth to inhabit the body it finds there –​and leaves behind when it dies. According to Plotin, every being depends on the departure from and the return to its origin; this is also (and perhaps especially) true for the soul: ‘each soul comes down to a body made ready for it according to its resemblance to the soul’s disposition’ (Ennead IV.3.12).55 It is essential that the soul spontaneously ‘goes into the appropriate body’ (IV.3.13), which implies that body and soul are united in accordance with their disposition, not randomly. In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, we do not expressly learn about this kind of appropriateness, but the emphasis on the triad of body, soul, and I  is analogous. The ‘I’ of the speaker, who ambiguously identifies with both body and soul, thus indicates their inherent relatedness. Plotin furthermore stresses that the ‘soul is not a part of body’ (IV.3.20) but independent and, at the moment of death, can be separated 54 See also his sermon on Gen 1:26 which counterbalances his letter to Goodyer (Sermons 9: 2.82). Donne also links the heavenly origin of the soul with its resurrection: ‘when that soule, which was at first breath’d from God, and hath long suffered a banishment, a close imprisonment in this body, returnes to God again; The returning of the soule to him, from whom it proceeded at first, is a Resurrection of the soule’ (6: 2.75). 55 See Moog-​Grünewald: The aim is the immanentisation of transcendence (55).

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from the body.56 This is a beneficial process, as ‘the soul is the self ’ (Ennead IV.7.1). Similarly, Cicero had already associated the separation of body and soul with the recognition of one’s self: It is a point of the utmost importance to realize that the soul sees by means of the soul alone, and surely this is the meaning of Apollo’s maxim advising that each one should know himself. For I do not suppose the meaning of the maxim is that we should know our limbs, our height or shape; our selves are not bodies, and in speaking as I do to you, I am not speaking to your body. When then Apollo says, ‘Know thyself ’, he says, ‘Know thy soul’. (Tusculanae disputationes 1.22.52)

Again, Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ does not exactly show such a process of recognition but alludes to it by indicating a change in the identification of the ‘I’. Whereas, at first, ‘I’ is associated either with the speaker’s sleeping or his waking part, his body and soul, the speaker then comes to state, in the final line of the poem: ‘For thus I leave the world, the flesh, and devil.’ This denotes a stronger identification of the self with the soul, which is contrasted with his fleshly part. In that respect, the progress of the soul in this poem marks progressive stages of the self. Accordingly, Cicero and Plotin can be seen as contexts with which Donne is in fruitful dialogue, if not complete agreement. At the same time, we should note that Donne does not expressly refer to the (sleeping) body in the last line of the sonnet, but to the ‘flesh’ in connection with ‘the world’ (not earth) and ‘devil’. This is strongly evaluative; i.e. it primarily refers to the sinful part of himself, which is to fall to hell. The purgation comprises both body and soul and, thus, the body, as Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’ reminds his readers, can and will be reunited with the soul. ‘And earthborne body in the earth shall dwell’ The origin of the soul is heaven, where it will return after its separation from the body; the body, by contrast, is made of earth: ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’ (Gen 2:7); being made of earth, the body will return to the earth when dead. Donne makes it very clear that this return, however, is only temporary: he is waiting for his body and soul to be reunited so that he will be complete again. He elaborates on this final reunion of body and soul in a sermon preached at Whitehall on the first Friday in Lent (1622/​23) and argues that, as soon as body and soul are separated, i.e. when death sets in, man no longer is a man because that which has made him a complete human being, the union of body and soul, is no longer existent. Only with their reunion does he become complete again. His text is John 11:35 ‘Jesus wept’ and the death of Lazarus: 56 See also IV.3.21 where he compares the soul in the body to ‘the steersman […] in the ship’ but then qualifies this statement as the ‘skill comes from the outside’ in this case, while the soul is within the body and at the same time the ‘body in the soul’ (22).

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Now a good man is not the worse for dying, that is true and capable of a good sense, because he is established in a better world: but yet when he is gone out of this world he is none of us, he is no longer a man. The stronger opinion in the Schoole is, That Christ himselfe, when he lay dead in the grave, was no man. Though the Godhead never departed from the Carcasse (there was no divorce of that Hypostaticall union) yet because the Humane soule was departed from it, he was no man. Hugo de S. Victor, who thinks otherwise, that Christ was a man then, thinkes so upon a weak ground: He thinkes, that because the soule is the form of man, the soul is man; and that therefore the soul remaining, the man remaines. But it is not the soule, but the union of the soul, that makes the man […] And therefore when he is disunited, dead, he is none of us, he is no man. (4: 13.331–​2; emphasis added)57

He stresses the interdependence of body and soul in this sermon,58 despite the underlying antagonism and dualism; by doing so he refers not only to Plato but also to Augustine, who writes in the City of God: ‘Modus quo corporis adhaerent spiritus, omnino mirus est, nec comprehendi ab homine potest: et hoc ipse homo est’ (23.10; ‘How the spirit adheres to the body is entirely a matter of wonder and cannot be understood by Man; nevertheless this union of body and spirit is Man’).59 But the body is, potentially, the part that will be ‘marr’d’ because of its earthly origin. This topic is presented in the medieval allegorical play The Castle of Perseverance. The play begins with an introduction by two ‘troublemakers’ (Primus Vexillator and Secundus Vexillator). They describe how vices and virtues fight for mankind and how he wavers until the virtues are able to lead him into the Castle of Perseverance, which is the ‘Castel of Goodnesse’ (1708),60 but also how he becomes entangled in sin again.61 When Mankind is visited by Death (scene 20), he is immediately afraid. He calls for mercy, but then his body and soul are separated: his body stays on earth and the soul steps forward in the character of Anima and becomes an allegorical 57 In the light of the Devotions, one might expect an argument along the following lines:  man is the soul and lacks, for some time, a body: ‘I am my best part, I am my soule’ (1st Expostulation; Devotions 8). In the sermon, he refutes this position; strictly speaking, however, the Hugo de S. Victor position, as Donne quotes it, is not exactly the same as saying that upon death, man is gone (because the soul is gone). 58 This idea can also be found in Donne’s Sermons (see 3: 4.109–​10; 2: 14.358), his Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’: ‘you numberless infinities /​Of souls, and to you scattered bodies go!’ (3–​4), and Devotions: ‘That therefore this soule, now newly departed to thy Kingdome, may quickly returne to a joifull reunion to that body which it hath left, and that wee with it, may soone enjoy the full consummation of all, in body and soule I humbly beg at thy hand’ (18th Prayer; 96). See Stanwood/​ Asals ed. 140; Gardner, Introduction xliv; and Targoff, ‘Facing Death’ 221, 224–​5. 59 Augustine mainly followed the Platonic view, but qualified it in so far as he believed the soul ‘to be immortal by the grace of God alone, not by virtue of its nature’ (Osmond 14). See also Armstrong 8; and Ettenhuber on the influence of Augustine on Donne (3). On the soul in Augustine see esp. The City of God, Books 12–​14; for a summary of Augustine’s position, see Osmond 13–​15. 60 ‘Þe Castel of Perseuerauns wanne Mankynde hath tan, /​Wel armyd wyth vertus and ouyrcome all vycys, /​Þere þe Good Aungyl makyth ful mery þanne /​Þat Mankynde hath ouyrcome hys gostly enmiis’ (The Banns 53–​6). 61 He is tempted by Avarice, but he chooses this path of his own free will, a notion that is emphasized repeatedly; e.g. Humilitas’ speech: ‘Mankynd to don what he wyl do, /​God hath ᴣouyn hym a fre wylle’ (2559–​60); see also the Banns:  ‘God hathe govyn Man fre arbritracion’ (25). Fichte notes that the theme of moral interludes was ‘the presentation of man’s moral progress in the world –​a progress determined solely by his freedom of choice’ (‘The Presentation of Sin’ 28).

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figure who reproaches the body for its way of life:62 ‘Body, þou dedyst brew a byttyr bale /​To þi lustys whanne gannyst loute. /​Þi sely sowle schal ben akale; /​I beye þi dedys wyth rewly rowte, /​And al it is for gyle’ (3008–​16). Mankind’s body is left in a bed below the castle, while his soul rises up to be judged:63 ‘Mankyndeis bed schal be vndyr þe castel and þer schal þe sowle lye vndyr þe bed tyl he schal ryse and pleye’ (The Castle of Perseverance 1). But there is no mercy as the bad Angel explains  –​the soul has to go to Hell for the sins committed during Mankind’s life: ᴣa why woldyst þou be coueytous And drawe þe agayn to synne? I schal þe brewe a byttyr jous; In bolnynnge bondys þou shalt brenne. In hye helle schal be þyne hous, In pycke and ter to grone and grenne. (3973–​8)

It is the body’s responsibility that the soul is not clean. Eventually, Mankind’s case is argued by the four heavenly daughters –​Mercy, Peace, Righteousness, and Truth; and he is saved by divine intervention and ascends to Heaven. But until then the play stages the struggle that ensues from a sinful life by representing its effects on the soul. Donne thus draws on a form of theatre that was felt to be archaic at his time and was nevertheless still very common –​one need only think of the allegorical figure ‘Time’ at the beginning of the fourth act in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale from 1611.64 But he also draws on contemporary dramatic texts that elaborated on the topics of body, soul, and sins, e.g. John Heywood’s interlude The Four P.P., in which Palmer, Pardoner, Pedlar, and ’Pothecary argue: Palmer. Forsooth, this life I did begin To rid the bondage of my sin: (31) ’Pothecary. […] No soul, ye know, entereth heaven-​gate, Till from the body he be separate: (34)

From the beginning, man is striving to get rid of his ‘bondage of [...] sin’, and it is the body that is mainly linked to it, as its separation from the soul is the precondition to enter heaven.65 The dualism of body and soul is stressed, and it is linked to sin. 62 This is probably one of the most striking differences between this morality play and Donne’s Holy Sonnets, where the body is never accused by the soul. 63 This is implied in Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ as well, even though he wishes for the judgement to come in death, when, upon the separation of the sins from the body and soul, he wishes to be imputed righteous. 64 See also the Protestant moralities of the sixteenth century; Kelly. 65 Although the play is primarily comic and entertaining, the four P.P.  still discuss very serious matters, including the account of the Pardoner’s descent into Hell in order to save a soul.

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Plato, in a similar vein, links the immortality of the soul to the concept of morality: if the soul were mortal, there would be no reason to lead and strive for a moral life. we ought to bear in mind, that, if the soul is immortal, we must care for it, not only in respect of this time, which we call life, but in respect to all time, and if we neglect it, the danger now appears to be terrible. For if death were an escape from everything, it would be a boon to the wicked, for when they die they would be freed from the body and their wickedness together with their souls. But now, since the soul is seen to be immortal, it cannot escape from evil or be saved in any other way than by becoming as good and wise as possible. (Phaedo 107c–​d; 369–​71)

Whatever terrible deeds –​or sins –​man commits during his lifetime, because the soul is immortal, this will affect his afterlife, which is why man should be ‘good and wise’ to escape an evil fate. Plato puts less emphasis on the body, but he clearly links ‘the body and […] wickedness’; as the soul is immortal, it will take the wickedness with it at the point of death. If it were not immortal, the wickedness would stay on earth with the other mortal parts. Donne resolves this problem by adding –​or rather removing the sins, the part that ‘mars’ body and, consequently, the soul. Time and again, in Donne’s Holy Sonnets, the speaker is concerned with the fate of the soul and reflects on what might happen to it after its separation from the body. In Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ he admonishes the soul and orders it to act to be redeemed. In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, both body and soul have to be freed from the speaker’s sins in order to make the speaker’s heavenly life possible. But while the body shall ‘dwell’ in the earth, it is the soul and the self (the ‘I’ that is the soul, and that is both body and soul; see above) that are affected by a sinful life and judged. This takes up and modifies the idea familiar from the Phaedo and elaborated on by Augustine. In his City of God, he also has a dualistic view of body and soul, yet he does not attribute sinfulness to the flesh but rather to the soul: To begin with, although the soul is correctly said to be immortal, yet it too is subject to its own sort of death. For when the soul is termed immortal, the meaning is that it does not cease to have life and feeling in some degree no matter how slight. On the other hand, when the body is termed mortal, the meaning is that it may be abandoned by life completely and has no life of its own at all. Consequently, it is the death of a soul when God abandons it, just as it is the death of a body when the soul abandons it. Hence the death of both combined, that is, of the whole human being, occurs when a soul abandoned by God abandons a body. For under these circumstances neither does the soul derive life from God nor the body life from the soul. (XIII.2)

The interdependence of body and soul or rather the influence the soul takes on the body as described by St Augustine, results in the soul per se not being immortal but subject to death:66 ‘the body’s decay […] is not the cause of the first sin but the 66 See his earlier treatise De Immortalitate animae:  ‘And so the soul is proved to be immoral in the shortest possible way, if it can exist of itself. For whatever is of that sort must of necessity

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punishment for it, nor is it the flesh, which is subject to decay, that makes the soul sinful; it is the sinful soul that makes the flesh subject to decay’ (XIV.3). The soul is at the core of man’s sinfulness, and its flaws affect the body; because man has sinned, his body has to decay. Original Sin has flawed humankind. In Augustine’s view, the soul thus takes influence over the body, not the other way around, and, in his thinking, is linked to sin.67 Donne presupposes this view when he has his speaker wish his sins to be separated from both body and soul upon his death, as this is what he desires in order to prevent the death of his soul, i.e. of his being pressed to hell. At the same time, the speaker links the world and the flesh with the devil, i.e. a sinful life. Still he does not expressly say that the flesh makes the soul sinful, nor does he blame the soul for the decay of the flesh: Sin comes from hell, and pressures them both; it causes the putrefaction of both body and soul,68 and, therefore, has to be got rid of. ‘So fall my Sins, that all may haue their right’ In the sestet of Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, the speaker is sure about what will happen to the soul. He uses the present tense (‘takes flight’) to indicate the future action and the soul’s destination. When it comes to the body, the ambiguous ‘shall’ (indicating a future event, as well as a command) shows that this is what he assumes and wishes to happen. As to the third party that he finds within himself, the sins, he is similarly wavering between the assured indicative and the wish (and even the imperative) when he says ‘So, fall my sins’. The subsequent ‘may’ in ‘that all may haue their right’ indicates that the fall of the sins is actually a wish (for God’s action) or a command (to the sins), for if he was sure about their falling to hell anyway, he would have gone on ‘and all will have their right’.69 He wants to make such a fall plausible (and convince the divine addressee of the poem to bring it about) by stressing the decorum or appropriateness of each be incorruptible and for that reason cannot perish, because nothing abandons itself. But the changeability of body is obvious, as the universal movement of the body of the universe shows’ (15,24). Augustine here explicitly refers to St Paul’s discussion of the ‘corruptible body’ in 2 Cor 5:1–​4 (see City of God 4: 268n3). See also Drecoll, ‘Immortalitate animae’; van Fleteren; Watson ed. 208; Wolfskeel ed. 146–​8. In De Quantitate animae, Augustine likewise argues that the soul is immaterial and thus immortal (ch. 13). 67 Potter/​Simpson see a direct Augustinian influence on Donne in this respect and ‘wonder whether Augustine’s influence on him was altogether healthy’ (10:  354–​8). Papazian comments:  ‘Their complaint is that Donne was concerned too much with Augustine’s doctrine of original sin and predestination, a pejorative influence that, in their view, caused Donne to place “too much emphasis on sin and its punishment” ’ (66–​7); see also Fish, Self-​Consuming Artifacts 43. 68 See Donne’s sermon on Rev 20:6: ‘In the grave, which is the furnace, which ripens the body for the last resurrection, there is a putrefaction of the body, and an ill savour:  In the Church, the wombe where my soule must be mellowed for this first resurrection, my soul, which hath the savour of death in it, as it is leavened throughout with sin, must stink in my nostrils, and I come to a detestation of all those sins, which have putrified her’ (6: 2.72). On putrefaction, see Zimmerman’s introduction to The Early Modern Corpse (esp. 1–​6). 69 In The Second Anniversary, the speaker advises the soul (in what can be described as a miniature allegorical drama) to return the sins to ‘Satan’s sergeants’ (102): ‘Give them those sins which they gave thee before’ (105).

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party’s dwelling-​place, which he calls (with more than a tinge of irony, in the case of his sins) ‘their right’. For this is his rhetorical strategy: if each character in this last scene of his play is sent where (he thinks) it belongs, he is free from sin and may enter heaven unburdened. The conviction that is expressed in his wishes can be regarded as the result of meditation in the octave.70 The word ‘press’ in ‘and would presse me, to hell’ is ambiguous.71 The first meaning refers to ‘senses related to the physical exertion of pressure’ (OED, ‘press, v.1’ I. 1.a., 1.c., 4.); the second to the compelling (of a person) ‘to enlist in the army or navy; to force (a person) into military service; [...] Now hist.’ (‘press, v.2’). The sins do not only wish to pull him down to hell, they also wish to ‘force’ him, make him one of their kind. Especially the first meaning of pulling down by weight evokes the imagery of weighing the souls upon death and the subsequent decision whether they may enter heaven or are sent to hell.72 If the sins are heavier, the soul has to go to hell:  ‘there are sins of such waight to the soul’ as Donne puts it in one of his sermons (6:  1.58), which echoes Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’.73 In his Comfortable Treatise for the Relief of such as are Afflicted in Conscience (1595), Robert Linaker accordingly warns his readers of being oppressed with their sins: ‘ “Pressed down” by the burden of sin and guilt’ (qtd. in Kaufman 24), which always contains the danger of despair (Kaufman 24); at the same time, this awareness of sinfulness was interpreted by Linaker as a good sign, a ‘cause for confidence’ (25), as it established and maintained the close relationship with God on whose forgiveness one depends. Likewise, the speaker in Donne’s sonnet is trying to find assuredness as soon as he becomes aware of his sins; and he comes 70 The meditation on man’s sinfulness –​and his resulting dependence on God’s grace –​is an element of all meditations, starting with Ignatius who writes that the ‘first point will be to exercise my memory about the first of all sins, the one committed by the angels” and to compare it ‘with the multiplicity of my own sins’ (19). See also Roston 172. 71 Patrick refers to the two meanings of ‘bearing down and impressing into conscription’. See also Prudentius’s Hamartigenia for similar imagery:  ‘With these plagues of sin the powerful robber besets our sickened souls. With his stealthy forces he infiltrates into men’s hearts and they draw him in. He sows all manner of wickedness in their inmost parts, and scatters his agents through their frames. For there a large force serves under this wicked commander and invests men’s souls with dreadful weapons […] Alas, with what armed forces does the ruthless enemy press upon the race of men, with what attendant trains under his command does he wage his iron wars, with what dominion triumph over the conquered!’ (231–​3; emphasis added). See Spivack on a reference to The Castle of Perseverance and the ‘conflict of vice and virtue [...] [in] the metaphor of the besieged fortress’ (79). 72 St Michael is the one in charge of weighing the souls in a Christian context; the image itself is much older; see Hildburgh; Kretzenbacher; and Renner. The image is also mentioned in The Castle of Perseverance, when Truth speaks: ‘Whanne body and sowle partyn atwynne /​þanne wey I hys goode deeds and hys synne, /​And weydyr of hem be more or mynne /​He schal it ryth sone fynde’ (3186–​9). 73 Nelson links sins with dung, which might be a ‘submerged’ conceit (281), and thus assumes that Donne used ‘scatological imagery in an eschatological context’ (277). Nelson claims: ‘the sinner too-​hopefully visualizes his sins falling down to hell at the moment of death, leaving his soul free to mount to heaven’ (276). Peterson reads the sonnet in the same vein as Nelson (esp. 509), but a reading that is not hopeful goes against the grain of Donne’s beliefs. Wall similarly points out that the speaker expresses ‘confidence that [his] load of sins will fall away at death’ (190).

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up with a solution to the problem: rather than being ‘pressed to hell’ himself, he would rather have his sins go there alone. In Donne’s sonnet, with the separation of body and soul, the drama has almost come to its conclusion. He allots each of his parts a space and a direction: Heaven to the soul, Earth to the body, and Hell to his sins.74 This threefold division corresponds to the structure and setup of the stage that was common during the Elizabethan period:  the vertical structure iconically represents a spatial scheme that is analogous with the division into Heaven –​Earth –​ Hell. The popularity of this structure in early modern theatre becomes perhaps most evident in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Before Faustus descends to Hell, a Good Angel and a Bad Angel appear  –​echoing the appearance of these two figures in The Castle of Perseverance, where Angelus Bonus and Angelus Malus fight for the soul of mankind that is brought to the Castle by the seven virtues. In Doctor Faustus, they tell him about the fate that awaits him after he has proved unable to repent. Before the Good Angel speaks to Faustus for the last time  –​ ‘thou hast lost celestial happiness’ (B-​text 5.2.105) –​a throne descends from the stage-​heaven and ascends again before the mouth of hell is shown. The Bad Angel then says:  ‘The jaws of hell are open to receive thee’ (114). This show of hell is followed by Faustus’s descent to hell, for: ‘He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall’ (128). In the theatre, this is literally the case, and Marlowe’s play here follows an even older tradition. In the York Corpus Christi Plays, the stage setup is identical with that of the early modern period. In the course of the first play of the cycle, Lucifer, after his failure to usurp the position of God, cries out: Owe! what I am derworth and defte! Owe! dewes! all goes downe! My mighte and my mayne es all marrande! Helpe, felawes! in faythe I am fallande! (1: 92–​4; qtd. in Collier, Poetry and Drama 28)

After trying to ascend heaven, Lucifer literally falls down into hell, his place of origin, where he belongs.75 The action expressed in the words is accompanied by stage-​action –​and iconically embedded in the stage construction. In Marlowe’s play, however, this seemingly unambiguous division of space into Heaven, Earth, and Hell is being questioned when, at the end of the tragedy, Faustus calls to Christ and God, in whose place  –​and most probably in their spatial position76  –​appear Lucifer and the devils:  ‘O, Christ, my Saviour, my

74 See above for Cicero and the tripartite spatial structure: He apparently provides the plot and the idea of the upward and downward movement in space. 75 Collier stresses how much ‘action is in the words’ as ‘the actor at this point did tumble from heaven, [and] [...] the physical fall from one level of the stage to another could only hint at the great impact of the moment. He literally falls from the stage at this moment […] already the early plays ordered their stages according to space and were able to present heaven and hell’ (Poetry and Drama 28). 76 At the beginning of 1.3, the Devils and Lucifer appear ‘above’, i.e. in the space allotted to Heaven.

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Saviour, /​Help to save distressed Faustus’ soul! Enter Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles’ (B-​text 2.3.81–​2); and: ‘My God, my God, look not so fierce on me! Enter Devils’ (A-​text 5.2.112). Although there are devils that are ‘real’ as stage characters, it concurrently becomes obvious that the hell, down into which Faustus drives, actually exists within himself. Faustus already is in hell while he is still standing on the stage; for him, the ‘Adders and serpents’ (A-​text 5.2.113) are present although they cannot be seen by the audience. Even before this instance, Mephistopheles made quite clear that Hell is not a fixed location: ‘Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed /​In one self place, for where we are is hell, /​And where hell is must we ever be’ (2.121–​3).77 In Donne’s poem, the three locations are unambiguously assigned to their appropriate inhabitants, but the speaker’s wish ‘that all may have their right’ implies at least the fear that it might be otherwise. And the fact that soul, body, and sin are all called ‘my’ suggests that all the places where they go are part of the speaker’s self. He is the stage on which the scene is enacted. Donne’s poem is about the sought-​for ascension to heaven, but his fear of God and the uncertainty of knowledge as well as the hint at a life ‘idly [...] run’ let the speaker in this sonnet appear in the light of a desperate attempt to oblige his addressee (and not the reader or his audience) into agreeing to his salvation. The final speech (act): ‘impute me righteous’ Throughout the sonnet, the speaker has been both an actor and a spectator; he is involved in the action in being concerned with his own death, and he has imagined (on an inner stage) what will happen to his different ‘parts’ after his death. While he presented his meditation (in the octave) and wishes (in the first four lines of the sestet) in a soliloquy, he is now, in the final couplet, coming to address God about it. The speaker is pleading with God to make what he wishes and imagines really happen. All through the poem, the event presented on this stage is an inward action which is brought to the outside by the final speech act. The reader-​audience takes part in the thoughts and emotions of the speaker, who makes them visible/​ audible: everything is focused on this character made up of body, soul and sins, and the stages he goes through on the stage of the poem. In the final couplet, he reaches the final stage and the hopefully happy ending as he leaves ‘the world, the fleshe, and deuill’.78 This happy ending is the final stage also structurally in a sonnet that begins with the speaker entering the stage in the final scene of the play that is his life. Although the concept of the immortality of the soul, the speaker’s ‘ever-​waking part’, is at least implied in the octave, the fear of annihilation, first by ‘gluttonous 77 Milton expressed this idea in his figure of Satan: ‘The Hell within him, for within him Hell /​He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell /​One step no more than from himself can fly /​By change of place’ (Paradise Lost IV.20–​3). 78 Rollin reads this Holy Sonnet as a ‘Christian comedy’, a ‘miniature religious drama with a happy ending’ (141).

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death’ and then by the spectacle of God’s face, predominates. With the volta comes a peripety, as the speaker now envisages a separation that may save him. He imagines that his soul will ascend to heaven, his body stay in the earth, and his sins fall to hell; the overall tone of the sestet is therefore a hopeful, if not even an assured one. But still, he cannot be entirely sure, as all that he utters describes what he imagines and wishes to happen only. It is, therefore, quite consistent that the repeated ‘thus’ in the concluding couplet of the poem is just as ambiguous as the ‘This’ with which it starts. The wish to be ‘imputed righteous’ by God is based on the completion of the hypothetical purgation in the future. At the same time, the adverbial expression thus, especially when it is used a second time, also gains an immediate deictic function, which is reminiscent of Othello’s famous words when he kills himself: ‘And smote him –​thus!’ (5.2.354). If we read Donne’s Holy Sonnet that way, we witness the speaker’s last words in his last scene; he dies and leaves the world before our eyes: ‘For thus [i.e. with this action, in this manner] I leaue the world, the fleshe, and deuill.’ While critics have hitherto interpreted the Holy Sonnets as either promoting the Protestant emphasis on divine omnipotence (sola gratia; see Carey 454; Gill 101; Hester, ‘ “Impute this idle talke” ’; Lewalski, Protestant Poetics 268), which is not to be influenced by anything man can do, or alternatively as a Catholic emphasis on the importance of the individual human will (Strier 374; Sullivan 346), the analysis of ‘thus’ can show that these are not just two possible and conflicting readings of the sonnet but that they are structurally inscribed into the grammatical construction chosen. Their co-​presence, and, in fact, fusion, is part of the strategy that is to be inferred from the precise meaning and function of the words and sentences. We may read the adverbial ‘thus’ as expressive of either a causa efficiens or a causa finalis. In the first case (1.1), what the speaker tries to express can be paraphrased as: impute me righteous since I am purged of evil (through my having got rid of my sins; OED, ‘thus, adv.’ 1.a.: ‘in the way just indicated’); the speaker asks God to impute him righteous because he is purged. Thus is accordingly pointing back to what has happened already, the purging. In the second case (1.2), the causa finalis, the speaker asks God to ‘impute [him] righteous’, so/​in order that he may be purged. In this reading, the speaker is pointing towards a future event: he will be purged ‘consequently’ to the imputation by God (OED, ‘thus, adv.’ 2.). If we read ‘thus’ as a consequence of ‘impute’ only (not of ‘impute me righteous’; reading (1.2.1)), the speaker accordingly asks God to assume him to be good or justified, for, if God does so, the speaker will be cleansed of sins (he stresses that the imputing is effective); if ‘thus’ is read as a consequence of ‘righteous’ only (1.2.2), then the speaker wants to be assumed good, i.e. he wants to be assumed clean of sins (in which case he stresses that being righteous means being purged of sins). Donne is playing a logical trick here in that he bases, in one expression, the causa efficiens on an event that has already happened and the causa finalis on an event that is yet to come; the adverbial expression thus allows for both directions. What becomes evident is the distinction between the reference and the meaning (or function) of thus:  the latter is determined by the first. If the reference is to ‘impute’, then the meaning of ‘thus’ is pointing to the future. At the same time, the

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second reading (1.2), in which the speaker leaves everything to the action of God, contains a paradox as God has already acted and need not be asked to do so.79 The second thus, in line 14, can likewise be read as denoting two different causae: 2.1 (finalis):  the speaker’s goal to leave the world, the flesh, and devil (as a consequence) is expressed; 2.2 (efficiens): the speaker can leave the world, the flesh and devil because he has been imputed righteous and purged.

These readings show that the two lines, eventually, have to be read in connection with one another. When read as causa finalis (reading 2.1), ‘thus’ is a consequence of the preceding line. Again, as above (1.2.1 and 1.2.2), the reference can be either to ‘impute’ (2.1.1) or to ‘purged’ (2.1.2); the speaker is able to leave the world consequently to the imputation or the purgation (or both). When we try to read ‘thus’ as relating to a causa efficiens (2.2) things become slightly more complicated still:  the speaker then says that he leaves the world, flesh, and devil since he is purged (2.2.1) –​but this reading is almost identical with 2.1.2, with the difference that the imputation precedes the purgation, which then results in his leaving the world, whereas, in 2.1.2, ‘thus’ refers to the speaker’s sins having fallen to hell. This is the most difficult reading as the reference would then be to line 11 (and hence go beyond the couplet). The combinations of efficiens –​ efficiens (1.1 and 2.2), efficiens –​ finalis (1.1 and 2.1), and finalis –​ finalis (1.2 and 2.1) are therefore most plausible. If we read both ‘thus’ as expressive of causa efficiens, the lines mean that the speaker asks God to impute him righteous because he is purged; and he leaves the world because he is purged, i.e. because his sins have fallen off. The point of reference is in the past, namely the falling off of the sins. The sins fall, the speaker is purged and imputed righteous; he can leave the world (in this reading, the imputation and leaving the world are independent of each other). If the first ‘thus’ is expressive of causa efficiens, the second of causa finalis, then the speaker asks God to impute him righteous because he is purged; he (can) leave(s) the world because he is imputed righteous. The final result, his leaving the world, is pending on his being imputed righteous (or either of them, i.e. his being imputed or his being righteous). If we assume that both ‘thus’ express a causa finalis, then God is to impute the speaker righteous, so/​in order that he may be purged; he (can) leave(s) the world consequently to this; the purgation is the result of the imputation, and his leaving the world is the result of his imputation. The expression ‘impute’ belongs to the context of the reformed dogma of ‘justification’  –​ the imputatio (which Luther called ‘Zurechnung’80) of belief 79 Donne fleshes out this paradox in Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’, when the speaker asks God to teach him ‘how to repent, for that’s as good /​As if thou hadst Sealed my pardon with thy blood’ –​an action that God has already completed as he is beyond all time. 80 See Luther’s The Bondage of the Will (1524): ‘No man can be thoroughly humbled until he knows that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, devices, endeavours, will, and works, and

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and justice. The notion of ‘imputation’ goes back to Rom 4, the imputation of ‘righteousness without deeds’ (4:6) and the justification of Abraham and his children81: ‘it was imputed to him for righteousness’ (4:22). This notion made its way into the doctrinal statement as expressed in the eleventh Article of Religion in The Book of Common Prayer, ‘Of the Justification of Man’: ‘We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deserts: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort’ (616). The BCP article stresses the fact that the imputation of righteousness is a matter of God’s grace, in accordance with the Protestant doctrine of ‘sola gratia’. To Donne, ‘selfe-​justification [was] […] a selfe-​condemnation’ as no one ‘hath […] any such righteousness of his own, as can save him, for howsoever it be made his, by that Application, or Imputation, yet the righteousness that saves him, is the very righteousness of Christ himself ’ (Sermons 8:  14.317; see also 7:  5.159). It is the belief in God that saves Mankind, not good deeds.82 Calvin, referring to Pauline theology, reflects on this in detail in his Institutes (IV.17; 97), where he links the concept of imputation with the idea of human sinfulness but also with the power of God to free him from sin. Man wholly depends on God’s grace: God makes the sinner righteous by imputation –​and gives him ‘grace to begin’. Without the imputation to righteousness, the world is nothing but death and darkness, ‘plane mors et tenebrae’ in the words of Luther (Werke 39.1: 205.5; see also Jüngel, ‘Rechtfertigung’ 115). According to Luther, God’s imputation is given unconditionally:  ‘Amor Dei non invenit sed creat sum diligibile’ (Werke 1: 345:35). However, the sinner destroys his union with God through his sins, and therefore it is hard to believe in God’s grace because with the acknowledgement of his sins he becomes aware of them and of the destruction of his bond with God (‘privatio veri’; Jüngel 112). It is hence the question about the ‘possibility of the forgiveness of one’s sins’ (Potter, ‘Forgiveness as Theatre’ 130) that is the focal point of Donne’s poem; the speaker’s sinfulness is a given, but his redemption remains doubtful, and what we read in the poem is the expression of a wish only. In a sermon on Ps 38:2, he talks about this general sinfulness of man:83 ‘I preach but the sense of Gods indignation depends entirely on the choice, will, and work of another, namely, of God alone’ (Luther and Erasmus 137; qtd. Sinfield, Literature 8). See also Luther’s commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in Bettbüchleyn (E ii v.); and Starke 12. 81 OED ‘imputation, n.’ 2.a. See Hooker vi. § 11; Maurer; Luther’s baptismal sermon in Bettbüchleyn (J ii); and Melanchthon’s chapter on ‘De iustificatione et fide’ in Loci, esp. 206n630. Bauer points out the different nuances of ‘imputo’, ‘imputâtus’, and ‘imputátor’ in Cooper’s Thesaurus (Mystical Linguistics). 82 ‘Faith as righteousness is the converse [sic] of meritorious deeds’ (Vainio 70). Targoff argues that Donne, in this Holy Sonnet, ‘does not conjure up the moment of death to beg God for forgiveness, as we have seen in other sonnets. Instead, he conjures up the moment of death to attempt to determine his own posthumous fate’ (Body and Soul 124). However, the imputation can only be accomplished by God. Moreover, the speaker does not so much try to ‘determine’ his fate but express his faith in God and in God’s power to impute him righteous. 83 Young notes that the word ‘impute’ appears in two other poems by Donne (Doctrine and Devotion 20): in ‘Satire III’, the speaker asks, ‘[…] shall thy father’s spirit /​Meet blind philosophers in Heav’n,

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upon mine own soul, in a conscience of my own sins, I impute nothing to another, that I confesse not to my selfe, I call none of you to confession to me, I doe but confesse my self to God’ (2: 1.52–​3).84 The speaker’s awareness of his sinfulness is similar to that expressed in the sonnet: he thinks about where his sins may go when confronted with his death. Donne refers to the concept of imputation once more when he seeks forgiveness for his sinful behaviour of disobedience (consisting in his elopement with Anne) in a letter to Sir George More, his father-​in-​law (around the time of his marriage, on 13 February 1601[1602]): How many of the imputations laid upon me would fall off, if I might shake and purge myself in your presence! But if that were done, of this offence committed to you I  cannot acquit myself, of which yet I  hope that God (to whom for that I  heartily direct many prayers) will inform you to make that use, that as of evil manners good laws grow, so out of disobedience and boldness you will take occasion to show mercy and tenderness. And when it shall please God to soften your heart so much towards us as to pardon us, I beseech you also to undertake that charitable office of being my mediator to my Lord, whom as upon your just complaint you found full of justice, I doubt not but you shall also find full of mercy, for so is the Almighty pattern of Justice and Mercy equally full of both. (from the Losely MSS; printed in Gosse 1: 106–​7)

He is very much aware of his sin which consists in his having married his wife without her father’s consent, and expresses his humility as much as his wish for reconciliation. What he writes at the beginning of the letter not only refers to the imputation of his sins but also to how he could be redeemed. He expresses his ‘hope’ and would shake himself and be purged, in a manner reminiscent of Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’. His rhetorical skill becomes most evident when he wants to turn his sin and his disobedience into something positive, into an occasion for his father-​in-​law ‘to show mercy and tenderness’; he tries to persuade him into forgiving him, in a manner analogous to the sonnet.85 In his letter, he delivers himself into the hands of his father-​in-​law and expresses how much he depends on the latter’s mercy. It would take several years until More consented to a reconciliation and supported his daughter’s growing family. In the sonnet, the outlook to God’s grace and imputation is more positive and hopeful. whose merit /​Of strict life may be imputed faith […]?’ (Robbins ed. 387.11–​13); and in the elegy ‘To His Mistress, Going to Bed’, where Donne mingles the imagery of love poetry with religious meaning and uses the latter to persuade his mistress to give in and have sexual intercourse: ‘Full nakedness, all joys are due to thee: /​As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be /​To taste whole joys. […] which only we /​Whom their imputed grace will dignify /​Must see revealèd’ (329–​30.33–​ 43). The verb also appears in ‘A Valediction: Of my Name in the Window’: ‘Impute this idle talk, to that I go, /​For dying men talk often so’ (268.65–​66); see Hester, ‘Let me love’ 138–​9. 84 See the principle of ‘simul iustus et peccator’ as expressed by Luther (Werke 8:  103 and 39:  1). Jüngel explains this principle (according to Luther) by pointing out that the sinner is a ‘peccator maximus’, if he finds his existential orientation in his sinful past; he is no longer a sinner if he finds this orientation in the death and resurrection of Christ (114). See also Tietz 105–​6. 85 This becomes evident already at the beginning of this quotation, where he even uses the same words as in the sonnet, e.g. imputation, fall, shake, and purge.

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The imputation of God’s righteousness implies the ‘acceptance by God’ (Vainio 77) and is based on Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and his triumph over death and sin, which provides a further link between the preceding sonnet and Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’. The speaker asks to be imputed righteous after the recognition of his sinfulness and the return of his sins to their place of origin, hell –​he will be ‘purg’d of euill’ and is therefore ready for the imputation; at the same time, the imputation prepares his exit from the poem and the drama that is this world. The ambiguity of the final couplet allows for both a reading that points towards Catholic dogma of purgation and for one that is based on the Protestant doctrine of imputation; the speaker refers to both denominations in one single line.86 Donne, accordingly, does not primarily strive for a consistent dogmatic statement; ‘Religion is Christianity, which being too spiritual to be seen by us, doth therefore take an apparent body of good life and works, so salvation requires an honest Christian’ (Gosse 1: 226). Rather, he uses the two possible causae of ‘thus’ and the resulting ambiguity of the final couplet to express a double persuasive strategy that transcends dogmatic boundaries:87 from a Catholic point of view, one can read the final couplet as a plea to God to impute the speaker to righteousness because he is good; the expression of his will to be purged is expressive of his repentance and thus an act towards goodness (i.e. purgation from sins) by the speaker. But the final couplet can also be read as a plea to God to make the speaker good so that he can be imputed righteous. The concluding lines combine that which can be done by the human being and that which God will do; both meet in the expression of the speaker’s wish and his persuasive speech act. The speech act as a whole, the poem, then also refers back to the initial ‘This’:  The play’s last scene literally is the poem which can be read as the soliloquy to conclude the speaker’s play that is his life (in a fashion similar to Othello’s concluding ‘thus’ as referred to above). By means of this speech act, the speaker wants to make all that happen which he has been talking about –​and he ‘thus’, i.e. by completing the speech act, leaves the world, flesh, and devil. ‘Thus’ therefore can also be read extradiegetically, and one may even imagine the speaker on the stage being drawn upwards by stage machinery and exiting thus. When the speaker is thus purged, he is able to leave behind the forces of the World, the Flesh and the Devil. These, however, also represent characters in a morality play –​in the world that is nothing but a play. The Castle of Perseverance presents the fight of Mankind against these forces, personified in the characters 86 Grierson glosses this line in Donne’s sonnet as a ‘[d]‌istinctively Protestant doctrine’ (260n13). Young, conversely, points out that such a view ‘forces the Holy Sonnets into a doctrinal frame that often overlooks the equivocal resonance and play of wit in Donne’s poetry’ (‘Donne’s Holy Sonnets’ 375–​6). For ‘doctrinal’ readings of Donne’s poetry, especially his Holy Sonnet, see Doerksen 85, 109; Johnson 39; Shuger 164–​5; Stachniewski, ‘Despair’; Strier; Sweetnam. 87 This is further made possible by ‘For’ at the beginning of line 14: it enhances the combination of the two causae as well as of the Protestant and Catholic reading. ‘For’ also makes its appearance in the following Holy Sonnet ‘At the round Earths’ (13), where it likewise introduces both causa efficiens and causa finalis.

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Mundus, Caro, and Belyal. In this play, they are mentioned in ‘The Banns’ that precede the actual play (29); in the course of the play, they make their appearance repeatedly; Mankind himself recognizes the danger caused by the trio during the battle and wishes to be saved from them (1999).88 Donne thus begins the poem with a reference to the theatrum mundi topos and ends it with an allusion to the allegories of the medieval moralities; by means of the allusion, the speaker points out that he will now be saved like the character in this play: he is ready to enter heaven. Donne’s drama (as expressed in his Holy Sonnets), and his reference to drama, is allegorical whenever he deals with dogma; but what we find in this Holy Sonnet is not a fixed dogmatic stance. Rather, the dogmatic stance is meant to prepare the happy ending of the speaker’s play, while the overall tone of the first eight lines is marked by uncertainty. What the reader-​spectator is confronted with is not a didactic piece about the afterlife but an actor who is speaking about life after death and who reveals his ignorance: ‘I know not’. Moreover, he utters a wish, even a desire, expressed by the use of the modal verb ‘shall’ that refers to the future: ‘and I shall sleep a space’. In the textual variant of this line ‘But my ever-​waking part shall see that face’, the modal ‘shall’ has more obviously the meaning of ‘should’ or ‘ought to’; and so it does in line 10, ‘in the earth shall dwell’. This sense becomes all the more evident in line 11 where the I no longer speaks in the indicative case but in the optative: ‘So fall my sinnes, that all may have their right’. What we find in this Holy Sonnet is on the one hand, the plea for God’s grace and, on the other, a process of purgation. Donne’s sonnet therefore contains a double discourse:  by talking about the event of death and about what happens after dying, the speaker links religious and dogmatic terms with reflections on drama. It is quite remarkable that, although the ‘plot’ of the poem resembles allegorical forms of drama of the late Middle Ages, it is not didactic, a feature common to morality plays, but aims at the affects and emotions and is, in this regard, far more modern.89

88 This combination of words  –​‘world, flesh, devil’  –​is repeated again and again in The Castle of Perseverance, e.g. 1004, 1539, 1718. The dangers that these bring to Mankind are also mentioned by the good Angel and the Virtues in the course of the play. In Wisdom when the protagonist describes the three enemies of the soul: ‘The Worlde, Þe Flesche, and Þe Fende’ (123.294). See Kelley 28. 89 See also Tuve on didacticism in Donne’s poetry: ‘The combination of ratiocination and emotional power is the proper and normal character of didactic poetry […] and what is peculiar about Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnets,’ for example, is not that combination. Emotional power is striven for in all good Renaissance didactic poetry because the affections have a necessary place in reasonable action’ (402). See Sidney’s dictum that ‘[m]‌oving is of a higher degree than teaching’ (Apology 94); and Leimberg on the development from didacticism to psychology (Heilig Öffentlich Geheimnis 141–​7).

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Dialogue and antagonism in Donne’s theatre of the soul

Donne’s Holy Sonnets present a speaker who finds himself confronted with his impending death and tries to imagine what will happen when he dies. In the context of these reflections, he addresses his soul in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’; this (communicative) situation implies the mode and the form of the soliloquy: the speaker assumes a double role, that of a dying man but also that of an advisor of his sinful soul. In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, the speaker regards the situation of his impending death as a dramatic one in that he conceives of his life as a drama now come to its ‘last Scene’. The overall attitude of the speaker in both poems can thus be termed ‘dramatic’. The author ‘fabricates’ and invents a speaker who expresses his thoughts and fears when confronted with his death but also, at least implicitly, the actions and thoughts of the soul, whom he compares to a ‘thief ’ and a traitor in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. At the same time, however, we may assume a certain affinity of author and speaker, especially when we think of Donne as ‘a very subtle and searching self-​ analyst’ (White, ‘Donne and the Psychology of Spiritual Effort’ 357)  and of the general concept of the ‘lyrical I’ as expressing personal experience (Müller, ‘Das lyrische Ich’ 57, 81). The ‘persona’ of the poem and its author are not so very far apart in Donne’s Holy Sonnets.1 The speaker of the Holy Sonnets corresponds to roles the author takes on; these are not expressions of feigning in the sense of pretending or simulating a situation2 but rhetorical realizations of his inner disposition, the situation of his soul in an imagined context: unlike those whom he condemns for ‘feigning devotion’ in Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’, he is serious in the representation of his fears and reflections. It is the similarity with and the evocation of the genre of meditation that renders his poetry serious; the soliloquy helps the speaker approach his soul and meditate on its condition.

1 See Thomas: ‘[T]‌he term persona is used to signify the dramatic speaker in the fictive situation of a dramatic monologue or satire’ (183). Thomas sees strong biographical connections in the Holy Sonnets (187). 2 And thus different from what Robbins describes as ‘posing[s]‌’ when he refers to ‘dramatic portraits’ in Donne’s poems (231–​2).

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This communicative situation of the soliloquy can furthermore be related to an emblematic tradition that would become particularly popular in the course of the seventeenth century. The externalization of the Soul that we find in Kempis/​ Rogers, the Psalms, Donne, and in the poetry of the early modern period in general is also conveyed in emblems of the Soul, e.g. by Francis Quarles. The soul here often replaces the first person pronoun; in III.1, for instance, the motto is Isa 26:9, ‘My soule hath desired thee in the night’; the subscriptio then begins: ‘Good God! what horrid darkenesse do’s surround /​My groping soule!’ (Quarles 129). The speaker does not express his fear speaking in the first person but refers to his soul. The pictura accordingly shows a groping soul, dressed in a long garment –​the soul as a woman, derived from Latin Anima (and Greek Psyche) –​and approaching the source of light, an angel. In the course of the text, the ‘I’ replaces the soul –​it is no longer the ‘groping soule’ that is described, but the speaker describes how ‘I vainly grop’d about’ (130). Still, the emblem ends with an address of the soul: ‘My soule, cheare up’ (131); again, the speaker addresses his own soul as if it were an entity distinct from himself and enters into the mode of the soliloquy. We have seen that the concept of the soliloquy was introduced into the literature and language of England at the time when drama was at its height, with representatives such as Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. We have also seen that the soliloquy has its origin in Augustine’s Soliloquia and the devotional practice following in its wake. The soliloquy, as an inner dialogue, is both a form of communication with God and linked to drama. The soliloquy is therefore, as becomes evident particularly in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, based on a double perspective: a speaker is confronted with his soul and talks to it; at the same time, he is affected as an anguished soul and actually talks to himself. The effect of this doubling is personification: he speaks of his soul in terms of metaphor, even compares it to several characters that are allegorical (especially the pilgrim) and thus distances himself from his soul; concurrently, the personification as a device of energeia creates greater proximity, the anguish becomes more immediate, and, thus, psychological urgency is expressed.3 This doubling of the soul in itself (as distancing and proximity) is again doubled when the soul is both an actor (in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ this is supported by dramatic allusion) and an audience (esp. in Holy Sonnets ‘What yf this present’, ‘Wilt thou love God’, ‘If faythfull soules’). The soul may, however, also take on a third part, namely when it becomes a place of action as in psychomachia. The interaction of the soliloquy as a communicative situation involving the soul and as a means to express psychological urgency conforms to the function of the soliloquy in Renaissance drama:  it serves to explore and present a character’s interiority (Arnold, Soliloquies 133). When the speaker addresses his soul in Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, he soliloquizes and thus enters into a dialogue with himself. In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, the speaker thinks about the separate parts of 3 This proximity may be linked to the function of the soliloquy, in Augustinian terms, to prove ‘self-​ existence’, i.e. to establish the self by conferring with an interior part.

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himself that will be divided at the moment of death. This mode of representation is grounded in the inherent division of man into his soul and the rest of his being, i.e. his body, his sins, his self. Donne chooses to reflect on this in the form of the soliloquy and by imagining his being ‘purg’d’ through the separation of body, soul and those parts that corrupt him, his sins. In the latter case, he even adds to the doubling by basing his poem on a triadic structure. The inner division based on the division of the speaker when he addresses his soul is embedded in a complex system of dichotomy and antagonism in these sonnets. The basic dichotomy in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ relies on the notion that the soliloquy is actually a dialogue: self-​address means both separation and union. The self and his soul are one and the same as well as different from each other. In Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’, the antagonism of body, soul, and sins as well as their mutual interdependence make the speaker reflect on his fate, and what he reflects on (though only implicitly) is the relation of body and soul –​and ‘I’. The soliloquy/​inner dialogue is therefore not only a rhetorical form serving to achieve clarification and dramatic immediacy but also a mode inherently appropriate to, and expressive of, the speaker’s attitude towards the question of death, judgement, and life after death. In both sonnets, form and content hence correspond to and reinforce each other. The inner division of the speaker is supported by the use of imperatives:  in both poems, the speaker gives orders or expresses his wish for action to either the soul or to God. In both sonnets, the speaker expresses doubt and uncertainty in the octave, and in the final couplet comes to his conclusion in telling someone else what to do in order to achieve his salvation. Holy Sonnet ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ more closely refers to a tradition as found in the Psalter, e.g. when the speaker directs the imperative towards God: ‘Fill their faces with shame’ (Ps 83:16). But in both sonnets, the imperatives serve to project the self beyond the limits of the self, and the self (as self/​I and soul) is able to leave the prison of its own self-​ encapsulation. Moreover, the urgency lent to the poems by the imperatives and the self-​division affects the reader-​spectators as well: we are no longer watching an Everyman on the stage of a morality play that is meant to teach us virtuous behaviour; in these poems, we are witnessing an individual human being who is afraid of dying and exposes his inner struggle. We are meant to be personally affected by what we behold as in the theatre. The functions of the soliloquy and the antagonism of the various parts constitutive of the self (body, soul, sins) in Donne’s Holy Sonnets are manifold. The soliloquy turns out to establish the point of connection between the religious self-​assurance of redemption (in Holy Sonnet ‘What yf this present’) and the psychology of the speaker as it combines the perspective of the individual person with that of the soul within him and the speaker himself. What is also emphasized is a ‘separation in unity’ of speaker and soul, in which the soul and the speaker are separate and one at the same time. This means, as shown in the readings of the Holy Sonnets, that the soul is at once single and double, which can be linked to the concept of the soul as the immortal self. The speaker, by addressing his soul and thus himself, is concerned with his personal wholeness and asks himself the

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question in which, again, the inherent appropriateness of genre/​form and content becomes obvious:  What happens to me and to a human being in general after death? This is a topic that Donne was haunted by, not only in his poetry but also in the Devotions; in the Holy Sonnets he expresses this question in the soliloquy, and this peculiar communicative situation can be linked with theatrical conventions. But, after all, Donne did not write dramas, he wrote poems, sonnets, in which he evoked dramatic modes of communication, structures, themes, topoi. In order to develop a language and a (doctrinal) position of his own, he chose to refer to drama. That his sonnets are in this regard different from his other poetic texts becomes particularly obvious if one compares them to, e.g. ‘A Litanie’. The first four stanzas of this religious poem begin with the invocation of an addressee: ‘Father of Heaven’ (1), ‘O Son of God’ (10), ‘O Holy Ghost’ (19), ‘O Blessed glorious Trinity’ (28; Robbins ed. 499–​500). The exclamation ‘O’ resembles the beginning of Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ and provides a link, with regard to the communicative situation, between these poems. But this is only seemingly the case. ‘A Litanie’ has the form of prayer (Donne foregrounds the public form through the constant use of ‘we’4), and all the addressees are invoked directly.5 In the Holy Sonnets, by contrast, the reference is constantly to an inward instance, the soul, the dialogue partner in these poems, and the soliloquy is directed at the observation of and reflection on inward processes. Donne’s Holy Sonnets are so specific and extraordinary in their poetic quality because of Donne’s perpetual reference to drama. This particular drama is linked to the concepts of the soul in Donne but also to the wider context of early modern literature: the soul not only enters the stage but also may become one. In being on the stage it may also go through several stages, e.g. the various stages of colours in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’. These stages can also consist in the separation of the soul from the body (and sins) and the events that follow this separation. The poems evolve around the antagonism that defines both body and soul as well as the basic structure of drama. Considering Donne’s Holy Sonnets in the context of the early modern soliloquy shows that this genre focuses on the observation of inward processes and is not delimited to the dialogue with an audience. Although the soliloquy may well exemplify the limits of the willing suspension of disbelief in drama as it potentially thwarts dramatic illusion, in Donne’s Holy Sonnets it appears to be the only manner to credibly represent the innermost fears and hopes of a speaker at the point of death. Donne explores the condition of his soul, and it is in this exploration that he comes to know not only himself but also God: 4 See Bauer on the change of pronouns to turn from a private to a public form of prayer: ‘Whereas the first half, after the opening lines, is characterized by the use of “I” and “me” and “my” […] [b]‌y the middle of “A Litanie”, “we” and “us” have entirely replaced again the first person singular’ (‘A Litanie’ 114). 5 In a letter to Henry Goodyer, Donne described ‘A Litanie’ as a ‘meditation in verse’ (Letters 1651 33). Low comments: ‘but it is not meditative in form […] In the poem, Donne touches introspectively on meditative themes’ (25). The form, however, is prayer, and it seems that Donne, in his letter, uses the term ‘meditation’ rather loosely.

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This world then is but an Occasionall world, a world only to be us’d; and that but so, as though we us’d it not; The next world is the world to be enjoy’d, and that so, as that we may joy in nothing by the way, but as it directs and conduces to that end; Nay, though we have no Joy at all, though God deny us all conveniences here, Etiamsi occiderit, though he end a weary life, with a painfull death, as there is no other hope, but in him, so there needs no other, for that alone is both abundant, and infallible in the selfe. (Sermons 3: 8.188)6

All hope is in God, and it is ‘both abundant, and infallible in the selfe’; it can be found in his own soul. It is therefore the soul, the ‘inner man’ that counts,7 and it is this inner instance that is put onto the stage by Donne in his poems and addressed by the speaker.

6 Doebler notes: ‘Donne’s Christianity is predominantly moral, not mystical, and embodies struggle. Letting go of the self is manifestly so difficult for him that when he does achieve it, his verse soars with the freedom he communicates. Self-​fashioning for Donne within the Christian tradition means paradoxically losing the self he has struggles so to maintain’ (201). 7 In his ‘Verse letter to Rowland Woodward’, Donne writes: ‘So wee, if wee into our selves will turne, /​Blowing our sparkes of virtue, may outburne /​The straw, which doth about our hearts sojourne’ (22–​4). See Aers/​Kress 266.

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PART III

Conclusion

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So(u)le-​talk, self, and stages of the soul

If the speaker in the Holy Sonnets focuses on the ‘inner man’, on what is going on with(in) the soul, and on the state and stage of his soul, then the same (though with a difference regarding manner) can be said about Tarquin in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece. The speaker in Donne’s Holy Sonnets addresses his soul in order to make it act and be saved; he views his soul as a character on its journey towards death and beyond, going through various stages and culminating in what awaits the soul after its parting from the body. The soul in the Holy Sonnets is regarded as an entity simultaneously separate from, part of, and identical with the speaker. The correlative of this self-​division in unity is the communicative situation of the soliloquy: the speaker addresses his soul as a part of himself that may, however, act on its own behalf. In The Rape of Lucrece, Tarquin has an inner debate that is a soliloquy; when he is determined to rape Lucrece, he orders himself to end debating, ‘debating die’ (274), and thus gives up himself as now his desire takes over, and reason loses the inner battle.1 The inner debate consisted in his self-​division; his will and reason were fighting each other (see 243; 486–​7; 495). With the end of debate, he decides that ‘Affection is my captain, and he leadeth’ (271). Like the speaker in Donne’s sonnets, Tarquin becomes an observer of what is going on within himself  –​which, simultaneously, creates distance from and involvement with what is being witnessed. The soliloquy as an inner debate serves, and has done so since Augustine, to make inward processes visible. During the early modern period, this technique or mode of speaking becomes integrated into fictional texts: the soliloquy is no longer restricted to devotional writing but finds its way into the poetry and the drama of the time. The self-​division into conflicting forces as introduced in the Psychomachia of Prudentius and made popular in the allegory of medieval morality plays is now, through the communicative situation of the soliloquy, turned inward and outward at the same time; it is used to express psychological urgency. Inner forces of the soul were externalized in the allegories of the Psychomachia and the medieval stage. Now this process of externalization is put inside the soul again, 1 The notion is a paradoxical one: he ends debating and gives up himself, although his debate was a sign of his inner division. But the debate also meant that reason did still have a voice; giving up the debate therefore means the giving up of reason, which is why Tarquin loses himself.

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which becomes a stage of its own –​and as such it may also appear on the stage of the theatre. In this manner, the self begins to establish and define itself in a complex interplay of interiority and theatrical exposure both on the stage of the poem and the theatre. Self and soul are thus intricately connected to one another in the poetry and drama of the early modern period.2 As has been noted, ‘before men had selves, they had souls’ (Wiltenburg 417; his reference is to Morris 6), a notion familiar from Augustine, whose Soliloquia served the purpose to prove his ‘self-​existence’,3 but actually going back to Plotin and a first emerging interest in what has been dubbed ‘inwardness’.4 The interplay of interiority and exposure, as well as of self and soul, is in many ways an enterprise of high risk: both in secular and religious texts of the early modern period, the soliloquy may serve to show the disruption of the self and the loss of the soul. We have seen that Shakespeare’s Richard III begins his soliloquy with a form of self-​address in that he apostrophizes his ‘coward conscience’: ‘how dost thou afflict me!’ He addresses his conscience as a part of himself and feels ‘afflicted’ by it. This self-​address (which may be expressive of an inner division) is typical of the soliloquy. What is conspicuous is Richard’s further use of pronouns: his self seems to dissolve entirely. It is ‘I’ vs. ‘myself ’ –​‘What do I fear? Myself?’ –​and, finally, Richard in the third person alone: ‘Richard loves Richard’. While ‘thou’ is a typical form of self-​address in the soliloquy, where speakers (and parts of the self/​ soul) remain related to each other as partners in a dialogue, Richard moves away from this pronoun and expresses his thoughts and feelings about himself either in the first or third person, as if there was an immense distance between him and himself. His choice of pronouns is indicative of a loss of self: through his sinful behaviour he has relinquished his self and his soul –​he is a lost soul recognizing that ‘no soul will pity [him]’. The pronouns hence show the reader/​audience that he is indeed a villain. Similar structures can be found in The Rape of Lucrece, when Tarquin ‘holds [...] disputation /​’Tween frozen conscience and hot-​burning will’ (246–​7). Like Richard, he is unable of self-​address: there is not a single instance in his whole inner 2 Wiltenburg notes that ‘our inward sense of self is dialogical’ (414) and refers to the history of the distinction between self and soul, ‘whether primarily descriptive and formal (nous and psyche) after Aristotle, or primarily ethical and theological (ego and anima) after Augustine’ (416n10). See also Haekel: ‘No matter at which point in history we choose to determine the beginning of the modern individual self, it is inextricably linked with the history of the soul’ (179); Fietz 18; and Reiss 256. 3 Shurtleff locates the emergence of a concept of the ‘self ’ in the twelfth century and links this to the ‘renewed interest in the Delphic injunction “Know yourself ”: literature of the period shows a conspicuous increase in concern regarding the inner workings and motives of the mind […] This attempt to articulate and define the self appears suddenly and dramatically enough to prompt some scholars to call the phenomenon the “discovery of the individual” or of the “self ” ’ (373). One may also diagnose a ‘renewed interest in the Delphic injunction’ during the early modern period; e.g. Sir John Davies’s Nosce Teipsum; see also Leimberg, Reading, on the Delphic maxims in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. 4 Cary argues that the first ‘inward turn’ goes back to Plato but that it was actually Plotin who associated this inwardness with the soul (Augustine’s Invention 11).

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debate that he addresses himself as ‘thou’. He is either ‘I’ or talks about instances of his self –​for instance, his conscience and will, his ‘affection’ (271) –​in the third person as if they were somewhat unrelated to himself. Both Tarquin and Richard are governed by their ‘fear’; and while Richard feels fear only after committing his sinful deeds, Tarquin, though feeling fear before the deed, actually overcomes it (his desire is stronger) and is guided by his ‘will’ until he realizes the loss of his immortal soul. His feelings are then no longer an issue –​they are probably beyond our imagination. After the rape, Tarquin’s inner state is transmitted through the narrator alone, who implicitly comments on Tarquin’s self-​division when he juxtaposes the pronouns he and himself (equivalent to the I and myself of Richard’s soliloquy): ‘now against himself he sounds this doom’ (717); ‘He [...] hates himself ’ (738). Tarquin, like Richard, is a lost soul, incapable of addressing himself in order to find out who he is and approach his ‘self-​existence’ by means of the soliloquy. In Donne, the speaker’s self  –​whatever his doubts and fears may be in the octave  –​is intact. He is able to address his soul and admonish, warn it, give it orders. The soul trembles at what may come after death but it is not lost. The use of pronouns is, e negativo, likewise indicative of that; in Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’, he addresses his soul directly and as ‘thou’ (2, 5); in Holy Sonnet ‘If faythfull Soules’, he likewise turns to his soul and addresses ‘Thy true griefe’; and in one of the Holy Sonnets, he asks his soul: ‘Wilt thou love God?’ Even when this speaker regards his soul as an entity separate from himself that will be separated from his body on the point of death, this soul is not lost because of divine ‘grace to begin’. The immortality of the soul is foregrounded, while, in both Lucrece and Richard III, the protagonists forego this immortality through the wrong reliance on various faculties of the soul, namely desire, passion, affection, and will. Their self depends on their souls being intact; once their souls are divided and reason no longer governs in a hierarchical system, their self-​division sets in. In the soliloquy, the speaker is concerned with his soul; in the wake of Augustine, the soliloquy became an established form in devotional texts, for instance in Kempis and Rogers. During the early modern period, the soliloquy is still part of ‘Tudor and early Stuart devotional practice’ (Staykova 121), but the genre also finds its way into literary texts, such as drama and poetry, where speakers enter into a communicative situation that is a soliloquy in the sense of ‘so(u)le-​ talke’: Augustinian sole-​talk thus becomes soul-​talk with the soul speaking on an inner stage. This communicative situation can be linked to meditation. An example of this practice that brings together meditation, soliloquy and drama is Thomas Beedome’s poem ‘Being a Meditation to My Selfe’ (Marshall 13) from Poems Divine and Humane (1641): Why wouldst thou live (fond soule), dost thou not know From whence thou cam’st, and whither thou must goe? Can walls of clay so much thy sense delight, As to debarre thee from that glorious flight Which thou shouldst covet? canst thou idly prize The mire that loads thy wings unfit to rise?

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Conclusion Shouldst thou still live, it were but still to see Some new sceane Acted in thy Tragedie; Thou couldst but do tomorrow as this day, Commit fresh sinne, sleepe, eate, or drinke, and play. No matter then how soone thou dye: then come, Prepare thyselfe to waite thy Judge’s dombe; Thou cam’st from heav’n; then labour to draw neere Thy quiet center. If thou once rest there, Thy walls of clay, the mire that loads thy wings, Shall be a mansion for the King of Kings. Thy Tragedy shall end, thy sinne shall cease, And thou rest ever in an endlesse peace. Bee’t when thou please, good God, at morne or noone, So I die well, no matter, Lord, how soone.

The speaker uses the form of ‘meditation’ to address his soul and emphasizes how much the soul is burdened by the ‘mire’ of its earthly existence. He begins with a question to the soul why it would want to live on although it knows its origin, and, therefore, also its destination, namely heaven, which is revealed as the poem goes on. He addresses his soul in a fashion that is reminiscent of the communicative situation in Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Oh my black Soule’ when he is speaking from a position of greater insight than the soul. This life on earth is described as a ‘tragedie’, which is an allusion to the theatrum mundi topos, a notion Donne and Shakespeare also refer to. Similar to this Holy Sonnet, the speaker here also changes his addressee in the final couplet and turns to God in prayer, promising that he will ‘die well’, which evokes treatises from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance on the ars moriendi. But it is not only the addressee that changes here:  if the first line addresses the soul with regard to its attitude towards death, now, in the final couplet, the soul itself is giving expression to its changed attitude. This implies that the speaker up to this point is ambiguous:  he may be the human being who is concerned with his soul, or God, who is addressing the soul and is answered by her in the final couplet. The poem concludes with the recognition that, while life on earth is a tragedy, a happy conclusion is achieved in dying well and entering the realm of ‘endlesse peace’. One can see here, how communicative situation (the address of the soul), content (the speaker’s quest as well as hope for redemption), and drama (in the sense of theatrum mundi) are linked with one another when Beedome refers to the form which likewise connects these elements in the title to his poem: ‘Being a Meditation to My Selfe’. The poem can be seen as a sort of final summing up to the development of the soliloquy in poetry during the early modern period. It has been noted that the ‘self ’ was ‘fashioned’ during the early modern period (Greenblatt), that this period was one of ‘inwardness’ and ‘interiority’ (Ferry; Maus; Schoenfeldt). It was the soul that provided the link between self and literary (self-​) expression, and it did so most conspicuously by becoming a stage or a character in its own right that appears on an inner stage. The genre of the soliloquy became a communicative mode that allowed writers to form this self-​expression and to give

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insight into a character’s innermost psyche. In our contemporary understanding, it is poetry which lends itself most conveniently and aptly to this kind of self-​ expression. During the early modern period, it is the soul that provides the link between poetry and drama: drama becomes truly poetic in its representation of the self and soul, just as much as poetry becomes dramatic whenever the soul comes into the equation, and it does so most prominently in the soliloquy. Soul, soliloquy (as soule-​talk), and self are intricately linked to one another and define the performative self on the stage as well as at the stages of the soul in early modern poetry.

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Index

agon 21, 89, 190 see also antagonism Alabaster, William 170 Sonnets 132n64 alchemy 34n76, 197 quasi-​alchemical  134 allegory 2, 4, 5, 10n28, 19–​29, 22, 24, 29, 41, 59, 65n3, 67, 69, 96, 100, 104, 110, 113, 117–​21, 123–​8, 132, 139, 145, 156, 159, 168, 175, 176n135, 184, 190–​1, 203–​6, 215, 217, 223 Alleyn, Edward 107 ambiguity 4, 5, 28, 30, 32, 34, 40, 42n21, 43–​6, 48–​9, 52, 54, 60–​2, 61n63, 62, 66, 68, 70–​1, 74, 86, 93n76, 94, 97, 101, 109, 110, 114–​15, 116, 120, 129, 130, 140–​1, 145, 146, 147, 152, 153, 177, 179, 185–​6, 187–​8, 193, 197, 201, 206–​10, 226 ambivalence 20n4, 34, 50n37, 85n59, 87n65, 120, 121, 123n37, 180n151 anagnorisis 75, 91, 92, 103, 109, 110, 111, 143, 146 animal imagery 44, 54n53, 59, 62, 77 antagonism 21, 24, 26–​9, 31, 36, 64, 69, 72, 74–​6, 78, 89, 96, 99, 100–​2, 104, 181n153, 190 see also agon apo koinou 31, 41, 100, 101 apokatastasis 184, 198 apostrophe 111, 140, 141, 143, 145, 172–​3 Aquinas, Thomas 108n10 Aristotle Art of Rhetoric 49 Historia Animalium 98n90

Poetics 3, 86, 89n70, 148n31 ars moriendi 128, 132n65, 142, 195n37, 226 Augustine The City of God 42n19, 79–​84, 96, 203, 205–​6 Confessions 122n31, 146n21, 153–​4 De Genesi ad litteram 198 De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio 122n32 De Immortalitate Animae 153n48, 205n66 De Quantitate Animae 153n48, 205n66 De vera religione 168n106 Soliloquia 12, 152–​5, 162, 166n96, 168, 174, 177, 217, 224 Averroes [Ibn Rušd] 108 Avila, Teresa of 66n9 Balbis, Johannes de Catholicon 160 Bartholomaeus Anglicus Batman vppon Bartholome 50n38, 66 Bayne, Paul Holy Soliloquies 161–​2, 171, 174n130 Beedome, Thomas Poems Divine and Humane 225–​6 Beichtspiegel 151 The Bible 1 Cor 9 189 1 Cor 13 192 1 Cor 15 113, 173n125, 182, 192 2 Cor 5 180, 206n66 1 Tim 3:16 145 Gal 3:27 126 Hebr 11:13 118n20, 189 Isa 1:18 134

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Index Jer 6:15 129 Job 28:28 195 John 1 134n76, 149n35 John 11:35 128n56, 202 Lk 12:50 135 Lk 23 137, 138n88 Mt 20:22 135 Ps 38 115, 196n39, 212 Ps 83:16 129, 218 Rev 1:5 136 Rev 7 134, 135 Rev 13 139 Rom 4 212 Song of Songs 156–​8 The Book of Common Prayer 193, 212 Burton, Robert Anatomy of Melancholy 32n5, 33n6, 33n7, 57n58, 66n11, 81n45, 198n48 cacochymia 97n89 Calepinus, Ambrosius Dictionarium latinum 160 Calvin, John 40 Institutes 212 Castiglione, Baldassare Book of the Courtier 33n7, 50, 87n64 The Castle of Perseverance 31, 68–​9, 113, 132, 158n69, 191n24, 203–​4, 207n71, 208, 214, 215n88 catharsis 184, 196 see also cleansing; purgation Cawdrey, Robert Table Alphabeticus 160n79, 161, 169n113 Caxton, William 119n22 Treatise 142n10 Chaucer, Geoffrey 43n21 Legend of Good Women 25n15 chiasmus 13, 21, 24, 32, 40, 55n54, 96, 99–​104, 176n137 chiastic link 65, 69, 98, 101–​2 chiastic reversal 66 see also wordplay Cicero 154n54, 198 De Oratore 114n10 Rhetorica ad Herrenium 114n11 Tusculanae disputationes 42n19, 198, 202 cleansing 78, 127, 133n71, 134, 135–​6, 138–​9, 210 see also catharsis; purgation

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colour symbolism 27, 29, 68, 93, 98n90, 113, 123–​4, 128–​31, 131–​4, 134–​9, 141–​2, 219 commerce 36–​7, 103–​4 compositio loci 109–​10, 172 compositio temporum 148 conceit 43, 88, 138, 207n73 Congreve, William The Double-​Dealer 163–​5, 167, 173 Cooper, Thomas Thesaurus 19, 161n81, 169, 177, 212n81 Crashaw, Richard ‘The Weeper’ 138 Davies, Sir John Nosce Teipsum 7n21, 224n3 debate, inner 12, 13, 21–​3, 31, 35–​42, 42–​3, 47–​8, 51, 54–​5, 64, 69, 87, 95, 104, 155, 162, 177–​8, 223 see also disputation deixis 121, 171–​2, 186–​90, 210 Dekker, Thomas The Whore of Babylon 131–​2 desire 12, 13–​14, 19–​21, 25, 27, 32–​4, 35, 42, 46–​8, 49–​50, 50–​4, 58–​63, 70, 77, 79, 90, 101, 149, 156–​8, 189, 197n44, 217, 225 devotion 119n21, 143–​6, 158, 162n84, 170–​1, 186, 223 devotional practice 9, 11, 110, 166n95, 217 Dickinson, Emily 158n67 dirge 93–​4 disputation 47–​8, 77, 81, 224 see also debate, inner Donatus, Aelium Commentum Terenti 14 Donne, John Anniversary poems 4, 6, 184n2, 185n6, 189n14, 190n20, 192, 196, 206n69 ‘The Calme’ 130n63 La Corona 140n2, 189n15 Devotions 113n6, 116, 173, 194, 199, 203n57, 219 Elegies 101n11 Essays in Divinity 173, 200n52 ‘The Extasie’ 150–​1, 197n45 ‘Goodfriday, 1613’ 196

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Index

Donne, John (cont.) Holy Sonnets ‘At the round Earths’ 109, 123n36, 134, 192n29, 194, 202, 203n58, 211n79, 214n87 ‘Batter my Heart’ 109, 146n20, 106n98 ‘Death bee not proude’ 109, 113, 139, 183, 191 ‘I ame a litle World’ 141n8, 180n150, 193 ‘If faythfull Soules’ 140, 143–​6, 151, 216, 217, 225 ‘Oh my black Soule’ 14, 108, 109, 111–​39, 141–​3, 148n29, 150, 158–​9, 172, 179, 183, 185, 190, 196, 205, 216–​19, 226 ‘Oh, to vex me’ 146n20, 195–​6 ‘Spitt in my face’ 109, 125, 170 ‘This is my Playes last Scene’ 7, 14, 97, 108–​10, 138n87, 143n13, 159n70, 171–​2, 182, 184–​215, 216–​18 ‘Thou hast made me’ 195 ‘What yf this present’ 140, 147–​50, 217 ‘Why ame I by all Creatures’ 196 ‘Wilt thou love God’ 140, 146–​50, 171, 217, 225 ‘A Hymn to God the Father’ 195n38 Ignatius His Conclave 171n119 Letters 108, 171n122, 194, 199n50, 219n5 Pseudo-​Martyr 6n20, 134, 136n80 Satires 195n37, 212n83 Sermons 6–​7, 108n10, 115, 116, 123–​4, 126–​9, 131, 136n80, 146n21, 151n41, 169, 173n125, 186n7, 188n12, 194, 199n50, 200n52, 201n54, 203n58, 207, 212, 220 Deaths Duell 56n56, 126n50, 158n68, 188, 192, 201 ‘The Sunne Rising’ 156n62 ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ 128, 192n25 ‘A Valediction: Of my Name in the Window’ 192n28, 213n83 ‘Verse Letter to Rowland Woodward’ 124, 220n7 dramatic irony 93, 95, 135, 145 dualism 184, 185n6, 191, 197n44, 198, 203–​4

economy 37 poetic economy 85, 87–​8, 133n68 ekphrasis 19n1, 22, 23–​4, 48, 84–​92, 187 Elyot, Thomas Dictionarie 161 enargeia 113, 130 energeia 2, 4n13, 24, 29, 80, 189, 217 evidentia 86 Gerhard, Johann Schola pietatis 127n53 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Naturformen der Dichtung 2–​3 governance of self 5, 8, 32, 35, 46, 55–​7, 62, 81, 90, 225 of state 55, 69, 90 Gower, John Confessio Amantis 25n15, 28n20 grace 14, 59, 86, 109, 112, 113, 117, 120, 121–​3, 127, 129, 135, 138, 159, 172, 212, 225 disgrace 60, 73–​4, 85–​6 gracelessness 48, 60n60, 77 prevenient grace 112n3, 117, 124, 133–​4, 196, 212, 225 Greville, Fulke Mustapha 32n4, 59n59, 72n21 Hall, Joseph The Art of Divine Meditation 132n64, 171n119 ‘Heaven upon Earth’ 130n60, 190 Hédelin, François La Pratique du Théâtre 163–​4 Herbert, George ‘The Collar’ 167n100 ‘A Dialogue-​Antheme’  190n21 ‘Death’ 113, 125 ‘Love (III)’ 122 ‘The Rose’ 196n42 Heywood, Jasper Seneca, His Tenne Tragedies 154n58, 154n59 Heywood, John 107 The Four P.P. 204 Heywood, Thomas An Apology for Actors 14 The Rape of Lucrece 20n5

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Horace Ars Poetica 85n59, 151n41 Epistles 50n39 Epodes 50n39 Satire VI 187n10 iconicity 21, 23, 74, 100–​3, 184, 208 imagination 4, 14, 39, 52–​3, 59, 70–​2, 87–​8, 109, 172, 187, 225 imago dei 178, 197 imitatio Christi 135 imputation 112n3, 124, 204n63, 209–​14 indexicality 23, 27, 29, 72, 87, 91 see also physiognomy inner drama 5, 69–​87, 108 see also theatre within The Interlude of Youth 51 introspection 24, 170, 174 inwardness 4, 9, 10–​13, 15, 22–​3, 29, 42–​3, 49, 54, 64, 101, 119, 150, 154n57, 165n94, 168, 169–​70, 209, 219, 223–​4, 226 Isidorus [Hispalensis Episcopus] Etymologiarum 160 Jonson, Ben 107n4, 217 La Ceppède, Jean de Théorèmes 134n73 Laurentius, M. Andreas A Discovrse 28n23, 53–​4, 66 Livy [Livius Titus] 21, 25n15, 31n3, 79–​80, 82n49 Lok, Henry Sundry Christian Passions 180n150, 187–​8, 196n40 Loyola, Ignatius of Spiritual Exercises 171n119, 172n123, 207n70 Lusty Juventus 51n43, 52 Luther, Martin 212–​13 Bettbüchleyn 150, 195n37, 212n81 The Bondage of the Will 211 ‘Gelobet seist Du, Jesu Christ‘ 125–​6 Lydgate, John The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man 119 Lyly, John 99 Euphues 156

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macrocosm 75n30 Mankind 31–​2 Marlowe, Christopher 217 Doctor Faustus 22, 109, 122n34, 153n51, 208 Edward II 56n37 Hero and Leander 14, 19n1 Tamburlaine 130–​1 martyrdom 79n41, 135–​9 Marvell, Andrew ‘A Dialogue’ 167 medieval drama 5, 113, 132 see also morality play(s); mystery play(s) meditatio mortis 108, 141n3, 172, 179, 188 meditation 42, 116, 140, 142, 146–​50, 152–​3, 155, 161, 168, 169–​73, 186, 196, 207, 216, 225–​6 Ignatian meditation 109–​10 memory 4, 7, 91, 109, 116–​17, 138, 146n21, 150, 196n40 microcosm 75n30, 180n150, 194n34 Middleton, Thomas The Ghost of Lucrece 20n5 Milton, John Paradise Lost 24n12, 157n66, 209n77 Montaigne, Michel de 125n45, 174n128 morality play(s) 14, 22, 29, 31, 59, 68, 107–​9, 112–​13, 114–​17, 121, 127, 130, 132–​3, 139, 166, 175, 191, 204n62, 214–​15, 218, 223 Moulin, Peter du A week of soliloquies 160 mystery play(s) 124n40, 127, 139 see also medieval drama Nashe, Thomas Christ’s Tears 129n59, 137n83 ‘To the Gentlemen Students’ 174n129 ‘Preface to Sidney’ 1–​2 Origen [Origenes Adamantius] 157 Ovid 19n1, 21, 31 Fasti 22n8, 25n15, 47, 55n53, 67, 84n54 Metamorphoses 33n7 oxymoron 21, 29, 37, 101 paradox 5, 23, 34, 40–​3, 44–​6, 58, 62, 66, 78, 84, 112n3, 120, 123, 134n73, 136, 142, 185, 188, 194, 196, 211, 223n1

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266 parallelism 13, 21, 29, 99–​104, 149n32 Passion (of Christ) 95n85, 127–​8, 134–​5, 137n86, 139 Pererius [Benedict Pereira] Commentary on Genesis 200–​1 performance 8, 11–​12, 85–​6, 99–​100, 107, 116, 142, 144 performativity 7n22, 9, 11–​12, 21, 23, 94, 100, 113, 120n27, 150, 175n134, 227 peripety/​peripeteia 2, 14, 22, 68, 102, 109, 111, 114, 121–​3, 138, 173n127, 182, 210 see also turning point Perotti, Niccolo Cornucopiae 160 Petrarch 49n35, 65, 149 Canzoniere 192n27 Petrarchism 65, 123n39 Rime e Trionfi 122n34 Philomel 63n68, 70, 75, 77 physiognomy 87, 92n75 see also indexicality physiomachia 30–​2, 35, 65, 69, 72 Plato 26, 96n86, 149, 155, 174, 194, 198, 203 Cratylos 120–​1 Hippias maior 154 Laws 185n3 Phaedo 172n124, 184, 191–​2, 200n51, 205 Phaedrus 54n53, 70, 200n51 Republic 3n10, 168n106 Sophist 155, 165 Timaeus 3n8, 66n11, 67, 197 Plotin 154n57, 224 Enneads 7–​9, 104, 197, 201–​2 Plutarch 136–​7 De genio Socratis 171n119, 192n26 The Pride of Life 191 Primaudaye, Peter de la French Academie 7n21, 33, 193n33 prosopopeia 53n48, 114, 159n75 Prudentius 117n19 Hamartigenia 207n71 Peristephanon Liber 135–​6, 139 Psychomachia 10n28, 22–​3, 26, 31, 33, 36, 42n19, 64, 223 psychagogy 155

Index psychomachia 30–​2, 36, 41, 54, 59, 68–​9, 72, 104, 108, 132, 175–​6, 217 purgation 15, 127, 137n86, 171, 184, 196–​7, 201–​2, 210–​15, 218 see also catharsis; cleansing Puttenham, George The Arte of English Poesie 99n2 Quarles, Francis Emblems 180n150, 217 Tarquin Banished 63n68 Quintilian Institutio 114n10, 114n11, 141n6, 147n21, 159n74 Redford, John Wit and Science 131–​2 Ricci, Bartolomeo De Imitatione Libri Tres 162 Rogers, Thomas 169n113 The sole-​talke of the Soule 20n4, 152, 155–​9, 164, 182, 217, 225 Ruland, Martin Lexicon Alchemiae 169 self-​division 30–​4, 36, 47, 53n48, 55–​6, 58, 64, 72–​8, 84n55, 102–​3, 110, 218, 223, 225 tripartite self 197–​202, 208n74 self-​fashioning 10, 142n10, 220n6 Seneca [Lucius Annaeus Seneca] 151–​2, 154–​5, 162, 165, 174n129 Epistulae Morales 154–​5, 172n124 serio ludere 139 sermocinatio 114, 159 Shakespeare, William (other than Lucrece) 2 Henry IV 67n12 2 Henry VI 45n27 Antony and Cleopatra 100n7 As You Like It 7, 110n15, 187–​9 Comedy of Errors 74n26 Cymbeline 25n16, 45n30, 61n62, 94n81 Hamlet 4, 5n16, 10–​11, 41n16, 61n62, 71n19, 117n17, 125n46, 129, 141n4, 144n16, 158n67, 165n93, 174, 176n137 Henry V 86–​9

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Index Julius Caesar 136–​7 King Lear 41n16, 194n34 Macbeth 92n75, 99, 129n57 The Merchant of Venice 92n75, 175–​6, 224n3 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 23–​4, 39n14, 66n8, 71, 74n25 Othello 210, 214 The Passionate Pilgrim 50n37 Pericles 5n15 The Phoenix and Turtle 101n10 Richard II 61n62, 143n12, 147n23 Richard III 47, 84n55, 114n9, 147n23, 154n58, 173–​8, 179, 224–​5 Romeo and Juliet 3–​4, 78n39, 86n63, 110n11 The Sonnets Sonnet 4 36–​7 Sonnet 15 5n15 Sonnet 27 26, 39n14, 71 Sonnet 51 20n4 Sonnet 62 177n139 Sonnet 138 41n17, 46, 99n4 Sonnet 146 178–​83 Sonnet 147 20n4 The Taming of the Shrew 179 The Tempest 94n81 Timon of Athens 19n3 Titus Andronicus 44, 129 Troilus and Cressida 33–​4, 54n52 The Two Gentlemen of Verona 37 Venus and Adonis 19n1, 22, 44, 102n12 The Winter’s Tale 204 Shakespeare, William, and John Fletcher The Two Noble Kinsmen 62n67 shame 27, 31, 45, 47, 54–​7, 59, 72–​8, 79, 81–​4, 102–​3, 123–​4, 128–​30, 131, 199, 218 Sidney, Sir Philip An Apology for Poetry 9, 88n68, 89, 215n89 Astrophil and Stella 1–​2, 113n7, 177n39 Sidney, Sir Philip, and Mary Sidney Sidney Psalter 147n22, 151n42 Skelton, John Magnificence 51n43, 129n59 soliloquy 9–​13, 14, 22, 46–​8, 64, 80, 104, 108, 110, 111–​13, 140–​50,

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150–​83, 184, 186, 189, 209, 214, 216–​19, 223–​7 soliloquium 152–​5, 160–​5, 168, 169 soul allegory of the soul (Anima) 4, 5, 113, 125n45, 132–​3, 139, 203, 217 faculties of the soul 4–​9, 32, 38–​9, 81n45, 82, 132n66, 144, 181n154, 225 immortal soul 4–​9, 15, 32, 62, 64, 82, 97, 98, 108, 124, 144, 154–​5, 185n6, 189, 191, 199–​201, 205–​6, 209, 218, 225 spotted soul 22, 60–​1, 64, 65–​9, 74n27, 76, 81–​2, 93, 96, 98, 100, 103, 132 Southwell, Robert Epistle of Comfort 136n79–​80 Spenser, Edmund The Faerie Queene 92n75 stage-​upon-​the-​stage  92, 94 suicide 13, 21, 22, 64n2, 70, 73n22, 76, 78, 93n77, 96–​7, 102–​3, 154n59 suicide debate (Lucrece) 79–​84 The Summoning of Everyman 110, 111–​12, 114–​17, 118–​20, 121, 122, 133, 173n27, 191 synonymy 21, 34, 74, 161, 169, 171 Taylor, Jeremy Rules and Exercises 142n10 Tertullian 11, 79n41, 193n30 De Spectaculis 11n33, 115, 145n17 theatre within 146, 164, 172n123, 216–​20 see also inner drama theatrum mundi 7, 9, 50, 104, 108, 110, 145, 168n107, 185, 187–​8, 215, 226 theodicy 104 Thomas à Kempis Imitatio Christi 3n10, 20n4, 152, 154, 155–​9, 182, 217, 225 Todi, Jacopone da 125n45, 166n98 tragicomedy 1–​2 trauma 62, 64n1, 77 trinity 184, 197, 219 turning point 117 see also peripety/​peripeteia Vaughan, Henry 5, 142n9 ‘Death: a Dialogue’ 167 ‘L’Envoy’ 156n62

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Virgil Aeneid 42n19, 44n26 Georgica 33n7 Vives, Juan Luis A Fable about Man 145, 168n107 An Introduction to Wisedome 181n156 Wager, William Enough Is as Good as a Feast 133n70 Walkington, Thomas The Optick Glasse of Humors 66, 92n75, 96n86, 97n89 Webster, John The White Devil 84n56, 94n81 Whither, George A Preparation to the Psalter 151n42

Index Wiericx, Anton Cor Iesu amanti sacrum 148n30 Wilson, Robert The Three Ladies of London 131 wordplay 19, 76, 99n3, 129n59, 156, 185 chiastic wordplay 76, 86, 156 homophone 76n33, 113, 128, 156 paronomastic wordplay 76, 88 pun(s) 4, 32, 61, 73n24, 97n87, 120n28, 128n55, 129n59, 137n84, 139 Wright, Thomas Passions of the Mind 33n6, 38–​9, 49n36, 56n55 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 177n139 ‘My lute, awake’ 186